Well apparently running an AMA immediately after returning from an unexpected vanishing off he face of the earth is not a great idea (hardly any questions at all? Who woulda guessed!) but anyway, here's part 2, and probably the last part due to the aforementioned lack of questions, unless people take a sudden extreme interest in this. XP

Anyway,

Absolutely not a problem! You're welcome to ask as many questions as you like! Since. You know. I didn't really get a whole lot to begin with, lol.

A really long time!! I don't think I realized it was something I actually enjoyed and wanted to seriously pursue doing until eighth or ninth grade, but I remember writing short stories as early as second grade!

If I recall correctly, the first of these short stories was about a penguin living in a zoo who somehow managed to get ahold of a magic cookie jar full of cookies that, when eaten, granted the eater's wish. After a variety of childish shenanigans, he eventually made it to the South Pole, whereupon he set the cookie jar adrift in the ocean, on account of the fact that it was too much responsibility for a single penguin, and someone else might need the cookies more.

There also might've been a sequel where a lion found the cookie jar floating in a river? But I don't remember very well.

Well, in one aspect, I guess I'm just lucky. I live on five acres of woods, and I'm usually the only one who really goes on the path we have out back, so I've got a nice, quiet spot to head off to.

As for music, the better part of my playlists are usually just various video game music and remixes? I mean, there are a few songs I heard on the radio and enjoyed/associated with a character, and a handful of other miscellaneous tracks from movies, or movie trailer type music, and some stuff I just happened to stumble across sometime or another. Here are a few of my favorites:

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Theophany - "Time's End," a cover of "Final Hours" from the Majora's Mask soundtrack.

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A cover of "Sealed Vessel" from Hollow Knight, by RGB TV

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"Sovengarde" from Skyrim

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"Arkham Bridge" from Mechwarrior 2 - 31st century combat
(This track is also INCREDIBLY nostalgic for me! I remember sitting at my grandparents' house, watching my brother play this game for hours on end on the bulky old Mac PC!)

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A remix of Black Mesa's "Questionable Ethics " track, by Morch Kovalski

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And finally "The Heart of Ruin" from StarBound!

And I have a LOT more of these, too, so if any of these caught your attention, I'm sure I can give you more like them, if you want!

Like I said, you're welcome to ask as many questions as you want!

And you may absolutely attempt to hug the characters. Some of the characters, by which I mean one of the characters, by which I mean Gaster, specifically, will probably be very opposed to hugs.

Alright, so I wasn't originally gonna use this as one of the questions here (because, I mean, answer is basically, it's a video game.) but because I didn't really get a lot of questions, I'm gonna make the best of things and take this opportunity to rant about one of my all time favorite games.

(Please note, however, that should I convince you here to play Half-Life, I actually recommend you play the more recent remake, Black Mesa instead, because, well,

Black Mesa is just so much prettier! It also has better music/sound, and the story is a touch more streamlined/easier to follow.)

Half-Life is a combined alien and zombie apocalypse game! You play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the Black Mesa Research Facility, and you may or may not end up triggering the apocalypse when something goes horribly wrong during an experiment centered about exploring another dimension. But thanks to the HEV suit, Gordon survives the initial catastrophe with only minimal damage, despite being directly in the test chamber where things went wrong. Also due to the fact that he has the HEV, Gordon is the one sent to the surface to seek out help. The only problem? Most the facility sustained heavy damage and stuff is exploding, and now there are aliens teleporting in, too! (And some of them are parasitic zombifying aliens that take over the bodies of his dead coworkers!)

Of course, things only get worse when Gordon learns the military's solution to the problem is to kill everything that moves in the base- including the scientists! So now he's got to fight his way through aliens and men with assault rifles! But he's got to keep going, he's got to make it to the Lambda Complex on the opposite side of the facility. The world depends on it, and the very freedom of mankind rests on Freeman's shoulders...

I also highly recommend the series if you played and enjoyed the Portal games. The Half-Life series is a perfect juxtaposition to Portal, the opposite half of the same whole type deal- especially since Half-Life takes place in the same universe!

Portal is a puzzle solving game with minor combat elements that relies mainly on dialogue and dark humor to tell its story, while Half-Life is a combat game with minor puzzle solving that relies mainly on action and environment to tell its story. But they both share a lot of themes, like death and destruction, menacing and oppressive higher powers, tenacity of the silent protagonist character, and, after a long interval between games in which the protagonist is ""asleep,"" the protagonist awakens to find themself near idolized as a hero by certain supporting cast.

It's also interesting that Portal takes place at Aperture Science, while Half-Life takes place at Black Mesa, two competing research facilities that ultimately share the same fate- destruction as a result of a failed experiment. Though I think it's funny that Black Mesa, the place that was doing well financially and actually seemed to care about its employees was totally annihilated and eventually nuked, while Aperture Science, the place that went bankrupt because its founder bought and subsequently ate a bunch of moon rocks, as well as frequently forced its employees into dangerous product testing of things such as "dietary pudding" that was supposed to just bounce right back out of the consumer's stomach, still remained functional to some degree, if only populated by robots.

I also am Very Strongly In Agreement, after reading Epistle 3, that Half-Life 3 and Portal 3 were going to take place at the same time, or even potentially be the same game, after Chell's escape and Gordon's... misadventure on the Borealis, we'll say, end up with them both potentially in the same time. That's something that you may or may not see me writing at some point in the future, and this hypothetical story may or may not be titled Australis, what with the aurora australis being the opposite aurora to the aurora borealis.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling about Half-Life for now, and with that, I'm out of questions. Like I said, I think this is the end of the 1.5K AMA, unless people express a sudden interest in it. So I guess I'll see you around whenever I get to writing whatever it is I'm gonna write next!