Greetings, Fellow Nerds!

[The Unchosen Hero]

[being a recovering English major, I'm a bit long-winded. If you're in a hurry, the tl;dr is this: Greetings! I'm glad to be here, and I look forward to kicking ass with my fellow rebel nerds. Would you like to know more? Read on.]

 

So.

 

Here we are, and I suppose the best place to begin is the beginning.

 

When I was a very young kid, I was a ridiculous, hyperactive nerd of a tomboy. If you didn't find me crashing through the bushes with a toy sword or pretending to be shooting up intergalactic space slugs or whatever, then you could find me reading or playing video games (mostly JRPGs and adventure-type titles) on my NES or watching cartoons. And if you didn't find me doing any of those things (and ideally all of them), it was probably time for a trip to the doctor, because something was wrong.

 

But over the years, something changed. Maybe it was that loss of gleeful innocence that comes with adolescence, or perhaps it was just that the family moved to a new city where I found it hard to make friends, much less to get along with folks, and the active portion of my life--the real life adventuring--gave way to longer and more intense periods of hiding out in the house, escaping into books and games.

 

And, as you might expect, I went from the wild and wiry nerd-child to The Fat Kid. And kids (and especially girls--I say this as one myself) can be brutal about such things. So deeper into my cocoon I went through junior high and high school, and things only got worse.

 

At college (now fifteen years ago), I decided to try to do something about it. By the time I graduated, I'd gone from a 210-pound, 5'3" nerd to a 140-pound, 5'3" nerd. I loved the fact that I was smaller, but the methods were all wrong. Mostly they involved eating fewer than 1000 calories a day and continuing not to be very active. I tried my hand at weightlifting through a class and liked it, but I never was able to keep it up after graduation ended my access to the campus gym and the expense of everyday life came crashing in. And in time I tired of the neverending starvation misery, and the weight came back. (It probably also didn't help that I picked up smoking during a year in Japan, and that I brought that habit back to the States with me.)

 

Finally I got something of a handle on things, and I got back down to 150 pounds...just in time to start graduate school, where I spent long hours holed up in a dark building putting in a lot of seat time, drinking a lot of coffee, and smoking two packs a day.

 

You can probably guess how that went.

 

Now--the present day. These days I'm 33, working as a freelance editor and writer and still reading and gaming it up in my free time. But I'm hovering around 195, I've lost any real strength I ever had, and I still smoke. That last part I'm working on actively, but I've had hell finding the means and the motivation to address the physical aspect outside of that.

 

I've tried stupid gimmicks, I've tried starving myself on very low calorie diets, I've tried just about any so-called magic bullet you can imagine. And, well, I'm sick to death of them.

 

But there is a positive turn to this story. Recently, a writer friend of mine encouraged me to check out the NF site, and while I was dubious at first (because, hey, aren't we nerds just cursed with bad bodies...isn't that just our lot in life?), I found myself inspired for the first time in a very long time.

 

Because, you see, even though all the years of protracted misery, I've still longed to be the brash and powerful swordsmanperson and hero of my favorite games and stories. True, we don't precisely go around swording things to death For Great Justice in our world, but that image has remained something of an unattainable ideal to me--a distilled representation of what I want from my physical self.

 

And so when I arrived at the NF site, I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that there are other people who take their goals and ideals from such things. All of that being said, I've decided to take the plunge after a minimal bit of lurking and get on board with the Rebellion here.

 

I chose the username "The Unchosen Hero" for several reasons. Mostly, it's a shout-out to--and an inversion of--the "chosen one" and "destined hero" trope that drives many of my favorite classic console RPGs. (In Dragon Warrior, for instance, which was my first JRPG, the hero's success is always predicated on descent from a legendary line.) When I was younger I used to think things like, "Man, I wish I were the chosen one. Then my life would be easy." And, truth be told, I still catch myself thinking that way.

 

But of course, there are no chosen ones--except when we choose ourselves.

