Question Hi Everyone! I'm ngu0061.

Umm hi everyone! I'm ngu0061. First off I hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas Holidays! I'm from Australia and I'm enjoying my summer Christmas. We love to do everything backwards here.

I'm not very good with introductions but I'll try my best. I guess I'll start off with how I stumbled upon the Whately Academy Universe. I wasn't much of a reader when I was younger but when one day after having watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I couldn't wait any longer for the next movie and bought the book to read because I was impatient. It ignited my inner reader in me or something because after reading the Hobbit I just needed more to read. Books just goes into way more detail and you're free to imagine how the author describes certain things instead to being limited to how a certain thing is portrayed in a movie. A different reader will picture the same character in a different way than you would.
So eventually I decided to search online for stories written by online authors. That is when I stumbled on the then fan fiction story Absinthe written by Morpheus. What can I say about it. I LOVED IT!. I also found out that Absinthe 2 and its companion piece The Porcelain Mask was also available. I pretty much binged read them all. I was curious of the relationship between Fey and Absinthe that I had to search up the official canon stories and I ended up to the old site at crystalhall.

Besides reading I do enjoy a multitude of enjoyable pastimes. My most recent read was Ready Player One by Earnest Cline (a very good read). Mostly because of the movie trailer I saw months ago. My most recent movie was Bright on Netflix. Loved it despites the critics reviews. I enjoy the occasional video game now and then. I have so many games I would like to play but just can't seem to find the time to play them. I enjoy anime with my most recent being Houseki no Kuni(Land of the Lustrous). I also now have the habit of being impatient with anime and jump right into it's manga if I can't wait for the next episode. Which leads to my lost but found hobby of drawing.
"Lost but found" you ask? I really liked drawing when I was younger and it lead up into highschool but it was there that I found another student who was a lot better at drawing than I was. Instead of using that as an inspiration and motivation to get better at drawing my younger self decided to just give up art. Without going into much detail I decided to pick up drawing again and I really regret dropping it so long ago. It's only been about a year since I started drawing again but I strive to get better and not let myself give up so easily not just in drawing but in life.

Gosh I written alot. I'm not even a writer or anything as you can see with my bad grammar and lack of sentence structure.

You're also probably wondering why I have such a weird username...it was my highschool ID number. Our student ID cards would be numbered with the first 3 letters of our surname (in my case Nguyen) and the last 4 digits meant I was the 61st Nguyen that was registered to the school. Yeah...there were 61 or more Nguyens at my highschool. So back in 2006 when I first registered an account on YouTube I used that as my username and it's been that way ever since. I now use it for my Twitter account aswell.

To end off I'd like to share a gift to everyone here on the forums. Merry Christmas everyone! Thanks for accepting me as a member of The Crystal Hall!

Welcome and greetings for the season

Welcome, Merry Christmas, and that is a very good piece of artwork there.

Welcome to the party, the straight jackets are in the cloak room, feel free to help yourself. Also, Merry Christmas to you and please enjoy yourself!

Welcome! ... OMG, is that Absinthe Fanart? So awesome! ... I'd make the sig a bit clearer? White on Bright doesn't have enough contrast?

Welcome! Art skills are always welcome! Fanart even moreso! Not required though! That is an awesome picture. I bet you could make some money on the side with art skills like that, good practice if you ever wanted to go professional too.

Read everything, love everything (or don't, it's not required). Now, where did I put that Hotel California record? Oh, there it is... hey, who stole my record player? Dangit people, how am I supposed to curse newcomers into never leaving if I can't play my cursed record of Hotel Califonia? Seriously!

Oh and authors to check out: Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Rick Riordan, Karen Britain

Other authors I'd recommend are Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery, Robert A Heinlein, C S Lewis, and a few others... though I won't try to think them up right now. I've read so many books by so many people it is hard to really pick out the absolute best, but read all the Dragon Riders of Pern stories at least twice, and all the Heralds of Valdemar stories that exist at least once...

Larry Niven, fer shur. And let's not forget John Varley, please. And no list is ever completed without Terry Pratchett.

I forgot to say welcome to our little mad house! Oh and if you read Larry Niven, check out his long time partner Jerry Pournell. They write a lot together, but they both have books that they have individually written. On the net and free? Check out SOL for Al Steiner. Story name, Doing it all Over.

I would suggest Lois McMaster Bujold and Jo Clayton. The former writes a very good Space Opera universe centered around an unassuming chap named Miles Vorkosigan. And the Latter writes.... a LOT of stuff. My personal favorites are her 'Skeen' books

Oh my! So many recommendations! Thank you! To be more specific I really like fantasy stories. I like a little Lovecraftian horror too.

Bek D Corbin wrote: The former writes a very good Space Opera

I do love space but most of favourites have been space related movies like Sunshine and Interstellar.

Malady wrote: Welcome! ... OMG, is that Absinthe Fanart? So awesome!

Yes it's supposed to be Absinthe. Hope I got her close to how Morpheus envisioned her.

Malady wrote: ... I'd make the sig a bit clearer? White on Bright doesn't have enough contrast?

Thank you for the feedback I'll keep that in mind.

