Back in 2002-2003, the internet was a younger place (and I was a younger person--12-13). Everyone had AOL, and I was no different. I had AOL 6.0 if I remember correctly, but eventually upgraded to 8.0. I couldn't really get into 9.0 or 10.0 like Amanda.

Amanda is my best friend whom I met in middle school. 7th grade. I was as much of a loner then as I am now, however, we had something in common. Or at least something that I could grasp straws too. She liked anime. The anime that comes on Adult Swim, of course, because we were both 13-year-olds and this is the age of dial-up, trying to download anime would take more time than working up the money to buy it. I remember very vividly how we started talking. I'd just moved to Watervliet, and one of the student council members named Kenny (very nice guy) introduced us. We wrote little notes back and forth to each other, and the first note Amanda wrote me went something like this:

"Hi! :D
Do you want to come over to my house today?"

It was, initially, a huge risk for me. As you may or may not know, the reason I was moved to Watervliet was because I moved in with my dad in 2002. I previously lived with my mom and her husband, both of which were abusive drunks who literally moved our school every year. I had built up a defense mechanism not to get too close. However, I decided to go out on a limb and go to her house.

Now, before she met me, she didn't have the internet. All she had was television. I kept raving to her how great computers are, and how she absolutely needs to get the internet so we can talk over IM. About a month later, she managed to convince her gramma to get a computer. Her gramma kept putting parental locks on it which I showed her how to circumvent, because I'm a little bastard.

But then were the days of KaZaA and dial up. Downloading a song took an hour and I remember waiting months to download a 4gb concert (A MUSEUM- I have since bought it). I also remember accidentally deleting an entire anime series that she was downloading, which must have taken at least a month. Yes, those were more innocent times.

Because of Amanda liking anime (I never really got into it), we frequented anime chatrooms together on AOL. Even before I met Amanda, I'd been rping. I learned about it because I was into HP in 2002 (shoot me, etc). There was a lot of HP RP on AOL in those days (there was even a private chat called hprp). So, I introduced her to rp as we know it today. She was hooked.

We eventually got very close with a few friends of ours. Particularly Leo (whom we called Inuyasha, because that was who he rped), Mercy, and Gin. Mercy and Gin were supposedly long distance lovers and one thing I can vividly remember about them is that they were boning on Amanda's birthday one year because they scheduled a flight to see each other. I wonder how they are today... I've talked to Inuyasha a few times since then, but nothing serious.

For the most part after that, I just hopped around chats where no one cared about who you were ooc. It felt more comfortable that way. It wasn't until late 2004 that I felt the need to come up with another e-persona. It was for a completely different reason this time. thundercake.com. Oh, thundercake.com. You're gone now (replaced by a dA account), but I remember you well.

I have been webdesigning since 2002- since I've been on the internet. In fact, Amanda showed me a crappy geocities website of hers that made me laugh, and I helped her learn a little bit how to design. The problem has always been finding someone who will host your site-- someone who will let you take their space to put up your own little space of the web. Now, way back when, there was pick-me.net. Today, it's still up, but it's not run by the same people. I like this system better, however, back then, there was a tagboard system. Someone tagged saying they were hosting or they needed a host, and people followed through to their site. This is how I found thundercake.com.

When I first encountered the site, it was using iframes and had a little vector cloud. I thought it was very creative, cute, and stuck out in the sea of huge-people-vexels-that-took-5-years-to-load (remember, this was still dial-up days). 

I decided that I would be hosted by this person if it killed me. However, their rules stated "I'd like it if we had something in common". I looked down her list of interests. Fuck! We barely had anything in common-- she was a political activist and I was a kid who just wanted an internet host. The host's name was Li, and she was a bisexual extreme liberal. 

