Good Evening Dudes, Dudettes, Splinterlanders, Rising Stars, Exoders, Cryptobrewers, Monsutas and all the other critters and beasties residing on the wax & hive chains.
This will be my first time ever blog and I am quite nervous writing this as I have no clue how people will be receiving my mad ramblings - feel free to give me your honest opinions in the comments.
Criticism is the mother of experience - you cannot learn if you don't know what error yui made
I was planning on making a post about my experiences on the block chain at some point, but after reading Zapf's Drabs' posts I was inspired to write an introduction first.

I find the most difficult subject to talk about is yourself.
I don't mean just describing yourself - everyone has a couple arms, legs, some hair, one or the other eye color - but describing who you are, your personality, your life experiences and your thoughts; things that make up who you are and not how you look.
I respect people who can do it easily; for me, every experience or story I share, I live through it again.
I was born with a very good memory, a strong will and strong feelings; those traits are definitely assets, but they do come with their own sets of downsides.
The biggest one is probably that I get emotional and cry easily, some of my viewers might have noticed it when i was talking about how i felt about the community and the rest of the #NoSleepGang.
I've learned to live with it and though some people feel put off when it happens, I still hope that they won't judge me too harshly.

Who am I?

Let's start with my Name: Dmitri Dmitrievitch Barabanov
Similar to the Arabian & Nordic culture, in russian culture the kids get a middle name that is related to the first name of their father.
Since my father is called Dmitri as well, that explains the Dmitri Dmitrievitch ;)
Born in Russia, I've moved to Luxembourg when i was 6 years old and have lived here ever since.
I've started my gaming career at the age of 4 (possibly longer, but that's as far as I can remember) when I was playing war and other simple card games with my grandparents.
My first gaming console was a Tetris console followed by a fat grey Game Boy with the first Super Mario Brothers Game (yes I was a Gameboy OG xD).
A couple years later you saw me playing Batman and power rangers on the sega mega drive II, followed by the N64, Gamecube, PS2, WII, all kinds of handhelds and finally PC. That's what stuck - I'm still playing the wii with friends sometimes, but if I wanna game it's the PC for me.
Last year i've finally fulfilled my longtime wish of getting an actual powerful gaming rig for vr gaming, programming and music & video editing.

My rig.jpeg

Careerwise I am a programmer and have worked on both front-end and back-end so far; Websites & applications, testing and servers - basically i dabbled a bit in the different programming fields and thus have a bit of an extended view when programming compared to a specialist focusing on only one field. This has a lot to do with my inborn curiousity for all things unknown and the fact that I always want to understand things at their core.

My other half

About 8 years and 16 days ago, I've met my lovely wife for the very first time and went to the movies with her.
We've actually met on the internet and were basically chatting for barely 2 weeks and i had a suspicion when I asked her out, but as soon as we met it became certainty - I was in love and the first thing i did was kiss her and tell her that.
For a second I was scared that the feeling wasn't mutual, but fortunately that wasn't the case and fastforwarding 5 years of ups & downs, we found ourselves in St. Petersburg my city of birth to celebrate our marriage with the whole family.

First dance.jpg

This is an unedited photo of our first dance and by pure chance, you can actually see my three siblings on the left side of the photo. Going from tallest to smallest they are:

Mikhail Barabanov; my true sibling, 3.5 years younger than me
Antonia Redwood; my half-english-sister on my mothers side, 12.5 years younger than me
Sofiane Yamani; my half-algerian-brother on my mother's side again, 16 years younger than me

There were 2 reasons why I was adamant about holding the wedding in St. Petersburg:

I wanted to make it the most unforgettable event in my wife's life and St.Petersburg is THE place were you can make a woman feel like a Queen on her wedding day and where you can rent a palace... that's right; a palace hall as the event venue for a totally affordable price (Okay I confess, I did get a lot of things at half price because my father still lives in St. Petersburg and has many connections, which is why it all worked out without taking loans xD).
I wanted my grandmother; my father's mother to be present at my wedding...
She was already too old and week to travel and thus it was the only way to make her a part of it.
I owe her so much and it was probably one of the most important and most correct decisions in my entire life, because... she died last October due to Covid...
It felt as if a chunk was carved out of my heart when my father told me the news and the worst thing about it was that due to the covid situation I did not even have the possibility to be there with my father and to my last respects... It still hurts tremendously to even think about it but I do not believe in repressing memories and feelings; even sad ones. It is what makes us human and it honours the people that made us who we are today...

