Help
D, on 03 December 2010 - 04:59 AM, said:
1) How were you introduced to the Malazan series?
I don't remember for sure. I think I might have seen it in a bookstore, liked the artsy titles and that there were already 4 of them and bought them on an impulse (hmm, 5/6 years ago, more like asked my mum to buy them!)
2) What brought you to Malazan Empire forums?
By the end of MoI I had a lot of ideas about how things are in the Malaziworld, as well as plenty of confusing questions. I wanted to see if others agreed on the crazy theories, and get answers to the confusing questions. Plus it would be a good way to find out when the next book was coming out (it already had and I didn't know!)
3) What besides MbotF do you "geek out" over?
Well, there's nothing that I geek out over as much as MBotF. Timelines and flow charts with fancy backgrounds is pretty much a Malazan-exclusive, except for the occasional thrown-together thing here and there.
That being said, I do geek out over the three kingdoms period of chinese history (roughly 170-280). My initial source for this was the novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or just Three Kingdoms). This is a big novel that gives a highly fictionalized account of that historic period by incoporating lots of folk tales and bending things a bit to make bigger themes. And if you thought Malazan had a lot of characters, you ain't seen nothing - Rot3K has about a character per page, all of them with some impact on the story. There's a series of fighting video games (Dynasty Warriors 1 to 6), a series of strategy video games (Romance of the Three Kingdoms 1 to 11), a ridiculously long chinese mini-series, several movies (Red Cliff being the most recent) and plenty more media surrounding it all. And I made a series of mafia games about it, too!
Beyond that and MBotF, I don't geek out nearly as much about any other books, largely because there's not that much with enough scope and tangential material to appeal to my inner geek (WoT is probably big enough, but I never got that into it).
I do geek out a bit about traditional music - I like some jazz and classical stuff, know lots of random tidbits about weird foreign instruments, that kind of thing!
4) Do you remember your first post? What was it and who responded?
If I'm not mistaken, my first post was in the HoC forums asking if:
I don't remember who responded, but it was pretty much a "Of course they're the same!"
5) Which members do you feel a special connection with?
Imperial Historian - got me going on the wiki
Abyss and Darkwatch - mysterious Quontarians unite!
Shinrei - I like debating with him in the discussion board and hearing all about the madness he observes every day in Japan. And he's directly or indirectly caused my death in about the last 10 mafia games we've both played in, but I forgive him!
Tapper - The greatest mafia game designer ever known. I got my first handle on building mafia games from reading through Tapper's own games and his analysis of other games (which is always good praise/criticism delivered in the best manner possible).
Lisheo - Just because.
Lastly, I always feel a special connection to anyone who tries to do some sort of Malazan-related project, because I can empathize so much with trying to work through the complexity of the world and so much of the knowledge is open to interpretation. If it's something huge, like Silencer's RPG project, then you've got loads of problems trying to make the project just as big and complex. If it's something ongoing or with not a lot of information, like Werthead's map then with every release sure enough there's a hundred little quotes you didn't look up that contradict what you did. And then there's tons of projects that you can imagine and would be glorious but there's just no easy technology to produce them (like Dolmen's time-map idea).
6) Are there any forum members who are "lost in the warrens" who you miss?
q21 joined at the same time as me and was the first person of equal noob-itude that I noticed. Though he got in to mafia long before I did.
bhok'arala used to fill enormous threads of theories and debate on warren mechanics, the pantheon, titles, ranks, geography, you name it. Not only is he gone, but his horde of threads were lost in the forum re-organization
bwgan, because she had that perfect mother-hen-branching-out style and was always so nice, too! And yet at the same time she played a lot of mafia and whooped some butts too! Plus her daughter coming on the forums to defend twilight was absolutely classic.
7) What are your skills that pay the bills?
None! I'm unemployed and have perpetually less and less money in the bank account!
I'm an engineering student, studying a weird blend of electrical and environmental systems that can probably only ever get me a job at the government. I'm trying to cover a bit of computer systems classes with electives/extra courses, too. It basically comes down to an environmental/energy engineer with better knowledge of electrical/electronics than most environmental-oriented engineers (and probably a weaker knowledge of biology as a result!)
8) How would you convince people who "hate" mafia to realize it's actually the best thing evar?
