Explain yer sigs!!!

[Traab]

This is a thread for people to talk about the circumstances around whatever is in their sig. if its a quote from the boards, explain the context behind it. If its a quote from a book/movie/show then let us know. If its something like the name and class of a favorite character from a game you love/loved, fill us in! I will start.

The first part is a line from a fanfiction I read, A Spark of Genius. In it, as a sort of author note, he would write in random lines like this, and I found it amusing enough to include this one.

As for the Nerd-o-Rama quote, heh, I dont remember the exact topic of discussion, but I was a relatively new poster and things were getting heated. So I made this ranting post with lots of caps in it to make my point and Nerd responded with that line. I loved it so much I asked for permission to sig it and have kept it ever since.

The last one is a random quote some congressman said once upon a time. Its just so warped that it had to be written down for posterity. I mean, what kind of congressman threatens to fart loud enough to register on the richter scale and stinky enough to clear a large room if the reporters dont leave him alone?

[Lentrax]

The first and second parts are pretty straight forward.

The third part:

LUTAS is an abbreviation for the Less Useful Than Aquaman Squad. It came about after the first few posts from a random super power lottery thread came up with powers that left us feeling, well, less useful than Aquaman. IIRC, my power was smoke manipulation.

[Peelee]

Im in the 501st, first costume registered as DZ-4049 (DZ - Denizen of the Empire. It was a Tusken Raider costume). Cuthalion drew my avatar, and he's awesome.

Any quotes are simply ones i find incredibly amusing at the time, and are typically short lived.

[Bobbybobby99]

I sort of like Niccolo Machievali in many aspects (I'm of the group that thinks he wrote The Prince as Satire), I had me avatar done by Serpentine, and I'm writing a Webserial! (read me).

[Peelee]

I sort of like Nicolo Machievali in many aspects (I'm of the group that thinks he wrote The Prince as Satire)

I just call the other group "wrong," to keep things simple.

[Madcrafter]

Though it sounds like he was the kind of guy who would do such a thing, I've been convinced it is not satire.


As for the signature, back in the day, another poster and I converged on a thread to give advice to a newly minted artificer. On many things we agreed, but when it came to the critical spell of the mighty artificer's arsenal, we found ourselves at odds. "Scorching Ray" I said "is surely ideal for the situation we find ourselves in". "Nonsense" came his reply, "there is only one true artificer spell, and it is Kelgore's Firebolt". The battle commenced, and many walls of text were written in argument and demolished. No true victor emerged, but part of the way in I added that line to my signature, and have kept it since.


The rest are just a bunch of Tom Swifties I came up with randomly and wanted to write down.

[FinnLassie]

I'm one darn sassy lassie and Vaynor can't handle it.

[Crow]

Aedilred created a most terrible avatar for me, and this is how I shame him until some kind soul volunteers to create a nice one for me.

[Jeff the Green]

I have homebrew and an ego the size of Saskatchewan.

[DJ Yung Crunk]

It's Grandmaster Flash and a lyric about Grandmaster Flash from Blondie's 1980 hit single "Rapture".

[Tiffanie Lirle]

Aedilred created a most terrible avatar for me, and this is how I shame him until some kind soul volunteers to create a nice one for me.

I honestly think that's a pretty great avatar. It's not what you wear, but how you wear it. Yaknow?

As for me, when I used to be an edgy teenager shortly after I joined I had a lot of edgy quotes and terrible pictures I drew that I thought were amazing.

Now I just kind of shill my side project and regret being a teenager at one point of my life.

[FinnLassie]

and regret being a teenager at one point of my life.

I think we all do. Or at least most of us.

[TechnOkami]

There's not much I can say about my sig, because everything's pretty self explanatory.

The extended sig though... long story short there's a handful of moments where people mentioned me or I was involved and they either stood out or, I dunno, felt "sig-worthy" to me, so I did.

Edit: I suppose now that I think about it, the "be calm, take your time" thing is just a self reminder to do just that with/in life.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Gotta love a good sig!

Avatar credit
The first line, of course, is a doff of the cap to the wonderful Oneris, who drew my avatar. If anyone is curious, it's a depiction of Queen Lydia Seaspray, an NPC from my faerie affair game. She has stats (as a CR 5 monster or CR 7 paragon monster for 5e), if you want to include her in your games! Feel free to PM me.

Critical Acclaim
I like it when people say nice things about me!

