Xwing's 1001st Post Thread

The Core RPGC Main Forum
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After much delay, here are my answers:

Might and Magic 6. Full of difficult and expansive dungeons, which sometimes grow frustrating and tedious, but ultimately prove satisfying. A leveling system that nicely balances potential for diverse abilities (the skill system) with the need for specialization (the class system) – which is more or less how I view personal development in real life.

Why did I ask you a question that sounded like it was out of the Dating Game, only nerdy? I really can’t figure it out, myself.
I can’t imagine either, GAP. But maybe meanwhile you could tell me your blood type and measurements?

It’s been at least 10 years, but I remember I loved the Timothy Zahn trilogy; the first book in the X-Wing series; and the book that had Han and Leia on the witch planet (Dagomir?) along with that prince. I read all of Kevin J. Anderson’s stuff, but his sloppiness with important characters and relationships made me queasy.

What is your favorite animal and why?
I’ve always loved the dragon, and the idea that cultures all around the world could independently devise the same awesome creature. I also find it fascinating how different cultures regard the dragon differently: Northwest European heroes slay dragons that are fearsome monsters, while the Chinese both revere and are wary of tricky dragons, while the Bible makes Satan into a Dragon, etc.

The short answer is that while I did well on the English Subject GRE (especially the poetry section), I did much, much better on the LSAT. I saw where opportunity was beckoning me.

The long answer is that I had developed distaste for an academy that largely has usurped the English major. What was once a study of how best to write, speak, and perceive the world, is now mostly a celebration of popular liberal causes. The amount of unsubtle and one-sided trash I had to read boggles my mind. The careless thinking and horrible writing of my peer English majors convinced me that the major was no longer doing its job, and had degenerated into formless musing.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that few of the great authors in history made a profession of writing about writing. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Goethe, Stevens (as Seifer points out): these were not professors. It struck me that, if I wanted to accumulate genuine life experiences about which to write, the Ivory Tower would not be the place to do so.

What happens in court is real. You learn stories about real people, their motives, their tragic downfalls, and then try to guide the hand of justice. This would be real life experience. I also thought that law school and practice may force me to cancel out some of my own weaknesses - e.g. a tendency toward “formless musing” - that the English major helped cultivate. So far, I’m pleased.

As for the job market, I’m actually starting a good internship tomorrow. I’m not terribly worried about the long term, but we’ll see what comes.

Research is inconclusive, but I have found this persuasive anecdote: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/542579

Who would you rathere- a fat chick with a pretty face or a chick with a hot body and ugly horseface? And you can’t cover it with a paper bag.
I would go with pretty-face-but-fat, as that can be fixed or at least ignored, while a horseface sounds difficult to deal with.

Would you let someone shoot you in the kneecaps for 1,000,000?
Not a chance. I’ll make that 1,000,000 and keep my mobility.

The number right after zero, and right before six.

Not worth it for a one night stand. But I can’t guarantee I would be so reasonable while drunk and in her presence.

