Before you read this, I want you to know I’m not angry. I’m not angry at all. Actually, it’s 8am and I’m… happy. Really happy. I had a tiff with my friends and then the love I received afterwards put it all back into perspective. So please go into this knowing I’m happy, I’m sitting at my desk and the birds are singing, bloody bugs have killed my FAVOURITE bush and I spent all of yesterday picking them off by hand so that was VERY annoying — and that I say this all with complete peace, love, and full friendship to every single one of you.

And don’t any of you dare turn this into (sobbing) an overhaul discussion thread. Because I’ll scream and cry. No one wants that. This is just a think piece about something that I believe would be incredibly easy and beneficial to put into place.

This is also very rambly but I think if you can make it through to the end (with, preferably, some kind of drink or you’ll die of dehydration by the time it’s over) my thoughts amalgamate into something resembling English. Maybe this will go nowhere. Maybe we’ll all go ‘……. Okay! *slaps thighs* Anyway!’ And that’s okay. I just want to put it out into the world so that if, some day, things need a change, maybe there’ll be a tiny seed somewhere in here for your brilliant brains to chew on.

I should also say that I hate putting myself out there like this. All my friends know this; I’m… afraid a lot of the time. I like to get along with everyone and not rock the boat. But right now, I do want to speak. 

Now, without further ado — Fox’s Essay:



By its very nature roleplay is a creative and fluid thing, and we’ve regimented it. Standardised it. All these check boxes, spreadsheets, numbers, lists — instead of being something fun, something you’re excited about at the end of a long, hard day, it’s become… scary. When I was promoted and saw the leadership activity post, I was filled with such terror. I knew it was there, there were numbers last time I was leader — but to see it again, to be faced with it, I still can’t go in there just because I get such a heavy weight in my chest. I have a loving mum who’s my best friend in the world, an 18 year old cat, a beautiful garden I love to tend, a degree I’m in love with — and the thought of having to take time away from that to meet a deadline or else I’ll have a post started about me, and my friends voting about me… It’s horrible. It’s really, really horrible. And you might think ‘oh, well, she’s not cut out for leadership. We’ll find someone who is.’ But that isn’t true. And you know that isn’t true. I’m a wonderful roleplayer — we’re all wonderful roleplayers. And to have had this site twist your thoughts into ‘that’s just the way it is’ — it doesn’t have to be.

Forget about our titles for a second, forget admin and moderator and deputy and leader. We’re just people. People from around the world sitting in front of a laptop or on a phone. When we first came here, we were looking for fun. But I don’t think anyone’s having fun anymore. We’ve taken something beautiful, something that should be so freeing, and we’ve turned it into… this. Something that makes us sick to our stomachs instead of joyful. And clearly I still get joyful and excited about my rps — I love my characters, I love my friends. I know you all love your characters and plots — or you should. You should have the room to. But as soon as I became deputy, that familiar little brainworm started. (5 more posts. 4 more posts. And then I can rp for fun).

Rp for fun?

That’s all it’s supposed to be!

And this isn’t an attack on you, Jadie. Not in a million, billion years. This isn’t an attack on the role of Activity Manager. It’s not about making it obsolete — it’s about adapting it into something wonderful. Maybe it’s about being a helpful watcher, an early warning system with your ear to the ground — you see a Clan struggling and you work with Faith and the leader to cook up some fun idea for activity. I don’t know. I’m not an Admin, nor do I want to be — you’re stronger than me, more resilient. You’re brilliant. You’re my friends. That’s for you to come up with, with the help of whoever you want help from. We’re all on the same side, and we want this beautiful, old, chaotic site to continue. But right now, all I see ahead of us is a great, looming darkness.

I see how this happened — I understand. We saw the thing we love struggling and so we imposed order on it; we thought ‘if there are numbers, if there is a categorical way to see this all, then it will be easier. It will be better.’ But we were wrong. And part of being a good leader and a good friend is knowing when we were wrong.

Imagine a world where there’s no CPCC. No QCA. No stars. I guarantee you that if you got rid of it all, activity would be the same — maybe it would be higher. Maybe it would be a little lower, but without the numbers to tell us, who would know? Just really imagine that: no numbers. Just a gut feeling. ‘This is right.’ Imagine being so excited about a character that you stay up late to rp them with your friend — imagine smiling about them in real life. Some weeks you might be lazy, you might have wonderful things on, and you might get in 2 posts. Then the next week you might be so inspired, so excited, by a new idea or a new plot or character that you get in 30, 40, just because you’re so thrilled.

Imagine feeling something other than a pit in your stomach.

Instead, you rush on to get in 35 desperate replies before the week ends. Do you have fun? Are you developing characters and turning them into something you cherish and love, or are you throwing on their skin for a few seconds to give a response (1 reply done, 34 to go, I can do this, 2 more hours and then I can go to sleep) and then discarding them?

