Forums » Art & Creativity » OFFICIAL CONTEST: RP in my life essay contest

It’s safe to say that roleplaying is, for many people, a fantastic hobby. It can be seen as a creative tool that encourages not just the improvement of literary skills, but shapes who you are as a person in ways that go far beyond mere storytelling. For me, it is probably the very reason I am still here to tell you what is so amazing about it, and why I can do it in proper English!

I have pursued this hobby since my early teens, and because of it I met the wonderful people who got me through the hardest parts of my life. Those who know me well also know that my years from my teenage years on are not exactly happy ones. A lot happened at once that tore my family apart and it allowed the manifestation of multiple mental illnesses in me. Roleplaying offered an escape from the reality of my life by allowing me to take on someone else’s. Even if it was just for an hour, in that hour I needn't worry about the real me. All I had to do was be this character I had created and enjoy what happened in the world we built together. Whenever something bad happened in my life, I still had something amazing to look out for. It kept the pieces together, whether they were broken or simply cracked, and gave me the courage to go on. I became bolder in real life because I learned from the social interactions my characters had. I became more understanding of different personalities and how they affect the way people behave. By creating characters that were not like me, I became a more empathetic person.

The many interactions with other people eventually led to amazing friendships as well. Where in real life I struggled finding like minded individuals who understood instead of questioned everything I did and liked, there was an abundance of people I could relate to who simply accepted me the way I was. I found love, both platonic and romantic, and I found heartache and sadness when I lost some. It was roleplaying that kept on me the path that ended up on this very website: the RP Repository. It didn't take long at all to become friends with Kim. Somehow she turned out to be the friend I needed to better myself, to help me learn to look at life in a different way so that I could turn judgment into understanding. I look back at the me from five years ago and I barely recognize her. Perhaps the changes are subtle to outsiders, but to me they are incredible.

It was Kim’s passion for creating that encouraged me to find the career that eluded me for so long into adulthood: being a Virtual Assistant. It’s the versatile nature of roleplaying and the aspects surrounding it that made me obtain many different skills, such as drawing, website building, researching, organizing, having social interactions, being fluent in multiple languages and learning efficiently. All these skills allow me to be an excellent Virtual Assistant, and I’m wholly convinced I would not be capable at this job without my experiences in roleplaying.

I would do roleplaying an injustice if I didn't bring up languages. The truth is, even though I’m very skilled with languages and speak at least four different languages fluently, I believe roleplaying has been the biggest influence on my English skills. It was after all the reason I wanted to become better at all. I learned about roleplaying in an English speaking online community and my joy for writing pushed me to improve myself tirelessly. My friends corrected me when I asked them to and offered tips and tricks to remember the rules. Within only two years I became mostly self-educated and fluent in both writing and reading to the point where my English teachers turned to me and asked 'How do I spell this word again, Sanne?'. Most of my online friendships were (and still are) based on communication in English, and with the aid of voice chats I quickly learned to speak it nearly accent free. I have seen this in many of my non-English native speaking friends too. Their knowledge of the English language improves drastically within months of roleplaying, and helpful fellow roleplayers are one click away to guide and correct made mistakes.

I truly love roleplaying and I will continue to love it for what I think will be a lifetime. It is a coping mechanism for when life gets a little too hard on me. It is a grand tool for connecting with other players when my afflictions get in the way of doing so in real life. The aspects of roleplaying helped me build vital skills for what I found out is my dream career and if I want to learn a new language, I know that roleplaying in it is the best way to do it. Roleplaying is not just a hobby anymore; it has become an integrated part of my life.

In order to start this tale of the impact roleplaying has had on me, it's best I start from the very beginning. Perhaps not the very beginning, I don't quite remember my birth.

In any case, at the age of six I was diagnosed with autism. Nothing severe, though. I wasn't throwing tantrums or anything like that. I was simply not very sociable and had no idea how to convey my feelings. For the most part this is fixed today. I seem to still have an issue looking people in the eyes, but besides that, I've learned to deal with it. This essay has nothing to do with my autism, not much at least, but because I was alone most of the time, I was very imaginative, since it was the best way for me to spend my time during those days. A very unlikely trait for someone with autism to have, might I add.

Even as I grew older and managed to get more friends, my imaginative side never left. I tore through fantasy books like there was no tomorrow, eventually even reading about mythology once I learned that's the source of my favoured fantasy books. I also got into gaming very quickly as a kid. In fact, I learned most of my English by playing Pokémon Yellow. The fact the words popped up and a little animation happened during a move helped me connect the English term with the Dutch one. Despite having have always loved RPGs, I was always a bit disappointed the video games never did make me feel like I was tailoring my own story. I was always on a set path in the end.

