Once Upon a Time... Part 2

[Continued from Part 1]

Motito was torn asunder by the boy's self-destructive path, and did many things that weren't so intelligent, chief among them ending things with Alicia, partially due to discovering he had a long-lost twin sister, Calairiel. Cala was a bright spot in the darkness of Motito's life, and the person who created her had become a bright spot in the darkness of the boy's life. The two got along famously for a while, and Motito and Cala grew close and developed a very important bond. During this period, the boy had returned to moderation to take up more of his time and forget his troubles, and was AGMing once more as Masamune in Medonia, for all the wrong reasons.

The boy eventually realized the error of his ways. In an attempt to break away from the horrid and painful things going on in his life, he broke away from his close friendship with Cala's creator, as well as his AGMing--unfairly doing so unannounced--for multiple reasons, though one of the most important was that he didn't really like himself at the time, and wished to rediscover himself.

Fights between the boy and Cala's creator ensued, mostly over minor things, and in the boy's stress to try and be rid of the darkness in his life he found both Motito and Cala and Cala's creator taking a backseat to his problems, but he was too proud to tell her such. So he cut off contact with her, and as a result, Motito and Cala grew a bit more distant. During that time Motito, who had risen to several prominent positions, was trying to make changes for the better, but every change he made drew nothing but criticism and hatred. Worried it would spawn more frustration in the boy--as it was already doing for Motito--he decided to have Motito remove himself from every position of import so he could focus on what truly mattered...his love for Alicia, who had almost died.

The boy and Motito simultaneously began to rediscover themselves, but as the boy finally began to get past all his darkness and frustration and finally accept himself and be happy with himself, Motito was growing more and more distant. The boy had focused so much on himself he'd lost touch with Motito, and the game had stopped being fun to play...this time he felt it was for good.

So, a year ago on this very month--the 25th, in fact, the anniversary of which is exactly three weeks from today--the boy decided it was time to put an end to it. He decided that he was going to kill Motito, as just stopping with him didn't seem fair to the character the boy had put so much time and heart into. He started a few threads to say goodbye to old friends, but an event during one of them brought yet more toxic hatred he simply wished to do without to the surface...so, without warning, he did exactly what he didn't want to. He simply stopped.

The Directorate decided to consider Motito vanished, with later explaination possible upon return, but presumed dead just in case the boy never came back.

Several months past, during which the boy, in his newfound happiness with himself, came to realize a few things. First was that he loved to write. Second was that he missed many of his friends on the newly-named Aelyria. Third was that the more he thought about it, after time away, the more Motito returned to the boy in force, the connection the two had shared bonding even deeper than before. This was all realized, however, by two events. One was Alicia's player talking to him on an Instant Messenger. It brought all kinds of old feelings back. He decided to just bring Motito back to be in a select few threads with people he enjoyed writing with. The fatal blow, however, was when two old friends of his, who he knew from his earliest of days as a moderator, has asked for him to help them.

The boy was resistant at first, but the two friends were insistent and he hated to leave his friends in a bind. Thus, at their request, he agreed to return to moderation not because he had remembered the fun of moderating, but because he felt a sense of loyalty to his friend. His application to be an AGM was snobby and imperious, partly because he still held some resentment towards the game as a whole, only having returned to have done Motito justice and to reunite with old friends. There was much distaste towards his return because of his previous vanishing, but with a push from the friends, GM Bunny and GD Blaize, he was accepted and he began to AGM again. However, his desire was to help Bunny, not to moderate, and so when Bunny became lax in posting, so did the boy, until both were removed as moderators once more, and the city the Bunny had been telling the boy his dreams for was closed.

Meanwhile the boy was eager to play with his friends again, but the thread that would bring him back was taking an exceptionally long time. As the thread began to stagnate the boy wondered if it was worth it all...but eventually, once the GM in charge of the thread vanished, he decided to, after some inspiration from another member of the family he'd founded, Larien, go ahead and come back anyway, even though that thread was never really finished.

And so Motito came back into Aelyria proper, and the boy could play with his friends once more...but shortly upon returning, he saw more bickering and drama that he wished to leave behind him, including the deterioration of some of the things Motito had worked hardest to achieve, and he found drama and hatred around many turns. Again the boy found himself questioning this game that had always had such a draw to him for no explicable reason, but once again his tie to Motito tugged at him, and as Motito, the character, his own imagination and love of writing spurred him on, he began to write yet again.

This time, something wonderful happened. The boy, pulled for the first time since he first joined not by a friend nor a feeling of loyalty or allegiance to anyone, had simply responded to his desire and love of writing. This helped the boy understand something fundamental in the very nature of his writing. If he did it for others he would always question it at some point, but if he wrote for the pure joy of writing...of seeing his imagination and his thoughts and his fantasy become material, then no matter what may try and tear at him and what may try and slow him, that faith in his own enjoyment of writing would sustain him through any hardship, and would never flag or fail even when his other sources of inspiration might.

And so the boy, older, wiser, more accepting and confident in himself, having experienced the bumps and bruises of life and his writing having evolved by leaps and bounds from when he first started, realized that no matter how much old he might feel on the outside, on the inside, where his love and joy of writing rest, he would always be that little boy who had been so captivated by that magical world called AIIeria.

Thank you. Thank you to all who make this magical world so wonderful to be in. Thank you to every who has seen me through these times, the good and the bad, and the ugly. Thank you to those who have been my friends, to those who have been my enemies, and to those who have taken the various positions in between. Thank you to those of you who have had a hand in making this game, both past and present, and to those of you who put your all into your writing.

You are the ones that make this game great.

Here's to you.