A good 'ole Saying Hello

[Xerxes]

Hi! I'll start there, for lack of, like, a better way to get typing. Anyway. This is both an introduction and not an introduction, considering I arrived here, like, what... 30 minutes ago? Hi, hello. I'm Xerxes.

TLDR, saw the tumblr post being like "oh hey this exists" and I'm like "oh wow that exists" because I have a fondness for old phpbb forums. And yeah. Homestuck. Considering I've been a long time runner on Town Of Salem's forum and then moved to a more personal(ish?) roleplay forum, it looked promising. So for the 4 online people and then 162 guests (really? Is that normal? If it is, and you are a Real Human Person as a guest reading this right now, extra hello to you!), good day, good night, blessed morrow and all that.

Be a bit of a shame to come here and lurk and not stir up some waters, right? At least in the place with the least expectations (See: General Chat Forum, because heavens forbid I know how to stay on one topic). But if I'm harshing the vibe, feel free to say so. I can contribute. But I didn't want to overwhelm myself by dipping my toes into everything else first and then forget.

And yeah, I did see the introductions thread, but I did just get here 30 minutes ago, and it feels kinda rude to post there and then immediately open up a new thread also to start posting in. Is that just me? I think that's just me. I can see that there is oscillating pools of varying activity, which is fine, and honestly a bit ideal? Considering all of my friends were the dregs of previous phpbb forums that rose to the top and stayed together, I'm really becoming an old man who needs schedule and can't handle anything too deviating from that. Also because I work on Vampire Rules, and if I can't figure out Exactly what I'm allowed to say and Where and How, then I just go quiet.

Man, I intended to start actually talking about things 3 paragraphs ago. So let's do that. Hi, I'm Xerxes. I got into homestuck, ah... I'm going to say, ah. A long time ago. As it goes. But it was honestly one of my formative ventures into media I like, and I like to hope that isn't so visible today, but maybe it is. I can, and would, love to talk to you about that. Considering I'm on the homestuck forum, of course. I think Sollux is neat. The music rocks so hard and absolutely influenced my lifelong tastes. I once accidentally got a teacher to pull up Homestuck on the main projector and had to die of secondhand embarrassment when I realized (THAT I HAD FORGOT) that the comic starts with very blatant swearing like 2 seconds in. Still hurts. Pipeorgankind has made me cry on multiple occasions. I have 29.5 hours in The Genesis Project on steam because it was fun to play on 4/13, and then I stayed some more to break the alchemizing system over my knee and then some. Still haven't managed to succeed in the One Task of having 2 multiplayer individuals stand next to each other. I really like John a lot, and learned how to messily draw him as quick as possible specifically so that I could have him be my avatar when I played Drawful on Jackbox. And, I have a whole lot to tell you about Dirk Strider, but for INCREDIBLY funny reasons.

Supplementary things I'm into I'd be down to talk about? I play Final Fantasy 14 right now, as I got into it because it was Free to start and I wanted to make one of my main oc's into a Dude, and I succeeded, and then the game was fun enough that I was like, all right. I'll buy in. And I really don't regret it, as someone so viscerally uninitiated in MMO's and adjacency. Genuinely a good time if you like what you're getting out of it, and not a drop expected further.

One of my main interests is also in the Zero Escape series, which is funny for like, 12 reasons. Number 1 is that I got into Zero Escape roleplay before I actually knew a lick of the series. Trust me, it makes sense. See, my friends (who weren't TECHNICALLY my friends, at that point) were on a different PHPBB forum, and fucking around completely unrelated to what the forum was actually for. And one of the guys in there had some For Realsies power on the forum, so he had a section made like 3 miles off the beaten path of the main forum activity, utterly tucked away, where they could host Zero Escape Flavored role playing facility escape games. Not, like, roleplaying as Zero Escape characters, mind you. No. You got a Rolecard flavored after Zero Escape Things (Like the Maverick, who had a gun, and the Esper, who had a mental chat connection with another player, etc.) and then you had the Host who was running the game, and all of the players in the game were playing themselves as they ran around a facility and solved puzzles, and did murder, and played the AB game to escape and fulfill their rolecards win condition. The Host facilitated official actions, like attempting to kill people, moving to other rooms, investigating people and items, all that jazz. The Forums Private Messaging systems would facilitate conversations in hidden rooms, while a public Thread facilitated everyone brought together to talk and argue and whatnot about murder and intregue. Usually these games had either 9 or 12 players, relating to the player size of the Zero Escape games. Early on, it wasn't even to really tell a story, simply a love for the drama of it all. It was massively fun in every way I could ever recommend, if, perhaps, a little jank. You have to start somewhere.

