January 2022 ~ Player of the Month

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January 2022 ~ Player of the Month

🐈~BV~Keep Staring At The Stars⭐🎵
January 8th, 2022 2:20:37pm
8,095 Posts

January's Player of the Month!

Apologies for the delay!
My 2022 hasn't been the kindest so far, but trucking through it, computer sillyness and all!
Hope everyone else' New Year is going good!

A Huge Congratulations to Mango

Mango (#1802) has been chosen to be in this month's spotlight! Very long overdue, but we sure are thankful for all that she does for HP!

Community Chatter
"Mango is super sweet and she is also a very wonderful person to talk to! She always makes everyone feel so welcomed and apart of the HP family! She also has some really incredible layouts around on HP!"
"Where do I even begin? From being an great event coordinator, offering to help people when their codes break due to HP changes, creating useful automatic calculators to help determine ticket or baby outcomes, and establishing interesting optional ways to play HP such as Prism... what has Mango NOT done to deserve this recognition? You can tell that they genuinely care about HP and its community. Thank you for all that you've done and continue to do!"

The Interview Questions!
Anyone who wins P.o.t.M. can answer as many or all of the questions as they feel comfortable answering!

......HP Questions......
1. How did you first learn about us?
Howrse. I did play HL like everybody else, but I actually didn't hear about HP until well after I quit HL and was wandering around player's pages on Howrse. Saw a button and a link to a nostalgia sim, and the rest, as they say, is history :P

2. What is your favorite thing about HP?
The community, hands down. Never have I ever found an environment that is as welcoming and warm to everybody as our HP family is. While the rest of the internet is burning itself to the ground, HP is here with cookies and trauma blankets to make everything better. No judgement, no drama, just love all around. You guys are incredible and I'm so thankful for each and every one of you.

3. How long have you been playing for?
I joined HP in 2014 and have maybe missed only a handful of months of active playing since then. We're going on 7 years now :D

4. How did you come up with your player name?
I've had a handful of names, but only two of them have really stuck (and I gotta explain one for the other to make sense). The first was Monstaccato - which was a play on the stage name of one of my kpop rappers (Rap Monster). At that time in my life, kpop and my other fandoms were my sole source of happiness. I was in a really bad struggle with my depression and sense of self. My current name, Mango, came around after realizing that I've made a lot of good changes and am in a much better place in my life and my mental health. Thanks in no small part to the kpop band that openly grapples with mental health and encouraged me to stand on my own rather than use them as a crutch, I learned how to find hope and happiness in myself and my own actions. In a nod to my past and the struggles that helped make me who I am today, I kept with a Korean inspiration: Huimang (??) is the Korean word for "hope," and my favorite kpop idol (who struggles himself with depression but has made it his goal to spread smiles regardless) created a character inspired by Hope named Mang. After playing with a bunch of ways to incorporate Mang into a new name, I settled on something simple. Not unique, but cute and memorable - which I think is a good illustration of who I am :D (I'll bet nobody expected an answer this in-depth and complex for the word "mango" lmao)

5. What is your favorite breed of horse or dog to train?
Knabstruppers. And Akitas. And I cannot pick one or the other because I adore them both equally.

6. What caused you to pick the breed(s) you train and breed?
With Knabs, I had struggled for a long time pinning down a breed to be my main. I wanted to be known as THE player who breeds "insert breed here." Like when you think Saddlebreds, you think BV. Or Blitz with her Appaloosas. I wanted something that wasn't rare in real life, but also wasn't massively popular on HP. Knabs just kinda jumped out at me from somewhere in the back of my brain. After doing a ton of research and reading a lot on the history and characteristics of the breed, I just fell head over heels in love with their striking appearance and versatility. I kicked off my empire with a mini project and have since produced some of my proudest achievements with them :D I've never looked back!

7. How do you come up with names for your animals?
About 98.7% of them are fandom-inspired lmao. Most are from video games, some books, some film. 0.9% are based on music. And the last 0.4% is a mix of cool words that pop into my head, a baby name generator that no longer exists, and a band name generator that no longer exists.

8. What are your current goals on HP?
My current goals are a little ambiguous. I want to continue creating fun and unique activities to shake things up here. I also want to continue ensnaring people into the Knab and Akita net. And I'd like to create some more unique coding designs to spread around HP ^^

9. Do you have a favorite animal? (It can be your own or another player’s you admire!)
I am still so very proud of Toothless. He represents a bunch of milestones for me, as well as some important achievements in my playing style and discovering my niche in the HP community. Not only was he a mascot winner, but the community actually helped me blow past my goals with him. And the activities I hosted for him during mascot were the forerunners to the Epic Quest! Without him, I wouldn't have discovered my love of creating and hosting games for players that are different from the usual - and telling a story as we go!

10. Who’s your go-to graphic artist or coder? Are there any services you offer?
I... cannot in good conscience send coding orders out knowing full-well I can code it myself xD I feel lazy when I do it xD That said, I'm always keeping an eye on coders, and I love seeing what's going around, who's developing their own styles :D The current coders to watch are Aeon and Tragedy! For graphics, Jax, Uta, Tragedy, Phism, and Amberellie are the ones I desperately wish I could collect everything from (and am never lucky enough to get slots for lmao).