1. It's challenging. There's nothing quite like trying to convince an entire horde of people dead set on murdering you that they should murder the guy who's making logical arguments about you instead.
2. It's good for your social skills. Trying to convince an entire horde of people dead set on murdering you that they should murder the guy who's making logical arguments about you instead is great practice for winning people over to your way of thinking in real life.
3. You haven't tried reading people's behaviour until you've tried reading the behaviour of someone who you not only only know over the internet, but who is hiding behind an alternate login, too!
4. It's creative. This isn't checkers, the mechanics of mafia change every game. Playing through games with unrevealed mechanics thought up by other people really builds your creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
5. It exposes you to all sorts of new novels (and movies and other things). People here love to make games themed on existing novels, other media or even worlds they've created. Mafia was what got me to read Deepgate and Locke Lamora. On the flip side, you get parody games like Twilight or Indiana Jones and the Funny Hats.
6. Most importantly, it does not get old. The players change, the game designers change, new mechanics, themes and ideas are always being introduced and the whole style of how we play it changes too. There is no other game that can include so many players and be so different after hundreds of games. And the ways in which it will change, either sort-term or long, are utterly unpredictable. There have been games that were unexpected barren, slow, waiting games with everyone keeping their cards to their chest when it could have easily been a wild crazy game with players from all sides helping each other figure out the mechanics while horrendously scheming, allying and betryaing behind each others' backs.
Then there's the completely sporadic crazy games, including the best mafia game ever: Mafia 48.5 - Team Fortress 2 (http://forum.malazan...showtopic=15709). For no particular reason, we completely spammed the crap out of that game. Most mafia games have some useless chatter early on, but this was a whole new level. The first hour of the game saw 300 posts, by 5 people. Do the math - on average everyone online was posting every single minute for an hour. There was multiple conversations that were leap-frogging each other, we tried to kill off Gem before she even arrived to the game, and a bunch of dragon alts randomly showed up and yelled at each other (which everybody assumed was someone at the Malazan BBQ having some fun... but it was me). No one could have foreseen that this particular game would somehow become a 300-post-per-hour spamfest, and that is the joy of mafia, you never know what you're going to get from any given game.
9) What members would you particularly like to meet in real life (who you have not met previously)?
I get really nervous meeting people I don't already know, especially if I've only communicated with them in writing before, because I'm shy and un-assertive in real life. The nervousness makes me clam up even more and I become a big bundle of stress and incomprehensibleness. And then I'm afraid that my personal self will detract from the (hopefully good) opinions people have of me prior and will always see me as the nervous bundle of stress person forever after! In writing I can take my time re-reading what I'm about to post and making sure it's what I want to say and that it's understandable.
Assuming I could sum up the courage to meet someone again, I'd want to meet Abyss. I've already met Darkwatch (and his sister and her boyfriend/fiance), so meeting Abyss would complete the triumvirate of mysterious Canadians (though I'm not *that* mysterious, especially after this interview, but people still don't know exactly where I live!).
I'd also like to meet Tehol because she's from Trinidad (right? something like that?) but living in Manitoba, and I have no idea what her accent must sound like. Reading her posts would of course never be the same afterwards. For the inverse reasons, I never want to meet Illy because I have a particular voice that I read his posts in (some combination of a 13-year old british boy, an internet troll going "laaaaaaame" and Timothy Dalton) and I don't want to hear his real voice which is probably not the way I imagine it.
10) Any surefire holiday gift recommendations, for that picky person who's hard to buy for (and has already read MBotF)?
Well I have a friend who buys a random friend a vibrator as a gift every year (and he didn't come to my brithday!)...
*ahem*
Someone you can spend a bit of money on and have bought them plenty of gifts before (in other words, family):
If they are well-enough off or don't pay utilities, one of thos electric pads that you just drop your phone/electronic device on and it charges wirelessly. It's easy to casually find out what kind of phone they have ahead of time and make sure the pad is compatible.
People you're spending a bit less money on (friends, lesser acquaintances):
Special glasses to drink their favourite kind of drink from (a big viking glass for lager lovers, super-wide wine glasses for red wine lovers, classy little glasses for whisky or scotch lovers, etc.)
