Post by ch00beh on Apr 10, 2016 3:40:04 GMT -5
Hello everyone! After all the hype, the last promised piece of our anniversary week is finally here: the staff picks for best RPs throughout our ten years as a group. Sorry for the month long wait, but it was really hard sifting through years of quality content and narrowing them down to just one pick for each year. So without further ado, I present
A Decade of Roleplays
Lee:
DL: Let's get this out of the way as quickly as possible and with as little fanfare as possible. 2006 was a horrid year for RP and it's really hurting my soul to pick a favorite. If you held a gun to my head I would have to give it to one of the three longest threads of the year but I just can't. We were all green as summer grass no matter what we like to tell ourselves at the end of the day. I'll give the crown to Return of the Dragon King for not being a fight thread and having the highest character count.
Lee: 2007 was when the Exodus started to really warm up. There's good cases for Summoner Style which spawned like half a dozen RPs, Luxury Airship Ride, which introduced the atmosphere for what largely became the modern era, and even Funeral Pyre for a Fuzzball, which despite incredibly uneven writing debuted a buttload of new RPers. I've got to give it to Chords in an Ethereal Harp, though. The repercussions of that RP just keep on coming, and it served as a debut for Terrian and Blaise, two of RP's most dynamic and compelling personas (and also one of our most compelling ships). 2007 wasn't a great year, but it showed we had a lot of untapped potential.
DL: I don't have much to say about 2007. I was out of the RP game for the most part and I can't honestly say that I read a lot from that year before now. Lee pretty much took the words out of my mouth. Terrian and Blaise were born in this thread and as such get some heavy points for it.
Lee: 2008 is when RP "grew the beard", so to speak. Up until that year, we'd been a bunch of highschool kids dicking around, but I think 2008 was the turning point where we realized "Hey, we can use this writing to make ACTUAL ART" and started stepping our game way up. End Game was poignant as hell, Whisper in my Ear featured some intense political jockeying, and Triannual's moral ambiguity and deep exploration of interpersonal relationships (and grudges) has set the tone for almost all RPs that came after it.
Still, I've got to give the prize to our dark horse candidate: Fallfish. While ORP was thundering along, Fallfish quietly blossomed in ORP. It might not have had the flair or drama or epic scope of Triannual, but it was an incredibly intimate plot that made you feel for every member of its cast by the time it drew to a close. Even in this day and age, it's hard to find a Role Play that is so consistently well written and enjoyable.
DL: 2008 saw the Exodus begin its stride towards quality in the RP world and did we ever have some doozies. End Game hit hard for many folks, Fallfish was born, and Whispers was up there. Still, my pick has to be Triannual. It basically had everything that I wanted in an RP at the time. The fights where solid, the social interactions were compelling, and the Order really shone in that thread. Triannual is a gem and I support it greatly.
Lee: 2009 was the year that we opened our scope, and, galvanized by our work in the prior year, decided to tackle some ridiculously ambitious plots. Crystal Part 2, Luxury Train Ride, and the Ulima Tournament each pitched over half a dozen RPers into free ranging plots that rambled all over the place (I'm fairly sure LTR has had over a dozen authors, making the behemoth a record for the site). In this era of ambition, though, I've got to give props to Emet, which has been steadily creeping along for years. It took four of our sharpest writers, gave them an atmosphere to work towards, and has grown darker and more intense with every post that goes up. These days, the tension in the thread is almost palpable... and we haven't even gotten to the most intense parts of the plot yet. (Mind you, those of you who think I'm patting my own back by picking my own RPs for these years... I think I was more of a bystander to greatness. Fallfish was basically stealth hosted by BloodWolf, and Emet's greatest bits largely come from Pohatu's excellently brooding writing)(Of course, it's worth noting that it has SV and I, which provides a +150 Modifier to Writing Quality with a -348 Speed Modifier. If you ever put me, SV, and Lonewolf in the same RP, time would move backwards.
DL: The year of our Lord 2009 is going to be where I might loose a few people. My pick for 2009 is The Crystal Part 2: Strained Alliance. Though the thread is very good as it is, that's not why I've chosen it. The reason that I picked Crystal is the story behind it and what it could have lead to if it ever finished. Bulbs and myself poured a lot of time and energy into the creation of this thread, and while I'm not sure that I have his consent to talk about this I shall do it anyway. Crystals was meant to be a three part series of RPs that was meant to bring Slys storyline to an end and bring RIck to the forefront of Bulbsies cast. From there a thread called When it Rains would have been penned by Bulbs, Lee, and myself that would have shattered most groups in the RP and leveled Cherrygrove. Though these things will never happen now I still look back on the plot points and think about what could have been.
Lee: 2010. TWO THOUSAND TEN. This was the red-letter date for ORP, and I'd argue a year whose ambition and activity have yet to be surpassed (though the tail end of 2015 made a valiant effort). There's the elephant in the room, Ishkabibble, the solidly intense Gasoline, and Light and Darkness Collide is essentially the capstone on the eleven years of roleplaying that had come before. These are all incredible plots with professional grade writing going down, but they're all surpassed by another homey little plot.
