Why do you role-play?

[Fate Flyer]

What compells you to role-play?
Why do you role-play?
What made you decide you liked to role-play?
What do you role-play?



I started role-playing at very young age. I can't, today, remember what attracted me to it, other than it was a form of fictional writing, something I had already liked since very early on. (Growing up, I'd write short stories in tons of different notebooks until they were full.)

I suppose I feel compelled to role-play not only because it is a form of entertainment for me and something I enjoy doing, but also with hopes that I will continue to improve, so that one day, when I decide to write a book (which I've longed to do since childhood), I will be better prepared.

I role-play all types of genres. I think I'm pretty versatile when it comes to plots and settings. As long as it interests me, I role-play it or have role-played it.

[vitamin_kitten]

I started back in 9th when I found out my best friend RPed. Back then, we didn't really realize that's what it was. It was, "Oh, you pretend to be this person, I'll pretend to be this person." It was basically make believe (this was all before we started writing things down, of course). I had just met my best friend and she had told me stories about her and her sister pretending to be Sailor Scouts and cats (from the musical, lol), and it interested me. So I made up a character of my own, jumped in in the middle of their plot, and it was all downhill from there.

The writing part started as random note-passing in class out of boredom. I'm not sure if the actual use of our characters was intentional, but that's eventually what happened. We've created way too many characters between the three of us, and though her sister no longer RPs with us, and we no longer act stuff out (I kinda miss those days, not gonna lie), we still have a notebook, just like we did in highschool. XD

EDIT I just realized I left out the actual answer to your question. -.-;; Way to be a winner, self.

Anyway, I roleplay because it's an effective release of stress- when my life sucks, I can just abuse some character of mine by making their life miserable in turn (so I'm a sadist, shush). I also just enjoy the creative outlet aspect of it. I often have so many ideas in my head that all just clamber to get out, and because I'm too picky of a writer (when I write stories and stuff) to just begin a new story, I turn to RPing.

It's also a way for me to get my vicarious drama and cuddles. My characters often have better drama going on (of course, I wouldn't really want their drama in my life, but it's fun to pretend sometimes) and insanity going on in their lives, so it's a way for me to experience that vicariously.

Other than that, it's just plain fun. It's something I enjoy.

[Lara]

I started roleplaying online in 2003 or so, if not slightly before, back around when I joined my first forum. It wasn't a roleplaying site, but there was a small section dedicated to it, and I found the concept to be a lot of fun (of course, 'roleplaying' there was basically just the lowest quality posts you'd ever see in your life, but it was okay, because we all had fun). From there, I continued to join roleplays on all of the other forums I signed up at (it was like a chain; when one died, another took its place, and then some), and I eventually ended up on Gaia. I remember my first roleplay there -- one of those 'pet shop' ones. I had a blast.

I roleplay these days for a few reasons. I find them interesting and fun; I love to write; I love to create characters and give them life. By roleplaying, I can do all of these things and more, all the while improving my writing abilities. I can't say enough how much the roleplays I've joined have boosted my writing skills.

I've had so much fun roleplaying over the years. Though I said I started roleplaying around 2003, I actually started a lot younger than that, back in fifth grade, though I never realized it was roleplaying until later. My best friend (at the time) and I pretended we were Pokemon every day during recess, and came up with all sorts of games based off of our pretending. While that ended when fifth grade came to a close, we attempted to 'write stories' together, which was essentially roleplaying, but that didn't go very far because, frankly, I didn't like her characters.

My roleplaying became actual writing where another friend is concerned, back in seventh grade, but that's another tale in itself.

These days, I roleplay a lot of different things on the internet. I don't immediately say no to many genres -- except ones involving zombies, or survival stories, because I just plain don't like them -- but a plot has to interest me in order for me to consider joining; that's pretty much my only requirement. That, and I need to be able to create a character. The fact that I can't develop a decent profile has stopped me already from joining a few RPs here, while if I could have just jumped in with an actual post I'm sure I would have eventually come up with enough material for a profile. But that's just me going off on a tangent, so don't mind that.

