When I was a kid, I had a deep and inherent love for Pokemon . As much of an utterly stereotypical nerd as I know it makes me sound, it was the wheelhouse of my entire state of being. I watched the show, which got me interested in animation and television. From there I began to find an interest in video games, and an existing childhood love for books and comics was pushed along by whatever Pokemon-branded pulp was on the shelves. I started drawing the dang things, in stacks of old paper that are still in sentimental storage somewhere in my parents' basement.
As time went on, I became vaguely more aware of the potential of this magical thing called "the internet." A friend got me to join an online forum when we were both around age 9 or 10; it wasn't Pokemon-related, but would eventually lead me to several that were. Over the next year of young exploration, learning the lingo of message board posts, I eventually stumbled my way onto a forum full of enthusiasts of - you guessed it - all things Pocket Monsters. More than that, I discovered the world of text-based roleplaying games.
Some people keep journals and notebooks. I kept forum threads.
For those who are (understandably) not in the know of what the hell I'm talking about, allow me a moment. Here's how the games would work: a user would post a new thread in the Roleplaying Game section of the forum, describing a setup for the story at hand. There would be some general rules (don't spam, don't be an idiot) and a character sheet for interested players to fill out in replies.
That was what made roleplaying different than a lot of fanfiction and stuff of the kind; players had to create their own, original characters. I remember my first very clearly. His name was Kai, and he was a pretty shameless self-insert character. The only real difference, other than being a Pokemon trainer, was that he wore jeans with flames on them (this made him cool, you see). I used him for a few different games, all short-lived but all entertaining. Over time, though, I started creating increasingly more well-dimensioned characters, and as some games and stories would go on and get gradually more complex, they would develop in ways I might not have been able to if I hadn't been given the continuous prompts given by the actions of my fellow players.
The other thing that made these roleplays so good for my writing was that very dynamic, actually. Depending on the game you wandered into, people might be making brief, single-sentence posts updating their characters' actions: "Joey walks up the hill and waits for someone to say something." In others, players were encouraged to go into much more complex depth with what they did in the story. It was really as if each post was a chapter in a book being written by as many as a dozen people. Length regardless, we would all write out posts and wait for others to write their next ones, everyone eagerly responding to each other's' actions and roles within the story. It didn't matter if it was about Pokemon, or ninjas, or an other thing you can name;
The most special thing about the whole experience, though, was the way some things lasted. We would all create new characters sometimes, but also had characters we would carry over and reinvent for new games. This taught me a lot about versatility, and helped me learn how to identify what aspects of a character's' personality are actually defining and core to who they are, as opposed to just being coincidental aspects specific to the experience at hand. That carryover is a magical thing. In fact, here's exactly how magical:
What you're looking is the same character in two very different contexts (both drawn by myself, in conjunction with their respective stories). Her name is Tess. In the first, Tess was a traveler in some Pokemon-related roleplay that I created myself, who I eventually elaborated on as being a refugee from a plot-related trauma. In the second one, more recently, she lives in a completely original story I've been working on for about a year and a half. She carries her original curiosity, ambition, and fears. She carries PTSD from a trauma that took her brother's life and is forced to face it throughout the story. Tess follows a complete character's path in the story I'm writing now, but I wouldn't know how I would be paving that road if it hadn't been for a series of message boards I started frequenting years before my voice cracked. More than that, the story itself is an adaptation of the core ideas behind the story of that same game. I based the original on lore and world locations from a series of video games, in a game about exploring a dangerous area from the series. In the eventual revival, I learned to extract what my made my story mine and give it a new context, creating a story about colonizing a dangerous planet. That's the beauty.
We all make fun of the fact that "Fifty Shades of Grey" was an adaptation of a "Twilight" fan-fiction. While I'll be the first to agree that there are many reasons to mock that series, I actually wouldn't be so quick to call its origins one of them. We all have to start somewhere. What's only halfway yours today could evolve into something that's completely yours tomorrow.
