InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I'm gettinn nuttin for Xmas"

ee to the em to the eye-ell-why (skycornerless) wrote,
@ 2009-09-22 01:03:00

Ugh, I miss FT so much it hurts. Sometimes.

I know that whining about missing FT and making half-serious jokes about someday rebooting it are not productive at all, though. Because, well, it's never going to happen. Interests have scattered, there are other people doing reincarnation games, and I doubt we'll ever have collective interest as a mod team to revisit it.

And yet, and yet.

So, I'm going to try and work out what it is, exactly, that I miss so much. So that maybe I can figure out a way to stop missing it, and stop wanting to revamp it.

Is it just nostalgia? Rose-colored glasses?

That's probably a part of it, but for the most part, I don't think so. Because when I allow myself to imagine a reboot, I still get excited, even knowing that most of the characters would not come back. I mean, sure, I get that twinge of 'what if'-ness, thinking about storylines that I never got to play out, but I've put most of the FT canon to bed, in its box, where it will forever be fondly remembered.

Is it the premise?

This is a large part, to be sure. I love fractured fairy tales, I love thinking about the ways in which I could make a fairy tale game unique. I don't have any interest in expanding the 'reincarnation' bit beyond fairy tales, because that goes into canonized territory, and I just don't tread there.

Is it the characters?

Like I said before, I've put most of FT's cast to bed. But I really, really miss my own characters. I miss Velvet, I miss Lillian. I wish I'd done more with Kelly, and that I'd actually apped Donovan. I miss the interactions that came with such a varied cast - all ages, all different backgrounds, all walks of life. The fact that they were all normal, with a single secret that tied them all together.

I guess that's it, really. But it seems too simple, because there are other games out there! Like that! aren't there? but they don't hold the same appeal.

Don't get me wrong, I lovelovelove Neopolis, but there's really no comparing -- they're two completely different beasts. Neopolis is fantastic because there's so much plot, and it's so easily generated within the structure we've set up. Everyone's stuck together, there's crazy super powers and whatnot, it's great.

Maybe what I need to do is just write a crap-ton of drabbles for my FT kids and maybe find myself some closure that way. Or write some sort of short story, or novel, or academic paper about fairy tales. Maybe that will scratch the itch.

anyway. what do you FT vets think? do you miss it? what was it that made it special? have you found similar dynamics in other games? I am curious!

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	vinterdottir 2009-09-22 05:25 am UTC (link)
	I should note that seeing Murdock's face in Neopolis all the time DOESN'T HELP AT ALL. goddamn you, Dimitri. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	trickyloki 2009-09-22 06:20 pm UTC (link)
	HEY. I TRIED, OKAY. You guys were all Noooo, you can't reject someone because you're irrationally attached to a PB, whatever. (Reply to this) (Parent)

andrewryan
2009-09-22 06:43 am UTC (link)

I can understand the nostalgia about past games completely, but I can also appreciate that sometimes it is absolutely impossible to capture that feeling you miss from it. I have characters and storylines from the past that I love, and would adore playing again, but technically I know I can never really go back so I know I just... shouldn't.

BOO HOO DEBBIE DOWNER'D

On the upside, I will play in any game this mod team creates (still working on my next Neo application -- SHE WILL BE IN SOON!), and I think I've been pretty on record as saying that I would've peed myself over FT. But in the meantime, write some drabbles! That's what I do!

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skycornerless
2009-09-22 02:06 pm UTC (link)

It's true, though! And I think that's probably a good litmus - do I just really want to play my specific characters again, or do I also crave the creative wellspring that brought forth those characters? And if I'm totally honest, it's the former rather than the latter. I would love rebuilding that world (your desire for 1920s Bluebeard reignites my own fancy for Turn-of-the-Century!FT, but period games don't seem to work that well in journal-based RP, boo. stupid PBs!), but I have no specific want to create new characters in that universe. Which I guess is a red flag.

Man, writing drabbles seems so unappetizing in a way, though. Probably because my own writing is hobbled by being reliant on others to bounce off of. It is the double-sided sword of RP! But, I'll get over it. It'd be a good exercise at least, in writing All By Myself.