The first entry is a link to DrcaoKnight's 1^st 5e spellbrew contest, which I won with Gingerbread Cottage (though he hasn't gotten round officially announcing it yet ). Good times.

JNAProductions' quote comes from the '101 uses for a 10' pole' thread, which I 'won' with use #101 (PIÑATA TIME!!!!).

KorvinStarmast's outburst was prompted by some witty suggestions for things you could do with the Command spell. I've since been trying to collect 101... currently up to 67.

Professor Gnoll's is more recent... a certain thread had become infested with dire camels, so I wrote up some stats for them. It was a dirty, populist move on my part, but totally worth it.

Spoiler: Full exchange

Show

At this juncture, I would like to note that as far as I can tell there has never been a Dire Camel in official D&D rules. So if you want to use this random encounter table, you'll need to homebrew it.

That's because the CR system can't handle a creature that awesome!

On a more serious note, I might just go ahead and 'brew it. I'll post a link in this thread when it's done.

I think it speaks volumes about the thread when 'I'll create statistics to allow roleplayers to simulate a monster camel' is the "serious note".

ThinkMinty's comment was referring to this mic drop:

Spoiler: BOOM

Show

Citation: People pay for entertainment. Nobody pays for pedantry.

Counterexample: copy editors exist and get paid.

#sorrynotsorry

Play-by-Post
This is more pragmatic. I keep links to the games I'm DMing so that I don't have to go through the control panel every time. Especially for the OOC threads, where I use the first post as a 'live book-keeping' sort of thing. My player profile has links to all my character sheets (which I ran out of space in the sig for).

Homebrew Signature
Probably the most important part! I frequently direct people to check there for things that I think might be relevant to their situations.

[Yuki Akuma]

Okay.

The first line is a quote from S. John Ross, the creator of Risus, specifically from the Excessively Deluxe Edition of Risus I believe? It's the gaming philosophy I try to always follow, with mixed success.

Next is just a comment I found hilarious from a topic about a read-through of the D&D 5e PHB someone posted to Youtube. Because come on, we do live in a weird and banal future.

And then finally... old avatars and artist credits. Baiyan was a character I played in a god game several years ago, and the Scaredycat and Dreamer are 'iconic' characters from a really old homebrew project that never really got off the ground.

[Thufir]

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett.

That explains my entire signature. I might switch back to a more complicated one at some point.

[MikelaC1]

The first part of my sig is the best putdown of Twitter (and all other social media for that matter) I ever heard, from Ray Ratto, formerly of CBS Sports. The second line is from a friend of mine who works in government procurement and is his response to panic stricken clients who suddenly realize they put off a purchase that needed to be made.

[Aedilred]

I think my sig is pretty much self-explanatory. Former avatars with credit and links to/ads for the long-running games I'm involved in. I did my current avatar myself, hence no credit for that.

Though it sounds like he was the kind of guy who would do such a thing, I've been convinced it is not satire.

The question of "what the hell was Machiavelli doing when he wrote The Prince?" is one of those that I think will never be settled conclusively and still energises academic debate today. I think given his life history and experiences and his other works, most notably the Discourses on Livy, which is a much more thorough and persuasive argument, it's hard to argue that The Prince is representative of his true opinions. But I'm also not persuaded by the idea that it's satire (sorry, Rousseau, looks like we disagree again) or for that matter that it was a simple matter of brown-nosing the Medici to win back favour: after all the Medici weren't stupid, and neither was he.

I have wondered if it's the product of a sort of nihilistic depression, a great mind driven to despair by the ruin of his life's work and temporarily embracing the politics of his ideological enemies because his own have failed him so completely. Or maybe that's just projection on my part. At least if that was the case it seems it was only a temporary phase.

I honestly think that's a pretty great avatar. It's not what you wear, but how you wear it. Yaknow?

Well I'm glad someone thinks so!

[Vinyadan]

The question of "what the hell was Machiavelli doing when he wrote The Prince?" is one of those that I think will never be settled conclusively and still energises academic debate today.

My opinion is that he was a man with an uncanny understanding of how things worked (not only in politics) and he realized it was a valuable thing. After he worked against the Medici and tried to have their allies executed, the Medici came back and he was fined. He was later taken prisoner and tortured for other reasons (probably without being guilty). In the meantime, his monetary situation went to hell. So he put his valuable knowledge of the world in a book and tried to get some compensation from the ruling Medici offering it to him (with underwhelming results).