That special someone:
______ dancing lessons for them and you! Fill in the blank depending on how close you are:
if you're just flirting with them, then pick something social without too much sodomy (ex: Swing)
if you're going out but not in a huge relationship yet, pick something exotic or energetic (ex: partnered fusion dancing)
if you've been with them for years, pick something that is both fun and matches well with their interest (salsa, swing, classical, etc)
11) If you were stranded on a desert island with only one MBotF, which one is it?
Hmm, is a desert island better than a deserted island... I might not be alone but deserts don't have a lot of food. Anyway...
*** HoC and MT SPOILERS***
HoC - There's a ton of great infodumps and thrown in crazy comments in HoC. It's got lots of great emotional moments throughout (ST and Cot with Hawl, for example) prior to the big one at the end. I like that the enemy camp has lots of different plots and storylines converging within it, not just several storylines of characters/armies converging to the simple end battle. Plus the first book being its own story makes the whole thing seem longer, which is good for a deserted island. Lastly, having now read all the books plenty of times, HoC's emotional climax is the most powerful in my opinion, threatened only by MT, which has more overall emotion at the climax but it is spread out between Brys, Hull, Trull and Udinaas and so doesn't deliver as big of a blow at once.
I still feel kind of bad about the HoC ending in that I cried in my first read of DG, but that ended up preparing me and I didn't cry in HoC (or MoI, but I don't feel bad about that one).
12) If you met Steven Erikson and you could only ask one question, what would it be?
Is your son single?
13) Who is you favorite character from the series?
Well, I like the random mysteriosos like the Rat Catcher's Guild mage who can make 4 simultaneous illusion-people that are capable of doing paperwork and having sentient conversations when the guy isn't even in the room to listen to what the other people are saying back... and he does it all with the magic of the Holds!
From the more important characters, Ganoes Paran has always been a favourite. I like his development through GotM as he starts to loosen up from working with Lorn, it seems like a pretty natural reaction to suddenly being surrounded by callous bridgeburners in a conquered city. He has plenty of inner turmoil, especially in MoI, but it appeals well to the heartstrings (you never see anyone complaining about *him* moping, unlike a dozen other characters). And hey, he's supposedly quite handsome too!
All that being said, the timeline gave me a profound love of Banaschar (if him being the last priest of D'rek wasn't enough), and here's why: Early in tBH Banaschar says it is the start of the season of D'rek (autumn), while drinking heavily in a bar. Near the end of tBH, Braven Tooth/Withal/Temper/whatever says he's been steady drinking ever since he got to the island (ie since the start of tBH or earlier). He replies says that the season of D'rek is just starting and it's time for him to force his way to Tayschrenn after all this waiting/trying. HE SPENT AN ENTIRE YEAR GETTING DRUNK OFF HIS ASS.
Not that you asked, but least favourite character: Harllo Jr., and I think you know why.
14) Was your "Orgy" worm avatar an invitation for MbotF members to party at your place?
Of course! Everyone showed up except you!
(Oh god I just got a lot of very, very disturbing mental images)
15) Who wins?
Anyone who donates something of themselves to the forum is a malazan winner to me. Anything from the admins running the place, to the artists and their beautiful renditions, or anyone who takes on a cooky project for the forum, be it running an Ultimate Death Match or making a guide of book paginations across different editions. Then there's all the members who post movie trailers, bands, their opinions of new books, etc. And most importantly, the members who have read every book a dozen times, seen all the typical new-member questions a hundred times each, and still go through the book forums answers the same questions and trying to stir up debate on topics that have long-since been settled in later books. All these people are winners of the forum!
16) Any pets? Why, why not?
Tufty!
Here's him trying be a bunny-wolf or something
Why? Because he's ADORABLE!
17) Do you do any creative writing yourself?
I absolutely love to create, but am a terrible writer. I've conceived up fantasy worlds that if I could write novels I would set them in. I'll think up the magic systems, the races, the religions, the political bodies, the geography, the major events, etc. But I'm not a very good writer, nor is it really something I enjoy doing for any chunk of time.
I do like to work with words on occasion, such as rearranging parts of Three Kingdoms to make coherent mafia scenes that aren't 10 pages long. But more often I like to create in different ways. Hence, I play minecraft on the forum server (Slippery Jim, our own minecraft server host, another example of a person who wins for question 15) and have lots of fun building weird stuff (right now I've built a tower in the middle of the ocean that has walls made of cascading lava. You have to pass through a multi-floor maze of lava walls to get into the tower itself).
