The Avatar People

I've always hated that word, "avatar."

And it ain't 'cause I'm s'posed to be a humble monk or anything either heh.

Naw see, I never really heard that word used the way these Big Fancy Internet Guys use it until I played UO after playing EQ.

Back when I played EQ, I played with all these people that roleplayed (y'know, for comedic and entertainment purposes only, none of that drama-queen wannabe-thespian stuff).

And these weren't just a bunch of no-game-skill newbie-yard cybersex shmucks, either, a lot of these guys ran guilds, couple of 'em even had more than two hundred and fifty folks in 'em, so they were pretty widely known, on our server, at least.

And when you wanted to talk to them, you had to talk with their character, y'know, 'cause they never broke character.

So you really were basically stuck talking to some jokey dwarf and a troll or whatever heh.

And so, even though all my characters had certain undeniable similarities, like laughing their asses off all the time at their own stupid jokes, every one of my characters was actually very different from each other, they all walked and talked and cared about different sorts of things and every single one of 'em even laughed different.

I wasn't the kind of roleplayer that made up a big monolithic-block-of-text background story for my guys and then thanked people for reading it and then turned around and read their big monolithic-block-of-text background stories on some wannabe-writer forum somewhere, y'know, it wasn't one of those things where you'd say cheesy shit like "that was great!" and "have a nice summer!" to guilt people into reading your Next Big Roleplaying Novel.

And I never did one of those things where you add a new part to some story or anything like that, except with Mego, where we were actually making fun of people doing stuff like that and laughing our asses off.

I was an old roleplaying pro, y'know, so I figgered everything that was worth bothering people with about my character ought to be conveyed in all the little ways he went around and did things in-game, y'know, the way he framed his reactions and jokey responses to stuff, its supposed to make you laugh while it colors something in a little, and that's it, these folks were my buddies, and not an audience, y'know?

Okay, okay, enough of the big monolithic-block-of-text background story already ahaha.

So then I went to UO, and there were a couple dudes that roleplayed extremely well, but the game wasn't really as intense in the background-forming department as EQ with all its different homelands and famous npcs and WoW-ish narratives and stuff, so folks just kinda went everywhichway, and it was pretty damn doubtful that you'd ever bump into a dude that came from the same town as you that came away from it with a similar set of experiences (although there were some exceptions, like Yew).

As a matter of fact, the dude that ran our UO Server's Newspaper Website Thingie was roleplaying a Tolkien Elf, and he came from a whole guild of Tolkien Elves that could actually speak Elven, the Silver-Something Tavern, who were all elegant and eloquent and poetic and awesome and way the hell better than me at roleplaying and stuff.

But then I met Dundee and Janey and all those guys.

And they were from an entirely different universe where nobody roleplayed.

Yah, they were the Avatar People.

They had one character, or multiple characters that were all the same guy, a version of their real life selves (according to them, at least heh) in a completely whacko fantasy world.

Which made sense in UO, 'cause there really wasn't any easy-to-adopt-for-a-lazy-man Troll Comedy Culture or Elven Homeland in UO to come from, it was all just a bunch of humans with barely anything that tied their character's identities to something in the game world.

And I didn't like it.

I dunno, it just gave me the creeps somehow, kinda like people that bitch about roleplaying give me the creeps, 'cause I know why I do stuff the way I do it, I wanna laugh my ass off while I'm out killing Giant Spiders or some shit, y'know, but I don't understand what they're all after exactly, y'know?

Well, whatever, it wasn't hard for me to get used to their way of doing stuff, especially 'cause I was never much more than a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants where's-the-goddam-joke-already monty-python kinda roleplayer anyways, and the difference between turning it on and turning it off for me is basically just a bunch of semantics.

And so now we come wandering through the mummy dust of ages past to the Modern Age, where suddenly Avatars and Roleplaying all have something to do with Zero Level People having Cybersex in the Newbie Yard.

I always knew you frickin' UO Avatar People were just trying to trick me into having cybersex with you.

And look what you did!

You brought all us famous roleplayers who were at one time beloved by children of all ages down with you into your sordid world of textually transmitted diseases!