A majestic hybrid creature stands poised for action, its form a seamless fusion of wolf, lion, and dragon. Black fur streaked with silver flows into shimmering green and iridescent blue scales, its powerful frame radiating strength. Draconic feet grip the earth, a long spiked tail sways behind, and vast blue wings extend from its back, ready to carry it skyward. Its left hand is a formidable wolf’s paw, the right that of a lion, each clawed and deadly. Swirling, ever-shifting eyes—amber, green, blue, red, and white—gleam with fierce intelligence. A wolf’s muzzle lined with dragon’s teeth gives it a fearsome presence, while lion’s ears and caramel-colored horns curving slightly at the tips complete its regal visage. Strapped across its back, two swords await their call to battle—one glowing with golden light, its circular hilt radiating power, the other a silver blade etched with sun and moon symbols, its ornate grip gleaming in the sun. The creature stands beneath a brilliant sky, the sun casting golden rays over the lush trees behind it and the endless blue ocean stretching beyond the sandy shore. Strength, mystery, and primal majesty intertwine in its presence—guardian of the wilds, ruler of the unseen, and force of untamed legend.
../just-some-origins

Just some origins.

What is this?

This is just a list of origins. Nothing more, nothing less. I go through the origins of an odd ritual I’ve developed, why I started voice acting, and why I chose to major in information technology — simply because I wish to.

Why does this exist?

Two reasons. One, because I was told to for a college assignment. And two, because I love self-discovery. Writing about the origins of something is a good way to learn more about it. So I’m all for it. And hey, why not teach others about me along the way? Prepare for me to ramble a bit about myself and why I do (or did) the things I do.

Why do I listen to The Wolf and the Moon by Karliene on every full moon?

I first came across this song while I was coding. My friend DeAnn had just introduced me to Karliene’s music, and I was shuffling through her songs as I worked. At the time, I was deep in thought, trying to figure out how to integrate OpenGL into my game engine, Electrode. Some sea shanty like track was playing in the background, it had thumping drums, a hurdy-gurdy, that kind of Irish feel that keeps things lively. Then it ended. What came next couldn’t have been more different. No drums, no hurdy-gurdy, just a soft guitar and Karliene’s beautiful voice. The contrast made me pause, or at least what I thought would be just a pause. But it wasn’t. I listened to the whole song, completely caught up in it. It told the story of a wounded wolf and his connection to the moon. And as it went on, it filled my head with pictures more vivid than anything I’d experienced from music before. I could see the snow, white and trampled, and the wolf’s fur matted and stained dark with blood. I could feel the cold light of the full moon casting over it all. I heard his howl, saw him lift his head, gazing up as he sang to her. It wasn’t just imagery, though, it was emotion, raw and sharp. The wolf’s pain and love. The moon’s joy at his song. It felt as if I wasn’t just listening, but living it. By the time the song ended, I was broken, for lack of a better word. My coding was finished for the day, there was no going back after that. Later that night, I went outside and noticed something that stopped me again: it was a full moon. That hit me hard. It felt as though the universe had lined things up deliberately, as if it had handed me an event of importance. From that point on, I decided to keep it going. Every full moon since, I’ve returned to that moment—sometimes listening to the song, sometimes just standing outside beneath the light. It’s become a strange kind of ritual for me. And it works. Each time I do it, I feel renewed, ready to take on the world the next day. And when I forget, I feel worse, like something is missing, a quiet nagging that doesn’t leave until the next full moon rises.

why am I always voice acting?

This all started when my friends and I began role-playing. We were just sitting around, messing about and expanding on our world, when I had a realization: hey, I can’t keep doing the same voice with slightly different expressions for over fifteen different characters. I had always been drawn to accents and voices in general, so I could manage some variety, but this was the moment I started taking it seriously. I began practicing accents and voices constantly, so much so that I’m sure I was driving my family insane. "Hey, could you speak in your Ethan voice, please? What do you actually even sound like anymore? Where is Ethan?" Etc, etc. My throat got sore all the time as I learned how to growl, roar, and make all kinds of sounds. When things failed, I felt extremely embarrassed, but when they worked, it was like a rush of senses. When a voice clicked, I felt as though I had become the character it represented. A few sessions later, I needed to voice a new character: Shelguen, a dragon born and raised in the wild by a demon slayer and trained within the Slayer Dragon sect of the Academy of Ages. I paused and asked myself: how on earth do I sound like a dragon? Much less one with Shelguen’s prowess? My friends were waiting, calling out, “Ethan? Hello? Are you there?” In my head, I went through everything I knew about dragons and immediately heard Jarad Doyle performing Glader from the Inheritance Cycle. Shelguen was supposed to be a bit younger than Glader was at the time, so I tried my best to create a younger version of that voice, using everything I had learned over the past couple of weeks. It didn’t come out exactly as I imagined, but it was close, and honestly, it made the character more unique. Man, feeling like a dragon, not something I ever thought would happen. Over time, my voices continued to improve, each one emerging more clearly and more in line with how I envisioned them. That experience hooked me. I fell in love with voice acting. Now, I do it so much that I sometimes slip into accents or characters without even noticing.

Why am I majoring in information technology?

This actually starts with one of my earliest memories. I was dancing around my living room, holding a braille PDA, yes, PDAs were still a thing for blind people, streaming music from iTunes through it. Suddenly, my little child brain thought, Hey, how is this thing doing this right now? So I asked my dad, "Hey, how does the braille machine play music?" He explained it all: how it was streaming over something called the internet, polling music from a computer owned by Apple somewhere else in the world. That moment sparked my fascination with technology. I wanted to know how everything worked, and I’m sure I drove my dad nuts with all my questions about how everything did everything. As I grew older, that fascination only deepened. Once I started to understand the basics, I began investigating systems on my own, learning the ins and outs of how they worked, and how to break and fix them. Eventually, members of my family would come to me with IT questions if my dad wasn’t around. My dad and I would solve issues together, sometimes even taking apart systems just to see how they functioned. Since he was working toward a career in security consulting, he would explain security flaws in systems, walk me through major security events, and show me why and how things went wrong, and how they could have been prevented. Those experiences left a lasting impression. Ever since then, I’ve known I wanted to work in the IT sector, exploring and understanding the systems that power our world. At one point, I thought about doing software development, since it dives deeper into how things work and is a crucial part of our technology. But after meeting several friends in the space, I realized that many of them never truly got credit for the work they were paid to do. I decided that no, I do not want to code for eight hours a week, deal with other developers making poor decisions, and get nothing out of it. In IT, at least, I get the appreciation of those whose systems I fix, or stop from breaking.

Wrapping up

Every habit has an origin. Some are strange, some are obvious, some just stick. For me, it’s a song under the moon, a dragon’s voice at a table, and a childhood question about a braille PDA. That’s me in a nutshell: part ritual, part role-play, part fascination with the hidden systems of the world.