Rachel's List of Love

I seem to do so much hating on this site and in my comics. Here I make a concerted effort to show you what I love (yes, I am capable of that emotion). See? I'm not all cynical. This list was inspired by an editorial column in one of my favorite old Wizard comic magazines in which it was suggested that everyone make lists of things they love and things they hate. If you read my comics, you pretty much know what I hate. So let's clarify what I love...

My Fans/Friends: Seriously! Some of my biggest fans have become some of my best friends. My favorite part about making these comics and running these sites is that I get to meet so many cool people.
Birds- Namely Crows: I love crows. Big time. They are so damned smart and cool and loving! I also love chickens, geese, birds of paradise, bower birds, anhingas, cardinals, towhees, phoebes, chickadess, and Ivory-billed woodpeckers. Ivory-billed woodpeckers were long thought extinct because of logging. However, America's largest woodpecker has resurfaced deep in the Big Woods forest in Mississippi. I used to raise geese, and I still raise chickens. Goslings, by the way, are far cuter than any puppy, kitty, or duckling. Long live the Aves!
Games, Digital and Card: Digital
Rise of Legends, the perienially playable King's Quest series (the originals and the fan remakes), and most of the games Yahtzee makes.

Card
Hands down I love playing my vintage Magic: the Gathering deck against others. "Ach, Hans! Run! It's the Lhurgoyf!"
Pokémon: I confess to playing Pokémon (the Gameboy version, not the card game) avidly for several years. My favorite pokemon is Murkrow. It's a weakling, but I love crows! My teams rarely use legendary pokemon. It feels like cheating to use pokemon with such incredible stats obviously stacked to destroy. I like the challenge of designing a winner from scratch. I have two dream teams (rest your mouse over the pics to see my comments):

Uber-Fantastic Bird Team

My Patented Beauty Pageant Team

I got these cute gifs from . My friend Locks-Gurl made the pic of me as a trainer.
Music: Nine Inch Nails, And One, The Crüxshadows , Alice in Videoland, The Offspring, Queen, Björk, Basement Jaxx, Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan (also of Depeche Mode!), Moby, Atom and His Package, Enya, Radiohead, Garbage, Third Eye Blind (the first CD I ever bought), Collective Soul, Duran Duran, Rob Zombie, David Arkenstone (the hippy elevator music guy!), The Beatles, MC Hawking, and lots of 80's New Wave.

Two of my favorite bands, Bis and Barbie Bones, are no longer making music. Bis was Scottish, and Barbie Bones was Norwegian. Obviously I have a thing for barely intelligible lyrics sung with thick accents (see also Björk). You haven't tasted obscure and under-appreciated music until you've listened to Bis or Barbie Bones, so keep an eye open at Goodwill and other stores where you might stumble over cheap, unwanted music. I got all of my CD's for under $5 at such places >^.^<
Books: I love reading! Some of my favorite authors are C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass), J.R.R.Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Ray Bradbury (From the Dust Returned), and Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time). They have inspired me to no end. I was raised on Ray Bradbury Theatre videos from the library. If you like Roald Dahl, you should definitely give Bradbury a try. His works are light, poetic, macabre, sinister, and humorous. That I can use all those words in one descriptive sentence is incredible in and of itself!
Television Shows: I only recently gained access to cable, so this list isn't very extensive. Roseanne, Stargate SG1, Star Trek: the Next Generation (my mother raised me on it), Miami Ink (why don't all comickers watch it?), Robot Chicken, The Venture Brothers, Full Metal Alchemist, and anything starrring Rowan Atkinson (except for The Thin Blue Line, which was just horribly flat).
Swan Lake, the Anime: The first anime I ever saw as a kid, and now I have it on VHS. Critics say that it wasn't Toei Animation's best, but I still think Disney would be hard-pressed to recreate the Burton-esque atmosphere. How many times did I fantasize about Odette's cage as a young girl? And, didn't I actually tear up during her long migration home after that fateful ball? I still start sobbing during the climax on occasion. There's only one decent page about it online. There's a picture I made of Odille in my gallery. I would love to direct a remake of this cartoon.

I'll add more stuff as I encounter it.