Darth_Angelus' RP Adventure

Posted by Kim on September 5, 2015, 12:36pm

How has RP changed your life? Perhaps it helped you gain confidence, become a better writer, learn new things about yourself, maybe even led you to a special someone? During Epic Week (April), we asked members to write essays explaining the effects that being involved in RP has had on their lives and why it was important that it was RP and not some other hobby. The responses were fascinating, moving, and often inspiring.

Here is the second essay in that series!

Darth_Angelus' RP Adventure

by Darth_Angelus

How has roleplay changed my life? To find out, we need to go all the way back to when I was 13 and it was a very dark time in my life, which I won't go into here. Suffice to say, I was looking for something to provide an escape or a distraction.

That's when I discovered Furcadia and the one simple act of logging in would change everything. I made friends, some of whom I'm still friends with today (in fact the site admin, Kim, is one of them), I met my first girlfriend there, would learn the basics of programming via dragonspeak and of course, I started roleplaying.

Now, I had played pretend with other kids when I was younger and I'd made up character histories and stories when playing video games but this was different. The friendships that I forged then were through the adventures we had.

The years passed and eventually I developed an interest in film making. What was my first film about? It was a Star Wars fanfilm that took a lot of inspiration from some of the roleplay adventures I'd had. This of course led to making new friends and while these people weren't necessarily into roleplay, I never would have met them if I hadn't roleplayed. They would teach me a lot about film making. RPR would never have had so many videos without any of that.”¨”¨ Another instance of roleplay changing my life would be meeting one of my closest friends when one of her friends joined a Star Wars roleplay group I'm part of. She helped me through a rough breakup when I needed a friend the most and later on would get me interested in cosplay.

Through roleplay, the cosplay I mentioned above and the films I started making based on past roleplay adventures, I have made friends all over the world, visited places I never thought I'd see. Won awards, received recognition for my creative efforts, inspired others and become a moderator here on RPR.

These are just a few examples of roleplay affecting my life but I have known for quite some time, that everything in my life now can be traced back to starting to roleplay online. Either directly or as a side effect. Has roleplay changed my life? I think it's fair to say not only has it changed my life, it's hard to imagine where I'd be right now if I had never roleplayed. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.

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