As the end of the 18/19 Writer’s Block board year draws to close, we present – for the sake of posterity – a joint masterpiece that critics across the world will surely describe as ‘crass’, ‘tasteless’ and ‘mildly funny if you’re really tired at the time’ – which we have put together with much love, dedication and nuance. Always wanted to get to know the board a little better? This is the perfect opportunity! All current board members answered a bunch of budding questions about themselves, with exciting, in-depth answers into the mysteries of selfhood, plastic bags and psychoanalysis (just kidding: only one of those three is true, and you know it’s neither of the good ones). Curious to find out about our favorite submissions, childhood antics and weirdest hobbies? This is the article that will answer all of the above, and perhaps leave you with more questions than before. Let’s get started!
Q: What is the piece of work you’re the most proud of?
- motherboard_666: I once wrote a story about two buckets of ice-cream being in love. They ended up meeting again at the trash dump. A true romance story, if you ask me.
- Jenna Talwards: Game of Thrones slash fiction.
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Getting my shit together.
Q: Which submission did you particularly like?
- Ali As: I loved the essay one of our submitters (who was it?) wrote about the late American poet Richard Wilbur. It is an extensive, well-rounded and well-polished piece of literary criticism.
- motherboard_666: dreams.com/true.
- David Dobrik: I particularly like anything that everyone else hates.
Q: What is your drug of choice?
- David Dobrik: contact highs.
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Herbal tea. Lots and lots of herbal tea. Whoooo!
- Yoran Sir: I don’t know any drugs, but if I would know a drug then it would definitely be cocaine.
Q: What is your guilty pleasure?
- Yoran Sir: My guilty pleasure would be listening to Taylor Swift, but I don’t feel any guilt. In fact, let me listen to TS right now.
- Hermione Granger tbh: I do not have guilty pleasures; I do not feel guilt over the things I take pleasure in. Seriously, you should try it.
- Jenna Talwards: Cheese croissants.
- motherboard_666: Drinking coffee even though I can barely tolerate caffeine.
- justgirlythings1996: Watching Vine compilations and quoting them on the regular.
- Ali As: It used to be a Lay’s extra crunchy ketchup-flavoured bag of crisps — until yesterday, when I ate a whole XL size bag of them in one sitting and afterwards felt like I had the plague.
- David Dobrik: contact highs.
- VapeNation2007: every year, I skip a full night of sleep so I can watch all six Rocky Movies directly after each other.
Q: If you could rename yourself, which name would you choose?
- Ali As: There are some funny hippy names. You know the actor Joaquin Phoenix? His birth name is actually Leaf Phoenix. And his siblings are Liberty, Rain, River, and Summer. So maybe I’d choose something like Stream, Valley or Thicket.
- justgirlythings1996: I would choose an Irish name with so many vowels and consonant of which none are pronounced the way you think they are.
Q: What is your favorite sandwich spread?
- Ali As: Hot fresh bread with melting butter is my drug of choice and guilty pleasure baked into one.
- VapeNation2007: Cornflakes.
Q: Which sandwich spread are you?
- Yoran Sir: I’d say I’m something with garlic: stays with you even after you try to get rid of me.
- motherboard_666: Honey, obviously ;).
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Fuck sandwich spread.
Q: If you were to start a cult, what kind of cult would it be?
- Jenna Talwards: Homonormative androgynous scholarly Celtic paganism. Aggressively dogmatic about cleaning schedules.
- motherboard_666: A cult in which the only thing we do is threaten to kill people with our long, sharp nails. Spoiler alert: David would be our first victim.
- VapeNation2007: one in which life is continued in exactly the same way as usual, except for one thing: the only way to prove our faith in God is by clapping whenever a pilot lands a plane successfully.
- David Dobrik: probably the Directioners.
Q: What is the weirdest thing you do when you’re alone?
- Jenna Talwards: I like to browse the sassy comment sections on gay porn blogs.
- Yoran Sir: Talk to my dogs as if they talk back. Dance like I’m a stripper without a pole.
- David Dobrik: are we ever truly alone?
Q: Which character would you always play when playing Mario Kart?
- David Dobrik: I’m partial to Baby Peach.
- Justgirlythings1996: Princess Peach, Yoshi or Waluigi.
- Yoran Sir: I used to always pick Peach, but then I turned to Yoshi. Now I like to imitate the sounds he makes winning game after game.
Q: Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?
- Justgirlythings1996: Drifting through the wind? All the time.
- Ali As: No, but I feel all kinds of guilt when I leave mine at home when I’m grocery shopping.
- Jenna Talwards: No. Paper bags only, you inconsiderate polluter.
Q: What was the last really nice sunny day you’ve had?
- Yoran Sir: It was the summer of 1997, I was just 2 months old and didn’t know yet the shit that’d be going down in what I can only aptly describe as: my life.
- motherboard_666: That one sunny day I spent in bed sleeping.
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: The light always burns bright within.
- David Dobrik: probably when my soul left my body to visit God for a second.
Q: What’s your Hogwarts house?
- Justgirlythings1996: I always thought I was a Hufflepuff but then Pottermore one upped me by sorting me into Ravenclaw.
- motherboard_666: Slutherin.
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Got expelled. Don’t wanna talk about it. Next question, please.
Q: Which Disney princess(/character) are you?