I'm sorry, i needed a moment to collect myself...
Let us move on to something positive that brings me and my wife joy every single day:

Our best friends

Let's begin with Gimli, we got him as a 5 months pup about half a year after our marriage and yes, the name comes from the dwarf in Lord of the Rings because he is a Longhaired Chihuahua.
When my wife was asking whether we could have a dog I said a small one that isn't a rat on stilts, and when we were in England the year before, we went to an irish pub and there was a permanent resident who was a 10 year old long-haired chihuahua lady that we both were quite taken with so we agreed on this race.
When we started looking I found out that they were ******* expensive, and that there were no breeders in the close vicinity so we drove for 3 and a half hours to go and get him.
He is a fighter in nature and a perfect mirror of the Dwarf as he is not afraid of any of the bigger dogs and let's them know about it.
Unfortunately, for his own safety, we need to keep hin on a leash now because while at first he simply had verbal disagreements with big dogs, about half a year ago, he actually got into a fight with a husky - luckily neither of the dogs had anything more serious than some scratches

Meet Trixie, his female companion that joined the family about one and a half years later because we wanted Gimli to live his life to the fullest including all the needs a dog has, especially companionship. ;)
While Gimli is not afraid of even the mightiest of dogs, Trixie is a very cautious lady.
I'd even call her a chicken sometimes, but she's starting to calm down a bit after having become a mother:

the pups.jpg

Meet Stella (girl that looks like the mother), Raven & Terra (boys that look like the father) that joined our family and gave our little Trixie a massive fright as she had no clue what was actually happening.
However, with a little help from our side, she bravely mastered all the challenges.
Terra has already made his way to his new Home in Switzerland and my mother is absolutely in love with Raven.
Currently we've set up some posts for Stella, but if noone is interested in taking her, my Mother will take her in as well. The only reason we'd prefer if she found a different home is because we all believe that an animal that lives with you is a part of the family and should live a fulfilled life and not be castrated which would be a necessity if you have siblings or parents and children living together.

So now that we've improved our mood with some cuteness overload, let's answer the question:

Why Darthwolf?

The Word is composed of two parts, Darth & Wolf, and I don't think i relally need to say much about the first part except that I've been a fan of the franchise and the whole Legacy Universe before Disney was like "Nu-uh, that shit ain't true" just so that they had an easier time coming up with their stories.
Wolves were always my favourite animals - they represent a lot of values that are very important for myself: honour, wisdom & family.

Streaming Career

How did I get into streaming?
I am planning a post on my first month in the community, but let's just shortly touch on this subject because there are a couple people I really have a lot to thank for.
After joining the Splinterlands discord server, by pure chance I got onto

@holozor's stream and won 30 DEC which allowed me to rent my first cards for a week.
A couple days later I joined his stream again and he raided another streamer that we all know very well:

@drabs587 .
Thus started my journey of discovering the Hive-engine, rising star & the #nosleepgang one by one by joining in the raids that were carried out by them. I've met a lot of very awesome people and after some acquaintances that i was talking aobut splinterlands about asked me to explain it to them via discord call, I got the idea to start streaming and explain it to them on stream.
I was extremely nervous and hesitant when I decided to ask what the people thought when on Drabs stream a couple days later; half expecting to either get a reprimand for self-promotion on another person's stream or to get told that there's enough streamers already or that the #nosleepgang was an exclusive club...
Far from it though, I got so much support for the idea that I was glad i wasn't streaming right then and there due to the overflow of emotions happening.

Afterword

Thank you for bearing with me and my crazy ramblings for so long.
A big shoutout to everyone who supported me to start streaming and who kept supporting me after i did. Every hour spent with you guys, whether you're a streamer or a viewer, is just such a massive blast that I cannot imagin of ever stopping anymore.
I'll name the people that come to mind from the get go as i had the most interaction with them, but the thanks definitely go to the whole members of the #nosleepgang.
Thank you

@splinterlands for creating such an awesome game; I'm looking forward to things to come.
Thank you

@atomcollector for supporting so many music artists and creating the awesome game known as Rising Star.
Thank you Holozor for showing me some highlevel play and getting me hooked on splinterlands.
Thank you

@drabs587 for introducing marbles to me and raiding clove and supporting my idea to start streaming.
Thank you

@luthien12 for being such an awesome and supportive person and even bullying me into silver II for EOS along with

@cutedawako and

@myeong.
Thank you

@zapf-brannigan for all the fun conversations that we had on stream, for introducing stream raiders to me and for showing me that it's all about the passion.
Thank you

@rentaw03 for helping me set up Streamlabs for the very first time.
Thank you

@mhowii for being our scanner that is making sure everyone of our viewers is treated fairly.
Thank you

@clove71 for being the awesome and giving person that you are and creating this awesome communtiy for all of us.
There are so many more that i would like to thank for so many things and I know I'm starting to sound australian for using the word "awesome" so often, but I can't find a better word to describe all of you guys.