Interview with AzureDaora
Tell us more about yourself
I'm AzureDaora, as should be obvious. When I originally created this username, I was currently addicted to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite(MAL isn't the first time I used this username, mind you). When I thought of a username, I wanted to combine the two names of my favorite monsters in MH, that being Azure Rathalos and Kushala Daora, hence the creation of the name.
I am a 17 year old college student with a course on Game Development. I was born in a rather average household, although as a kid I was weirder and more ADHD than most kids. I played with the dirty canal waters, talked to myself, spat on the cabinet and slowly watched as the melancholic saliva slowly and pleasurably makes it way to the bottom, drink and eat random food found on theaters, etc. Despite these oddities, I was actually a pretty smart kid. I learned to read straight at the age of 3, reading profound works of art like Sesame Street books and picture encyclopedias at this early age and was consistently an honor. I suck at handwriting, though. My handwriting looked like Mayan scriptures back in those days.
My family is actually from a lineage of actors and actresses, and I tell you that not every actor is rich. Not very prominent ones though, besides two although only locally. Just google search either Teroy De Guzman, my deceased grandfather, or Rita De Guzman, my cousin, since they're the most popular ones. I have to say that while I usually see a lot of actors from our country face to face, I don't really feel like they're that special. They just talk like some other rich guy or gal anywhere, although more interesting since they're more talkative, many young actors and actresses are spoiled little shits lel.
In terms of interest, I'm very interested on Astronomy, Literature, History, Philosophy, and Psychology or human behavior. I usually change up my actions in order to invoke different reactions. When I see a person I find genuinely interesting, I usually stick to them and see who they are and try to delve into their thoughts. Humans interest me in the fact that they are unpredictable beings where you think that you know them until they do something that you think is out of place with the "image" you have formed on your minds on this certain person. Certainly, humans are curious, interesting creatures with many variations that one is definitely vastly different than the other, despite being similar at first glance.
Interest is part of what drives me. I am quite a lazy person, and I have little initiative. I mostly use shortcuts on things, and manipulate the people around me to do work for me without them knowing. For example, although this doesn't work now that I'm in college, being seemingly irresponsible would make my parents less likely to ask me to do work since, well, they think I'm irresponsible and underestimate my capability. They'll do it rather than ask me, since they think I'll fuck up. Yup, I'm that kind of manipulative bitch.
I like arguing, not really much on in real life and more on the internet. As I believe that while I am capable in terms of thinking logically, in terms of actual knowledge and access of information inside my brain I am lacking. I know some things about physics and such that aren't, err, "suitable" for my age and grade but it's still very much lacking. Going back, I am a lazy person and won't do something unless I'm really interested in it. Lazy, I won't research something unless I feel like it. Therefore, the best way to gather my needed knowledge as of today is debate and arguing, as that serves as my drive for actual research and thinking. I've been arguing about stuff in the internet since I remember, firstly about science and the touchy subject of the existence of God. Ah yes, I remember those times I spent on YouTube comments erecting walls of texts, separated because there was a character limit on comments. I have done this a lot of times even today, again and again, and I can safely say that I have learned many things just from arguing in the internet.
I really like learning about stuff. It gives me great joy to know about stuff, since I know more. I just want to know, and to understand the many things that the world, perhaps even the entire universe, has to offer. The great vast space, the quantum world, the mysteries of history and humankind itself, and a lot more. Obtaining knowledge about stuff is my sort of thing, too bad I'm lazy else I would have read a lot of books.
I usually play games, watch anime, or delve the interwebs. In terms of games, I like the legit challenging games, so I'm interested on a lot of hard games(Hence why I'm now addicted to Touhou, because that's some top-tier hard shit). Games contain a big part of my time during a day, taking more time than anime can ever dream about. I once played Monster Hunter Freedom Unite 2 days and a half straight, without sleeping. Good times, I would say. When I get addicted to games, I get ADDICTED to it. I can't stop playing, and at times I don't even eat once in an entire day without even noticing it because I'm too busy grinding in chaos difficulty at Zhonecage in Tales of Graces f or desperately finding and grinding for Metal Slimes in Dragon Quest VIII since I can't beat the final boss. I love it really, despite raging at times. I first learned the greatness of beating something hard on Tales of the Abyss, as in my 3rd or 4th playthrough I changed the difficulty from normal to unknown without knowing the consequences. (Warning, game lingo ahead) I fought Fyr Bronc (that large dragon thing in the volcano) and I was severely underleveled for an Unknown difficulty boss since I just skipped from normal difficulty, which is three levels of difficulty higher. Any physical attack, even mystic artes, do a whooping total of 1 damage against several tens of thousands of health. It took me two hours to beat the gal using Jade, just spamming water magic with enhance cast. I felt that relief, and was happy the entire day despite being tired as all hell. Up to this day, I still seek that kind of feeling in hard games, with success.