Now years passed and little adorable me turned into an edgy teen. I had few friends, I didn't feel like I truly belonged somewhere, or perhaps I just didn't want to belong anywhere because being an outcast was cool at the time. If my mother didn't have a better fashion sense than I did I'd probably have walked around school in a black duster coat while claiming the darkest corner in the entire building for myself. Age 15 really was my most awkward year ever. However, it was also at this age one of my friends, who's also a member of RPR might I add, introduced me to the wonder that was roleplaying. This had been exactly what I was looking for! I could tailor my own story together with like-minded individuals! Truly this discovery was a revelation to me!

My first year of roleplaying was a difficult one. I blame 15 year old me for that, because at age 16 I suddenly matured and realized how horrible I truly was. Stealing the spotlight, over the top dialogues, spelling errors, and much more were what marked me when I first began. I got banned so many times it's a miracle I didn't just give up on roleplaying altogether. But I just loved it too much! Eventually I got much better at it and I became part of a few communities on Furcadia. I don't remember much of them, but my best experience was in a Naruto RP 'dream'. Rynh was the first actually decent character I had ever made and people were actually excited to see me get online. It was the first time in my life I ever felt wanted, and it was great! It did wonders to my self esteem! I flourished at school after that. I became a funny, dependable young man, no longer a weird outcast wanting to be by himself. I have always kept the nickname Rynh after that happened.

Roleplaying has introduced me to the sense of community and just how important it is to have in your day-to-day life. But sadly it also introduced me to the concept of having your community fall apart. The Naruto RP group I was in slowly died out as we grew older. After a certain age anime isn't all that interesting anymore, and thus roleplaying in that world wasn't either. Years passed and to this day I have contact with only one person from that group from time to time.

So here I was, group-less once more. Luckily I had made a lot of friends in real life as well, not just online. I would survive. But I always did miss that sense of community. My friends are great, trust me, they really are. I owe them much. But none of them are familiar with the concept of roleplay. I could never really talk to most of them about it with them, simply because they weren't interested in it. And then I discovered RPR.

A friendly, active community filled with like minded individuals with a forum RP system so I could post whenever my time allowed me to? It was as though I had died in battle and the Valkyries brought me to the Valhalla of roleplay! After three more years of being active on the site, that opinion hasn't changed one bit. RPR has been a bastion of enjoyment and friendship to me. I've met new people, I've gotten into contact with people I used to know again and finally my writing skills have improved even more. My life is in a good place right now!

So, in conclusion I'd say roleplaying has allowed me to break out of my shell. I've become a more pleasant person and it has introduced me to the concept of community. That last part I hold dear the most. I would not trade the feeling of being a part of a community for anything!

I started reading when I was eight years old. My first book was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and I loved it despite my peers telling me that I was reading it in the wrong order therefore I'm an idiot. I did eventually start from the beginning again, and I've been a fan of Harry Potter, and by extension a fan of reading books ever since.

I decided I wanted to be a writer not too long after, actually delving into fanfictions early in my life, though it wasn't of Harry Potter, but of Balto, which is where I made my very first iteration of Windthor, my main RP character. Yes, Windthor is roughly fifteen years old, though don't ask me where his name comes from. At nine years old, I can only guess that I simply thought the name was cool.

I didn't really get into RP until I was about thirteen and I discovered a webcomic called Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, which was originally based loosely on FurCadia, and I followed the link provided by the artist, and downloaded the game. Of course, this was during that phase of everyone's life where they lie about their age on the internet. Needless to say, and without going into too much detail, my RP was far from the best and extremely far from safe for work for several years. My time on FurC was on and off, once even taking a hiatus for a year and a half due to some personal issues. I like to think that I have improved on my writing over the years I started roleplaying, especially once I matured enough to actually know what I was doing.

I'm currently in the process of writing a novel, though honestly, I've been trying to write it for roughly six years, with no progress. It's mostly inspiration and motivation, or lack thereof, keeping me from writing, but I've always been quick to RP, expressing my creativity that way. It's also a great trial run, in a way, to write these characters how I might write them in the novel I hope to complete some day.

On the whole, RP has allowed me to meet some great friends online, create characters and stories, and join in worlds that people have created, and possibly even create one or two worlds of my own. It's something that I hope never goes away and I can stick with it for a long time, because it's basically kept me going when my spirits were down and I needed an escape for however brief a time.

It's no secret that I've had to rely on creativity growing up to keep myself content and happy. Ever since I could hold a pencil, I was drawing. As soon as I learned to write words, I wrote stories. This continued up until I was about 13, when I began to text-roleplay on Furcadia.

