Tropers / Talbot Farwell

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

— Hunter S. Thompson

Salutations, everyone. A bit about myself: a gadfly and long-time lurker, I have a passion for everything Heavy Mithril and After the End, mixed with my love for Cool Guns and stories involving warfare, political intrigue, assassinations, bank heists (Heat is one of my all-time favorite crime dramas), Cool Planes, car chases, hardboiled detectives, Tank Goodness, Cosmic Horror Stories, Femme Fatales donning Zettai Ryouki, and the Stylistic Suck of grindhouse cinema. If it's sleazy, involves Gas Mask Mooks with M16s, and a grizzled chain-smoking .38-wielding detective probing the modus operandi of a Humanoid Abomination Serial Killer, I'm into it. My favorite band is probably either Megadeth or Clutch, my favorite movie is The Matrix, my favorite book is either Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy or Blind Side by William Bayer, my favorite video game is Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and I love a good Conspiracy Theory.

Think something along the lines of Dale Gribble meets Sandor Clegane (and shades of Robert Baratheon) meets Domon Kasshu meets Venom Snake. Or even a Spear Counterpart to Zero Two. Or Geralt of Rivia but with guns.

Fun Facts

• Favorite jet fighter: Mine would definitely have to be the F-4 Phantom II. It might not have been the prettiest, say compared to a F-104 Starfighter or a F-14 Tomcat or an F-15 Eagle, but it looked powerful and was so versatile. It served as a fighter-bomber doing deep strikes over North Vietnam and Iraq, a carrier-based interceptor for the US Navy and the Royal Navy, a land-based interceptor for even more countries like Israel, South Korea, Japan, Greece and West Germany, and has even done Close Air Support (CAS) for the US Marine Corp. It can dogfight with the AIM-9 and the M61 Vulcan if needed, or engage with radar-guided BVRAAMs like the AIM-7 and the AIM-120. It certainly killed plenty of MiGs over Vietnam and earned its reputation as a all-around workhorse.

Tropes

Tropes that describe me:

• Awesome by Analysis: Probably my main "real life" power, with Charles Atlas Superpower a close second. I follow the old Latin motto, "mens sana in corpore sano", essentially to have a "sound mind in a sound body".
• Badass Baritone
• Badass Beard: Viking warriors had them. American Civil War-era generals had them. Special Forces operators have them. Since Asskicking Equals Authority and my idols are asskickers, I need to look the part.
• Badass Bookworm: I strive to live out the ideal of the Cultured Warrior.
• Beergasm
• Cigar Chomper: My favorites are Alec Bradley Sanctums, but I enjoy a good Flor de Las Antillas by My Father Cigars, and the Gurkha Heritage was awesome. I haven't had a Drew Estate Liga Privada No.9 in a while, but it was quite memorable.
• City People Eat Sushi: Averted, I love sushi and I'm as redneck as they come! I love big diesel trucks and off-roading, hunting and fishing, gun ownership, country music, rural living, traditional values... I don't think enjoying and embracing all of that precludes one from appreciating and having an affinity for all things Japan. I guess you could say I'm something of a hillbilly Otaku!
  • Or is that Aversion actually subverted? After all, I do consider myself pretty street smart when it comes to avoiding trouble in sketchy areas, keeping up with urban slang, getting along with folks of all different nationalities/ethnicities/religions, listening to the greatest artists hip-hop has to offer... I think it's a side-effect of commuting and working in the Greater Washington, D.C. Metro region's sprawl. The traffic around here might be a nightmare but you meet so many interesting people from all walks of life, which tickles my extroverted nature.
• Dark Is Not Evil / Good Is Not Soft
• Gun Nut: Proudly exercising my Second Amendment rights with a Smith and Wesson Model 360 .357 Magnum Airweight J-frame snubnose, a Gwinnett County GA Sheriff's Department trade-in Smith and Wesson 4506, an Italian police surplus Beretta 92S with aftermarket wood grips, a MD-compliant Frankenstein AR-15 “A2 clone" built on an Anderson lower and a 20" HBAR DSA flat top upper (with A2 handguards), a Remington 870 Tactical 12 gauge pump action shotgun, a Mosin Nagant M91/30, and a '60s vintage Universal M1 Carbine.
• Hell-Bent for Leather
• Metalhead: Oh yeah. Whether it's headbanging at a stoplight to '80s thrash metal, moshing at a death metal show, pumping iron at the gym to the most violent and brutal black metal, relaxing in the evening with some atmospheric doom metal, enjoying beers and good times with my lads listening to hair metal, flying down the freeway to New Wave of British Heavy Metal; metal is as much a lifestyle or an outlook on life for me, as it is my favorite genre of music. To me, metal embodies the Platonic ideal of raw power, the incorruptible energy of youth, and the dynamism that is necessary for life to function. It is an affirmation of strength, truth, and living one's life to the motherfucking fullest.
• Must Have Caffeine / Must Have Nicotine: I estimate that my blood is probably 50% caffeine, 30% nicotine (from smokeless tobacco, usually Copenhagen Straight Long Cut), 15% adrenaline, and 5% pure pure cussedness. Maintaining alertness over long shifts during the dead of night is a necessity in my line of work.
• Nightmare Fetishist: I love every kind of book, movie, TV show, or videogame that has to do with horror, from Edgar Allan Poe to the Cosmic Horror Stories of H. P. Lovecraft to Zombie Apocalypse works like the Resident Evil series and The Walking Dead.
• Papa Wolf: I'll do anything to protect my family and loved ones. The Notorious B.I.G. put it best:
  "...action, pack guns, ridiculous
  and I'm quick to bust, if my ends you touch,
  kids or girl you touch, in this world I clutch
  two auto-matoes, used to call me fatso, now you call me Castro..."
• Photographic Memory
• Rated M for Manly: What I strive for, at least. In a world gone soft, I want to be that shot of testosterone that inspires other men to be their manliest. Don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you! Now how about A Round of Drinks for the House?
• Scary Shiny Glasses
• Sophisticated as Hell
• Wicked Cultured: I regularly quote Plato and try to work Shakespearean allusions into any given conversation, I can explain various parts of an Italian Renaissance painting or a Gothic cathedral, I can even take time to savor the operas of Verdi but given my political stances and my pessimistic view of contemporary postmodern Trans-Atlantic socioeconomic and cultural trends, I usually get portrayed in online debates as some kind of Evil Reactionary out to corrupt the minds of impressionable young neoliberals. The truth is far more complicated than that, but more often than not it's lost on those who just want to shout about how "bigoted" that anyone who disagrees with the concept of globalism supposedly is, so I said "fuck it, Then Let Me Be Evil" and started hamming it up because I enjoy seeing people get their panties in a twist over someone refusing to apologize for having opposing views.
  • Subverted to some degree when I Stopped Caring so much about politics lately because it's too stressful to worry about a geopolitical and socioeconomic/sociocultural crisis bigger than any one person can hope to resolve. Trying to "fix" society at this late stage in the game is like trying to patch the 'Titanic' on-the-spot after the iceberg tore a huge gouge in the hull under the waterline. Nobody's really convincing anyone of anything, so there's no point in arguing politics unless you're doing it for fun, and it stopped being fun for me after about the 1,000,000th debate (or so) with the opposition on issues like immigration, firearms policy, and trade. Debates are futile in such a radically polarized society... you're either in an ideological echo chamber, or you're talking to a brick wall. You get burnt out with arguing about the same shit over and over again, we're humans, not hamsters on a wheel for cryin' out loud. Unfortunately, I don't think the outlook gets any rosier from here, based on some worrying trends I've noticed from an armchair sociologist's perspective. The postmodern globalized consumerist "Western Civilization's" days are numbered, and this whole amoral blight of a society is 'probably' just a house of cards waiting to fall as a result of the next big stock market crash/natural disaster/contested election/pandemic outbreak, with a Civil War and an Age of Barbarism lurking under the surface because class and ethnic tensions are nearing their breaking point. (Mainly thanks to corrupt corporate executives in the 24/7 cable news media stirring up tensions to keep people glued to their screens so they can profit off the boosted ratings they get during crises.) That's why we have to toughen up now and become Crazy-Prepared so we can protect those we love and survive to build a better world in the future when the dust settles. After all, the Balkans went through a version of this in the Nineties and while it was horrific, things are finally looking up for them.

