About Me

So who am I?

I'm a nerdy enby person from the US, specifically somewhere in the Northwest. The summers are very warm. The winters are very wet. I struggle with health issues, which the yearly wildfire smoke since 2012 does not help with at all.

A brief history

I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy as long as I can remember. I watched Star Trek and Disney movies since before I can remember, and over the years came across fairytales and mythology. Back in the day I was a fan of Stargate SG-1. I was there for the rise and fall of Pirates of the Caribbean. The Tenth Doctor had a huge influence on me as a person when I was a young adult.

I was a fan of video games, too; when I was very young I was introduced to high fantasy watching my mother play the first and second Dragon Quest games (then titled Dragon Warrior) and the second Legend of Zelda game. When I was four years old, I ran around with a garden spade pretending it was Link's knife, and for as many years as I played with dolls I wished they could have swords and armor!

When I was around twelve, I started writing fanfiction. My first fanfiction was a Star Wars story that was maybe a page long. Later, I wrote a series of rather awful Sonic the Hedgehog fanfictions, the first one involving a pretty ridiculous self-insert. As for the rest, well, I only had access to some of the classic games and one children's book based on the Saturday morning cartoon, and it only made sense to me the characters ought to have some relatives out there and fall in love and all that.

I was about thirteen or fourteen when I got into online roleplaying, and I made a great many newbie mistakes that make me shudder to think of now! (Neon pink and electric blue Hogwarts robes, really?)

Sometime around that point (the very next year, I believe) I came across the term "Mary Sue" for the first time, and after looking into it I realized that I was going a little overboard with some of my characters. I wanted a general test to help me balance any character of mine from any fandom, whether for fanfiction or roleplay, and that's how I ended up creating the Universal Mary Sue Test. That said, I've since come to disavow the term "Mary Sue," because even though most Mary Sue tests were made in good faith, the term has gained widespread usage in disparaging female characters for completely ridiculous reasons - and besides that, there are better ways to troubleshoot potential problems in a character than a Mary Sue test.

The random generators came about in a similar fashion - many of them were created to help me come up with new ideas, or just because I found them amusing. The articles started as a way to vent a few frustrations, but then I ended up writing more about things that seemed like they'd be helpful for people to know or to think about.

I very much hope that you, visitor, will find something here that helps you, or inspires you, or just makes your day better in some way.

A few personal philosophies

Besides anything that outright promotes oppression, hate, or stereotypes, I don't think there's anything that's inherently bad. When I look at things that other people decry as awful or horrible, I see missed opportunities - something that, if the author had put a little more love and care into, could have been something brilliant.

I don't mind dark stories, nor stories that explore dark topics, but I'm not a fan of dark for dark's sake. I also think that people are entitled to enjoy fluffy vampire romance stories if that's what makes them happy. But most of all, I believe in emotional authenticity in characters - whatever's going on in the story, people should be fundamentally people.

I also believe that we should be mindful of how our words affect others. If I spread malicious stereotypes about a group of people, then I share a part of the blame when one of them is attacked by bigots. Same goes for you. Do your best to avoid spreading hate.

It's also important to remember that no one's born knowing everything. We can't be too hard on ourselves or others for not automatically knowing things, even when they seem incredibly obvious right now. The Curst of Knowledge is a cognitive bias to be mindful of.

It's always good to try and put yourself in other's shoes and try to see where they're coming from before getting angry. And trying to fight for a good cause with abusive behavior will get you nowhere good, because you just turn your movement into another instrument of abuse. We always gotta ask ourselves: are we here to look and sound good, or are we here to do good?

That's the important stuff for now. I hope things are all right for you, and if they aren't, that they get better soon in whatever way they can.