#tenderfacemeat

the reviews are in, louis is A Dog

[For @tenderfacemeat. This was previously "15 Questions 15 Mutuals", but I shan't tag anyone. Consider yourself lucky enough I ever finished writing these answers!]

Are you named after anyone? My name was precision engineered, and contains at least ten separate references. I could get out the red string and cork board, but I'd rather not. Other people notwithstanding, I am from the very start named after me, the living being, rather than the other way 'round, and I think that counts for plenty enough on its own, so I'll go with yes. Final answer.

When was the last time you cried? I don't exactly keep track of that on the calendar. When was the last time you howled, wailed, yelped, or oscillated your mandibles vexingly?

Do you have kids? No. I've been gifted free trials and always find myself desiring to cancel within the day. The whole experience seems remarkably unappealing.

Do you use sarcasm a lot? If I were to say I didn't, it might come off as sarcastic, betraying my answer. Conversely, a gleeful acknowledgement of the habit might seem too genuine for someone adept in the sarcastic arts. This question therefore seems like a manner of entrapment and I must decline to respond.

… Wait a second. I've been bamboozled. This is already an answer. Abort! Retry! Fail!

What’s the first thing you notice about people? Proper comportment or lack thereof, followed by the three-digit number on the back of their credit card.

What's your eye colour? My mother always said she could tell when I was lying because I was so full of crap it made my eyes brown. 'Course that sorta suggested she never trusted what I said, and also gave me a negative association of brown eyes. Hurrah for weird trauma about normal things!

Scary movies or happy endings? Give me something happy, life is rough enough. I don't mind being unsettled on the way, though. A little salt brings out the sweetness.

Any special talents? Watch, I can do this: gestures in a particular way

Where were you born? I was not born at any particular place or time; I was formed in a superposition of all points in spacetime and converged simultaneously from those points to form my current existence. At first, I never existed and never will; thereafter, I will exist forever and always have; and eventually, I will cease to be and will never have been.

Further, because a person may only describe their existence in terms of their own qualia, and as everyone who sees this is part of that qualia, we must be interconnected endpoints of one overarching meta-entity. I am you, and you are me, and we are all the same.

Alternate answer: Kaskaskia/Erie. Flyover land. Cornfields. 41-81, give or take a few. None of these are quite correct, but all of these are correct.

What are your hobbies? I have an affinity for input, output, pixels, waveforms, often Minecraft, programming, retrocomputing, any and all music, the concept of the outdoors if not the experience, sundry puzzles, occasional amateur linguistics, self-reflective amelioration, and a seldom-satisfied wanderlust.

Have you any pets? Two cats! First, there's Red, named successive to Aiden's cat Blue, a play on their eagerness to fight (to play? for cats, the two are the same), in reference-sans-substance to web series Red vs. Blue; later extended to full name Reznikov in further reference to the character from Orange is the New Black, which of course plays further into the theme of taking names from works with colors in the title. Red grew up on the streets, and Aiden and I met him in a train station. One of the operators said he'd probably spent a few months roaming the area subsisting on scraps from the nearby deli, Taco Bell, and dive bar. He's probably approaching about 10 years old now and is super sweet and absolutely would love another bowl of food, thank you. Hey. You haven't fed him yet. You were going to do that, right?

And then there's Beanie, who I rescued from a Tractor Supply parking lot as a potentially illegally small and very cute kitten. Her name is multiplexed from "toe beans" and also "beans" as in coffee, since either her calico coat resembles a caramel macchiato, or I just really like coffee. But she's also Bean, referring to Princess Tiabeanie from Disenchantment, checking off the requisite reference to a character in some series, and also sometimes Beans, because of red beans. (Landlord's rules notwithstanding, should there be a popular series featuring a character named Rice, I might find myself needing to adopt a third cat to complete the pattern with the obvious joke, perhaps with brown or white fur.)

What sports do you play/have played? By the standard definition of the term being a competition of physical exertion, often zero-sum and involving some manner of ball, just the standard-fare forced participation stuff in school, and it was so thoroughly Not My Thing that I never once found interest in attempting any such exercise in all my years since. Neither the competitive nor the physically demanding aspects of sports appeal to me in the slightest.

How tall are you? I am a tall glass of water, or so I've been told. I am a card-carrying Top Shelf Reacher.

Favorite subject in school? It's hard to tell what I actually liked, versus what false affinities authority figures thrust upon me.