Trunks

This gives a relative overview of everything I did on the net up to the creation of AO and for some time after the creation. It's sort of an internet autobiography. If you don't want to read a massive tome of back history on me as well as some back history on AO you don't have to read this at all, as such you should probably just skip it if that is the case. Anyway, here we go. Some of you probably remember me posting something similar to this over various versions of AO, well, if you remember then you probably don't need to read it.

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Okay i'm gonna actually write one of these long ass things. Hopefully I will remember the best I can how my net history went. Should go something like this. I'm gonna start BEFORE I got on the net so that you have some history before that point.

Lets go all the way back to the year 1987 before I even got on the net. There were things called BBS systems, which were basically a direct connection to software set up on another persons computer called "BBS"es. You'd call up this person's computer and you might have maybe 1 or 2 nodes (or phone lines) in which you could connect to. Meaning if 2 people were on and the person only had 2 nodes, if a 3rd person tried to call in they would get a busy signal. Anyway, I spent most of my early computer time wasting away on these things. They had stuff like E-mail between members, Message boards, Chat, Door Games (Just text based games that were actually pretty fun at the time), etc. Basically everything you have now, but pre-dating the internet. Obviously since there was no internet at the time you couldn't get e-mail from it, but you could get e-mail from other users of the particular BBS.

Anyway around this time I spent most of my time going back and forth to these things, posting on their boards, chatting, playing DOOR games, etc. Mostly the games, particularly a game called LORD, Legend of the Red Dragon, the game AO's second RPG was based off of. Back in the day this was the shit. I mean everyone was on these BBSes and such. Fast forward ahead to 1990. I spent all time up until this point wasted on BBS systems. Enter 1990 and the world or text based MUDs that dominated my life for about a year. I was on this one MUD called Age of Damnation. This was really fun for a good year, where I had gotten my character super high, even was an immortal (as they were called) which basically is like an Admin at a forum, but this was on a game. It went down shortly after that. On there though, I learned about a text browser based game. I forget what the name of it was, but that is where I started on the net, I believe it was 1991 or almost 1992 at the time. I played that for about 3 months or so, until I discovered message boards.

I wasted a lot of my early time on a message board on ezboard called Straight Outta Section, where I met a lot of people that I could name, but none of you guys would know them. It was a message board for some show called Le Femme Nikita, which I had heard of but never watched. A friend of mine I met somewhere else posted there and managed to drag me there. Funny I spent all this time at this board meeting and talking to these people who were hardcore fans of the show, but never watched the show myself. To this day I've never seen that show. I've heard of it though. That was that, I haven't posted there in a while but that lead me into message boards of the sort.

That brings me to either the late 90s or the 2000+ range, can't be sure on the year exactly, my times might be off. I was just searching yahoo for Hentai (Yes, Hentai, got a problem with that?) when I stumbled upon an Ezboard called "Hentai Forums" catchy name for a hentai board eh? Anyway, this is where I met MoonUnit, whom I've known for a -VERY- long time. I originally had not met her till later when it was suggested that the forum have a mIRC channel. We all moved to this mIRC channel, where basically only a few people actually went and chatted and shit. That would be where I met some anal bitch named Psychotropica, who then later proceeded to ban me indefinately. For what, you might ask? What could I possibly have done to deserve an indefinite ban? Absolutely nothing. She just didn't like me. Well back then me and Moon were having difficulties as well, I had developed feelings for her and her BF (some dick named Darkman) got wind of that and banned me from the chat channel that we were in as well. We had gotten along real well and chatted all night every night so it would have only been natural to develop feelings for someone after all that. Anyway, after that all had been said and done, like I said we had a falling out. Not sure exactly what happened but we got into a fight and she didn't talk to me for about a half a year. I spent mostly all of my time on mIRC over this period of time, I wasn't around any message boards. Then shortly before we started talking to each other again, I stumbled upon EA forums. (Full name was "Everything Anime Forums" and was the predecessor to Anime Online, it was owned and operated by Cybergig1)