The Case of the Burgled Boullogne is one of the best written mysteries I've ever read, period, fully exploiting the medium of both RP and the Exodus as a whole to create an immersive, interactive experience. It goes to show you don't need life or death stakes to make an amazing RP, or even a large cast. All it takes is finding the right angle, and throwing yourself at it with all your heart.
DL:
Lee:
DL:
Lee:
DL:
Lee:
DL:
Lee: There is no 2014. There is no Miss Zarves.
DL:
Lee: think this one is (Dis)Orientation by a massive margin. Sure, there were some other plots that kicked into gear, but you gotta admit that Dis has everybody in the thread bringing their A-Game to a fairly fresh concept that reveals a whole new facet on the setting. Special props go out to Pohatu and Elliot doing some daring writing that really grabs the reader and gets them emotionally involved with some characters that could have been easily overlooked otherwise, and Merc and Shoni, who proved that they not only can run with the big boys, but also bring some serious emotional depth when the occasion calls for it.
DL:
Phew, what a load of crazy picks. It's crazy just how many choices we had oh god I can't lie anymore EVERYTHING WAS TERRIBLE. God. Here are the actual years in review presented by yours truly.
HOLY. SHIT. We all were fucking terrible in 2006. Hands down trash. Yeah, we were still learning the trade, and yeah, we had our flashes of brilliance, but that doesn't change the fact that at an objective whole, everything was terrible. For all of you, I have stared into the abyss, and it stared back at me. I am afraid my own writing abilities have regressed at least five years.
But after all my digging, I have managed to find that which is the worst from our most terrible year. There were many many choices (like seriously y'all were stupidly prolific back then) so I will actually be presenting three.
The third worst RP I have found was Miss, Did it Hurt Hurt When You Fell from Heaven?. Yeah. We seriously had an RP entitled that. Yes, you could already tell it was a Prime original (origional as Prime would say). And now you're asking yourself "how the hell did that only come up as THIRD?" Well, I made myself some guidelines to help narrow things down. Firstly, how bad was the concept? Well this one was god awful. Naked angel chick shows up in Prime's swank pad for reasons. Second, how bad was the execution? Nonstop unironic bro-ing out and objectifying women? Check. Third, was there missed potential? When you start with something terrible, there is no way to disappoint more, so this actually exceeded expectations with a creepy date... somehow. Fourth, are there any fucking hilarious moments? "This is Odinthrana, 'Odin's Bane.' This sword can dip below absolute zero, and freezes time itself as it does. Its so powerful that nothing can pass through it, star or black hole, angel or demon or god himself. If anything comes in contact with the blade, it is frozen for as long as the blade remains." And fifth, is the RP representative of the glaring flaws we all had that year? 2006 was the year of Prime and Aurora just going at it hard with topics that didn't do anything, so yes, this topic was representative.
And now SECOND worst RP. As a complete surprise, it's a topic which features neither Prime nor Aurora: A Second Breath, A Second Dawn.... Wow, a Lee topic with DP, Loogs, and moi in it, and I have elected to crown it with the silver? Yeah, because it was ungodly boring. Absolutely fuck all happens and probably proved to us why swinging swords around and shooting energy was way more fun than talking about stuff. Highlight reel moment where Ender decides to just play video games because NOTHING IS HAPPENING. This was I guess supposed to be some retrospective of untold destruction or something like who even cares, and here we see the massive whiffs at placing the appropriate gravitas in anything. I mean I'm pretty sure I still can't do gravitas, but I mean Ender is hanging out with chocolate milk. Whatever. One more shining point about it being indicative of everything wrong with 2006: it's unfinished before anything real happens. Unfinished business has been a hallmark of all creative types, and especially bad for us in 2006 so I wanted to call that out.
And the crown of gold for 2006: Alter of Frost. There we go. A Prime/Aurora topic takes the cake for WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND SIX. I don't even know what the concept was supposed to be about. I guess they were supposed to be in Shiva's ice cave? Why do they start in a dojo? Is the dojo actually a boxing ring with a sifu? Anyway, here we have an introduction of Eragon (no not that one, a worse one) who just comes right out and says he's immortal and that's his weakness. Then we got Aurora doing just Aurora things. The dojo fight has them waving their dicks around and is only stopped with some bluh bluh old man who can't see that these two speshul people are cooler than everyone else. We have external characters in the opening paragraph commenting about how cool Eragon is because what the hell is POV. Then I guess they decide to go on a question because they're best friends now? Then they easily dispatch some boss monsters or whatever. And then the topic dies out with the last post being something about Eragon stabbing Shiva in her naked boobs who even cares.
Whatever. I'm so done. I got the worst job for this series.
Oh my God. You guys. I didn't think I would have to do another three parter, but WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT kill me now. In 2007, we improved, but the improvement was in our word counts, and technically we did improve at conveying emotion. Not emotions, just emotion, and that emotion was angst.