Give us a brief history of your time on MAL. Which sections of MAL are you the most active on?
I joined MAL because I don't really remember. I just kinda did, although it's probably because I want to list anime. If I remember right, I never even knew there was a forum until I joined.
When I joined the forums, I first started posting on the Anime Thought of the Day thread. Since that's really just where I posted before, when it was locked I was shocked(heh it rhymes). After, I was set free from ATotD, I posted more on other boards like CD and FG. Then someone invited me to the O/U club (I think it was TripleSRank), I joined, and now I'm a regular of the club.
Now, CD is MAL hell (as always), FG is the "I have nothing to do" go-to place, so I don't go in both much anymore. I frequent AD more than the other boards, and I post wall of texts about Madoka Magica like some raging fanboy. Although I post in the O/U club more than in any other board.
I haven't been really in MAL for a long time though, compared to some other forums like OBD although I'll touch that later.
On your profile you said "I am a somewhat hardcore gamer that has played over 200 games, most of them being JRPGs. In games, I like the Strategy genre and the RPG genre, of course. Games were a big part of my life, but that does not mean Anime does not have big part as well." In what ways has gaming shaped your life?
Oh, plenty. As a child, I wasn't only weird in action but I also didn't think like a normal child. At least, from what I know kids think of. Maybe I'm just thinking arrogantly, I don't really know. As a kid, I constantly wanted to find meaning to things, and rather delve deep into these meanings. So I as a kid I was rather philosophical, although my actions never did compliment it.
It all first started in my favorite game, Kingdom Hearts. I played Kingdom Hearts II first (yeah that's right screw you), and as I played through the game I was legitimately interested on the "heart" (which is emotion on the lore of KH), nothingness, and the like. I asked myself as a kid about all these things, forming conclusions based on myself, the surrounding that I seem and the game. These things formed my mind, and even today they linger. And this, my friends, is when I first started to think that humans are never to be completely trusted.
Many of my ideals and thoughts come from games, as loser-ish as that may be. For example, I questioned the concept of destiny when I first played Tales of the Abyss. I thought about things like predetermined fate as a kid, and if God truly knows our future. Then I asked and delve deeper, like "If God knows the future, then why do punishments exist?" and such. So I came to a conclusion that fate probably doesn't exist.
Things like that were born from games. While they aren't exactly directly learnt from the games that I play, the idea and the questions that came into my mind as a child came from these games, so they had a very large part in forming my personality. I am a very idealistic person, wanting happiness to come over all as at an early age I already knew what cruelty humans are capable of. Many games, and even anime, fill me with ideals and those ideals say how I act.
Putting aside all the serious stuff, most of my time and money is spent on games as well. Also, my course is Game Development. Games definitely had a large effect on me.
How do you think the MAL community sees you? How do you feel about that?
I have no idea. I'm not a very popular user, I think, so I don't really know what MAL thinks of me.
In the O/U every regular pretty much knows me, and I guess I'm that guy that posts a lot about games that people don't usually play, meme-ride with Gholy and fst, and the guy that always says "lel" despite Botato's protests.
On the general forums, I really don't know. Perhaps I'm known as the guy that will defend Madoka with lengthy text, perhaps I'm known as the guy that usually shortens words and has below average grammar and spelling usage, maybe that pseudo-intellectual that says a lot of shit that probably doesn't even know what it means, perhaps I'm known as that guy that posted a lot in the KaceSpace threads, or that guy with a high compatibility with a lot of people. If I have to guess, probably the Madoka fan part.
When arguing, while it actually depends on the person, I usually include some form of trash-talk in between so they might think I'm a condescending person, and I wouldn't really blame them considering my usage of words.
I don't really like to use big vocab words as long as it's not necessary. It makes posts look intimidating, so I often speak liek dis to show that I'm all happy and rainbows :D
It makes me look like a shitposter to some, but ehhhh what can you do.
What do you feel about the board you use the most? What do you feel about the community in general?
I like Anime Discussion, heck MAL in general I like. Despite the countless threads in CD and even AD of why "MAL is so bad", "MAL is getting worse", "MAL smells like shit", etc., it's one of the best active forums out there. No, really. In MAL, you can legit find actual discussion more "often" than most forums. CD is the only thing wrong with MAL, really, with shitposters abound and a lot of trolly trolls. AD is alright as long as a moderator is keeping an eye on it.