Eventually, given time, the format evolved past that basic framework, and basically became a free for all storytelling playground of the Host's discretion. No longer would you play as Xerxes, no, you would make a character to roleplay as in whatever scenario the Host cooked up, whether that was a murder mystery in a locked mansion, a cruise ship (or three...), space ships (We'll get to that.), and even some more Open World shenanigans. I mean, typically, a setting with a closed facility is easier to manage, but I'm friends with some people who love biting off more than they can chew, so. Open world (ish).

It's been.. ah. 7 years? Ish? Since that started. Still going, even as we literally speak right now. I've played [checks notes] 65 of those games, though quantity does not reflect quality. If everything goes well, they run roughly a month, but of course life finds a way to spite even the most inspired. Because its on a forum, 24/7 involvement isn't really required (and would kill the Host, lmfao), so even for a bunch of adults its a pretty good deal. Wouldn't give it up for the world.

Ah, right. Remember when I mentioned Dirk Strider? Well. We hosted one of those games where the Host was like "hahahaha what if I did some real funny shit right here right now" and then he sure did. Because he was damn well familiar with Homestuck. So he had, completely unrelated to Homestucks universe, made Dirk Strider the Big Main Guy of the game, and (mostly) nobody other than me knew what Shit he was up to, and it was. So good. And incredibly funny.

I, well. That story is kinda long? And I'd really love to get into it, but this post is.... also, really, really long... So if you're reading this and you do want me to talk about it, I will. Basically Dirk turned himself into a spaceship to make himself immortal through the Machine, a spaceship called the Nemesis, and the game was a smash combo of Alien Isolation and Protomen, and I was playing the Captain of that ship as things went to hell. Because it was very very clearly advertised that this trip was Not Going To Go Well. Literally "This game is intentioned to be roleplayed as if it is a Horror Movie. you are in a Horror Movie. People are Going To Die. Yay!" and man, its so good. Fantastic. I actually have a google doc stashed around here somewhere of my entire character perspective of the game, specifically to archive the Private Messages for more coherent narrative purposes. Wouldn't be opposed to sharing it, but that's more digressing as well.

Aside from that, I like baba is you, and rain world, and spirit island. And I REALLY like Dragon Quest 9. All of them, but DQ9 in specific. So if you want to talk about DQ9 I would love you forever and ever. And typing this is currently putting off some not immediately important stuff I really should be doing, so... I'll just leave it here. Feel free to get back to me, noble reader, and enlighten me to the individuals who remain vigilant in the stronghold of the mighty. Pretty please. This is low stakes, I swear. I'm a lovely guy. Ta ta.

[Aeroplane]

Heya Xerxes, good to see new people on the boards but we do have an introduction thread for posts like these.

[phantos]

Have an old fashioned welcome, Xerxes.

[Emma81]

Hey Xerxes!It's great to have you here!Your story with Homestuck is amazing.YesSollux has such a cool character and his arcs are full of emotions, Your experiences with Zero Escape sound really interesting, especially the dynamics in roleplaying games I totally agree that forums can connect people in such a genius way!And about PHPBB I also have a soft spot for those kinds of forums.It’s incredible how these places can build communitiesI hope you find your niche here quickly and make some awesome connections! :)

[kipple]

I've nosed around a few classic forum haunts here and there, and the holding stable of lurkers always seems disproportionately massive for the amount activity and members. Here's Lacrima Castle for example, people are just psyched to read old chatter on 2004 GBA sleeper hit, Riviera: the Promised Land.


Probably another new feature of the AI REINFORCED internet, a lurker botswarm milling about on the hunt for a nice, zero registration/captcha post-form to fill in.
They're cold, let them inside.