Answering The Sunshine Blogger Challenge (Mostly)

Years ago, when I had a stronger readership and most of the blogs I followed were active, I was nominated for a “Liebster Award“. It’s not an official award from any particular organization. It was just a way for bloggers to promote fellow bloggers. Nowadays, as equipment has become cheaper and more people make videos for YouTube than write for solo websites, or so it feels (and I wouldn’t mind getting back to the occasional video myself), I don’t have a strong a readership as I used to. A couple of boosts by Instapundit only helped for a short time, as I expected it too. I still have people who show up, but I’m half of what I was before the forced hiatus in 2016, where I probably lost most of my readership, and the recent attempts to stay out of the culture war as it keeps forcing itself into storytelling, despite being only one of the many problems with storytelling today and the types of stories I tend to follow (sci-fi superhero stuff). This will become more important later on.

What’s important for the intro is that the independent blogger isn’t dead, just most of the sites I used to follow. Some of us still are out there posting stuff and reading others’ work. For example, novelist Caroline Furlong of A Song Of Joy enjoys myself enough to like most to all of my articles and I have also used a few of hers for the Saturday article link. She also nominated me for a Sunshine Blogger Award. That was nice of her. Like the Liebster, the Sunshine Blogger Award rules are answer a series of questions provided by the nominator and then charging 11 other sites to answer your questions, but it can’t include the blogger who nominated you. Which seriously reduces my nominations since most of the sites I follow these days are multi-contributor news and commentary sites. Who do I nominate on Bleeding Fool or Geeks & Gamers?

While I figure out a workaround, I have below the 11 questions Caroline has asked of me and her other nominations. You can read her responses to her own nominee’s questions at the link in the previous paragraph. Here are my responses to her questions of me. To make up for the limited nominations, I’m going to ramble a bit, and it seems I’ve broken my 2000 limit more than I’d like. She’s been here long enough to be used to that, so blame her. After all, I started this site to talk about the stuff I’m really into that nobody else I know in friends or family think about in the same way I do, and hoping to get into discussions with others who think the same way. It doesn’t seem to happen if you see how blank most of my comments are, which is also why I want to get back to videos and try livestreaming again. Also, go read the rest of her site after you see her own Q&A session. It opens in a new tab so you don’t have to scramble back here.

1. What are you reading?

This is some odd timing. Usually it’s an easy prose answer because I do the Chapter By Chapter review series, so you know what I’m reading. It’s my way of getting myself to go through my novels and the occasional online offering I’ve wanted to read. This run, however, it’s a graphic novel, How To Completely Lose Your Mind. It’s a biographical depiction in comic form of indie entertainers Pocket Vinyl in their attempt to hit all 50 states in 45 days, unofficially breaking the record of 50 states in 50 days because officially would have cost too much. The last prose novel I read was the novelization of the Doctor Who storyline “The Rescue”, and I’ll be back to prose once this is done. All the other comics are in my daily “Yesterday’s” Comic article series.

2. Latest update on your publishing, or what book do you have out that’s relatively new, if applicable? If not, what’s your favorite color?

Ah, the shameless self-promotion section.

I don’t get to publish physical books because that requires money. The last comic book I’ve had time to produce was Captain Yuletide #8, my Christmas superhero comic series I (try to) put out every Christmas. Each year a different elf with the right skill set is given the power of Captain Yuletide and joined by Bryce The Green-Nosed Reindeer with the mission of “let’s save Christmas”. I still need to pick out this year’s. I also have three other comic ideas–a one-shot, a graphic novel, and my dream ongoing project, but that’s all still a ways off as I try to get a work schedule that works. It’s part of the BW Comics & Art archive, separated from my weekly commentary/parody strip Jake & Leon, which has its own archive and usually has a new strip on Sundays.

On the prose side I’ve been trying to find time to work on the next chapter of My Transformers Universe: How I’d Write Cybertronian Lore. The previous chapters are up in the BW prose archive along with other “how I’d write”, fanfic, or fictional theorizing posts. I’m finally ready to move past how Cybertronian “techno-biology whatever” works and start the early stages of how I’d write Cybertronian culture from the early years. I take into account toy gimmicks (they’re the source material), previous multiversal continuity, and all the parts I really like and really hate about how Transformer life has been written over the years. I really want to get back to this.