The community is definitely NOT internet newbie friendly. If a user joins here and this is either the first time he's seen so much anime fans at one place or he's just pretty damn new to the internet or the forums, I'm pretty sure he or she will get intimidated or even offended. MAL, or the anime community in general, use a lot of sarcastic remarks, harsh, tsundere welcomes, "warning anime fans are retarded" welcomes, "your favorite anime is shit" variations, and more. There are also some number of anime or MAL inside jokes that a forum newb won't understand and may misinterpret.
I like the community more than I dislike the community, however. There are a great number of good users, it's just that the bad users are more popular and get more attention that good users, and are thusly neglected.
As I've said before, I now mostly go to the Overrated/Underrated club. People there are pretty friendly as long as you either don't get weirded out by jokes about your deep black hole(s), fetishes about deep black hole(s), or not be intimidated by fst.
How do you feel about how the site is run? Especially in regards to the moderators and admins.
I would say, lacking. Perhaps that effort is being exerted into the site, and most likely there is effort. However, despite this, it's sad to say that exerting effort doesn't mean that that the "rewards" would be great and bountiful. MAL is in shambles, and this is true for many facets of the site. Whether it would be security, community, layout, and more, many things are currently in a chaotic state. I would say that MAL needs more moderators since I feel that the mods can't doesn't really have complete view over the forums, with obvious spambot threads taking hours even a day or two before deletion.
It's sadly lacking, and moderation is also on the slow side. I get that many of you have lives beyond MAL, and you're all not on MAL every single time-frame so this more the reason to actually have trustworthy and active users become mods, as long as they are willing. like Ckan for example.
Any users you like? Why?
Pretty hard to pick, since there's plenty to talk about.
-Gholy: Probably the user I talk to the most, although he's not as active as before I think. Probably. Nice, rather blunt guy, smurt, and who I can say proudly is my son. I love you, my son.
-Zergneedsfood: Why, that's a surprise. No seriously, who dislikes Znf? He's the smartest guy in MAL and acts like Hanekawa Tsubasa without all the family problems and cat behavior. He's our little chubby asian who cooks a lot and posts all those hard to read posts. He's so cute :3
The only people that don't like Znf either don't know the guy or are the people he rekt.
And no, Znf, people don't over-estimate you. You just compare yourself to the wrong people. Your ramblings of being "not as smart as you think I am" makes us look worse ;_;
-Soul-Master: The guy I talk to about games, and other related stuff. He's pretty fun to talk to and is also an energetic guy I feel.
-Ezocon: That guy that only posts on profile comments. He's one of the few elitists that's actually pretty fun to talk to.
-jal90: The other really smart guy of MAL, although he only posts in AD. He also often defends Madoka, so I luv him.
-Ckan: Kim jong owl, and the leader of the O/U club. He's a great user that has lot of experience in MAL, and is pretty intelligent. He's the pillar of the O/U club, and without his dictatorial rule, we would never be the same in MAL. *salute*
-TripleSRank: Another smart guy. I like smart yet not boastful people. He often provides great insight and stuff like that in his posts.
-Higashi/Antilope: MAL's oji-san. His posts are very direct and straight to the point, rarely missing the mark. It reminds me of a user named Narcissus which is also like this on another forum, which btw Narcissus still stands to be the smartest mofo I've ever seen.
-Jessica: The nicest mofo I've ever seen, although we don't really talk much. She posts like an anime character lel.
-KaceSpace and Solvite: Best trolls of MAL, no contest.
-Cupc and Silverwalls: I ship thee lovebirds, and may cupc not be anal raped at the meantime.
-Every other O/U regular: Too lazy to talk about all of you. I love you all <3. We are Kazoku
I probably forgot some, I like a lot of users on the site.
Any users you dislike? Why?
I don't really dislike the user, as in, the person or user itself. I dislike some actions users do, but if they talk to me properly then I won't mind at all. I don't want to leave this blank since I'm no youkai jesus and that'd be boring, so:
-Mikasa: Should be pretty obvious why. Makes bad threads, baits, and whatnot. Has some really questionable logic behind his posts and can be pretty rood to some users. Also, he pretty much gave every single HxH fan a negative stature.
-Working_Designs: I wouldn't mind his preference of old anime over new anime, that is if he doesn't regularly diss at newer anime without even watching them.
-Buzzworders in general: The guys that feel like top of the cream people by using lmao buzzwords to criticize and judges by categorization instead of individually.
I'm thinking of other things I dislike, but to no avail. I guess Date/Fgau's extreme patriotism his country(?) is something, but I don't really mind it that much.
You've mentioned that you are a lurker of many websites and forums. Would you like to tell us more about your lurking experiences?
My story of lurking forums and sites came from the curiosity while playing Kingdom Hearts I, and then watching Naruto as a child. A certain thought came to my head: Who would in a fight, Naruto Vs. Sora? I searched the internet, and found the great OutskirtsBattleDome, an entire subforum dedicated for Vs. talk. It's a subforum, or a section, of a forum named Narutoforums, or it's old name, Narutofan. Despite the name of the site, most users ironically make fun of Naruto.