I also like to fiddle with a bit of music arranging and some computer art programs. I can't draw very well, but I like playing with ones that are more create-polygon-and-modify-attributes style programs. An example is Bryce, which I used to make the backgrounds on my malazan charts.
18) When not reading MBotF, what are you typically curling up with?
Right now I've got a pretty stagnant collection going on - I've read everything I have and there's nothing I feel like re-reading. I'm reading Stonewielder right now, but before that I was re-reading The Twilight Watch and The Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (from the Night Watch quadrilogy, which is great). I've been holding off on buying any new books though as I'm sure I'll get a bunch at Christmas.
Books that I've really enjoyed and probably read multiple times include:
The afore-mentioned Night Watch series
Black Company series
Guy Gavrial Kay stuff
Orson Scott Card stuff (Ender and Bean stuff, plus the Homebound series)
Some Dragonlance books (they vary in quality and cliche-ness, but there's lots of good ones)
I'm slowly getting into Dresden, probably going to get those at Christmas.
Books I've enjoyed a lot but for some reason only really read once:
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
ASoIaF
Oh, and I've read 2 and a half books from the Paladin of Shadows series by John Ringo (sounds like fantasy but is actually extremely over-the-top Tom Clancy-style books, read this review if you haven't heard of them - http://hradzka.livej...com/194753.html - They are a very strange mix of awful and cheesy-awesome). Not the kind of books I would pay for but they're available for free online (legally), so I figured why not take a break from fantasy and read them.
19) Do you keep a personal library, or do the books just cycle through your possession?
I keep a personal library. The most important ones I keep in the limited space at my home, the rest are in storage at my parents' house and I switch books back and forth if/when I need to.
I do lend some books out to people if I think they're trustworthy and there's a chance of them getting into it. The most personally important book I've ever failed to receive was volume 1 of Three Kingdoms and I did eventually have to order a new one. The girl I lent it too and I are obviously no longer friends.
20) Please bare one random little known fact about yourself for the peanut gallery please
My favourite combination of a time of day and atmospheric conditions is:
-a little foggy
-overcast, but really high up, not low clouds
-has just rained, but is now lightly raining or not at all
-a few hours after sunset or a few hours before dawn
I don't remember for sure. I think I might have seen it in a bookstore, liked the artsy titles and that there were already 4 of them and bought them on an impulse (hmm, 5/6 years ago, more like asked my mum to buy them!)
2) What brought you to Malazan Empire forums?
By the end of MoI I had a lot of ideas about how things are in the Malaziworld, as well as plenty of confusing questions. I wanted to see if others agreed on the crazy theories, and get answers to the confusing questions. Plus it would be a good way to find out when the next book was coming out (it already had and I didn't know!)
3) What besides MbotF do you "geek out" over?
Well, there's nothing that I geek out over as much as MBotF. Timelines and flow charts with fancy backgrounds is pretty much a Malazan-exclusive, except for the occasional thrown-together thing here and there.
That being said, I do geek out over the three kingdoms period of chinese history (roughly 170-280). My initial source for this was the novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or just Three Kingdoms). This is a big novel that gives a highly fictionalized account of that historic period by incoporating lots of folk tales and bending things a bit to make bigger themes. And if you thought Malazan had a lot of characters, you ain't seen nothing - Rot3K has about a character per page, all of them with some impact on the story. There's a series of fighting video games (Dynasty Warriors 1 to 6), a series of strategy video games (Romance of the Three Kingdoms 1 to 11), a ridiculously long chinese mini-series, several movies (Red Cliff being the most recent) and plenty more media surrounding it all. And I made a series of mafia games about it, too!
Beyond that and MBotF, I don't geek out nearly as much about any other books, largely because there's not that much with enough scope and tangential material to appeal to my inner geek (WoT is probably big enough, but I never got that into it).
I do geek out a bit about traditional music - I like some jazz and classical stuff, know lots of random tidbits about weird foreign instruments, that kind of thing!
4) Do you remember your first post? What was it and who responded?
If I'm not mistaken, my first post was in the HoC forums asking if:
Spoiler
I don't remember who responded, but it was pretty much a "Of course they're the same!"
5) Which members do you feel a special connection with?
Imperial Historian - got me going on the wiki
Abyss and Darkwatch - mysterious Quontarians unite!