[Fate Flyer]

That's really cute, vitamin_kitten. ^^ It'd be fun to act plots out, I think (like LARPing). I've tried it somewhat too when I was younger, but nothing serious. Lol ah, and your own experience starting off kind of reminds me of mine! You said you passed notes and created characters. When I was younger, I used to trade a notebook back and forth with another girl at my school, and we'd write this story together. I think it's a really fun thing to do.

Haha, aw, that makes you win.

Lol that sounds like a very effective and productive way of relieving stress at least. Sounds good to me!

~

Hehe well, you gotta start somewhere, Lara. I don't think most people can jump right into role-playing anywhere and write like pros -- as long as you were enjoying yourself! :]

I think your second paragraph pretty much summed it all up for me too!

That's so cute that your friend and you when you were young pretended to be Pokemon! I would have loved to have done that when I was a kid lol. Aw XD that's funny that you didn't like her characters though.

I think that maybe not creating character profiles right away may become a trend around here. When I heard what vitamin_kitten had to say about them in her Introduction post, I kind of agreed. Things might run a lot smoother if you develop your characters through the story and the experiences. If you have a larger group you're RPing with too, then it makes it hard for everyone to read over everyone else's character profiles and remember them.

[Lara]

I do like the sound of everyone being given a blank character sheet and having them fill it out as they introduce things into the story. People probably wouldn't remember to update them all the time, but that way it's more of a surprise, and leaves room for constant changes, like real people.

Hah, yeah, it is funny that I didn't like them, but by the time we tried writing in a notebook I had already been writing with my other friend, so I knew when things were a bit too much. She always did make her characters way over the top, and gave them godly powers. -shrug- But it was fun in itself.

[Dio the Awesome]

My reasons are probably much more unhealthy than everyone else's, but lets rock this thing.

The story I'm about to tell, goes back all the way to good old Calvin and Hobbes, when I was 8 or so. Calvin and Hobbes were the greatest and worst thing that ever happened to me. It opened up a world of imagination to me, and I would from then on imagine everyday objects, as things they were not supposed to be. Imagine my disappointment when I found out my stuffed cat would not come to life.

Having such given up on manipulating the real world, I turned to novels, like Red Wall, and imagined myself in those worlds, sometimes inserting my own character, and reacting as the story progressed, as I was that character. For a time, this satisfied me. But again, I was unable to manipulate the book the way i wanted. The same went for my favorite TV shows, like Scoobie Doo. I recall wishing that there was a machine that could send me into the TV, so I could go hunt ghosts with them. Again, naturally, I was disappointed.

Then video games entered my life. Here I had control over my character. I could move, and to some extent talk, the way I wanted to. These basically sucked away what was left of my childhood, and my life has not yet recovered from a nasty video game addiction. (I'm working on that. Kinda.) But I found, that while I had control over my character, there were still limitations.

Thus, my good friend introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. Here I had more control over my character. Complete control within the realm of physics. And even then possessed super human powers. This was my dream. I could do whatever I wanted, and be whoever I wanted. And so i was lost to the world of roleplay.

Why do I roleplay? To escape reality. Surely I enjoy it, I love to write and create. But if there was a virtual reality I could enter, I'd be crazy over that too.

There's not a day that I don't dream I'm somewhere else. Not a time when I walk down the street and wish I could shoot fire from my hands, or fly, or teleport. Not a night I don't dream about far off worlds. I roleplay because the world I live in is not extraordinary enough for my own imagination.

[Klikxx]

Why Do I role-play?

Nostalgia is my initial response but it is so much more.

Growing up playing street hockey in the cold Canadian winters we would pretend to be our favorite NHL hockey players hoisting the Lord Stanley’s Cup. Dedicated as we were we would be out there with our shovels on “snow days” clearing a path before the plows even hit out streets.

Camping. Not with tents, trailers and electricity but in T-pee’s with fur and wool blankets cooking only what you caught on a line or trapped that day. A weekend dressed in period costumes consisting of loin cloths and body paint or buckskin jackets and polecat hats. Throwing knives and tomahawks and shooting black powder muskets to pass the time.

Mock civil war battles recreating historical battles from the past. Full costume firing wads of Kleenex from our muskets.

So many more memories.