- Jenna Talwards: Sleeping beauty. I know a lot more than just three fairies though. 👀👀👀
- David Dobrik: the chameleon in Tangled.
- Yoran Sir: ALWAYS HAVE AND WILL BE BELLE. But to be honest Grumpy from Snow White is actually me.
Q: Where would you like to live?
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Naboo.
- Jenna Talwards: Monachil Pueblo, with a portal to Leiden in the backyard.
- David Dobrik: anywhere besides this godforsaken country. Maybe in a field of sunflowers in southern France. or a little town on a hill in Italy. Just not here.
Q: What is your spirit animal?
- Yoran Sir: –
- David Dobrik: a plastic bag.
- Jenna Talwards: A rare 0-0/Egyptian crossbred silkworm. Duh.
Q: What advice would you give to a friend?
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: The clock is ticking: it’s now or never.
- David Dobrik: don’t do that.
Q: Who is your favorite board member?
- Justgirlythings1996: Like a mother who is asked who her favourite child is, I cannot answer this question. I love all my fellow board members equally.
- Hermione Granger tbh: David.
- Jenna Talwards: Me (David).
- David Dobrik: the pumpkin in our office that warns us whenever someone’s soul is leaving their body.
- Yoran Sir: That cute girl, what’s her name?
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: I’m gonna say Mom because I don’t want a fucking knife in my gut.
- motherboard_666: I hate all of you equally.
Q: If you could be an insect for a day, what insect would you be?
- David Dobrik: fruit fly.
- VapeNation2007: A mosquito, annoying people never fails to be funny.
Q: What is the most outrageous or elaborate lie you’ve ever told?
- Yoran Sir: I’ve only told white lies, because I get sick if I lie to someone’s face outright, I just can’t do it.
- Ali As: When I was 7, I told my 5 year old cousin and her friend that I was an alien who had been orphaned on Earth for centuries and that I was only attending the holiday club in order to complete my Pokemon card collection. They cried.
Q: If you were an accent, what accent would you be?
- David Dobrik: Californian Valley girl.
- Yoran Sir: Scottish accent. It’s exotic, it’s strange, it’s hot- just like me.
Q: What is your spirit Instagram?
- Yoran Sir: What does this even mean?
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Writer’s Block Instagram. Duh.
- VapeNation2007: @azfar_abbass
Q: What is your weirdest hobby?
- motherboard_666: My obsession with Eurovision might be considered a weird hobby I guess? I don’t think it’s weird, though. Eurovision is almost as fundamental as reading.
- Yoran Sir: My weirdest hobby would be deciding I want to start watching a new show on Netflix and then spending the whole afternoon going through everything and ending up watching Brooklyn 9 9.
- VapeNation2007: looking for physically high places, like towers and hills, so I can later smoke weed on them, in order to become extra ‘high’.
What was your favorite thing to do on Runescape?
- Jenna Talwards: Mining/runecrafting.
- Yoran Sir: –
- David Dobrik: dungeoneering.
- Nathaniel Marvin Wolff: Running into the Wilderness naked and killing people for loot.
Q: What character would you be in a horror movie?
- David Dobrik: the virgin.
- Jenna Talwards: one of the background extras in the starting scene who gets to go home safely and just eat.
- Yoran Sir: I would be the person that gets a call from her sister, who made the stupid mistake of going to an event that turned into hell quickly. The one who picks up and panics hearing the screams and cries of everyone dying but is sitting at home safely because she always avoid social events or humans altogether.
Q: What is your funniest childhood memory?
- Hermione Granger tbh: I once tried to put a peanut butter sandwich in the VHS player and then I was upset it wouldn’t play.
- Jenna Talwards: cuddling a chicken on the swings and thinking it liked it.
- David Dobrik: not having to pay for health insurance.
Q: If you could invite five people to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?
- Jenna Talwards: Terry Prachett and Ursula le Guin because they’re incredibly witty and talented, Kit Harington because I want to fuck his brains out, Simon Amstell and Olivia Colman because they’re so clever and funny, and finally a 30-year-old Martin freeman because I want to marry him and fuck his brains out*.
- David Dobrik: Jake Paul, Jesus Christ, Lady Gaga, Trisha Paytas, Tomi Lahren.
- Ali As: Shakespeare, Jesus, Sherlock Holmes, Cruella de Vil, and Oprah. Why them? I don’t really know. It’s just a wild mix. A world-historical-cum-fictional-blind-date from hell.
- Yoran Sir: Like close friends or famous people living or dead? I’d invite Jesus, obviously. Then I’d invite Charles Darwin to create tension. I’d invite Muhammad. Siddhartha Guatama. And lastly Brahma. Now we can REALLY discuss faith in detail.
- Hermione Granger tbh: I would invite Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Hanya Yanagihara, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Deborah Frances-White and J.K. Rowling and I would ask all of them for advice on writing and life.
- motherboard_666: Haruki Murakami and Claude Monet because I love their creativity to death, Marina Diamandis because her voice is life and she is perfectly beautiful, Park Jimin because he is my sweet angel baby and Verka Serduchka because what. an. icon.
- VapeNation2007: Kanye x5.
* Jenna Talwards struggles with basic arithmetic like counting, which is why she’s listed six characters instead of five. Don’t worry; she’s in therapy.
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