Introduction Post
Nov. 15th, 2008 12:58 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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I think we've been spending enough time together (and for me, it's been very enjoyable time) that we should get to know each other a bit more. So here's a post for that purpose. Some things I'd love to know about you, my fellow fen, are:
-Your name and a little about yourself. (Age, job, where you live, anything about you that you consider important)
-How you got here. (History of the path you took to finding this game, not just how you heard about it but what made you care enough to actually check it out. And what made you interested enough to want to stay and spend hours and hours discussing it)
ETA: I had more, but after writing my own answers I realized that this was plenty to start with.
I have put my own answers to the questions in a comment. I really look forward to seeing what everyone has to say.
-Your name and a little about yourself. (Age, job, where you live, anything about you that you consider important)
-How you got here. (History of the path you took to finding this game, not just how you heard about it but what made you care enough to actually check it out. And what made you interested enough to want to stay and spend hours and hours discussing it)
ETA: I had more, but after writing my own answers I realized that this was plenty to start with.
I have put my own answers to the questions in a comment. I really look forward to seeing what everyone has to say.
My answers
Date: 2008-11-15 06:23 pm (UTC)Part of the reason I mention this is that I think that my position as a teacher sometimes influences the way I see the kids in the game, especially those who are younger than 12 (which is the oldest age I sub for).
I do plan to get a full-time teaching job, hopefully next year. If I could choose any grade, I think I'd choose fifth.
I live with my boyfriend, who I met at Reed and have been with for five years. He got caught up in my excitement at first and was reading alternity, but I suppose it's not really his thing, because while he enjoyed it he also quickly fell behind and then stopped reading altogether. He is a grad student and a blogger for World of Warcraft. He has been playing WoW nonstop since the new expansion came out Thursday, which partly explains why I am spending my Saturday morning at home sitting on my own computer! Although it's enjoyable way to spend time, so I'm not really complaining.
I had no idea how much I'd have to say. I think I'm going to stop there for now.
And about the game
Date: 2008-11-15 06:56 pm (UTC)When I was in high school, I heard about Harry Potter and thought it sounded dumb. I tried reading the first 80 pages or so while sitting in a bookstore and hated them. But my friend, who would eventually become my first girlfriend, loved the books and offered to read them aloud to me. I agreed, she ended up reading the first three books to me that way, and it was one of those wonderful and perfect life experiences.
I loved the books enough to venture into fandom. I've always been a bit shy about the internet (I read a lot, but feel pretty nervous about saying anything), so I was mostly a silent participant. I talked to my RL friends about it, but from the computer I mostly watched. There was one fan whose livejournal entries I found particularly funny and interesting (her username was dorkorific). One day, she started raving about this thing called That Was Then. I didn't totally understand it, but I started to read it anyway. A few months later the game This Is Now started, and so I followed that from the beginning.
It turned out to possibly be my favorite sort of storytelling that I had ever encountered. Complex, interesting characters. First-person, real-time, full of subtle hints that rewarded a close reading. After it ended, I never completely stopped thinking about it. Every few months I would go on a grand and desperate search through livejournal for any trace of another game like it, but I didn't really find one. A couple of years after it ended, my boyfriend helped me with a project to list All the TIN posts in order (http://tinlist.nfshost.com/) so I could reread it. And I did. Every word. And was sad again, because by then I was pretty sure that HP fandom was dwindling, and maybe no other fandom would ever be that big again, and there just wasn't enough creative energy left in online fandom to create anything like TIN ever again. And then Alternity happened, and here we are. It's not the same as TIN, but some of the players are the same, and I think the fan community is actually much better, although smaller, and I think that it has the potential to be really amazing. And I also have something of the urge to nurture and protect it like some little sapling that could grow into a giant tree if it doesn't get stepped on first. Which is probably dumb. But I'm inches away from making my first actual post in my LJ for over a year, just to pimp this game. Because this is the sort of story I love maybe the most, more than TV or books or movies or anything, and for all I know this is the last one of its kind that will ever exist.
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Date: 2008-11-16 12:14 am (UTC)- The player who went to Reed College
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Date: 2008-11-15 06:42 pm (UTC)I'm Deb. I'm 45 and teach. I have a commuter marriage, so I live in Texas and slave in Ohio, where it is currently doing this:
I'm especially likely to be seen here at
How you got here:
Ah, that's easy. I read Peg Kerr's journal and she's been talking up this game since the summer. I was a huge fan of Nocturne Alley and loved playing at Nraged. (I may well have been there with a different LJ name, though, I can't really remember the chronology. If so, I was
Ideas for Growth:
I've got no good ideas about how to bring people into the fen, except that I think the expansion of players may bring some of their acquaintances along, which helps gradually through word of mouth. I hope, at least.
There are sometimes good plot moments for bring more folks on board, so we fen and the players might look for those opportunities for re-pimping the game.
And we might suggest to the mod (she said, suggestively) that in addition to the weekly updates, it might help to have periodic summaries of "the action to date" (after each term of school perhaps ... or after a major plot milestone passes). It's already hard to imagine anyone reading the whole game to catch up.
Maybe the mod would also consider adding a post-dated
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Date: 2008-11-15 07:03 pm (UTC)How long have you had a commuter marriage? I imagine that'd be very difficult for me, so I admire you for making it work.
So you never read TIN? And I never got too far in NA. Maybe we should trade favorite posts someday from our respective first games.
I think with other games, one of the things that got them an audience was being pimped by some of the more well-known people in fandom. Do we even have those anymore?
I was thinking about using a series of sample posts to give people a taste of the game so far, enough to motivate them to continue to read it. Like Hermione's first post (http://alt-hermione.livejournal.com/725.html), which introduces her role in the game. And about the Order Only spell (http://community.livejournal.com/hpalternity/898.html), so people won't be confused about that. Harry's sorting (http://alt-harry.livejournal.com/736.html), some in-game events that they would recognize because of similarity to the books (http://alt-harry.livejournal.com/1772.html), the Ministry (http://alt-terry.livejournal.com/2459.html) of (http://alt-terry.livejournal.com/2612.html) Magic (http://alt-terry.livejournal.com/2997.html) Declaration (http://alt-terry.livejournal.com/3326.html) transcribed by Boot... Things to pull them into the world and be motivated to learn more on their own.
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:15 pm (UTC)I was just thinking that some kind of crack pot idea/red herring/brilliant theory index would be a great resource, both for us and for new fen.
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:38 pm (UTC)I like the idea of doing a periodic "action to date" summary. I had originally planned to do it once a year, but how about three times a year - Christmas, June, and September? That way, each school term + the summer is covered. And our first one is coming up, too, then: I'll have it for the New Year.
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From:Old RPG favorite posts trade?
Date: 2008-11-15 10:54 pm (UTC)Here's an early post from TIN that makes me laugh:
http://obviouslynot.livejournal.com/1069.html
Got anything from NA?
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Date: 2008-11-15 07:57 pm (UTC)How I Got Here:
The Game: I really haven't the foggiest how to engineer greater publicity for the game, since it always seems to be Internet serendipity that brings these things to my attention. I have a relatively small flist and many of the people on it are RL folks in addition to the population of fannish friends (although there's some delightful overlap). I think the best thing we can do as fen is to be active and enthusiastic in our discussions, which includes being as welcoming as possible - commenting back to newcomers, et cetera. Maybe doing these introduction posts periodically? I'm assuming that this game will run for years (I hope so!) so a chance to meet new fellow fen once a year might be a good opportunity for helping new followers feel more connected.
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:05 pm (UTC)I learned of the game from
I'm currently a week or so behind -- I've checked out the game a few times, but I haven't read most of the comments. I'll have more time to catch up next week.
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:21 pm (UTC)I've been missing you here. (But then I go AWOL, too, fairly regularly, so it could be more me than you.)
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Date: 2008-11-15 08:45 pm (UTC)I found Alternity because of the post on Nraged, like a lot of people here I'm an old NA fan, and I never really found an rpg I could really get into after NA finished, so I'm exited by how good Alternity is coming along so far!
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Date: 2008-11-15 09:04 pm (UTC)Was your mom stay-at-home? I know of some people who do pretty well being a substitute teacher and mom at the same time, since it lets them be home all the time their kids are home. I always sort of liked that idea. But hopefully once I get a full-time classroom of my own, I'll love it so much that I won't want to stop.
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Date: 2008-11-15 09:13 pm (UTC)I'm a librarian at a private high school in the Twin Cities (I've been a paraprofessional there since 2000, finished my MLIS in 2007, wrangled some new duties to go with the degree, and now my boss - the MLIS requiring position - has taken a new job, so I'm sliding into his position in January for spring semester, and will be applying to keep it. (Said school believes in, shall we say, a far more diligent hiring process than Hogwarts appears to.) I am looking forward to Alternity keeping me somewhat sane in the process - it's going to be a busy spring for me.
I found the game through
-Your name and a little about yourself. (Age, job, where you live, anything about you that you consider important)
-How you got here. (History of the path you took to finding this game, not just how you heard about it but what made you care enough to actually check it out. And what made you interested enough to want to stay and spend hours and hours discussing it)
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Date: 2008-11-15 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-11-16 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-17 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-17 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-15 10:54 pm (UTC)I'm a gamer nerd from back in the day, and a Potter enthusiast. I read about alternity on a video game blog, however. Rest is history.
I'm apparently the only dude here.
I dig brevity.
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Date: 2008-11-15 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-11-15 11:27 pm (UTC)--Pansy's and Amycus's player
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Date: 2008-11-17 07:20 pm (UTC)So kudos.
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Date: 2008-11-16 04:03 am (UTC)I heard about the game through
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Date: 2008-11-16 04:29 am (UTC)And you just got "What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?" stuck in my head.
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Date: 2008-11-17 02:46 pm (UTC)--How I got here: Well, I discovered fandom during an emotionally exhausting period in my life, towards the end of my graduate program, and it helped me get through the writing of my Master's thesis. HP was my first fandom, and I mostly lurked, but it's still a fandom that I feel a real connection to. And one of the things I discovered (I don't remember how exactly) was a wonderful game called
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Date: 2008-11-17 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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