As for my sig, I enjoyed so much an ill-tasted joke about Durkon's name I made, that I am now using it as a theme.

[T-Mick]

My signature is supposed to be a quote from the Roman poet Horace, and it means "He who runs across the ocean changes the sky, but not the soul." However, Horace wrote it slightly differently: he wrote "They who run... et cetera." The misquotation comes from an eleventh century linguist who was one of my first translation projects. I was very likely one of the five or six people in history who had read him at that time at all, since he was so obscure and never translated. I feel like his misremembering of the quote makes it more personal to me, and use it gleefully!

Coincidentally, I absolutely agree with the sentiment, which is one major reason why I've never been much interested in travel, and it also contrasts beautifully with Augustine's "the world is a book of which those who do not travel read only one page." Augustine was a wise writer, but you can't beat Horace's old man grouchiness.

[gooddragon1]

The quote is from a thread in the forum game known as The Town which is currently known as The Nexus. It was when Aesa (one of AmberVael's characters (formerly known just as Vael)) was trying to prevent the police station from being rebuilt. It was a clash of really strong characters (one of the many things that inspired to make my latest characters on par with that level of power by being a fragment incarnation of the concept of nothing). I just really liked the conversation that went on. Particularly that line.

No μ! Is a play on the meme NO U! Note how the symbol μ partially resembles the letter u.

"In actuality what has been stated applies more directly to the former poster than to myself."

The excitement mark at the end of "no u" is a link to a 3.5 homebrew base class that I made to make the game simpler (because I occasionally enjoy simplicity).

[Kid Jake]

I'm a shameless self promoter and insist that everybody be aware of my various stuffs.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Avatar.

Steam profile for if it becomes relevant while I'm in the Gaming section.

Cool stuff that isn't mine.

[Giggling Ghast]

Mine is a quote lifted from the end of a mission in Dragon Age: Inquisition. In the mission, you raid several tombs left over from a dwarven colony in a patch of desert known as the Hissing Wastes. (There's a good reason for raiding these tombs, as baddies want the stuff left behind.)

The tombs commemorate the story of a brilliant dwarven weaponsmith who wearied of constant war and brought a group of his followers to form a new city on the surface. This is a huge deal, as dwarves who stop living underground become non-citizens in dwarven society.

The father eventually passed on and left his throne to his two sons. But they bickered, and eventually one murdered the other. However, the living brother regretted his deed and built the tombs as a memorial. In the final tomb you find the two lines quoted in my sig.

[SirKazum]

My sig is pretty straightforward... Shameless self-promotion, as is the fact that I'm even posting here when there's really nothing to explain

[A.A.King]

I think the important question to answer isn't: "What was our boy Nico thinking when he wrote this?" but rather "Does the Prince contain the truth and nothing but the truth" and so help me god it does. It may be a cynical world view and to use his practises to the best of your capabilities would probably be less than perfectly moral (on how much less so we could start an entirely different debate) but they would work really really well. There is some line about extreme satire mimicking truth floating around on the internet which can't really be bothered to google right now but the point is that even if he was mocking the kind of leadership he described he described the most efficient leadership possible.

Anyway, as to my own signature it contains an important message, a silly little banner showcasing me favourite 'party role' and one of my own sayings which doesn't seem to role quite as nice of the tongue as I thought it did when I first put it there (and yes, I am the kind of guy who quotes himself because we all want to quote the best)

[2D8HP]

My sig is pretty straightforward... Shameless self-promotion, as is the fact that I'm even posting here when there's really nothing to explain

Looks like good stuff. Promote away!

[Vinyadan]

I think the important question to answer isn't: "What was our boy Nico thinking when he wrote this?" but rather "Does the Prince contain the truth and nothing but the truth" and so help me god it does. It may be a cynical world view and to use his practises to the best of your capabilities would probably be less than perfectly moral (on how much less so we could start an entirely different debate) but they would work really really well. There is some line about extreme satire mimicking truth floating around on the internet which can't really be bothered to google right now but the point is that even if he was mocking the kind of leadership he described he described the most efficient leadership possible.

Anyway, as to my own signature it contains an important message, a silly little banner showcasing me favourite 'party role' and one of my own sayings which doesn't seem to role quite as nice of the tongue as I thought it did when I first put it there (and yes, I am the kind of guy who quotes himself because we all want to quote the best)

If you want there is a similar image in a quote by some Stoic philosopher which went with something like "destiny carries us wherever it wants, and the wise man is the one who follows it, instead of acting like a dog bound to a cart which vainly pulls the opposite way than the horses." However, the meaning is rather different, I reckon.

