Coo coo ka-choo, how do you do?
It's so exciting to start something fresh! The ability to imagine all the possibilities of where all of your effort will go? It's kinda overwhelming sometimes.
I guess I should introduce myself, huh? I'm known online as Rusty(y) and I'm an African-American nearly 24yo woman with an obsession of starting new hobbies. I'm a big fan of platforming, role-playing, and simulator games and play them on a variety of systems. I jokingly call myself a fake gamer as I don't play many competitive first person shooters, but I was an avid league of legends player and only quit because of internet issues. To be a cliché "not like other girls" girl, I also like anime, manga, foreign dramas, and young adult novels.
I've been a fan of video games for as long as I can remember. Coming from a family of Gamers™, I've always had a console or two in arms reach since I was a toddler. I remember asking to play "Mr. Mark", better known as Grand Theft Auto III, and having to turn the volume all the way down because little me liked to sing along to unknowingly explicit lyrics. I'd watch fearfully under the covers as my aunt played Fatal Frame after my mom and I had gone to sleep. I was mostly contained to kid friendly platformers like Spyro, Crash, or Sonic, eventually moving to Mario when my mom bought me a Gameboy Advance SP for Christmas and later a Gamecube for my birthday the next year.
When I wasn't sneaking to add more time to my game hour timer, I watched a ton of cartoons after school. Born in 1999, I grew up another "last good generation of cartoons" but in the mid to late 2000s. I refused to watch live action media, calling them "people shows/movies," and still prefer animation to this day. Since I watched with my mom or my (hyper Christian) grandma, my tastes were formed by them. Watching gross out shows like Invader Zim or supernatural shows like Danny Phantom had to wait until I had my own room with my own TV. While most kids were off watching Phineas and Ferb, which my mom absolutely loathed, I was sitting up at midnight waiting for Wow Wow Wubbzy reruns to begin.
Because my grandpa worked on computers since the dinosaur age, we had a pretty wicked basement set up complete with Windows XP at the nice early time of... 2008?! When not pestering my family from doing actual work, I spent countless hours making up stories on Microsoft Word or venturing through very not age appropriate early Youtube. It was here I found my love of fan content, in the form of AMVs and poorly animated parody clips, but mostly the huge amount of fan art of things that other kids in my class weren't interested in. If I wanted to talk about Pucca, I just had to info dump my friends and hope they got the jist. Now I could find endless videos of angsty 2000s songs on top of Blingee gifs for any media I could imagine.
After years of trying to figure out how I could be like the artists I looked up to online, and not particularly getting better at art itself, I taught myself how to crochet. At first, I'd set my sights on learning to sew from a panel I had attended at a convention, but I soon found out how expensive the starting point for such a complicated hobby was. With only a few costume related sewing patterns, I explored the rest of the craft store as usual, trying to find something to make the trip worth it. My mom and I have joked for years about how "chewable" yarn looked and I decided to pick up a hook, a pattern set, and a skein of yarn as a joke. Little did I know, over the course of the next few months, I probably spent twice as much as any upscale sewing machine on piles and piles of yarn. I started with misshapen hats and scarves, eventually evolving into trying out clothing and plush patterns that were way too advanced for my skill level. Nowadays, the patterns are intimidating but very doable as long as I have enough time, patience, and audiobooks. x)
Wow, what a long autobiography. Sorry for taking up so much of your time. I feel like one of those recipes with extreme tangents about assorted family members. I figured I should info dump about myself on my first ever post instead of blathering on in future, more important posts. Hopefully somewhere in these massive paragraphs, an understanding of where I'm coming from can be found. If not, just know I'm a super nerd who will explode if I don't share something from the media I enjoy with others who also enjoy it. Interacting with fanbases has always been my dream, so I hope I can make things that will give me an "in" to start making friends.