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.
And about the game
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.