Crüniac 
Welcome, Explorers! This one’s going to be a little different, because this time we’ve got a couple of complete nuts at the helm. Here, with all of our beloved(ish) inability to restrain ourselves from interrupting people, it’s Crüniac and Aelus. Today we’ll be grilling and dissecting the community’s favorite die-hard optimist, TheHopeful Loser! So strap in, boys and girls, because it’s about to get eccentric.
Crüniac: Please, introduce yourself.
Hopeful: Hello fellow Explorers, Fed family, Empire fam, and my Union onions. I am the HopefulLoser, as you know me, and more personally my name is Maximilian. I hail from California but grew up in Miami, Florida, and now you’ll find me on the west coast again in Portland, Oregon. I do data analytics for a living, so I am quite handy on a computer. Generally speaking though, my passion is gaming. I’ve always done it. There’s so many stories I could go into, of LAN parties with my brother and the other boys playing Halo in the same house, running from room to room after completely dominating a game, just endless stories of that nature and other things that we’re not gonna go into in more detail in this interview. Just an avid gamer, an avid sci-fi fanatic, and this is how you find me here in PlanetQuest. Generally speaking I’m always available, and you’ll usually find me in the Storyline chat. That‘s predominantly where I am. As soon as the game starts, please look me up. I’m always going to be around to help out.
Crüniac: So, first question from me: Tell us about the name. Is there a story there?
Hopeful: It starts with my introduction into the crypto scene. I was very much a hopeless loser, and I had no idea which way to go. Through general perusal of projects and different groups of people building crypto related products, I came across a story of these guys out in China. I suppose it’s a cultural thing out there that there’s groups of people known as “hopeful losers,” and essentially that’s what that group of people was. It was a band of hopeful losers. They got together, and they built this project. They created their coin, and they were successful. I didn’t track this project, mind you, but I was inspired by that. So I thought, I’m gonna be the first hopeful loser in my area. I’m gonna create this movement for myself, and then it evolved from there. Being a hopeful loser is when you know you can be number one, always hopeful and ultimately victorious, but you end up losing a lot along the way. It’s a nod to never giving up. I may be a loser in some cases, but as long as I have my hope, I’m good.
Aelus: Hopeful, you’ve said several times that what drew you to PlanetQuest was sci-fi and that it’s a theme that you’re very interested in, so I was curious to know when that started. How did you become a fan of sci-fi?
Hopeful: Oh, that’s a great question, Aelus. Sci-fi for me was always something that, for lack of a better word, I was ‘drawn’ to. For the longest time I associated sci-fi with space, and space had this mysticism for me ever since I was a child. You wonder what is really out there and grow up hearing stories of the boogieman. Well, the boogieman was always what I couldn’t see, and that for me was space. I knew as a child I could never touch the stars, not unless I became an astronaut, or understand what lies amongst them. It was always the fear of not understanding, not knowing, and I guess sci-fi was my connection to explore that unknown.
Aelus: I can imagine!
Hopeful: But it was just completely captivating! All that stuff became my boogieman, and sci-fi for me has evolved into so many facets. You have the horror sci-fi, non-fiction documentaries, then more into the fiction side of things: Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, and a plethora of other things. More recently, The 100, The Expanse…there are just so many different things one can explore with sci-fi, and all of them, if you notice, have to do with space. So for Planetquest it was an easy, easy equation for me. You know, planets, space, quest for planets, alright that’s already enough to draw me in, and as you both know, it was so, so much more than that.
Crüniac: That actually leads in very nicely into my next question, which is: What prompted you to step up, back in December?
Hopeful: Ah jeez, that for me was the passion for the project. Most of us would agree, on the Mod Team and even members of the community that are out there holding the PQ banner very high and very proudly. I saw an opportunity to, essentially, do what I do best: connect with people who share the same like-minded ambitions and experiences and joys for sci-fi. This was the first space oriented project I came across in web3, so I saw this opportunity to not only connect with many different kinds of people who fall in line with my interests, but to also set this project aside in my own mind. I wanted it to actually function in a way that I thought would be beneficial to it and all my fellow Explorers. I saw no better way than to connect the masses of people that, like me, were bitten by the sci-fi bug, and all it takes is a little push—that catalyzing force—to connect everyone. The rest, from there, is history. Once we all got together in the Canteens and the Space Lounge, it was some Federation Blue Label Vodka, some Grilled Onions, and some Empire Spices for us!
