A friend brought up the topic of rs today which made us think about this place and decide to come back and poke around.

[tw: emotional post, some discussion of abuse]

Nearly half a lifetime ago, we joined runevillage. We were a young child, 13 years old, very lost and broken in ways we would not understand well for well over a decade. Playing games online allowed us to make friends online. These friends existed in a place where we did not have the scrutiny of our parents, where they could not see our friends and tell us which of them were bad and who we should and should not be friends with. The friends we made here helped us through some of our deepest rounds of depression when we were 15 and 16 years old. We do strongly believe that the friends we made here quite literally saved our life.

After those years, we mostly withdrew from online communities. Until grad school, there was never quite the same need for such close friendships which fed into us not being able to recreate such deep friendships for nearly a decade. We aren't sure it was the most healthy path for us to follow, but it was a path which allowed us to survive.

We mostly want to thank the people here, the wonderful admins, the mods, the people who helped create the culture of runevillage, everyone who helped this place be what it was. This was the first time we were a part of a community and even though we were still a lost child, runevillage created a space where we were able to begin to figure out socialization and make mistakes. We would be surprised if we didn't make some serious mistakes and didn't piss off a lot of people in the process, but simply being allowed to try different things and make mistakes played a huge role in our growth as a person. Even as we have grown, runevillage is a community which is always in the back of our mind, the first place online which truly felt like a home. Thank you for providing this space for us.

I'm really happy to hear you say that, Blizaga. Just going off of the strongly fond memories I have for RV, I know there are lots of others that have similar-but-different feelings, and that's really cool that we were all part of the same worldwide community for so long.
Haha! We were all teenagers or younger, so it was bound to happen! Don't worry about it.

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for posting this . Good memories.

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GF to my imageshack based sig.