Memory Lane 💭

[Stefan Archer]

Another year, another birthday!!

It does seem a little surreal that this little corner of the internet is now 16 years old! This is because of you, our wonderful community, creating such amazing characters and storylines that keep us coming back for more, whether you joined us today or 12 years ago, all of the continued birthdays are because of you!

We usually ask people to share some of their favourite memories of HNZ and their time here on the site. But this time around we're going to be a little specific, share with us your memories around writing, around the changes in your writing, periods when you like a particular work, or trope in a character? We want to focus this memory lane in part to talk about our histories and memories as young writing noobs to now. Share some of the lessons learned from those experience for those members who are perhaps still in the beginning stages of their writing journey.

Obviously it goes without that HNZ is for all levels and we aren't look to preach about what sort of writing style is best but to talk about writing in general and share thoughts and memories of writing.

If you would like to share roleplays or plot bunnies created in 3am calls share them here. Of course though we are being more specific we do welcome people who just want to talk about their fondest memories writing or otherwise.

So please do come share!

 

[Van Voclain]

Ooohh, my most prominent HNZ writing-style memory was the period of time I went through trying to imitate someone else's beautiful style! I spent hours writing posts sometimes, stressing over whether or not it was as good as theirs and getting upset when I felt like I'd fallen short (all the time ). And then I went overboard trying to write all fancy using words I clearly didn't understand the meaning of.

It took me ages to realise that 'different' doesn't mean 'worse', and that it's our unique styles that make it so exciting to RP with different people. Creativity is always beautiful! And nobody else on the planet can write in your voice. Embrace it and love your writing :3

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

OH MAN the mention of 3 AM plot bunnies reminds me of one of my FAVOURITE plotting sessions ever, when Daph and I came up with the Westwick twins. I was looking at my own birthday on famousbirthdays, and in the horoscopes section they talked about famous celebrity relationships, including Kim Kardashian and her husband Kanye Westwick. We both found that hilarious and wanted to use the surname for something, but didn't really have any ideas, so we both threw PB ideas at each other until we came down to the final two. The other option we considered actually wound up becoming Nell, but she was nearly the Westwick twins. We went with Craig Roberts though, because this was the pic Daph sent me, and the westwicks were BORN:

Spoiler

13 :00 Rowan
he hides in the crawlspace in the walls and writes stories about a world where everybody is inside out
13 :00 Rowan
thats him emerging from the crawlspace with his murder fanfics and his pet tarantula
--
13 :35 Rowan
imagine the spider twins
13 :35 Bab
GOD
13 :35 Rowan
they made up a secret twin language only they speak
13 :35 Bab
I WAS JUST GONNA TYPE THAT
13 :35 Rowan
their parents dont know where they are half the time bc they have a dozen secret hiding places to chill out with their pet rancho and write weird stories
13 :35 Rowan
(please can they each have a pet rancho)
13 :35 Bab
yes
13 :36 Bab
but they share them
13 :36 Rowan
i love them
13 :36 Rowan
yes
13 :36 Bab
rowan
13 :36 Rowan
i love the spider twins
13 :36 Bab
are we going for spier boy
13 :36 Rowan
he was the only real option in the end

And then I kept Daph up until 3 am her time talking about spider boys (including Edmund's breakup with Diana, which she came up with like. 10 minutes after we had settled on spider boys cause she's a genius)

 

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

My first roleplay was like two sentences long and it was straight to the point (I was purchasing a wand). And then Paul who roleplayed Bruin Dumbledez replied as if I'd written a paragraph and I was able to begin getting the hang of role-playing.

It was always the kindness of strangers that kept me on the site.

I do remember keeping an HNZ notebook. Did anyone else?
I'd keep track of my roleplays, work on bios or replies during class, and did HNZ homework in there. Now I'm wondering if I still have it lying around somewhere

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

I do remember keeping an HNZ notebook. Did anyone else?

"did"....

Spoiler

Daph gave me this for my bday a few years ago because up until that point I had been keeping notes on loose scraps of paper I kept losing. Most of my detailed notes are digital, but I like the physical book for things like lists of plots for school dances ect., who I'm PMing for the HM poll each semester, which characters are getting new graphics for the next IC year (obviously), all that good stuff!

