The Imaginary Assistant Tag

Wow, look at that, I’m actually posting weekly! Such a shocker, right?!

I was tagged for the Imaginary Assistant Tag awhile back, annnnnd then I completely forgot about it. *facepalm*

I remembered about it earlier this week and resolved to make the whole thing right by filling it out ASAP. So without further ado, here’s my response to the Imaginary Assistant Tag!

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The Rules

• Thank the person who tagged you and link back to their blog. – Yep, that was Maya over at Maya’s Magic Musings! 😀
• Link back to the creator of the tag. – Aberdeen the Authosaurus created this tag!
• Tag 5-10 bloggers who need assistants (and if they don’t need them, tag them anyway). – my “taggees” are at the bottom of this post
• Please answer the questions so the author assistant agency can find the right assistant for you.

Questions

What type of creature/species would you like your assistant to be (human, animal, dragon, dinosaur, figment of your imagination, etc.) and why?

I feel like an elf assistant would be fun, but would probably also be very judgmental of my grammar and spelling slip-ups, not to mention my bad procrastination habits. 😐

Perhaps an AI, like Jarvis and Friday and Karen from the MCU would be a fun assistant? I’ve always had a soft spot for robots/droids/artificial beings, going all the way back to R2-D2 when I was super young. So yeah, that’s what I think I’d go with.

What do you want your assistant to look like?

Well as an AI, my assistant probably wouldn’t really have an “appearance”… At least, not in the conventional since. Perhaps he/she would sometimes have a holographic or digital form they could use if the need arose? But that could easily change depending on what purpose they’re serving at a given time, so I wouldn’t want to be too limiting. (And I’d probably have a female-coded AI tbh, so I’ll just go with “she” from here on out.)

What qualities are you looking for in an assistant (responsible, lovable, exasperating, etc.)?

I’ll be honest, I loved Tony Stark’s AI Jarvis while he was around in the MCU. And I love the Vision, too, who still retains a lot of Jarvis’s personality/programming details. So my AI would probably have similar attributes: loyal, responsible, not without a sense of humor (but probably a wry/snarky one). But I would also like her to be more human than machine – she may get a little perturbed at all the “human problems” that plague organics, but when it comes down to it, she’s willing to listen when I just need someone to talk to and offer advice.

Actually, the more I describe her, the more I think my AI would be something of a mix of Jarvis and Spock (from the original Star Trek series). Sensible, logical, intelligent, rather wry, but not uncaring or without humor.

What job(s) would your assistant be in charge of?

She’d help me do research (for my cosplays and art projects, but also for my writing and school assignments), and it would be really awesome if she could help me learn new things. Like now, as I’m trying to study how to draw the human figure, I could get her to critique my work and offer advice on how to improve. Same for the projects and schoolwork – she could help when I need to measure for a new pattern, order supplies for me, and make sure I don’t make all the seams with the wrong sides facing out (again), she could proofread my papers and remind me when I have upcoming assignments due. I wouldn’t expect for her to do any of the work for me, because I still want to make sure I’m being responsible and doing the work myself so that I have the needed knowledge and skills for my future, but she could help me with the complicated things that I can’t wrap my head around and with working on my time management problems. Like a personal tutor in any subject I could want to learn.

She’d also help me work through my ideas and give me a good (figurative) knock in the head whenever I need to be realistically brought down to earth before over-committing myself, as I tend to do.

Oh, and she can make me coffee and tea whenever I need it. XD

What would you like your assistant to be named?

Ugh, I always have such a hard time trying to figure out names for new characters…

*disappears into the wondrous void of Behind the Name*

*reappears*

Alright so that was actually not helpful at all.

But Arin is one name that keeps coming back to mind, because I’ve always loved putting a spin on the name “Aaron” for a gal, and it’s also fun because the letters could easily double as initials for (Ar)tificial (In)telligence. 😀

What would you feed your assistant (candy, books, pickles, etc.)?

As an AI, which is essentially a computer program, I don’t think Arin would really need “food”, at least not in the conventional sense. But I would make sure she had a steady “diet” of great literature, library databases, and basically all of Google being fed into her processors.

How would you pay your assistant and what benefits would you offer as compensation for their work?

As an AI, Arin wouldn’t really need “payment”, either… It might sound a bit harsh, but she would be created to do whatever I needed of her, just like Jarvis. But I would definitely make sure she had electricity and all the parts and components she needed to function. And I would certainly develop an emotional attachment to her, though something tells me she might find this more annoying than sweet… “Pesky organics and their illogical emotions” and all that.