The OBD talks of many forums beside theirs, kind of like how Hummingbird talks about MAL a lot. These include Moviocodec, Spacebattles, Comicvine, and other Vs. related forums.
With this, came my experience of arguing. I only argued in YT comments before, though. I learned the meaning of logical fallacies, incorporating facts and logic into statements, and such. Despite the general prejudice of Vs. talk, it's actually full of pretty serious and entertaining talk even more so than anime talks, with A LOT of terminology. My discovery of forums was around 8-9 years ago, and even today I still lurk the OBD despite it not being as active as it was before due to the death of their wiki. If you have a question if who wins against who, feel free to ask :3
With this, I learned what forums are, and generally went to many sites in search for different types of stuff. People that think MAL is the worst forum to ever exist most likely haven't been to much forums in the first place,I believe. There are worse out there, believe me.
In all of the forums I've been in, I would say the best ones would be Animesuki and the OBD section of NF. Animesuki is the friendliest forum to ever exist, and has great moderation and community. The OutskirtsBattleDome section, despite being rather rude at first glance, is great because people there are used to humor and there's fun everywhere, making it the most fun forum I've been into even today because of how the people act. Even during serious, mathematical arguments about feats, it's still entertaining. Also, mods have a sense of humor and don't delete and even archive funny, legendary threads like Itachi vs Galactus.
The worst forum I've been in is harder to answer, being that there's a lot. Moviecodec, another Vs. forum, is one. It's FULL of fanboys, and there's a lot of spite against users. Gaia is one, mainly because it's like 7 year old kids run the place and it's just cringefest. The two is probably my top pick.
Best article site would definitely be Cracked, no contest. The community is very friendly, one of the friendliest I've ever seen, and there's a lot of interesting articles in there. Best flash game site would be Kongregrate, since there's a lot of good quality games despite being just flash games and there are even trophies ala Playstation games. Other great sites include Stickpage(great animations and if you're a fan of action scenes check the site out) and Roosterteeth(Great community infinitely better than their YT one, and tons of content).
I've lurked into a lot of forums, usually in the timespan of maybe a week or two in one forum and if it's interesting enough a few months, before going to another. Although I do simultaneously lurk different forums. I don't even remember all the forums I've been into. Also, I've never actually been into a political forum.
In ALL the forums I have been into, I actually only have a account on MAL and recently HB when I was banned for a time being. Although I did go to 4chan during 2012 regularly, but you don't really create an account there. That's why I'm just a lurker.
What are some MAL members you consider the most influential? You're not allowed to include yourself.
No idea. I haven't been in MAL for long, so I don't know who is influential that much. Although, from what I know, the one that popularized shitposting and attention-seeking is yo momma, MellowJello. He's one, I believe.
Tyrel is also one of them. Being the most popular moderator of MAL, he is the necessary evil and strictness that MAL needs to feel every once in a while, else we go astray. I would also say Ckan is one, being that a lot of people know the guy and he created the great O/U club which I am a part of.
Is there a MAL member you would want to take on a date or get to know better? Who and why?
I guess Zergneedsfood, being that the foodies he cooks look fucking delicious and he's also an interesting VERY smart guy that I would most likely learn a lot from.
Do you see yourself leaving MAL in the near future? Why?
By leaving MAL, perhaps I'd be less active but to actually leaving MAL and never going in again I don't see it near. Maybe when I'm 35 or something. This being that I like internet communities a lot, and I like seeing the different thoughts that people share in these sites. I am interested in human behavior, after all, and the internet is a big part of it.
Is there something unasked you would like to talk about?
No, not really.
Can you recommend us 3 members who we can choose from to interview next and briefly explain why you would love to read their interviews?
Gholy - Someone interview this man pls. He's a very interesting guy, with a lol haircut. He's smart, pretty fun, and can be quite serious.
fst - Another pillar of the O/U club, and from what we are modeled from. We are merely fst clones, after all. Interesting, funny guy and I'm sure a lot of people that know him want him to go and be interviewed, as well.
Katsucats - Not sure why, but I'd like to see someone interview the antagonist of MAL. He's a pretty interesting guy with good grades(hehehehe) and has a somewhat troll-y personality.
Any feedback on the interview format?
I guess it was good. The word "guess" meaning that I don't really have much experience with interviews.
Any shameless self-promotions? Perhaps you want more publicity for your club, or a suggestion for the community to see?
Join the O/U club for the best club :D
We're friendly people, I believe.
If you like SRPGs and like unique gameplay, I would rec you to check out the Dept. Heaven series. Definitely an underrated game "series". |
