August 2022 Q&A

Transcript

Hi Moonbeams and happy August. I'm here doing another Q&A for you, August 2022. We have a few questions, not quite as many as there have been in past months, so see what you can come up with for me in September.

That said, let's jump right in. Violet Iris has a couple questions. The first one is, what have you learned most about yourself and your voice since becoming a voice actor?

That is a very interesting question. It's a big question, much bigger than you realize, and there's a lot that I can't disclose without completely and utterly doxing myself in my personal life. Suffice it to say, there's been a multitude of changes in my life since I became a voice actor, and becoming a voice actor was kind of the thing that got the ball rolling on a lot of stuff.

And my life is very different from the way that it used to be. I've learned a lot about my preferences, I've learned a lot about the things that interest me and that don't interest me, the things that soothe me and that don't soothe me, things that I like about myself, things I don't like about myself, things I want to partner, things I don't want to partner. It's really been a huge growing and learning experience for me.

About my voice, I've made no secret of the fact that when I first started out, I didn't think I had a very good voice, and I thought that few people would want to hear me. It's kind of on a whim that I submitted those first verification audios to a couple of different subreddits. So as far as my voice goes, learning that it's soothing, that a lot of people find it sexy, that a lot of people find it comforting, reassuring, those were big revelations for me, things that I was not anticipating.

So yeah, quite a lot of personal growth and quite a lot of self-discovery have followed since I became a voice actor. Violet Iris also asks, what is your favorite word? Word? Mine's onomatopoeia.

That is a very good word, and it's one that, you know, I'm normally a really good speller, and that one I actually do have to look up every time I want to use it or write it. I would say that gargantuan is probably a pretty strong contender for my favorite word. It just sounds important.

It's a fun word. Jen says, since you travel a lot, any suggestions for dealing with jet lag? My body is still exhausted a few days after I got home.

All right, so dealing with jet lag. You know, I usually alter my sleep schedule a bit before I go on a trip so that my days and nights are a little bit mixed up, and that helps me, I think, when I first get to where I'm going. I find that I get a lot more jet lagged when I go west than when I go east.

When I go east, especially if I'm going transatlantic, then I just have a night of crappy sleep on an airplane and get some rest the next day, and I'm fine. When I go west, like even transatlantic, you're crossing the Atlantic, but going west, you, it's still the same day when you get there, and so there's more hours in the day, so you have to push through it, and it's just, it's just rocky. So one of the best things that I can recommend to you is get some extra sleep when you first get to your destination, but then force yourself on to a regular schedule, and stick to that schedule.

Don't indulge yourself by sleeping half the day away and then being unable to sleep at night. You know, pound some caffeine, get through a day, and get on a regular sleep schedule. That, that's what helps me.

Also, why aren't there more charging spots for charging your phone in an airport? I think it's torture, to be honest. Now there are some airports I've been in that do a really, really good job of having a lot of outlets, and they're in between the seats, and they're on the pillars, and just all over the place.

I've even been in airports that have wireless charging spots, like on all of the armrests in the seats while you wait, and I think those airports are, quite frankly, awesome when they do that. I've been in some of the biggest airports in the world and been appalled by the lack of available charging. It's just, it's criminal.

Yamakun asks, do you have a favorite food or snack? Also, if you were in the world of Star Wars, would you be a Sith or Jedi? A favorite food or snack? I'm gonna go with some different food genres that I really like.

I really am a fan of Asian foods. Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian are all among my favorites, and I really, really like, there is a Thai curry, it's kind of a sweet curry, chuchi curry, that I just adore. Absolutely love it.

As far as snack, I gotta say I am partial to cheese and crackers. Just a pretty standard snack, but easy to fix and yummy, and I just, you know, liked it when I was a kid, like it as a grown-up. Star Wars, I think I would be a Jedi with the attitude of a Sith.

