Aulis Vaara avatar

Aulis Vaara

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Location: Leuven, Belgium    Member since: March 27th, 2002    Profile views: 16160
And now, for our feature presentation.....

    An Interview with Aulis Vaara


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~~"As usual, we'll go over the painfully obvious questions first-- What.... Is your name!? "


My name? Well, Aulis Vaara XD. My friends should call me Aulis, although many are still a bit stuck with my old username, which I absolutely do not like.

Although I can understand the difficulty of getting used to calling someone else differently all of a sudden. Of course, for strangers it's Mr Vaara. I actually like my nick more than my real name, although I don't dislike my real name.

But as a friend and colleague/fellow student of mine said, a nickname is something of your own, a name is not, that was just given. So a nickname tells more about you than your name.

I could actually elaborate further on the meaning of names and such, but that would take us too far, so I'll just move on to the next question.





~~"User formerly known as Mole (and known to some as Molis) -- What was the inspiration for your current username? Does it have a history with you, or a special meaning?"

Well, I really needed a new nickname because you could find out too much about me with my last one. My cousin for one found some embarassing things about me (don't try to find them, you'll only scar and traumatize yourself).

So, since I really like Finland and all, I thought something based in Finnish would be good. Subsequently, I took the only Finnish first name I liked at the time and combined it with a last name I liked. I'm now uniquely identified on the web, while the first and second part are both too generic to be linked to only me.

Alright, moving on.





~~"Do you have a favorite color of sorts? Why is it appealing to you?"

Colors? Wow, there's actually a few. Though it is really limited to those few.

Black. I'm a goth, and a metalhead, so black is a pretty natural color for me to wear, with bandshirts and all that. Furthermore, black is usually rather easy on the eyes and I like that.

Red and Purple. Only, or mostly, in combination with black though, because you often need highlights or colorcombinations. They are also rather soft colors to look at on a black background, while still having suf ficient contrast.

Olive and a few other types of yellowish greens. I have no idea why I like these colors, but they are very appealing to me.

Hair colors: anything but blonde, but especially red and redheads, and dark brown and black.





~~"Many of the FRP residents lovingly know you as "The Pasta God"-- However, is this actually your favorite food? XD"

Oh yes, of course. Pasta is my absolutely favorite food in the world. Going from my mother's delicious and meaty lasagne over fishy pastas to various types of vegetarian pastas.

When I make pasta, it's usually tomato sauce with a lot of veggies in it. I have really become half a vegetarian lately. Not that I really want to be one, I just realized that we really eat way to much meat in our lifetimes and that a lot of our planet's resources are used to make sure that we can have this much meat.

Wheat and rice are my primary substitutes for pasta though (just so I don't eat it ALL the time). Those are both very delicious and you should try them out, if you haven't already.





~~"Upon arriving in the Feature Role-Play forum, what were your first impressions?"

Wow, that's been so long ago. I don't think I actually remember the first time I went there. (I don't remember much most of the time anyway XD).




~~"What was the first Role-Play (feature RP or not) in which you participated in? Does it hold a special memory within your heart? Do you feel as though you've improved at all, or if you've learned from any prior mistakes?"

My first RP? Wow, that's hard to remember too. I remember two RP's at the very start.

The first was a Zelda Role-Play in the Ocarina of Time forum. I think this was actually the first I was in. I didn't participate much though, and there were few others who participated very much in it. It was also not so incredibly focused on writing. It was created by Brainiac256 is memory serves correctly, but it might be wrong, especially on the number part of the name.

The second, was a Golden Sun Role-Play in the Golden Sun forum. It was the first of its kind, though many incarnations followed. It was called ‘Quest for Power’ and was actually based on the first Golden Sun game, as the second was not out yet (yes, it was that long ago). I was a big n00b back then, but the story was actually not bad, just very thin and simple. And told in a rather horrible way. The tenth thread should still be alive somewhere in the depth of the RP-forum (after thread seven we moved there), but I'm not digging it up right now.

Of course, that second RP holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first I ever created (one that required writing anyway, not counting turn-based battles here). And I wrote in it with people I still consider to be my friends even though I haven't spoken to them in years. I really miss them, but since I have no way of contacting them, there's nothing I can do about that. A real pity. I'll also never forget the ending of the RP. I couldn't allow the bad guy to win, but I had to make it a bittersweet memory as my character died as well to defeat him.







~~"Upon over-viewing your work, I see incredible variance in your characters. Is there a certain type of character that you are most partial to?"


Really, variance? I always think there's not much variance in my characters. They usually are cute or handsome intelligent females with certain character traits similar to my own.

Ok, maybe there's more variance than I would think, but I always make them so that writing their story feels natural to me. That is the reason while I will never make a really dumb character. I don't know what th ey are thinking, so I can't write such a story properly.