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chthonian
2009-09-22 07:46 am UTC (link)

I am too sleepy to be intelligent, but I will second this: go forth, write drabbles. I'm just conjecturing, but -- I imagine this might be because a lot of us went through our respective coping methods afterwards. We recycled characters (lol hello Toby), we brought them over into other games, we wrote (and are still writing!) drabbles and prompts and closure narratives and analyses. I mean, I went through my own intensely antsy and restless period, and what resulted was several narratives for several characters; including Reynard's death, which was really the perfect way to put him in that box. (Literally.) While you, as far as I can tell/conjecture -- correct me if I'm wrong -- just outright stopped playing when the game closed, and left it at that. Short and abrupt.

And even so, it's only recently that my FT requests on memes have trickled down to the extent that I assume I won't be quizzed about them much anymore. Letting go was a hell of a process, but I carried through almost all of my storylines to perfect fruition, and so -- as you well know -- I have zero interest in revisiting it. I just think you need to go through whatever process you require to close the lid on that box.

(So say I, from my box-is-closed stance. If I were still feeling the nostalgia pangs as acutely as you are, my advice here might have been way different. ♥)

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skycornerless
2009-09-22 02:19 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I definitely didn't get to go through a coping period because, well... LOL HI RL. Everyone else went on to different games, but I didn't start RPing again until Neopolis. And of course, by the time I got back to RP and decided, 'man, FT was some good ol' days!', everyone else had basically moved on -- as demonstrated in the comments here. I mean, sure, you and others have humored me when I've been all 'waaaaah I miss Vel, waaaaaah the Pen' (lol, our never-got-off-the-ground PSL project), but mostly I have been here stranded at the bus station and the bandwagon passed through a looong time ago.

That was an awkward analogy.

Anyway, I think maybe what I miss most is a) the varied cast and b) the rich backstory each member of that cast had. The former you can conceivably get in any game, but the latter was unique to FT, I think. Superhero reincarnation games can't capture that, because the characters haven't been through several lifetimes like the characters at FT. I think, aside from my individual characters, I miss crafting those backstories, weaving the connections over generations with the recurring characters, the most. Set on a framework of fairy tales, which provide thematic structure for all those past lives, that was really what was most awesome for me about FT.

Which is to say, really, that I don't think any other game would be able to fill its shoes -- same as I couldn't ever recycle my characters (play their archetypes again? sure! recycle? no.), because their pasts are such a big part of who they are. (Of course, the Moderns didn't really fit that mold, so I guess it'd be easier to recycle them. I SHOULD'VE PLAYED A MODERN.)

So, uh, yeah. Drabbles.

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sandinista
2009-09-22 12:23 pm UTC (link)

I'm okay with letting sleeping dogs lie. Part of it is because I left FT on a very bad note: my life was kind-of-sort-of-completely falling down around my head by the time I had to resign, I felt as if plots of mine had been distorted by other players (which was no fault of the mod team at all so much as my own misjudgment of who I was playing with), and I just felt burnt out by everything. I really treasure the good that I did in the game (which was a lot), but I think that resurrecting games that are carbon copies of past premises regardless of connotations runs you at a risk for disappointment. After all, it ended for a reason, n'est-ce pas?

I'm not just like this with FT, though; my last run of MAIMED, although really treasured in my heart and centered with good plot and good writing (much like FT), is something I don't miss per se. I don't want to reconstruct it or resurrect it (which I guess is what I associate with "missing" something), but I'm happy of the good things I made there with the good people that are still around me. In the end, what I take from RP is the social aspect of it, and those friends that I made at FT are still around me right now; if anything, Neopolis has reacquainted me with individuals from FT that I didn't know as well and have made better friends with as a result. If I lost those people, I think I'd want to remake it more, because it's those social constructs that I would long for. But I don't have to, so I just go on and make new and different things to explore different parts of writing and creativity I haven't tapped into yet. Really, that's the other end of the process for me with RP: doing shit I haven't quite touched before.

So basically: no, as special as it was in its own way. But I'm okay with that.