If you like Lovecraftian stories, try Charles Stross's The Laundry Files. H.P.Lovecraft meets John Le Carre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files but be careful digging through the Wikipedia pages, as there are some spoilers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070205005350/http://www.goldengryphon.com/Stross-Concrete.html

https://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/

First, Welcome!

Second, omg, Omg, OMG ARTIST!

In case you haven’t worked it out, for a bunch of Authors, we really like Artisits in this site, especially when they make art about the characters we love

Last, if you liked the Abstinth stories, Morpheus wrote two other “Fairy” stories.
The CHASM is almost his ‘alpha’ version of Abstinth, while The Changeling Chronicles is a first rate book in its own right.

Welcome to the asylum, and that is a very nice piece of art. I was wondering if anyone would ever do a fan piece of Absinthe.

Nice arts! Welcome to our lovely insanity.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: In case you haven’t worked it out, for a bunch of Authors, we really like Artisits in this site, especially when they make art about the characters we love

Good to know the authors like some art of their characters . If I ever do another Whateley character I'd like to talk to the author and get a better discriptive detail of how they'd like their character portrayed instead of just relying on my own imagination. Guess that shouldn't be too much of a problem now that I've registered to the forums.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: Last, if you liked the Abstinth stories, Morpheus wrote two other “Fairy” stories.
The CHASM is almost his ‘alpha’ version of Abstinth, while The Changeling Chronicles is a first rate book in its own right.

Yep I read those two. Looooved The Changeling Chronicles!

Morpheus wrote: Welcome to the asylum, and that is a very nice piece of art. I was wondering if anyone would ever do a fan piece of Absinthe.

I'm glad you liked it! Also thank you for sharing my Ribbon speedart/time-lapse video on the forums. It gave me a boost in views hehe.

That was you? AWESOME!

Welcome!

As for other stories, how is it that no one has mentioned Douglas Adams yet? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is certainly worth a read!

Though even more than with others, you will want to read the books first - unless you can get the original stories, from the radio series, as an audio recording. Adams semi-deliberately made each version - the radio plays, the books, the television series, the game, and the film, in roughly that order with the film being released posthumously - distinctly different, with only the starting points, the characters, and some specific scenes really being similar to the other versions; each is a variation on the themes of the series, but they all diverge.

I still haven't read or watched either Game of Thrones or Outlander, so I probably should get on those myself. This also reminds me to read the October Daye and Velveteen books - I really haven't been reading enough, and I owe it to Seanan if nothing else.

Definitely repeat the recommends for Larry Niven, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett. I specifically recommend Ringworld and The Integral Trees for Niven, most of the Discworld books for Pratchett, and Good Omens for both Pratchett and Gaiman.

Let's see... Iain Banks' Culture books are of interest. David Brin, certainly, especially the two Uplift trilogies - and despite the film, The Postman is actually a good read. The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Almost anything by Ursula Le Guin, but especially the Earthsea trilogy.

Oh, and if you are up for something in the way of other online series, and don't mind stories that are perhaps a bit more adult (or adolescence, as the case may be), try The Saga of Tuck and Sith Academy . And maybe Tales of MU , if you don't mind a bit of kink (OK, more than just a bit...).

EDIT: Bite me, Kunena Forum! Too many links my...

ngu0061 wrote: Oh my! So many recommendations! Thank you! To be more specific I really like fantasy stories. I like a little Lovecraftian horror too.

Just be careful that the horrors don't love you back. Well, not too much.

Bek D Corbin wrote: The former writes a very good Space Opera

I do love space but most of favourites have been space related movies like Sunshine and Interstellar. [/quote]
I'd second the Bujold recommendation. The series has a battle in space or two, but the stories and series are mostly driven by the characters. One couldeven consider Barrayar itself a character (usually one of the antagonists!)

Hello and welcome, I'm a little late to the party of welcoming ... err welcoming party? Anyhow. Loved your video. I was one of the ones in the comments saying " come join us! We don't bite!" ... ( though Domo might, but 'e's had his shots.) Anywho. Glad you decided to register. Now to fit you for your complimentary leg-irons, and assign you to the wiki-staff, so ALL the characters without portraits get one.

( Just kidding!!)

Welcome! More fan art please. These two are amazing and some of my fav Whateley characters.

Hiya there! Welcome to the forum!

Geez, for someone not good at intros, you sure wrote a lot, indeed! Geez! And being an artist too? Bonus! ^w^ Welcome!

Fanart is always nice, indeed, there's so many characters around, and a lot of them would deserve some attention. We even have a nice art section we can add in!

Hrmmm... Books... I'll admit, haven't read much books themselves (I'm still trying to catch up on the Original canon stories, getting closer though!)... But a friend of mine has been adamant that I read the Dresden Files, and I have bought just about most of them, and devoured each. Series has a bit of highs and lows, but certainly entertaining, in a twist of a wizard and wizardly world in the modern setting.

All I have to say...

"POLKA WILL NEVER DIE!"

...

Tough crowd.

In any case, again, welcome in ^^

Welcome to the madhouse.
Merry belated Christmas, and great work on drawing Absinthe.