Hiyas everyone! I'm Kiereth, as I am usually known on the interwebs. I'm from the United Kingdom, I'm five foot nine, bit overweight, long messy hair, just your average socially awkward university student geek.
I've been here for two and a half years - I can remember it because it's roundabout the same time I got into League of Legends. I've learned so much about fiction from being here, and it's been a massive blast.
So, what do I like? I enjoy anime, manga, TCGs and video games mainly, but I'll occasionally stick the box on and change over to Top Gear or something (the UK has a channel called Dave which basically airs very little during the daytime but for re-runs of Top Gear - it's become a common subject of ridicule.) I've also recently got into comics thanks to the very lovely peeps at my local comic book shop - the Little Shop of Heroes - where I go every week to play Cardfight!! Vanguard and Yu-Gi-Oh! religiously. Vanguard on a Monday, Yugioh on a Wednesday. Look them up if you're in or around the Dunfermline area.
I also want to make specific mention that I adore hugs.
Tropes about meeeeeeee!
- Apologetic Attacker: Whenever I manage to pull off a massive One-Turn Kill combo in Yu-Gi-Oh!, I'll often find myself saying "Oh, my god, I'm so sorry about this ah, this is terrible, sorry I'm taking so long..." and so on.
- Berserk Button: Quite a few:
- Double Standard
- Tsundere
- The internet in our house, which actually cuts out if someone picks up or hangs up the landline phone.
- Catchphrase: A few
- Hiyas!
- How's you?
- Pleased with that, pleased with that.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Possibly due to my Asperger's Syndrome, I'll often make "hilarious" non-sequiturs, including but not limited to: beginning to tell a story I've already old five times, forgetting who's said what or who hates a certain thing, or being sidetracked during a group conversation by my own thoughts and then a minute later coming out with something entirely unrelated (such as, during a conversation about Islam, suddenly saying, "Y'know, my mum really hates Stephen Fry").
- Collector of the Strange: I collect Vanguard decks. For those interested, I currently have sitting around: Riot General Gyras; Mr Overlord; Pendragon-Galahad; Soulless Oracles; Stil Vampir; Raptors; Dungaree Unlimited; Ergodiel; "Reverse" Amon's Followers; Blauklugers; Dimensional Robos; Bad Emperor Maximum; and finally Blaster Ildona. That's thirteen... so far.
- Unfinished are Musketeers, Chromejailer Dragon, and Revenger Diarmuid.
- Cool Hat: My current favourite hat is a Creeper beanie with a Super Mario Bros Mario sprite pin badge pinned next to the left eye.
- Cuddle Bug
- Cuteness Proximity: I adore cats and dogs, and I speak to them in that ridiculous cooing voice all the time.
- The Ditz: I am very forgetful, and things sometimes don't connect in my head quickly enough.
- Deconstructed when it got me in massive trouble with a friend once. I hate myself still for doing that.
- Keet: I love being around people, and I love the excited back-and-forth of a discussion.I also have a habit of fanboying over things like meaningful, well-developed romance subplots in fiction, or anything Super Robot.
- The Gadfly: Yeah, I get a kick out of teasing people.
- Limited Wardrobe: Downplayed. I do wear more than one outfit... but they're all t-shirt and jeans. That's the only thing I'll wear. I call it "The Uniform". I'd wear it to family weddings if I could get away with it. I just don't feel like me when I'm not in The Uniform.
- Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: Averted. Last time I checked, I was 100% man.
- Never Bareheaded: Other than when I just put my hair up into a ponytail due to heat, I own a Creeper beanie (see above at Cool Hat), a Cthulhu beanie, a enormous black fedora, a Daddy Hat, a royal family crest baseball cap, a white Stetson, and a tweed flat cap, and I wear them all on a regular basis.
- Production Posse: Sort of. Whenever, in a video game, I can name characters, they'll invariably be named Graham Sterling (nicknamed Grey), Dan Wright, Lilli Strange, Rachel Fulham, Camilla Perkins, and/or Anne Smith.
- Pungeon Master: I will admit to my fair share of pundemonium from time to time.