For me, I've always been really shy. I know, it sounds pretty cliche, but I've had a lot of crappy hardships I've experienced, even at thirteen, that left me damaged and unable to socialize very easily at all. People scared me - legitimately terrified me - because how was I supposed to know if they would be abusive to me or not? I was picked on at school, afraid to voice opinions even to my close family, and overall just a big skittish pushover. I guess I haven't changed too much from that, but still. The stressors in my life were getting to me at that time, and the moment I popped onto Furcadia, I learned that maybe there was an escape.

I see a lot of people think escapism like this is unhealthy, but for me, it helped me out in many ways. I don't have an impressive vocabulary, but roleplaying has helped me put thought in words, research them when I didn't know what they were, learn how to express emotion through text... it taught me a lot. More than what I learned as a writer, I learned what it's like to have friends. There are odd people out there just like me who enjoy weird music and the paranormal and scary stories. I love art, more than anything really, but writing with people gave me a means to communicate.

Anytime I felt depressed or angry, I could escape to fictional worlds where none of that existed anymore. It was therapy for me, and it always will be. If I was recovering from flashbacks and I needed someone to talk to or help me stay distracted, there was always someone there. If I needed advice, I could count on my friends I played with. If I needed to express an idea for a plot I had in a dream, I could count on my roleplaying buddies to bring it to life. There are countless little things about the hobby that add up to make me happy. I'm not sure I'd have turned out to be the person I am today if not for rping, mainly because I would have so little to help me relieve my stress or help me forget. I wouldn't be as creative. Or artistic (because a lot of my practice came from drawing original characters).

I hope maybe one day I can help someone the way my friends have helped me, because this is just phenomenal. This is a community I belong to, and one I won't let go of so easily.

Essentially, roleplaying has kept me content with myself, and allowed me to express parts of myself I wasn't sure existed. I expanded on my creativity, became a bit more social, and have found some form of therapy that helps. I've made real friends, fallen in love, and learned to love myself through this hobby.

The idea that something like roleplay has changed my life is hard to quantify as I have been doing it for more than half my life, but as I examine my life since I have begun to roleplay, both online and off, I am able to see that there have been profound changes and while I do not know who I would have been without it, I do know where roleplay has stepped up to be a positive part of my life, and even where it has caused problems. It is all of these things combined that have made me into who I am and certainly that has changed my life dramatically.

One of the first ways I got into roleplaying was through chat based roleplay. This alone I can attribute my speed typing to. In groups of five or more people, usually playing one-on-one in an open chat. This meant you had to react fast and get your post out fast so you would not miss your line. As an adult I have not used this as much as I would have liked to, but I can type 1500 or more words in fifteen minutes if I push myself. While some people can say that I would have learned these skills through a typing program, I can safely say that since I ended up failing my touch typing test just a few weeks before I began to roleplay, this is completely untrue. The Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program my school used was useless to me when compared to my desire to roleplay well and fast in these chat-rooms. From my online obsession to being someone else, there came a time where I was asked to roleplay in a different way.

During therapy there is often an element of roleplay. Early on in my adventures in therapy I had to change my position and play both the victim and the abuser. This allowed me to see that the world is not black and white and also to process who I am because of the abuse suffered. I was given the power to abuse another person through roleplay, but I was also taught to see why I am not just a victim. I was empowered to see beyond the “victimhood” that was given to me by playing the abuser. Also through therapy I learned another, less fun version of roleplaying I still use today; I suffer from a number of potentially debilitating mental and physical disorders and generalized anxiety disorder in particular clouds every interaction I have. By roleplaying these situations I have been able to prepare mental scripts for myself which gives me the illusion of being confident and in control of my emotions when I am terrified. While these are not the typical things that people think when someone says “roleplay”, they have been an integral part of becoming who I am.

There is another part of my life that has been deeply impacted by roleplaying: learning it is okay to dislike people. While this sounds counterintuitive and not something positive, it is. All my life I have been told that I need to be nice to everyone and I always assumed that it meant that I had to like everyone, to try and be friends with everyone I meet. This kind of attitude has caused so much internal strife about the moment where I just could not make myself like a nice person. This was compounded by the roleplays that I couldn’t get into with perfectly nice players and characters. There was nothing wrong with these games nor with the people in my life, but I did not like them. Specifically RPR has helped with this because I was finally able to see the freedom of choice and the freedom from forcing myself to agree to everyone. I no longer need to set up a roleplay with everyone who comes my way. By slowly allowing myself to see that I don’t need to roleplay with everyone, I also see that I do not need to like people, no matter how nice they are. There is nothing wrong with these people, I simply have found that I cannot be friends with them and that is alright. There is no shame in being unable to mesh with someone and I’m coming to terms with that through roleplaying.

Roleplaying has been a huge part of my life for so long, so it is easy to dismiss all of the things it’s given me. I am thankful for every part of roleplay I have been a part of, even the strife it caused in the early days. It’s become a part of me without my realizing.