The sidequests for this week were to listen to my 5 favorite songs, draw a fictional character, and to draw or write about a spacecraft and what it’s used for and what features it has.
The top 5 favorite songs is simultaneously easy and hard. First off, my favorites tend to have a revolving door, so sometimes something new comes along and completely occupies me before moving on to be replaced by the next new thing. There are some that have a pretty special place in my heart though, so I added several of them to a playlist and after some deliberation deleted and pruned until I had 5.
And even amongst those, the answer might be completely different if I had made the decision on a different day of the week. See! Hard!
And then I sat and listened to the choices. Anyhow, the choices were as follows:
- Aria di Mezzo Carattere – Nobuo Uematsu
- Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve
- Needing/Getting – OK Go
- Berzerk – Eminem
- Lose Control – Teddy Swims
Starting off is a song from one of my favorite childhood video games, Final Fantasy 6 (originally FF3 in its initial US release). Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese composer that has provided the music for the Final Fantasy series, and there are a lot of songs from the series that I absolutely adore. The FF Victory theme lives in my head rent free, and I had a hard time choosing between this song and “A Place to Call Home” from FF9. This particular song is a little more than background music and actually has lyrics and a place in the plot.
The next song, Bittersweet Symphony, came out when I was in middle school. I think my childhood friend loved it first, and it always makes me think of her, but it’s also a great song. Also the lyrics stick with me a lot more as an adult than they did as a kid. As far as songs that make me think of her, this and Wonderwall were pretty much tied for contenders on the list. But Wonderwall has other and numerous associations.
The next is Needing/Getting by OK Go. I’ve always loved OK Go and most of the music they make, but the significance of this song for me is that I relate it back to someone I used to love. There were several songs that I relate to him that ended up on the list, including White Flag by Dido, Why Don’t You and I by Chad Kroeger and Santana, and Last Leaf by OK Go. This one really could have changed out any other day of the week. Fun thing about this song though: the car in the music video is the same one I currently drive. Which, speaking of, OK Go makes really fun music videos! Go watch them!
Berzerk by Eminem is probably my favorite Eminem song. It’s also great to add to any workout playlist, and can usually be found on mine whenever I make one.
The current revolving favorite is the last one – Lose Control by Teddy Swims. I’ve had this song on repeat a lot lately – so much so that it’s almost on its way out.
For the spacecraft, I will describe the alien ship in my story a little better, but probably briefly and it will likely change as I make things more concrete in rewrites. I still don’t really have a name for the tripod-bastards, unfortunately. Naming things is hard, guys.
The ship has about 4 levels. The bottom level is storage of supplies and has vast areas for training and staging for large scale invasions of planets. Since their entire “culture” revolves around seeking out alien worlds and destroying them for their resources, this area is large enough to accomodate everything they take. This is also where the smaller, faster ships for attacking are kept.
Every level has smaller vehicles lining the outside edge of the ship. These are for the convenience of the crew, and can also act as emergency vehicles to escape – but since their entire life is built around their ship, they don’t use basic escape pods. After all, their goal would be to protect it as their “home.”
The next level up is the prison section – there are two large cell blocks on each side of the ship, each containing multiple halls full of detention areas. Splitting the prison blocks is an engineering section.
Above that is the command center, and the areas of the ship where the actual “work” of maintaining, running, and operating the ship takes place. They have it spaced here to have better access to engineering and to keep an eye on the prison sections, and to provide a buffer between the prisons and the residential area.
The top level is the residential area, where they keep their families and live their normal off-duty lives out. There are likely conveniences here to make it more “homely” such as parks and entertainment and cafeterias.
It’s a pretty basic description, I guess, but it’ll do.
As for drawing a fictional character – I decided to draw Goku, from Dragonball.
Earlier this month, Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragonball and Dr. Slump, died. Dragonball has had a major influence on my life. I initially started watching the very chopped up dubs of DBZ as a kid in the late 90s, when they would show the first few arcs of DBZ and had split a few of the movies into episode side chunks and aired those as well. After I moved to Oklahoma, they started the Toonami block on Cartoon Network and I was able to continue enjoying the show there. Most of my initial online life was spent in chats and forums and fansites for Dragonball. I don’t think it was my first foray into anime, as the SciFi channel used to air their Saturday morning anime movies. But it was one of the first longer series I became obsessed with.
Even to this day, Piccolo is my all time favorite character.
RIP Toriyama.
mehryment 