User:Erik the Appreciator

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All About Erik (AAE)
Greetings, greetings. I'm Erik Jensen, editing from California. As a bureaucrat, I do both heavy page-editing and some important housekeeping, even though I usually don't spend all day making minor edits to a lot of pages. I pretty much haunt a select few Wikis, mainly this one, and aside from the above sites listed and occasional posts at a Golden Sun forum, I don't post or appear anywhere else on the Internet, and I don't give out my email address.

I'm a very non-aggressive person, and also quite lazy and prone to procrastination. On anything that's a Wiki or something like it, I always try to think from the perspectives of the other people making edits, and if there's someone I disagree with, I look for ways to compromise and collaborate. The self-imposed title "Appreciator" refers to my tendency to be very forgiving with what I see and read in stories, as well as how I like to go out of my way to understand what the developers of a show or game have in mind instead of randomly rant or rave about what I see on the surface through a quick glance; I can appreciate pretty much any type of character and plot element, and if there's something in a story or game I don't like, rather than bitch about it I ignore it so I can focus on the other aspects that are better.

The biggest thing I don't like is nonconstructive criticism. Basically, if someone doesn't like something, they would do well to explain how and why, because that feels like a well-supported opinion that can be respected. Straight blanket statements like how something *is* bad, without paying any attention or respect to those that happen to like it, on the other hand: As Sonic Sez, "That's no good." :P People won't like you if you insult their favorite franchise just for the sake of having something to randomly rant at, but I can at least say that I'll respect and ignore your misgivings if you provide an understandable reasoning and show you don't have anything stupidly personal against other people that think differently.

Golden Sun is the one series I ended up deciding to embrace completely because I really loved it back when I played the two games back-to-back in 2004 (at a time when my life also happened to become a lot easier since I was coming out of high school x_x). I definitely like high fantasy and magic and the sorts, and there's certainly huge examples of that in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings which I pay attention to, but what endeared me to Golden Sun is that, at the same time it felt somewhat complete as a setting and mythos, it has so much potential for future expansion and development. Golden Sun DS certainly looks set to realize this. As for the characters, what made me appreciate them for life is that they're not insanely developed and deep; they're probably the only characters I've seen where a lack of development makes them more interesting, because the reader then wants to see them developed and starts imagining ways they could be. I theorize this to be the driving force behind Golden Sun's fan fiction and shipping communities. ^_^

Transmission ending... Erik Jensen (Appreciate me here!)

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Past and Current Activities
This wiki's pretty much my "constructive" free-time activity, and I've certainly made use of that to supply a large portion of the wiki's content over the years. Some examples of my insanity dedication:
 * Writing the complete articles on the main characters and rewriting them: Isaac, Garet, Ivan, Mia, Felix, Jenna, Sheba, Piers, Alex, Saturos, Menardi, Karst, Agatio, Kraden, and Babi.
 * Completely writing every article in the following templates, attempting to make the Wiki the ultimate Golden Sun bestiary.
 * Completely writing every article in the following template, hopefully giving the Wiki another layer of informative prestige in that there is now no better resource on or off the Internet about the somewhat complicated Djinn business.
 * Writing the merged article on the complicated subject of Alchemy, including explanations of the Golden Sun and the Stone of Sages
 * And a lot of other things, such as updating 4-Koma Gag Battle and having written Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

It is pretty much my dream at this site to work on pages about Golden Sun DS-related matters. 8D

In pretty much all of these ventures and the other stuff in between, I work closely with Zabbeth and (at one time) HungryPaperweight, as well as any other user that attempts to be "mainstream".
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Erik's Miscellany
Who doesn't love pimping in the Golden Sun world? Or buffing?

Check /A_Man_In_Black_user_page_preservation for a troll's rant on Wikipedia that you might find extremely funny too.

Then, take a look at /Erik's own sandbox to see my own, uh, sandbox. You know, where I put up drafts of my own if necessary.

If you want Dark Dawn to be much more of an engaging RPG challenge, I invite you to /My Dark Dawn Challenge.

Finally, check my collection of snapshots of Isaac in Brawl to see how he sure would've fit as a playable character.