Sunshine Challenge: Prompt #2

[lebateleur]

What does your username mean?
"The Juggler," which is the first numbered card of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. This card is more commonly known in English as The Magician, and is associated with the alchemical figure of Hermes Trismegistus. Trismegistus is my preferred username but I'm LeBateleur everywhere someone else has snatched Trismegistus up first. (In fannish areas of the net, I was Trismegistus on ff.net...but got TOSed after they instituted their no NC-17 policy. Trismegistus is also one of my pseuds on AO3 and Discord).

What's your origin story? Is it fannish?
I've been writing and posting fanfic since the days of Usenet and Yahoo MLs, and back in the day I used to run a major website hosting fics featuring Alex Krycek from the X-Files. I was pretty active during Livejournal's heyday but life put most of my fannish activity on hiatus until a few years ago. I write tons of stuff but am more circumspect about posting it now than I once was. That said, I've toyed with the idea of reworking and reposting my earliest fics, which were written with plenty of enthusiasm but less attention to characterization than I might these days prefer.

What is your default icon about?
For about the past two decades, my default icon has been a picture of sweet woodruff. This is my favorite herb, for the shape of its foliage and flowers, its beautiful scent, its shady habitat, and its use in flavoring May Day wine. It has nothing to do with fandom, but ties to one of my other major interests--gardening.

Tell us anything else you want to share publicly that would help people know how to interact with you.
I love both meta and inarticulate squee, so I don't think there's a wrong way to interact with me. Anyone is welcome to read, subscribe, rec, or comment!

What does "fannish identity" mean to you?
"Fannish identity" is a useful term for the part of me that enjoys speculating about and (over)analyzing books, movies, manga, video games, or other media, getting gleefully enthusiastic about said media, and often doing the above with a group of other likeminded people, in person or online.

これで以上です。

Comments

[lebateleur]

Oh man, I still have my 3.5 manual to this day! That is really cool about your Pathfinder group; I've never played with a single group for so long, but hope my current groups develop into that. How do you find homebrew versus pregen campaigns? And how does GMing compare to playing?

The FMA manga is my first and deepest love in this series' universes. I unabashedly cried when I finished it (and put off reading the final chapter for years--no joke. Because once I read it, it would be Over). For me, the original FMA series was the first anime I'd watched that I felt really lived up to the source material. Others (e.g. Saiyuki) had great voice acting but shit production quality otherwise; FMA was good all around. Then they ran out of manga to adapt from and it went a bit off the rails.

And now I am off to view your squee (as soon as I finish looking at that Roy image, that is. Well played. :) )

[enemytosleep]

I've actually never played/used a pregen campaign! That said, I won a giveaway recently and they sent me Hoard of the Dragon Queen plus dice and things. I'm currently prepping/converting the first section to PF rules and plan to have that adventure run once the party reaches the capitol. I'll let you know later how it goes at the table. Based off the prep I've done so far, I wouldn't use them exclusively for games, but would consider getting more modules that fit into our homebrew.

As a DM the greatest joy I have is watching the players strategize and rolepay and have fun with what I've given them. I don't get to do "cool stuff" like my character does in the game I play, but setting up my players so they can do cool stuff is still fun.

Yeah the 2003 anime was tough because some aspects of it were so good. The extended Barry the Chopper bits were so chilling and unusually serious for animes that aired at that time. The manga is where my heart lies, though. Currently in my 400th re-read? Idk but it's been a lot over the years. xD

[lebateleur]

That's really cool--my Monday group is fully homebrew, and it's loads of fun. But even back in the day when we were doing pregen we had a tendency to go a bit off the rails. (We ended up as landlords in Phandelver, and I managed to persuade a cannon-fodder goblin into joining our party, and that's the start... And it let the DM do some "cool stuff" in addition to running the show.

And yes, I deeply, deeply love the manga. It's better than many books I've read and I've managed to convince several non-prose skeptics to try reading it. Unsurprisingly, they all loved it.

[enemytosleep]

DM cool stuff is not the same as player cool stuff, though both are much fun! It could just be that I have more experience as a player and am biased. I also am running this game for a group of 10 players (started as 6 and snowballed) so we have quite the crew already. We have a goblin bard who plays a flute, and every time he plays to inspire courage during battle I play this. xD I had this whole subplot planned with a gnome NPC that would most likely have joined the party, but as the numbers grew I was like there's no reason for them to have her around anymore so she's in a folder for later.

FMA forever ♥ My old online buddy was a PhD in essentially horror films and the talks we'd have about the plot. Good times. I miss her nerdy ass brain.