Vell, Aaron’s just zis guy, you know?
I run a forum called Fool’s Gold
. I’ve also been active on a number of other boards, but much less so, and they’re mostly pretty inconsequential in the scheme of these things; Freethought Forum is really the only other message board I still maintain any appreciable amount of activity on these days. I’m pretty obsessed with music (especially jazz, soundtracks, metal, and progressive rock) and basically one of those Bomb-Throwing Anarchists, but without the bombs. (See TV Tropes’ Useful Notes on Anarchism and Political Ideologies for some actual factual information on anarchism. My thought tends towards anarcho-syndicalism, but I’m not particularly dogmatic about any particular form of anarchism. Note, however, that so-called “anarcho-capitalists” are not anarchists, because the word “anarchy” literally means “without rulers”, and it is impossible to have capitalism without disparities in power). I live in Florida, much to my chagrin. See also my last.fm, my Soundcloud, and some neo-classical electronic music I wrote awhile back.
I really, really hate the Loudness War to the extent that I actually go and edit the audio of victims to make them less painful to listen to. I wrote a guide to how to do this here.
I also develop content for the game Marathon Aleph One. I've worked on the largely completed game Marathon Eternal as well as a few currently unfinished ones.
If you want to contact me, the best way to do it is through messages here, through my forum, through my forum’s IRC channel, through last.fm, or through Discord. I have Skype, AIM, and MSN, but I rarely sign into any of them. I also have a Facebook, which I never check; if you want a link, send me a private message.
Some works I like (alphabetical order, and the list is nowhere near complete; I’ll probably add a lot more stuff later, but it’ll probably never be fully complete as I want to keep this to stuff that has wiki entries here):
- DOOM: Repercussions of Evil
- Half-Life: Full Life Consequences
- My Immortal
- If you think I like any of these for any other reason than For the Lulz then I don’t know what to tell you
- 12 Monkeys
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Almost Famous
- Amélie
- Barton Fink
- Blazing Saddles
- The Big Lebowski
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Dark Knight
- Die Hard
- District 9
- Dr. Strangelove
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Fargo
- Good Night, and Good Luck.
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Gravity
- High Fidelity
- Inception
- Interstellar
- Iron Man
- Kill Bill
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Life of Brian
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Moonlight (2016)
- Moulin Rouge!
- Network
- A New Hope
- Once Upon a Time in the West
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- The Prestige
- Pulp Fiction
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Return of the Jedi
- School of Rock
- Serenity
- Seven Samurai
- Taxi Driver
- This is Spın̈al Tap
- Up
- The Usual Suspects
- WALL•E
- You Can't Take It With You
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Breakfast of Champions
- Candide
- A Canticle for Leibowitz
- Cat's Cradle
- Daemon
- Discworld (of which my favourites are Guards Guards, Small Gods, Night Watch, and Going Postal)
- The Dispossessed
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- Flow My Tears The Policeman Said (I need to write a page for this)
- Foundation
- Gravity's Rainbow and other works by Thomas Pynchon
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy
- The Left Hand of Darkness
- The Man in the High Castle
- The Millennium Trilogy
- Slaughterhouse-Five
- The Sirens of Titan
- Ubik
- Kurt Wallander novels
- Agent Carter
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Almost Human
- Arrested Development
- Battlestar Galactica (Reimagined)
- Better Call Saul
- Better Off Ted
- The Blacklist
- Castle
- The Colbert Report
- The Daily Show
- Doctor Who
- Elementary
- The Expanse
- Foyle's War
- Fringe
- Galavant
- Game of Thrones
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
- Lost
- Mad Men
- The Man in the High Castle
- Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
- Modern Family
- Orphan Black
- Scandal
- Sherlock
- True Detective
- The West Wing
- The Wire
- Alcest
- Ash Borer
- Atheist
- At the Drive-In
- Bathory
- Between the Buried and Me
- Black Sabbath
- Blue Öyster Cult
- Blut aus Nord
- Burzum
- John Cale
- Camel
- Captain Beefheart
- Converge
- Counting Crows
- Cynic
- Darkthrone
- Miles Davis
- Dead Kennedys
- Deafheaven
- Death
- Deathspell Omega
- Deep Purple
- The Dillinger Escape Plan
- Dir en grey
- The Doors
- Nick Drake
- Drudkh
- Emperor
- Brian Eno
- Enslaved
- Faith No More
- Fairport Convention
- The Fall of Troy
- Fell Voices
- Fleet Foxes
- Marvin Gaye
- Genesis note
- Gentle Giant
- Michael Giacchino
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor
- Murray Gold
- Gong
- Gorguts
- Grateful Dead
- Hüsker Dü
- Ihsahn
- Immortal
- Immortal Technique
- Iron Maiden
- Isis
- Jethro Tull
- Judas Priest
- Kayo Dot
- King Crimson
- Hiroki Kikuta
- Krallice
- L'Acéphale
- Led Zeppelin
- Tom Lehrer
- Magma
- Mahavishnu Orchestra
- Marillion
- The Mars Volta
- Mastodon
- maudlin of the Well
- Mayhem
- Bear McCreary
- Mercyful Fate
- Charles Mingus
- Yasunori Mitsuda
- Janelle Monáe
- Moonsorrow
- Van Morrison
- Mr. Bungle
- My Bloody Valentine
- Negură Bunget
- Ne Obliviscaris
- Nico
- Opeth
- Panopticon
- Pavement
- Pink Floyd
- Porcupine Tree
- Radiohead
- Lou Reed
- R.E.M.
