After 
And then I used my phone to take an image of the screen, as I do for most of my Splinterlands posts. I used the "portrait" setting to get a blur, and the fucking thing whitewashed me anyway. I guess AI filters assume dark people want to look lighter.
A big fucking assumption!
It actually looks like this in-game:
So if anyone wants to "be like me" (I don't recommend it), there you have it. I went with the veteran hair, because I am old and going grey. Though I am going to be more "salt and pepper" grey than this fella. Still, the likeness is pretty good, other than me being far better looking and muscular in real life.
Since people mostly hate themselves as humans these days, many seem to have chosen one of the other bloodlines on offer. I have seen mostly elves and a couple orcs. Zero dwarfs.
Most people hate short people even more than they hate themselves.
I hate myself, but I don't try to escape myself, even in avatar form. Though, I am thinking of transitioning over to a woman at some point, as it is all the rage in society today. And looking at the leather vest with the red piping I am wearing, I am half there anyway. I couldn't find the woman avatar though, so perhaps I need to pay extra for the operation.
My reasoning for my very plain avatar, is that it is meant to represent me, as I am. This is of course not a rule for avatars, just for me, but I think that there is enough fantasy in the world with all of the filters and augmentations applied to make us look like anything other than who we actually are.
But I get it - sometimes it is good to escape who we are, so I thought it might be a bit of fun for people to add their own Splinterlands avatar into the comments and tell a little about the "origin story" of their Battle Mage.
After a near death experience that brought very little life insight, and with nothing better to do with his life, tarazkp fell in with the wrong crowd. A group of masochistic sadists, who enjoyed inflicting pain on themselves through their choice of investment vehicles, and spreading the misery to others, so as to watch them suffer and drown alongside. Misery loves a symphony - yet this was a cacophony.
After being fooled into investing into a world of battle, tarazkp bought overpriced summoners archons and monsters to do battle in the arena, with fierce names like "Kitty" and "Llama". Alas, soon after purchase, they would be retired and become useless, sent out to pasture to graze on the barren land that tarazkp had also paid far too much for.
But now firmly reinvented as a masochist himself, tarazkp no longer cared about past investment losses, and chose to keep doubling down to create future investment losses. He is nothing if not consistent. And as such, we meet him here today. Once a man standing tall and respected in the community, now, nothing more than a broken shell of who he once was, getting beaten in the arena by everyone and everybody, including the mindless robot.
The pain should be insufferable.
But tarazkp, as the masochist he has become, suffers through with pleasure, like a religious fanatic performing self-flagellation to rid themselves of sin. But for tarazkp, there is no penance that can cleanse his soul of all the bad decisions he has made in his life, there will be no absolution.
Just more loss and pain.
Accepted with a smirk.
Taraz
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