I first met Donald the Duckling in the form of a small fluffy toy given to me by a relative one Easter when I was a boy. It wasn't long before he joined in the exciting adventures I invented for all my toys -- in his case, exploring the universe in a TARDIS of his own, which is why he ended up in my public Who-fan fiction. (The TARDIS was just found one day, abandoned in a wood. Never did find out whose it was, or what happened to its pilot. I'm confident it wasn't the Doctor's, though, because its chameleon circuit works.)
2. How did you develop your persona of the Pink Pedanther?
More or less by accident. I've always had a tendency toward pedantry (also hair-splitting and nit-picking, although I realise this is a distinction only observed by other pedants, hair-splitters, and nit-pickers). One day on Usenet, after admitting to a particularly pointless bit of nit-picking, I began singing a pedants' anthem consisting of the word "pedant" sung repeatedly to the tune of "The Pink Panther Theme", thus:
One of those also present announced that henceforth I would be known as "the Pink Pedanther"; and henceforth I was.
3. What kind of cake would you like for your birthday?
My mind keeps wandering toward what kind of cake I wouldn't like, because I've had several of those in the past few years. (Not at the family celebrations, but at work, where they tend to go for bought cakes with deficiencies like being decorated with so much cream that there's more cream than cake.)
So: something simple and difficult to get wrong. The lemon madeira cake was nice.
4. Which kind of character trope in stories do you most closely identify?
There's that trope where a character will do something, and then it turns out that they've misunderstood the situation and just embarrassed themself in front of a whole bunch of people, and we're expected to laugh. I always identify way too closely with that character; I never hid behind the sofa when the monsters came on TV, but I was -- and still am -- out of the room like a shot at the first hint that one of the characters might be about to do that. And there are several otherwise-excellent books that I have put down and never picked up again for the same reason.
(On the other hand, I once saw it done as a horror device, where it wasn't that the character misunderstood the situation but that the situation was changed out from under him by malicious magic, and the consequences were much worse than mere embarrassment. And it was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen.)
5. Is there a story or series (Book, comic, or television, radio, whatever) from your childhood that still echoes in your memory?
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I first met Donald the Duckling in the form of a small fluffy toy given to me by a relative one Easter when I was a boy. It wasn't long before he joined in the exciting adventures I invented for all my toys -- in his case, exploring the universe in a TARDIS of his own, which is why he ended up in my public Who-fan fiction. (The TARDIS was just found one day, abandoned in a wood. Never did find out whose it was, or what happened to its pilot. I'm confident it wasn't the Doctor's, though, because its chameleon circuit works.)
2. How did you develop your persona of the Pink Pedanther?
More or less by accident. I've always had a tendency toward pedantry (also hair-splitting and nit-picking, although I realise this is a distinction only observed by other pedants, hair-splitters, and nit-pickers). One day on Usenet, after admitting to a particularly pointless bit of nit-picking, I began singing a pedants' anthem consisting of the word "pedant" sung repeatedly to the tune of "The Pink Panther Theme", thus:
Pedant, pedant; pedant pedant pedant pedant pedannnnnnnnt...
One of those also present announced that henceforth I would be known as "the Pink Pedanther"; and henceforth I was.
3. What kind of cake would you like for your birthday?
My mind keeps wandering toward what kind of cake I wouldn't like, because I've had several of those in the past few years. (Not at the family celebrations, but at work, where they tend to go for bought cakes with deficiencies like being decorated with so much cream that there's more cream than cake.)
So: something simple and difficult to get wrong. The lemon madeira cake was nice.
4. Which kind of character trope in stories do you most closely identify?
There's that trope where a character will do something, and then it turns out that they've misunderstood the situation and just embarrassed themself in front of a whole bunch of people, and we're expected to laugh. I always identify way too closely with that character; I never hid behind the sofa when the monsters came on TV, but I was -- and still am -- out of the room like a shot at the first hint that one of the characters might be about to do that. And there are several otherwise-excellent books that I have put down and never picked up again for the same reason.
(On the other hand, I once saw it done as a horror device, where it wasn't that the character misunderstood the situation but that the situation was changed out from under him by malicious magic, and the consequences were much worse than mere embarrassment. And it was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen.)
5. Is there a story or series (Book, comic, or television, radio, whatever) from your childhood that still echoes in your memory?
Apart from Doctor Who?