In third place, we have one of the few FRP topics Breaking News. Imagery-wise, we actually did pretty well, so bravo to us I guess. Everything else, though............... Let's start with the concept: while it was a sound way of bringing a whole bunch of conflict to the board, it also shoved it headlong into sprawling space opera mode which no one but me and Prime wanted to do. Execution was particularly hilarious in that we have me and Prime trying to coach Kaz (see the pohato sez segments). More plotwise, I keep trying to make things just about spaceships shooting each other despite Bulb's best efforts in making the topic actually mean anything. This focus on fighting for the sake of fighting was one of the defining weaknesses of Early Exy, and I think this topic perfectly exemplifies throwing out any possibility of good plot in favor of a fight.
Second place goes to Shattered.... Ah, here we go, how about some MEANINGLESS ANGST to go with your MEANINGLESS ANGST. My favorite thing about this is that it's all kicked off by Zeb dropping his feather so he could pick up the idiot ball. Here we see some improvement in our sheer ability to produce words that go absolutely nowhere, just like this topic. I guess at least boring!Emily was introduced, so that's a positive. I award this a worse position than Breaking News because at least Breaking News wasn't boring. No, I'm not biased.
WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN goes to................Enema Enma! A topic so horrendous and drama riddled that Prime deleted all his posts from it and Bulbs locked the topic. Bonus Gil doing just Gil things and being an assturd. This might have also been one of the first times Prime destroyed Tokyo?? At least the other two shitty RPs of the year were kind of forwarding our craft a bit in vaguely the right direction; this topic just was just par for the course writing at the time that caterwauled into a flaming pile of garbage.
For the love of all that is good, everyone better fucking learn how to write in 2008.
>:{
See friends, here's the thing. While the others get to wax nostalgic about our greatest RPs, their search means they pop open an RP from the desired year, look at the words in the opening and go "wow this is trash" and are allowed to move on. Me, on the other hand, I have to open up the topic, see that it's trash, then keep going to see if it's worse than the thing I just previously read. Madness' sweet embrace beckons to me after all this. 2008 was where we still enjoyed beating the snot out of each other, but we were also in that awkward ugly duckling phase wherein we were trying too hard to be real writers, and at the same time life started to hit everyone in the face and we all got distracted or whatever so everything just fell flat.
My solace this year lies in the fact that there was a clear winner. I also found mild amusement that a good number of the useless fight topics were started by Lee, but they were at least par for the course. So, without further ado, the winner of WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT goes to Ghost and Rust. Let's put it this way: my character literally says "adios" and peaces out in the middle of the topic because everything was such bullshit. So because I get to only look at one topic, let's go the long way.
We start off with Lee not knowing how to fucking double space between lines of dialogue, and also unironically dropping an AS YOU KNOW moment on us. He then has Lacy tell a bunch of things about herself because wow it's totally not telling if I'm showing things off with my character talking!!!!!!!! At least the concept is kind of sound with sweet giant robots and one character mysteriously flipping out and killing a bunch of people I guess, but for an RP leaves very little in the way of stepping in. Past!me and present!me agree that "secret training mission really? how does anyone even get in on this without taking over an NPC?" Whatever, at least DL, the shining star of this topic, manages to give everyone a way in.
So anyway, we get to a Mexican stand off in Siberia and all these unfolding weapons that just keep escalating when suddenly we get to nukes. I guess these nukes were from the Obsidian Hearts according to Lee's post? It was all very ambiguous. What do the Obsidian Hearts even want to nuke them for? Why is it that our plucky protagonists decide to hide away in Aiden's black ops base? Can't the Obsidian Hearts just like track them? I hope the words are hidden somewhere deep in there but I couldn't take it and just skimmed.
Speaking of Prime, this wouldn't be a terrible RP without something just going wholly off the rails. This is what makes Ghosts and Rust stand head and shoulders above the rest as king of riff raff: it gets taken off the rails and thrown off a bridge into a lake of gasoline because Prime decided he wanted cool tech or something? Prime flies in while the characters are about to start talking about shit and make demands that I still don't fully understand the ramifications of and maybe talk about Lacy's batshit qualities. And what does Prime do? He shoots a boulder hoping to create a distraction so he can look for parts, then gets all mad saying he didn't want to fight after everyone goes high alert. Like seriously, I kinda get it if it's said in character, but it was done in OOC.
He then decides to find a huge fucking space ship and functional alien mech that Hex can somehow pilot immediately in the middle of a fucking mountain because bluh bluh bluh the adults are being mean. Everyone else, you're not off the hook because y'all act like the guards in Metal Gear Solid and apparently go back to trying to talk immediately after Prime disappears into his own littletumor tangent.
Eventually everyone is just like "Lee go like deal with this or something" and for some reason Lee obliges with some weird fight sequence that I guess is just the end of Independence Day. I really don't understand the spazzmaticness of this topic and inability for anyone to do blocking/dialogue. But here's some bonus highlight reel:
"Hex looked sceptically"
"I'm fighting for my own freedom"
"Waiting with baited breath, Hex waited to see if they'd take the bait."
