User blog:Neoexlucky/Four Years...

Hi there, I don't think we've ever been properly introduced. My name is NeoExlucky, I'm a college student, actor, writer, roleplayer, and I've been here for 4 years today. Now to some people, this isn't really a lot, we have a few users who have been here for far longer than I have, but to me that's a pretty big deal. I'm not really sure what most people do for these sorts of things. I haven't really accomplished anything, I've just stuck around for a while, but I believe a bit of reflection is in order.

I joined on June 1st, 2013, the first day of my summer break. I had wanted to do some roleplaying, something I remember not having done in a while, and I found this site. I was lurking for a while, I didn't even have a wikia account yet, but I remember the thing that sort of pushed me over the edge and made me make an account, was Smash & Co.'s rolepley series. I don't really know how or why, but it never crossed my mind to have a series of roleplays all be connected to one another in some form of story. I loved the idea, and I wanted to do something similar. That day, I made Neo Tranquil, my first character and page on this site.

And let me say, Neo was fucking awful. He couldn't be a fox, because that wasn't edgy enough, so he was just some creature who looked like a fox, he could steal powers from other people by drinking their blood or something, and he was something called a chao-born, a race connected to chao, and of course Neo was the last one of his kind (Until he wasn't by deus ex machina). I could go on and on about what made Neo so terrible when he first came into creation, but I won't. He fell into a huge list of overused tropes and he was edgy for the sake of being cool. Since then, his entire history and series was rebooted, and I feel he's gotten better. One problem I remember having with Neo was constantly comparing him to Smash, I wanted him to be as cool as Smash the Echidna, and I didn't really know how to do it, or what I was doing, so it turned out really weird. I learned much later that Smash developed and became awesome over time. I looked at Smash so much, that I didn't even realize that I needed to develop Neo in his own way.

Speaking of which, that brings us to Tales of the Echo. I wanted to be apart of roleplays, but I wasn't really sure how, luckily I found the forum and was guided by an old user, Maryxgil, who directed me to one of her roleplays, everwinter. This was where I first started roleplaying, and I met some users, who I continued rping with for quite a while. Eventually, I created Tales of the Echo, a page meant to keep track of the roleplays Neo took part in, and chronicle his story. The problem was that there really wasn't any overarcing plot with the roleplays, and it was basically an assortment of random RP's. Don't get me wrong, those roleplays were valuble for my journey to where I am now, I've certainly improved since then and I met a lot of really great people like Darkest Shadow (Pianoteen back then) TheDarkMantis15, Nikki-Kaji, Cyclonestar, Rapid the Hedgehog, and others, but they didn't really help with Tales of the Echo.

So, around when I declared Season 2 to start, things were different. We have a whole cast of characters (At this point it was Zero, Leah, Echo, Fate, and Neo) and we had a group of roleplayers who kept up to date with the roleplays and participated in them. On top of that, I was the one who wrote the roleplays, so there was some overarcing story tying all the roleplays together. The problem came in when I had to establish this world and was trying to incorporate the rules established from the previous season, into this one. In the end, there were plot holes everywhere, some things made sense and others didn't, sometimes we had villains who showed up out of nowhere but had been threats the entire time, it was just a mixed bag of nothing really making sense.

I remember that when the third season was around, I added a villain who had a very interesting effect to the series, Warlock. Warlock was different from the previous villains because he was a lot more competent from other villains, and there was a lot more thought put into him. Previous characters were evil for the sake of being evil, but Warlock had a reason to be evil, and he added something different to the series than I originally expected. He was a good villain, and he had that right up until he was killed in the season finale, but not before causing the death (More seperation than death, but she wasn't coming back so she might as well be dead) of Leah, another character who people seemed fond of.

It was also around this time that I met two people who are still apart of the Tales of the Echo Team, MaverickHunterSigma and Zapor888. These two have been hugely influential to the series and have been around for a quite a while.

Eventually I couldn't ignore the plot holes anymore and I pulled the plug on Tales of the Echo during it's fourth season. So, the entire series went quiet for a while. Then things picked back up. In October I returned with a rebooted Tales of the Echo. This was a lot different from the previous version, this one had an actual plotline figured, a writer's bible to follow. I knew before starting the series how the series finale would play out, and I loved it. There wouldn't be edgy things for the sake of being edgy, there was a reason to everything, even the first few episodes were created with the intent to introduce the world to the roleplayers and what was going on in this world. This is where we met Saren the Dark Lynx, another roleplayer who has become a pretty big staple to the series alongside the return of Zapor and Mav. We also had the guest appearences of Darkest appearing every so often, and Timesmashperil who also has made a few appearences here and there as well.

The Season was going pretty much where I expected it to go, but I never counted on the decisions of the roleplayers. The biggest part of that was with Saren. To make a long story short, Season 2's first arc had a substory involving Saren constantly making grabs for power, and getting punished for it. However, in one scene in particular, Saren made a choice I did not expect him to make, and threw the entire timeline I created for a loop. An arc that was supposed to end in the next roleplay, suddenly couldn't and I didn't really know how to react. It was honestly one of the greatest things I've encountered so far. No longer did I even know where this plotline was going, and I had to build something different based on that decision. What resulted was something amazingly better that I would have thought of until Saren did it. It looks like Season 3 might also have bits of that in store, judging from the way season 2's ending is going and honestly, I could not be more excited to see what is going to happen in the world of Tales of the Echo.

So yeah, that's basically, the entire time I've been here. I've been focused on Tales of the Echo so much, that it's history is sort of my history as well. I'm hoping to change that, what with the creation of some new series, and with Secret Discord from Timesmash happening. These four years have been great, and I'd like to thank people for it:

Smash - Technically, the reason I'm here in the first place was because of your page

Maryxgil - Being the person who helped me during a really idiotic moment from me.

Cyclonestar, Nikki-Kaji, Rapid the Hedgehog - Have been inactive for a while, but gave me some great memories.

TheDarkMantis & Darkest Shadow - For being some of my earliest friends and being some of the coolest admins I know

TimeSmashPeril - For helping me branch out of my corner

Zapor888.MaverickHunterSigma,Saren the Dark Lynx - For sticking with me all this time, even through the rough patches

And if your reading this now, I'd like to thank you too. There's a lot of people on this site who I don't interact with a lot, but you guys are all on your own journey, like I am, and you guys all help keep this site alive and active.

Four years has been a really long time, but I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, so hopefully, I'll be able to leave another blog post like this celebrating my eight years here. (Or maybe I can pay more attention and write a blog post for my five years when that comes) Either way, it's been a pleasure being here with all of you.