YOU: Then, Now, +1 Interesting Fact

[severenz]

It's pretty incredible that there are some dedicated writers out there and names that I've seen on the site for years. I know some of you "elders" were younger when you started using this site. Feel free to take a moment and explain the "then and now."

THEN:
When I coded the first rendition of this site it was around 2002/2003. At the time I was maybe 27 -- single, programming for a music gear company, and living alone in a suburban cul-de-sac.

NOW:
8-9 years later and I'm married with two kids. I program for a movie server company; working from our home in the country.

Interesting Fact:
I got into a serious car accident a few years ago. At the hospital they accidentally discovered a brain tumor (pituitary adenoma). I had a transphenoidal (through the nose) brain surgery a few days later.

[donteatpoop]

Then: I discovered this site in 2006, I think. My daughter was three years old at the time, and I lived in a house that I had just bought a few months before. I found this site after writing a short experimental one in a notebook that involved the concept of what difference a few seconds would make. It wasn't very good, but I was just playing with the style; then I was like "i wonder if there's a website out there that lets you write on it and just click the answer and it takes you to the page." I found myadventuregame.com (now chooseyourstory.com) and was depressed that it was all so shitty. Then I found this place and was like 'hell yeah.' Practiced on a few stories from other people and then started my own.

Now: Like everything else I write, I'm a good starter but bad finisher. I get a good idea, start it out and then get distracted by another newer shinier idea.That's why I only have two finished stories on the site, and both are rather short. I'm 32 years old; fat, bald, toothless, married, and ugly. My daughter is 8 now, and I have a three year old little dude. Still live in the same house, working the same job, trying to make ends meet.

Interesting Fact: I have two buttholes. Seriously, there's a little one above the big one. I used to think everyone had two buttholes and that farts came out of one and poop out of the other, but that was errouneous. Turns out it can get infected pretty bad if I don't make sure I scrub it real clean in the shower. It's kind of wierd having two buttholes, but also kind of cool. I'm like a superhero or something. I just haven't figured out what my powers are yet. Whatever it is, I think it's somehow going to involve my butt.

[severenz]

DEP - are you sure your second butthole isn't just a stinky vagina?

[Cat2000]

Then: I don't have the first clue about when I discovered this site, but I think it was when I was staying at my mother's when I was 15... maybe 16... maybe younger. (Not older, though. Pretty sure about that). And I found it cause I was looking for choose your own adventure books. I was pretty obsessed with them when I was younger. So I found this pretty cool website and... been dipping in and out ever since

Now: Still not any better at finishing things. I have one finished story on here and about... two finished novels, one of which I keep putting off editing. I hate editing, I've discovered. It's nowhere near as fun as actually writing. And I have a cute four-year-old niece

Interesting Fact: I strongly dislike my job. No... wait... that's not that interesting or unusual. How about this - in about three weeks' time, I'm going to a convention of one of my favourite tv shows. Oh, and I sent a book to a publisher. I haven't heard anything back in a while, but I am hopeful of a response soon. (Any response now, cause it's been so long, I'm beginning to worry)

[End Master]

Then: Came here from another CYOA site called The Neverending CYOA Story Engine when that one was closed down for retooling in 2004. Liked it here a lot better and stayed ever since. I was single at the time, but later on I met my wife on the forums here. Didn't see that one coming!

Now: Still married of course. I don't have as much time to write stories like I used to anymore, but I still keep at it.

Interesting Fact: The name End Master is a hold over from the first site I was at, where I tended to add endings to the countless unfinished stories there. Of course I soon just started writing complete stories myself.

[mizal]

Then: Came here from another CYOA site called The Neverending CYOA Story Engine when that one was closed down for retooling in 2004.

Hey I remember that site! ...it's still sitting there today, waiting patiently for log-in functionality to be added.

I haven't actually been a member of this one long enough to participate in this thread, but I believe my first exposure to CYOAs on the internet was the classic ADDventure.com back when I was 12 or so. IIRC that was also where I read my first porn story. Ahh, memories. (It involved a german shepherd.)

