Hiya!

Hi! I'm new here, and thought it would be appropriate to put an introductory post up before I started posting all over the place I've been lurking here for about a week now, and I have to say I've pretty much fallen in love with this forum. I can relate to so many of the people here, and I've found the environment to be extremely helpful and supportive.

Well, about me... let's see... Well, first off, I'm 16 years old, and I'm gay, hehe. I've known I was gay since about 11 or 12, but I've always known that I was "different," I just didn't know the proper term. I've always accepted the fact that I'm gay, but only recently have I really become proud of who I am. My thoughts are basically "I am who I am, and if your opinion of me is going to take a turn for the worse due to something as insignificant as the gender of the people I'm attracted to, you don't matter to me anyway."

This is going to be really cliche, I know, but I also REALLY enjoy both Lady Gaga and Glee. Those two things are probably the only "gay" things about me (aside from the fact that I like guys), as I typically act pretty straight - and it's not a facade, it's just who I happen to be. A lot of people think I'm constantly "acting," and wonder when I'm going to stop. What they don't understand is that it's totally possible to be gay and still act straight But back to the whole Gaga thing, and this is just an interesting little tidbit that I am personally excited about, two of my best friends and I have recently decided that we'll be going to the next concert near our town for the upcoming Born This Way tour - YAY!

Hmm... I also enjoy video games. A lot. Probably a little too much >.> lol. I play a whole lot of World of Warcraft (and for those of you out there who play too - I know you're there... Isn't Firelands AWESOME???), hehe. I play a Holy Paladin and have since the very beginning of Wrath, when I leveled as Holy after switching from the mage I played during Burning Crusade. Every once in a while my WoW guildmates and I will play some Team Fortress 2 together, since it's recently become available for free via Steam. I'm not much on the typical "shoot em up" games like Call of Duty, but I did really enjoy Halo 3, mostly because of the storyline. I'm a sucker for a good story...

Probably the biggest thing about me, though, is that I'm a debater. I'm on my high school's debate team and LOVE it -- it's what I want to do with my life. For those select few of you who also debate, I do Policy Debate, and recently placed 3rd at our district tournament, qualifying for State as an alternate. This year in debate has been pretty shaky, as we've recently made the transition to a new coach, but we hope to be back on our feet again next year. Debate is pretty much my life... If I'm not with my friends, and I'm not on WoW, you can pretty much guess what I'm doing -- researching for debate.

Anyway, that's probably enough about me. I'm really excited to be here and can't wait to start talking some more with you wonderful people!

 

I've had SO many good debates... Very rarely do I go into a round and come out of it thinking that it was really easy (granted some ARE easier than others, and I do have a 31:11 win/loss ratio - there just aren't really that many bad debaters out there). The best debates I have are always the really close ones, because there are generally really good arguments being made on both sides. The one I would consider the "best," however, is at district last year when I (accidentally) took out my partner and I's own argument through another argument that I made, but still managed to make something else up on the fly and defend it until the end, ending up winning the round.

Basically, it went like this. (Disclaimer: you have no idea what side you will be arguing until about 30 minutes before the round. You are forced to argue both sides of any topic, regardless of whether or not you actually agree with the side.) The opposing team was arguing that by pulling out of Afghanistan, we could solve terrorism worldwide. The arguments that we were initially making against that were "no we won't, number one terrorism will never be solved, and number two we will just cause more terrorism if we pull out." Somewhere down the line, I thought that it would be a good idea to present some evidence that said something along the lines of "nothing extremely bad comes from terrorism, just some minor attacks that can be controlled." Looking closely, you'll see that that takes out the impact of more terrorism from pulling out - basically, why would it matter if there were more of it if it didn't matter in the first place? Yeah, not a good idea on my part. My partner was PISSED. But I did manage to come up with something along the lines of "pulling out decreases US relations with Russia, and then Russia goes nuclear, and kills us all." Which somehow we won on >.> It was fun, hehe.

Yes, yes it is! And honestly you aren't missing out on much with Cataclysm - it's basically the same old grind, but I guess if you like that kind of thing (like me, haha, I just enjoy raiding in general) then it's pretty good. That and the new environments kind of make things "feel" new.

 

WoW has definitely lost its shine throughout its years, but it is still an AMAZING game and I would choose it over any other MMO. It honestly has something for everyone, which, while a lot of people complain about that, that is the single thing that attributes to its wild success.