As for what I'm most partial to. Girls, obviously, I like writing stories where girls are the main character. Preferably one carrying an Eeyore-plushie around XD. I'm actually thinking of making that my trademark.





~~"Now, with writing skills as intriguing as yours, I have to ask-- Are there any inspirations/influences on your work? Authors, actors, people in every day life... You name it."

Without a doubt there are influences, however it would be ridiculous to say that I can name them all, many influences happen subconsciously afterall.

As for influences and inspirations from authors, I would have to say that Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time and Frank Herbert's Dune are my two favorite series and thus influence and inspire me quite a bit. Although JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth is also a very inspiring world.

Every day life inspiration mainly comes from those I write with and from within me. As I said before, my characters all have things in common with me, this is because they are usually based on a part of me that I do not get to explore much in real life. For example, I have never had a lasting relationship and many of my characters fall in love and form a lasting relationship. Despite any problems there may be in the relationship, there is no way they are breaking up.

As for friends then. It's needless to say that when you're writing a story (or Role-Play) with someone, they inspire you to continue writing. You never know what they are going to do next, so you wonder what will happen next and thus you keep on writing your own story, molded to fit into theirs, just so you can see what happens next. That's the thing I like most about RP'ing: the seemingly endless inspiration you get from some people.





~~"On the subject of Authors and what not, do you have a favorite novel or genre?"

As stated above, Dune and the Wheel of Time are my favorite series at the moment and they represent my two favorite genres: (high) fantasy and science fiction. Although, of course I'm always open to new books an experiences.




~~" (Continuing with favorites. XD) Do you have a favorite movie?"

There are so many movies I consider my favorites, and it is quite hard to choose a single one above all the others, because of the oh so many differences between movies. Many are ingenious in their own way.

* The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland: Everybody likes the muppet when they were little, at least everyone from my generation. It's just a bunch of nostalgia and cuteness, as well as the childlike innocence we are reminded of when watching such movies.

* The Care Bears movie: Again adorably cute, nostalgic and childishly innocent. Plus the Carebearstare.

* Winnie the Pooh: Winnie the Pooh characters are highly lovable, especially Eeyore. Not only are they lovable, they are also each very different from one another and still they get along, something which is not the case in our modern world.

* Monsters Inc.: What an ingenious plot! Monsters scaring children for energy is just epic. It is quite hard to explain otherwise. The movie also shows us how terrible some people really are, getting more power at the cost of others. It's almost painful to know that the monster world reflects back on our own.

* Finding Nemo: On of my favorites since it came out. A movie about fish? Who'd have thunk it. It is an epicly great movie though, and hilariously funny. It shows us that we have to trust others and let go of our fears. I especially like Dory though, despite being the greatest source of hilarity in the movie, she's also the story's saddest character. She knows like nothing, imagine how lonely she must be and how hard lif e is for her, not even remembering if you are or not. And yet she has such a lively and carefree personality, it really give a person warm fuzzy feelings inside.

* The Craft: Enough with the kiddy movies already. The Craft is one of my favorites as well, dealing with magic and the consequences of abusing your power. Not to mention the beautiful women playing in the movie.

* Serenity: I actually checked this movie out because of a joke in an internet comic. But it is one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen. The fact that they actually made noiseless outer space scenes (as it should be) also helps a great deal. The movie has very cool characters and each one is funny and surprising in their own way. Really, I want to see the series as well, when I have the chance.

* Monty Python: This doesn't really need an explanation I think. Holy Handgrenade, the christian in Eric the Viking, these questions three, the space ship in Life of Brian and so many other memorable moments. Truely some of the most ingenious creations of our time.

* Juno: A nice show of what life is like. Not to mention Juno herself is very cute (since Ellen Page is very cute) and the role is played so well. It also seems very realistic and it is funny without really trying to be, in my humble opinion.

I'll just stick to those nine, although even that is going a bit overboard. Oh well.





~~"Okay! Moving on to life in general-- How is life for you in Belgium? Is the anything substantially different you would like to enlighten us onto? (Besides the drinking age thing. :( )"

Well, our educational system is vastly different, but I'm not going to bore you with that. Christianity is really becoming something of a minority here in this generation. Once there old people are gone, Catholicism is somewhat done for. Islam seems to be on the rise, according to some, but it just seems like a temporary fad to me. That'll be over in a generation or two as well.

Belgium is very diverse generally, although many areas are dangerous and I don't like walking around in those places. Especially not with a dress on. Luckily, the city where my university is located is not very violent, and I feel rather safe there. In other cities I do not feel safe, regardless of what I'm wearing.

Other than that, I don't really know what could be so different about Belgium. We generally have terrible Internet Service Providers though.





~~"If there was any place within the world that you could visit-- worry free-- where would you like to go?"

