The Jedi vs Sith Testimonials Thread

This might be a little too open. But the short & sweet is that without this site, I would probably be filling a rather cold hole in the dirt. Shit comes, Shit goes. But friends are awesome in more ways than I can count. Thank you JvS, for being a safe & welcoming place to someone that was running out of places to look.

Hello frens.

I joined 1.0 way back in October 2007, when the JvS mini game app (yeah, with all the Influence, Knowledge (I beasted at those quiz trivia), Strength stat stuff when poking your friends on FB was still a thing). However, I barely touched the Universe segment even though I frequented it a lot (partially due to my insecurities as a prepubescent tween).

I migrated to 1.5 in August 2008. Looking back now, I was 13 years old, what the hell.

I was a socially inept teenager with low self-esteem and a tragically shitty stream-of-consciousness writing style, but at least I mustered enough courage to start posting. (I read back on my first ever 1.5 post in archaic thee/thou/thy/thus language and I visibly cringed so hard). I spent most of my days with the same group of RPers, and when they eventually moved on from the site, I carved my own niche out as a loner on Iridonia. HAHAHAHA

This place was a getaway from brutal reality and puberty. I've been riddled with medically diagnosed chronic depression for almost as long as I've been on JvS, and this place was a channel where I could let loose my loud imagination. I remember coming up with some of the most (in)famous OOC games in that thread: You're Banned, Word Association, Last Letter First... then contributing mindlessly to a lot of the others: Last Person to Post, Count to a Million, etc... I remember being part of the inaugural council for the Sithies award. Presenting, MCing a bit (basically my real-life study vocation now lol). That was a ton of fun, one of the more memorable highlights of my relatively backwater RPing life as DA. I derived a sense of satisfied accomplishment typing paragraphs of progressive character development and posting. Zion puts it nicely early above:


The people I interacted with in JvS were far more accommodating and patient than the toxic humanity surrounding me in my younger school days. The collaborative effort of writing your character into a larger story arc with other people, and gelling your imagination with theirs was a unique experience I'd never encountered before. I made friends; some fellow semi-retirees I still have on Facebook to this day (I see you Jair, Hench, McCann, Josh, Nick, Will, Stephen, Dave, Glyn, Daman).

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Some backstory on myself: I'm a third-culture kid. Born in Singapore, raised my entire childhood overseas. My first love of Star Wars was when I lived in San Francisco, in America. My first experience of JvS was in Taiwan.

August 2008, the time I created the DA account on 1.5, was in the midst of a transitionary period of my life. I relocated from Taipei to Beijing. And my three years in Beijing till 2011 was my most active time on this site. I was online nearly every day, and developed a lot of my flair for creative writing bouncing off from here (even though I was pretty much doing my own thing throughout because of my insecurity of writing with other people at the time hahaha)

The 2.0 migration 2013 to ProBoards occurred around a very busy period of my life. I'd been back in my home country of Singapore for awhile, pursuing my diploma studies in mass communication, impending much of my activity, though I lurked around from time to time. By then, my RP posts had been sporadic.

Then I conscripted into the military, which pretty much ate most of my time. I appeared here and there on the game threads as I usually do, but put my character in a form of RP void and semi-retired from roleplaying altogether. Not sure if many remain that remember me. But I haven't forgotten my time here. Who knows, maybe like E-Rad right above me, I might start up slowly for the nostalgia.

I started when I was 13. I'm 24 this year, honourably discharged from the air force and pursuing a B.A. and majoring in Radio Production next month in Sydney. I'm contemplating furthering into Masters for Creative Writing, but only time will reveal my decision. Just know that if I do follow through on that, JvS had an integral role in galvanising my love for writing.

With this new sequel trilogy opening the saga up to a new generation of wide-eyed 13-year olds like I used to be when I started RPing, may you last another decade, and then some more. Happy decade anniversary, JvS.