1. What is your name?
Stuart, formerly StuartO))) which was an homage to the doom metal band Sunn O))) but the Nazis took away my parenthesis.
2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?
I am an industrial controls technician, which is a wordy way of saying I am an Applied Electronics Engineer with only an associates degree. I am the eldest offspring of the minor science-fiction and fantasy author Lois Tilton. I currently work in a factory that makes medical filters. Up until very recently I was an avid gardener and kept a log here called Stuart's Garden.
I am also a certified Roller Derby official for the Womens Flat Track Derby Association. I don't write much about that though. I like to play music and have been in several garage bands and I like to make weird sounding noises with electronics. I have begun to build a synthesizer from kits and eventually hope to grow this interest into some sort of a semi-retirement side-hustle. Or not. I am married and have dogs.
3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?
I discovered E2 while I was working twelve-hour shifts. it was very tedious when there was nothing to fix and all of the managers weren't in. While surfing the interwebs one day I found Riverrun's writeup about Bhagavan Das. Soon I was exploring the site and once I found Christmas and Corduroy I was hooked. Mom had always encouraged me to write but I have no real knack for fiction. Still, I enjoy writing if there is something worthy to write about. My first writeup was New Castle Machinery and Forge because I thought it was a crime to paint over those murals they had in that factory and I wanted people to read about the place that once had murals and what they might have meant to the people who worked there.
4. What are your least favorite and favorite memories from E2's history?
I despise Asamothing and my least favorite memories was the bullshit and infighting and people leaving, taking their writeups with them. I think it is selfish. I understand that an author's work is their own to do with as they see fit. This sentiment makes no consolation to the huge missing pieces of the E2 nodescape. And a great number the missing writeups happened because people couldn't be civil with each other, or with the staff, or the staff with the noders.
By the time I found E2, its apex had already happened but the community was still active even though I knew that a great many of its most prolific contributors had largely moved on. All of the nodermeets were in the past and with the singular exception of a noder graciously letting me stay over at her home for a night while I was traveling for Roller Derby, I have not met another Everythingian. Still, I was able to participate in Story Time Archives, where people would start reciting a story in the catbox and then make them into writeups. Oh, and the E2 Podcast! Like so many things on E2, I got in right at the end of the last episodes. And the "edgy" humor! Shit was edgy here while the *insert disdainful generational reference of the moment* were crapping their diapers.
5. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?
Geez, there is SO MUCH...too much to remember and list in one setting. I really REALLY like serial writeups especially if they have been organized into a category any story which is noteworthy to tell. The following are ones which immediately come to mind:
The New York Magician
The Song of Cyber
The Man with the Terrible Eyes
Metro City Chronicles
The life and times of a fallen angel
Stories about Mia
The Network Revenant
Thaumic City
NOCing on Heaven's Door
Dead Guy: Resurrection
There are SOOOOO many individual writeups that I have enjoyed here, it is impossible to remember them all ( and a delight to stumble upon them again! )
6. What keeps you coming back (or not coming back, as the case may be)?
The hyperlinks keep me coming back. I have Short Attention Span Theater syndrome and can just as easily loose myself down the rabbit hole of hyperlinks as easily as I did when I was ten years younger. In these troubling times, it is a real refuge.
7. What does E2 mean to you?
When I think of E2, I think of the old cyberpunk fantasy stories that were written before Netscape and all of the other web browsers that came after it. I imagine myself in a virtual labyrinthine library where someone's story lies behind every door, and within that story, dozens of door to other stories, places, things, people, the very parchments of the lives around us.
8. What do you hope for E2's future?
I hope that it keeps on keeping on. Keep on telling your stories, people! And thank you, Jaybonci!
9. Who are your favorite noders?
My favorite noders are the ones who write fantasy fiction. I will always appreciate your contributions.
10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
Rainn Wilson. We used to look seriously alike but I am now bald.
11. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?
Anyone new to writing should foremost answer two questions that their perspective readers should be asking which be answered plainly within the first 100 words. These questions are: "What am I reading about and why should I care?"
Also, you didn't ask, "What is under the bed." Thank you for not asking.
Everything2 Decaversary Interviews
If you have questions or comments, please contact Stuart or Jet-Poop.