EA forums brought many of the people I know to this day, people like Jayspin, Keiichi, Zeroshen, Blue Dragonell, Spike/Tychoides, Gig, Oni, Lei and Cutie Pie, Etc. Back then I was a real ignorant SOB to Anime, I remember making a post about how I actually liked ZOIDS, which I got severely chastised for if I remember correctly. I was a major newb and it was quite evident. We had so many of these thread called "post your voice", which you do just that, post a sound clip of you saying something so people knew what the hell you sounded like. Problem was nobody did but me and maybe 3 or 4 others. I think back then was when I showed off my Piano skills, and JaySpin (great guy, awesome guitarist) showed off his Guitar skills by playing a piece that I requested he play. I think I asked him to play a number from Crono Cross, the song of Marbule or whatever its called. It is basically this great guitar piece which sounds totally excellent. Anyway, it wasn't long before Gig held a Moderator Recruitment post. Of course, I applied. Why not? Give it a shot I figured, whats the worse that could happen, I get denied, which I thought was gonna happen. Low and behold I was actually CHOSEN as a Mod. Which was a major shock to me. That was how I originally became a mod of what is now known as AO. So I stuck around this forum, getting to know more and more people, a year goes by (maybe less), the site gets more popular, and the financial strain becomes VERY difficult on Gig. This is because Ezboard goes by users and how many posts and visits there are to determine how much to charge for gold. Basically if you don't have gold the board itself is VERY limited on what you can do, so it's pretty much a requirement for a popular community. Something had to be done, and the answer came from a man named Ewdi. Ewdi had agreed to host us on a really sleek, clean, and fast board system known as Vbulletin (what we use to this day). The move was set and everyone moved over to the new and luxurious Anime Online forum. A HUGE step up from Ezboard.

Anime Online brought even more friends and acquaintances, I say acquaintances because, as some of them I know, not all worked out to be friendships. I met people such as KenshinIV, Toki, CC, Tse Lu, Yume, Baron, Sawaislikeakite, Kenjita, Lynx, Kalilung, Faye, Meiwaku, Frr_Vegeta (only got to know him after moving to AO), SilverToeKee, Caz Chan, Cal Kun, Hassun and a million and one other people that I can't name or I'd be here all night. At this point I was actually getting settled in and being known as a "vet" I wasn't as much of a vet as some people, but at least I wasn't a newb anymore. It was here I proceeded to meet various people through posts/etc. I met and started talking to various people on AIM, I could go into all that but then I think I'd be here forever. Later actually met up with Tsurara in person, since I was going to be going down to New York with my brother, and she lived about 5 minutes from where we'd be staying. Fast forward to meeting Charity, or is it rewinding? Can't remember. Started talking to her almost day and night on messenger/telephone. Grew feelings for her, didn't work out, ended up friends. Had ups and downs, all and all still friends. Forward a bit more to meeting Caz who I didn't talk to that much, except maybe a bit now and then on messenger. Seemed like a cool girl, UK chick who has a temper but is also a sweetheart. Forward a bit more, where me and Tychoides had been at each others throat almost all the time. At the time it was really pretty bad, I finally mustered enough courage to confront him and work out a lot of our differences. At the time those differences were "CC" related. Ended up becoming good friends with him later, through sharing interests / chatting it up. That one chat had turned things around a lot and after that we started playing Diablo 2 together and chatting about football and games and shit.

Around this time I stumbled upon a board called Restless city where I met a guy named Stray Winds, mostly everyone else I already had known, so no use mentioning them again. I spent almost a year here, and the board had just been revived when I arrived, Moon and a few others were there already for like a day or two. Anyway spent most of my time between AO and here, didn't have much happening really. Had fun times till the board got shut down, this was a little after Lunar Illusions was formed. Which most of those people or should I say all of them now post there. Anyway back a bit to about the middle of RC's life and Otakon. So moving to around the year 2002.

The month of August to be exact, Otakon. My first year at an Anime convention, I almost didn't make it, but at the last minute I pulled some shit out of thin air and could go. I was like a fish out of water, I had no idea what I was doing. Here I was, a novice Anime fan, at a rather large Anime convention. I finally got to meet Gig and Sedka, but not Tych. I wanted to meet him, but then we never managed it. We could not find them. We all had a great time, despite the disappointment. We returned home a few days later to post all our pics on AO to all the jealous people. Around this time Zeroshen completely disappeared for a long time. We hadn't seen hide nor hair of him for at least a year. Otakon 2002 was great and a lot of fun.