Media

Favorite Anime and Manga:

• DARLING in the FRANXX: How can a Giant Mecha anime be so sexy and stylish, so full of asskicking, and still be so heartwarming? The adorable romantic dynamic between Hiro and Zero Two is like a gender flip between that of my wife and I; I'm the red oni to her blue oni.
• Death Note: Who could resist being given godlike powers to rid the world of dangerous criminals and those who would hurt or prey upon the innocent? I think there's a little bit of Light Yagami in all of us.
• Excel♡Saga: Always a good show to kick back with and relax while watching, when I need something with more zaniness and black comedy than my more serious fare.
• Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]: Such fluid animation, mindblowingly-awesome fight scenes, and you can't help but rally behind the duo of Rin Tohsaka and Shirou Emiya. I am hooked on the Fate series!
• Golgo 13: A consummate Professional Killer and gunslinger for hire with his custom M16? Capable of pulling off impossible shots with Improbable Aiming Skills, in a series oozing with sexy women and awesome cars? Count me enthralled.
• Hellsing: Creepy Catholicism and Religious Horror? Check! Gorn out the wazoo? Check! Huge freakin' handguns galore? Check! Fanservice from Ms. Boobs of Steel? Check! Using an anti-materiel rifle to kill vampires with? Check! Those Wacky Nazis? Check!
• JoJos Bizarre Adventure, if I had to pick a favorite part I'd have to say Part 1 is my favorite, but Yoshikage Kira from Part 4 is my favorite villain.
• Kill la Kill
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Thank you, Toonami for introducing me to Giant Mecha anime back in middle school, and to the most badass man in the whole Gundam universe: Domon Kasshu. (Also thank you for introducing me to the Dragon Ball universe, and to Zoids.)
  • Speaking of Zoids, I still want my own Blade Liger after all these years... or a Lightning Saix, or a Geno Saurer, or even the Death Saurer itself.)
• I also want to extend a hearty "thank you" to my high school anime club for introducing me to Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and Cowboy Bebop, and for being the first place I ever got to touch a boob. Good times with some of my fellow low-lives!
• Space☆Dandy
• The Big O:
  "CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD, YE NOT GULTY"

Favorite Movies:

• It's hard to say which series of movies starring Clint Eastwood I like more, the Dollars Trilogy or the Dirty Harry series. I also have a soft spot in my heart for The Outlaw Josey Wales and Kelly's Heroes.
• Black Hawk Down: Not only am I fan of the movie, I also greatly enjoyed the book it was based off of; I vaguely recall considering it for a book report for either a high school or a community college English class, but for whatever reason I recall I ended up writing it on the novel The French Connection which itself became a classic movie and another one of my favorites in its own right.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula
• Con Air
• Conan the Barbarian, the old-school one which introduced me to the Riddle of Steel. Also featured one of my favorite villains in cinema, the charismatic cult leader Thulsa Doom played by the imposing James Earl Jones.
  • Speaking of James Earl Jones, that reminds me: Coming to America has to be one of my top three Eighties comedies, along with 1941 and Caddyshack.
• Cliffhanger: My very first ever Stallone action flick and still my all-time favorite of his, although Cobra and Demolition Man both come close.
• Daybreakers
• Enemy at the Gates
• Event Horizon; or The Magic School Bus takes a ride straight to Hell. Where you're going, you won't need eyes to see.
• Evil Dead:
  "All right, you primitive screw-heads, listen up! See this? This... is my BOOMSTICK! It's a twelve-gauge, double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt-blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right... shop smart: shop S-Mart... Ya got that?!"
• Escape from New York: Started my love affair with John Carpenter films, which after watching this and Assault on Precinct 13, extended to his horror flicks like The Thing and the first two movies in the Halloween series.
  • Paul Verhoeven is another favorite Eighties director of mine, having favorites of mine like Robo Cop, Starship Troopers^note (Yes, I know Starship Troopers is meant by Verhoeven to be a satirical indictment of "fascism" and authoritarianism in general. Maybe I'm part of the misaimed fandom due to the appeal the Federation has for me... But you're not fooling me, Verhoeven! I know a more efficient and logically superior (and more aesthetically badass) form of government than universal suffrage democracy when I see one. It's your fault, you made it look cool!) and Total Recall to his credit.
    • Since I mentioned a second Arnie film in addition to Conan The Barbarian, I'd be remiss if I left out all of my other favorite Schwarzenegger action classics like Commando, The Predator, The Running Man, and the starring role that made him a legend, The Terminator series.
• Falling Down: I think everyone who's hit adulthood and entered the American workforce and has had a modicum of experience dealing with heartless corporate machinery can sympathize (albeit distantly) with Michael Douglas' villain protagonist, D-FENS.
• Heat: From the coffee shop scene laden with tension to the climactic gun battle (turn the volume up for this fight) with a cacophony of automatic rifle, pistol, and shotgun fire echoing off the buildings of downtown Los Angeles, it's gotta be one of my all-time favorite heist films and thrillers in general.
• Hellraiser:
  "We have such sights to show you!"
• Interstellar: the Crowning Moment of Awesome has to be the white-knuckle tension of the docking sequence after Dr. Mann sabotages the mission and causes the Endurance to careen wildly out of control during the movie's climax, if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. This one scene makes Hans Zimmer tied with Basil Poledouris^note See the Conan the Barbarian entry above in my book as the two greatest film soundtrack composers of all time.
• Basically any of the James Bond movies, but my top five would have to be (in no particular order) Goldfinger, Thunderball, Skyfall, From Russia with Love, and You Only Live Twice. Dr. No, Goldeneye and Casino Royale were all memorable introductions to various incarnations with their respective actors. License to Kill was pretty badass. I was introduced to James Bond through the Nintendo 64 game growing up, so he was one of my biggest heroes as a child. It had violence, sexy women, cool cars, megalomaniac villains, international espionage and intrigue; man, it had everything cool that had me hooked as a kid. Above all though, it did it with style and class.
  • Which is a big reason why I loved Kingsman: The Secret Service so much. Manners maketh the man, indeed.
• Mad Max, fitting for a fuel-injected suicide machine like myself. "I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!"
• Natural Born Killers: Prior to The '90s, who would've thought of combining an edgy story about Ax-Crazy publicity-driven celebrity bank robbers with such funky, offbeat post-postmodern cinematography? It's like the Easy Rider of my generation.
• No Country for Old Men: What's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss?
• Now You See Me
• Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen: I always daydreamed about how badass it would be if I were President, because I'd always carry some kind of firearm on me (probably a Smith and Wesson M&P 2.0 in .45 ACP) partly because I'd want to be a rugged modern-day Theodore Roosevelt and partly because Asskicking Equals Authority. Then they went and made these movies. Being President has never looked so fun before.
• Reservoir Dogs
• Taxi Driver: It's a sad commentary on the state of our society when I can't even quote a Martin Scorsese cinematic masterpiece, due to Political Correctness Gone Mad and the risks of offending the wrong person.
• The Bourne Series
• The Departed
• The Godfather (also goes for Part II, haven't seen Part III yet)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Matrix and its sequels; even though they only capture about 99% of what made the first movie so magical, I'm still a huge fan of the lore.
• The Transporter
• Thief: No wonder I loved the aesthetic of Drive and Hotline Miami (and the music of Kavinsky) so much.
• Scarface
• Speed: Yep, another Keanu Reeves flick. Between this, The Matrix, Point Break, and the John Wick series, he's gotta be one of my top five favorite actors out there.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: A masterpiece of Soviet cinema, a stark and brooding work that asks the viewer to look deep inside his or herself.
• Van Helsing

Favorite Live-Action TV Shows:

• 24: I'm a grown-ass man, all of 26 years old, and I still wanna be Jack Bauer when I grow up.
• [[Series/Breaking Bad}}''
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• House, M.D.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Detective Munch is my sprit animal. I still mourn the departure of Detective Stabler.
• NCIS
• Robot Wars and its American spin-off, BattleBots. My favorite episode is the one where the Killer Clown robot's rubber mask gets literally torched and the robot grinds to a halt as the mask burns to a crisp, while the crowd goes apeshit.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Westworld:
  "These violent delights have violent ends."
• The Wire: Welcome to Baltimore, duck motherfucker!

Favorite Literature:

• Blind Side, by William Bayer. Partly a BDSM-themed erotic thriller, partly a gritty detective story set in the Big Rotten Apple, partly a Sunshine Noir culminating in the oppressive heat and humidity of Key West, Florida about a shell-shocked photojournalist who lost the ability to capture images of the human form during the Vietnam War. He meets a mysterious blonde aspiring young Broadway actress with a hidden dark side who helps bring back his ability to photograph humans through Intimate Healing but gets him embroiled in a steamy conspiracy involving a shadowy elite clique of wealthy BDSM aficionados, Blackmail, and Hired Guns.
• "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet, a short story which served as my first experience with After the End literature all the way back in middle school and still one that chills me to this day. The author literally predicted the nature of nuclear warfare, and just a few years later, World War II broke out. Let that sink in.
• Cryptonomicon: No wonder Neal Stephenson is so renowned, the man seamlessly combines a gripping Adventurer Archaeologist narrative with a feel-good tale about WWII cryptography experts and their descendants on the trail of a hidden WWII-era cache of gold seized by the Imperial Japanese. I was hooked from the first page to the last.
• Really any good Cosmic Horror Story will do, but if I had to choose one, it'd probably be the Trope Codifier, Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, or the Ur-Example, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death".
  • I'd have to say my favorite H.P Lovecraft work would be At the Mountains of Madness, there's nothing quite like coming face-to-face with an unspeakably alien nightmare being sealed in an Antarctic research outpost that is apparently thousands of years old.
  • Two short stories by Charles Stross fit here, namely "A Colder War" and "Missile Gap". Believe me when I say, Jesus Christ, these stories are pants-shittingly scary. Good luck ever looking at termites the same way again. Or ever sleeping again.
• Dune: It's really something for a sci-fi novel based in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to grant me insight into the real-world inspiration for it; the complexities of leadership and maturing when faced with extreme adversity; the fundamental nature of the interaction between fields as diverse as linguistics, ecology, sociology, and psychology; overcoming one's fears; and grappling with the Butterfly of Doom, but by Paul Muad'Dib, author Frank Herbert has done it with his masterpiece.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: I might be on the opposite side of the political compass from Hunter S. Thompson, but his over-the-top style of Gonzo Journalism and his bombastic prose really resonated with me, taking me on a trip to the corrupt heart of post-WW2 American contemporary culture in a psychedelic hellride through the collective subconscious of a nation high on consumerist capitalism, sexual hedonism, and the hippie "flower child" revolution.
• Pretty much any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Childs; Jack is The Spock to Mack Bolan's Captain Kirk.
• Last Man At Arlington by Joseph DiMona. The year is 1973, and the ten year anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is upon us. A madman publishes a list in a major newspaper stating that six people are marked for death, as a kind of twisted commemoration of President Kennedy's killing. One of the six marked, an intrepid Justice Department official, is able to find ties between all of those marked for assassination and the Kennedy Administration, for which they all were low-level staffers. But why these six? As the killer starts to escalate the violence and those marked feel the killer's wrath, the pressure is on for our hero to uncover the deeper ties between the six, so he may hone in on the killer's identity and apprehend him before his schemes reach their explosive culmination.
• Red Storm Rising: So take a World War III clash of "rough n' ready" Warsaw Pact armored formations versus the latest in NATO anti-tank missile teams, make sure to include copious scenes of MBTs and IFVs clashing in West Germany, add in a Soviet naval infantry occupation of Reykjavik, Iceland; prominently feature the ferocious sea battle between NATO and Warsaw Pact fleets as the US tries to resupply NATO and the Soviets try to sink the freighters with a Macross Missile Massacre to force a NATO surrender aaaaaaaaand treat us to a USAF ace female F-15 pilot who gets to shoot down a Soviet maritime reconnaissance satellite so the US Navy and the Marine Corps can sneak into position to retake Iceland? Four Lines, All Waiting full of Cool Versus Awesome.

  • Really, anything Tom Clancy wrote was great, but The Hunt for Red October and The Bear and the Dragon are two of my all-time faves that round out my Tom Clancy "top three". It should be obvious why he's my favorite author. He can do motivating characters (Without Remorse), tactical wizardry (Rainbow Six), and political intrigue (The Cardinal of the Kremlin) too.

• Roadside Picnic
• The Day of the Jackal by espionage thriller legend Fredrick Forsythe. If you haven't read any of the other books I've listed here yet, read this one first.
• The Road: Holy shit. If you have kids, make sure to hug them often and let them know you love them as much as you can. I heard it was an incredibly dark, minimalist work but I didn't expect such High Octane Nightmare Fuel upon my first reading of it. I mean, I did first read it as a tender young sophomore in high school, so maybe since then I've grown a thicker skin and I'm not bothered by the bleakness or the cannibalism as much. But now that I'm a parent, the scariness has started to seep back into this masterfully haunting novel by Cormac McCarthy.
• The Stars My Destination: Basically The Count of Monte Cristo but Recycled In Space, features a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against a Corrupt Corporate Executive and has always served as an inspirational "Dare to Be Badass" story for me.
• The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card: So you've got a sci-fi novel that describes a Dark Ages-level civilization on a backwater Lost Colony which is stuck in a Medieval Stasis. This was because of a galaxy-wide psychic energy field meant to cancel out all pain, instantly heal any injury or disease, and instantly dispels negative emotions like grief or anger, including blotting out painful memories like the death of a loved one. This energy field - maintained by this omniscient god-like psychic guardian breed of superhumans who were humanity’s “angels" - was turned off, by a rebellious ESPer (the founder of the colony, a rebellious ace pilot who was Reassigned to Antarctica in the form of being named captain of a Sleeper Ship) who wanted humanity to break its millennia-long stasis and regrow our emotional depth; because the inability to feel pain or suffer any kind of injury had made humans blissful but dumb and uncreative, impairing our capacity to grow as a species. It discussed the implications of the "gods" enabling us to feel pain/suffer injury and whether or not it was unnecessarily cruel and exploitative, versus being harsh-yet-necessary so we could truly experience joy by knowing what pain was in comparison. I remember a scene in the novel where a villager was shocked to find she could bleed and was scared that she was gonna die from a minor scrape on her elbow... between the main story, and the related short stories about cryogenic preservation, it really stuck with me and left a lasting impact on me over the years.

Favorite Video Games:

• Area 51 and its counter-terrorism themed spin-off, Maximum Force.
• Battlefield, specifically Battlefield 1942 and 2 on PC, 3 on the Xbox 360, 4 on the Playstation 3, and the spinoffs Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2 for the Xbox 360 as well as Battlefield Hardline on Xbox One. I have the latest iteration of the main series, Battlefield 1, but haven't spent any considerable time playing it yet. I even had the (comparatively) crappy Battlefield 2 port for the Playstation 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam helped get me through a tough time in my life. I love the little touches of realism they feature, like being able to select semiautomatic or fully automatic fire, because slowing down to take a few well-aimed shots (versus full auto "spray and pray") can mean all the difference in winning a long-range firefight.
• Call Of Duty: Geez, it's hard to pick a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but for me it was sneaking through the ruins of Chernobyl in Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare in a ghillie suit, having to remain motionless in the tall grass while mooks patrolled just feet away from you and any sudden movement meant shit hitting the fan. Few other games (or even any film, TV show, or book) has created as much dramatic tension as that one scene in that mission.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops II: I loved the Darker and Edgier atmosphere that the game had, between the visceral fighting during the Vietnam theater of operations or the behind-the-scenes conflicts fought as a part of the Cold War, and the 20 Minutes into the Future techno-thriller storyline in II, this series kicked so much ass.
• Civilization, specifically Civ III through VI. I just love 4X games in general, see also Stellaris.
  • My favorite hardcore Real-Time Strategy series would probably have to be Wargame: European Escalation, along with sequels Wargame: AirLand Battle and Wargame: Red Dragon, although I actually preferred World in Conflict which has a slightly more "arcadey" feel because it's easier to pick up and play casually ^note  (Wargame has you carefully managing the ammo and fuel carried by each unit down to each gallon of JP1 or diesel and each shell for your MBT's main gun; don't let your expensive M1 Abrams platoon run out of fuel and get stranded while a horde of angry T-72s are encircling and swarming you! You'll learn the hard way to keep a few logistics units handy for resupply at all times.) and its more compelling narrative/characterization/setting.
• Fate/Grand Order: This game has sucked me into the glorious maelstrom that is the Nasuverse. It's easy to play, but difficult to master. I've fallen in love with the many compelling characters, the shocking plot twists, the highly-addictive gameplay, the marvelous dialogue, the breathtakingly gorgeous art and visual effects, the incredibly fluid animation, the unparalleled soundtrack, and the storyline which never fails to have me on the edge of my seat! It's by far the BEST damn mobile game I've ever played, hands-down. I'm always cheering for hardworking and big-hearted protagonist Ritsuka Fujimaru, his steadfast kouhai Mash Kyrielight, and the whole Chaldea Security Organization. I mourned for the deaths of Olga-Marie and Dr. Roman, I laughed at the antics of Okita Souji and Nobunaga, I can't help but smile when I see hardass stoics like EMIYA and Jeanne Alter warming up to our heroes, and the villains (Goetia, the Crypters) are such effective heels that you just love to hate. To borrow wresling terminology, I even mark out when I see references to Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero in the form of Servants like Artoria Pendragon, Cu Chulainn, Kiritsugu Emiya, Irisviel von Einzbern, and Waver Velvet. Kinoko Nasu is a master storyteller, and I can't wait to see where Chaldea's journeys will take Ritsuka and Mashu next in their quest to defend Proper Human History from the imminent danger of total annihilation. The story is getting gritty and dark, but I'm confident that humanity's last battle-hardened Master and his lovable Shielder will somehow make it through.
• Forza Motorsport and Video Game/Gran Turismo
• Grand Theft Auto, with my all-time favorite being Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. After I beat the game's main story I'd just fly around and pretend I was flying air-to-ground strike missions with a Rockwell B-1B rather than an ersatz Gulfstream business jet. I let my imagination run wild with that game, which shows you how much I loved it, because I'd done nearly all you can do. Plus I liked how CJ's epic story mirrored that of Homer's Odyssey and the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
• Mafia II: Maybe I'm just drawn towards anything with a Villain Protagonist, maybe I just love gritty crime dramas, maybe I'm just a huge fan of The '50s, and maybe I'm a sucker for anything with Chuck Berry in the soundtrack. Go figure!
• Metal Gear Solid: Probably my favorite videogame series of all-time from both gameplay AND a story perspective, the combination of white-knuckle tension and drama from the stealth action and the deep thought-provoking philosophical questions it raises combine to make videogames truly worthy of being deemed a high art; on par with music, paintings, sculpture, dance, theater, prose, or poetry.
  • The first two games, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 (released back in the 2D era) have you questioning the nature of blind loyalty and looking at the human impact of the global fuel crisis respectively.