3. Who is your favorite superhero or hero?

By now she should know my answer:

Yeah, I’m just kidding.

You would think that my sample pic would be Superman doing something really cool with his powers or showing off some big speech he gave. How do you choose just one? The thing is, Clark Kent is just as interesting as Superman. Captain America (the original) has similar “we can do it” speeches. Superman’s powerset in the DC universe alone is so universal I can find a bunch of characters with similar or the same powers without looking at another Kryptonian. It’s the idea that Clark Kal-El Kent is exactly the kind of person you want to have “godlike” powers no matter how many people make fun of him. Heck, most of the people who make fun of Superman’s ideals are exactly the kinds of people I DON’T want having physics-breaking abilities. It’s not just that Superman has amazing powers but what he does with them and why.

He doesn’t care (sorry to date this to 2026) if you have a MAGA hat or a Free Palestine t-shirt. If you’re in danger, he’ll save you. He’ll save his mortal enemies. He seeks the best in all of us, even when acknowledging we don’t all live up to it. Suck it, James Gunn’s Kara. It’s not his powers and cool costume that make him a hero. Supervillains have those, too. It’s who he is as a person that makes him my favorite superhero…but I have tons of articles and shared videos explaining all of that. It’s one of the reasons I look below the surface of a character to find the person underneath.

Even though 2021 did its best to stop me, I still made it to #500!

4. What is your favorite art style? Art nouveau? Art Deco? Something I haven’t heard of?

I don’t know how many of her other posters make any kind of art, though too many people don’t think comic book art is “Art” unless it’s Alex Ross or something. I don’t know that I have a favorite style to look at. I prefer cartoony art to make because I’m too impatient to do anything “realistic”, so making more cartoonish art allows me to hide some of my faults while improving on all of them. I also like making logos, which used to be an art form all it’s own in the days before shared templates and reusing fancy fonts someone else made. Yeah, I use those as well, but I try to make something unique in site images and logos because I want to create something, not just kitbash everyone else’s stuff. You use the tools that’s best for the assignment. I also used to have a sprite comic, but that failed miserably.

5. Who is your favorite historical personage?

Religious cop out? Only for the sample image. (Even designing a page is a form or art for me as I try to break the text wall and save both our eyes a bit.) In truth, I don’t have just one. Since I tend to have a rather light tier ranking system there are creators, historic figures, fictional figures (though I do know the difference), and people I know that I admire. Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Moses, that guy who landed an airplane in the water, the creators of Ultraman and Superman (the Japanese Ultraman, not evil Superman #2 or 3), the people who stopped the 911 hijackers from hitting the White House at the expense of their own lives…I don’t have A favorite, I have favorites, or at least a large group of people I respect and consider heroes and creative geniuses.

Photo by Edvinas Jakunskas on Pexels.com

6. Are the Northern Lights cool or overrated?

I’ve never seen them in person, and doing so would require me to freeze my @#$%$# off, but they look cool in pictures.

7. If you had a spirit animal, what would it be?

Foxes are my favorite animal. (My cousin who had a farm would disagree.) I don’t know if it’s a “spirit animal”.

Photo by Leon Bastian on Pexels.com

8. Favorite military plane, chopper, rifle, or ship – fictional or not. GO!

SR-71 Blackbird stealth plane. It just looks so darn cool and futuristic. Fictional, depends on the day. Either the starfighter from Glen Larson’s Buck Rogers or the Snowspeeder from The Empire Strikes Back. Or maybe the TARDIS but I don’t know if that fits the spirit of the question given it’s supposed to be military.

