My Kind of Addiction…

Now let me just sway a bit from the usual stuff I post here. I know most of you guys follow me because I blog about books I read and stuff. What most of you read here in my blog is usually about books and book related memes and all that jazz but what you don’t know about me is what started all this. What made me start writing online…

This…thing, will be a series of posts every week dissecting every element of my addiction. From what it is, what started it, what made me addicted, and all that stuff. And before you click away from this post, NO, this is not about some illegal addiction or something that is generally not accepted by the public. This is nothing like that.

Now I can’t just write down all the things  wanna say about this topic in one blog. If I do that, we will be here for a long time, I’m telling you. Now, this has nothing to do with books or my opinions about a certain topic or whatnot. This post is centered on one topic and one topic alone: My Addiction.

Don’t go all judge-y on me yet. We barely scratched the surface. I’d like to say this used to be an addiction of mine. The addiction was so bad, it was so good. It’s not like I was addicted to online games or stuff like that. I’m never the one for graphics and and animations. My head literally hurts whenever I try to play a video game and I get bored easily but let’s not sway from the topic. My addiction has more depth to it. It’s not just about playing a game designed by someone else. My addiction is some much more than that. With my addiction, I do play but the difference is that I play someone in a world I created with a bunch of other awesome people.

Have you ever gotten across the word ‘Role Play’? Well, some of you might say something along the lines of Warcraft, DOTA, League of Legends (I’m just typing out random things I remember my guy friends talk about when I say roleplay. I know of them but never played them) For me, it has a totally different meaning. Role playing for me is me writing about a certain character interacting with other characters controlled by other people in a certain setting. Confusing? Think of it as role play in tumblr. Character #1 posts first. He sets the mood, the setting, time of day, the weather, what’s around them and all that. He paints the first picture that the reader would see. Then in comes Character #2. She supplements information based on the scenario Character #1 already established. She reacts to the things around them, she even control somethings as long as they have no conscious thoughts like things, the wind, the sky, even animals and the way they behave. Now Character #1 replies by reacting to what Character #2 posted. They could talk to each other, move around, do anything they want (as long as it is within site rules). The world is your pickle in roleplaying, my friend. Your only limit is your imagination. In this kind of scenario, characters interact and they form some kind of relationship. It can be anything, really. They could be friends, enemies, lovers, acquaintances, even just random strangers doing random things with random people. Anything goes, really. I even experienced random shit going on especially when I am RPing with my friends. This isn’t limited to just 2 characters as well. You can take as much characters as you want, bring them to a certain topic and go to town. It could be confusing though, with all the characters you need to react to.

Now that you know a bit of what roleplaying (aka RPing)  is about, I would like you to learn about the ony RP site I’ve been in and stayed in: Hogwarts Online.

As a bit of background, Hogwarts Online (henceforth referred as HO) is an online community of Potterheads. What else can you expect from a website called Hogwarts Online? Anyways, I accidentally came across this interesting Sorting Hat quiz that actually asks you to choose a name and answer 10 questions to know which house you are from back in 2009. I was just looking for the Hogwarts crest because I wanted to make a bookmark with it when it led me to that site (if you are wondering, that’s www.HSWCW.com ) I immediately used the name of the heroine from the story I was writing that time. Of course, I typed in Nearra Morgan. I was so excited as I answered the questions. Everything was situational and I answered every single question as I would answer them myself. How hard could it be?  I’ve always been sorted to Gryffindor in every Sorting Hat quiz I took before so you could only imagine my shock when I got sorted to Slytherin! I was so confused and I felt so betrayed that the Hat sorted me to Slytherin. I was kinda disappointed because I used Nearra’s name for that quiz and now her name is forever associated with the green house. I just couldn’t imagine my sweet Nearra wearing serpent green waltzing around Hogwarts. Slytherins would eat her alive!! It was that mindset that made me stray away from that evil website. However, I just couldn’t shake the pull it has. It was confusing at first. I tried to follow the instructions on the main website (which they call Office) to the forum ( which they call– well, Forums) to register again. Plus they made me remember a 5 digit number as my Office ID. Too much work, right? I was just happily browsing the website, silently taking it all in and taking pleasure on reading random stuff. What really intrigued me is the way that the characters are interacting. It is very clear that the two alternating posts are written by two different people (based on the writing style and the font style. I was young, that is already different in my young mind). Even if the two characters are very different, they were able to form a story revolving around a subject that then branches into something else. It was all so surreal at first. It took me a while to finally understand what’s going (after a few trials and errors first). I could still remember the first ever RP I was in. It was in the Slytherin Common Room and there were 2 girls, both higher years. I mustered all the courage I have as a writer and typed a small sweet post of my sweet Nearra approaching the two girls and they responded in a way that made me cower with fear for Nearra. After that, I stayed away from the common room and ventured around the castle.

I don’t really remember exactly when I got addicted. I just noticed that I spend  at leas an hour a day going online and posting and RPing with people. I was only 15 and a senior in high school (I know, too young for a senior but our educational system here in the Philippines is different than most of the world) and I save my allowance just so I can go to an internet café and go online. Those were my dark days when smartphones are a thing of the future and wifi is just a dream waiting to be realized… I was such a kid back then but I was a happy kid. I was living my dream of going to a magic school like Hogwarts through writing, which I love as well. It’s like hitting two birds with one spell. Life couldn’t get better than that.

So yeah, that’s part one of my addiction series. I think I will start introducing my lovely characters to you one by one. I’ve got 13 so… yeahhhh…. I think I’ll start with Nearra since you already have a background on her.