Get to know your Gurus.

[Inertial]

Well in the interest of faciliating a sense of community I had the idea to make a thread in which we blab about ourselves (something no self respecting forum posting is not good at) and gennerally get to know things we perhaps didn't about our fellow heroes, villains and Gurites.

Since im the one putting people on the spot i'll go first. I don't have much of a comic background at all, in fact I never own one till I was over twenty-five. I do however have a great love for the old serial heroes and ethics of the 30's and 40's. Watch Sky Captain and the World of Tomarrow sometime, i've always had this idea that that is what Inertial should be doing, flying around in the skies fighting evil robots and protecting a world of sepia tones.

A good former friend of mine who alas no longer plays pointed the game out to me, at first I was so so about it and after several heroes stumbled on to making Inertial shortly after issue one was released. The idea and my love for classicalism stuck and has kept me hooked, once capes were added I only grew more enamored with the look and idea of playing at running Inertial around saving the day.

I have three great loves, one being my wife, the other being my profession and the last being great stories in whatever format they come. The whole notion and conception of loss and heroism. Giving yourself for the greater good is a fascinating idea and one that ofter drifts my thoughts to what heroes would truely be like if they existed. You can often see inklings of my sentiments in the little bits of art I make of Inertial. In his world the bad guys are bad guys and both the good and bad are drawn in shades of yellow, grey and black.

[sheld0n]

Hah, good thread. I was thinking of making a similar one for a while now. :)

My first experience with internet forums was when I administrated the official Polish website about Unreal Tournament. They practically had to force me to register on those boards, but in the end I made some good friends there. In fact, when the site died out, there were only like three people visiting the boards including me, and the forums were still alive with our conversations. If I remember correctly, I was about 13-14 back then.

MMORPGs interested me ever since I saw an ad for Everquest, but I couldn't get myself to try it because of the monthly fees. When I moved to Canada though, I heard that City of Heroes, a game I was already curious about, was giving away beta testing invites to their forum members. I figured I'd be sneaky and use the opprotunity to try this whole MMORPG thing for free. In the end, I did recieve a beta invite about two years later and already have played many other MMORPGs by then. I do not consider this time to be wasted though, since in the meantime I joined this community, which consists of some of the coolest folks I've ever met.


As for my personality, I'm the generalist type.
I prefer to try a little bit of everything as opposed to specializing in a single topic. I find that people with whom you can talk about anything tend to be the most interesting and I aspire to be like that as well. I just think it's the best way to lead a life.
I'm also a pacifist and a hopeless optimist, and been called a hippie on more than one occastion. Having judged me by my looks, people tend to be surprised when they hear I don't do drugs, when the truth is I don't smoke or drink either.

I speak Polish, English and French, and I would like to learn Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin and maybe Sanskrit before I die.

I'm currently going to college, working part time and goofing around rest of the time.

[sheld0n]

Come on, it's someone else's time to post! I feel kinda silly now. :p

[Sebastian Kain]

Come on, it's someone else's time to post! I feel kinda silly now. :p

I'll post before I leave. :)

[Slipshadow]

Hello. My name is not Slipshadow, however I do play him on Virtue. The name I _really_ wanted was taken (it always seems to be), so I went with this. Slipshadow is the name of a suit of armor for a character I made long, long ago and I always loved the name so I went with it and chose powers I thought fit (illusion/kinetics).

Been playing CoH since... uh... well I played in the BETA (not on this account), then picked it up again a month or two after launch.

I work as a video game developer, in varying roles from project to project. I live in Maryland and am currently single, dating around but nothing steady. Other than CoH, I play Battlefield 2 (and Special Forces expansion) and Soul Calibur 3 (too much of this).

I read Beowulf far, far too often - mostly for literary study. I also read Albert Camus' The Stranger quite often, mostly to hold discussions on it with the students I help tutor. I don't have a favorite author, perse, but I do hate Robert Frost... and most poetry for that matter.

That'll do.

Originally on the official CoH boards, cross posted here.

Werd.

[MaligneFamily]

Ahh my turn.

Well to start things off, my first love of gaming were RPGs of the DOS era, specifically Might and Magic and the Ultima Series. I was 4 years-old when I picked up the first First-person 3D game, Ultima Underworld (Doom came out months later). These series went on to their respected areas of stardom with Heroes and UO as their stars, but I stayed back, being uninterested in Heroes and too poor for UO. My love of MMORPGs, and being too little and too poor to play them I would mearly sit and look at the guides pretending I could play them, and explore their terrains... *sniffles*

My comic book background is patchy, when I was younger my dad used to buy me tons due to availability in NYC (I remember going to a Superman Convention of sorts at age 5), but when I moved to Cleveland, the comic book supply only trickled at my local Borders. I did read the story guides when possible, and had always kept a strong affection for Psylocke, Havok, Iceman, and Archangel.