 

[Elliot Briar]

I remember when I first joined in 2018 I was so nervous about posting anything I had to close my laptop and pace around the room for 20 minutes after I hit send each time. I'd never really shared my writing online anywhere so it was terrifying. Now I can do several replies a day without even thinking about it, funny how fast that changes.

 

[Monty Pendleton]

I do remember keeping an HNZ notebook. Did anyone else?
I'd keep track of my roleplays, work on bios or replies during class, and did HNZ homework in there. Now I'm wondering if I still have it lying around somewhere

Omg yaaas, well kind of, I used to write my RPs in a notebook quite often before I typed them up. The day Monty became a professor I wrote all of his lessons outside in a notebook in the garden! It was a beautiful sunny day and I was so excited

Remind me never to throw away old notebooks, they have so many memories in them!

I remember when I first joined in 2018 I was so nervous about posting anything I had to close my laptop and pace around the room for 20 minutes after I hit send each time. I'd never really shared my writing online anywhere so it was terrifying. Now I can do several replies a day without even thinking about it, funny how fast that changes.

I totally know this fear and I'm happy that you pushed through it and shared your writing and characters anyway, they're fantastic

 

[Seraphina My]

Omg yaaas, well kind of, I used to write my RPs in a notebook quite often before I typed them up.

Before HNZ, I was on a HP messgeboard site called Veritaserum, and I had all my one-shots in this green notebook handwritten because we still had a desktop. And then I started a new gen fan fiction with chapters and filled it. It also helped that I could write at school while I was in Geometry

 

[Samantha Jacobs]

I remember when I first joined in 2018 I was so nervous about posting anything I had to close my laptop and pace around the room for 20 minutes after I hit send each time. I'd never really shared my writing online anywhere so it was terrifying. Now I can do several replies a day without even thinking about it, funny how fast that changes.

Omg I totally relate to this. In 2019 when i joined, I was completely lost with everything, and with the first role play i did, i remember just being really nervous to post or reply to it. It also took me months to start talking on the shouty because I was always nervous if anyone was gonna like me or not

I think throughout the time my writing has slowly improved. When I first started, I only did a couple of sentences, until i slowly got the hang of roleplaying, as well as looking at how different role players wrote, so i guessed that helped me out a bit.

Also, I actually had a notebook, it was The Office tv show notebook, and it had all the faceclaims i could use, as well as possible names for my characters and their speech colour. But i decided to move all the digitally hehehe

 

[Daisy Parker-Taylor]

Well, Riley had sparkley hair so that's a fun time

 

[Samuel Phillips]

Ahh man if we're talking about writing etc, I never had the full confidence to write what I wanted to write until like 2014 after being on the site for 3 years oops

I remember feeling awful about my writing, and it wasn't helped by the people I knew in high school being mean, so it took a while for me to actually come out of my shell and write the characters I wanted to because I was so self conscious

But to make it all better this first character I wrote from my own mind and with my own confidence and inspiration is @Archie Renner and I have never looked back, and Archie is the best and I love him, and I am in my own vibe of characters and writing and enjoying wrting because having fun is what matters!! no matter what happens, as long as you're having fun and making memories that is whats most important

 

[Stefan Archer]

My first roleplay was like two sentences long and it was straight to the point (I was purchasing a wand). And then Paul who roleplayed Bruin Dumbledez replied as if I'd written a paragraph and I was able to begin getting the hang of role-playing.

One of the first roleplays I ever did, was buying a cauldron, and being a dumbass, I got confused about the cauldron, and the list was listing a type of cauldron like type 2, i forget now, but I remember that I thought it meant you were supposed to get two cauldrons. So like the other person -no idea who it was now - was like trying to tell me through RPing that I didn't need two, but I was like admanent that I did. So I got two and then afterwards realised what they and the list meant and was like ah okay, now I've just got two cauldrons. But it was those initial interactions that helped me understand what RPing was, how I was supposed to write (like first RPs I did i'm sure were in some first person hybrid) and kinda showed that there was always someone willing to help even if i was being too stupid to realise.

 

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

That's such a nice notebook @Ainsley Lynch!

I can't say that I was ever super nervous about people reading my writing. HNZ has always been about stress relief for me, which is hilarious because then I became an admin . But I've always had high stress jobs - social work, court visits, and high caseloads galore - and HNZ has been my opportunity to let my hair down and have fun doing something as an adult that I enjoyed doing as a child - creating stories. Just now, I get to do it with other creative people. So I've never cared much about grammar and sometimes my phone makes spelling errors, and I'm about it because in the grand scheme of things...