Shinrei - I like debating with him in the discussion board and hearing all about the madness he observes every day in Japan. And he's directly or indirectly caused my death in about the last 10 mafia games we've both played in, but I forgive him!
Tapper - The greatest mafia game designer ever known. I got my first handle on building mafia games from reading through Tapper's own games and his analysis of other games (which is always good praise/criticism delivered in the best manner possible).
Lisheo - Just because.
Lastly, I always feel a special connection to anyone who tries to do some sort of Malazan-related project, because I can empathize so much with trying to work through the complexity of the world and so much of the knowledge is open to interpretation. If it's something huge, like Silencer's RPG project, then you've got loads of problems trying to make the project just as big and complex. If it's something ongoing or with not a lot of information, like Werthead's map then with every release sure enough there's a hundred little quotes you didn't look up that contradict what you did. And then there's tons of projects that you can imagine and would be glorious but there's just no easy technology to produce them (like Dolmen's time-map idea).
6) Are there any forum members who are "lost in the warrens" who you miss?
q21 joined at the same time as me and was the first person of equal noob-itude that I noticed. Though he got in to mafia long before I did.
bhok'arala used to fill enormous threads of theories and debate on warren mechanics, the pantheon, titles, ranks, geography, you name it. Not only is he gone, but his horde of threads were lost in the forum re-organization
bwgan, because she had that perfect mother-hen-branching-out style and was always so nice, too! And yet at the same time she played a lot of mafia and whooped some butts too! Plus her daughter coming on the forums to defend twilight was absolutely classic.
7) What are your skills that pay the bills?
None! I'm unemployed and have perpetually less and less money in the bank account!
I'm an engineering student, studying a weird blend of electrical and environmental systems that can probably only ever get me a job at the government. I'm trying to cover a bit of computer systems classes with electives/extra courses, too. It basically comes down to an environmental/energy engineer with better knowledge of electrical/electronics than most environmental-oriented engineers (and probably a weaker knowledge of biology as a result!)
8) How would you convince people who "hate" mafia to realize it's actually the best thing evar?
1. It's challenging. There's nothing quite like trying to convince an entire horde of people dead set on murdering you that they should murder the guy who's making logical arguments about you instead.
2. It's good for your social skills. Trying to convince an entire horde of people dead set on murdering you that they should murder the guy who's making logical arguments about you instead is great practice for winning people over to your way of thinking in real life.
3. You haven't tried reading people's behaviour until you've tried reading the behaviour of someone who you not only only know over the internet, but who is hiding behind an alternate login, too!
4. It's creative. This isn't checkers, the mechanics of mafia change every game. Playing through games with unrevealed mechanics thought up by other people really builds your creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
5. It exposes you to all sorts of new novels (and movies and other things). People here love to make games themed on existing novels, other media or even worlds they've created. Mafia was what got me to read Deepgate and Locke Lamora. On the flip side, you get parody games like Twilight or Indiana Jones and the Funny Hats.
6. Most importantly, it does not get old. The players change, the game designers change, new mechanics, themes and ideas are always being introduced and the whole style of how we play it changes too. There is no other game that can include so many players and be so different after hundreds of games. And the ways in which it will change, either sort-term or long, are utterly unpredictable. There have been games that were unexpected barren, slow, waiting games with everyone keeping their cards to their chest when it could have easily been a wild crazy game with players from all sides helping each other figure out the mechanics while horrendously scheming, allying and betryaing behind each others' backs.
Then there's the completely sporadic crazy games, including the best mafia game ever: Mafia 48.5 - Team Fortress 2 (http://forum.malazan...showtopic=15709). For no particular reason, we completely spammed the crap out of that game. Most mafia games have some useless chatter early on, but this was a whole new level. The first hour of the game saw 300 posts, by 5 people. Do the math - on average everyone online was posting every single minute for an hour. There was multiple conversations that were leap-frogging each other, we tried to kill off Gem before she even arrived to the game, and a bunch of dragon alts randomly showed up and yelled at each other (which everybody assumed was someone at the Malazan BBQ having some fun... but it was me). No one could have foreseen that this particular game would somehow become a 300-post-per-hour spamfest, and that is the joy of mafia, you never know what you're going to get from any given game.
9) What members would you particularly like to meet in real life (who you have not met previously)?