 

So my username here is a reminder of myself of that fact. I am the Unchosen Hero. Nobody picked me. No gods smiled on my birth. No watery tarts handed me a legendary sword. No prophecies foretold my coming. But I am here, and legends or not, I will do this thing.

[shaar]

You chose YOURSELF to be a hero!  And that's the most important thing!

 

Welcome, fellow ex-hyperactive-tomboy-child!  I used to run around in the woods with a wooden sword and it was my favorite thing ever.  (I would probably still do it if I had some woods around.)

 

The community here is fantastic.  Everyone's so friendly, motivating, and positive - I'm certain you'll fit right in and achieve your goals!!

[The Unchosen Hero]

Thanks, shaarawy!

 

I'm glad to be here, and I'm looking forward to learning and growing in such good company! Best of luck to you on your own journey as well!

[Lalie Fanyarendil]

RECOVERING English major?? What is this heresy?? You cannot escape our clutches once you have learned the difference between an em dash and an en dash! We get to go about VERBALLY swording things For Great Justice! And also utilizing hyperbole. 

 

Sometimes I think the world might be a better place if we went back to dueling instead of suing over some things. But that is probably idealistic and mostly due to my liking of swords.

 

Welcome!

[The Unchosen Hero]

I do indeed agree with you about duels. Sadly, my thesis committee did not. When I asked them whether I should bring the hard leather, chain, and broadsword to my thesis defense, they all just blinked in confusion.

 

What's your favorite flavor of sword, BTW? I'm partial to the katana, but there's something about big ol' barbarian swords (a la the '82 Conan movie) and giant axes that tickle my fancy, too.

[Strickland5]

Swords?! Axes?! Wahooooo!

 

Greetings Unchosen One! Thanks for making me want to play Dragon Warrior ... love that game! Also the sequels which took place on the same planet/world which had things from the first game in it ... like bridges/area the hero put in ... ah good times

 

So welcome aboard ... the boards

[The Unchosen Hero]

Swords?! Axes?! Wahooooo!

 

Greetings Unchosen One! Thanks for making me want to play Dragon Warrior ... love that game! Also the sequels which took place on the same planet/world which had things from the first game in it ... like bridges/area the hero put in ... ah good times

 

So welcome aboard ... the boards

 

Dragon Warrior and its first couple of sequels remain some of my favorite games of all time. I think FFVI may be my absolute favorite, but it's hard to go wrong with Dragon Quest/Warrior, especially DQ3.

 

Right now I'm working my way through DQ8 on the Playstation 2 (bizarrely, for the first time, considering how old it is now). Also saw recently that the original Dragon Warrior now has a mobile phones release (as Dragon Quest) for both Android and iOS. Folks I know who've played it have said it's pretty good! It's based on the Super Famicom remake that never got a release here, so there are some new twists and turns even for an old hand.

[Lalie Fanyarendil]

What a boring and unimaginative thesis committee! Sigh. What's happened to the world?

 

Actually, I'm rather partial to long knives. I'm really short and I prefer a slightly curved, single-edged blade. But the distinctions between "long knife" and "short sword" get pretty fuzzy anyway.

 

But in the zombie apocalypse I will probably grab my shang guo hook swords. I know that I don't have the upper body strength yet to bash a skull in with anything except luck, so my survival technique will have to be tripping them and running away.

[The Unchosen Hero]

What a boring and unimaginative thesis committee! Sigh. What's happened to the world?

 

Actually, I'm rather partial to long knives. I'm really short and I prefer a slightly curved, single-edged blade. But the distinctions between "long knife" and "short sword" get pretty fuzzy anyway.

 

But in the zombie apocalypse I will probably grab my shang guo hook swords. I know that I don't have the upper body strength yet to bash a skull in with anything except luck, so my survival technique will have to be tripping them and running away.

 

I'm not familiar with shang guo hook swords. I will have to check into those! The Guan Dao, however, I'm quite aware of, and I would love to be able to wield that monstrous polearm someday.