User:Christoph Schrader

Words of Welcome
I seem to be back after a very long hiatus, and so, however you have stumbled across my userpage, welcome to it! While you are here, sit down, and have a cup of tea with as many lumps of sugar as you like.

And just who am I, you ask?
I should hope you would know because you clicked a link that brought you to a page with a title you should have read! Well, regardless, since you have asked, I am Christoph, just as the title of the page says. That is the German version of Christopher, and, if I had to guess, I should say the Germans probably borrowed it from the French, who write it Christophe and pronounce it more Frenchly; neither is technically my real name, though I do happen to fancy both, and the English version, too. Schrader, or Schraeder as it should properly, or Schräder as it should more properly, be spelt, is the German word for taylor, apparently, though I also like the variants Schroeder/Schröder, which appears as the Japanese form of the name in that infobox you see somewhere or other on this page; well, at least, I hope you see it, for I am glitch-prone, and the Wiki may not like the markup I used to make it, even though I have probably just copied and pasted it from somewhere or other.

I wish there were some sort of deep significance to my pseudonym, though the simple truth behind it is that I fancy German names....

Interests
I can say, without hesitation, that my most enduring interest is literature. I absolutely love to read, especially the great novels of yesteryear which show both how great a novel can be and how poorly many of my contemporaries who fancy themselves writers understand their craft. I am the eternal adversary of the silly writers who fancy themselves "modernists" and who think that their nonsensical experimentations with language constitute artistic products. They do not, and never shall. I also like writing archaically in a rather comically-formalistic sort of way (at least, I hope it strikes you as comical, or else you shall probably be wondering why I speak so stiffly).

English is, of course, my mother tongue, and, should you dare abuse it in my presence, you ought to prepare yourself for the worst. Perhaps ironically, I am a proponent of orthographic reform; this does not mean spelling words phonetically, which is an absolutely atrocious thing to do, but rather the restoration of internal consistency to English orthography, howevermuch it baffles continentals when we use e where they use i and so forth. Ammending the system we already have to fix the inconsistencies, largely by applying our native English and Norman spellings to the foreign words which do not conform to them, should fix our orthographic problems quite nicely, though we may have to invent a few spellings or apply a lot of them analogically, but nothing is perfect.

I also have an abiding love of video games, which, of course, include Kingdom Hearts, and also Tales, Star Ocean, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Mario.

One of my favourite pastimes is writing, samples of which may be perused here:

http://countchristoph.deviantart.com/

I encourage you not to like it too well, for that is the thing I want least and my ego wants most!

And why Kingdom Hearts?
But why not? I must own I found the premise a bit outlandish at first, but I grew to find the games quite endearing, and it was through them that I discovered Final Fantasy, some of which I have also enjoyed immensely -- largely because I love all manner of fanciful things, though I never could quite stomach much in the way of what claims to be modern fantasy literature. There is simply something endearing about the series that cannot be easily explained, even though I was rather disappointed by Kingdom Hearts II (which I did enjoy nonetheless, though I cannot say I think it should be able to surprise without the popularity of the first game), and I especially dislike every change made to Hollow Bastion in the sequel, which seems to, quite unfortunately, carry over into everything else. I liked the rather melancholy world of pipes and pillars a fair deal better better before the town was rebuilt. This also bids one wonder what was done with all the incorrectly-moving water to reveal the immense amounts of now-columnar crystal.

And, on that note, Radiant Garden is a silly name, it ought to have been renamed something like "Bastion Hollow" or "Hallowed Bastion", or something which retained the sound and sense of the original, number of letters be dashed!

Contact Information
If, for some reason or other, you should need to contact me in private, the following resources may be used:

My personal e-mail address: bastianfayre@gmail.com The above is also linked to my MSN account. I am not reachable by Facebook, Twitter, or any other form of social networking.

Off the Wiki
Other than my DeviantArt account, which may be found both under the "interests" section and below, I use no other form of social networking.

http://countchristoph.deviantart.com/