Starbuck wrote:
Yet again I'm enticed to come back and rekindle my desire for the hopeful optimism of my youth. It's rather strange how a site such as this can harken back some many fond memories. Just wanted to say that although I was increibly immature at times and perhaps even a bigot, I truly cherish my times here and the friends whom I have probably lost to time. There's quite a few of you whom I fondly remember and still even more that appear to have dropped off the face of the Internet entirely.. Such as cosmos and Jordan among many others. It's a strange feeling missing people whom you only ever corresponded with behind the glow of a monitor. I've never really fit in anywhere in my life and I often think back to this site and the genuine feeling of belonging and community.
I've never felt more lost in my entire life than these past few years.
If there's anything I've learned through my near-decade at RuneVillage, it's that time is cruel, but that friends can come from anywhere. RV went through a lot of changes--right along with the rest of us. When I started browsing RV, my main goal was to beat Omegaman, who had invited me here. What is life without a little challenge? That meant getting a higher post count than him, and by design, I would not allow myself to spam, as they called it. I quickly settled in to the Questions Forum, and then the Quests Forum when it was created shortly thereafter, answering every question I could and helping people out. It wasn't long until I stopped caring about post count entirely and purely focused on helping people. Even then I don't think I really felt like part of the community. I wasn't really a RuneVillager. That was Euph and Cosmos and Henner, people who had been around much longer than me. That was Applequest and Orangequest and Not_A_Kitty, people who were obviously having a great time together and who knew each other, people who I genuinely looked up to and knew I had no way of reaching their level. But I tried.
I didn't fit in anywhere in my life either. What you see of me on RV is who I am in real life, except that in real life I'm much, much more shy around people I don't know. I don't start conversations with people, I turn around and walk the other direction. I was that kid in elementary school, in junior high, in high school, that everyone wanted help from, but had no intention of helping me in return. I was never "in the loop" on anything, and the few friends that I seemingly had let me down far more often than not. Perhaps it was just who I am, and I have no one to blame but myself for not putting forth the effort. Regardless, RuneVillage gave me a chance to change that, at least online. When I wrote Zamorak's Bane, I met several dozen people through the story. Most of them fell away, but a few like Ultima Cow and Magicana really went on to be good friends. After 19 months on the site I got over my fear or distrust or whatever it was of the Chat room, and then I really got the opportunity to speak with people, to make friends who would actually think twice about hurting me. I didn't really intend to make friends. I wanted to, sure, but I given my track record I saw it as an impossibility. But I stuck it out. I spent a lot of time here. I spent a LOT of time here, especially in the Chat room. A lot of fun times came out of those experiences.
But it's also a double-edged sword.
I think the first person I really got to know was NintendoDude. We'd strike up conversations in PM Chat all the time for weeks. At one point we even considered meeting, and when he was going on a trip he asked if he could stay at my house for a day or so. My parents might have actually let him do it, I don't know. But I told myself they wouldn't likely agree, and that's what I told him as well. He went on to create a least two phpBB forums that I instantly made accounts on, but they both became abandoned within months and I stopped hearing from him entirely, both here and there.
Then I struck up a friendship with Whydidijoin. I'll never really know why he joined, but he probably didn't know himself, so it doesn't matter. I don't even remember what we talked about all the time in RVChat, I just know that we did. We talked incessantly, night after night. He was a really good guy. I find myself wondering what he's up to sometimes. But like NintendoDude, he drifted away.
Shortly thereafter, I started talking to Quan and Chris, but I was automatically on the outside with them from the get-go. Quan had his group with Tsukasa and Frogger and Mogo and what-have-you, and Goten had his Fake Four thing going on. I don't know how it happened, but I think from 2007 to 2009 we must have talked every night. Quan eventually mentioned that he wanted to be friends with Chris too and that since I was a mutual friend, it would be a good starting point, so we started having group MSN chats, just the three of us. We'd play FlyFF a lot, and everything was wonderful.
Life moves on, things happen. Chris lost his home more times than I'm able to remember, Quan got a girlfriend, etc. I got a job and though my online hours at night didn't change, I was basically told they assumed I wasn't really online anymore. I guess it was true in part, but it still hurt. I found myself missing the old days, with a dozen or two people in RVChat, with MSN conversations every night. When things got particularly rough, on two separate occasions I took a 6-week and 8-week break from the Internet, not logging on to pretty much anything. I don't remember what I really wanted. I think I wanted to be missed. I wanted to go back to those 2009 3-way conversations with Quan and Chris. I even wanted to talk about I wanted those 2009 conversations back, and how we could get that to happen. When I finally returned, one of them asked if I had been gone but quickly changed the subject, and the other one didn't even notice. That didn't really help. What made it worse was the realization that the person I was hurting most was myself. I had taken 14 weeks off when Chat still had roughly 6-10 people in it every night. I think Chat had two people in it today, for the first time in two weeks. We'll never truly get any sort of level of activity in it again, and I missed out on all those moments.
There were lots of others. J Assassin and Kikori and Ultima and Tau_Xi and Tanks and Tweedy. And I guess if I think about it, there's still a handful of people that I have the pleasure of speaking with when the opportunity presents itself, like Topsummoner and Magicana. I still even talk to Omegaman, who was by very first online friend. Jackstick remains a complete and utter bro and best friend but I only really got to talk to him in Chat and everyone's Chat activity is waning whoops?
Now I talk to Pyro a lot, haha. Chris spends so much time with his girlfriend he's not really available to carry on conversations, and today Chris said Quan is apparently in Canada so there's that too. Chatting with Pyro over Skype is just as good as it's always been, especially because I seem to have more in common with him than most anyone else I used to talk to. (don't tell him i said that pyro stop reading go away) But how long until he ends up like J Assassin and NintendoDude and Whydidijoin and Chris and Quan and I stop having someone to talk to that actually wants to talk back to me? Past experience has taught me it's all but inevitable.
I forgot the point I was making
I also went on a giant tangent by accident
I was about to comment on RV's future but dang no one needs that right now
Sorry about hijacking your post there
Uhhhhhhh ok lessee
Starbuck wrote:
It's a strange feeling missing people whom you only ever corresponded with behind the glow of a monitor. I've never really fit in anywhere in my life and I often think back to this site and the genuine feeling of belonging and community.
I've never felt more lost in my entire life than these past few years.
It's a very strange feeling. But it's not a fake feeling. I miss these people all the time. Even if it was for only months at different spots, I
did belong here at RV and in different peoples' lives. I miss all sorts of people that I didn't even get the opportunity to
really strike up a friendship with, like Viruz and Jayman and Avian Maid. I even remember speaking with you through forum posts, Starbuck. You miss people like us, and we miss you right back.
I don't think I have a moral to this long post of gibberish I've written. I've felt very lost myself, many times over, but I can't begin to imagine what your situation is like, so I'm not going to dare to draw a comparison. All I can say is to hang in there. Keep dropping by; those of us that are left enjoy seeing you. Prior experience here has tried to tell me that the friends I make online will eventually drift away, but that's not set in stone. Omegaman and I have been chatting regularly for practically a decade, even though he rarely visits RV. I have Jackstick's cell phone number to text, and I have a bunch of RuneVillagers on Skype and on Steam and on Facebook. There are those like NintendoDude and Whydidijoin that I'll likely never see again, but if I dwell on that I'll miss out on the good times that are still happening with others like Market Man and bluecoat and Landerpurex and Muffin, etc.
As long as RuneVillage stands, there's going to be someone around here that knows you and is happy to see you return.