For me, it's been really fun working with my first character, Kingsley. She started off being significantly younger than me and now she's a good deal older than me. It's been fun exploring all of these different life stages with her and really fun getting to be both a student- she was a student of Kalif from when he taught Herbology - and figuring out she actually liked teaching. I can't imagine how her life might have turned out had she become an Obliviator like she'd planned.

 

[Professor Adorah Zumwalt]

I feel a lot of the above comments about being nervous to share what you really wanted to write. I was bullied a lot in school (I feel you @Samuel Phillips ) and they found my YouTube channel and made fun of me. So I think I was on and off of here a lot never committing because I was afraid the same thing would happen with writing.

I look back at my writing with my very first characters (Veronica Kealders and Siobhan McGowan) and am amazed by how one note I thought they had to be. Veronica was a Slytherin so she was always agnsty and I made Siobhan super bubbly and happy all the time. Then I went through a phase of tragic backstories... although, I guess I'm still in that phase (orphan, orphan, dead and disppearing parents, terrible mother...). Adorah kind of started out one note and really quiet because, well, I was still really quite and nervous about my characters making waves. And then Juniper happened, and it's kind of snowballed.

I guess I'm glad that I feel comfortable on here now trying out new characters (like Seraphina literally being the worst and screwing up everyone's threads) or still doing OSW style posts when I just don't have the energy to type out long posts. Not sure if this technically answers Emzies question, but... yeah.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Yeah, I really relate to the feelings of anxiety as well. When I first joined HNZ I had all the unwarranted confidence of an Extremely Online 16 year old, but coming back as an adult in 2016 was a lot harder. I'm autistic so pre-established social groups are a bit of a nightmare for me, and I spent the first few years mostly only RPing with Daph because strangers were too scary. It was never insecurity about my writing as much as just like.... insecurity about my social skills and ability to make new friends, since I find tone really difficult online. It's gotten easier over time, but I still struggle a lot & still have a bad habit of just canning entire plot ideas because I'm still too scared to talk to some people on the site :V

Anna was a big help to me getting settled honestly, she was the first person on the site to reach out to me, and her being so friendly and starting conversations really helped me feel more welcome and like part of the community, so big love forever to Anna TBH it really influenced me to be more active about reaching out to newer site members in turn & welcoming them the same way.

 

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

Not sure if this technically answers Emzies question, but... yeah.

Emzies' initial question is more to offer a jump start to things. Feel free to go with this conversation where you'd like!

 

[Professor Landon Carter]

Reading all of these makes me so happy I joined HNZ when I was like 13 or 14 and just beginning to find my interest in writing and making stories. I had loved Harry Potter way before then and so it was cool for me to find a place where both of my interests collided with like minded people.

I used to keep notebooks and pieces of papers with HNZ stuff on it too, especially when developing my characters, but now I've moved everything digitally. I actually bought a new laptop about a year after I graduated and finished studying and it only has HNZ things on it, nothing else I like to keep myself busy and so HNZ allows me to do that when I'm feeling lonely. Life gets busy sometimes but I always have HNZ to go back to if things are feeling overwhelming too!

I'm still too scared to talk to some people on the site :V

Also, this is honestly me as well There are lots and lots of people on this site, and despite being on here a while, I still don't think I've spoken to everyone yet Sometimes I create plots in my head for things that I want to happen but I'm way too shy to ever talk to the people involved and so it just never happens.

HNZ makes me happy though, and that's why I haven't left

 

[Tilly Drage]

I credit HNZ with improving my writing drastically. I don't want to know how many words I've written on this site over the years. I'm lucky to have had HNZ as a non-judgmental place to practice writing and make friends along the way. Even now, it's helped knock the cobwebs out of my brain and allow me to have an imagination again.

I think the biggest thing I learned being a new, young, naive member was restraint- and I learned this slowly and painfully. You don't need to have the flashiest plot, or the most badass character, to write well and also have others enjoy the stories you write. Learning how to make characters complex was a needed lesson for me.

It's also been fun to put some of my old characters to rest, tie up their stories, and let the new ones come out to play.

I miss dreaming up plots with friends as a new member and putting them into action- some good, some bad! I also hope no one feels scared to reach out to me.