  • Let’s imagine this new product, let’s call it “Lickin’ Stix.” It’s kind of like those old candies where you had the candy stick that came with the flavored powder, and you put the powder on the stick and licked it off. Imagine that, but much larger, and phallus-shaped…like, undeniably reminds you of a big-ass dick. Would you agree to do a commercial for Lickin’ Stix - which involved you using the product (i.e placing it in your mouth and licking/sucking powder off the end) while talking about how delicious it was - if you were offered several million dollars?
    Maybe if I were desperate for money. But that’d also destroy my career, and any hope I had of being taken seriously, so probably not.
  • Let’s pretend your calling was something like playing the trumpet. A stupidly, stupidly rich person offers to pay you unimaginable amounts of money to play trumpet for him. However, the catch is that you only play in his house, in the bathroom, while he is urinating or defecating. The job will only be offered once, so you have to take it right now, or never. Do you?
    Not worth it. I’m imagining visitors to my giant house asking, “Wow. What did you do to get this?” And what would I be inspired to write about?
  • What’s the most fucked up thing you’ve ever done to a person(s) that you can still look back and go “Man, that was really fucked up…but it was pretty funny”? You can list multiple ones of varying degrees of fucktupness, if you’d like.
    In eighth grade, we had desks that opened on hinges. One kid had a desk that didn’t close all the way by itself, and people would always open it partway to annoy him. He got used to slamming it shut irritably. One day I put a raw egg in the gap between the top of the desk and the edge against which it closed. Not noticing, he saw his partly open desk, slammed it shut, and the egg spilled all over the inside of his desk: homework, folders, textbooks, etc. His desk reeked of rotten egg for the rest of the year.
  • Tell me some event that happened in your life that no one knows about, but you aren’t embarrassed to tell? This can be anything from something that happened when no one was around, to some sort of sticky situation you got yourself into that you managed to hide from other people.
    When I was around ten, I ordered a video game controller on eBay, and didn’t notice that it required payment by money order. My parents didn’t know about it either. I just planned to send cash in the mail. I get the e-mail informing me I have to pay by money order. I have no idea how to get a money order. So what do I do? Nothing, for two weeks. I get an angry and poorly phrased e-mail saying something like, “Hey asshole, if you don’t fucking pay me in a week, I WILL REPORT YOU and you’ll be in big trouble.” I am freaked out. So do I ask my parents for a money order? No. I respond, “I have been having difficulty obtaining a money order, but was about to acquire one, when I read your e-mail. I would inform that by swearing repeatedly in your previous e-mail, you have violated the eBay Terms of Service, and I intend to provide negative feedback to that effect, as well as report you to eBay if it continues.” All made-up, 100%. I get a reply the next day: “I’m so sorry man, didn’t mean to be a jerk, don’t even worry about the money order. I’ll just send you the controller and we’ll call it even, ok?” I’ve never told that story. I sent him the money order about three weeks later, after taking my sweet time.

I need to go eat dinner. I’ll be back to finish responding as soon as I have a good internet connection.

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Might and Magic 6.

Isn’t M&M an rpg? Leveling up, XP, inventory, huge dragonflies (or was that 7?), the works. I thought GAP was talking about Monkey Island–like games.

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Might and Magic… SOLID!

What’s your favorite game genre and title?
What would you do for a girl’s affection?
If you could have any real or imaginary creature as a pet, what would you choose?
V for Vendetta: Comic book or movie adaptation?
What would you do if you had something really nasty you wanted to get out of your mind?

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What would you do for a klondike bar?

And would you cut you dick off for a million dolloars? But by some magical way it would come back within 24 hours but during those 24 hours you had to go through all the pain and everything?

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What is your dream in life? On the other hand, what are you practical, long-term goals?

If you were a class from Final Fantasy 5, what class would you be? What RPG character do you identify with the most, and why(I’d like a lengthy response for that last one :suckah:

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Make my 10001st Post Thread.

What question will you ask in the said thread?
Of all the characters to name yourself after, why Gilbert?

And will there be cake?
No, just fruit.

Do you still intend to write the poem when you hear Cloth Hat’s story?
The question is, will Clothhat even bother with his story after he reads my poem?

Also finish this story-

Okay. So a Nun, a Leprechaun, and a Rabbi run into a bar…
Lacking a pot of gold, the Leprechaun offers both one wish. The Nun says, “I wish for a fifth of everything this bar’s got.” The Rabbi says, “I wish for the most valuable item in the bar.” A huge array of liquors appears before the Nun. The golden rosary she wears vanishes and appears in the Rabbi’s hand. The Nun sighs and laments, “They’re always after me lucky charms.” The Rabbi gestures at the fifths and points out helpfully, “They’re magically delicious.” The Leprechaun is speechless.

If you had two seashells, nine fish, four sea horses, and forty-seven snakes, how many legs would you have?
Two.

[witty retort]

I give you exclusive permission to do so.

I fail at that, but you may appreciate this link.