At this point a few moderators got "upgraded." They became Super Moderators. I was one of those Super-Mods, and held the position for about a few months, before Ewdi decided to take out the whole "Super-Mod" thing all together. Since it was causing problems with fighting and other stuff among the staff. Anyway, shortly after that, things had kinda gone down hill for some people. Zev was on the scene still, or should I say was a few months before Otakon, caused major issues between a few members. A few members actually got banned. Shortly after that, Kenshin decided to step down as Moderator, because of his problems with Zev or something, can't remember the exact reason, it was a long time ago. That was shortly after Toki stepped down as Moderator as well.

Fast forward a bit even more, nothing really new happening between that time and Otakon 2003, where people came and went. Moderators came and gone, people were banned. And the AO world turns. Aside from just AO I had been playing games such as Ragnarok Online and Diablo 2. mIRC was in the distant past and I had never gone back. I to this day am still banned from those Hentai Forums. I had gotten into Ragnarok mostly before and during the time around Otakon 2003, I played that for almost 6 months I think it was now, and just recently had been getting "unaddicted" it was here I met Suntiger and Cloud Nine, which I got to know better and better. Cloud Nine dropped off the face of the earth, but now I'm very close to Suntiger, which is a good thing since shes a really cool girl,and a great friend. It was also around the year 2003 that I met Faye V. and A few other people that I met through the AO Journals. People like White Shadow, Murder of Crows, TheDarkness, Omni, Shadowsleeper, WillTwilight, Lantis, Professor K, Sanzo, Sei-chan, Aza darkspell, Maru, Flame_chi, Cyberboy, Trowble, Raven Omega, Joey, Naori....there are countless others but I can't remember everyone, as it is hard to think of everyone of several dozens of people off the top of my head. 2002 and 2003 were huge for the AO Journal system, we had a great group of regular posters, the AO Journal Feuds, etc. Just a great time all around. Sometime around that year I had a short (and I do mean short) relationship with Aza_Darkspell, it lasted maybe a week. Then I got dumped for another girl. (Yes, another girl. Apparently Aza was Bi) Anyway, later that year I had met some other great friends, mostly on the journals, and started exchanging comments back and forth with them all. It was around this time me and The Darkness had a falling out. To this day not sure what happened with our friendship, but just one day it ended out of the blue. Leaving me like that flash clip goes with the Australians and the end of the world, saying "Wtf? ^^;" Okay that last sentence didn't make sense unless you saw the flash video that i'm talking about.

Around this time I stumbled on Stupra/Xerosix where I met a few cool peole such as Lady, Stari, and Manglor. Not much happened here cept for various fun and stuff, Xecrets which was sending things to people secretly, made a few friends, havent been back in a while. Other than that, I was only around here for a few months. Not there everyday/totally active but a cool fun board none the less.

I guess you could say a lot happened before Otakon 2002 and 2003 because I'm writing all this. I stumbled upon a forum called Velocity Anime, which had a RPG system, somewhat similar to AO's first RPG which you could only challenge and kill other players. Not really and RPG but more like a "Battle System." As you could only really fight other people. I had fun there for a while, made mod rather quickly. It was then moved to a place called Yaxio later on.

Sometime between then and Yaxio, I revived my old Gaming Forum, Gaming City. Which was rather active for about 2 months, and then was supposed to move to another forum. We moved to the other forum, provided by Ewdi, but not many people followed, and GC quickly died. The place it moved to, Music Tune, survived a month or so before it was changed to Max Gamers on another server, which lasted another month and died as well. Then it moved to Yaxio along with Velocity Anime, in which is currently and is still around. And which I am an Admin of. Along with Ewdi, NanoEntity, and the old Velocity Anime Admins.

Now, we finally come to 2003's Otakon, we finally got to meet up with all the guys, I finally got to meet Keiichi, Frr_Vegeta, CC, and Tychoides. CC was really fun to be around, as was Ty, Veg, and Keiichi. I was incredibly shocked at how different Ty was in person, but we all got along great. We were supposed to meet Ewdi, but this year he was the one we couldn't find. I was more experienced this year, and we had a great time. It wasn't much different than 2002, except for the fact that it is just that much more fun when you are with more people that you know. Anyway, the end of the con came, and I didn't want to go, but all good things come to an end.