  • The first game of the 3D era, Metal Gear Solid for the PS1, delves into the ethical ramifications of the US Government secretly developing an army of genetically-modified Super Soldiers and the psychology behind Cloning Blues, along with the threat to human existence posed by an undetectable extremely mobile nuclear launch platform.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 ramps up the Mind Screw even further by exploring topics like the Dark and Troubled Past of child soldiers, PTSD, the use of a Virtual Training Simulation along with a fake romantic interest and False Flag Operation attacks to mold a traumatized young man into the "perfect soldier", the notion that an Omniscient Council of Vagueness (the remnant of a hundred year-old plot) consisting of Artificial Intelligences exists to subtly manipulate censorship and the flow of information in the Internet Era, and the use of digital censorship (and spurring on America's involvement in The War On Terror) as a tool by these nefarious A.I.s to allegedly shape the course of humanity's future and lead mankind to a new golden age of world peace.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3, serves as a prequel to the entire series set during the height of the Cold War, and introduces us to the driving characters behind the ideological clash which sets up the rest of the series. On a deep-cover covert CIA operation in the Soviet Union, you're initially tasked with recovering a scientist defector who's being hunted mercilessly by a Renegade Russian colonel in charge of the GRU Spetsnaz, but things quickly go awry when your mentor ambushes you and launches an American handheld nuclear recoilless rifle at a Soviet military research facility, bringing the world to the brink of World War Three and causing you to be tasked with terminating her. Needless to say, this is our hero's Cynicism Catalyst and even though he rescues the defector, defeats the Five Bad Band, charms his way into a one-night stand with a sexy NSA operative who's embedded as a mole in the KGB, and manages to shut down the mad colonel's Supervillain Lair before he can launch a nuke with his rocket powered Drill Tank, he can't shake the feeling that he's being used by The Conspiracy and the seeds of his ultimate rebellion^note (possibly emulating Lucifer Morningstar's fall from heaven in Milton's Paradise Lost) are sewn here.
• Perfect Dark: Take everything that made GoldenEye legendary and turn it Up to Eleven with a dystopian Cyberpunk setting, futuristic weapons, and a gritty Government Conspiracy using the NSA to conceal a plot by a (War God-worshipping) race of Reptilians hell-bent on reactivating a Lost Superweapon left behind on the floor of the Pacific Ocean by a race of Precursors, which will cause an Earth-Shattering Kaboom when it actually reactivates. Now you're cast as an Action Girl in a Spy Catsuit who's tasked with bringing down the Government Conspiracy and defending the good guys' benevolent conspiracy, which is firstly to prevent said explosion and secondly to initiate a peaceful first contact between mankind and The Greys, one of which becomes your strongest ally in the secret war against the pro-Reptillian faction within the NSA and their partners-in-crime over at Evil, Inc.. All this, set to a synth-heavy soundtrack that alternates between ominous BGM to ratchet up the tension and adrenaline-soaked high tempo parts that play when you have to go hot. If this don't sound like the best game ever released on the Nintendo 64, Get Out!.
• Police 911 and its sequel, Police 911 2, I always got a good aerobic workout from ducking and dodging behind cover in 2. I also always chose the Detective with the 5-shot revolver to challenge myself with a more limited ammo capacity in a game already notorious for being Nintendo Hard. Plus revolvers are just cooler, and I think those long balmy summer evenings playing this in the neon-lit arcades on the Ocean City, MD boardwalk might've subconsciously influenced me when I bought my Smith and Wesson snubnose J-frame.
• Silent Scope: As a teenager, every summer it was my mission to top the high score chart playing Silent Scope 2 at the Funcade Casino on the Ocean City, MD boardwalk at 9th Street. Some years I went down to the bigger arcades down by the Inlet and played the Sniper Duel "versus mode" (where they had two machines linked) against my dad, my younger brother, and any onlookers who wanted to challenge me. It was the coolest fucking thing ever.
• Soul Calibur: Cool Versus Awesome: the Video Game. So you've got Gratuitous Ninja, fighting undead pirates, fighting heavily armored European knights, fighting wandering Rōnin, fighting foppish fencing vampires, fighting any number of sexy babes in Stripperiffic outfits... and they're all fighting to gain supremacy over an accursed sword that is said to grant godlike power to the wielder. Kudzu Plot and Loads And Loads of Characters makes for a fun time to be had playing this series, with far more replay value (in my opinion) than other run-of-the-mill arcade fighters.
• Splinter Cell
• Time Crisis: ...wait... wait... wait... ACTION! When the pedal drops, the bullshit stops.
• The Witcher: Who doesn't love a saga of drinking, whoring, going on adventures, fighting brigands, casting spells, and slaying monsters for profit as the grizzled Anti-Hero Geralt of Rivia? In a lovingly crafted and deeply intricate Constructed World? With a powerfully motivating backstory and Myth Arc? If you don't rate The Witcher as one of (if not the) best RPG series of all time, you may need to get your head checked.
  • I actually roleplay Geralt in other RPGs as well, including perennial favorites of mine like Fallout: New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and even Mass Effect 2.
• True Crime: New York City: Aside from the captivating hip-hop noir story and the well-developed characterization I just loved how huge the game's world was, how it let you vary your play style between "good cop" and "bad cop", and how there was always some kind of street crime going on for you to step in and solve. Plus there was the way it perfectly captured the gloomy atmosphere of Big Applesauce in the rain, and the kickass soundtrack of New York City-based rock, metal, and rap artists.
  • The John Woo-inspired Spiritual Successor to this game, Sleeping Dogs, was just as awesome. I liked how it set you up as an undercover Hong Kong cop (actually an Asian-American detective on loan from the San Francisco Police Department) who enters the criminal underworld of the Triads to uncover a criminal conspiracy which goes all the way to the top of Hong Kong society.
• War Thunder: it's a WWII (and early Cold War) armored combat and aerial combat simulator, and one of the few F2P MMOs of any kind that I've ever developed a taste for. The soundtrack gets boring after the bajillionth time Level Grinding, so I usually mute the in-game BGM to play stuff like Migos, Gucci Mane, Drake, Lil Wayne, Fat Joe, Chief Keef, Waka Flocka Flame, and A$AP Ferg. Lyrical Dissonance is Averted because all of the rap I listen to while gaming is super violent and so were WWII battles. Nothing beats listening to Gucci Mane as he raps about being the Pablo Escobar of Atlanta's infamous "Zone 6 trap" and having his rivals killed on his orders, all while your Panzer IV C savagely knocks out eleven enemy tanks in a row (without dying) in a snowy Central European forested hilly region, and you become the #1 player both on your team and of the whole match.

