Hello Penny Arcade! I go by Swordstone on these here internets and I would like to reserve this space to introduce myself. If there is a different avenue through which I should be doing that, my apologies. If introductions are some breach of etiquette here, then blame the five year gap I've had in internet forum membership.

I have been an avid reader of the Penny Arcade comics for almost eight years. I know that this is not an uncommon tale, but the reason WHY I started reading probably is, and for those of you who've been around long enough, I hope it doesn't make us enemies right off the bat. I don't know how many of you are veteran enough to be aware of Squidi and the controversy its creator caused when he, well, went batshit crazy on these very forums. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can see it more in depth here. Let's just say that I was... on the wrong side of that controversy. I was only thirteen years old at the time and while I wasn't new to the internet, I was new to the concept of the internet as a community. Before I discovered forums, I thought the internet was nothing more than an entertaining tool on which I could play games. I joined Squidi's foums a couple months before my thirteenth birthday after my twelve year old mind was overcome with wonder at his jokes about testicles... I was enthralled. Here was this artist and he regularly spoke with people on this strange internet community. I hate to admit it, but I was devoted to this guy. Aaaand then he threw a hissy fit about people in THIS forum using images of one of his characters. Now, overreactions were actually pretty common with Sean. I remember one instance in which I was suspended for three days for disagreeing with him in the most polite way I knew how (I was his thrall, remember) in an aggressive political debate on the forums. But when he declared war on Penny Arcade, he opened up a whole new can of worms.

See, before this point, I was only vaguely aware that other webcomics even existed. When I first heard Sean's side of it all, even I was a bit skeptical, but I joined his pathetic crusade regardless. No, I never spammed these forums, but I found other avenues through which to herald what I perceived as this dork's greatness. After a while, however, I became curious about PA and it wasn't long thereafter that I became a devoted fan. Eventually, Squidi left the internet in defeat, vowing never to return (and yet he has, with a now humorless webcomic) and I was left to find new online forums to revel in my weirdness.

Devoted though I was to Penny Arcade, I stayed away from these forums mostly out of shame for my part in this sad little tale. Yet here I am, almost eight years later, looking for a new community. I'm far wiser about the internet and life now than I was in my tweens and am looking for a home here at PA. I plan to use this as a place to find fellow tabletop gaming enthusiasts, not to bring up some eight year old argument that a barely pubescent young me was involved in.

So let's try this again.

Hello. My name is Swordstone. I like games.