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sandinista
2009-09-22 12:26 pm UTC (link)

To tack on something that's been said, though: I encourage the drabble/academia angle. Not everybody can get to the same place of closure on a game at the same time (and really, I'll admit that letting go MAIMED -- which was 90% I WAS THE MODERATOR, I SHOULDN'T HAVE LET IT END THIS WAY >:O!!!! -- was a long process for yours truly), and sometimes you have to make that angle yourself.

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skycornerless
2009-09-22 02:30 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, for sure! And I think part of the driving force behind my own nostalgia for FT is the editor in me who wants to go back and make revisions, do things differently, make it better ~~faster stronger~~. FT definitely hit a few huge potholes in the road that made the end of the game a lot more bitter than sweet in some ways. In terms of making things better, I can say that the way we've dealt with some stuff at Neopolis has made this ride a lot smoother. So there's that, at least!

But I can definitely agree with missing the social aspect - when I was out of RP, I missed that hardcore. Now, obviously, I don't have to, so I think it's just the specific characters and the theme that I miss. Because hi, I loved those characters, and also I'm a huge folklore nerd. (Elaborated upon in my reply Julie, above.) And I wouldn't want to go back to FT in a carbon-copy kind of way, because, yeah, that wouldn't work. Besides, exploring new angles is a lot more fun, like you say.

Anyway, lots of new games coming along, maybe something will catch my interest!

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chthonian
2009-09-22 08:48 pm UTC (link)

Ha, yes, this -- thank you for articulating the social aspect, because that was something I hadn't quite managed to put my finger on. There are so many times that you'll lose touch with a fellow writer and desperately want to reconnect with them again, but not be able to. The fact that I haven't lost any of you bros, and have even gotten closer to several of you since? Just means that things are consistently moving uphill from the past, really.

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neruda
2009-09-22 04:15 pm UTC (link)

I think the main reason I really loved FT was the character development that went on there. The characters I created for that game were totally new to me. I got to step out of the comfort zone I had fostered in the long time that I spent rping in Harry Potter. FT was the first non-HP game I participated in that I made friends and plots in, that lasted longer than a week, and that I actually contributed to. It was my catalyst out of the Harry Potter rp world, which I think was something that I really needed.

Also, just the relationships that came from the game, both ooc and ic! Leo is an obvious example - his interactions were just some of the best memories of rp that I have to date. But most importantly, we fostered a really big network of awesome players that I still know today. It connected me to people with similar interests, but a group that was still diverse enough to be interesting, compelling, intelligent and humorous. That's something I am really proud of with FT; it's the fact that the game kind of brought all of us to where we are now.

That, though, is also the reason why I don't think it would be in the best interest to necessarily resurrect it? Idk, but whenever I've tried to "redo" a game, it ends badly, because it's never the same - which is what we're looking for when we attempt that, to experience the same things we experienced at the time because those experiences were good. But just because they were good doesn't mean we need to necessarily try to experience them again. I think the only way it could really be successful is if the only thing recycled was the premise - fairytale reincarnation. But I really dk. I could be totally wrong.

Buuuut all that is just imho. :) /illness-induced rambling

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	chthonian 2009-09-22 07:44 pm UTC (link)
	♥♥♥♥♥♥ aww I want to hug you, Shay. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	skycornerless 2009-09-22 07:46 pm UTC (link)
	It's actually really neat to see the ways in which FT was 'special' to everyone, so thank you for weighing in! And yeah, I am getting that sense more and more. I just get so wistful! xD (Reply to this) (Parent)

	hello_from_dis 2009-09-23 04:01 am UTC (link)
	(Reply to this) (Parent)

princessjessia
2009-09-22 10:20 pm UTC (link)

I am pretty much the queen of pining for specific things of the past, like FT as a whole, or specific interactions I've had in games, so I definitely feel you on this. <3

There are tons of ways to cope and have some closure, but in my personal experience, there is always that wish in the back of my head for that lost game or lost storyline even after I've "moved on". I guess I personally just don't do closure well, which was why I ended up taking the two characters I finished FT with into a PSL-type situation with another player, because I had SO MUCH I wanted to do with those two, but the problem was, it wasn't all just within the year or two of a potential timeframe of linear-played game.