"Liking Hex. He's seeming like a pretty deep character"
I want to thank us all for finally passing high school english by this point. We can now string sentences together! Almost half the things we say are conveyed to the reader! Now if only we could string paragraphs together to make things less fucking boring, that'd be grand.
I was so hopeful after 2008, but alas I have a silver and a gold to hand out for this year. Silver place goes to Step into Chaos in which Jack the Ripper is loose or something? And he's actually a demon? What? So anyway, it starts off in a "classic rave joint" because I guess Prime and El had been to their first raves at this point in their life. This "Angel" guy really likes to harp on about how human he is. Felix reminds me of Jackie Chan in Drunken Master. Together they fight crime, starting off by getting down at the club, then going out to re-enact Tokyo Drift. My favorite part is when Felix uses his cellular telephone in the seventh circle of Hell. Shout out to Angel taking a demon spike literally in the ass and then using his virility or something to absorb the spike into his rectum like a fucking suppository to gain superpowers. Thank God this topic didn't make it to page two.
Now for WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND NINE, we get God of the Sea because it goes on FOR FUCKING EVER and it's the most masturbatory writing I've seen in the year. And despite being high level shonendick sword waving, it somehow stays super boring through the fight, then becomes stupidly spazzmatic for the rest of the topic. Probably because there's a bunch of butthurt and passive aggression about superplaying or whatever. We're on the cusp of our breakout year, and the night is always darkest before the dawn. I feel like I can't do this topic more justice than its highlight reel.
"Yoshimitsu flicked his wrist, causing the blade to become rigid."
"Hey Prime, wanna lend a hand here?"
"The blade in his hand suddenly stretch"
"the serpent reeled backwards and surged forward, undulating at terrible speeds"
"Al flicked his wrist, a whip made of water fifteen feet long uncoiled and licked the oceans surface."
"He was leaving the warrior unprotected"
"The serpent lurched backwards, violently reacting, shaking its head back and forth."
"a column of white, smashed through the mass of fluid and spattered"
"The last remaining slimy monstrosity"
"the form elongated"
"It pulled itself upwards, revealing that the team was only dealing with the tip"
"He flicked his wrist, sending the flaccid blade of his weapon flying an incoming tentacle."
"it whipped across his face"
"They glowed wetly as they sucked the energy down, an immense amount of power in a simple, golden liquid."
"The serpent shook its head"
"Zebedee exploded"
"As the seconds went by, the weapon was gaining strength."
"the slimey goo, he had plenty of constitution to go around."
"Primus rubbed"
"inserting it into his mouth"
"He was naked, but had no sex, well muscled because that was how he saw himself."
"Zebedee began to say, and stopped to spit on his fingers."
"Zebedee said, each word growing rougher as the vigor of his efforts increased"
"OOC- Well, fuck me sideways"
"Primus bit his lip"
"Well when your a God for almost eternity, you want nothing more then to be laid"
"Try harder Al, I'd like to sweat a little!"
I'm spent. I'm going to get a towel.
This... this wasn't that bad. This is the breakout year. Ambition is through the roof with planned storylines, and many of us stepped up big time in writing. There were still good number of bad concept topics, but many ended up getting saved by two or three contributors going off the rails and make something out of nothing. But do not fear! I still found hot garbage to christen WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND TEN in MeltingTrash Trance.
Amidst the gorgeous, deep plot lines and the experimental storytelling is this boring-ass quest topic for some who-even-gives-a-shit artifact owned by a generic god (with a capital G). I'll give it to Prime for trying to hammer home how depowered his character is, but again, we're on a quest to power him up by leaps and bounds. And then when no one replies in four days, he throws a conniption fit. Good God why did I reply, we could've been rid of him there.
Rie shows up and is boring as usual because she has no beef in the fight besides reward and I'm sure I was equally bored while writing. Ninety shows up and why the fuck is he even monologuing to himself? Ninety you were the chosen one whyyyyyyy. PS. grats to me for not immediately spotting Mr. Monologue and maintaining "dramatic irony" or whatever it's called; no grats to me for having Rie touch Prime's butt.
So Chris pops up and where the hell did Prime get a not-lightsaber from? I don't even remember reading that the first time through; I guess I'd just accepted the bullshit by then. Rie is also apparently fed up with everyone at this point. I am pretty sure I was projecting by this point. I also like how Ninety decides to peace by passing out in the middle of the fight. That's probably the highlight.
All in all, Rie sums up this topic nicely. "This was getting tedious. Rie took a grenade out and tossed it at one of the machines."
I might be getting too real here, but I'm handing WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN to Ishkabibble Scene Eight. Don't get me wrong, the writing is great, but I think it is allowed to take heavy responsibility for Ish grinding to a halt. Not only that, but honestly the situation feels kinda contrived in the first place. Nat's really reaching deep into the basic barrel to go aggro on Helen. Like this whole thing could've been avoided by rubbing two brain cells together.
I don't really have any vitriol left so I'm pretty much also out of gifs.
