fairy skeletons.: Blog Award | The Infinity Dreams Award

Hello all! The gloriously witty and always-insightful Heather from Sometimes I'm a Story was kind enough to bestow upon yours truly the Infinity Dreams Award. Thank you so much, Heather! Here's my response:

Rules:

• Thank and follow the blog that nominated you.
• Tell us eleven facts about yourself.
• Answer the questions that were set for you to answer.
• Nominate 11 bloggers and set questions for them.

Eleven facts

• I love anime and people seem to forget that a lot. (Fairy Tail / Kuroko no Basket / Sword Art Online / Soul Eater fans? HIGH FIVE.)
• I've eaten squid ink pasta. (It was really good!)
• I've been writing about teenagers since third grade. Yay for inadvertent YA writing!
• I'm basically incapable of writing fanfiction. Whenever I attempt to, it comes out as a puddle (so does most of my writing, but with my original work I can usually salvage something).
• I'm probably that one suspicious girl in the corner wearing a hoodie. Especially if said girl has ink/pencil stains on the side of her left hand. (Hey, hoodies are comfortable.)
• My favorite Studio Ghibli movie is Spirited Away, but honestly ALL their movies are my favorites on some level.
• I just made a resume website thing in an attempt to be more "professional."
• I am so into Halsey's music right now you don't even know.
• I'm thinking of doing Communication or Media Studies in college, with possibly a Creative Writing minor.
• I'm super pumped because I get to take Diversity & Justice and Graphic Design 2 at school for second semester this year.
• Unfortunately, that also means I need to get both Health and PE out of the way in first semester—usually it's one per semester—which IS GUARANTEED TO MAKE ME CRY. I kid you not when I say that these two classes are the most awful ones in the school. I detest them. (On the bright side, though, once I get these credits out of the way, I *never* need to take another Health or PE class again.)

How do you feel about soft tacos?

I don't really eat tacos a lot? But I've never experienced a particular dislike for soft tacos on the occasions when I have eaten them. I suppose I have a fairly good opinion of them on the whole. Unless they're sentient and they're coming for me in order to avenge their fallen brethren.

bilbo being #relatable

Favorite Disney movie?

This should go without saying, but: Mulan ALL THE WAY. Mulan is such an amazing, resourceful, courageous character (both in the movie and in the original ballad, although the two versions differ in many ways). Plus, the movie has sass everywhere and much girl power, and when I first saw it, it was the one Disney movie I could really relate to—the main character was Asian (hooray!) and she didn't fit into the typical definition of 'femininity' (although again, movie Mulan is very different from ballad Mulan). I think it completely changed the way I looked at storytelling and at my own identity.

what a dork. i would say 'protect' but you don't need protecting

FAVORITE

the animals in this movie have so much sass

Close second is probably Big Hero 6, though. There's an adorable huge balloon robot and an equally adorable main character. There's diversity and sass. There are super cool action scenes (I mean, that's honestly a necessary thing sometimes!). I just love Big Hero 6 a lot, and I feel like it's not appreciated enough.

*screaming*

*still screaming*

Best villain ever?

Oh my goodness, this is so difficult. There are lots of tired, cliché, uncomplicated villains out there, but there are also layered, fascinating, magnetic ones. Currently, my favorite villain is Talis, the amoral AI overlord of the world featured in Erin Bow's The Scorpion Rules (it's a straight-up genius YA dystopian that comes out later this month; I was lucky enough to snag an eARC). He's snarky, brilliantly strategic, and utterly remorseless, but with a surprising and breathtaking depth to him. Definitely one of the most memorable villains I've ever read.

Favorite musical?

Of the musicals I've actually seen in person, I have to say my favorites are Fiddler on the Roof and Wicked. (Although in the case of Wicked, I may be biased because I saw it in New York. On ACTUAL BROADWAY.) Fiddler on the Roof has elements of culture, history, and family that I didn't think I'd enjoy but ended up absolutely loving, and the dialogue, music, and character dynamics are spot-on + so well-done. Wicked is absolutely hilarious in some parts but powerfully reflective in others, as it looks at the strange power of friendship, the twisting nature of time, and the boundaries between good and... well, wicked. 

How much do you hate spoilers?

This is how I react when I see one for a fandom I'm not in and want to get into, or one for a fandom that I'm in but am not too deeply invested in:

i've been waiting to use this for forever

Now, this is how I react when I see one for a fandom I'm really into:

look i'm not in the asoiaf fandom but i still love daenerys? oops

In sum: I hate them a lot. Please don't bring them anywhere near me. In fact, KILL THEM WITH FIRE. (Or alternatively, please use spoiler tags. I'm really not a big fan of getting a bunch of spoilers and then being forced to go into a show or story or film where everything is a foregone conclusion.)