I get really nervous meeting people I don't already know, especially if I've only communicated with them in writing before, because I'm shy and un-assertive in real life. The nervousness makes me clam up even more and I become a big bundle of stress and incomprehensibleness. And then I'm afraid that my personal self will detract from the (hopefully good) opinions people have of me prior and will always see me as the nervous bundle of stress person forever after! In writing I can take my time re-reading what I'm about to post and making sure it's what I want to say and that it's understandable.
Assuming I could sum up the courage to meet someone again, I'd want to meet Abyss. I've already met Darkwatch (and his sister and her boyfriend/fiance), so meeting Abyss would complete the triumvirate of mysterious Canadians (though I'm not *that* mysterious, especially after this interview, but people still don't know exactly where I live!).
I'd also like to meet Tehol because she's from Trinidad (right? something like that?) but living in Manitoba, and I have no idea what her accent must sound like. Reading her posts would of course never be the same afterwards. For the inverse reasons, I never want to meet Illy because I have a particular voice that I read his posts in (some combination of a 13-year old british boy, an internet troll going "laaaaaaame" and Timothy Dalton) and I don't want to hear his real voice which is probably not the way I imagine it.
10) Any surefire holiday gift recommendations, for that picky person who's hard to buy for (and has already read MBotF)?
Well I have a friend who buys a random friend a vibrator as a gift every year (and he didn't come to my brithday!)...
*ahem*
Someone you can spend a bit of money on and have bought them plenty of gifts before (in other words, family):
If they are well-enough off or don't pay utilities, one of thos electric pads that you just drop your phone/electronic device on and it charges wirelessly. It's easy to casually find out what kind of phone they have ahead of time and make sure the pad is compatible.
People you're spending a bit less money on (friends, lesser acquaintances):
Special glasses to drink their favourite kind of drink from (a big viking glass for lager lovers, super-wide wine glasses for red wine lovers, classy little glasses for whisky or scotch lovers, etc.)
That special someone:
______ dancing lessons for them and you! Fill in the blank depending on how close you are:
if you're just flirting with them, then pick something social without too much sodomy (ex: Swing)
if you're going out but not in a huge relationship yet, pick something exotic or energetic (ex: partnered fusion dancing)
if you've been with them for years, pick something that is both fun and matches well with their interest (salsa, swing, classical, etc)
11) If you were stranded on a desert island with only one MBotF, which one is it?
Hmm, is a desert island better than a deserted island... I might not be alone but deserts don't have a lot of food. Anyway...
*** HoC and MT SPOILERS***
HoC - There's a ton of great infodumps and thrown in crazy comments in HoC. It's got lots of great emotional moments throughout (ST and Cot with Hawl, for example) prior to the big one at the end. I like that the enemy camp has lots of different plots and storylines converging within it, not just several storylines of characters/armies converging to the simple end battle. Plus the first book being its own story makes the whole thing seem longer, which is good for a deserted island. Lastly, having now read all the books plenty of times, HoC's emotional climax is the most powerful in my opinion, threatened only by MT, which has more overall emotion at the climax but it is spread out between Brys, Hull, Trull and Udinaas and so doesn't deliver as big of a blow at once.
I still feel kind of bad about the HoC ending in that I cried in my first read of DG, but that ended up preparing me and I didn't cry in HoC (or MoI, but I don't feel bad about that one).
12) If you met Steven Erikson and you could only ask one question, what would it be?
Is your son single?
13) Who is you favorite character from the series?
Well, I like the random mysteriosos like the Rat Catcher's Guild mage who can make 4 simultaneous illusion-people that are capable of doing paperwork and having sentient conversations when the guy isn't even in the room to listen to what the other people are saying back... and he does it all with the magic of the Holds!
From the more important characters, Ganoes Paran has always been a favourite. I like his development through GotM as he starts to loosen up from working with Lorn, it seems like a pretty natural reaction to suddenly being surrounded by callous bridgeburners in a conquered city. He has plenty of inner turmoil, especially in MoI, but it appeals well to the heartstrings (you never see anyone complaining about *him* moping, unlike a dozen other characters). And hey, he's supposedly quite handsome too!
