Ambermist’s Challenges

…. or would it be the ratonga behind the man? Hmmm….

If you are wondering what the hell I am talking about, it is this month’s challenge by Ambermist of Tastes Like Battlechicken. The idea is basically to give a peek about the person behind the blog. Sadly, I skipped last month’s challenge which was to tell a story involving a MMORPG of our choice. Unfortunately, I could not think of any interesting stories to tell. There were sure lots of epic or funny moments moments in my MMORPG history but nothing that led itself well to an interesting narrative. This month however is a  topic I can write something about that I hope might be interesting to somebody.

So, here are some facts about this guy who writes this little blog:

• I am a brazilian. Or if you want to get technical about it, half-brazilian, half-japanese. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about japanese culture. Or even eat japanese food. I know, it sounds strange but my mother is the most pragmatic woman I know. So I guess she didn’t see much point in teaching those things to me and my older brother. She is also second generation, with my grandparents from her side being the ones who were actually born and raised in Japan. The part about food though is my fault since I am terribly picky about food.
• My grandparents, from my mother side, never learned to speak portuguese. Yet somehow I was always able to get along pretty well with them. Sadly they passed away when I was still a little child so I never got the chance to learn japanese to actually talk to them. Ah, well, I will always have the best memories from them, despite the language barrier. 🙂
• I learned to speak in english in a course for it outside school at… 11 years old, if I recall correctly. My mother thought it would be one of those required skills to get a good job in the future (she was right). I didn’t abandon it without completing it though since I got really tired of all those silly stories they make you read in those kind of courses. Plus the years were starting to drag by. I learned enough to get by myself though so the rest of my english was honed through lots of reading of tabletop RPG books (which were pretty much never used), games and reading websites.   Go internet!
• I wasn’t confident in my english skill until I started to play MMORPGs. I can read and write without issues. But listening and speaking is still hard for me. How hard? Well, this is how people in voice chat sounds a lot of times for me. To be fair I am pretty sure I sound the same when speaking english.
• I started playing video-games back at the Atari days (whenever those were. It is been too long). Although I don’t think I really got into them until the Super NES and a little game called Final Fantasy VI. That was the point where I really started to get interested into all things gaming. Before that it was usually platformer games or action games (I forgot the actual term) which could be played by two players with my brother. On the PC it usually was strategy games or adventure games.
• My first real MMORPG was a little known title called Fairyland. As far as I know it is long gone by now.  I think it was originally produced taiwanese company whose name I don’t remember anymore nor who did the american version of it. Anyway, as the name implies it was a game where all the quests were based around fairy tales. It was interesting to see how they turned some fairy tales into quests. It also had an interesting pet system, where pets were like party members. Pets also had elements so having the right pet for  the  right battle could make things a lot easier. Oh, combat was also turn based in the same style as Final Fantasy VI.
• The name Rakuno was one I made up when I started playing Everquest 2. Originally my intention was to make my ratonga my “main” character. After much pondering about a name, I started to try thinking about things that would have to deal with stealing since ratongas have a natural tendency toward kleptomania. Eventually I thought about the word gatuno (a not very common word for thief, robber, etc. in portuguese. The most common word being “ladrão”).  Change a couple letters and voila! New name that sounds original enough.
• I chose a ratonga to serve as my person on this blog because they are the coolest race ever. If I had god like powers I would use it to put ratongas in every game in every MMORPG! Thinking well, maybe I just should use such powers to transform humans into ratongas. The world would be a much better place  that way.
• On a random note, it has been dang cold here lately. In a related random note, I never seem snow! Well, ok, I’ve seem it on TV and movies. But you know what I mean!