I must give thanks to Mr. Gygax and his creation of Dungeons and Dragons. I still remember when I was first introduced my first comment after hearing the proposed title. “Kind of like snakes and ladders?” “No!” the emphatic response. “It is a fantasy role-play involving dice.” Now, that explanation I could grasp. You see from the earlier examples I had already been doing it to some extent.

From that point on we would spend day and night creating worlds, creatures, characters and lasting friendships. Thinking back we probably spent more time in our fantasy worlds than reality as we let our imaginations take us through endless possibilities.
The systems and genre changed as we explored but the group remained the same for many years.

Now that we are grown up and have families and responsibilities of our own many from our group have moved on. But the spark still lingers from those leisurely days of youth. Today it is much more of an escape from the concerns of job, bill payments and mortgages. Taken back to a time when things were simpler and much of my life was still in from of me. When you are young you want to be older. When you are older you long to be young.

It began again for me with a simple question from my daughter.

“Dad, if you could have two super powers what would they be?”

That was all it took to rekindle the spark.

[vitamin_kitten]

That is basically the cutest roleplaying story I've ever heard. 8D

I feel inspired to create an RP idea out of these last two responses, actually.

[Fluff]

I roleplay because it gets me laid. True story.

[vitamin_kitten]

Nice~~ 8D

[Eternity]

I roleplay, because first off, I love to write. And a lot of times, I love creating diversity. When I go out in real life, I admire different qualities about people; then I come home and manipulate them into characters.

As well, I started roleplaying a long time ago, when I was going through a phase of horrible depression. And I rp'ed in a chatroom, and so it wasn't magnificent. But to be someone else for a while, instead of me; it was great. I never really think of it as writing about someone you made. Though my characters are diverse, so am I, and I always create them with some small figment of something I can relate to, that way I can become that character. I never write thinking about this character sitting from a third person view, I write as though I am this character, and the words being typed are from someone else observing me. If that ... makes sense... which it probably doesn't...

[vitamin_kitten]

It makes perfect sense, cuz that's how I RP too- I really try to get into character and write as if I'm writing about myself from a third person perspective. It makes the character more believable that way.

[Guest]

Wow...I never saw this until now, whilst perusing the old threads late at night.

I think my reasons for role-playing are both similar and yet quite different from other people's reasons. First of all, I have to agree with what Diodri said. Everything he said is so similar to my own experiences (down to the video game addiction). I want, so badly, to experience things that I will never experience because they simply aren't real, and never will be. And that is where writing comes in for me. But that is writing, and that is why I created the world that will someday be actual "books."

So, why do I roleplay? Well, quite simply, because I don't like to role-play. I don't like interacting with people. I'm quiet and reserved. I don't like sharing my ideas, and then having the blasted into a million little pieces as other people take them apart and transform them into something completely different. I don't like the rejection of having ideas or posts overlooked, and being told I'm not good enough.

But: there is so much to learn from role-playing. You learn how to interact with other people (writers), and you learn how characters themselves interact. You learn to expect the unexpected, how to vary your writing and shake things up, and how to put up with failed expectations. I started role-playing here on FOG. Before that it had been mostly between my wife and I, and before that only once with two close friends. I did it because it was a barrier I had to get past to become a better writer.

I am still nervous when joining new role-plays: Am I good enough to join this? Will my ideas be accepted or will the be overlooked? Will I screw the whole thing up? Am I going to be that ONE person that everyone wishes hadn't joined so that the role-play would go smoothly? But I do it because every role-play is a learning experience, and, as with everything else, practice makes it easier. I can't say that role-playing is addicting for me, but I learn so much from doing it that it would be shameful for me to stop.

And, despite my reclusive self, my lone-wolf attitude, I enjoy making new friends and learning new stories

[Karali]

The first experience I ever had with something like text RPing was in the beginning of sophomore year of highschool, where a friend and I would write stories together, where we each chose a character and wrote about them. We just considered it co-writing a novel, hahah, but looking back on it was really RPing. And my friend was pretty terrible at it. D:

Ummmm... I'm not really sure what compels me to RP any more. It's just one of those things I do in my spare time, like playing video games, except generally it gets me a lot more excited than playing a video game can. I like the writing part about it, and I like making characters and watching them develop. I never really understood how people can sit there and obsess over random anime characters and stuff when having original characters to fawn over is so much fun. '^'

It really didn't take much for me to decide I liked to RP. I've always enjoyed writing stories, and so writing stories with other people was just an extension to that. Not to mention-- writing by myself is just sort of boring to me, in a way, because I know everything that will happen. But with other people/a partner, it's kept fresh and exciting because everyone can throw in twists.