That brings us closer still to present time, where nothing has been going on but the same as usual. I started playing FFXI, not every day, but when I can I play it. That and I've gotten back into playing Diablo 2 with Ty and Keiichi. Zeroshen Returned shortly after the con and everyone was happy to see his return. Zev also came back about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Not everyone was happy to see her come back though. All and all that sums up most of it.

*Continuation*

So I am going to try and update this a little bit more with more current back story. At the time it was 2004, since nothing really of interest happened during 2004 in the way of Anime Online I will skip right to Otakon 2004, I believe this was the first year we actually managed to meet Ewdi, great guy, as he always has been. Everyone had managed to meet up finally, it only took like 3 years of trying. Either way, this would actually be the last Otakon that we would all go to. It just stopped being as good as it was in previous years and the only reason a lot of us went anymore was just to meet up and hang out with each other. It was the 2004 Otakon when I met Trowble for the first time. Pretty fun guy to hang out with, but if I recall he was kind of a lush. Since Otakon itself was no real fun that year we all pretty much just hung out together around Baltimore and went to the con inbetween doing other things. We had a blast at the ESPN zone, went around to the various sites of Baltimore such as the harbor, a lot of fun stuff.

That Otakon I'd have to say was probably one of the funner ones we've gone to. Since everyone was there and we got to see a lot of things in Baltimore that we missed. Just as quickly as it had started, however, it was over. Not long after we returned to AO Ewdi had announced that he needed to sell it to another owner for reasons of personal health problems causing financial strain and he also would not be able to take care of the site because of the same reasons. This is when the site landed into the hands of what is now known as one of the great destroyers of what was once a magnificent community. Spiderwebb took over AO, sometime near 2005 something happened with AO. I think something about Spider not paying the bandwidth bill. Either way it resulted in the site going down for a VERY long time, everything good about the AO of previous years was completely lost after that. All accounts were wiped, board skins, the gallery, everything was lost completely. Well, you can sort of guess what that meant. A lot of the core members lost their desire to return. All of what they worked so hard to obtain was lost and could not be recovered. It was then that the major core of the site fell out completely. AO was a very hollow shell of it's former glory and to make matters worse the new board began being flooded with low quality members. Well, the site existed in this half-assed state for a good part of 2005 until it once again went down without warning. This time for a great deal longer.

At the time, very few members from the original version of AO remained, but after this second crash there would be even fewer still. They all scattered to various parts of the internet, we even had a forum up at one point (very brief) called AnimeTalk, but that soon fell just as quickly. It all seemed hopeless in the world of AO, til one day the site was reopened again. It was opened to what is now the current version, but under the ownership of a person by the name of Spdude. Unfortunately, this version of the board was obviously just for revenue purposes as Spdude littered the board with massive amounts of ads. Ads were everywhere, basically ruining anything good about the site. This version of AO, which I nickname AdsOnline brought about a huge influx of poor quality posters. To this day there is still aftermath of poor quality posters from that. Anyway, eventually a large portion of the remaining journal crew and ALL of the remaining members from the original AO decide to leave. I think the breaking point was when Spdude went crazy and started demoting and banning staff members. Aside from that a large portion of the members hated seeing AO turned into a big money making project for Spdude. So, we pretty much all decided to leave at this point. Before doing so, though, a large portion of the members that decided to leave staged a revolt. I didn't personally take part in it, I decided to sit back and enjoy the show.

