Welcome to 44th edition of our blog about DoF members.
We hope that these blogs will entertain you as well as help you in getting to know our members and DoF better.
We asked ImpaledWater 15 standard questions from our
Meet the Member blog questionnaire
and then we gave chance to our members to ask 5 specific questions.
Hey all, my name is Reid but I believe most of you know me as ImpaledWater.
I'm mostly found lurking around the discord waiting to play Rocket League/Fall Guys or posting articles on global affairs. In my day to day life though I work two jobs, go to university, and participate in mutual aid programs. I have also never owned a car (or been able to afford one) so I walk or ride my bicycle everywhere and love staying active with activities like rowing, canoeing, dragon boating, and just going to the gym.
My first job that I mentioned previously is based in project coordination and that's my regular 9-5; it's quite boring and easy for me but puts food on the table and leaves me plenty of time for my other activities in the evening.
My second job is at a local deli. I only work on weekends but I have worked there for years and we are currently organizing to buy out our boss to create a worker owned co-op and have more of the profits returned to us, the workers! This is some of the most serious and important work I have ever done in my opinion and I am very proud to be apart of it.
On the academic side, I have an honours degree in history and consider myself a Marxist-Leninist and I am currently torn between starting post graduate studies in archiving, global affairs, or actually enjoying my life.
Favorite Quotes/Lines:
Peter Burke on the beginnings of the nation state in the late 16th century, "...it was in this period that European governments were coming to view history as a means of promoting national unity, as a means of education for citizenship, or, as a less sympathetic observer might have put it, a means of nationalist propaganda." -Peter Burke (2004).
“You can never make an analysis of the oppressed in any aspect of their lives and leave out the oppressor. If you do so, you'll blame the oppressed for their condition.” -Kwame Ture
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” -Assata Shakur
“If there are no isolated phenomena in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent, then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of "eternal justice" or some other preconceived idea, as is not infrequently done by historians, but from the standpoint of the conditions which gave rise to that system or that social movement and with which they are connected.” -Joseph Stalin
“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.
The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.” -Thomas Sankara
1. How and why did you join DoF? When Bannerlord came out, I had recently broken up with my girlfriend and had tons of free time on my hands.
I wanted to hop into the scene early so I started up my own clan/group called Numinous Beauty that would focus on competitive gameplay (I used to compete as Warfive in Warband) and put a lot of time and effort into creating a discord, advertising, and even paying a graphic designer to make a shitty logo with planets and stuff. That ultimately flopped after a couple of tournaments and due to the competitive scene dying down and ended with me disbanding the group and coming to Erminas, hat in hand.
I was initially cautious of the group though because a lot of Mount & Blade clans have similar names to what neo-nazi groups call themselves, i.e. North American Teutonic Order, Knights of yada yada, etc. But what helped change my mind about DoF was that I had played in some rat games and met some really cool, skilled, and knowledgeable North American DoF players that inspired me to apply. Some of these included but are not limited to (in alphabetical order) Beeflip, Canton, JukeBox (RIP), Percival, Ruthven, Surreal, and Wegnas.
2. Favorite moment(s) in DoF? It has to be playing Rocket League with all the great guys from EU and Africa like White Noise, Tom, Erminas, Kohath, Satheron, Paul, and so many others who have made my experience in DoF so welcoming.
3. Favorite book? This is very difficult for me to decide on. I generally don't have "favourite things" and I try not to let popular media influence my personality or imprint on me too much but for fun reading I would have to say the Name of the Wind series by Patrick Rothfuss and for more inspirational and serious reading, I'm torn between State and Revolution, Wretched of the Earth, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Blood in my Eye, and so many other books by revolutionaries that have helped me understand the world as it is.
4. Favorite movies and tv shows? I'm a sucker for big productions and shit they show at Cannes like The Martian (2015), Ilya Muromets (1956), Mandy (2018), The Northman (2022),
Soy Cuba (1964), and again so many others. My friends and I even have a whole discord dedicated to discovering cool/shitty movies and watching them all together.
5. Favorite music? I like pretty much everything except country but recently I've been listening to a lot of R&B/Soul. I really love Dua Lipa, Jhene Aiko, Doja Cat, Drake, and all those old R&B songs from the early 2000s. I should also mention that I will always sing along to the classics from groups like Queen, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and many other old rock groups.
6. Favorite food and drink? I just love so many different kinds of food. But, probably all the stuff my avó makes from back home. Bifana, soups, beef, pork, and roasted potatoes. Anything from Portugal is my favourite. Water, rum & coke, and tequila are my favourite drinks.
7. Favorite color? Blue!
8. Favorite time of the year? Autumn. Everything is still clean from Summer and most of my wardrobe is Autumn colours.
9. Are you sport or esports fan and if so what are your favorite sports and teams? Not really but I try to keep up with the big teams during play offs or tournaments whether that be basketball, hockey, or soccer. For teams, I feel obligated to cheer on either Porto FC or Benfica.
10. Do you have any pets? No, my building doesn't allow pets but if I could have pets I would have one of those shelter dogs you can't bring near kids under 14 and doesn't shed cause I've recently developed an allergy to dogs.