I mainly stick to 1x1's when I RP, because they're easier to set up and easier to... Drop, I guess-- not to mention, with a group RP, it's a lot harder to regulate who you end up playing with, and you might get stuck with one or more people who you really don't like.

Generally I will RP just about any genre, (although admittedly I lean more toward fantasy and sci-fi and such)-- as long as the main pairing is male x male. I wouldn't consider the RP's I do to be yaoi-- mainstream yaoi infuriates me, actually, because of the stupid seme x uke dynamic. I find myself getting really bored really quick if I have to play the dominant/submissive character all the time, and that's one of the reasons that I don't like doing heterosexual pairings. They bore me. I've tried them but I really just can't get into them. :/

Oh and also like Silvone said, making new friends is totally one of those big reasons why I RP. I've met some of my best friends through RPing. ;D

[Kalon Ordona II]

What do I role-play?
I role-play fantasy (of which I consider science fiction a sub-category, instead of vice versa). I role-play that which I can never experience in real life. I role-play the metaphors of real life that teach us valuable truths and lessons. I role-play the heroes that no longer exist; I role-play the battles that can no longer be fought; I role-play the adventures which can no longer be lived.

What made me decide I liked to role-play?
Role-playing itself. Writing. Using one's imagination together with others. Role-playing is different from writing in that other writers, other imaginations, are involved. Role-playing is a chance to share the act of creation with others. The act of creating, or of shaping, or of weaving characters, worlds and stories from our own experiences is a thrill like no other.

Why do I role-play?
I role-play for the fun of it. I role-play because I have a desire to create. I role-play to exercise my imagination, to hone my skill, to share experiences with others through the miracle of words.

What compels me to role-play?
The characters come alive. The worlds breathe. These are real places growing from our minds. They will cease to live without us. For the sake of the lives of those we have created, we must tell their stories to the end. With great power comes great responsibility. We owe it to our creations not to abandon them.

What greater sorrow can there be than a life cut short?
What greater joy than an adventure worth living to be lived.

[Shadow Hunter]

What compels you to role-play? I just...need to. I need to flex my brain, escape reality, and keep that part of me that goes into each character alive.
Why do you role-play? It's fun, it makes me a better writer, it's easy, and I love being creative.
What made you decide you liked to role-play? I could create a character however I wanted and play them any way I wanted. What's cooler than that?
What do you role-play? I mostly RP animals and humans, because those are the most popular, but occasionally I branch out when the opportunity arises.

To say something more: I have always longed for a permanent escape from my life, even as a toddler. I started out by playing pretend with my sister, where we'd usually be animals and make up fantastic plots, or we'd use our toys and stuffed animals. Those turned out to be more fun because we could actually make the toy move where, when, and how we wanted, rather than be limited by our own bodies. From there I went to SIM games and such online. My sister has no interest in playing pretend anymore. I discovered Role Playing about four years ago, and I sucked at first. But I learned quickly, and I'm now considered an Advanced Role Player in some places, though personally, I'd classify myself as more Intermediate to Advanced.

I believed so strongly at times that the world I lived in had to be the way I imagined it or there was no point that I broke down in tears several times. Still do, and I hate crying. If only this, if only that, etc. The if onlys have no number, but if even one was true for me, so many things would be better for everyone.

I throw myself as deep as I can into Role Playing because I can't take reality. I'm serious when I say I contemplate either suicide or mass murder every time I take my head out of my mind and actually look around me, because this isn't how it's supposed to be, but there is no hope of fixing it on my own. I Role Play because I'd die if I didn't, and that's a horrible fact I can't escape.

[Bird of Hermes]

I role-play... because ever since I can remember I have had a story running through my head.