All that being said, the timeline gave me a profound love of Banaschar (if him being the last priest of D'rek wasn't enough), and here's why: Early in tBH Banaschar says it is the start of the season of D'rek (autumn), while drinking heavily in a bar. Near the end of tBH, Braven Tooth/Withal/Temper/whatever says he's been steady drinking ever since he got to the island (ie since the start of tBH or earlier). He replies says that the season of D'rek is just starting and it's time for him to force his way to Tayschrenn after all this waiting/trying. HE SPENT AN ENTIRE YEAR GETTING DRUNK OFF HIS ASS.
Not that you asked, but least favourite character: Harllo Jr., and I think you know why.
14) Was your "Orgy" worm avatar an invitation for MbotF members to party at your place?
Of course! Everyone showed up except you!
(Oh god I just got a lot of very, very disturbing mental images)
15) Who wins?
Anyone who donates something of themselves to the forum is a malazan winner to me. Anything from the admins running the place, to the artists and their beautiful renditions, or anyone who takes on a cooky project for the forum, be it running an Ultimate Death Match or making a guide of book paginations across different editions. Then there's all the members who post movie trailers, bands, their opinions of new books, etc. And most importantly, the members who have read every book a dozen times, seen all the typical new-member questions a hundred times each, and still go through the book forums answers the same questions and trying to stir up debate on topics that have long-since been settled in later books. All these people are winners of the forum!
16) Any pets? Why, why not?
Tufty!
Here's him trying be a bunny-wolf or something
Why? Because he's ADORABLE!
17) Do you do any creative writing yourself?
I absolutely love to create, but am a terrible writer. I've conceived up fantasy worlds that if I could write novels I would set them in. I'll think up the magic systems, the races, the religions, the political bodies, the geography, the major events, etc. But I'm not a very good writer, nor is it really something I enjoy doing for any chunk of time.
I do like to work with words on occasion, such as rearranging parts of Three Kingdoms to make coherent mafia scenes that aren't 10 pages long. But more often I like to create in different ways. Hence, I play minecraft on the forum server (Slippery Jim, our own minecraft server host, another example of a person who wins for question 15) and have lots of fun building weird stuff (right now I've built a tower in the middle of the ocean that has walls made of cascading lava. You have to pass through a multi-floor maze of lava walls to get into the tower itself).
I also like to fiddle with a bit of music arranging and some computer art programs. I can't draw very well, but I like playing with ones that are more create-polygon-and-modify-attributes style programs. An example is Bryce, which I used to make the backgrounds on my malazan charts.
18) When not reading MBotF, what are you typically curling up with?
Right now I've got a pretty stagnant collection going on - I've read everything I have and there's nothing I feel like re-reading. I'm reading Stonewielder right now, but before that I was re-reading The Twilight Watch and The Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (from the Night Watch quadrilogy, which is great). I've been holding off on buying any new books though as I'm sure I'll get a bunch at Christmas.
Books that I've really enjoyed and probably read multiple times include:
The afore-mentioned Night Watch series
Black Company series
Guy Gavrial Kay stuff
Orson Scott Card stuff (Ender and Bean stuff, plus the Homebound series)
Some Dragonlance books (they vary in quality and cliche-ness, but there's lots of good ones)
I'm slowly getting into Dresden, probably going to get those at Christmas.
Books I've enjoyed a lot but for some reason only really read once:
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
ASoIaF
Oh, and I've read 2 and a half books from the Paladin of Shadows series by John Ringo (sounds like fantasy but is actually extremely over-the-top Tom Clancy-style books, read this review if you haven't heard of them - http://hradzka.livej...com/194753.html - They are a very strange mix of awful and cheesy-awesome). Not the kind of books I would pay for but they're available for free online (legally), so I figured why not take a break from fantasy and read them.
19) Do you keep a personal library, or do the books just cycle through your possession?
I keep a personal library. The most important ones I keep in the limited space at my home, the rest are in storage at my parents' house and I switch books back and forth if/when I need to.
I do lend some books out to people if I think they're trustworthy and there's a chance of them getting into it. The most personally important book I've ever failed to receive was volume 1 of Three Kingdoms and I did eventually have to order a new one. The girl I lent it too and I are obviously no longer friends.
20) Please bare one random little known fact about yourself for the peanut gallery please
My favourite combination of a time of day and atmospheric conditions is:
-a little foggy
-overcast, but really high up, not low clouds
-has just rained, but is now lightly raining or not at all
-a few hours after sunset or a few hours before dawn