Like nothing started in 2012, though a handful of RPs dragged their sorry selves through the year. One such, now crowned WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND TWELVE is Luxury Train Ride. The topic had no point besides trying to be as neato as Luxury Airship Ride and due to complete lack of planning on my part became a jumbled mess of criss crossing yet unconnected plot lines that could've been cool, but ended up looking like a bowl of spaghetti.
Slim pickings for 2015, but I guess I'm handing WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND FIFTEEN to Ishkabibble Scene Twelve only because it's really self indulgent. It's pretty fun though shrug.emojii
I had fun once. It was terrible.
A Decade of Roleplays
2006
Lee:
DL: Let's get this out of the way as quickly as possible and with as little fanfare as possible. 2006 was a horrid year for RP and it's really hurting my soul to pick a favorite. If you held a gun to my head I would have to give it to one of the three longest threads of the year but I just can't. We were all green as summer grass no matter what we like to tell ourselves at the end of the day. I'll give the crown to Return of the Dragon King for not being a fight thread and having the highest character count.
2007
Lee: 2007 was when the Exodus started to really warm up. There's good cases for Summoner Style which spawned like half a dozen RPs, Luxury Airship Ride, which introduced the atmosphere for what largely became the modern era, and even Funeral Pyre for a Fuzzball, which despite incredibly uneven writing debuted a buttload of new RPers. I've got to give it to Chords in an Ethereal Harp, though. The repercussions of that RP just keep on coming, and it served as a debut for Terrian and Blaise, two of RP's most dynamic and compelling personas (and also one of our most compelling ships). 2007 wasn't a great year, but it showed we had a lot of untapped potential.
DL: I don't have much to say about 2007. I was out of the RP game for the most part and I can't honestly say that I read a lot from that year before now. Lee pretty much took the words out of my mouth. Terrian and Blaise were born in this thread and as such get some heavy points for it.
2008
Lee: 2008 is when RP "grew the beard", so to speak. Up until that year, we'd been a bunch of highschool kids dicking around, but I think 2008 was the turning point where we realized "Hey, we can use this writing to make ACTUAL ART" and started stepping our game way up. End Game was poignant as hell, Whisper in my Ear featured some intense political jockeying, and Triannual's moral ambiguity and deep exploration of interpersonal relationships (and grudges) has set the tone for almost all RPs that came after it.
Still, I've got to give the prize to our dark horse candidate: Fallfish. While ORP was thundering along, Fallfish quietly blossomed in ORP. It might not have had the flair or drama or epic scope of Triannual, but it was an incredibly intimate plot that made you feel for every member of its cast by the time it drew to a close. Even in this day and age, it's hard to find a Role Play that is so consistently well written and enjoyable.
DL: 2008 saw the Exodus begin its stride towards quality in the RP world and did we ever have some doozies. End Game hit hard for many folks, Fallfish was born, and Whispers was up there. Still, my pick has to be Triannual. It basically had everything that I wanted in an RP at the time. The fights where solid, the social interactions were compelling, and the Order really shone in that thread. Triannual is a gem and I support it greatly.
2009
Lee: 2009 was the year that we opened our scope, and, galvanized by our work in the prior year, decided to tackle some ridiculously ambitious plots. Crystal Part 2, Luxury Train Ride, and the Ulima Tournament each pitched over half a dozen RPers into free ranging plots that rambled all over the place (I'm fairly sure LTR has had over a dozen authors, making the behemoth a record for the site). In this era of ambition, though, I've got to give props to Emet, which has been steadily creeping along for years. It took four of our sharpest writers, gave them an atmosphere to work towards, and has grown darker and more intense with every post that goes up. These days, the tension in the thread is almost palpable... and we haven't even gotten to the most intense parts of the plot yet. (Mind you, those of you who think I'm patting my own back by picking my own RPs for these years... I think I was more of a bystander to greatness. Fallfish was basically stealth hosted by BloodWolf, and Emet's greatest bits largely come from Pohatu's excellently brooding writing)(Of course, it's worth noting that it has SV and I, which provides a +150 Modifier to Writing Quality with a -348 Speed Modifier. If you ever put me, SV, and Lonewolf in the same RP, time would move backwards.
DL: The year of our Lord 2009 is going to be where I might loose a few people. My pick for 2009 is The Crystal Part 2: Strained Alliance. Though the thread is very good as it is, that's not why I've chosen it. The reason that I picked Crystal is the story behind it and what it could have lead to if it ever finished. Bulbs and myself poured a lot of time and energy into the creation of this thread, and while I'm not sure that I have his consent to talk about this I shall do it anyway. Crystals was meant to be a three part series of RPs that was meant to bring Slys storyline to an end and bring RIck to the forefront of Bulbsies cast. From there a thread called When it Rains would have been penned by Bulbs, Lee, and myself that would have shattered most groups in the RP and leveled Cherrygrove. Though these things will never happen now I still look back on the plot points and think about what could have been.
2010
Lee: 2010. TWO THOUSAND TEN. This was the red-letter date for ORP, and I'd argue a year whose ambition and activity have yet to be surpassed (though the tail end of 2015 made a valiant effort). There's the elephant in the room, Ishkabibble, the solidly intense Gasoline, and Light and Darkness Collide is essentially the capstone on the eleven years of roleplaying that had come before. These are all incredible plots with professional grade writing going down, but they're all surpassed by another homey little plot.