I would always be creating things in my mind as a child.

I was the one whose stuffed doll could talk, the one who recorded cartoons daily on video-cassette, the one who make note card comics, the one who laughed at her own jokes because no one else understood them.

I was the one who didn't just have one imaginary friend... I had two.

I guess to shorten things I could say I was born with the inclination.

[Shadow Hunter]

Bird of Hermes: I had hundreds of imaginary, though only two were my main best friends, and several were unnamed and unformed. In fact, those two both still exist, though they mainly hang out in the back of my mind until I need them. It's odd, because I created my first friend in third grade, and she actually resulted in being the inspiration for a creature in both my books *pats*

[Guest]

Well I use to play World of Warcraft more than I RPed. Found that I was enjoying my RPs more than that game. Plus it's pay to play each month. Kind of not worth playing if you aren't getting much out of it like at the beginning. So I guess I stick with things that give me constant entertainment and a sense of accomplishment than rolling with something that wastes my time and in the case of World of Warcraft my money as well.

So I role-play cause the entertainment is reliable it certainly isn't as boring as playing a computer game for 3 years and get pinned against the same challenges all the time. I role-play cause I have direct control over the story's content and can help make it as intricate as possible without making it mediocre and boring.

This is of course, comparing actual real RPing to World of Warcraft. Real role-playing > World of Warcraft for me.

I also guess you could say I'm done with MMORPGs for a while. I'll probably play Star Craft 2 and Diablo 3 like a mad man though.

[Reffy]

What compels you to role-play?
Love writing. Love the interaction with other people. Love seeing where the stories go. Love using my imagination and combing it with others. (Its also a good waste of my free-time, instead of plunging it in to a silly computer game)

Why do you role-play?
See above

What made you decide you liked to role-play?
Reading the EPIC roleplays on WoWforums. Some of them are book worthy! I browsed for a long time, reading other people's stuff. I kept thinking about joining but didn't have the confidence. Well, eventually I got over that and realized it was a lot of fun!

What do you role-play?
Mostly, anything. I'm not too keen on modern or futuristic stuff. I like to stick to the old school Dragons and Wizards. Although there is the occasional one that is too tempting.

[6billionghosts]

What compels you to role-play?

I have an overwhelming personality that needs many outlets in order to stay healthy.

Why do you role-play?

I enjoy it. It's exciting and immersive and makes me think about myself and the world in different ways. I love experiencing the world intimately and in a variety of ways. I love collaborating with other people creatively.

What made you decide you liked to role-play?

I don't think I ever really decided. I did it as a kid, because it's what kids do. I think it's natural.

What do you role-play?

Right now, horror-type-stuff.

[Gadreille]

I role play as a creative outlet. I did not pursue the creative side of myself in school, and I feel the need to get it out somewhere. I love to write, but more than this, I love and need to get away. I need to leave real life behind for a while and explore a different side of myself. This is why many of my characters are a reflection of myself.

I love role playing because it's like dreaming while awake, and you get to remember these dreams long after they are gone. I originally got into it so I could help Silv explore writing emotionally rather than factually, as well as to help with character interactions. This original role play may someday become a book, but regardless of this, it brought me into role playing and I never want to leave!

I usually role play fantasy, or fan-fiction. The dreamer in me tends to go in these two directions.

[Gabe]

Ryona's reason for roleplaying is very similar to mine. Creative outlet is really important to me, as I spend a good bit of my day on cloud nine during class (certain examinations require the students to operate the equipment solo, so there's a good bit of down time during hands on testing). Thankfully I have a whole section of my notebook dedicated to writing down whatever pops into my head.

Anyway, I commonly put some aspect of myself into my characters. Anyone who's read my posting will recognize that. I want to get away from it, but it's all I've found I can write without feeling like I'm doing something way-wrong. Something I have found that I wanted to try recently was putting just a single aspect of myself into a character and basing their entire personality off of that trait. The main problem with this is it could make the character flat and uninteresting, but I haven't made it far enough into an RP with this idea to try developing it into taking a negative trait and turning it good, and vice versa.

I'll stop there, wouldn't want to make this TL:DR, ha!

[Aiswari Cara]

Right now, what compels me to roleplay is my need for more writing experience, trying to master my fantasy and fiction skills. I also love to roleplay in general; whether it is roleplaying console games, dungeons and dragons, or text based online roleplays. They give me a break from the ordinary, letting me escape the stresses of everyday life.

I role play because it is fun to me, giving me a sense of fulfillment upon completing one. I also love to create roleplays, watching them develope, and it kind of feels like my own child or my own home. I also like the people that I am surrounded by while in a roleplay, for I am always looking for companions in writing.

The first roleplay experiece I had was on Gaia online, but it was a very unorganized form of roleplaying. I found Roleplay gateway a few years after finding Gaia, and I fell in love with the professionalism of the site, backed by the sheer amount of good writing on the site. I've always liked writing for myself, but roleplaying gave the first sense of purpose in my writing.

I love to roleplay fantasy, creative fiction, realistic fiction, futuristic, and war in fantasy as well as future style. I am trying to gain as much experience as possible with writing, hoping to become an accomplished writer some day, and each roleplay I participate in helps me along on the course.

[Lets Dance On Fire]

That's a surprisingly hard question to answer. I had to actually think this one over for a while.

I remember when I started RPing, almost exactly to the date, it would have been sometime in mid-September, 2007. I was a member of certain popular avatar site some of you may know, named after the ancient-Greek mother-nature goddess [well a titan if you want to be specific]. I was a member of a Final Fantasy 7 forum within this site, and on a whim joined a fan-fic RP, having never written before.

I was starting my IB course (a pretty demanding education option you can take between 16-18 world-wide in terms of writing) and decided I wanted to try and enhance my eloquence and variety of syntax within my work. RPing seemed like a good way to do this at the time.

However, now (although I haven't RPed in a month due to serve illness which has now finally left me) I RP because I enjoy it, not to try and help my writing (although I know for well that RPing does indeed help my writing abilities by forcing me into regular high-literacy environments.) But largely, I enjoy the escapism, much like with music (my other passion). That and creative writing is something that has always appealed to me, a nagging feeling in the back of my head if you will, an itch, a hunger to do something to burn excess creativity in my head.

So, all in all, I guess RPing is two things for me: The cure for the itch of excess creative juices and a mechanism for enhancing my writing.

That and at the end of the day its just plain fun

[Artorius]

The primary reason I RP is to keep myself in constant writing practice. Other reasons include getting away from boring old everyday life, and for the fun of interactive story-telling/collaborative story-writing.

I know this isn't as in depth as everyone else's posts, but these are my reasons in brief.

[The_End]

I like it. It's fun.

[ImmortalSin]

What compells you to role-play?
If I don't roleplay actively I usually find myself drifting off frequently. I could write short stories to get all of my ideas out of my head - and I sometimes do - but it's more satisfying when I can involve others and allow them to interpret things in their own way. I'm also always trying to improve my writing skills too.

Why do you role-play?
To escape. Simple as that. Oh, and it's fun of course.

What made you decide you liked to role-play?
Originally I didn't even realise I had started roleplaying. There was something called the Power Theatre on a virtual pet site I used to be a Player Assistant on, and you chose a character picture and could choose a map and then you played out a story of your choice. Thinking about it makes me shudder, considering I was this wolf looking thing with wings called Giggles.

Even so, I made a few good friends and we moved to our own forum from there. That's when I realised I liked to roleplay. Or better yet, that what I was doing was roleplaying.

What do you role-play?
Anything that catches my fancy, which is usually fantasy. I'm not much of a fan of realism. Considering the reason I roleplay is to escape from reality.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

A single word sums it up: Escapism.

However, after a lot of debate lately I've decided to take a break from role-playing and focus more on my own writing.

[DarkGoddess]

Feel free to TL;DR this.

I am compelled to role-play for many reasons, though a lot of them are too intricate to fully explain in writing.

I find that in reality, it's difficult to get who you really are out there, especially for someone like me who doesn't say much, doesn't stand out from the crowd that often. I'm the nameless face in a crowd, the one name, neatly tucked away amongst dozens of others in the newspaper. My heroism, what little of it is there, used to be injected into the anti-heros of my stories. Later on, I did the same with my role-playing characters.

As well, I am full of contradictions. I can hate and love one thing at the same time, but when I try to describe it to others, they just sneer. I find that my role-playing characters are a chance for others to see what lies underneathe what I portray in real life. Every single one of my characters, no matter what the background, what their troubles are, what their personality is, is a projection of some dusty, dark corner of my soul.

I roleplay for my love of the ethereal, of the outragousness of the worlds that sprout from other minds. I don't know whether it's really true, but I find that the world that is created stems from how the person perceives this world, and I feed upon it. Roleplaying helps keep my mind open to what's possible, to the good side of life. They help me believe that, if our made-up people can do things like that to my outlook on life, then real people could do that themselves. Maybe the world isn't as dooms as I've thought.

I like roleplay because I like reading. I like writing. I like how, unlike spoken word, written word is immortal. You read something you find absolutely beautiful, and then when it disappears from the mists of time and memory, you can look it up again.

Also, like many others on here, I liked to interact within the worlds that I read from. You know those cheesy, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories? I had every one of them. My friends and I would play pretend, and be spies. We'd put an empty waterbottle between our bikes' tires and the piece that holds the tire in place just for the sound affect. We'd be fairies one day, and dragoons the next. Whenever we heard of an outragous mythological creature, we'd introduce it into our crazy plots.

From playing pretend came video games. My grandfather had the old-fashioned Super Nintendo, and had many games to go with it. There were the kiddy, party games, but I preferred the darker ones. Final Fantasy VI (then called Final Fantasy III), Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Illusion of Gaia, and Earthbound were my absolute favorites, ones that I still play today. I have SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, and DS, but my heart lies with the SNES and the N64. Something about the primitive graphics and how the plot mattered more than the look of the game struck out to me.

Though I still love Video Games, what came next was writing. What had happened was that I was unsatisified with the ending of one of the video games. I wanted the game to keep going, so I decided to fix it myself. I took full control of the characters, and I made them do what I wanted, not what some silly writer wanted. (I was only three or four at the time, but I was already criticizing some of the storylines! I love little-kid me <3)

I got hooked.

I think in my first five or six years of writing, I spewed out more total crap than some writers throw out in their entire lives. None of it was good, until about fifth grade.

Ms. F (I won't give out her full name), saw me writing in a scribbler at lunch. She wanted to read what I had written. I gave it to her with no complaint or anything, and the next day she told me it was terrible.

I was stunned. Frustrated, just ready to rip the teacher's hair out. I didn't want that, I wanted to be told that I was a great writer. I did have some natural talent, but talent only goes so far. But she took me aside, and pointed out every minute and minor detail that was wrong.

I needed that. So angry I was, I set out to prove her wrong, that I COULD write well. There came my first real story. I have it still in my jump drive. It's only about a page and a half long, but it had real characters, not just stock ones. The storyline was unpredictable. There were still some little errors, but it was something I was proud of. I liked this story, and I didn't care who knew.

She started a game with me, giving me a page of something her character was doing, and I had to reply to what had happened. There came my first introduction to roleplaying in the form I hold dear. We did that until I went to high school, and she went to Kuwait. We still swap emails all the time, though.

As for internet roleplaying, I became introduced to it on a small fan-forum. There was a minor section dedicated to roleplaying, and some of it was terrible, but other parts were incredibly complex. I was fully addicted to roleplaying by the time I joined my first RP, named Heart of Winter. My character was one-dimensional, and I lived on the high of roleplaying, yet still having the work there to read later on. About three months later, after getting out of the hospital due to a nasty mix up, I realized I was falling into old habits, and set out to work to improve my writing, to make others gasp at my posts.

Fast-forward to today. I'm still not a great writer, definitely not cut out to be an author (yet), but I'm working at it still. And I still love it as much as I loved that first day of writing.

But I digress.

I like to roleplay magic, or magical creatures. It doesn't matter where, or when. Present-day ones are just as fun as medieval-time ones. However, I am not a huge fan of the whole werewolves vs vampires thing. I love werewolves, but I don't get why everyone wants them to be the vampires' ancestral enemies so badly.

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