Later there was also some other CYOA site I can't remember the name. You had to contribute a couple of chapters to a certain story and then get permission to write your own so it didn't have a lot of traffic but everyone wrote (actually good!) cyoas in the third person. I think at one point there was an option to get a completed story printed into an actual book if you wanted. The owner was not really involved in the site but still answering emails when I first joined, he disappeared completely not too long after that though. Seems to be a common problem with this kind of site...and I am really happy and stupidly excited it's not the case with this one anymore.

[apotheosis]

Then: Stumbled upon this site when trying to find the longest story in existence by searching "infinite story" on google... seriously. Spent countless hours I was suppose to be doing work in my high school library on the site, the majority of time probably sunk into my monstrosity, Hall of Infinite Doors.

Now: Completed college and trying to decide what the hell to do next. Unfortunately, my original plan of transcending my mortal shell and becoming a brain in a jar that can control objects from afar like Endmaster isn't working out like I'd hoped...

Interesting Fact: I lost my virginity as a direct result of this site and 16 ounces of vodka.

[Vesnic]

THEN: I first discovered IS in the late summer of 2006, shortly after I returned to the States from Eastern Europe. If memory serves, I was visiting a friend in Baltimore on the day that I finally decided to meet those intriguing rascals whose antics I had been tracking for several weeks. I couldn't think of what name to give myself, so I just translated the word "infinity", as in "infinite story". This little junket to Maryland was fateful in yet another way: on the very day that I registered on Infinite, I fell roughly off a piece of exercise equipment in my friend's apartment and was unable to move for several seconds. I was subsequently taken to the hospital, where I got some not-very-good news. The probability is unlikely, especially in a group so young, but Sev and I have both had our intimate little dances with tumors. The day I joined IS was the day my life changed forever.

NOW: Five and a half years later, I feel as though I'm living in an entirely different world, residing in a different body, with a mind irrevocably altered by the chaotic intensity of everything that's happened. Many people have told me I should write a book about it all. What sort of book would it be, though? A straight, autobiographical rehashing of events wouldn't come close to capturing the often surreal nature of the experience.


Interesting Fact:
I am slowly making my mark as a professional translator. Translation is fascinating, because it really does require writing ability above and beyond stringing a sentence together. You need to understand the author's state of mind, the language's own unique way of seeing the world, and try, often with great difficulty, to turn the specific into the universal. There is something almost chemical about it, and also something quite magical.

[ChubbyTeletubby]

THEN: 2004, I believe it was February. The site was more civilized then. As a kid I was seriously obsessed with CYOA stories. However, the first site I began writing for (www.sir-toby.com/extend-a-story) was in 1999. That site is more of a Multiverse set around ONE big story. I still write over there from time to time...

Actually, the first site I wrote for was www.addventure.com and that was in 1996. I was like 13 or 14 or something. Wow. Forgot about that. That site went bye-bye in 1999. Anyway...

I believe Mr. Wiggles Big Adventure was the first story I added too...here.

I was an unmotivated, drug and alcohol-addled good-for-nothing.

NOW: I'm an unmotivated, drug and alcohol-addled good-for-nothing.

Interesting Fact: My parents were missionaries, and I was baptized in the Amazon river when I was 12. My dad got his nipple practically bit off by a piranha a couple days later. It hung on by a thread.

Also on the same trip we were staying in this...hotel, I guess you'd call it (it looked like an Ewok village) in the jungle. Built entirely on stilts. Anyway, I wanted to see a pink river dolphin.

No one had seen one the entire trip. I woke up at 5 am, went out to the dock on the river and waited with a pal of mine. We must have been there only a couple minutes when lo and behold, a dolphin emerged from the water for just an instant.

Quite a moment.

I've never had a steady girlfriend, EVER, and I don't want one. No kids, and I don't want them. Don't have a career, and I don't want one. Don't want to go back to school. Really don't want anything but some kind of construction job or lawncare or landscaping. Something physical. Something outside.

