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I would have to agree with Wakey on just about every point here. In my own case, I'm 22, have lived in my flat for a year and a half, and haven't watched the television since something like 2013. I recall a time when 2013 seemed an absolute age away, because it was; in 2006, seven years constituted more than half of my life to that date.
I had my phases, too - a mad period between 2006 and 2007 when I really hadn't a clue what was going on or what a forum really was, when a bizarre role-play featuring the 'forum minxes' played out and somehow managed to incorporate me, when the debate raged long into the nights over which style of play was better - should one be cautious or brave, pragmatic or irrational, should he give the game serious thought or treat it entirely as a matter of luck and hope for the best? If we're to be completely honest, that particular issue never reached a definitive resolution, because there could never be one; it was for each person to make up their own mind and apply their own approach in their own way, and this, I feel, is part of what made the show itself such a roaring early success.
Still, we had characters all around, and the great thriving, living hotel depicted in my 'sig' was in its prime.
2008 saw for me a quiet period, punctuated by a weird and inexcusably lazy attempt at running my own 'series', loosely based on Aaron's work and often without any dialogue whatsoever. In 2009 the fourteen-year-old prodigious writer and photographer took his literary experimentation to the General Discussion section in the form of obituaries of famous figures and political opinion pieces (read:sweeping generalisations).
After that, I disappeared for three years, returning in 2012 to establish myself as a member of considerably better repute than the daniel123 of old. I achieved my past dream of becoming a mod - for which 11-year-old me would often beg the mods of that era via private message - in 2013.
Then what? Then follows the slow and steady, gentle downward slope for the forum that, inevitably, appears next in this reply.
It has been a few years I might liken to having a prolonged period of drinking - recollection is fuzzy, memories are faded even if recent, and days merge with one another, and weeks with months, and so on. The party is over, and it's long since been over, but all that was there before remains as it was. It's only really we who have changed, but as time went on, and time has this odd way with us, we never really stopped to witness it happening, we weren't all that aware of it. It just happened, and now I'm a man in his twenties, twice as old as the boy who joined this forum and chose the same username.
This is why I, a while back, vehemently supported keeping the forum as it is once the show had finished. It really is therapy for the mind, and in a way, I feel, when I glance back, much the same as I do when I open an ancient, worn old book and pause for a moment at some page or another - or when I walk through the ruins of an abbey near my home town and stop to acknowledge a well-written bit of graffiti by Robert Clark who visited in 1887. There is something that screams out to me from the screen, something I cannot possibly ignore, something as true as the night is dark: we were here.
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81st member of the Pat M fan club. Still flying the flag for the class of '06...
Like Tom Hanks and his football on that island in 'Cast Away', it looks like it's just me and the bots here now. But that's alright, we're having a grand old time. Aren't we, Wilson? WILSOOOON?!
A few of us who were once part of the furniture, once stalwarts of the grand and extravagant, exuberant and thriving forum, have receded back into the walls, still faintly visible, still here as poignant, reminding relics of an era gone by; but most of us have vanished, forever immersed in the mists of time.
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FAQ
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:50 am Author: JamesJMH91 Post subject: Re: What are you currently doing?
