RagnorakTres has contributed several examples around the site, but no major edits. His motto is: "Violence is like My SQL and cheesecake: if it doesn't solve all your problems, you aren't using enough of it." He will now begin referring to himself in the first person, abandoning all sense of pretentiousness and embracing the mundanity that is he.
I'm your average, straight, male, white geek/nerd/madman. Both my political and religious beliefs are unfortunately too complex to be pithily summarized by a categorical statement such as "I am a Democrat" or "I am a Christian," however you can rest assured that I prize logic and rationality above all else.
I can't say that I have a favorite author as I read both too much and too quickly to narrow the field considerably. I will say that Robert Heinlein has had a serious impact in my personal life, as have C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Both Patricia Wrede and Mercedes Lackey put out solid reads that I would recommend to anyone with a penchant for fantasy, as did Terry Pratchett who, sadly, will most likely not be publishing any more books. Nonfiction-wise, I tend to read the lighter material, thoroughly enjoying the For Dummies series.
Manga has interested me for a long time as the storyline and characterization seem to be, on average, superior to their Western counterparts, though that may be simple bias on my part. I do know that I have always preferred manga like Mahou Sensei Negima and Fullmetal Alchemist to Western comics. Anime is much less interesting to me, though I have enjoyed certain exceptional examples like Cowboy Bebop and Irresponsible Captain Tylor.
My favorite musicians include but are not limited to:
- Blind Guardian
- Jonathon Coulton
- Barenaked Ladies
- Iron Maiden
- AC/DC
- Boogie Matrix Mechanism
- Gaelic Storm
- Great Big Sea
I can't really say that I have a favorite video game, or even favorite video games. The Mega Ten franchise has proven to be consistently entertaining, as have the Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry series. There is a laundry list of other games have interested me enough to play, some of them (e.g. Mass Effect, Torchlight) several times.
Role-playing and acting have always been a part of my life in one form or another, the latest incarnation being online "play-by-post" role-plays. Most of the posts I have made on the Escapist
Forums are in the "Forum Games and RP" section. Over the last 2 years or so, I have found that characters are my preferred driving mechanism in creative writing, mostly thanks to the sheer number of RPs I have joined that failed when the GM decided he wasn't interested in it anymore.
Some of my favorite quotes:
- Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. —Mark Twain
- The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel. —Gilbert Keith Chesterton
- Man is, by nature, a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human...Anyone who...does not partake of society is either a beast or a god. —Aristotle
- To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher. —Friedrich Nietzsche
- Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don't ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue. —Michael Crichton
- Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. —Russell Baker
- Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world - "No. You move." —Captain America
- All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are the dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. —T.E. Lawrence
- History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club. —John W. Campbell