Favorite Pro Wrestlers:

• Ric Flair, the Nature Boy! WOOOOO! Everything he does is just so over-the-top and outrageous, you can't help but break out into a smile over his antics.
• "Macho Man" Randy Savage, the most bombastic of all the larger-than-life personalities during the WWF's Golden Era, the man could literally not cut a boring promo. My favorite promo of his would have to be his March 21st, 1987 promo for the Intercontinental Heavyweight title bout against Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat at WrestleMania 3. That match itself was legendary, but I would have to say one of the coolest things ever was when Macho Man and The Hulkster tag-teamed (with the help of Miss Elizabeth) against André the Giant and Ted "the Million Dollar Man" DiBiase at SummerSlam '88.

Favorite Bands and Musical Artists:

• Airbourne, much like another perennial favorite of mine, AC/DC, it's hard-drinking, hard-partying Aussie pub rock good for flying down the interstate at 80 mph, shagging your girl in the hottest and steamiest way possible, or knocking back cold lagers with the lads on a Saturday evening.
• Megadeth, the band that got me into thrash metal, my overall favorite subgenre of metal. I saw them live at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD on their Dystopia tour along with Meshuggah, Tesseract, and Lilake. Nothing beats sneaking ice-cold Yuenglings in your empty Mickey D's soda cups in the line outside the show with your True Companions.
• Bathory, probably my favorite band at the moment. Lately my tastes have grown from "pure" thrash into into speed metal, blackened thrash, blackened speed and outright black metal. A lot of the more obscure bands I've become a big fan of don't even have TV Tropes pages made yet, like Speedwolf, Midnight, and Ketzer. (I need to fix that.)
• Burzum
• Immortal:
  "...MIGHTY RAVENDAAAARRRRRRRRK!"
• Mayhem: Have I mentioned that I like Black Metal today?
• Satyricon (I need to make a page for them! Come to think of it, I need to make a page for progressive stoner metal gods, Earth.)
• Kyuss
• Sleep: one word, just one word: Dragonaut.
• Electric Wizard: Listen through a good set of headphones. LSD is completely optional, these guys will take you on an auditory trip just through the power of their nigh-Satanic distortion and droning fuzz alone. The heaviest doom/sludge metal known to man, some think they are not mere musicians, but instead they are agents of Nyarlhotep.
• Metallica: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the most famous member of the Big Four, alongside my perennial other faves like Anthrax, Slayer, and the aforementioned Megadeth. I actually got to see them live from the nosebleed seats at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, MD, home of the Baltimore Ravens (my favorite NFL team). They played so loud I could feel the whole stadium vibrate, it was like being near a Saturn V rocket taking off. (Opening for them were Avenged Sevenfold and Volbeat, both of which played pretty awesome sets.)
• Venom
  • Toxic Holocaust is what you get when you take a band like Venom (or early Slayer) and turn the savagery of their shredding Up To Eleven, it's blackened thrash metal on a cocktail of amphetamines and anabolic steroids injected into a cyborg arm covered in spikes that will punch you with the force of a 50 MT thermonuclear warhead, rip your face off, And Show It to You.
• WASP: The coolest thing my dad ever gave me was his cassette tape collection... which included The Last Command and Double Live Assassins. At the time, way cooler even than any dust-covered porno magazine stash or rusty bolt-action .22 rimfire rifle, this glorification of Sex, Drugs, Rock n' fuckin' Roll and the Badass Biker lifestyle has always underscored my tastes in media.
• Sepultura
• Bolt Thrower
• Pig Destroyer: I saw these guys live along with Misery Index, Prong, and Cripple Bastards at Maryland Deathfest XVI. It was probably the loudest of all of the concerts I've ever gone to, when I left everything sounded muted, I'm pretty sure I'd slightly fucked up my hearing at least temporarily afterwards; even almost a week later, my ears are still sore. Then again, I was sore all over from moshing and slamming into other people in the pit. MDF XVI went fuckin' hard!
• Sabaton: These guys both play off my military history nerd side, and they make good testosterone-laden metal for lifting weights to. Is there anything more you could ask for from a heavy metal band?
• Korpiklaani: Ah, Finland! Korpiklaani hails from the wonderful country that gave us the sauna, many wonderful brands of vodka, My Summer Car, and Simo Hayha.
• Judas Priest: If you've never listened to their criminally underrated album, Sin After Sin, go do that now.
  • How could I not also mention the most famous British metal band of all, Iron Maiden?
• Black Sabbath, I even got to see them live on their farewell tour when they played in Bristow, VA. After all these years, bassist Geezer Butler still has it. My all-time favorite album of theirs would have to be Master of Reality, although Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is their Magnum Opus as far as musical talent goes, flexibly incorporating blues and jazz fusion elements into their monumental genre-defining doom metal brew. Ozzy kills it with his vocals on "A National Acrobat".
  • They played with Rival Sons opening for them, who're almost as badass in their own right, they're kinda like a healthy blend of Led Zeppelin and The Black Keys with the aggression turned up a notch.
• Ice Cube: Out of all the rappers to have stake a claim on the West Coast, Ice Cube would have to be my favorite for his "pyroclastic flow" when it comes to wordplay, his delivery which hits like the recoil of a 12-gauge shotgun, and his ability to tell the listener a story when he raps. Some of Snoop Dogg's early works (back when he was Snoop Doggy Dogg, on the album Doggystyle) are my favorites for the same reason. Some people say good rap is poetry, but to me, great rap is actually prose set to a beat.
  • The Notorious B.I.G. was an East Coast master of storytelling in rap, as was the Wu-Tang Clan and a criminally underrated artist, the late Big Pun.
• Waylon Jennings, especially when he could get together with Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash.
• Hank Williams Jr.
• I like a little prog rock, mainly Rush, Coheed and Cambria, The Mars Volta, and some Queensrÿche.
• Death Grips: It's not just the witheringly savage punk rock drum beats laid down by Zack Hill, or the Industrial synths and production by Flatlander; above all I love how raw and brutal MC Ride's verses can be. The man is practically writing a biography of 21st Century America personified; touching on everything from Charles Manson's esoteric worldview and the works of Aleister Crowley, to the underground drug dealing scene and bad LSD trips, to cyberpunk-inspired verses about hackers and cyberwarfare, to blood-curdling street fights between vagrants and drifters (and possibly serial killers and/or professional assassins carrying out their bone chilling deeds).
  "You're fit ta learn tha proper meaning of a beatdown, madness, chaos in the brain
  let my blood flow, make my blood flow through you mane
  you got no business, questioning a thang!"
  • Similarly, I've been getting into a little Horrorcore lately, specifically GHOSTEMANE and $UICIDEBOY$.
  • Dr. Dre and Ice Cube literally murdered it on their collaboration track, "Natural Born Killaz".
    • Snoop Dogg went there before any of them with "Murder Was The Case", where he describes being shot dead in an early '90s Compton gangland shooting, as he's being Dragged Off to Hell, he has a chance to make a Deal with the Devil... the deal turns out to have Gone Horribly Right.
• Powerwolf: Creepy Catholicism with militant werewolves and Heavy Mithril? Oh yes. DEUS VULT!
• Manowar: For when I need to let my inner barbarian out and go raid the local village for comestibles-er, I mean, pick up snacks and energy drinks at a 24/7 Sheetz or WaWa gas station/convenience store.
  • Amon Amarth is this taken Up To Eleven in the form of Viking-themed melodic death metal. That is EXACTLY as awesome as it sounds.
• Lady Gaga: Yes, there is at least one pop artist who I can say is my all-time favorite in that genre (sorry Taylor) and that's the Mama Monster herself, Lady Gaga. I feel like she puts so much more effort and pours more of herself into her art than other artists in that largely over-commercialized and watered-down genre typically do, she's a shot of 80-proof rye whiskey in comparison. My favorite song of hers, "The Edge of Glory" has accompanied a few top-speed blasts on local interstate highways (inspired by the legend of Japanese tuner, Smokey Nagata) in the dead of night; while my other favorite song by her, "Applause", really speaks to my extroverted nature as an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs test. I love being able to work a crowd, as Eminem once said, "Music is like magic, there's a certain feelin' you get, when you real and you spit, and people are feelin' your shit..." I love having people cheer for me, and being able to "wow" an audience even if it's just an audience of one. Lady Gaga just exudes that by the truckload and I love her for it. An honorable mention would be her duet with R. Kelly, "Do What U Want".