Of the above, only Ezra Pound, and only his early work. In his early career, he achieved a difficult tension between deep spite and romantic grace, grace which he cheaply sacrificed later for a bit more conciseness. Here is Ezra Pound at his best:

Portrait d’Une Femme

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you - lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind - with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.

Do you shudder when you look 11 years back?
Yes and no. Yes, when recalling my ridiculously awkward 12-year-old moments. No, when I remind myself of formative moments that were meaningful and can’t possibly happen again. I suppose I shudder but look back anyway.

Grey (Green) Magic from FF5. It’s hard to argue with Meteo, Quick, X-Zone, Fast 2, and Return. I find it more interesting than Black Magic’s generic array of elemental damage spells. White’s also pretty one-sided, despite having Holy. Red takes the most boring of White and Black and sticks it together. Blue has an extremely interesting variety, but never has the wham of other magics.

If my lover wants a threesome and I can choose the third participant, why, who am I to crush her dreams and leave her dissatisfied?

How about an “Indecent Proposal” situation: would you allow some stranger to woo and seduce your love interest for a financial compensation?
No way.

The Green Ranger. My SINISTRAL post gives reasons why.

Are you driving with your eyes closed or are you, like, using the force or something?
In my avatar? Nothing so impressive, unfortunately.

If by “fountain pen” you mean “tank,” and by “the pen is mightier than the sword” you mean “a tank would destroy a samurai,” yes and yes.

Indeed.

Her rhombus-like figure, rusty eyes and gloriously single brow?

In my parlance, an RPG is not a game with a statistic system like D&D’s. What does that have to do with “role-playing”? RPG could logically mean any game where you play as a character, but then it’s a useless phrase. It makes most sense to include only games with major stories and character development. Baldur’s Gate? Absolutely. Not so much MM6.

RPGs (in the above sense), Final Fantasy VI. No other game has touched on such a diverse array of situations and personalities, with such an authentic and sincere demeanor. No game has studied any character as deeply as FFVI studied Terra and Celes, except perhaps FFVII and Cloud.

What would you do for a girl’s affection?
Go to University of Michigan rather than Notre Dame. Adopt and reject a religion. Sacrifice good grades. Drink excessive liquor. Run on meager sleep for weeks. I won’t go into things I haven’t done yet.

If you could have any real or imaginary creature as a pet, what would you choose?
Perhaps a mischievous demonic familiar, who would follow me about and provide comic relief and unwittingly deep insight.

V for Vendetta: Comic book or movie adaptation?
I thought the movie was pretentious, its “insights” cliched, and its overall argument childish. I probably should avoid the comic.

What would you do if you had something really nasty you wanted to get out of your mind?
I’ve found the more I push away undesired thoughts, the more the “impulse” behind those thoughts grows. Like trying to eliminate hunger by repressing thoughts of hunger. If something really nasty is stuck in my mind, it’s probably because I’m depriving myself of something that is pleasant and healthy or at least natural. Sometimes I try to “scrutinize the undesirable.” Other times I just let it be, and try to address whatever problem is responsible for that weird mental state.

Walk, oh, an extra 300 yards, give or take. Otherwise I will settle for a brownie.

And would you cut you dick off for a million dolloars? But by some magical way it would come back within 24 hours but during those 24 hours you had to go through all the pain and everything?
No. I’m fine with the pain, but not the nagging possibility that this “magic” is just my insanity. I have no desire to be the man with no penis.

Curtis, your questions call for more lengthy answers, so I’ll have to do those later.

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Before I forget, I’m bumping this, you still owe me those questions Xwing :suckah:

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Curtis, being busy at work has delayed me, but as promised, here are your answers.

That’s a hard question. I think the problem for me is how it is framed. The instant I settle on and grasp to one concrete dream, I have decided no longer to grow at the deepest level, but rather to savor the finite pleasures of attaining something material and definable. I would avoid settling for a dream.

Instead, I try to maintain what one poem calls a “love of joys unknown.” I let that be my guiding directive. Humans are fallible and limited, and what my reason and past experience tell me is the best choice is inevitably wrong, or at least partly wrong. As long as I am finding new joys in or beyond life, I can have faith that I am moving toward something that is beyond human reason. Maybe it is just my biology speaking, or maybe not, but either way, at least there is a chance of meaning in it.