Crüniac: Ahh, those were the days.
Crüniac: Since you mentioned that sort of fascination and fear with sci-fi films like Alien, I’m curious to know what the first video-game you got hooked on was.
Hopeful: Great question! First video game that I’ve ever gotten just absolutely enthralled with would have to be, and I don’t think anyone is gonna know this game, and again it kinda plays into my love of being scared—
Crüniac: My own answer to this question is something no one would ever have heard of either, so…
Aelus: I’m already on Google. Just say the name and I’ll look it up.
Hopeful: So the name of this game that I was completely enthralled with, which had like a comical aspect to it even though there was so much fear involved—like genuine fear as a child if you played this game there is no possible way way you would be not scared unless you were taking valium—
Aelus: *Cries a little bit*
Hopeful: —or you were just, I don’t know, emotionally dead, or something… So, the game is called “Blood.” In this game, you play a gunslinger who’s been killed, his family’s been killed, you’ve been taken by Tchernobog, a dark demon lord, and you rise from the dead in vengeance. The whole game is just you fighting dead creatures, the miscreants of hell, and it’s just so terrifying. It’s very much akin to the first Duke Nukem on Nintendo 64, if that makes any sense, but it’s just a computer game.
Aelus: I’m looking at the pictures, and it’s for MS-DOS.
Crüniac: Oh my God.
Aelus: So, ‘97. I was not that young, but you guys are younger so you were very young playing this.
Hopeful: Oh yeah, which would speak to my love of hardcore gaming and challenging myself. I feel like the fear is something to be channeled, right? Especially if it’s in a controlled environment. The mysticism of sci-fi and wonders of space, the immersiveness of gaming… These are controlled environments where you can explore fear.
Crüniac: Hopeful, what is the first thing that you want to do when pre-alpha first drops? When you first load up into the game, what is the first thing you want to do?
Hopeful: Go through my epic gear loadout. One-hundred percent.
Aelus and Crüniac: *Chuckles*
Hopeful: Yes, I’m definitely going through my epic gear load out, and I’m going to fully explore any and all mechanics that I can, right? In this pre-alpha, I will do any and all quests or missions available to me…and on the hardest difficulty of course. Yep!
I’m gonna really go through each and every single one of my Planets that I am hopefully able to buy in the Planet Sale. I wholeheartedly want to explore them though during pre-alpha. If I’m capable of going through the environments—throwing on a loadout and just, whether doing a mission or not, walk around a small area of my Planets in my flashy gear, then I’m totally squared away.
Aelus: So, just directly asking, then. Talk to us about playing hardcore.
Hopeful: Oh boy.
Aelus: Why do you choose this sort of lifestyle? Why do you like pain?
Hopeful: What motivates me to literally (figuratively I hope) self-flagellate? I can answer this. I can answer this in an eloquent fashion, I promise. It has to do with, again, controlled environments of fear. When you talk about hardcore, I immediately imagine like any real game, right? Playing ninja gaiden on any difficulty, the original ninja gaiden—
Aelus: Right.
Hopeful: —that was hardcore. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten that game. It slaps me up. The game punishes me. That is a game I regret playing hardcore. But I still do it.
Aelus: Gaming in our childhoods was generally hardcore. Whatever you were playing, those side scrolling games—
Hopeful: Correct. Games were generally unforgiving.
Aelus: —absolutely hardcore.
Hopeful: Very unforgiving. So I feel like this has conditioned me, right? And then when you think of more modern hardcore games like Diablo, for example, or playing Halo on legendary with all the skulls turned on, like a madman. Things like that. That’s kinda how I prefer to play my games. The reason is because, yeah, although sometimes it does make me mad, of course, but it’s the challenge. It’s the defeat behind it, that ultimate defeat of say, for example, Diablo. Your character dies after 500 hours of playing, you have multiple gear sets, numerous legendary gems, and they’re completely maxed out, and you’re crushing greater rifts left and right, and then you make one mistake and your character dies.
