Welcome to Gaia! ::

I could probably go the long, drawn-out route with this, but I'm not good at the long stuff. The only reason I'm still on this site is because of two people. One is opaj, and the other is Elvidnir. On a personal level, they're both great. Awesome people, awesome friends. But again, not really here to talk about personal stuff, though I guess I can't explain it without going into it a little bit, so here goes.

opaj was the very reason that I got into RP. Literally. As in, after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean with a mutual friend of ours (strangely enough at a local theater that is, quite literally, down the street from my current apartment), and getting something to eat at a nearby restaurant, he told me about Gaia and about his character. At the time, I twisted the whole thing in my mind to be an online flash game or something of the sort. I remember him talking about how his character hadn't eaten in a week, and that we thought it was funny, but not why, or that his character would go into the bathroom and then he'd just stop posting for the night - then walk in through the front door as if nothing happened. Ah, the days when a character had a constant presence - but I digress. Anyways, I went home that same day and signed up. Made a username (one that I had recently thought of maybe three or four months before), and realized that I had no idea what to call my character, or where to go.

opaj directed me to a thread that he and another mutual friend of ours was RPing at - the Gaia Bar, run by K-Man. I fumbled through the earliest incarnations of my character, who had no official name, before people settled on calling him Rage. Tofu was just too... odd, and while the name 'opaj' seemed to work in context, 'ragingtofu' was just way too silly. It was there that Rage became a defined name, and a defined character, though it would take him a while to become the character that he's known as now. It was also where he met Elvidnir, and where another lasting friendship was formed.

That was nearly seven years ago.

But are people like opaj and Elvidnir my favorite roleplayers? Well... yes. And no.

Over the years I've spent on this site, I've met a ton of people. Some I still talk to to this day. Others were one-off fights, or have faded away over time. But their character's stories endure in my mind, and in the mind of a character that's evolved and changed and aged over those six-plus years of development. As cheesy as it sounds, I don't think I can honestly have a favorite roleplayer - but I have a lot of favorite roleplayers. Even the silliest of fights, the most bizarre of occurrences, have had an impact on the way I RP and the way I tackle situations both in and out of an RP scenario. From opaj's amazing events that everyone loves, to dragons shooting laser beams made of nuclear energy at the Firebrand, be it posting in the Gaia Bar in real-time in 2003, or realizing that I should REALLY finish that post for Barthavos Desert in 2010 that's been in limbo because of me for the last two weeks, it's all been one long evolution of how I write and how I tackle a situation.

I realize that this is probably coming off a lot more ramble-y than I first intended. But my favorite RPer is all of you. And all the people in my past that have kept me hanging around this deranged website playing make-believe for as long as I have. Maybe I'll come back and edit this a bit when I've got more mind fuel to run off of, or maybe this'll be good enough. I hope it is, because it's been a fun, funky, sometimes harsh ride, but I don't think I'd be the same if I hadn't gone to see Pirates that day.

GROUP HUG

There's a reason I still check this place on a regular basis. I was more specific in the last thread, but you're all great and I love watching you guys.

Except for Steve, who's still a total f**.

We are all fags.

Together.