The Case of the Burgled Boullogne is one of the best written mysteries I've ever read, period, fully exploiting the medium of both RP and the Exodus as a whole to create an immersive, interactive experience. It goes to show you don't need life or death stakes to make an amazing RP, or even a large cast. All it takes is finding the right angle, and throwing yourself at it with all your heart.
DL:
2011
Lee:
DL:
2012
Lee:
DL:
2013
Lee:
DL:
2014
Lee: There is no 2014. There is no Miss Zarves.
DL:
2015
Lee: think this one is (Dis)Orientation by a massive margin. Sure, there were some other plots that kicked into gear, but you gotta admit that Dis has everybody in the thread bringing their A-Game to a fairly fresh concept that reveals a whole new facet on the setting. Special props go out to Pohatu and Elliot doing some daring writing that really grabs the reader and gets them emotionally involved with some characters that could have been easily overlooked otherwise, and Merc and Shoni, who proved that they not only can run with the big boys, but also bring some serious emotional depth when the occasion calls for it.
DL:
Phew, what a load of crazy picks. It's crazy just how many choices we had oh god I can't lie anymore EVERYTHING WAS TERRIBLE. God. Here are the actual years in review presented by yours truly.
2006
HOLY. SHIT. We all were fucking terrible in 2006. Hands down trash. Yeah, we were still learning the trade, and yeah, we had our flashes of brilliance, but that doesn't change the fact that at an objective whole, everything was terrible. For all of you, I have stared into the abyss, and it stared back at me. I am afraid my own writing abilities have regressed at least five years.
But after all my digging, I have managed to find that which is the worst from our most terrible year. There were many many choices (like seriously y'all were stupidly prolific back then) so I will actually be presenting three.
The third worst RP I have found was Miss, Did it Hurt Hurt When You Fell from Heaven?. Yeah. We seriously had an RP entitled that. Yes, you could already tell it was a Prime original (origional as Prime would say). And now you're asking yourself "how the hell did that only come up as THIRD?" Well, I made myself some guidelines to help narrow things down. Firstly, how bad was the concept? Well this one was god awful. Naked angel chick shows up in Prime's swank pad for reasons. Second, how bad was the execution? Nonstop unironic bro-ing out and objectifying women? Check. Third, was there missed potential? When you start with something terrible, there is no way to disappoint more, so this actually exceeded expectations with a creepy date... somehow. Fourth, are there any fucking hilarious moments? "This is Odinthrana, 'Odin's Bane.' This sword can dip below absolute zero, and freezes time itself as it does. Its so powerful that nothing can pass through it, star or black hole, angel or demon or god himself. If anything comes in contact with the blade, it is frozen for as long as the blade remains." And fifth, is the RP representative of the glaring flaws we all had that year? 2006 was the year of Prime and Aurora just going at it hard with topics that didn't do anything, so yes, this topic was representative.
And now SECOND worst RP. As a complete surprise, it's a topic which features neither Prime nor Aurora: A Second Breath, A Second Dawn.... Wow, a Lee topic with DP, Loogs, and moi in it, and I have elected to crown it with the silver? Yeah, because it was ungodly boring. Absolutely fuck all happens and probably proved to us why swinging swords around and shooting energy was way more fun than talking about stuff. Highlight reel moment where Ender decides to just play video games because NOTHING IS HAPPENING. This was I guess supposed to be some retrospective of untold destruction or something like who even cares, and here we see the massive whiffs at placing the appropriate gravitas in anything. I mean I'm pretty sure I still can't do gravitas, but I mean Ender is hanging out with chocolate milk. Whatever. One more shining point about it being indicative of everything wrong with 2006: it's unfinished before anything real happens. Unfinished business has been a hallmark of all creative types, and especially bad for us in 2006 so I wanted to call that out.
And the crown of gold for 2006: Alter of Frost. There we go. A Prime/Aurora topic takes the cake for WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND SIX. I don't even know what the concept was supposed to be about. I guess they were supposed to be in Shiva's ice cave? Why do they start in a dojo? Is the dojo actually a boxing ring with a sifu? Anyway, here we have an introduction of Eragon (no not that one, a worse one) who just comes right out and says he's immortal and that's his weakness. Then we got Aurora doing just Aurora things. The dojo fight has them waving their dicks around and is only stopped with some bluh bluh old man who can't see that these two speshul people are cooler than everyone else. We have external characters in the opening paragraph commenting about how cool Eragon is because what the hell is POV. Then I guess they decide to go on a question because they're best friends now? Then they easily dispatch some boss monsters or whatever. And then the topic dies out with the last post being something about Eragon stabbing Shiva in her naked boobs who even cares.
Whatever. I'm so done. I got the worst job for this series.
2007
Oh my God. You guys. I didn't think I would have to do another three parter, but WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT kill me now. In 2007, we improved, but the improvement was in our word counts, and technically we did improve at conveying emotion. Not emotions, just emotion, and that emotion was angst.