As it stands right now, can anyone honestly say they’re enjoying themselves? And you might have the kneejerk reaction, the harsh, understandable reaction that is every leader’s right, to say ‘well, this isn’t about enjoyment. It’s about keeping the site running. It’s about hard decisions.’

But the thing is, my loves, it isn’t. It so isn’t. And it breaks my heart to see you like this.

Because the thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change it. These titles of admin and mod — we’re just people. We’re all friends. We’ve put duties and roles and things like that on it all, but if we take that away we’re just people who fell in love with Warriors when we were little, who like creating stories with our friends about cats — and anything that’s hurting us, we have the power to change. We’ve put rules and restrictions on something we love, something fun — and why?

The harsh reality, as it stands, as it’s stood for a long time, is this:

Soon you’ll have pretty spreadsheets and no one left to fill them with.

Because by trying to enforce activity, you drive away people who were in love with their Clans, with their characters, with their stories — who were the, excuse the messy metaphor, the meat of Classic if the Admins are the backbone. And I’ve always believed, with all the love and devotion in the world, that if everyone left, Classic would still stand because of the core group that makes it so strong, so beautiful. The people who have been loyal to it since they were children. And that, slowly, the site would rebuild once more around them.

But that’s still ignoring one simple truth:

People don’t have to leave.

People don’t want to leave.

People want to stay.

It’s just… hard. To have the thing you love regulated by numbers.

To be constrained by the threat of a noose instead of motivated by pure love of something. 

And don’t get angry at me, don’t get defensive, don’t lock up now and fall back on your title — you’re a person sitting at a screen, I’m a person sitting at a screen, and we’re having a conversation about our happiness. Whichever one of you I’m talking to right now, whichever one of my friends you are — are you happy?

Look, rules are fun. Being able to impose them on people is fun. Deep down, beyond all the things that tell us jealousy and ambition and power are bad, who doesn’t want to do that? You haven’t done a bad thing. I love you. But taking a step away from being worried about a site made up of 0s and 1s on a screen, I’m worried about you. Whoever you are. Because this place can be so addictive, and it can be so consuming, and it can end up being the only thing you think about, last thing before you go to sleep and first thing when you wake up. And that’s not healthy. And so much of that comes down to the fact that our lives have become defined by numbers. A fun thing, a thing we’re all so excited to get back to that we run back home like kids after school — that’s what this is meant to be.

And I honestly believe, with all my heart, that that’s what it would be without numbers.

To have it be a point of pride to get the highest numbers, to inadvertently have turned all this into a competition where the only people we’re pitted against are our friends and where, beyond a grim feeling of satisfaction, there’s no real fun — it breaks my heart.

We need to try a Classic without the CPCC and the QCA.

We need to try a Classic where we just let it be a fluid, loving, creative thing. (Without sabotage, I say with full love, just because you might want it to remain the same).

We need to try a Classic where ‘activity’ becomes an obsolete word.

And I get the terror — because we don’t know if it will work. We don’t know if it will fail, if people will take it as an excuse to get compliant, if we’ll suffer more than we are now. We don’t know if what we have now is better than what we could have.

All I’m saying, in the most loving possible way, is that we need to try.

Six months.

One year.

No CPCC. No QCA. No numbers.

Activity checks continue, moderated by individual leaders.

If we can pry ourselves away from that damn excel that’s haunted me since I was 15 because I can never make the damn boxes do what I want — then no monitoring at all.

Ooh. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? But kind of… freeing.

No stats. At the end of the 6 months or 1 year, we don’t have numbers to tell us how we did — we have a gut feeling. That’s what I want. How did we do? Did it feel good? To be able to say ‘I felt like my Clan was thriving, I was having fun, I wasn’t even thinking about meeting goals’ — imagine that. Maybe you’ll say ‘it didn’t feel too good for me’ — fantastic, we’ll address it then. We’ll have an open, honest discussion about how it felt and if we want to go back or not.

But all I want is to try!

New things. Because we can either dig our heels in and continue along the path we’re on to wherever it goes — or we can break free, set it aside for a little while, and go have fun with our friends in the woods. Maths exam… or playing? I think we all know which one we’d like better. What’s the worst that could happen? Lowered activity but the activity we do have is incredibly fun, incredibly enjoyable? Centred around character development, relationships, journeys, love? Wouldn’t that be better than 1000 posts and they’re all done at a quarter to midnight with no buzz and no joy? Maybe it all goes to hell — we don’t know.

All I’m asking is that we try it.





Now, I don’t want this to become one of those (chokes) posts with 200 replies to it. So please don’t. I just want you to think about it. I want you to know that I love you, that I’m your friend, that I’m still in love with our characters and our roleplays.

So stay quiet.

Sleep on it.

Think.

Ponder.

Get a bloody cocktail because by Christ you deserve it for making it through that! Booyah, baby dolls <3