Don't get me wrong, it's the day to day stuff like journal commenting and random scenes on a lazy Thursday that make my RP world go 'round, but with my FT characters, a lot of my thoughts weren't in the present. They were focused on the past with discovering past lives, and, as my characters fleshed out, it moved a lot toward wondering about the future: what would James' life be like after Anna's death? How would Whit cope with a child and her inability to stay in one place very long? How would these huge life events change how they dealt with those closest to them? Things like that.

But I am so bad with narratives/ficcing when I'm in a good RP groove, so anyone's advice to do that didn't help me as much. >.< I'd long ago realized that I cannot do both actively - it's either write a lot of fanfic and not be in the right headspace to RP, or write a lot of RP and not be in the right headspace to fanfic, otherwise the fanfic reads like RP (including the RP issue of characters saying more than one relevant thing per comment and the flow being not-quite-right for a fanfic :P) and the RP reads like fanfic (with attempts to move/predict characters that I don't control, which makes for frustrating RP for me in reigning that in to try not to be a 'bad RPer').

And so for me, I needed a situation where I could still have, in at least one storyline, that bounce-off RP dynamic I needed, but where I could also lay out a roughish outline with the other player and then essentially jump around in those years and play, including having present-day play. Even figuring out the big events for that outline was satisfying in the way plotting often is. In my case, we time shifted FT 2008 to be 2005 for our purposes, so we could play three years of "backstory" and still be able to use real world events of 2009 in play, rather than try to predict what would be going on in the world in 2011 and beyond. We write it occasionally instead of constantly and that helps a lot on the days when I'm all "I miss FT D:" because then I can still have a tiny piece of it that others get from doing drabbles and such.

(oh ffs, I am so sorry, this is two comments! >.<)

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princessjessia
2009-09-22 10:21 pm UTC (link)

The other part of my nostalgia was the social aspects IC and OOC. When I say that, I don't mean just the specific FT characters and their specific interactions (because I know now that even if every single player came back with every single character, it would still be different because we've all grown as writers and plotters. Yes, it might well be BETTER, but it still wouldn't be the FT I'm nostalgic for), I mean the thrill of having these original characters that just mesh in these lovely ways that you can never truly predict with all the storylines in the world. I'm still in original character RP (including a reincarnation game) and I just haven't found that to the degree that it occurred at FT. That's not to say the games are bad, because they aren't, or the players aren't amazing, because they are, or even that it's not my head for not getting more into it, because I know I should be more involved. It's just that, at FT, all of that was so effortless. And even then, I know there were opportunities I missed out on by not being one of the super-active players, but what I gained from FT far outweighs what I wish I could have had.

As I know I just don't have the confidence and focus to jump into the playgrounds everyone has gone on to (like the huge, epic overwhelmingness of Neopolis), I know I'll never get that back, so I can't say "here's my thoughts on how to combat this, based on my experience. However, I think that anyone who is playing in those places likely is the best solution for that part of the nostalgia, because you both could be missing FT and then both decide to make, with new characters, something just as worth being nostalgic over someday.

Aaaand now I'm shutting up, omg the rambling tl;dr. I AM SO SORRY.

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	chthonian 2009-09-22 10:35 pm UTC (link)
	:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ♥ and then both decide to make, with new characters, something just as worth being nostalgic over someday. TRUER. WORDS. NEVER. SPOKEN. (Reply to this) (Parent)

skycornerless
2009-09-22 10:42 pm UTC (link)

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

oh man, I'm so happy to hear from you!! we certainly got a lot of new, awesome people when we started Neopolis, but I've missed people like you from FT. :)

And yes, you articulate the trepidations I have re: drabbles/narratives very well. Part of the fun of writing those specific characters we love so much is bouncing them off other characters. Julie, for one, has humored me a bit with old logs/PSLs, so that helps, but it's hard to recapture what made writing them worth it with fiction.

Anyway, your comment helps a lot, so thank you, and thank you for loving FT and being such a great player when you were there. ♥ :] I hope, if we ever start a new project, that you'll consider joining.

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