I've always found Internet forums such as this to be fascinating. Not because of the topic or theme per se, but because of the people.

You can see who enjoys using this board really easily, and who's actually new.

But it isn't that which interests me the most.

It's that we are all having sex with each other. That we are role-playing out our deepest fantasies here, in a relatively secretive place. I myself only found it by accident, because I'd grown bored of the 'tubes'.
The other thing is that our characters are all representative of chunks of who we are, be they the good, bad, or evil. And we accept it.

It's hard to say that there isn't some form of attachment to the people we role-play with, and even I can't deny sadness at losing a partner, no matter how new they may have been.

I also found one last thing that is interesting. It seems that relationships, like the one mentioned above, that kind of attachment is almost exclusively found on the 'net.

It just strikes me as fascinating, what I see if I lurk for a while in places like this. I made this account to join a wondrous community, and so far, I am not disappoint. Thanks for the welcome, and any brain candy you have would be much appreciated!

Seems surprising doesn't it? But I've known at least three or four couples who got married off the back of it, including myself. Probably know a similar number of divorces too. That sort of intensity doesn't come around without communities such as this creating strong bonds.

Once you have been around for a while, the real surprise is how people on the outside trivialize the way it happens, or ascribe it to 'losers' who can't function in real life. Of course no one likes to be thought of as a loser, especially when they have an ego as big as mine. So let's see... I have a house, a car, my own business, an income above the average and a wife almost 20 years younger than myself who looks like a model. Yeah, I really feel like a loser!

Wait, people who frequent here have married each other? I can see why, what with my growing attachment to Kanoe, but isn't that a little... Awkward?

It's only awkward if the sexy ADD agent your monster has been ravaging turns out to be played by a guy

That's happened 3 or 4 times in all my years of, er, interacting with people over the net.

After a while it doesn't bother me any more.

Not that it bugs me, it's more... I think it'd be weird to walk up to a guy I met here, and say 'I'm Alyx-Sthde, that one girl you horribly raped on the board.'. Admittedly, I wouldn't be so glib, but that's what I think he would hear.

If you're silly enough to assume a r/l relationship based upon roleplay then it would definitely be doomed to failure and disappointment.

Those who meet up form a strong bond between the real players OOC before ever thinking of meeting.

^ This. If you were gonna meet up with someone from Shokushu in a more... intimate manner, I'd certainly hope you two know each others' name as well as a couple of other stuff that would be nice to know. Plus, when one shares one's fetishes and kinks with another, it would help foster a bond between them, I suppose, and that would certainly cut through awkwardness.

Unless, of course, the other person's an insane axe murderer IRL and only seems normal online.

...

That only happened to me twice, I swear!

Forny! You've found me out. As an aside, I prefer Estwing Camper's Ax - 26". I'm not that tall and I find the extra length helpful.


Also: I cannot access the Outlaws group. Every time I try, I get "You do not have the required permissions to read topics within this forum."

When I click on Stormbringer's "direct to post" thing, I get "You are not authorised to read this forum."

Why does the fact that you've included an aside turn me on? Ahem.

I'm having the same problem as well, and I've heard the same from a couple others as well.

I have to say, I /am/ interested in what impressions Krawn had other than just what he said. I sorta have a weakness for tons and tons of exposition about what people think of other people, after all! But... mm, the gender thing is always amusing, I think before I disappeared the last time, I saw a thread on just that - though I think it was someone (perhaps naively) trying to poll everyone on their RL sex/gender/tuna (...sorry. third item joke, couldn't resist). The question, in a way, becomes... does it matter?

Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. I'd certainly say if you're trying to get an OOC connection beyond mere internet contact, you'd probably want to know. But otherwise... Hell, "crossplaying" is probably pretty common in this sort of situation - and that goes both ways (or other ways, since I happen to know a thing or two about gender-weirdstuff, queerness, etc, so someone might not even be 'one way' or the other, as it were.)

The other big /thing/ to note, I think?... Is that it's not just that sharing the kinks and fetishes helps the bond, per se. It's actually one of the bigger cultural... uh, formative... ...is there a word for that? Eh. But it informs the culture of a place - I've noticed actually that highly-kinky communities tend to have a higher average "niceness" level than the dead internet baseline. Probably because the intimacy of that kind of knowledge (and outsider-ness, to some extent, of having those kinks at all) makes it already feel a bit closer and more 'special' than the mass populace, much like a personal clique might be.

...rambly. @-@

I get what you're saying. After all, most people of the 'net know OF tentacle/monster stuff, but don't KNOW of it, if that makes sense.

Being that I'm mostly on a bend here, I'm not too... Helpful? Had a wonderful date with my friends, and I had too much fun. No booze, just tired.

Back on focus, cross-playing is an idea that I thought most people avidly avoid, as the probably don't want to imagine that the cute schoolgirl they've raped is actually a 26-Y/O man. Perhaps I'm being stereotypical? Or is it stereotyping? I dunno. Point's been made.

Hmm, I dunno. From what I've seen, just about most of us here are pretty open-minded about that sorta thing, or more like... It doesn't really matter in the long run, because as long as the roleplay's fun and exciting, that kind of thinking doesn't really come up at all. I mean, when you think about it, we're here to indulge in our fantasies and have fun with our kinks, not wonder whenever the person we're raping/being raped by is someone else entirely different than what we're expecting them to be.

-shrugs- Anonymity is a very wonderful thing, my friend.

Doesn't anonymity become boring after a while though? I personally find it even more exciting to think about who the person on the other side is.

Of course, that's just one of my kinks, not neccesarrily anybody else's.

It has been helpful in other boards for me, where I can make several characters and not have to worry about who sees the profile. Some of the bigger boards leave me empty though. No feeling. Unlike here, where I can tell who's feeling what in all the threads I lurk.

Oh yeah, a seperate depravity of mine. Watching monsters rape hapless students in a college setting.



*Edit*

Oh yeah, Saira, what I think of the people I've 'met' is kinda... Incomplete? I haven't met many people here, and thus do not have enough data to form an opinion.

-shrugs- Boring after a while, perhaps. But that doesn't change the fact that if you're gonna do anything on the internet, your safety comes first. Apart from that, I think most of the more intimate conversations take place in PMs, maybe even through emails, or even when people decide to chat with each others on Instant Messengers or mIRC. But yeah, I'm just saying... You wanna think about who the other person is, go for it. Feel free to ask questions or something, just remember where to draw the line at.