InsaneJournal

...but, sadly, she was not a showgirl.

Instead, she was a 20-year-old-Wisconsin-native woman with far too much free time on her hands. But, naturally, this is not where our story begins. No, it never is. Instead, we must go back nearly six years prior when I found myself with my very first computer. At the age of fourteen, most of my friends had already gotten themselves well acquainted with the internet and all of the joys and wonders it could open up to a young teenager. This was before the days of Myspace, Facebook, and Youtube. It was a more innocent time.

This was also the time of Digimon. With the help of a good friend of mine, we were able to run a not-so-successful website which had the primary purpose of displaying fanart that we stole from other websites as we didn't completely understand the concept of crediting and other such bits of etiquette so early in our fandom careers. Nonetheless, it didn't take long for us both to find and enjoy message boards, becoming my very first taste in RPing. I soon found myself participating in a whole slew of different RPs - from Digimon to an occasional Pokemon to original story to, finally.. Harry Potter.

As the high school years went by, my dedication to RPing fluctuated. High school brings all sorts of incredibly important things such as football games, musicals, tests, and the occasional homework assignment, distracting me greatly from my online life.

It wasn't until I started college that I found myself turning back to my RPing habits, looking for a sense of belonging in familiarity as I started a new, scary part of my life. Naturally most of my older RP buddies had disappeared into their own lives or corners of the internet and it was hard to get back into the cycle of things. That is, until, I was playing with my Live Journal, where I had a personal journal, only to find that people did role plays on journals. Now, why had I not thought of this sooner? It was genius!

And thus, I joined my first Harry Potter journal based game. It was MWPP, as was what I was most used to from my times of the message boards. It did not take long, however, before I moved on over to Greatest Journal and the rest, as they say, is history.

In November of 2006, I joined my first game at GJ, a lovely and fantastic game called Memories 1975. It was there that I began to really grow as a writer, learning that there are more to characters than meets the eye. I allowed my characters to become more three dimensional, having hidden sides and really, for the first time, really feeling and understanding the characters. It did not take me long to begin joining other games, developing new characters, and meeting new people and making new friends in the little piece of fandom I had come to really enjoy being a part of.

Now, coming into 2008, I have joined much of the rest of the Harry Potter fandom and ran from GJ over the Insane Journal, where I hope I will not have to leave anytime soon. I currently moderate two different games - Euphoria Lane (a postwarts game that is canon through HBP) and Apple Creek (a literary based premade game set in a fictional high school in Louisiana). I also modded Mad World (a MWPP school-based game) which was open for eight fantastic months. I have found myself with more friends than I can count and only hope that my time RPing will continue to be as rewarding as it has been all these past years.