User:Gilgamesh

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I am Gilgamesh, just another user of this fine Wikipedia.

• I have been a member of Wikipedia for about half a decade. I am committed to NPOV editing, and discussing what may or may not be NPOV.
• I am Hawaiʻi-born and a member of the Sproat clan, but am neither an ethnic or cultural Native Hawaiian. I have great sympathy though for Native Hawaiian cultural rights, the Hawaiian language, and Hawaiʻi-particular conventions of Standard English, such as the consistent use of the ʻokina and kahakō in all words and names of Hawaiian origin when both spoken and written in English.
• I study bits and pieces of many languages, but I am fluent only in English. The International Phonetic Alphabet is your friend.
• I believe that there is no such thing as a 'wrong' accent of English speech, so far as it is sufficiently organic to the speaker. I advocate respecting how mutually intelligible English (that is, English that is still English) is spoken internationally, and regarding the neutral international phonology of English as necessarily including even conservative phonological distinctions that many speakers in the major cultural centers don't make, such as the pour-poor distinction, the horse-hoarse distinction, the wine-whine distinction, the pane-pain distrinction, the toe-tow distrinction, the rap-wrap distinction, yod-retention (including after /r/), the fern-fir-fur three-way distinction and, conditional on its continued active existence, the meet-meat distinction. But I also recognize that any particular dialect or accent's phonetic mergers and splits and articulations are entirely correct and natural to its speakers, and no one should say otherwise. The Scots language is technically English as it evolved from Northumbrian Middle English, but has become a separate language through time, and this can happen to any accent, dialect or diasystem that evolves separately for long enough. Linguistic development, including alterations in phonology, grammar, vocabulary and slang is entirely natural and cannot be rightly regarded as a 'corruption' of language.
• If my ramble above didn't tip you off, I am also high-functioning autistic. This totally influences my edits because of my alien theory of mind and my complete lack of intuitive common sense inherent to most people. Nevertheless, I always try to edit in good faith.
• I am 6 Kinseys gay. This inevitably influences my edits, if at least because of inalienable first-hand perspective that makes it impossible for me to put myself in the shoes of straight people or homophobes. As such, I will tend to treat even the most deeply ingrained homophobia and heterocentrism without tact or mercy in my edits.
• I believe in the inherent factuality of the scientific method, and that its findings need not conflict with positions of individual belief, in that it is only science's place to describe that which can be proven empirically, and faith is inherently outside of that scope. Neither science nor faith should have to oppose or try to discredit one another in any way. I believe that all efforts to the contrary are part of a shameful culture war for an authoritarian supremacy of philosophy.
• I am Mormon, but of the liberal social democrat variety. I am frequently at odds with Jell-O Belt culture (not being from the area to begin with anyway), and my relationship with the Church is frequently strained. I am not a biblical literalist, nor a member or supporter of the Republican Party or the bewilderingly popular John Birch Society, nor do I readily endorse traditional folk doctrines as canonical. I generally believe as a matter of personal faith in the limited geography model of the Book of Mormon, but contrary to folk doctrine, I have no problem with the probability that, if existed, it has left no trace in modern pre-Columbian cultures, and possibly even no identifyible physical trace considering the geological upheavals of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas.
• Samurai Jack is hot. :3