Ok, don't laugh but...my first experience role-playing was on Xbox Live. And no, I don't mean through chat. You know the little avatars you can make for each profile, and how you can view them all at one time? Me, my cousin, and my brother used to make a plethora of characters, and make a story for them. Like, literally using our voices for each "avatar" and doing a weird, video game play. We were like 10 at the time, and had no idea what the heck we were doing. All I know is we had so much fun doing it. Eventually that ended, and I began to get heavily involved in MMO games, anime, manga, etc etc. In 2009 I stumbled across this website called "Otakuzone". I believe that was the year the site first got started...? Don't quote on me this. But what originally attracted me to it was, besides the cute avatars, was the anime and manga section. I eventually left the site for a while, and didn't return until early 2011. That was the year I finally discovered the roleplaying section. Like
@FieryCold , I kinda just perused how other people rped, and then randomly made my own rp. Have no idea I how managed to do it, but oh well.
My first rp was called "Survival of the Fittest". If you think
that's cringey, just know that I wrote out everything in Comic Sans *shudders*. I actually met a really close friend there by the name of SoraAngel. She doesn't really rp anymore, but we still talk in real life; I actually visited her at college last spring as a matter of fact. I made some other friends too on OtakuZone, and had some good rps there. The website was very expansive in its content, which I liked. But alas, the site was canceled by its company. The same administrators and moderators from the site decided to make their own by the name of OtakuNetwork, but I didn't go there right away. I had a few misgivings about some of them...one of them used to harass me on OZ for reasons bewilderingly unknown to me (she got mad at me in chat one day because I said something in Spanish to a friend. I was just like ????ok??) Even after I reported her to the mods, they were just like "lol stop being sensitive, she's just playing around." Yeah ._. I didn't like that attitude. At the same time, my friend SoraAngel decided to make a little private
website that was really just populated with our circle of friends---not to say that no one else couldn't join, but it was just the five of us in the beginning. Eventually, a gaggle of people from OtakuZone drifted there, but they soon ran off to OtakuNetwork. I had a great time on that site too for the short year it was active, but when my friends eventually ghosted, I went to OtakuNetwork.
Alright, so.
OtakuNetwork. <----clicky to see it in its last days. Where do I even begin...? Fiery and Nemo have already said how toxic it was, but I'm just here to reiterate what a cesspool it was. Don't get me wrong, I had fun with my rps; I
always enjoy that. But holy crap was it toxic on there. All people did was bitch about how inactive it was on there, and then when some of us were like "ok, then why don't
you post something" then all of a sudden, here came the pity party. Wah, I'm so busy with work/school/family/pets/food etc etc. That shit was infuriating. And the mods--save Nemo--were just bumps on a log who did not contribute at all to anything. It was a roleplaying site, and yet the administrator used to frequently complain about the rps going on. WTF MAN.
Around the time the site started dying--because, you know, people were crying instead of being active--
@Nemopedia kept trying to convince me to join Iwaku. After much nagging, I eventually made an account in 2014 I believe...? But I didn't stay long. The site was really confusing to me at first, combined with the fact I didn't know anybody and was being a shy little punk. After OtakuNetwork finally closed, I just decided to take a long hiatus from role-playing. I was just entering college, and a lot of stuff was going on at home.
But I digress. FAST FORWARD TO 2017. In May I finally returned, and huzzah! Here I am! YOUR WELCOME.
Sorry for the essay, but I couldn't help myself. It's either this or write a book titled "My Struggle".