11. Place you would love to travel to? I really want to visit Ethiopia and take tours of the ruins and museums they have there. I think their historical significance is greatly undervalued. This Winter though I am traveling back to the Azores to see my family!
12. Most inspiring historical figure? Can you guess from the quotes what types inspire me?
13. Favorite games? When I was kid I loved playing Age of Empires and Midtown Madness.
As I got a little older, I started getting into shooters on the Xbox 360 like Gears of War and Halo (RIP Halo custom games :,)). Nowadays however, I like any games I can play with my friends and single player adventure games to help me decompress after work.
14. Describe your playing style? I do stupid stuff until I figure out all the controls, limits, and combos and then start devising strategies from what I've learned. In Bannerlord, because I want to actually be good at the game, I'm trying to take more of an approach based in theory and practice then applying them to more serious skirmishes.
15. What is your main class in Bannerlord? Archer.
And now we will turn to the specific questions our members had for Impaled Water
16. Sid Wolf would like to know If you get a chance to travel back in time, what is the first thing you would like to do? If I'm allowed to bring winning lottery numbers with me I'm going back just a few years lol. If I'm not allowed to bring those my first impulse would be to go back to just before I finished high school and try to refocus my life. I spent a lot of my time as an early adult working and partying with little direction. However, I don't want regret those times either because they helped shape who I am today and gave me the focus I needed to keep improving so I don't want to do that.
This is another sad one but I want to build a better relationship with my sisters. I only recently reconnected with my big sister because the Covid pandemic made me really appreciate the connections I have with the people that are close to me. I just feel like I wasted so much time in my own little world after our parents split up and I can't help but feel as if I was a bad brother. But, I'm also thankful of how we've been able to reconnect these past couple years so I don't want to change that either.
I think that the thing I'm dead set on doing is stopping 9/11 so that we don't have to live in the closed off security state we live in today in North America.
17. Erminas asking: What is your favorite brand of maple syrup? Pearl Milling Company. Grew up on it in Canada and it's always been my favourite.
18. Tom is wondering Is it true that Canadians are very polite and friendly with everyone?
This is unfortunately a myth. Canadians like to pretend that we are better than Americans when in reality we are their imperialist lap dogs and much of their culture influences ours. We deploy militarized police with rifles, grenades, and snipers against unarmed Indigenous land and water defenders. Our prisons and judicial systems continue to uphold old colonial prejudice against demographic minorities, in particular Indigenous peoples. There were also recently protests where Nazi and confederate flags were waved at our capitol building smh. We have no revolutionary potential and I am not proud to be Canadian.
19. Karatak's question: What do you think about Poland in Canada? I don't know enough about the topic therefore I will remain silent. I also do not believe that our entire country can have a homogeneous outlook on other countries. Some of the takes and ideologies I've seen develop in North America due to the alienation of culture is insane. Poland though from what I know personally has a very interesting and diverse population of various religions and Eastern European ethnicities. I would love to visit someday and learn more about the region and people!
20. Messius is curious What do you think about the fact that the pizza Hawai'i was invented by a Canadian? Wasn't it a Greek guy who owned an Italian restaurant? Pretty cool I guess. However, it does remind me of how supposed "Tiki" culture developed during the Great Depression when Americans could no longer afford to go on trips and came up with the idea of appropriating and bastardizing Hawai'ian culture. Solidarity with Hawai'ian sovereignty btw.
And now the round of bonus questions for our interviewee!
By Krex: How does one impale Water? Try reading this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26135133/
By White Noise: Following that, what's the story behind your nickname, ImpaledWater?
When my family got our Xbox 360 my father stressed that it was for the family to share. So we all had to come up with a name together. We tried something with the word "water" in it as we lived on a street with "water" in the name but it was taken so Xbox recommended some names and one of them was ImpaledWater. It's stuck with me ever since. I was also the only one to ever use the Xbox btw.
By Erminas: In your opinion why is Canada better than USA!? I guess we don't have upwards of 750 military bases around the world, though we do deploy troops to them so what's the difference? We participated in the Korean War, where Western forces alone killed over 20% of the population on the Korean Peninsula (most of which were civilians), but not the Vietnam War in the same capacity? Maybe we've not been involved in as many coup and coup attempts in the Global South as the US but since the formation of NATO we've helped them with everything, even the terrible invasion of Iraq in 1991 where an estimated 1 million Iraqi's perished, so I'm not sure. Geographically, they have a warmer climate and more arable land so they've got us beat on that too. We are essentially just a proxy of the US empire.
By Messius: What Canadians think about Czech (European) hockey? I didn't know it existed until this week tbh. Sorry (ya'll were waiting for that huh?).
Thanks to Impaled for joining us in today's edition.
This deep, intellectual and scientific at times article is definitely worth checking
and I hope you enjoy it Dear Reader.
Sadly, with the state of affairs of our, DoF's, primary game Bannerlord and it's North American scene we rarely get a chance to interview new NA members of the clan, but let's hope that changes for the better in future!
Next Monday we will have our new Dutch member joining us in the blog! It's KSHMR time!
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