- The Residents
- Reverend Bizarre
- Todd Rundgren
- Rush
- The Rutles
- Motoi Sakuraba
- Shiina Ringo
- Shining (Norway)
- Shining (Sweden)
- Sigh
- Slint
- Skagos
- Skepticism
- Skinny Puppy
- The Smashing Pumpkins
- Sonic Youth
- Soundgarden
- Talk Talk
- Tears for Fears
- tool
- Nobuo Uematsu
- Ulver
- Van der Graaf Generator
- The Velvet Underground
- Tom Waits
- Weakling
- Wolves in the Throne Room
- Yes
- Neil Young
- Frank Zappa
- Zeal & Ardor
- This is actually pretty unrepresentative of my taste because I’ve only listed the ones with their own TV Tropes pages, which basically only means the artists that could be vaguely described as mainstream are listed, and many of the most adventurous ones are left off. (Although Magma, Zappa and a few others are still pretty adventurous). The list would have been longer than the entire rest of the page combined otherwise. See my last.fm, seriously. Though I would like to note that the “Shining” on my page contains plays from both the Norwegian and the Swedish artists. I probably have around 500 plays of each. This list is probably also missing a number of recent favourites, because I didn’t update it for several years.
- Chrono Trigger
- Chrono Cross
- Dragon Quest V
- Final Fantasy V
- Final Fantasy VI
- Final Fantasy IX
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
- Marathon trilogy & Game Mods
- Portal
- Secret of Mana
- Seiken Densetsu 3
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario World
- Super Metroid
- Yoshi’s Island
Tropes That Probably Apply To Me
- Ambiguous Disorder - I’ve actually been diagnosed with “components” of several of them
- Ambiguous Gender - I’m frequently confused for a woman, which no longer bothers me
- Anarchism - the dominant influence on my political thought. As it’s a highly misunderstood philosophy, I’d recommend reading the article, which does a pretty good job explaining it
- The Anti-Nihilist
- Brilliant, but Lazy
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer
- Chivalrous Pervert
- Ethical Hedonism
- Insufferable Genius
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold
- Messy Hair
- Neutral Good and/or Chaotic Good - philosophically I am Chaotic Good but my behaviour trends more towards Neutral Good because of reasons
- Nightmare Fetishist - Not so much in my tastes in fiction (though I’m not necessarily too bothered by things that often give others nightmares, like the Weeping Angels), but I often listen to music that would drive most others screaming from the room in terror; I have been known to fall asleep to bands like Deathspell Omega, if that’s any indication
- Older Than They Look - I still get confused for a high school student despite being in my thirties
- Save Scumming - I have been known to do this almost to tool assisted speedrun levels when playing older games, though my approach to Marathon is almost the exact opposite: the method of play I generally follow requires me not to load saves at all within a single level
Some Tropes I Like
- Black Metal
- Epic Rocking
- Genre Roulette
- Platform Hell
- Progressive Rock
- Speed Run
- Technical Death Metal
- Uncommon Time
Some Tropes I Dislike