It included a lot of protest spamming, changing of avatars and signatures, calling out spdude, a lot of great stuff. The displeasure of the members, ex-staff, etc. was made abundantly clear. I left for a good while with everyone else, I would eventually return after learning that the site was sold to a new owner, DragonBall. After lurking for a bit I figured out that DragonBall was actually a really great guy, nothing at all like spdude. In fact, he was pretty much the complete opposite. Well, it took a while, but eventually I managed to work myself back onto the staff. I continued about my every day business like I had done when AO was a flourishing community in the early 200x years. Well, eventually the AO RPG system was added to the site. I did a whole lot of work on that. In fact worked my butt off trying to build that RPG. Though all my work would pay off, as I was eventually promoted to Administrator. I didn't just do the RPG though, I was in charge of making graphics for the site as well. In fact, the buttons you see on AO today were created by me. Aside from that I helped DragonBall with my knowledge of VB and various other things. Sometime after my promotion I decided that LenMiyata deserved a higher rank than just Super Mod. He is of course a very seasoned member of staff, and is a good mentor to other staff, so I created the "Head Moderator" position. Len is and always will be the only one to hold this rank. He has more than earned it over the years, it is more of a prestige rank as it has the same power and duties as Super Mod.

Well, I thought that DragonBall was going to run the site from there on out, but unfortunately he could no longer afford to, this site is apparently pretty expensive to run. So, it was eventually sold to CowboyBebop and Hellsing. I remained on as Admin and continued to do the same tasks as before. Maintaining the RPG, banning members that break the rules too often, managing the staff, implementing new ideas and sections, etc. Basically keeping the site as fun and interesting as I can, with of course the skilled help of our staff. Anyway, there really isn't much else to add, it was pretty much business as usual up until present day, where I find myself updating this entry. I am probably missing a great deal of information. When I first wrote this I was much better at remembering every small detail, now..not so much. Either way, this is now updated at least to current year. I may update it again a few years down the road.

This is just a list of people I met and where:

Hentai Forums: Moonunit, Dka

Everything Anime/Anime Online: Grey Pixel, Blue Dragonnell, Ty, Oni, Gig, Zeroshen, Jayspin, Kenshin, Dark Tokiko, Keiichi, Tsurara, Kenjita, Lynx, Baron, Yume, Darkness, Caz, Cal, Raven Omega, Trowble, Maru, Faye V, Lantis, KenX, AzaDarkspell, CC, Meiwaku, Naori, White Shadow, Murder, Omni, Shadowsleeper, Twilight Sazuka, Prof K, Sanzo, Sei-chan, Flame_chi, Cyberboy, Joey, Kali, Lei, Cutie, Zui, Gallcomp, Veg, Tse_Lu, DragonBall, Cowboy Bebop, Hassun.. bah mind just went blank if I left out your name say so.

Restless City: Stay, Ruby

Lunar Illusions: Trek Queen

Stupra: Lady, Mang, Stari

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EmoNightmareRose

And Tula thought she had the longest post ever. I always was a guest in the Dragon Ball days...(my sister was the full time user.) I kind of miss it. Don't get me wrong, Cowboy Bebop is Boosha, but Dragon Ball was just pure Classic.

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ketaro

You surely have been around for quite some time eh. All, i can remember was the old AOL and how slow the thing was.

Zev

Wow, you have a great memory. I had forgotten most of those people until you brought them up gain. I remember listening to Jayspin's music a few times, that guy had talent!

You know I also had forgotten how much some people used to dislike me back then.

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Hassun

Holy shit, Trunks is writing his memoirs.
It's interesting to see the history of AO and all the pitfalls along the way. Especially the pre 2002 parts as I didn't experience those myself.

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Sazuka

Man, I was 1 in 1990. That's going pretty far back Trunks.

I miss all the people from my Twilight_Sazuka days... I would have the "Twilight" part if people could friggin' spell it right.

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RayMe

Wow... he wrote from even the time he got on.. o.o I was not even born on 1987!

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Legion Ketsueki Lives on~!!
The best ever Lasura~!
>>>myspace<<<

mystical shadow angel

You have an extremely impressive memory, Trunks. =O

The events prior to Nov. 2004 were very interesting, and after that I caught on a bit. It's a shame that Dragon Ball had to leave. He genuinely wanted this to work, and work well. Spdude, Frr_Vegeta, Everything Anime, all ring some serious bells in my mind, but for the love of all that is holy I can't remember anything except that SpDude's username was yellow and Frr_Vegeta's username was green. Wow, I'm great at remembering colours lol. I have excellent short-term memory (awesome for cramming before exams), but my long-term memory's worse than my mum's. No joke, and yes that's how you spell it in Australia.

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