I definitely wrote down HNZ things in notebooks, especially in the earlier years when I didn't have internet access at home, but these are all lost to paper shredders at this point.

 

[November Albertson]

So I'm going to jump in this pot now

I have sooo many memories of HNZ, it's been 10 years but always off and on for me. The early days I remember stressing trying to figure out how to reply and the replies were only like 3 sentences long Go figure, these days I could pop out paragraphs. I've found the plotting things stressful mostly because I'm afraid that my interest will lack or the other person's interest will lack on it and I just haven't liked letting people down (even though everyone here is so understanding and I shouldn't worry about it). But November and her feud with Amber is one my top memory slots I'll have I think for a long time with plotting. It started completely unplotted, just happened as Anna and I were planning and thinking about Flavio and November timeline. Then Daphne and I all started going in deeper with the relationship Nov and Amber were having because of her crush on Flavio, and sending random messages about interactions in classes like: what if this happened and could November squeeze one of the pus filled things in Herbology onto Amber while she is distracted by Flavio's looks? It was a really fun time and made posting classes feel less like a chore and kind of opened my eyes up to classes as being really great places to develop characters.

I used to keep notebooks but I found I'd start them for the semester and then two weeks later forget and never use them. Now I have a google sheet that I open up, I've had various pages on there that get deleted and reworked as I figure out what helps me the most. I've also used Trello, especially with posting lessons and replying to classes but I've kind of fallen off using that for HNZ as it merged and became less helpful.

And in terms of people reading my writing, I was never super nervous about that part. Sometimes I wanted to be good at writing like I thought others were, but I came into my own style and even each character is different and each interaction I change things up to suit the character more than my own personal writing style. I think the only time I actually was nervous for awhile was when (and I won't out them for it but you know who you are ) someone told me that they used to look up to me and my writing and characters. That made me feel super nervous for a few weeks about if I was that good, even though it had been a few years after that person had originally thought it <3

 

[Stefan Archer]

I've also used Trello, especially with posting lessons and replying to classes but I've kind of fallen off using that for HNZ as it merged and became less helpful.

Using trello is not something I would've ever thought of for HNZ, that's really interesting, I've used it in work and found it somewhat good for keeping on track of projects.

I mostly use google docs now, it doesn't keep me on track or on time, but it's a really useful thing that I can log into anywhere, which when I was moving about more was really practical.

 

[Marisol Woods]

As funnnn as plotting with other people in advance is (and it is!!), one of my most significant writing memories on HNZ is back when I first joined and was in a group rp with several others (back when TONS of people used to join rps at once ). Isabella was angry at a character she didn't interact with ~too much but knew of because he was her best friend's boyfriend. It was my turn to reply to the thread so while I was at work I was thinking of my reply in my head. I was thinking of my character's motivation and behavior, she was a little snarky first year Slytherin but she seemed to be particularly annoyed with this boy and I kept thinking but why? And then it hit me - she has a crush on him. Her best friend's boyfriend.
So as soon as I got home, I wrote the reply out and had her realize her feelings for him which shifted the entire tone of the rp/her friendships/relationships etc. I didn't discuss it with the rpers beforehand, but I didn't expect anything to come out of it initially. I thought it was a completely natural thing for someone to have an unexpected crush without warning to the character/rper and see how they could reply to a "curveball" in a plot.
Plotting is so sO SO fun, but sometimes I wish there were more unexpected things in rps to see how your character would react in the moment.



Oh and speaking of keeping notebooks for HNZ, I used to have a planner specifically for the site, it was a Divination themed planner I'd track the full moon cycle of the IC year and with the speed of the HNZ calendar so I knew exactly when Marisol would transform. It helped make rps and especially lessons more fun to rp if I knew they fell during the full moon time.

 

[Monty Pendleton]

9. Marisol's need to be Dramatic™ and asking Professor Pendleton to Obliviate Teagan just because she hated her

Quoting this from Top 16's cus it seems fitting in here, I just wanted to say that I heckin loved every interaction with Monty and Marisol him trying to convince her that, yes, she really really did actually need to take her Wolfsbane potions was hilarious to write

Plotting is so sO SO fun, but sometimes I wish there were more unexpected things in rps to see how your character would react in the moment.

Yes!! I love those moments. You learn so much about your character when they have to respond to something completely unexpected. Open RPs used to frequently get crazy back in the day I definitely need to make and join more of them to relive the chaos