In third place, we have one of the few FRP topics Breaking News. Imagery-wise, we actually did pretty well, so bravo to us I guess. Everything else, though............... Let's start with the concept: while it was a sound way of bringing a whole bunch of conflict to the board, it also shoved it headlong into sprawling space opera mode which no one but me and Prime wanted to do. Execution was particularly hilarious in that we have me and Prime trying to coach Kaz (see the pohato sez segments). More plotwise, I keep trying to make things just about spaceships shooting each other despite Bulb's best efforts in making the topic actually mean anything. This focus on fighting for the sake of fighting was one of the defining weaknesses of Early Exy, and I think this topic perfectly exemplifies throwing out any possibility of good plot in favor of a fight.
Second place goes to Shattered.... Ah, here we go, how about some MEANINGLESS ANGST to go with your MEANINGLESS ANGST. My favorite thing about this is that it's all kicked off by Zeb dropping his feather so he could pick up the idiot ball. Here we see some improvement in our sheer ability to produce words that go absolutely nowhere, just like this topic. I guess at least boring!Emily was introduced, so that's a positive. I award this a worse position than Breaking News because at least Breaking News wasn't boring. No, I'm not biased.
WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN goes to................
For the love of all that is good, everyone better fucking learn how to write in 2008.
2008
>:{
See friends, here's the thing. While the others get to wax nostalgic about our greatest RPs, their search means they pop open an RP from the desired year, look at the words in the opening and go "wow this is trash" and are allowed to move on. Me, on the other hand, I have to open up the topic, see that it's trash, then keep going to see if it's worse than the thing I just previously read. Madness' sweet embrace beckons to me after all this. 2008 was where we still enjoyed beating the snot out of each other, but we were also in that awkward ugly duckling phase wherein we were trying too hard to be real writers, and at the same time life started to hit everyone in the face and we all got distracted or whatever so everything just fell flat.
My solace this year lies in the fact that there was a clear winner. I also found mild amusement that a good number of the useless fight topics were started by Lee, but they were at least par for the course. So, without further ado, the winner of WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT goes to Ghost and Rust. Let's put it this way: my character literally says "adios" and peaces out in the middle of the topic because everything was such bullshit. So because I get to only look at one topic, let's go the long way.
We start off with Lee not knowing how to fucking double space between lines of dialogue, and also unironically dropping an AS YOU KNOW moment on us. He then has Lacy tell a bunch of things about herself because wow it's totally not telling if I'm showing things off with my character talking!!!!!!!! At least the concept is kind of sound with sweet giant robots and one character mysteriously flipping out and killing a bunch of people I guess, but for an RP leaves very little in the way of stepping in. Past!me and present!me agree that "secret training mission really? how does anyone even get in on this without taking over an NPC?" Whatever, at least DL, the shining star of this topic, manages to give everyone a way in.
So anyway, we get to a Mexican stand off in Siberia and all these unfolding weapons that just keep escalating when suddenly we get to nukes. I guess these nukes were from the Obsidian Hearts according to Lee's post? It was all very ambiguous. What do the Obsidian Hearts even want to nuke them for? Why is it that our plucky protagonists decide to hide away in Aiden's black ops base? Can't the Obsidian Hearts just like track them? I hope the words are hidden somewhere deep in there but I couldn't take it and just skimmed.
Speaking of Prime, this wouldn't be a terrible RP without something just going wholly off the rails. This is what makes Ghosts and Rust stand head and shoulders above the rest as king of riff raff: it gets taken off the rails and thrown off a bridge into a lake of gasoline because Prime decided he wanted cool tech or something? Prime flies in while the characters are about to start talking about shit and make demands that I still don't fully understand the ramifications of and maybe talk about Lacy's batshit qualities. And what does Prime do? He shoots a boulder hoping to create a distraction so he can look for parts, then gets all mad saying he didn't want to fight after everyone goes high alert. Like seriously, I kinda get it if it's said in character, but it was done in OOC.
He then decides to find a huge fucking space ship and functional alien mech that Hex can somehow pilot immediately in the middle of a fucking mountain because bluh bluh bluh the adults are being mean. Everyone else, you're not off the hook because y'all act like the guards in Metal Gear Solid and apparently go back to trying to talk immediately after Prime disappears into his own little
Eventually everyone is just like "Lee go like deal with this or something" and for some reason Lee obliges with some weird fight sequence that I guess is just the end of Independence Day. I really don't understand the spazzmaticness of this topic and inability for anyone to do blocking/dialogue. But here's some bonus highlight reel:
"Hex looked sceptically"
"I'm fighting for my own freedom"
"Waiting with baited breath, Hex waited to see if they'd take the bait."
"Liking Hex. He's seeming like a pretty deep character"
2009
I want to thank us all for finally passing high school english by this point. We can now string sentences together! Almost half the things we say are conveyed to the reader! Now if only we could string paragraphs together to make things less fucking boring, that'd be grand.
