Words, words, words.

[kd7sov]

As prompted by ceitfianna, the Words Meme. Comment with the word "words", and I'll give you five words to write about.

Mormon is the most common nickname for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The term church leaders have told us to encourage is "Latter-Day Saints", or simply "Saints", but "Mormons" is still much more popular. It comes from our signature book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, which is named for the ancient prophet who compiled the majority of it. This book tells the story of ancient inhabitants of the Americas, focusing particularly on their righteousness or lack thereof over the course of several hundred years. The modern church is rather widely misunderstood and reviled for a variety of reasons, both valid and specious. I have been a member since I was born, and have no intention of ever changing that.

Felix is, in a manner of speaking, the biggest reason I have this account. He's also something of a fluke. Way back in late 2005 I encountered milliways_bar for the first time. Once I had some idea of what it was I considered playing Isaac, who also comes from the Golden Sun games and is the main protagonist of the first game, rather than the second. As it turned out, however, hisenshi was already playing Isaac (as valehero), so I picked up Felix instead. I picked venusadept_2 as his username for the simple reason that he's the second Venus Adept to join the party, assuming you play the games in order. I can't point to a specific time that I actually had him as a headvoice, instead of going through a laborious What Would Felix Do process, but I'm pretty sure he was there by the end of January 2006. Over the intervening time period he's grown and changed, much as I have. It's actually a little astonishing, the number of Felixes I can point to in my head. Some (Apocalix and dalzoon, in particular) are more separate than others. (I recognize that dalzoon doesn't have much yet, but his voice is pretty fully-realized. He's Felix as he might have been in the Young Wizards universe.)

Writing has always been something of a vague goal of mine. I've loved to read longer than I can remember, and at various times I've had ambitions of making things for others to read. That said, apart from Milliways and the one-and-a-bit fanfics I've written, I can't recall more than half a dozen stories that I've ever written. There are two in particular that I remember fairly fondly - one, from about first grade, involving a car that goes to the hospital because it ran over a sword; and one from eighth grade that... I don't even remember, except that it involved an overpowered taser as a murder weapon and had a scene in a cluttered laboratory. My major obstacle is, oddly, that I love words. I obsess over putting exactly the right word in exactly the right place, with the result that very few end up getting placed at all. Somehow, in non-story environments such as this and Milliways interactions, I can suspend that a bit, but only to a point. I am also hampered by the fact that I'm really not creative. I can take others' ideas, adjust them a bit, maybe add a little, but in the end they're still recognizable.

Video games and I have an interesting relationship. I don't know how it started, but when I was young I would sometimes go to a friend's house (one of the few friends from more-than-a-few-years-ago whose name I remember) to play with his SNES. Much later I had another friend with a GameCube, and then in early 2007 I bought my own first system - a Game Boy Advance. To date I have only that and a DS. My preferences in terms of games are a bit erratic - I tend to like particular games or series rather than genres, so - for instance - I have both of the Professor Layton games, but no other puzzle-based games; I like the two-dimensional Metroid games, but not very many other platformer or single-character adventure games (apart from the Zelda games. All of those that I've picked up have grabbed hold for significant periods of time).

Science is an odd word, in my head. It's one of those rare words that can change its entire subjective meaning depending on tone and circumstances, going from the gleeful abandon of "For Science!" as seen in Girl Genius or Narbonic to a sort of single-minded Serious Business to a dismissive phrase ("It's to do with quantum."), and any number of others. In general I tend to approve of what is generally called science, since it's based on observed facts and mathematical data and such things - quantifiable, definable, and predictable. The "soft" sciences - psychology, sociology, and the like - are more problematic, because they deal with people, and people are... messy. Chaotic. Oh dear, we're an Auditor. I don't hold that science is the Greatest Possible Human Endeavor, or even that it can answer all of life's problems, but I do approve of increasing the sum of human knowledge.