Welcome to our weekly 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 Melling 15 standard questions from our
Meet the Member blog questionnaire
and then we gave chance to our members to ask 5 specific questions.
Hello! I’m Michael, aka Ser_Melling, and I’m the somewhat disputed No.1 archer in DoF. I’m a 22-year-old from the town of Leyland near Preston in the North-West of England, though I spend half the year living in Selly Oak in Birmingham studying for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. My hobbies aside from gaming are cooking, 5-aside football, tennis, table tennis, photography, and music production.
Favorite Quote/Line: “Ain't no average MC ahead of me, getting cheddar instead of the probably better pedigree” Dr. Daniel Dumile
1. How and why did you join DoF? I started playing Warband late 2011, though I didn’t touch multiplayer for the longest time. When I did I was mostly playing siege on the popular US servers (back when I could handle 100 ping), and I even joined GK rebels for a short time after Delion invited me. When I found they’d gone inactive after a long break from Warband, I started playing more on EU servers, and at one point I found myself on DoF TDM with lots of the group on. Erminas invited me to my first scrim as a trial archer, and the rest has been a very enjoyable history.
2. Favorite moment(s) in DoF? It’s been a bit of a running thing that I often get ‘accidently’ teamkilled in matches, probably because of my erratic movement and aggressive play from all the hours of siege and deathmatch with team damage disabled. During a casual match with CCC it managed to happen twice in the 1st set for both of my deaths, even though I was playing cavalry. It was pretty funny the first time, but when people realised I’d been TK’d again we were all in hysterics!
I’d also like to shoutout the whole debate about Erminas profile picture, which I’m pretty sure I started (it’s definitely a bear).
3. Favorite book? Gotta be the Twilight series, Article 50 and the Communist Manifesto. Just kidding of course, though actually I really have fully read one of those works… I don’t read enough books so I can’t pick a favourite, but I’ve enjoyed the Rangers Apprentice, Inkheart, Alex Rider, Young Bond and Lord of the Rings series of books to say a few. Other than that it would be my A-Level history reading, like A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes.
4. Favorite movies and tv shows? Filmwise probably a good action/crime thriller, like the Godfather, Inception or the Dark Knight. As far as TV series I love The Mighty Boosh and The Thick of It most of all, but right now I’m mostly watching cooking shows or BBC documentaries.
5. Favorite music? I’m big into 90s soul influenced Hip Hop, and my favourite albums are:
Operation: Doomsday (MF DOOM)
Moment of Truth (Gang Starr)
The Score (Fugees)
2000 (Grand Puba)
I also listen to a lot of soul music, and you can find all my playlists here:
6. Favorite food and drink? So for breakfast I like some Kellogg’s cornflakes or crunchy nut, but I’m a bit weird in that I like my cereal dry with my milk in a glass. I just can’t get pouring it into the bowl, makes everything all soggy and wet. For dinner I’ll have some tuna or cheese (Red Leicester) sandwiches with a bit of ketchup, but if I’m being really very lazy I’ll just have some baked beans because we always have them in the house. For tea it’s gotta be spaghetti carbonara, with the pasta perfectly al-dente and a bit of salted pasta water into the sauce. Makes it lovely and creamy, WITHOUT ADDING CREAM. For dessert I love making my own banana and baileys ice cream, but otherwise ill have some strawberries with balsamic vinegar if they are in season. I love a good balsamic and a special meal for me would be a plate of Culatello ham with some Parmigiano Reggiano and a good aged balsamic. Its hard stuff to get in the UK but I had it properly once in Bologna and it was something else. I don’t really drink alcohol, but my favourite beverage would be a bottle of Tsuruume Suppai Umeshu (plum infused sake) which I once I tried as a wine pairing at a nice restaurant. Otherwise I drink semi-skimmed milk with pretty much every meal, and I can never be anywhere without a huge bottle of water.
7. Favorite color? Blue! or maybe yellow, or green. But not red.
8. Favorite time of the year? Anything but summer, my student flat doesn’t ventilate well and boils at anything over 20 degrees outside. I used to do a lot of skiing so I’ll say ski season, as long as it comes with some decent snow around my way as its been years since we’ve had any at all.
9. Are you sport or esports fan and if so what are your favorite sports and teams? I follow football primarily, and while I’m more of a general fan of English football I’ve got a love for AC Milan from back when they had players like Kaka, Gattuso, Nesta and Pirlo. I haven’t been keeping up with their recent results but I’ve heard that might be for the better… I used to follow competitive CSGO for a bit as well, and I was rooting for Astralis back when they were TSM.
10. Do you have any pets? Not for a few years unfortunately, though I grew up with a personable tortoiseshell cat called Motley who was queen of our estate for 18 years. Now we have a Siamese cat who frequents our garden, we’ve no clue where its from but it loves my mum’s greenhouse and its tried to come indoors a few times too. I’m very much a cat person, and I would definitely adopt one once I have my own place.
11. Place you would love to travel to? I’ve been lucky to go travelling to a lot of places around Europe and I love northern Italy in particular for the food and architecture, but I’ve never been further afar than Bulgaria where I went skiing 8 years ago. I’d love to go around Japan and Vietnam someday, though I’d probably need a fair bit of planning (and cash) for both. Realistically I’d like to go around the lakes in the south of Germany, as some of the most beautiful landscapes I can remember were from a train I took from Munich to Salzburg.
12. Most inspiring historical figure? Historically I don’t know, but when I’m trying to make beats I look up to producers like Madlib, the Alchemist and Nujabes (rest in peace), because I love how they respect a sample and they can make a memorable bit of music out of almost anything.
13. Favorite games? Warband of course, and definitely Bannerlord too once they have it polished. Aside from that I like Arma 3 for the co10 Escape from Tanoa mission which I’ve modified with my own scripts, and also Rocket League which I’ve somehow gotten alright at. Goes to show you don’t need a controller ;)
14. Describe your playing style? In Warband I used to love playing deathmatch and siege, since I like being an aggressive player who tries to win fights quickly and hates having to survive on one life. I was good at infantry combat but I enjoyed shooting more, so I’d play a sort-of hybrid role where I’d shoot from very close to a fight and join in whenever. This worked great since I’m best at reactive ‘flick’ shooting, and I’ve pretty good awareness since I use tilde frequently and I always aim 3rd person to better see what’s around me. I’m not half as good with long-range archery or archer duels though, so I was rarely much use in battles and I was only good as an infantry if I could actually survive until the late round. With Bannerord though I feel the new skirmish mode suits my playstyle perfectly, since I have a lot more freedom with the longer rounds and respawns so I can be effective as the annoying deathmatch archer instead of being told to hide in a corner taking pot-shots all game.
15. What will be your main class in Bannerlord? Infantry was definitely my best class in Warband but so far I’m doing well with archery in Bannerlord so hopefully I’ll never be on spear-inf duty again I really want to try and popularise my inf-archer role going forwards, and so far I think it’s working great.
And now we will turn to the specific questions our members had for Melling
16. Darin wants to know what is you favourite canned food Its actually not beans haha, since I’ve been doing more of my own shopping I’ve found out about Heinz chunky veg and I now like that way more, but I rarely eat canned food now. I still love Heinz ketchup but it doesn’t fit as well for a profile picture, at least without going for one of the pathetically small bottles. I think I should change it to a picture of my carbonara instead, I just need to go through all the hundreds I’ve taken to find the best one.
17. If you were to leave Preston, where would you live, asks Berta? I’ve never moved house in my life and I’m pretty attached to Leyland and Preston really, so wherever I go it would have to be a similar kind of quiet suburb which has plenty of nature around it. I’d definitely stay up North, so maybe somewhere around Lancaster or the lake district where it’s a bit more hilly and I could do some more interesting walks. If I had to go a bit further then definitely Sheffield, since it went there a while back to look round the Uni and the whole place just seemed great. Even talking to random students on the train they all spoke highly of living there and its right next to the peak district too, train went right through it which made a change from the usual dilapidated views. If I had to pick another country I’d say somewhere in Germany, like Dresden or Munich. I’ve been Germany loads on holiday, one of my mates studied over there for his year abroad and I should hopefully be set for work with all the engineering companies. And of course it would put me living close to most people in DoF too.
Also big-ups to Newcastle, had a great time visiting 😊
18. Berta's question: Do you still have the picture(s) from when we met? I changed phone and all my photos from WhatsApp are gone...
19. Favorite domestic and foreign football players, both current and retired please? Favourite footballer playing in England would be Bernardo Silva, he’s a technically gifted playmaker but insanely hardworking too, and I think last season he had the record for distance covered in a game (13.7 km). He might also be my favourite player in the foreign leagues, but ill say Romagnoli instead because I’m totally not biased. As for retired players it would be Kaka for sure, he was the ultimate No.10 in his prime and he had everything to his game, and domestically John Terry because he was a born leader and he would put his life on the line defending for Chelsea and England.
20. When are you and Kohath getting married? Once he lifts the restraining order.
Bonus question: "Letter for Melling" type of question: What is your favourite bus station? Great question, I think it has to be Preston bus station the former no.1 largest bus station in Europe. I love the brutalist architecture and they’ve done a great job refurbishing it, also it no longer stinks of pee.
Follow up question by Erminas: Did you just ask yourself a question? No it was the other Melling, the one we don’t talk about.
Thanks to Melling for joining us for our weekly blog.
And with this edition I will be closing the first season of our MMM blogs
Thank you for reading this week's blog and we hope you had a blast reading them!
Stay safe and return this Autumn for the Second season of our Meet the Members Monday blog!
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