11. What is your favorite Site-Wide yearly event?
Does Epic Quest count? As stressful as it is, I love hosting the story and seeing everybody react to the activities and twists that I put together. Aside from that, Mascot! The creativity that just explodes over HP in the spring is absolutely incredible and overwhelmingly inspirational.

12. What other contests or activities do you usually participate in?
I always give 24 DoC and Blitz's word search a valiant try. Also Trick-or-Treat and the Easter Egg hunt!

13. Do you have any training or breeding tips to share?
*cough* bit of shameless self-promotion but I've got an HP help site: https://helpmango.neocities.org/index.html It's rudimentary, and I've yet to upload all my training advice/guides, but there's some awesome calculators and stuff for club presidents!

14. Which seasonal layout art is your favorite?
Spring. Because.. green. And pink.

15. If you could change one thing about HP, what would it be and why?
I wish there was better circulation of animals and lines. I miss being able to search for animals for sale and actually finding some quality trained and lined horses/dogs that would be good additions to/foundations for my own lines. That and color genetics! I will always vote for color genetics!

......Real Life & Random Questions......
1. Where are you from?
California, through and through!

2. What do you do for work?
I'm a dog bather and pet care specialist. I wash big grumpy dogs half the week, and the other half, I help people take care of everything from ghost shrimp to desert rosy boas lol.

3. Do you own any horses or dogs?
I own a german shepherd named Teagan!

4. Do you have any other types of pets at home?
Fish. Lots of fish. I love talking about my fish too. I'm that person.

5. What are your favorite breeds of horse and dog?
Horses: Knabs, obviously. And Clydesdales. And Suffolk Punches. I adore da big soft bois. Dogs: Akitas, Giant Schnauzers, and Goldendoodles.

6. Do you have any hobbies? If so, what are they?
I collect books. I rarely read them anymore, but collecting is it's own hobby lol. I also write fiction that I will rarely, most likely never, share. And video games. Mostly it's video games. Survival and fantasy RPGs are my go-tos.

7. What’s your favorite color?
GREEN. Any and all and each shade of green.

8. What’s your favorite Holiday or Month?
October and Halloween!

9. Do you have a favorite vacation spot? If so, what or where is it?
Is it allowed to be my fav even if I've never actually been? Because London. Because history. If not - Lake Havasu, Arizona is my eternal happy place (if you go, bring sunscreen).

10. If you could own any breed of horse, what would it be and why?
Clydesdale. Because when I was 8, I swore to myself that I would grow up and own a Clydesdale named Harvey after a giant invisible rabbit.

11. If you could own any breed of dog, what would it be and why?
I'm tied between a Goldendoodle and an Akita. I love the loyalty and spitz-build of the Akita, but they can have some serious behavior issues if not firmly trained. And Goldendoodles are the sweetest, floofiest floofs that are wonderful family dogs, but... grooming is necessary and expensive D:

12. If you could meet any celebrity, who would it be and why?
Wh...why.... Why do you gotta make me pick? If it's just a meeting, Adam Driver. I really admire his integrity and passion for both acting and the military. If it's to spend the day with, Tom Hiddleston. Because he's a bucket of laughs and someone I look up to when it comes to being a human being sharing a planet with other human beings.

13. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go and why?
How broad can this be? Because the entirety of the UK, with emphasis on London, all of Scotland, and including a day trip to Paris. I've had a love affair with the Notre Dame cathedral since I was in high school and The Hunchback of Notre Dame became my favorite book of all time, so I need to spend a day just standing in front of her and taking in the beauty that inspired such a breathtaking work of romance and tragedy. London has so much history, and I looove me some history. I could spend days in the Tower, or just wandering around historic areas dwelling on all the people who walked there before, who lived through epic eras in history, who saw things the world will never see again. And I'm absolutely dying to drown myself in the natural beauty of the Scottish highlands - and to marry myself a burly Scottish man.

14. What is the top thing on your Bucket List?
The abovementioned trip to the UK and Paris (and future Scottish husband).

15. What talent do you wish you had?
Traditional art. D'yknow how many times I pulled out my tablet to draw something I'm inspired to draw, and it turns out like a pile of soggy mashed potatoes? Too Many™?

16. What’s the funniest joke you heard recently?
Simply because you've put me on the spot, my brain has decided that I have never heard anything funny even once in my whole life.

22. What Meme do you currently relate to? (please provide the pic link)
Clicky Here!

23. Any good books or comics that you’ve read recently?
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

24. Any good movies or shows you’ve seen lately?
Uh... I haven't watched anything that isn't anime or Witcher lately but... Black Clover is actually really good xD Also - Boruto. Better than I thought it would be lol.

25. What is your go-to show to stream? (Via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.)
PSYCH. My favorite show. Always and forever. ??

New Nominations Open Now Through January 24th!

VOTING FORM: Click Here!

All Requirements, Information, and New Nominations can be found here: Player of the Month Thread

Thank You! :D
~Broken Vow (#22700)