9. Which anime are you currently watching and would you recommend it to a neophyte or not?

Wakana Gojo could be a spirit person. I relate to him so hard. I started watching My Dress-Up Darling on Crunchyroll’s livestream channel out of curiosity. I saw clips and it looked like it had some fun moments. This tale of a creator looked down upon–or feels he is–for what he works on (in my case comics, in his a type of doll his grandfather makes) to the point he kind of self-ostracizes from his fellow students (though I actually had friends because we were a small school) who helps a pretty girl make cosplay outfits and slowly comes out of his shell just really speaks to me in a way I hadn’t expected. I didn’t expect to like something this much since Oh My Goddess as both shows are way out of my normal tastes. I’ve also been catching up on stories of Samurai Troopers that were never released for the Ronin Warriors series despite using the same dub studio, and been trying to finish Kino’s Journey. Two other must watches for me are Tomo-Chan Is A Girl and Miss Kuroitsu From Monster Development. My tastes are weird but I don’t care. They make me happy. By the way, just found out one of these I can use for Saturday Night Showcase. See if you can guess which one before Saturday.

Also, mecha anime, sci-fi, and I need to watch more of their superhero offerings. She asked for currently watching, though, and I’m watching a lot of old cartoons and game shows plus stuff for this site.

10. Are you looking forward to any movies this year?

“Forward” is a bit strong. Curious? More accurate. If I get to finally watch the first Mario Brothers movie I might want to see the second one. The Masters Of The Universe movie looks better since the second trailer but like with Mario it’s not the movie I want to see. I’ve lost so much trust in Hollywood to make anything I really want to see and they keep proving me right.

Photo by Steven May on Pexels.com

11. What is your state flower?

You just want to know where I live! I’m on to your…wait, I’ve already shown I’m in Connecticut. Apparently it’s the Mountain Laurel. I don’t really know flowers.

And now comes the hard part. The only blog besides Caroline’s that I check out with any regularity that’s still regularly active as of this writing is Siskoid’s Blog Of Geekery, and I don’t even know if he likes me anymore. Such are the times we live in. Everything else I follow written are group and news sites, video/podcast postings, or webcomics. Pretty sure I can’t nominate myself with my declutter site. I have to redo my blogroll and the rest of my site. So I’m going to follow Pocket Vinyl’s path and do something unofficial. Here’s your chance to push your own site, either in the comments or linking to your own site in the URL section of the comments form. It will link your site in your screenname. I’ll put 11 questions, and even Caroline can take part seeing as this is unofficial and thus the “no link back” rule need not apply. If you don’t like my comments section, do it on your own site and make up for my situation by doing 11 official nominations under the same rules. There’s no committe to complain.

Now, please don’t be a porn or scam site. I’ll kill the link if I think your evil but disagreeing with me isn’t evil. Liking or hating Starfleet Academy isn’t a deal breaker. You can be liberal but if you celebrated Charlie Kirk’s murder or something, please don’t. You can be conservative but I accept no extremists of any viewpoint. Extremism is part of our current societal problems. Apolitical is also welcome here. Also as a Christian, I’m not comfortable with anti-Christian sites as a topic, just as a heads up. I try not to be divisive, though I don’t hide my biases. You know what you’re getting if you come here. With that, my questions:

1. What got you interested enough in your topic of choice that you started your own blog/site? It doesn’t have to be a storytelling related site and if you have more than one site, go for it!
2. What is your favorite current TV/streaming show?
3. What’s your favorite show of all time?
4. What’s your favorite movie?
5. To borrow one of Caroline’s questions, are there any movies/shows you’re looking forward to or at least curious about?
6. Do you have a favorite comic, or do you even read them?
7. Same question, but with “video game” in place of comic. Also, what type of game do you prefer, one with a strong narrative or just a simple puzzle/platformer? (Card games count as puzzle in game form.)
8. Have you ever check out audio dramas? It could be recent or old radio dramas.
9. To borrow another Caroline question, what’s your favorite book or what are you currently reading?
10. What kind of stories do you like to create? Or if you’re not a storyteller, what do you look for in a good story and what do you create if anything? Wait, are multipart questions cheating? Probably, but it’s unofficial.
11. Since we’re unofficial, this is the comments, and I’m always supercurious about this question, what brought you to BW Media Spotlight and is it worth hanging around?

You can even recommend some of your favorite sites. So I’m half-compliant in this one but thank you to Caroline Furlong for the nomination. Check out her site and her writings if you get a chance. At least I kept this under 3000 words.