The Other R*****

Dear readers.

A few days back I happened to be in the center of a heated discussion concerning my name.
Quite unsettling for me as it's the very first discussion on the internet with me in the center of it (mostly I'm what some call a lurker, I don't really say much)

I had registered on the forum of Notch's new game (0x10^c, may you wonder) and I posted a small introductory post saying hi and stating who I am...

First reply is made by someone named Comet:

Nice post, but please let me know if your name is intended to be funny or an attack at people who think it is? If it's the prior, change your name. It's offensive, and even though i take it you don't mean it, you should know better.

Until now I still don't actually know what the guy meant, I just sent him a PM as a request for more information on his arguments.

And why could I use my name for about 3 years without anyone pointing this out to me?
A short list to all my identities as TheOtherRetard or alike on the internet:

• CounterStrike (and Steam in general) 
• LeagueOfLegends 
• O-Game 
• Minecraft
• CastleStoryOnline
• Twitter
• Youtube
• here
• Wikis
• Weekly Pickaxe
• ... (This is just what I could remember from the top of my head, if you Google me you may find even more...)

So yeah, on all those communities, on all those websites, after my 400+ posts on the Minecraft forum only 2 have openly opposed and demanded me to change my name because of possible offensiveness...

First of all: I don't use the word Retard as an offensive word. In my opinion it's used for someone who acts stupid. And I do lots of stupid stuff...

Let me tell you a bit more about myself.
I know what it's like to be called names. I was that one kid that liked to play alone, I was that kid that was the first one of my class to wear glasses (at the age of 7), I was that kid that didn't do or say much during lessons, but still could score above average on most tests...
Per definition I was the one they (the other kids, you know which ones) picked on. Well, me and the fat kid. And when they were picking on the fat kid I never participated, just because it wasn't as fun as they made it look like...

Anyways, this made me have quite an aversion from calling names cursing and stuff, which I still have (if you hear/read me cursing you know I'm agitated...). So when i use the word Retard I mostly just refer to myself...

Oh, I didn't tell about the creation of TheOtherRetard.
It dates a few years back, to when I was playing Counterstrike 1.6 with my (younger) brother. One day we had the idea to name ourselves alike and have some kind of a "clan" feeling. After some suggestions we stopped on "Retard", since we never took ourselves quite seriously and did a lot of stupid stuff while playing the game...
This discussion was followed by a few days of me being away from the computer and when I came back my brother had taken "The_Retard". I quickly settled for "The_Other_Retard" and we went on shooting...

And I liked being the Other Retard. No-one expects much from me, so when I screw up they can say "What a retard!" ending up with me smiling.

One letter too long to fit on a sign...

Ever since that I kept on using the name for pretty much every other game I played, just to have something of a continuity. After the realization that my name was 1 letter too long to fit on a Minecraft sign I dropped the underscores in other games and went on playing.

It never occurred to me people could consider my name as an insult as I clearly name myself a retard, and no one else.

After all that time I'm proud of that name, I'm identifying myself with it and I don't plan on dropping the name because 2 people (of the millions on the internet) want me to change it.

I ended up changing my name as they added "Slurs and insults" to the Forum Name Rules, so I'm now registered as "ThOR"...
I won't fight this decision, there's been enough discussion on it. I'll still use "TheOtherRetard" as a first choice, "ThOR" if Retard is considered insulting and if that's taken I'll think of something similar.

Anyways, thank you for having read all this. If you have any comments, please post them, I'll respond on them as soon as possible.

-ThOR

PS: The story hasn't ended yet, there is a Part 2 of this post.

Writesel

 Some time ago (and this "some time" could've easily be a few years) I wrote something. I'll paste it here.

One

He's awake, but doesn't move out of lazyness

The warmth, the scents, the sounds of the world, ...
He registers all this until his mind is awake.

He slowly stretches to get rid of the sleep in his body.

Finally he stands up.
He goes outside.
The world is, Like always. Alight, but also with shadows.

He is all-one. His all is one, not more and no less.

Why is he alone?

He hasn't found anyone to be two with.

Is the two-being necessary?

No idea, He'd like to experience it, but if there's no-one it won't be possible.

He actually isn't looking anyway.

You look for something when you lost it.

You can't lose what you never had so you can't go and search for it.

Is he happy?
Why not, he is, and he will be. Is more needed for happiness? He's alone with himself, he isn't chased, he isn't missing anything, so why shouldn't he be happy?

He loves Silence. No, not silence, ...

Traquility.

He loves tranquility.

As long as there is tranquility, it is. Worries aren't present. Als long as there's tranquility he doesn't have to worry. As long as the tranquility is present.

How long will it be?

No idea, but if would've known therewouldn't be any tranquility because he'd be worrying.

Tranquility makes time, tranquility makes tranquile, tranquility makes more tranquility.

Tranquility makes time. Who has little time can use some tranquility to make some time. Who has more time has more tranquility, and with tranquility comes less worries.

...

He's hungry, he has to eat.

You have no idea how many folders I opened and closed before I found this. Folders I haven't opened in a few years... If computers had digital dust it would've been clouding my computer right now...
So I wrote this "some time ago" and send it to a few people, saved it in some folder and forgot about it. then some folderchanges, some reorganisations and some years later I forgot how it was called. Not only was it hard to find, I had to translate it, which wasn't easy. Original was in Dutch (I'm from Antwerp in Belgium), if anyone wants to have a look at it I can post it...
The translating wasn't really easy. For example the "tranquility" I refer to is something like "peace of mind", "quiescence", "calmness" or "quietness" or something... In dutch it's simply "rust".

Anyways...

Now it's made it on the World Wide Web and I'm actually quite happy it's here.
My main reason for writing this was an idea. First I had this story of some unknown creature that doesn't get described throughout the story. Then I made it more extreme by abandoning any description of place, time, object whatsoever, only reflecting thoughts.

Yes, it says "He goes outside", but there's absolutely no way of telling where this outside is, or what the inside is. Maybe he just went outside his "room", maybe outside his "home". And the "alight" is also arbitrary: what is the light? Might be the sun, but an electrical lamp is also a possibility. And what if some other sensorial organ (other than the eye) registers something as "alight"?

But still, while reading this I keep comparing it to a human being, I keep imagining it being human. I think this mainly is because we only know ourselves of reasoning this way, we can't possibly know how some other creature (or human being for that matter) processes this information, or reasons as here described.
Even I don't really know what this creature is or what it's supposed to be. I only know what I wrote down.

This was one of my "writesels". Maybe I'll write down more. There's an entire world evolving in my head... But it'll take some time to write them out. Anyways...

Any suggestions of what you think of it are always welcome.

Till the next time

-ThOR