Aelus: Oh my god.
Hopeful: That’s truly heartbreaking. *Laughs at own pain*
Aelus: That is truly heartbreaking. Oh my God.
Hopeful: That’s when it’s okay, even as a hardcore gamer, to take a day or two—
Crüniac: Take a day or two to throw your monitor out the window.
Aelus and Hopeful: *Kek’ing intensifies*
Hopeful: A day or two is customary. You know, just like funeral rites.
Crüniac: Complete change of subject: Do you have any beard care tips?
Hopeful: Haha, oh boy, bear care tips. I was expecting this one for sure.
Crüniac: I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you.
Hopeful: No, no, I knew you wouldn’t. Okay, Beard Tips 101. You gotta have shaved your face, right? If you’re starting out with peach fuzz, shave your face. Every three or four days—that’s how you start a beard, as if you had a beard. This promotes even hair growth across your face. You may or may not have issues with hair follicles coming in in an ingrown manner. This is something that, usually, your face becomes more accustomed to, but it could depend on the type of razor you’re using or even the method in which you shave your face. So these are all things you have to consider, but that’s the start. So let’s say you’ve done this already. Moving forward you already have some nice beard stubble coming in, right? You’re pretty proud of it. It’s not even hanging off your face yet, and you’re still like a beard minnow. You gotta brush it. You gotta stimulate those hair follicles. You get one of those nice boar bristle brushes, right? With the wood handle, and you just brush your face. Feels good, trust me. Feels real good.
Aelus: *Laughs in minnow*
Hopeful: All right, so let’s move on. It’s been a couple months now, you’ve got some beard coming off your face. I strongly advise you pay close attention to the mustache area and the corners of your mouth. You wanna ensure you are shaving this area so that it does, in fact, form the goatee bridge. It’s very important to have a nice full beard. Now, the soul patch, right? That’s right under your bottom lip. That’s that nice, stylish piece of man-patch fur. You gotta maintain it. You gotta start brushing it downwards. You can’t have it all scraggly and looking all over the place, getting into your mouth. It’s not cool. So, when you brush, you brush down nice and even. You brush it the entire time you’re growing your beard. If you want to trim for style, that’s on you. My advice is to actually grow your beard out like you’re Moses, or something like that, or perhaps like some sort of hipster, and then at that point you have a lot more to work with when you trim. You can style, you can form, like, specific shapes if you want, you can go for the Leonidas, right? That’s real cool. You can go for the Kratos beard, right? God-of-War? These are just examples I throw out there. But yeah, those are beard tips. You can also oil your beard! I would not over-oil your beard. Be very spare with the oil, and if you want great trimming, you have to do it with a pair of scissors. So I’m not sure if we have any further questions that I could expand upon as far as beard tips, but these are your first beard tips.
Crüniac: I am so not disappointed. I’m so glad I asked.
Aelus: *Still laughing*
Hopeful: Okay, Beard Tips 101 has gone well.
Crüniac: It really has. I feel like an expert already.
Aelus: It was really good. I am gonna be embarrassed to post my picture with my beard. I just know Hopeful is gonna look at it and say ‘No, no, no, no, no, you’re doing it all wrong!’
Crüniac: I’m just gonna shave. I have no beard to speak of, so…(incidentally, Crüniac has recently begun curating his beard)
Hopeful: In Beard Care 201, we can go into straight razor shaving. That’s where you get into the real nitty gritty, like fancy man stuff. Where you just pamper yourself.
Full transcript of the interview: Read more here
Interviewers: Crüniac and Aelus
Interviewee: TheHopefulLoser
Editors: Crüniac, TheHopefulLoser, and Luffy
Graphics: Luffy
- Meet the Mod: TheHopefulLoser - June 16, 2022
How awesome!
As someone who grades papers every day, I enforce the Oxford comma with a vengeance.