Like, don't screw with me, I will end you, but I have a conscience, so not really. I'll just talk a good game and, you know, let you live. Luna Castro wants to know, what's your best dish that you can make for someone? That is a good question.

There is some Italian chicken that I've made in the past, chicken caprese or caprese, however you say it, I don't know Italian pronunciations, and served over, I've served it over mashed potatoes that people tend to like quite a bit. I like that one a lot. There's also a beef and noodle dish that I make that is, it's kind of a homemade hamburger helper, but it's really, really, really tasty, and I like making that as well.

After a really stressful day, what do you do to relax? I come home and I pass out. Sometimes I play video games, sometimes I listen to music, watch shows, interact with my family, you know, that sort of thing, but, and I like reading too, although I haven't done a whole lot of that lately.

Yeah, there's a number of things that I like to do to relax, but I kind of like to just lay low after a long day and go to bed a little bit early. What's the best live concert you've ever been to? I, I gotta say, best live concert I've ever been to, and I've been to a few really, really good ones.

One of my favorites, I want to say, was about almost ten years ago. I went to a Pearl Jam concert in the Midwest, and someone got the microphone from Eddie Vedder during an encore break and proposed to her boyfriend, and so it was pretty cool to listen to this lady propose to her guy, and he said yes, and we all cheered, and they played a love song to start off the encore, and that was pretty memorable, and yeah, and I've been to a couple really big music festivals that I really liked as well. Don't go for those quite so much anymore.

More often now, I go for a single band or a couple of bands kind of thing, not a big outdoor all-day music fest kind of thing. Have you ever broken a bone? Yes, I have.

I have broken the big toe on my right foot a few times, and I've broken the fifth metacarpal, that's a long bone inside the hand that attaches the pinky finger. I've broken that in my right hand, and it's actually still bowed a little bit because when they set it, the the doctor told me that sometimes when you break a bone with a lot of force, the bone kind of, the energy can actually deform the bone a bit, and so that bone now is not completely straight in my right hand. There's some, it's a bit bowed.

I'm gonna totally mispronounce this name because I just could not do Arabic pronunciations, so Amo, I'm really sorry, but I'm just not gonna get it, I think. The animated or real-life Aladdin? Well, I'd have to go with the animated because I've not seen the real, the live-action one.

So, now the animated one is a classic and it's one of my favorites, and RIP Robin Williams, we miss you. Laura Rojas says, hey I'm new here, so just curious to know what was your motivation or reason to be a voice actor? Well, that's a, that's a story that I've told a few times, but I don't mind sharing it one more time.

A couple of years ago, I went through a rough patch. I was very, very depressed, and I got a lot of comfort and encouragement from some female voice actresses on Pillow Talk Audio Reddit, on subreddit, Pillow Talk Audio subreddit on Reddit, and I got the desire to give back. I got the desire to pay that forward to someone else and think maybe I could help someone out that's struggling, offer them some words of love and encouragement and support, and I initially joined that subreddit thinking I was just gonna write scripts because, as I mentioned earlier, I thought I had an awful voice, but kind of on a whim, submitted a verification audio, and people's responses were along the lines of, oh my gosh, please keep talking, and so that was the first indication I had that maybe I had a voice people like to listen to, and so the rest, as they say, is history.

Caroline, what's an unpopular opinion you have that may make people mad? I'm going to dodge this one and plead my Fifth Amendment rights. I do have a few opinions that are my own and best not put in public because they can be very hot topics.

What's the last song you listened to? Well, I don't remember which one. When I got home from work today I put on the album Back in Black by ACDC and I can't remember what the last track was that I played.

It might have been What Do You Do for Money, Honey. I think that might be the one that I stopped the album on because I got distracted by something else. Shy Shadow says, okay, so I'll start with the serious stuff first.

If this were the last thing you ever recorded in your voice acting career, what would be the one key message you would want to leave with people? It would be to be good to one another and to yourselves, and to look forward with hope, and be the hope in someone else's life. I've mentioned more than once that I am a religious person.