My name is Andre’. It’s the french version of Andrew. I’ve been told it means strong and manly. I am cool with that. But the name Fred comes from one of loves from my youth. When I had the time, I used to role-play a lot. But because of my GM style and the style of the other GMs I played with, a character didn’t have a long life expectancy. Part of the fun was finding creative ways of killing first level characters. So until a character survived long enough to get its true name, it was Fred. Fred’s surname would describe what class he was. Like Father Fred was my priest or cleric, or Fireball Fred was my mage, etc. And when I joined the online revolution, I adopted Fred as my name. Originally it was Lordfred because of the regal sound of it. But over time I found that it was popular and I couldn’t claim it. So I had to find I another.

I chose heretic. I include the definitions below.

Noun 1. heretic - a person who holds religious beliefs in conflict with the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church misbeliever, religious outcast castaway, outcast, pariah, Ishmael - a person who is rejected (from society or home) 2. heretic - a person who holds unorthodox opinions in any field (not merely religion) recusant, nonconformist - someone who refuses to conform to established standards of conduct Although, I don’t hold to many of the Catholic traditions. I am a man of the Christian faith. I am thankful for the church’s catholic history. But all this is for another post.

Definition 2 is the one I am claiming to use to identify with. As a man of the Christian faith, I believe that I find myself out of the social/cultural norm. I believe that our society is starting to view us as outsiders for my faith. Not only does my faith make me a nonconformist, my geekiness and my weirdness allows me to be a heretic in a society sense. I believe that is where one of my greatest strength lie.

And after all this rambling, now you know why I am HereticFred.