TheShinje

Damn, I keep missing these mini revivals like ships in the night. Anyway, I often get nostalgic and look back at my time on OB very fondly, so every now and again I have to come back and at least browse the forum and dig up some old posts I had a blast with, to read how I wrote back then and remind myself of the colourful cast of characters that were once part of my daily life. OB was what Facebook is to me now, only with the added bonus of not being tied to my real identity and a persona, based on my passions in anime and video gaming. It's hard to believe that from my signup date to today is just over half my life knowing OtakuBoards is/was a thing. Not bad for signing up on a whim because I searched for Dragonball Z pictures. I found this in an archive about a year ago and I can't believe I burned through 4 names in one year. O_O;

I couldn't believe it, after so many iterations of OtakuBoards, I thought for sure the attachment in the original thread was gone, and the original files, because I was so bad at backing things up then, were long gone. Then I saw it, in my attached files, still there. A movie I made about OtakuBoards life set to a parody of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the daftly titled Moderator and Otaku: The Short Side of TheOtaku. Back in the day It had little fanfare and was watched by about 5 people. I think this was due to the need to zip the file in an attachment as there was no YouTube or anything like it back in the day and image hosting websites had their limits. You did have to jump through a couple of hoops and then have a flash player installed on your pc to watch it, after all. Besides being a parody of Master and Commander, the film references several notable events and the crazy characters of OtakuBoards at the time and was heavily influenced by Dragon Warrior's Daily Comic series. The cop-out ending was hastily thrown together simply because I got bored with the project as the frames piled up and Flash became less stable on me, computers of the time, eh. I thought this might be interesting to some as a throwback very much of it's time and it certainly did bring back a few good memories. ?

I don't keep up with OB very often, I check back from time to time and to hear of Desbreko's passing is heartbreaking. I knew he was going through treatment, I thought that he'd make it. Like everyone here I have very fond memories of his presence here. Cancer sucks. RIP Des.

I really enjoyed FQFG2, once I knew what it was, what was going on and why half the board members were running around like terrorists! I'll never forget my one and only excuse to go running around the board dressed as Kuja and splashing size 3 crimson Century Gothic font everywhere. ;) I hope Flash still has the awesome CTU crest he made for the other side. PLAYER NAME: Quentin Szyslack FAVORITE OB RPG CHARACTER NAME: The one played by Dragon Warrior... The cool one.CHARACTER'S AGE: 19 and three quartersCHARACTER'S ELEMENT OF POWER: NeonPLAYER'S OB FORUM OF POWER: NoooooooooooooospherePLAYER MONTH AND DAY OF BIRTH: 03/11CHARACTER'S IDOL:Billy IdolWHAT IS THE WORST DECISION YOUR CHARACTER EVER MADE?Signing up for Final Quest for Glory 3

Gee, I almost forgot about my Jeremiah phase, and there it is immortalized as my entry. Actually, I can't even remember half the names I have allegedly gone by here, haha! Still, I got an entry when the likes of ZF Foredaddy, Juuthena and Mnemolth didn't... It makes me feel somewhat more important that I actually am. ^^

It may have been a weird cognitive connection to our upcoming reunion day, but when I heard of Bowie's passing, one of my first thoughts was with Tony, who gave me my appreciation for all things Bowie. It struck me that the last single released while he was alive was titled Lazarus. Tony's gaming website was called Orange Lazarus, I believe. It's somehow fitting and I wonder at what he might think of this uncanny connection.

Leh's summary of his history summary just gave me a thought, does the Otakupedia still exist in some form? It might be a valuable resource to help us keep a track of who everyone is and who they may have turned into. ^.^

Who's getting Fallout 4 when the title drops in a few days? From what I've seen it looks really good, but the dog is giving me Fable 2 nightmares! I'm sure the dog is way better implemented in this than that, though. I'm down for the whole experience but I can safely say that I'm looking forward to exploring the map the most. Fallout 3's map was pretty impressive for a vast nuclear wasteland.