Well how did I end up in COH? Last Thanksgiving, after having read about COH and other NCSoft games because of Richard Garriot's project Tabula Rasa, I was looking for something to get for Christmas. The choices were given, and after going through them COH came first.

What am I like? Can't say really. I love RPing when I get the chance to and sometimes wish that I would find a perfect and moving story that I could be a part of. I also tend to reach out wanting to know everybody possible, unifying people if I have to. I consider my self not anything in particular, not a complete socializer, nor a complete PVPer, nor RPer, nor PLer. When teaming with people I'll be the product of what the team is. I prefer not to be confrontational and don't actively try to be a bastard, though I get in ruts at times due to personal life.

I am a dual citizen Italian, speaking Italian at the home. This is my last year of HS and will most likely be attending Case Western Reserve University next year. I am a Quaker (my dad's side of the family is) in all but belief, so pacifist yet spiritually agnostic. And am cynical most times in terms of politics, except around primaries time

And I like Joe's Mother.

[Sheba]

Who me?

Well, I live in Memphis, Tennessee. Norn and raised. I have yet to actually visit Graceland... and that's kind of sad.

I attend Austin Peay State University in Clarkesville AKA Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee where I'm a freshman theatre major. Right now, I'm in To Kill a Mockingbird and I'm getting ready to audition for the musical Blood Brothers when school lets back in.

On my spare time at college, I hang out with the local geeks. I go over to their room and just hang out and play their videogames and be what we like to call "awesome". They've also introdused me to Table top roleplaying which is something that I'm learning to grow into.

Also, I work in the costume shop, assisting with building costumes. Learning how to sew and all that good stuff. It's very relaxing working in the costume shop with those crazy ladies. Did I mention that I'm a guy? So that makes sewing for me even more interesting.

everynow and then, I'll make myself sitdown and draw a picture. But I'm really lazy when it comes to that sort of thing.

My first comic and only comic before the CoH ones was a Batgirl and Catwoman team up from Batman: The Animated Series. Other than that, my only experience with comics include whatever I find on the shelves at book stores and in the racks at grocery store check aisles.

I'm a big fan of female heroes if you didn't know that already. My favorite is Catwoman, naturally. I've tried to make a male hero to be played seriously, but I just can't. And I'm not going to cop-out by saying "Well, If I have to stare at an ass for hours on end, it might as well be a hot female ass." I play female characters because that's what I enjoy. That's all there is to it.

I imagine Taloned Owl existing in a world like Sin City. When I first made her, she was more pulp than anything. As time progressed, she became more Gotham City-ish.

I ended up playing City of Heroes after I watched X-Play on Tv and they said something about "City of Heroes being released in a year". I was intrigued by the game so I looked it up on the good 'ol world wide web and the rest is history.

Yeah... I think that's it...

[Solario]

Hi everybody!

Alright first things first. Hmm.. My first exposure to the existence of internet forums was originally in Lionhead's God-sim, Black and White in 2000. Shortly afterwards I learned that a game I had vigourously followed, a little indie company's superhero MMORPG, City of Heroes, in fact had a forum. I signed up in April 2002, but first became really active a couple of months before what we then use to call the purge (of all the old posts). I got managed to get into beta despite at the time being 16 (shh don't tell Cryptic). Coming for the game, staying for the community seems a common occurance in this particular community, which I have been a part of since the days of NeXus RPG.

My great love has always been comics, and thanks to CoH and you guys I became reintroduced with some quality comics, having stopped reading comics around Heroes Reborn and Clone Saga (What can I say? I was a prepubescent Marvel Zombie) due to idiotic peer pressure. The first comic I ever read was the danish translated Spider-man and the Cult of Love (which contained the full story arc, Web of Spider-man #40 to 43 I think), wherein Betty Brant after the tragic death of her husband is sucked into a Cult and Flash gets Spider-man to rescue her.
The first comic I read after my return was, unknown to me, the online version of Runaways #1, "at some point, we all think that our parents are the most evil people alive, but for these kids it's actually true. They find out that their parents are actually supervillains, they run away from home and hijinks ensue."
Mentioning all my favorite writers (mainly comic book one) would take a grave amount of time, so I'll keep it short: Alan Moore, Earlier Frank "The Tank" Miller, Mark Millar, Brian Vaughan, less mainstream Bendis stuff, Kurt Busiek, Robert Kirkman, Ed Brubaker and Warren Ellis. I usually like less realistic comic book artists such as, but not limited to, Sean Philips, Stuart Immonen, Ryan Ottley, Darwyn Cooke, Michael Lark, Tony Moore, Jock, Mike Mignola, David Mazzucchelli, John Cassaday and Cary Nord.
The Pulp Age is probably my favorite comic book era (of course closely followed by our current era and the early to mid-80's) with heroes such as Conan The Cimmierian, The Shadow, Tom Strong (Albeit a modern hero with a "false" pulp background, but pulp none the less), Tarzan, G-8, Zorro and Doc Savage.