Finland of course. After having been there I only want to go back even more. I hope to live there some day, it's the country of my dreams, more or less. In any case, it's very beautiful there and the weather is very much attuned to my taste.




~~"If you could be president of the universe, what laws would you pass? (Without having to worry about congress. )"

“No travelling at above the speed of light !”

Just to bum everyone out of course. How can you get anywhere if you're not allowed to travel faster than the speed of light?

On a more serious note, I have no idea. I'm not the right person to lead a civilization, too much of a dreamer to do so and I absolutely don't know what would make a society thrive.





~~"If you can recall, did you have a childhood dream? What did you want to be when you grew up?"

I remember one dream from kindergarden, but that is too private to share with everyone on here. Few people are open-minded enough to deal with that topic. And I don't blame them for that.

Other than that I don't remember any real childhood dreams, I was never one with great hopes for the future, I still am not. I just live life from one day to the next, I don't know how else to do it. It is strange, because I always keep telling people about things I still want to do, but I never plan ahead for them, if they happen then that's much fun, but you'll rarely see me go through effort to experience something new. I'll rather do such a thing when the opportunity presents itself.

And finally, I'd rather not grow up, to be honest. With what I know now, I do not like the world much at all, I'd rather have the comfort of being a child without worries. When everything was still so simple and easy.





~~"Well, we know for certain that you're an extremely intelligent person, and you've talked a lot about certain technologies and what not. Are you planning to pursue a career in this line of work?"

Well, I am studying informatics/computer science (or whatever it is called over there). So yeah, my line of work will probably be on the frontline of computer-technology. I enjoy working with computers, although the average graphical user interface (GUI) bugs the hell out of me. I prefer being able to do everything by keyboard or just typing it up. It's much quicker once you get used to it.

Then again, while I'm pretty passionate about computers, I'm also pretty passionate about writing. So we'll have to see what the future brings.





~~"You've told us about freya before-- Is there anything else you would like to share about her or any of your other technological items?"


Well, I have a few technological items, though not too many.

First and foremost is perhaps freya. For those who don't know, freya is my desktop computer. It's the first computer I actually built myself. It's not even a year old, but the hardware is considered a bit old by now. Things have grown by leaps and bounds after I put it together. Still I'm proud of her, she does her job extremely well, although I still need to finish patching her up. But for that I need to find a fitting Operating System, Ubuntu has been bugging the hell out of me since I reïnstalled it, though I still think it's going to remain that in the future, because of its frequent updates and good repositories. Still, as long as Firefox 3 does not get vimperator, I won't be too happy.

Then of course there's also skadi, my laptop. She's been serving me loyally for three years now, but the battery is ruined and the keyboard is losing it's responsiveness. On top of that, the current subnotebooks (ASUS eee pc and the like) are somewhat on par with it now, so I'm thinking of buying one of those instead. It would provide me with the same functionality.

And of course, I also still have my Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo DS. But those can hardly be mentioned.

Oh, perhaps for the fans, I have a Sony Ericsson Z530i cell phone, which is the best cell phone I've ever had. It's just really good looking and fun to use. Somehow it just feels natural in my hand.

And finally, I have a Meizu MP3 player. No idea about model numbers or anything, but it has 8GB of space, it plays video as well as music. And the two features which were most important to me, was that it could play .ogg files (an open source media container file format) and that it acted like an external harddrive and did not require software to use/exchange media files. So it also functions as my USB stick.






~~"Are there any activities that you do for recreation? Sports, games, ect."

For recreation? Well I mainly write, sometimes I really get into playing games again, but that really isn't that often. When I play games, it's usually because it's a game series I once started playing and of which I now want to know how the story ends or continues.

I try to read as much as I can, but that seems a bit laggy these days as well. Still, I hope to change that when the next school year starts.

I also try to stay tied in to a few communities, a major one being neoseeker and then especially the role-playing forums. Then there's also another two which I frequent slightly less, but those are again very private and related to the kindergarden thing from above.

I keep up with the xkcd web comic as well. So much so that I usually read the new comics on the day they come out. It brings a lot of laughter into my life.

I'm not much of a sports man, but I do hope to go folk dancing a bit more often next school year. Ireally didn't go often enough the past year, and it's something I enjoy doing. Plus it's a good way to meet new faces, especially female ones (the ratio is like two girls per guy or so).

Occasionally I go out with friends too, but that's rather rare, I mostly sit behind my computer at home. I'm not very sociable most of the time.





~~"Do you have any morals in which you live by?"

Morals?! What are those?

Just kidding of course. Wiccans have one golden rule. Do what you want as long as you don't harm anyone.

While that is a wonderful rule to live by, I did have to adapt it a bit to my taste. For it's more realistic, something like: Do what you want, as long as you don't harm an unwilling victim.