About Machiavelli, I agree with you on the fact that the book works. Personally I don't believe to the parody theory because a. the book isn't humorous and b. Machiavelli was very good at making people laugh, if he wanted to.

[A.A.King]

If you want there is a similar image in a quote by some Stoic philosopher which went with something like "destiny carries us wherever it wants, and the wise man is the one who follows it, instead of acting like a dog bound to a cart which vainly pulls the opposite way than the horses." However, the meaning is rather different, I reckon.

About Machiavelli, I agree with you on the fact that the book works. Personally I don't believe to the parody theory because a. the book isn't humorous and b. Machiavelli was very good at making people laugh, if he wanted to.

That definitely has a different meaning. My quote, for a lack of a better word, is supposed to be more 'Machiavellian' (which funnily enough fits very well with the other discussion going on in this thread). The basic idea that it needs to convey is that everyone is just a pawn to be controlled by kings and the only way to escape this is to accept that is happening and join in. You're a pawn until you're a king and you can't be a king without some servants. I'm sure there should be some snappy way to put that all in one little quote and still have it make sense without context but I haven't found it quite yet.

As for the Machiavelli bit, I too agree that it isn't a satire and frankly I never quite understood why people try to make that argument. I believe that's not just a scholarly point but more of an attack on the philosophy, trying to discredit the book by trying to prove the Author didn't really mean it. Which is why my point is that "Satire Yes/No" is a irrelevant question. What matters it the word written on the paper (or whatever it is that makes an e-book version work), not the intent with which those words were written. Generally I'm not a fan (or frankly opposed) to the whole idea of 'Death of the Author style arguments but I'm willing to make an exception for philosophy: if an idea works it works, no matter how sarcastic it was said (I can think we can all find examples in this fine webcomic where the comic duo of Roy and Elan prove this particular point).

[Aedilred]

As for the Machiavelli bit, I too agree that it isn't a satire and frankly I never quite understood why people try to make that argument. I believe that's not just a scholarly point but more of an attack on the philosophy, trying to discredit the book by trying to prove the Author didn't really mean it. Which is why my point is that "Satire Yes/No" is a irrelevant question. What matters it the word written on the paper (or whatever it is that makes an e-book version work), not the intent with which those words were written. Generally I'm not a fan (or frankly opposed) to the whole idea of 'Death of the Author style arguments but I'm willing to make an exception for philosophy: if an idea works it works, no matter how sarcastic it was said (I can think we can all find examples in this fine webcomic where the comic duo of Roy and Elan prove this particular point).

Eh, but then I feel that to an extent this also misses the point of philosophy. Philosophy is at least as much about arguing the should as it is about arguing the could. I find the circles in which I move generally fairly scientifically-minded, which is great as far as it goes, but it also means my friends often struggle to understand philosophical arguments because they want to boil everything down to data and formulae and empirically testable statements, which isn't really what philosophy is about. It's one of the reasons medical ethics is such an interesting, and difficult, field, because it's one of the areas where philosophy and science intersect most unavoidably.

This is something which underpins a lot of political philosophy going right back to Plato: not just what is efficient, but what is right. So when looking at The Prince, I think we have to keep in mind the question of "even if this works, is this really the best that we can do?" It's why it doesn't surprise me that Rousseau considered it satirical, because his whole political philosophy is based around bettering ourselves and not settling for the bare minimum of functioning government. And everything else that Machiavelli wrote suggests to me that while The Prince might present a barely-but-consistently-functioning model of government (notwithstanding that he fairly extensively picks apart the flaws of autocratic systems elsewhere in his writing) he fairly firmly believed that that model was, on some important level, wrong, and that the world would be a better place if it wasn't put into operation. That's why I suggest it was born out of bitterness and despair: in some ways, the antithesis of much of what he actually believed.

I suspect that my feelings on the matter are at least as much about trying to redeem Machiavelli from the pop culture perception of him as "archetypal conniving bastard" and restore him to his rightful place in the pantheon of great political thinkers alongside people like Hobbes and Locke as anything else, however. I hear people go on about him who've only read The Prince, or worse, only heard about The Prince second-hand, and it makes me unreasonably annoyed.