- Rummage Sale Reject: When heading to my university's first Live Action Role Playing event, Steamdrunk 1, my character was essentially Del Boy with the life success of Charles Foster Kane, and as such, my character had no idea how to dress himself amongst the born-and-bred posh folk. So I ended up wearing my tweed flat cap, a red buttoned shirt, and white-and-turquoise checked waistcoat, a bowtie in the same check, a hideously flowery necktie I borrowed from my dad (that's right, double necktie combo!), a bottle green jacket, and jeans. It was like Christmas had drank itself drunk.
- The Teetotaler: Downplayed. I've drank before, but I just don't get why you'd choose to drink something over choosing cola. Also, I drive to-and-from university.
Tropes in fiction I enjoy
- Award-Bait Song: Any song that can make me well up a little has my seal of approval!
- Cheshire Cat Grin: I don't know why, but I just love it when characters in Shōnen shows just grin through fights. Like Luffy does.
- Lemony Narrator: As evidenced by my love of The Stanley Parable and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Metafiction: I enjoy picking out Trope Tropes and looking at interesting ways of Playing With Tropes.
- Mons: I'm a great fan of Yu Gi Oh, Pokémon, Digimon, and Shin Megami Tensei.
- Postmodernism: I sure as hell don't understand half of it, but it's all really weird and cool!
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: ORAORAORAORAORA!
- Rocket Punch: Ever since watching Shin Mazinger, I've loved this attack.
- Super Robot: BEHOLD THE POWER OF COURAGE!
- The Cape: I just love silly idealistic stories about people who beat the bad guy and save the city.
- The Power of Rock: I actually once played an RPG character whose entire skill set was magic spells that were all song lyrics taken literally. His strongest move was "Mountains come out of the sky", a lyric from Roundabout by Yes
- Tomboy: Alright, bit of a guilty pleasure there.
- Trading Card Game: I play Yu Gi Oh, Cardfight Vanguard, Magic The Gathering, and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and I have enjoyed the few games of the World Of Warcraft tcg and the Pokemon tcg I've played.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: It goes hand in hand with the Award-Bait Song, and I just can't help but grin through it.
Pet peeve tropes
- Combat Stilettos: Purely because they reinforce the idea of glamour over practicality, and because wearning high heels in a fight is a quick way to get yourself into hospital with broken ankles.
- Double Standard: All of them.
- Fanservice: It's just not necessary, and it remains a barrier to nerd culture being taken seriously by the mainstream.
- Girliness Upgrade: I just don't see why it's needed - or acceptable - for every Tomboy who undergoes Character Development to have "oh, and she becomes more like a girl SHOULD be" just tacked on the end.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: I can't stand it when characters who laze around become more stronger, smarter, faster, better at playing the piano, whatever over time than other characters who actively try and do something about stuff.
- Isometric Projection: I find it difficult, fiddly and ultimately pointless over the Top-Down View. It's tough to aim things. It doesn't make sense that, on a directional pad describing primarily left, right, up and down, that the primary directions of travel are the diagonals. It makes platforming incredibly frustrating. And half the time I'm not even sure if I'm facing to the enemy or past the enemy. Ick.
- Love at First Sight: Is this still going on? Haven't people realised yet that it's not love - it's infatuation? Love comes after getting to know them!
- Share the Male Pain: Come on, guys. It's not hurting you. Grow a spine.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In the past I've got involved in shows that have had awesome premises but utterly failed to deliver. Some examples are:
- Kore wa Zombie desu ka? had a really enticing Fantasy Kitchen Sink premise, starring a guy who's been brought back to life by a Cute Mute necromancer and then forced to pick up the slack of a Magical Girl who's lost her powers. Unfortunately, it chucks everything interesting down the bin and focuses on fanservice.
- Hyakka Ryouran had an awesome art style, with thick lines like the brush strokes of traditional Japanese art and a weird supernatural Samurai setting. Unfortunately, it chucks everything interesting down the bin and focuses on fanservice.
- Ichiban Ushiro No Daimaou had the great hook of the most virtuous dude in the world being told that his destiny is to be the demon king that will conquer the world in the name of evil. Unfortunately, it chucks everything interesting down the bin and focuses on {{fanservice}.
- Tsundere: If I hear "I'm not X because I LIKE you or anything", someone's getting Rocket Punched through a wall.
And, now, your thought for the day: Maybe the reason we never see romantic subplots is Shōnen shows is that the Idiot Hero would be a terrible father. Case in point: Goku and Aang.