Although I have to say it's quite hard living up to that rule, at points, you are going to clash with different personalities and someone is often bound to get hurt, even if it is only their pride.






~~"Out of all the RP's in which you've participated in, is there a character you are most fond of? What made them so special to you?"

This will probably not come as a surprise, but Kyllikki is by far my most favored character ever. What I like so much about her? That I was able to put so much of myself in her. And I adore that fact that she carries around her Eeyore plushie and that she can be so distant from people at times while still being seen as innocent and pure. Except by L of course XD.





~~"You mentioned that you find romance a natural part of a flowing story-- Do you consider yourself to be a romanticist? Do you have a favorite love story, of sorts?"

Did you ever see Serenity? By the end of the movie, one of the characters, the doctor, mentions regretting not being with the engineer of the ship (a girl, btw) and then she said: “Screw this, I'm going to live.” Well that was hilarious and adorable at the same time. You'd have to see the scene to fully grasp its adorableness though, there's far more details to it. I like love things like that.

I can be pretty romantic myself, though at times it is also just lacking. It's weird like that, but that is also the reason why I like seeing that in movies, because it is strange to me, but it can also give me ideas. Although those things never pack out like anything you've come up with yourself.





~~"And in a continuation of romantic things, which would you prefer? A Romantic adventure in which your name will forever be remembered in the hearts of the people, or an actual romance with a person to love?"

The romance with a person, without a moment's hesitation. However long you are remembered, it is still only temporary, but at you will always remember that romance yourself.

That, and I will always prefer nails cutting into my back because of passion over some random person knowing me.





~~"You seem to have affection for the adorable Eeyore-- Is there a history behind this, or do you just love him because you can? :o"

I've been through a couple of binge/purge cycles with plushies. In middleschool and high school I had a small collection, from that time, only the Tweetys and a Gizmo (from gremlins) remain.

About one and a half year ago, I had a particularly child-like episode and I wandered into a toy-store and acquired a Lumpy and an Eeyore. I've grown verry fond of my Eeyore over that time and it is usually with me now, though I don't carry it around like Kyllikki.

My mom won me a big lion plush as well. But that one is in my chair along with my Tweeties. Once I get a double bed, they're all moving back though, now they would just fall off when I would get into the bed.

I'm hoping to have a complete Winnie the Pooh collection one day. That would be very awesome and adorable. But Eeyore will also be my favorite.

I also suppose that I see a lot of myself in Eeyore, he does remind me of myself quite frequently, at least in the episodes I remember him in.




~~"*random questions* If you could have any super power, what would it be? =D"

The ability to have all superpowers. That or omnipotence.

Did you really expect any other answer? I mean, I'm not stupid you know. If you wanted any limitations, you should've set them.



Lei: :(





~~"Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"

That is a question for Ishi, he is the Almighty Cookie God afterall. What happens with the cookie jar is his business, not mine.

Though, if he needs help catching, punishing or torturing the perpetrator, he can always count on my help. Especially if torturing is involved, he told me he's a bit lacking in that area.





~~"And now, back to serious business.... You've been on Neo for awhile, and have earned the title of an "Oldie"-- Do you have fonder memories of the olden days? Or are there any memorable experiences that you can recall?"

The good old days? Oh yes, I have some fond memories and people I miss, as I've said before.

But the most memorable experience was surely modding. That was a lot of fun, though I was somewhat young then and so different from how I am today. Still I didn't do a bad job, except an error in judgment for picking my co-mod at one time. Actually, I never should've gotten a co-mod at all.

I managed to moderate the forum at a hundred an fifty ppd just fine, according to one of the residents anyway. But then again, it was summer, I was fourteen or fifteen and I had nothing better to do then. Besides, few bad things happened in the forum and the members generally kept it rather tidy. I only needed to actually close the wrong or finished threads and sometimes delete some posts here and there. But like I said, hardly any inappropriate stuff happened, it was a DragonballZ forum afterall, so it was just a bunch of kiddies discussing who was stronger SSJ3 Goku or Mystic Gohan.

There are more fond memories of course, but that was definitely the best one.






~~"Do you have any shout outs you would like to give?"

Stop touching my breasts!

I don't know what's worse, that I thought of that, or that I've actually ever had to say that. Life brings you strange things.





~~"Is there anything else you'd like to say, to wrap things up? ;)"

Pasta la vista!

Dude, I've slayed you once, don't make me slay you again!

Screw this, I'm gonna live!

DISCLAIMER: The second quote is from Hannah Montana. The third quote is from Serenity.





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Oh my gosh, best interview ever.

*cough* Anyway, thank you very much for your participation, Aulis. It was fun talking with and learning about the pasta god. >=3 Good job! :suikiasmile:




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