Oh man, I nearly forgot about this picture! Today went by in something of a haze, my apologies.

ANYWAY. Today (technically yesterday by my clock) is/was the fifth anniversary of the day I sat down and wrote a character sheet for a new RP character, this ugly red-haired dude called Theodric Predderstaffen.

Little did I know, ladies and gents. Little did I know. It might be stretching a point to say Theo has changed my life more than some real people, but I do know that he started me down the road that led to my grim and dusty fate as a history major.

No, seriously. See, when I was a kid I hated history, mostly because I thought history was about dates and stuff (although, looking back, I read a lot of history and was quite a geek about it, but I didn't realize at the time that it was history). Reading Page Smith's US history series in high school did much to break down my prejudices, but I still believed that my heart lay with linguistics (I liked it, okay. I still sort of do).

Then, you know, I had this RP character. And the RP died. And I wanted a setting in which to keep writing him, so I decided to build one. I still remember vividly the spring morning I woke up and said to myself "wait, self, you want an island nation kind of like England... why not just use England? And, right, add magic and stuff." Since I knew nothing about medieval England I started researching.

Holy cow.

Suddenly, I realized that history was awesome.

And it kept getting more awesome, and somehow the linguistics thing fell by the wayside, and then somehow I found myself telling everyone I wanted to be a history major, and then somehow that was my major, and now I'm not sure how far it's going to take me but I have this little pipe dream where I get my PhD and write my dissertation on something related to the Investiture Controversy.

And that's the story of how Theo made me a history major.

In-character, unfortunately, he's a great deal less admirable and accomplishes pretty much nothing no matter what setting I put him in (whines, betrays, murders, dramatizes, and dies horribly, one for each setting. I'm not telling which is which). He's a loser and a jerk and frankly, he creeps me out sometimes.

But after all these years I can't ditch the beggar, and hey, I'm kinda fond of him.

So happy birthday to Theo.

P.S. The donkey ears on the last Theo are an old, old joke. There may be one or two iterations of it buried in my gallery.