I like most kinds of music, but I'm particularly fond of swing, punkrock and indie rock. I very much enjoy Film Noir, Sci-Fi and of course superhero movies, but my film tastes are fairly wide, as long as they're good. The three lastest films I've watched are The Believer, A History of Violence and Citizen Kane.
As with Sheld0n most of my knowledge is very JackofAllTrades'esque, but I particular have an interest in everything symbolism, philosophy, psychology, pseudo-science (though hard numbers tend to lose me) and a bit of everything.
My favorite painting is probably Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. My favorite "style" is surrealism, more specifically expressionism.

I have been everything from a deeply devoted protestantm, a strict nihilistic atheist to finally a somewhat lapsed buddhist. I have been called many things, a heartless yuppie, anti-american and an anarkistic beatnik, and while in specific place this might have been true, I don't (atleast at the moment) count myself quite this extreme.

[PawnOfFate]

I'm fate, real name justin. Been playing video games for as long as I can remember, been playing role playing games since I was 10. The logical step forward was MMOs.

I got introduced to CoH through a Miniatures game, oddly enough.... we play heroclix and back before coh was even in production, just an announcement, we followed it. I've been around from the beginning, starting as a mild lurker, turned pissed off, anti-everything forum goer.

As for my personal life, I work at a Credit Union, making debit and credit cards all day. I live with my girlfriend of 3 1/2 years and write comics. That's right, I actually write the things.

I hate the world, I hate people, I hate religions... to put it simple, I hate. The more you get to know me the more you realize how I don't choose to hate, the hate chooses me to focus.

To sum up: I'm Justin, I'm ****ed up and I play CoH.

[Charon]

My name's Craig (some people call me Max, mostly close friends - my middle name.) and I live in the land of Tea and bad teeth, which has no where near as much tea nor bad teeth as you've been lead to believe. England probably isn't as cool as some of you might think it is either - but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

I've been on the internet since about... Well since I was 10-11 so let me work it out.... Well, about 1999-2000ish. I started out on the MSN Gaming Zone playing a Star Wars game called 'Jedi Knight,' which eventually I got pretty good at, but only as I got good at it did I get bored of it, and decided to look for something else. In my time at the MSN Gaming Zone, I met SepTa, me and him had been in a couple of clans when I decided i didn't really want to carry on playing JK, so I left in search of better things.

Now this is where CoH comes in. A friend of mine, who sadly isn't a friend anymore, had directed me to this site and had originally told me it was a game you simply downloaded and could play for free. This, of course, I thought was complete bull****, so I checked it out and it looked cool. So, when I got bored of Jedi Knight, I looked it up again and joined the forums.

Um, started out with a hero called 'Shotgun,' he was crap, ;), so I sat down, brainstormed, and came up with what you know as Charon today, and this was about Febuary 2003. I then dragged Septa over here, and he made his hero Ice Claw.... That's right... You can blaim me for Septa. Little known fact there. ;)

So, I met Mr. D, we made the Bone Squad and had a hell of a time writing forum RPs and just hanging out.

So, enough of the history of me on the internet. I'm currently still in the equivilant of what you guys would call High School, studying Film (Yay!) English (Woot!) History (Pretty Good) and Politics (So boring I could bore my eyes out with a pencil.)

My ambitions are to become a writer of some sort. I actually really don't care what kind of writer but ideally I'd love to get into the film business, I don't really care how much film writers get stepped all over, because it's what I really want to do if I can get the breaks. And getting the breaks means getting good grades and then getting into a good university, so fingers crossed for me.

I'm agnostic, and a total apathetic, it has to be said. I'm also possibly the most lazy person you'll ever meet. I like to think I'm kinda funny, but the downfall from that is that I tend to think that the ONLY thing I am is 'Funny,' which can be bad for self esteem sometimes. ;)

I'm into all kinds of crap. My big passions are comics and films, though. Other than that I'm into video games and stuff, as you can see, mostly of the superhero genre when it comes to games though, because I'm so busy these days with other stuff like school and my girlfriend and films and comics ;), that I don't have time to actually fit video games in much, which would explain my absence from CoH for a while.

Talking of the girlfriend, her name's Rachel, we've been going out for six months as of yesterday (which is a bit scary at 16 but it's going well, lol,) and she's possibly the most awesome person I've ever met.

Um... That's about it. I've made some, what I'd call actual friends out of this experience such as Connor, Icelander, Got, Solario... So it's pretty much been worth it, even after being a part of this very community (The Paragoncity.com community, as it still is for me,) for almost three years now.

Just before I stop, might aswell talk about that here. Joined the actual Paragon City community in about August 2003 after mine and Septa's RP idea the Paragon Universe flopped, and I've been here ever since, in every incarnation these boards have been through. It's had it's ups and downs but this is the most awesome online community I've ever been a part of.

So yeah, that's me. My name's Craig, I'm your admin, and I suppose I like to use my imagination alot. :)