It's a shame that version never saw the light of day because that design is certifiably badass.

I'm keen as Colonel Mustard, in the kitchen, with the knives, preparing the cake.

I'd really like to see separate anime forums back, and I seem to beat this drum every time I attempt a return, i'ts just that as I see it, there was a correlation between that and the decline in activity. OB realy was a melting pot of diverse fandoms and each fandom had it's own cozy little place, with a general lounge where you met up with the other ones. I found this place searching for all things  Dragonball, I posted almost exclusively in that forum to begin with and I have no idea if I'd have stuck around for a nonspecific and very general 'Anime' forum.    If you want to try and reboot this forum, then might I suggest at least giving it a try, putting some specific anime forums up and give it a year or so, until the Google spiders have grabbed it and folks looking for all things SwordArt Online have found our specific SwordArt Online forum. ;)   Kudos for offing the PRP. :D

  I'm surprised Tripod is still a thing. :/ A pity Geocities is taking a long dirt nap, there were a lot of really corny and cheesy websites out there, with equally corny and cheesy MIDI background music! Oh the memories! :D Did I just post in the PRP? I think Hell must be a pretty cold place right now, I've given in to the madness.

Well, I keep coming back here to check up on things, sometimes I can have a quick burst of activity but I never end up staying because the forums are so quiet now.  OB has sentimental value for me, as the first online community I ever signed up for, and I'm all for any ideas that'll jolt the senses and give OB a new lease of life. So when I saw this thread adressing the issue,. I knew I had to try and remember my password and contribute a few ideas... For your consideration.   Gear the forums toward fan art. :3 The Otaku community has been focused on fan art for a long time now, while the boards are now more centered around general discussion. I suggest taking a dual-media apporach encouraging the fan art community to both discuss the series and share their art works with the community. You could spin this as a way for artists to get noticed and get a wider audience. OB then benefits from the large fan art base on TheOtaku, streamlining the memembership so their existing TheO account also works here might, already have been done, but if it hasn't, my idea! :tongue:   Kill. The. Padded. Room. Party. >.>   Why? To encourage new threads and discussions on the topics that won't just fade as pages pass and other discussion vie for space. The lounge has not been the same since that thread opened, it's the all-encompassing behemoth that takes in almost all areas of discussion and it leaves no room for other discussions, why start a new thread when you can just PRP it?  It's exactly the same reason I have not discussed much anime series after the one-thread-per-anime thing came into being. Which segues perfectly into my next idea,   Opening separate anime forums again. ^_^ The goal of the move was a good one, cut down on maintenance, but in the end, I think, a lot of the more nuanced discussion about a particular series was lost to a general thread of 'I like it' and 'the latest episode was so cool.' Those examples are paraprhased but that was the general feeling I got. We lost those insane but enjoyably fun conspiracy threads and those threads on a specific topic that woudl spiral into a whole new arena of discussion and take on a new life of it's own, or maybe that was only the Digimon thread about the pink Power Ranger toy. This works well with the idea to incorporate fan art, as each series can then have it's own little hub. The art forum can then be used as a place for all non-specific art works, the graphics worms, the banner requests etc.   Bright large logo and logo competitions O_IO This ties into the fan art focus idea. How about having a big logo at the top like we used to have, with the graphic links and intergrated anime characers? You could hold regular competitions to design them. There were some good logos that came out of those competitions, Syk3's was awesome and who knows? Perhaps something big bright and cheerful would be more inviting to some people as well. :)   These are things I believe can help stimulate the OB community and bring in the new membership base. What are your thoughts?

Cheers Petie, that was a good trip. So... Anyone keen for another? I might just be the push I need to become a regular on the OB again. ;)

Now that John has mentioned the graphic worm, are they stored anywhere? Man, it'd be great to see them again and to wince at my horrible intrusions into them haha! :D