Frequently Asked Questions

Q - wtf is a "ranavain"?

A - Good q. When I was in high school, I wrote the first book of what was intended to be a fantasy series. I wrote it mostly when I was bored at school, so it was 265 pages, freehand, on loose leaf paper in a binder. I gave it to my sister to edit and she lost it :screamyface: 

Anyway, Ranavain was a character in the second generation of that book series; so, someone I had conceived of but never wrote about. The name is a tweak from Agravain, the coolest name in history. The character's bestie in the series was Caedred, a bastardization (pun intended) of Mordred. 

At some point, I started using Ranavain as an online alias, including on the Twitter account I made long before I understood what Twitter is good for (memes). 

(incidentally, since I never picked the series up again to write, I've instead incorporated it into my D&D homebrew universe; the stories I never wrote are ancient history, and some of those characters, including Ranavain, are now gods in my pantheon.) 

I was trying to come up with a name for my company, because Kim Stiens Consulting is boring, and then I was like, eh, I already go by Ranavain online, that seems like as good a made-up word as any for a company!

Q - How do you pronounce Ranavain?

A - I'm pretty agnostic on this one, but the canonical pronunciation is RAN-uh-vain. 

Q - Why do you swear so much?

A - Because I curse a fair amount in real life and I think most of the professional norms in America are a form of class warfare. Why the heck should anyone think you're less skilled and capable because you have blue hair and say "f*ck" a lot?

Business has a way of sanitizing everything that is good and unique about people, and then complaining that all its people are too sanitized, boring or corrupt. 

(Plus, let's be completely honest here, "sanitized and boring" means "white, middle class and male.") 

But, OK, I'll try to tone it down.