Favorite Comics/Graphic Novels:

• Judge Dredd
• One Hundred Bullets looks like your run-of-the-mill Roaring Rampage of Revenge comic at first, and there's nothing wrong with that, right? It gets better though: there's a Bigger Bad around every corner and ancient conspiracies abound in this tale of power, corruption, and the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that perpetually seems to surface amongst the wealthy bluebloods who run everything behind the scenes as the The Illuminati.
• Heavy Metal: A.K.A the one you hid from your parents as a teenager because of all the awesome sex and edgy violence in it, but gained a new appreciation for as an adult when you take in all of the gorgeously eye-popping visuals, the intricate plots, and compelling characterization at work in this avant-garde collection of the greatest talents to ever grace the pages of a comic book.

Favorite Visual Novels:

• Doki Doki Literature Club!

Favorite Webcomics:

• Drive: It's got the perfect mix of comedy and dramatic tension; it'll always keep you chuckling at Nosh's antics and wondering at the same time, "how is the crew of the Machito gonna get out of this one alive?"
• Girl Genius: How can you not love Agatha Heterodyne? She's got Curves in All the Right Places, she knows her way around a Giant Mecha or a death ray, and she's a badass mad genius redhead who wants to root out The Corruption plaguing late 19th Century Steampunk Europe.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: I came for the story of post-apocalyptic mutant horrors lurking within a civilization-turned-ghost town, I stayed for the breathtakingly beautiful artwork and the empathy I've grown for the characters.

Favorite Western Animation:

• Invader Zim
• Hey Arnold!
• King of the Hill

Media I need to read/watch/play:

• Book of the New Sun
• The Blacklist
• Street Trash: holy shit, how have I not seen this cinematic masterpiece of Bloody Hilarious Body Horror and Black Comedy Gorn? I just need some greasy pizza to chow down on and some Tenafly Viper to knock back while I'm enjoying it.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica
• Gangs of New York
• Hard Target
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Basic Instinct
• Persona: specifically Persona 5 as from what I've seen of it, it looks really good. Haru Okumura gives me a Cuteness Overload and reminds me a lot of my wife.
• NieR: Automata
• Rebuild of Evangelion, I saw the originals but haven't seen the remakes yet. Mari "ZA BEASTO" Makinami is definitely my favorite girl this time around, I'm like her Spear Counterpart or something.
• Snowfall: Lately I've been interested in anything involving the Iran-Contra Affair, the CIA's involvement in facilitating the pipeline of cocaine trafficking from the Colombian cartels via Nicaraguan anti-communist warlords to dealers in the US, and how that eventual abundance of cocaine became the basis for America's crack epidemic (with all the violence that entailed) during the mid-'80s. I greatly enjoyed watching Made in America which explored similar themes from the perspective of the crazy-ass outlaw pilot Barry Seal, who was tasked with smuggling arms to the Contras for the CIA on southbound trips and made quite the comfortable life smuggling Escobar's coke northwards on his return trip home, only to run afoul of the law, threaten to spill the beans, and get assassinated under questionable circumstances.
• Shooter: Just the hero's Awesome McCoolname, Bob Lee Swagger. Yeah. This is my kinda movie.
• Delta Green:
  "Choose federal law enforcement. Choose the military. Choose NASA or the CDC. Choose lying to your superiors. Choose to ruin your career. Choose no friends. Choose divorce. Choose life through the bottom of a bottle. Choose destroying evidence and executing innocent people because they know too fucking much. Choose black fatigues and matching gas masks. Choose an MP5 stolen from the CIA loaded with glasers, with a wide range of fucking attachments. Choose blazing away at mind numbing, sanity crushing things from beyond the stars, wondering whether you'd be better off stuffing the barrel in your own mouth. Choose The King In Yellow and waking up wondering who you are. Choose a 9mm retirement plan. Choose going out with a bang at the end of it all, PGP encrypting your last message down a securely laid cable as an NRO Delta wetworks squad busts through your door. Choose one last Night at the Opera. Choose Delta Green."
• The Quest for Karla, along with two other related John LeCarre works, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Looking Glass War.
• Blood Meridian
• House of Leaves
• Death Wish and Straw Dogs, two '70s "revenge porn" classics.
• Manhunter and its remake, Red Dragon.
• The Dogs of War and a similar but unrelated work, The Wild Geese.
• Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
• π
• Brazil
• Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., and Twin Peaks; all notoriously Mind Screwy David Lynch creations and therefore right up my alley.
  • Blue Velvet looks pretty cool too, it looks like a steamy, seedy erotic thriller along the lines of Blind Side.
• I'm interested in exploring the works of Yukio Mishima when I have the time.
• Blindsight and Echopraxia: two hard sci-fi novels that sound like they have a "black metal" feel to them, based on what I've read about them.
• Oldboy (2003)
• Seveneves
• Man on Fire

Pages I've added examples to:

Tropes:

• Holler Button: Added an example from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, specifically the feature which lets CJ recruit fellow Grove Street Families members into an ad-hoc posse that follows you around and assists you in combat.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Added an example from Doki Doki Literature Club!, specifically concerning Monika, the best of the "Dokis" in my humble opinion and also the creepiest/craziest because of her psychological warfare against the others and because The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
• Die or Fly: Added an example from Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, relating to how rookie pilot Grimm came to join your team during an all-out Yuktobanian bombing raid of the airbase you're operating out of, because if he didn't, your team would've been overwhelmed and either shot down or forced to retreat as your home base was bombed into rubble.
• Humanoid Abomination: Added an example from The Filthyverse, specifically the Dark Lord Himself, the mind-warpingly fearsome Chin-Chin.
  "Franku, that thing is not of this Earth!"
  - Safari Man, alerting Filthy Frank to the disturbing presence of one of Chin-Chin's heralds at his octopus takoyaki cookout/rap video shoot
• Darkest Hour: Added the climactic scene from Interstellar as a prime example.
• Added examples for Mash Kyrielight from Fate/Grand Order to Showgirl Skirt, Supernatural is Purple, and Royal Rapier. (Also mentioned Chevalier d'Eon in the entry I added to lattermost Trope's page.)
• It Works Better with Bullets: Added an example from The Devil's Rejects.
• Badass Boast: Added an example from Predator.
• Shark Tunnel: Added an example from Agent Under Fire.

Media: