“Hey, that’s not how you spell ‘wraith.’ Why are you bad at spelling? Or are you just trying to be ‘Cool and Edgy ™?’”
This is what you are asking me through your phone or computer screen aren’t you? Ok, maybe not, but you could be. Well, to answer your actual, theoretic, potential, and/or non-existent question: I am neither of those.
First of all, I feel reputationally obliged to emphatically refute the notion that I am deficient in (almost…) any way regarding my knowledge, execution, and practice of the English language. I have my honor to uphold as the resident “Grammar Enforcer.” I’ll save you the full force my usual dramatics to avoid coming off as a total weirdo if you don’t know me, but suffice it to say that (*cue just a tiny bit of heroic music, please*) it is truly a thin line between literacy and the complete and utter ruin of humanity. If no one else will hold that line… then I will do it. I will bring that ring to Mordor.
Uh, Anyway. So. Now that I’ve gotten sidetracked already and probably caused at least a third of you to ragequit (or furiously scan this post for typos and syntax errors (yes, I know I use too many commas than is necessary; it’s a choice for clarity)), I think I should explain “The Raeth.”
One of the nerd-doms of which I like to consider myself a card-carrying member is fantasy fiction, and specifically fantasy worldbuilding. In fact, I have been (very) slowly writing and working on my own world and novel(s) for quite a few years. Who knows if I’ll ever get around to “finishing” any of it (mostly because I keep realizing many of my old ideas are dumb and have to redo everything), but it’s a bit of an ongoing happy place for me to craft, think on, and dream about. I’ve even been running a hacked Dungeon World campaign with some other Leaguers (is that what we call ourselves? Idk probably not) set in a fantastical, fictional world that exists as a “mythology” inside of that fictional world. Take that, Inception.
Within the history of this world, one of the prominent figures I’d started working up early on was a character who I refer to as, you guessed it, The Raeth.
One summer in high school (I told you I’d been working on this for awhile), I was working for my uncle who owned a shop that did work on gas pumps old and new-ish. While wandering among the yard of older ones one afternoon, I saw a pump that had some label on it saying, “Tetra Ethanol” which, because of some of the cultural and naming conventions I’d established, my brain saw as “TetraEthanol” and thus, the world in my head gave birth to the “Raeth.” I swear, that’s literally how it happened. Ugh, I’m such a dork.
As I began to flesh out a character from the name, I imagined the The Raeth as a kind of fantasy Batman, and so the idea of him became a freedom fighter that set up shop in a network of caverns underneath a city and worked by stealth to try and bring down an oppressive government (to jive with the name’s root in “wraith”). The first novel that I’ve been working on tells his story (as well as the story of another similar character from a slightly different point in history, but that’s not important for this explanation). Sorry, I guess that’s all spoilers or something…
So since this was one of my more significant characters that I’d then recently created, with an interesting name that was unique enough not to necessitate extra numbers and such (no offense at all to anyone who uses them, they’re just aesthetically not my jam), The Raeth was, I believe, the very first gamertag I choose all the way back on the Xbox 360 (which, coincidentally, I bought with the money I earned from that gas pump shop job), and it’s stayed that way ever since. Funnily enough, since I’ve now been using this tag for such a long time, I now feel this strange kind of pressure to make sure the character lives up to the sort of legendary status I’ve ascribed to him from putting his name forefront on all my gaming endeavors, which certainly hasn’t helped me get things done any faster… Oh well. I’m sure you didn’t come here to hear me talk about my own insecurities. In any case, that’s the story behind The Raeth. Maybe someday you’ll be able to read about him…
You spelled “wraith” wrong.