I at first didn’t want to write anything about fear, the topic of the first Blaugust Promptapalooza prompt. I’d much rather talk about the second one, which was easy, and all prepared. But, I came into this Blaugust thing determined to write a post for each writing prompt. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean I get to skip each. The things that are hard, are the things on which I should focus.

The first prompt comes from Professor Beej of the Geekery, who asks:

What is your greatest fear, and how does it impact the type of content you create or consume?

Before I get started on that, though, I just have to really just admire the creativity people show when designing their blogs. Not one of them looks like another, and the layout and how the blogger sets their focus through visual display elements is just a gallery of personality. If we ever do Promptapalooza again, I’d like one of the prompts to be, “What does your blog design say about you?” There’s definitely been a progression in my own blog as I get inspired by different people.

Fear, though – that’s something I live with, all the time. There’s some personal element to that, tragedies that I won’t get into on a public post. I will say that there was a certain thing that happened, a long time ago, that ended the time when I looked to the future with hope and joy, and instead was held back with the knowledge that everyone I love could be taken away by some evil chance.

I was looking forward to the game “Heavy Rain” as my way to try that new sort of game which was more literate and cinematic instead of the more arcade-like or RPG games I usually played. I hadn’t gotten too far into it when a child was kidnapped, and the game made it clear that unless I played the game correctly, that child would die, and then the game would go on from that.

I immediately stopped the game and I haven’t played it since. I cannot deal with losing a child. If I think a “game” would depict the death or killing of a child, I will not play it. I won’t see a movie with that plot. I won’t read a book with that plot. So if you’re a game developer who thinks the torturing and killing of children is something you believe you need to explore in your game, then you are sick, need help, and should rethink your profession.

The real world is an evil place and children are easy victims. You don’t need to inspire even more sick people with your twisted game.

Okay, enough of that.

Dan, the Once And Future Magi Who Was Taken of Indiecator asks,

How did you get the name that you regularly go by online, and what if anything does it mean?

The picture really is worth a thousand words, here. Although I didn’t know where I’d gotten the name “Tipa” from. For a long time, I thought I’d just made it up, from thin air.

My first halfling in EverQuest was named “Etha”, after a lady at my church. I’d never heard the name before and instantly fell in love with it. After that, I thought any other halfling I made would have similar names.

Next was “Nina”, my warrior, named after one of my friends when I was a kid. “Brita”, my cleric, was named after my step-sister, and NOT the water filtration system. Don’t make that joke. I’ve heard it. “Dera” is another name I used for various characters when one or the other wasn’t available in some game I was in. I’m not sure where that came from. It might be original, but probably not, as I discovered when I was running around Misty Thicket one night and happened to walk into a little hobbit home and found – Tipa Lighten.

There is absolutely no way I hadn’t seen her when I was playing Etha. I’d always be selling things at the outside vendors to save the lengthy loading screens to go into Rivervale and back. But at some point I forgot, and when I decided to roll a rogue, chose “Tipa” as a name I thought I’d just made up.

It was all just a lie.

Site of concert

Similar story about my preferred last name, “Tanglewood”. Anyone in New England is thinking, “you got that from the famous music festival in the Berkshires, right?”

I dunno. Probably? But that’s not what I was thinking when I was camping the aviaks at the tree house in South Karana and level 20 was coming up fast. Back then, you had to petition for a GM to come grant you your last name, and I wanted more than anything for a green-named GM to pop up next to me and do the deed. But it would have to be something epic, but also meaningful.

Etha was a druid, so I knew it had to be something woodsy. Bark, Tree, Treebranch, Brambleshoot, I kept trying different things until I hit upon my new, wholly original creation, Tanglewood, a name nobody had ever heard before in any context. Hence, Etha Tanglewood, and I wore that name proudly.

I’m not sure how long after it was that I remembered that maybe I had, somewhere, at some time, heard the name before. I’d even been to a Tanglewood concert; way back when I was a kid, my mom took us to a concert on the lawn of the old mill down in Uxbridge. I was fascinated, entranced by the music. I don’t know if I’d ever heard music performed live before. I was in the school band, but I don’t think anyone ever considered that to be anything close to “music”. Music played by people who knew what they were doing. THAT was new.

I’m not certain why this old signature doesn’t say “Tanglewood”. At some point, EverQuest was updated so that you could change your name freely. I don’t remember changing it to Ebonstar, though I obviously changed it back, because it’s been Tanglewood as long as I can remember.

EQPA was a paper doll program some artists came up with back in the day that let you dress up a character with all sorts of gear. Since I was big into drawing pixel art back then, I’d just draw over the paper doll myself with the outfit of whatever boss we were raiding at the time. Saryrn, Terris, LDoN at the bottom.

I can’t find my Bixie Hunter signature… another time maybe.