What special abilities would your like your assistant to have (ice powers to freeze writer’s block, super strength to break writer’s block, super stupidity to stare at you while you’re having writer’s blog, etc.)?

Once again: she would be an AI. She could do almost anything computer-y, she would have access to almost all the collective knowledge of humanity so far, she would be a genius when it comes to putting things together and figuring them out, and she would have the snark and annoyance with me to not really care one bit about my feelings when I really need to get back to work. Also, as I mentioned before, I feel like I’d probably enable her to shapeshift, should she have a holographic/digital form.

Where would you like your assistant to be from (Jurassic Park, Narnia, your head, etc.)?

Well as I just made literally all of this up… I’m guessing my head is the correct answer?

But if I’m allowed to get a bit fictional for a second, then I’d like to imagine that she was created by Stark Industries. 😉

Will you solemnly swear not to fire your assistant in sickness or health, for richer or poorer, smarter or stupider, writing or not writing, for as long as you both shall live?

Um… I mean I obviously wouldn’t be able to “fire” her permanently, because that would probably consist of more or less deleting all her programs. And that would be just plain wrong. Not to mention sad. (Yeah I DID get really upset when I thought Ultron had destroyed Jarvis in Avengers: AoU. And I still get a bit sad when I think about the fact that he’s still kinda gone, despite much of his personality going into what became the Vision. I told you, I have a soft spot for these artificially constructed buddies.)

I’m sure I’d get annoyed at her and she would get annoyed at me from time to time, so I’d probably lock down her program or she’d refuse to help me until I started being more responsible with my time and resources. But in the end, we’d get it figured out and everything would be fine. It’s literally the relationship I have with my sisters (except they usually don’t get upset about me being a time-waster. It’s usually something more along the lines of me having left my dirty clothes on the floor or my art supplies on their bed. :P)

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Alrighty, that was fun!!

And now that I’ve spent all this time developing an imaginary assistant, I feel like I’ll probably end up using her in a story sometime. I really the ideas I’ve come up with for Arin, I feel like she’d be fun to write!

As one of the rules, I’m supposed to tag 5-10 more bloggers who may or may not need their own assistants (I really didn’t think I needed one myself, but I enjoyed making on up, so maybe someone else will to!)

I don’t actually know a lot of bloggers who I think would like this tag who also haven’t already done it! I’ll go ahead and tag Audrey @ Shadows of the Dawn, and maybe Writefury would like to give it a try as well? I’ll also tag Gracie @ Through the Eyes of Gracie and… ya know what, Carrot @ Not the Link You Are Looking For, too (I feel like he’d have some incredibly sarcastic answers to all of these questions and that would be very fun to read). Oh and I’ll tag Christine @ Overflowing Mind & Pen, too!! Maya said that I was supposed to tag at least one person who is unaware I exist, and I don’t know if any of these guys qualify for that stipulation… Writefury may or may not know me, or, most likely, “knows my name but doesn’t know I belong to it,” to paraphrase Gandalf. XD

I’m also supposed to say nice things about all the people I tagged, and to that, I will respond: all the people I tagged are lovely girls who have great blogs that I very much enjoy reading, except for Carrot, who is a boy. 😛

Here are the rules and questions for the tagged people:

RULES:

• Thank the person who tagged you and link back to their blog.
• Link back to the creator of the tag. (I have them linked at the top of this!)
• Tag 5-10 bloggers who need assistants (and if they don’t need them, tag them anyway).
• Please answer the questions to the author assistant agency can find the right assistant for you.

And here are the QUESTIONS:

• What type of creature/species would you like your assistant to be (human, animal, dragon, dinosaur, figment of your imagination, etc.) and why?
• What do you want your assistant to look like?
• What qualities are you looking for in an assistant (responsible, lovable, exasperating, etc.)?
• What job(s) would your assistant be in charge of?
• What would you like your assistant to be named?
• What would you feed your assistant (candy, books, pickles, etc.)?
• How would you pay your assistant and what benefits would you offer as compensation for their work?
• What special abilities would your like your assistant to have (ice powers to freeze writer’s block, super strength to break writer’s block, super stupidity to stare at you while you’re having writer’s blog, etc.)?
• Where would you like your assistant to be from (Jurassic Park, Narnia, your head, etc.)?
• Will you solemnly swear not to fire your assistant in sickness or health, for richer or poorer, smarter or stupider, writing or not writing, for as long as you both shall live?

Thanks again, Maya, for tagging me for this! I hope everyone I tagged has fun filling out the questions and creating their own imaginary assistant! 🙂