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Jan. 10th, 2011 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superheroineSTOP: RANDOM RAMBLING TIME.
I just wanted to let you all know how much I really love you and how amazing I think this place is.
If you think about it, our hobby is coming together every day to build a story. Call it escapism or a creative outlet or a pass-time or a time-killer, whatever, this is one giant, cohesive story with hundreds of different characters in one constantly-evolving setting. While mods may gently guide some plots or ideas, for the most part, everything happens because someone takes the initiative to make it happen, whether it's by introducing something new or by just having their character get involved in something. It's as little as describing the wall as blue or as big as an epic battle on the lawn.
There's this idea proposed by one of my favourite writers: fictional universes and the characters within them can gain a measure of "sentience" and become real, living things. It sounds kind of ridiculous just like that, but if you think of it another way, it sounds pretty amazing. Despite having a huge collective of writers and hundreds of brains between us, we've managed to create ONE cohesive universe, something that we all share, that has taken on a life of its own. Every day, time passes for our characters just as it passes for us. While we're sitting in class or at our jobs, in this story, they're going about their day in Paradisa. We have hundreds of characters with their own thought processes, their own designated personality traits, their own voices... and they make their own choices because of who they are. All writing is like this, but ours is special in that it comes from the minds of hundreds of people, rather than one author. Characters create their own histories, and live their own lives, and impact their surroundings. Put like that, Paradisa is very real, isn't it?
We all created this beautiful little world in our minds. Hell, there are hundreds of people out there who have never been in the game but have all held a role in the creation of this beautiful world. Artists, writers, actors, programmers, storytellers, producers, publishers, even the people who run Livejournal. We have all chipped in little ideas that have come together to make something much bigger.
I think we use "roleplayer" a lot when we could be equally justified in simply calling ourselves writers. The "roleplaying" we do could just as easily be called writing. Borrowed materials, sure, but even then, we all bring a unique and original life to the characters that can't be found in their original canons. We get to do almost anything we want. We've never seen how these characters would react to certain things outside their canon but here in Paradisa we can say with confidence what the characters would do. We can take characters through plot arcs we've never seen in canon before. We can take them through new relationships they never would have made. We can let them learn, let them grow, let them spread their wings in ways canon never would, and never could.
All for the love of roleplaying –– writing.
Sure, it isn't always Shakespeare, and it isn't one of Homer's epics, and it'll never be known as a great work of literature or art or anything... but it is special. It's special in a way few things are. It's hundreds of writers sharing the same journal, hundreds of artists sharing the same canvas, hundreds of musicians in the same orchestra, creating as they go and still managing to make something beautiful. We aren't a garbled mess or a bunch of random paint splatters or some awful tuning session.
We're actually pretty damn good, especially for people who work on the fly and seldom plan beyond a month in advance.
Day 1500 really doesn't hold all that much significance to me, other than being just a number. But 1500 days is a long time, and whether you've been here for all 1500 or just a single day, you're a part of something incredible. Something that is going to continue being incredible, maybe for another 1500 days, and maybe another 1500 after that, and so on.
I love you guys. Keep being incredible, and keep making this place amazing to be a part of.
I just wanted to let you all know how much I really love you and how amazing I think this place is.
If you think about it, our hobby is coming together every day to build a story. Call it escapism or a creative outlet or a pass-time or a time-killer, whatever, this is one giant, cohesive story with hundreds of different characters in one constantly-evolving setting. While mods may gently guide some plots or ideas, for the most part, everything happens because someone takes the initiative to make it happen, whether it's by introducing something new or by just having their character get involved in something. It's as little as describing the wall as blue or as big as an epic battle on the lawn.
There's this idea proposed by one of my favourite writers: fictional universes and the characters within them can gain a measure of "sentience" and become real, living things. It sounds kind of ridiculous just like that, but if you think of it another way, it sounds pretty amazing. Despite having a huge collective of writers and hundreds of brains between us, we've managed to create ONE cohesive universe, something that we all share, that has taken on a life of its own. Every day, time passes for our characters just as it passes for us. While we're sitting in class or at our jobs, in this story, they're going about their day in Paradisa. We have hundreds of characters with their own thought processes, their own designated personality traits, their own voices... and they make their own choices because of who they are. All writing is like this, but ours is special in that it comes from the minds of hundreds of people, rather than one author. Characters create their own histories, and live their own lives, and impact their surroundings. Put like that, Paradisa is very real, isn't it?
We all created this beautiful little world in our minds. Hell, there are hundreds of people out there who have never been in the game but have all held a role in the creation of this beautiful world. Artists, writers, actors, programmers, storytellers, producers, publishers, even the people who run Livejournal. We have all chipped in little ideas that have come together to make something much bigger.
I think we use "roleplayer" a lot when we could be equally justified in simply calling ourselves writers. The "roleplaying" we do could just as easily be called writing. Borrowed materials, sure, but even then, we all bring a unique and original life to the characters that can't be found in their original canons. We get to do almost anything we want. We've never seen how these characters would react to certain things outside their canon but here in Paradisa we can say with confidence what the characters would do. We can take characters through plot arcs we've never seen in canon before. We can take them through new relationships they never would have made. We can let them learn, let them grow, let them spread their wings in ways canon never would, and never could.
All for the love of roleplaying –– writing.
Sure, it isn't always Shakespeare, and it isn't one of Homer's epics, and it'll never be known as a great work of literature or art or anything... but it is special. It's special in a way few things are. It's hundreds of writers sharing the same journal, hundreds of artists sharing the same canvas, hundreds of musicians in the same orchestra, creating as they go and still managing to make something beautiful. We aren't a garbled mess or a bunch of random paint splatters or some awful tuning session.
We're actually pretty damn good, especially for people who work on the fly and seldom plan beyond a month in advance.
Day 1500 really doesn't hold all that much significance to me, other than being just a number. But 1500 days is a long time, and whether you've been here for all 1500 or just a single day, you're a part of something incredible. Something that is going to continue being incredible, maybe for another 1500 days, and maybe another 1500 after that, and so on.
I love you guys. Keep being incredible, and keep making this place amazing to be a part of.
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