I was so hopeful after 2008, but alas I have a silver and a gold to hand out for this year. Silver place goes to Step into Chaos in which Jack the Ripper is loose or something? And he's actually a demon? What? So anyway, it starts off in a "classic rave joint" because I guess Prime and El had been to their first raves at this point in their life. This "Angel" guy really likes to harp on about how human he is. Felix reminds me of Jackie Chan in Drunken Master. Together they fight crime, starting off by getting down at the club, then going out to re-enact Tokyo Drift. My favorite part is when Felix uses his cellular telephone in the seventh circle of Hell. Shout out to Angel taking a demon spike literally in the ass and then using his virility or something to absorb the spike into his rectum like a fucking suppository to gain superpowers. Thank God this topic didn't make it to page two.
Now for WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND NINE, we get God of the Sea because it goes on FOR FUCKING EVER and it's the most masturbatory writing I've seen in the year. And despite being high level shonen
"Yoshimitsu flicked his wrist, causing the blade to become rigid."
"Hey Prime, wanna lend a hand here?"
"The blade in his hand suddenly stretch"
"the serpent reeled backwards and surged forward, undulating at terrible speeds"
"Al flicked his wrist, a whip made of water fifteen feet long uncoiled and licked the oceans surface."
"He was leaving the warrior unprotected"
"The serpent lurched backwards, violently reacting, shaking its head back and forth."
"a column of white, smashed through the mass of fluid and spattered"
"The last remaining slimy monstrosity"
"the form elongated"
"It pulled itself upwards, revealing that the team was only dealing with the tip"
"He flicked his wrist, sending the flaccid blade of his weapon flying an incoming tentacle."
"it whipped across his face"
"They glowed wetly as they sucked the energy down, an immense amount of power in a simple, golden liquid."
"The serpent shook its head"
"Zebedee exploded"
"As the seconds went by, the weapon was gaining strength."
"the slimey goo, he had plenty of constitution to go around."
"Primus rubbed"
"inserting it into his mouth"
"He was naked, but had no sex, well muscled because that was how he saw himself."
"Zebedee began to say, and stopped to spit on his fingers."
"Zebedee said, each word growing rougher as the vigor of his efforts increased"
"OOC- Well, fuck me sideways"
"Primus bit his lip"
"Well when your a God for almost eternity, you want nothing more then to be laid"
"Try harder Al, I'd like to sweat a little!"
I'm spent. I'm going to get a towel.
2010
This... this wasn't that bad. This is the breakout year. Ambition is through the roof with planned storylines, and many of us stepped up big time in writing. There were still good number of bad concept topics, but many ended up getting saved by two or three contributors going off the rails and make something out of nothing. But do not fear! I still found hot garbage to christen WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND TEN in Melting
Amidst the gorgeous, deep plot lines and the experimental storytelling is this boring-ass quest topic for some who-even-gives-a-shit artifact owned by a generic god (with a capital G). I'll give it to Prime for trying to hammer home how depowered his character is, but again, we're on a quest to power him up by leaps and bounds. And then when no one replies in four days, he throws a conniption fit. Good God why did I reply, we could've been rid of him there.
Rie shows up and is boring as usual because she has no beef in the fight besides reward and I'm sure I was equally bored while writing. Ninety shows up and why the fuck is he even monologuing to himself? Ninety you were the chosen one whyyyyyyy. PS. grats to me for not immediately spotting Mr. Monologue and maintaining "dramatic irony" or whatever it's called; no grats to me for having Rie touch Prime's butt.
So Chris pops up and where the hell did Prime get a not-lightsaber from? I don't even remember reading that the first time through; I guess I'd just accepted the bullshit by then. Rie is also apparently fed up with everyone at this point. I am pretty sure I was projecting by this point. I also like how Ninety decides to peace by passing out in the middle of the fight. That's probably the highlight.
All in all, Rie sums up this topic nicely. "This was getting tedious. Rie took a grenade out and tossed it at one of the machines."
2011
I might be getting too real here, but I'm handing WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN to Ishkabibble Scene Eight. Don't get me wrong, the writing is great, but I think it is allowed to take heavy responsibility for Ish grinding to a halt. Not only that, but honestly the situation feels kinda contrived in the first place. Nat's really reaching deep into the basic barrel to go aggro on Helen. Like this whole thing could've been avoided by rubbing two brain cells together.
I don't really have any vitriol left so I'm pretty much also out of gifs.
2012
Like nothing started in 2012, though a handful of RPs dragged their sorry selves through the year. One such, now crowned WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND TWELVE is Luxury Train Ride. The topic had no point besides trying to be as neato as Luxury Airship Ride and due to complete lack of planning on my part became a jumbled mess of criss crossing yet unconnected plot lines that could've been cool, but ended up looking like a bowl of spaghetti.
2013
2014
2015
Slim pickings for 2015, but I guess I'm handing WURST RP OF TWO THOUSAND AND FIFTEEN to Ishkabibble Scene Twelve only because it's really self indulgent. It's pretty fun though shrug.emojii
2016
I had fun once. It was terrible.