What’s the best thing about your blog? 

Honestly? Probably the title. (FOREVER PROUD of my blog title.) The actual content, on the other hand—well, anyone who's been here for a while knows that sometimes my posts can become puddles of caps and sappy thoughts. If you're looking for a ~quality~ blogger with her act together (and an actual posting schedule), you'd be best served in continuing your search elsewhere. Although for those of you who have put up with me for a while: thank you! You're the greatest.

What are three books that everyone must read before they die, period?

• All the Rage by Courtney Summers, for its discussion of rape culture, its take-no-prisoners attitude, its powerfully dynamic and unavoidably human main character, and its gut-wrenchingly visceral prose.
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, for its lens into the tide of history, its deeply passionate and distinctive cast of characters, its sweeping and masterful writing, and its paragraph of a first sentence.
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, for its unique and stunningly emotional narration (courtesy of Death), its heartbreakingly wonderful characters, its historical setting, and its grasp on what makes us human.

End of discussion. *bows*

Discuss your opinion on corn on the cob.

Honestly? I think it's generally delicious, but it's very dependent on the kind of corn. For example, yellow corn here in America tends to be very sweet and nice (in my experience), while corn in Korea tends to be more whitish and honestly kind of tasteless (but nonetheless amazing once salted). Overall, though, I like it, and since I tend to eat more corn on the cob around my birthday month, it holds a pretty positive connotation for me. 

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Honestly, I'm pretty open to whatever comes my way as long as a) it's related to books, publishing, media, and/or the Internet in some way, b) it pays enough for me to support myself, and c) it allows me to write novels, poetry, and the like on the side. Of course, being a full-time poet and YA author would be the dream, but I realize that that's not really feasible until I have at least a few books under my belt aka a vaguely (that's a BIG 'vaguely') reliable source of income.

Do you have a favorite punctuation mark?

What can I say? I'm a walking cliché & I love ampersands. I love fonts with pretty ampersands. I love the geeky Latin origin of ampersands. But I'm also quite partial to semicolons, especially when used correctly; I really don't know why other people seem to find them so intimidating. I've got a weakness for em-dashes as well, which you've probably noticed if you've been reading the blog for a while—I tend to overuse them, I think.

(Props to you if you see what I did there. *twirls*)

Describe the best trip you ever took.

I'm fortunate enough to have gone on lots and lots of wonderful, eye-opening trips in my lifetime so far. But my best trip was definitely the one I took to Korea the summer after third grade. I got to attend elementary school for about a month—at the same school that my mother attended when she was tiny!—and I learned a lot and made lots of friends (turns out being from America at a Korean school does great things for your social status). And oh my goodness, Korean school lunches are perfection. (The students there actually refuse to eat the school lunches because they think they're low quality. Imagine how they'd react to the cardboard we're typically given in America.) I also took taekwondo classes for the first time while I was there, which was at once terrible and amazing, because a) it was incredibly hot and humid, which isn't great if you're engaged in intense physical activity every single weekday, but b) that also meant I got to eat a veritable mountain of ice cream. Plus, taekwondo is a lot of fun. And of course, visiting Korea is always wonderful because I get to see family (the vast majority of my relatives live there) and practice my Korean (fun fact: I actually picked up the dialect of my mother's hometown within two days) and eat delicious food (so much food).

Honorable mention goes to my most recent trip to Korea, about two years ago, in which a hairdresser asked me whether it's true that everyone in the US carries a gun everywhere. (Wake up, America! THIS is how the rest of the world sees us.)

I hereby bestow this award on

...some lovely recent-ish commenters who also run stunning blogs. (I was going to also give it to Alyssa, but I know you're dealing with the tag backlog of the century, so.)

Chiara | Aneeqah | Adelyn | E.R. | Alex | Ana | AnQi | Morning | Samantha | Aimee | Jo

Some questions for you all

1. If you could steal the wardrobe of one book character, whose would it be?
2. Your life has just become a novel! Write a short pitch for said novel.
3. What's your favorite foreign film? 
4. What does breakfast typically look like for you?
5. If you could make a PSA on any subject and have it broadcasted to the entire world, what would that subject be?
6. What is your stance on unicorns?
7. Favorite obscure word?
8. Who is your favorite non-human(ish) fictional character (think animals, robots, etc.)?
9. Go back to the very first post you made on your blog. Is it cringe-worthy or surprisingly okay?
10. You have to assemble a team of nine bloggers—including yourself—for a grand and dangerous adventure, Fellowship of the Ring-style. Who would you choose and why?
11. What is your favorite soup?

Thanks again, Heather! And congrats to the award recipients.