fullerterror asked me to answer 6a, 12a, 14a, and 8b from this “Ask My OCs” post, and here, at last, they are!
For Robert:
6a. Cats or Dogs?
Ohhh, why would you make me choose? Well, if I had to, I'd pick cat, obviously, obviously, but I don't think I have to. Canines are fascinating! Did you know that canines are classified into basically "foxes" and "not-foxes"? Canini and Vulpini! Given humanity's reliance on domestic dogs, isn't it odd that the scientific community has such a fixation on foxes? They're hardly proper dogs, anyway; they're practically cats, behavior-wise. So that's the answer to your question: foxes. They're dogs, but also cats. Foxes.
12a. If you had a large sum of money drop into your lap, what would you do with it?
Are my eyes sparkling? Because this is the sort of thing that my mother used to say made my eyes sparkle. Depending on how large the sum of money is, as well as the limits on its use, as well as whether or not my legs are injured from having it dropped on my lap, I'd launch into a full-scale investigation of several of the most well-documented cryptids: Sasquatch, Nessie, the Chupacabra, the big names! I want complete thoroughness, I want scientific rigor, I want the lakes and forests combed with a fine-toothed...comb. I want evidence for or against their existence. I want to fit them into the existing taxonomy, or, even better, I want the existing taxonomy to have to shift to accommodate them. Eyewitness accounts are fascinating reading, but without any samples, I can't very well bring any of this up to the scientific community.
I...learned that the hard way, as they say.
14a. What’s something/someone you really hate?
Oh. Hm. That's a difficult one, very difficult. Hmm. Inaccurate reference books. I go to the campus library in the hopes of finding the most up-to-date, the most widely accepted information. I'd rather not spend weeks working on a proposal for working with...passenger pigeons, only to find out that they've been declared extinct a decade prior!
Also, erm, politeness. The sort of politeness that keeps people from telling me when I'm...doing something they find irritating. That's...worse than being told, I think. I don't want to be irritating.
8b. How well does your OC deal with stress?
Oh, dear sweet Robert. He's so constantly high-strung that usually a little extra stress doesn't do much to change how he acts, but if anything big happens (like being denied funding or losing access to a specimen without warning), it sends him over the edge. In those cases, he becomes a worrier. He worries. He locks himself in his room with his cat and silently worries. His cat doesn't like those days, since he has a tendency to absent-mindedly pet her too hard and pull at her fur when he's worrying. He'll also sometimes try to sketch out his plans for how to deal with whatever mess is stressing him out, which results in his walls and desk and floor becoming even more covered in paper than they already were. Occasionally, some of the faculty will come and check in on him, since it's not like him to suddenly be so quiet.
