HNZ Hall of Fame

[Sara Moon]

Welcome to the HNZ HALL OF FAME!
To celebrate HNZ's 12th birthday, we invite you all to indulge in some not-so-solemn reflection about your time here on the site. What are your favourite moments or memories? When did you laugh aloud, lose sleep, or spit out your tea because of this site?

Were you once the newbie who didn't know how to shop, or apparently, how to spell "dragonskin gloves?" Did you create a ridiculous excuse for why a pupil randomly missed two years of school? WHO WAS ANONYMOUS????? Did you too, join this group when you first started on HNZ, despite not having a notion what it was? Whatever the memory, however embarrassing; acknowledge it in our hall of fame, and win ETERNAL GLORY, or incessant teasing. The odds are fairly 50/50.

Let's be honest, we're all slightly obsessed with this site (or at least I hope it's not just me) and so, let us celebrate together all the wacky, wonderful things that make HNZ home.​

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Aah, a consequence of joining this site aged 11 or 12 (I forget) is that I have a lot of embarrassing material out there. I'm sure Phoebe and I used to RP from separate rooms of our house, but I haven't managed to find those RPs yet. So here are some of the things I did find...

One of my old characters (at the time a beauxbatons student) confessing her love for Luxen Silverback, a dark presence... The reason the post was edited was because initially I decided (without any kind of approval) that Luxen had killed her, and I ended the post: 'And then, she died.' Yeah.
Edit: HAHAHA I just noticed her member title is even 'Luxen's Admirer <3'

This. I don't think I need to say anything more
And this post. I would say 'Aw, see, I've always loved Nick ' but I'm fairly certain I was just waiting on a reply for an app

Then there was Rue Undersee. She was a Beauxbatons student, and the first character I ever really felt attached to. I was so afraid of her growing up that I would keep pushing her age back so that she could stay young for longer

Aand that time I thought it was so hilarious that I'd refreshed between the sorting hat's post and the student getting their group change that I took a screenshot of it... Now it just amuses me because I still have the screenshot so many years on. Seriously, why?

And finally, I found some of my old banners recently. I made these about 7 years ago. Maybe they'll inspire anybody hoping to improve their signature making skills

Spoiler

 

[Merlina Caliburn]

Goodness ... when I first joined HNZ I had never roleplayed before on a site at least. It had been a few chat boards but that was it so it was one liners all the way. I remember most of those early posts I made here, consisted of Andy having dialogue and little in the way of actually fleshing out the post. What was hilarious I think was that a few of us would chat back and forth OOC during our roleplay posts too and thought that was how it was done, regardless that it interrupted the flow of a roleplay

I didn't know how to do a lot of things when I first joined and I've been gone so long that I feel like a total newbie again. Figuring out how to send a pm to two people instead of one annoying the admins (...ok, admin I've been leaving Cyndi off the hook with my bout of newbieness ) about stupid things from applications to returning old characters.

I remember in the early days, myself and Brian joined about the same time and became friends swiftly but we would stay up for hours rping Maeve (Andy's mom) and Luxen (nasty evil guy) or Andy and Brian (character not person) and then we'd run in and out of spam cracking up laughing at the stuff we were putting our characters through. Seems all so silly now but it was pretty fun and great at the time.

I was one of those that took over the haunting at the Borely with Hunapo - he was pretty fun to play actually and was anonymous as hell ... I think

There was a time I was considering setting up a HNZ addiction society because I couldn't go a day without being on it. I might as well have camped out by my computer actually. There are so many things about this site that blew me away and had me in stitches laughing, that pinning down one is difficult really.

In Andy's (Andromeda Fiorelli) first year of Hogwarts ... because I couldn't leave the site alone for a few hours and I just wanted to write her, it didn't have to be anything major ... like I had her sneak out of her room one night and rp'd her creeping down each and every stairwell (corridor) with her broom just to get out to the pitch and fly. Of course King caught her at the pitch and she got detention with games keeper Willie best detention ever btw

ok, I could be here like an old fogie relaying times past and forgetting half of it

Glad to be back here

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Did you create a ridiculous excuse for why a pupil randomly missed two years of school?

I did exactly that I was living in a place without internet for a while, and Kyle missed most of third year and I think all of fourth and fifth, but fortunately I'd planned for him to have been bitten by a werewolf during third year anyway, so I made up something vague about his cousin homeschooling him while he was adjusting lmao

As for favourite memories, this thread is pretty much permanently burned into my memories... melodramatic firstie fistfights, those were the days... (It's also a lot funnier to reread now that I've updated Maria's av and sig )

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

I'll probably keep adding things throughout the month as they come to mind, but it's been awesome to see how the site has grown. We've gone from creating dolls as avatars and banners (Thanks Pat ) to having awesome graphics people work on avatars and signatures for themselves and the more graphically-inclined of us to use as playbys. We've gone from having to make a list of people with student's grades -here's what the grade cards looked like (Go Kingsley. ) to this awesome gradebook system that Nick created. I was talking with Nick the other day about what used to happen during exam time - the lesson archives would disappear! Yes, OG HNZers needed to take notes on classes and actually know the material for exams.
And we've gone from a quidditch system that worked extremely well when individuals limited themselves to only a few characters on the site to a system that works well for today's HNZ. And those are just a few huge changes that jump out at me. The site has really grown and adapted well against all odds - really, did any of you think a site dedicated to a series that ended a decade ago would last this long..and continue to gain new members?

HNZ started out as just a way for me to fill in some time between my TA classes (I had one that finished at 11am and another that started at 3)...and I only logged in about once a week or so for the first year I was on the site. It took me well over a year before I created a second character because I didn't think we were allowed to and a few months longer than that to create a male character...and that's when the bug hit and I really felt like I came into the fold of HNZ...and boy has it been a wild ride since then. As I approach a decade of being on the site (yep, a few of us are reaching that point), my first thought is always "Have I really stuck with something for this long?" And the answer is yes. We'll see how long this ride continues.

 

[Wren Louise]

Oh man, the grade card is in Comic Sans, just to top it off.​

 

[Sara Moon]

I would not have survived in a world where notes actually needed to be taken for classes.

---

Also to add to this; KR: I used to have all of Sara's posts in Comic Sans

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Oh man, the grade card is in Comic Sans, just to top it off.​

What's wrong with Comic Sans?

 

[James Adams]

Oh man, the grade card is in Comic Sans, just to top it off.​

What's wrong with Comic Sans?

I'm more concerned with the 101%.

 

[Nicolas King]

Oh man, the grade card is in Comic Sans, just to top it off.

What's wrong with Comic Sans?

I'm more concerned with the 101%.

Extra credit.

- the lesson archives would disappear! Yes, OG HNZers needed to take notes on classes and actually know the material for exams.

Even worse. There were no lesson archives at all. Lessons, like so many other topics, would just get deleted.
When we first introduced lesson archives, professors were concerned about cheating on exams (reading old lessons to get the info). Maybe we hide lesson archives once during exams. I think I probably suggested that was possible at the time, but I never really did it.