Interests Descriptions Meme

[packbat]

No, I didn't mean to break my posting drought with memes. Sorry.

LJ Interests meme results

1. books:
   I read books. I like reading books. When Baen Books set up the Baen Free Library online, I read almost everything they put up there. I took fifty-seven hardcopy, non-class-related, non-reference books to my dorm room under the assumption I would want to read them, and I have read several of them. Basically, I read books.
2. conlangs:
   Conlangs are interesting. The idea of conlangs is even more interesting. Fiction languages are fascinating, both as worldbuilding and in their own right. Philosophical languages, languages designed for abstract purposes, cannot fail to be enthralling. Even this mere monoglot, that does not even know the names of Tolkien's languages, remains unambiguously interested in conlangs.
3. fantasy:
   Reading, my two chief genres are science fiction and fantasy. I am not so interested in horror-fantasy – I read one Dean Koontz book, and was disgusted – I like adventures, and mysteries, and the alien and foreign. These things I like in sci-fi, these things I like in fantasy.
   
   In addition to literary and cinematic fantasy, I am further interested in fantasies, in flights of fancy, in imagining things that aren't, and probably never can be. I wonder what an ordinary bee might say, if it were given the capacity and inclination to speak. I wonder, and fantasy is wonder to me.
4. go:
   The ancient game of Go, white and black stones on a square field. Of all the games that humanity has created, Go is the one I think most likely to exist in the same form on other planets, in other universes.
   
   But that's not the main reason for my interest. I like the game, despite having played less than four times in my life. It's interesting.
5. lycanthropy:
   I am interested in lycanthropy because I am interested in shape-shifting, in transformation. It is impossible, but imaginable, and I wonder what it's like.
6. music:
   I played the piano semi-regularly for over half my life, and voice classes and lessons for a shorter, but also multi-year period. I took two years of music theory courses, knowing they would apply to my major barely, if at all. I did these things because music is enjoyable to me, and interesting to me, and I wanted to make it and know more about it.
7. poems:
   This is a more recent interest. A few years ago, I memorized the text to Shelley's Ozymandias, and around the same time I began reading other poems as well. Then I began writing poems. Last summer, I purchased a textbook on poetry, Forms of Verse, and began to work on the exercises contained therein.
8. role-playing games:
   I like role-playing; see fantasy, above, for many of the reasons. I have had little experience playing with formal role-playing systems, but I have wiled away many a long bus trip with my old Scout troop DMing (and sometimes even playing!) miniature D&D-like adventures, and enjoying it quite a bit.
9. societies:
   This is a sadly uneducated interest, but a genuine one, nevertheless. Many of my favorite science-fiction and fantasy books (A Woman of the Iron People comes to mind) vividly feature the cultures existing in their depicted world, often as a nearly-central part of the story. Understanding the way groups of people operate is important. Plus, I took an anthropology class awhile back, and it was fun.
10. typewriters:
    I like machines, and I happen to have owned a couple typewriters. I enjoyed writing letters on them, when I had them readily available. There's not actually much more there, in this case. Typewriters are interesting machines.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

Comments

Re: 4.1 = Dippy

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. The core rules of supply centers, moving, holding, and supporting would have a good chance of being repeated in an extraterrestrial wargame – perhaps even convoying as well. I agree, an analogue could likely exist independent of the planet Earth.

Go, though ... Go's board is nearly as simple as a board can be – nothing more than a rectangular grid. The pieces are likewise nearly as simple as pieces can be – black stones, white stones. Even the rules are almost absolutely as simple as rules can be. Go is a game without inherent cultural, or even physical, references, and that's why I find it so easy to imagine it being independently invented, with no more changes than a different size of the board.

Actually, checkers is another game without innate cultural references, although its rules are noticeably more intricate than those of Go. I guess it, too, might exist elsewhere.