I'm not a regular member of society, and I'm really glad. Regular people are SOOOOOOOOOO boring. The drug culture is where you meet the interesting folks.

The white picket fence just isn't for me. You guys can have it.

And there's no way I'm letting some dumb slut steal my manhood by getting married.

You guys are crazy. I don't know how you put up with them.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

THEN: In second grade I decided I wanted to be a professional writer. In high school I wrote notebooks full of stories that I promptly destroyed once finished, never sharing them with a single person. It was pure chance that I met Drag on another site, and he brought me here. At first I just stalked the forums, but before long I found everyone to be entirely too engaging. Eventually I not only allowed people to actually READ my stories, I also began submitting them into the contests here. As a dayslave I worked at a library making the small bucks...

NOW: I still work at a library, and I still make the small bucks. I also love my job. I'm married now, to one particularly interesting forum regular. I still write stories, but I've discovered I'm much better at completing short stories as opposed to infinite stories. I still share my stories, and I've been encouraged by a few folks to try to get published, perhaps 2012 will be the year I take on the publishing world.

+1 FACT: I love iTunes U, especially the Yale courses.

[Usoki]

Then: I found the site back in April of my senior year of high school, after a brief internet search. After 2+ years on a CYOA site meant for porn, it finally occured to me that there were probably other sites out there. I was hesitant at first, but after roaming around the site and the forums, I decided to place a bookmark. I liked the place. So, of course, IS shut down the very next day. (It came back, of course.)

Now: It doesn't feel like I've been here for almost 6 years... it's kinda creepy, in a way. Or depressing, when I think about how few stories I have, and how old most of the complete ones are. I'm not sure which. I had really hoped I'd be a better writer by this point in life. Oh well. I have a NaNoWriMo under my belt, so that helps ease my conscience.

+1: I have a job now. An actual job, that uses my degree and everything. I'm working for an insurance company in the KC Metro area. I start at the end of the month. It's nifty. Much celebration.

[ChubbyTeletubby]

Okay, so I just got an e-mail from Old Man Higgins who lives up on the Hill. He's a mean, nasty Old Man and he threatened to go public with our sex scandal if I didn't post this for him (he thinks his computer is a toaster oven) :

Then: Back in my day we didn't need interwebs to do our writing. All we needed was a jar of squid ink, a writing utensil which in those days we called a McFlabberdaisy, and some dried sheep or Jew skin! And we wrote out all our words grammatically!!!! Anyone who wrote 'LOL' was hung for treason by the Holy Roman Emperor!!!!!!

Now: I'm confused and I want my prune juice!!! I can still get an erection, but only if I've had my prune juice!!!

Fact: ChubbyTeletubby is a damn fool - the premise of the thread was to have ONE fact, you damn fool! What is your damn problem, you damn idiot!? What are you, a damn fool? You'd be put on the gallows for mental incompetence in my day! Or at the very least sterilized and placed in a sanitarium!!!!!!!!!!!! No wife? What are you, a damn gay? No kids? GOOD! God help us if you did reproduce!!!!!!!!!! No career? Sounds like a case of arrested development, you spineless coward!! You want something physical?? You should be sent to the coal fields of Kentucky with the rest of the damn Scots!! Or at the very least worked to death building the railroads with the rest of the Chinamen!!! You are a Chinaman, aren't you? What are you? A Chinaman or a Scot? You're a damn fool, either way! There's your FACT!



Ending note: Fuck you, Old Man Higgins. If Sev bans me again for having multiple accounts I'm blaming you.






Oh, and at least I'm not an Irishman!!!!!! You moved over here during the potato famine, you grumpy old pervert!!!!!! Potato famine!!! What kind of people die from a potato famine!??? Irishmen, that's who!!!!!

Sorry, Sev. Please don't ban me. This guy is really starting to get on my last nerve.

[severenz]

Then, married. Now, divorced!

Sorry guys, been busy with the separation.

[Vesnic]

Sorry to hear that, Sev. I hope you're doing all right.

[donteatpoop]

That sucks dude. Sorry to hear it.