I do have concrete goals. I want to succeed as a poet and playwright. I want to know love as deeply as it can be known. I want to succeed in the law. I know the tragedy of the indecisive man, who knows that nothing in life will perfectly satisfy him, and so seeks nothing. I will not fall into that. Instead, I view every day in life as a chance to facilitate greater possibilities for the next day. The more freedom I have – due to knowledge, skills, health, money and relationships – the more I can follow that “love of joys unknown” wherever it beckons. So while I reject settling on a dream, I have been working 10-14 hours every weekday at a law firm, writing hundreds of poems, and trying always to learn more about love.

That is a long answer, but I think it captures my real feelings.

Time Mage. It’s a mentally oriented class that doesn’t fall neatly into the offensive-elemental or defensive-life cliches. Time mages tinker directly with space-time, opening gates to other planes (Meteo, X-Zone), slowing and speeding time (Quick, Slow), traveling through time (Return), and so forth. Time magic is a kind of meta-magic, dealing with what goes on behind the elements and manipulating them indirectly, without descending into them.

That is an analogy for how I think.

What RPG character do you identify with the most, and why(I’d like a lengthy response for that last one :suckah:
Cloud. Last year, I responded to your thread on this topic:

Cloud is the only Final Fantasy character that never falls into a simple definition. Terra’s self-questioning ended in love of the children, Celes’s sorrow ended in trust, dark knight Cecil became a paladin, Squall escaped his brooding through romance. The source of conflict and interest in each of these characters is ephemeral. But Cloud never finds that solace. Aeris may have offered it, but she was something beyond human, and doomed from the start. Cloud is the only really tragic hero in Final Fantasy, the only one who, at journey’s end, has not reached his destination, and never will. More than any other character, he has had all the promises of life drop away from him:

Shut up!!! The cycle of nature and your stupid plan don’t mean a thing. Aeris is gone. Aeris will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry . . . or get angry . . . what about us . . . what are we supposed to do? What is this pain? My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!

His last name is “Strife.” Aeris, the only solution to that strife, is dead, and Cloud is left to keep striving. His inability to be lastingly content with anything in the world, longing for something that is not quite possible, or too late to be possible, is something I see in myself.

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Thanks for remembering. :slight_smile:

I do remember the thread about which character you identify with. I remember my reply was pretty long as well; but I appreciate reading yours again.

I do have concrete goals. I want to succeed as a poet and playwright. I want to know love as deeply as it can be known. I want to succeed in the law. I know the tragedy of the indecisive man, who knows that nothing in life will perfectly satisfy him, and so seeks nothing.

I really like this one, and can relate(in my past, not currently).

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Originally Posted by Wilfredo Martinez
More importantly, WHO IS NUMBER 6??

[witty retort]

Hmm, I think my reference was too obscure. I keep forgetting how OLD I am. :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s the answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Six_(The_Prisoner))

But now that you know, you can rewrite your Witty Retort! :slight_smile:

Btw, that Nun/Rabbi/Leprechaun joke was sheer GENIUS! :hyperven:

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I just wanted to give a belated “You’re the greatest,” for that link.

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What do (or did) your parents do for a living?

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Thank you for showing me the joy of The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Proceed.

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My dad is a tax lawyer. He has always told me how much he hates litigation, hates arguing with people, hates having months of hard work come down to the heat of a few moments. He hates the on-again off-again schedule of working with the court’s calendar.

I am exactly the opposite. I hate the dreariness of spending countless hours devising ways to avoid future controversy. I hate the idea of having the same 8:30-6:30 schedule year round. I want to win and risk losing, not to cleverly avoid fights. While some things “run in the family,” as relatives are keen to point out, others work out rather differently.

My mom was a teacher before I was born, but has been a housewife since then. I guess the net effect was that my lessons on “fending for myself” came later than average, but left time for more tranquil development.

Not a number at all, but a free man.