Thus Bruce was born. How did I come up with my name? I remember very vividly that I turned around and asked Steve, "What's the gayest name you can think of, for a guy?" and he responded "Bruce". Then I needed an AIM name. Closest thing sitting to me was a rainbow pencil, so my AIM name became "arainbowpencil". Ended up going by Rainbow as a nickname, which I carried over to H!O. I still use the username 'agrayrainbow' over there. I IMed her and we talked for a bit. Li welcomed me, and I got to use her webspace:

"Rainbow's my best [online] friend. When I think about Rainbow (or Bruce) I want to use the word "quirky" but that's way too flamboyant for Bruce (which is saying something ;)). He's a fellow anime fan, and we spend long hours talking trash about your website behind your back. He's been a hostee for a LOOOONG time...in fact, I think he was my first, unless that was Megan. He now has his own domain (real-emotion.org) but he's still hosted at Thundercake, giving us a sort of supernatural bond (sort of like, I could delete his site if I wanted to, but I won't). Rainbow's a great person who gets crap from everyone. One day I'll show up in Michigan and kick the asses of his foes. And that's the end of my Rainbow paragraph. When he sees this he's going to squee. And use this face --> XDD"

I should also probably mention I half-assedly crossed this persona to DC++ (a filesharing/chat client). There was this guy from Czech Republic named Diamond that was so gullible that he believed I was a cis dude even though I voice chatted with him. I tried to make my voice sound a bit deeper but it was probably epic fail. Amanda and I still have an inside joke about how his mic lagged and made him sound like a robot.

Next was when I started going by Jason... Oh, Jason.

There were a few people that I regularly talked to in that chat: a girl named Mel, who was actually pretending to be a guy (I had to drag it out of her), a girl named.. god, I can't remember, let's just call her 'bitch' because it's appropriate (also pretended to be a guy).

Finally, there was a Canadian 19-year-old guy named Ethan. I don't know whether it was a chick with a better, more convincing act than most, but I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

Ethan's rp was on a different level than everyone else's. His was way better. All his rp wasn't about sex-- in fact, he felt almost uncomfortable rping yaoi. The reason why he said he lurked those chats were because he liked watching the interactions. Eventually, I got him to play with me one-on-one and it was like love at first type... or something. I was only fourteen, but if it wasn't love, it was the biggest crush ever. I came online every day to talk to him, vent to him, rp with him.

But he didn't really treat me right. Often he'd cry "Jaaaaay" when I got online, and we'd talk for a bit. He was generally very rude with me, but for some reason, I was into that type of guy. We were both very immature. I remember that part very clearly. We'd say something even remotely sexual, and he would respond with "heh heh" in his teal-blue 8pt Verdana. We had some good times together, despite the fact that my character was a little weird.

Of course, being me, I rped with other people as well, and there was another guy named Luke who ~wanted~ me. I actually enjoyed playing with Luke more than I enjoyed playing with Ethan. That was because Ethan was orthodox, Ethan was normal, and my character, Kaoko, just didn't fit with very well with his, Kish. However, Luke would always play the weirdest scenarios with me and I ate it up.

Point being, I liked Ethan for OOC chat, and I liked Luke for IC.

However, the bubble eventually had to burst. Eventually, I made the mistake of telling a mutual friend (bitch, of course) about the fact that I was, in fact, the certified owner of a vagina. Naturally, she ran and told Ethan, and Ethan pried teeth getting that out of me personally. By this point, we were very close. He even said something along the lines of "thank god, I'm not gay". However, shit hit the fan when I told him I'd just turned 15. For some reason, that made him back off. If it was ~twu wub~ or whatever, it wouldn't matter, right? We'd have to wait to meet nonetheless.

Despite all that, we continued talking. He signed on less often though, and I started to get a bit worried. One week, he didn't sign on at all without any notice, which was a huge blow. When he came back, he said something about a drug overdose? Thing is, Amanda was good friends with Ethan as well. Amanda worked the truth out of him-- and proceeded to send me the log. It was ugly like, "Amber whines about her brother too much. What about MY problems?" and "I'm getting kind of sick of her" and "A friend of mine hung himself and I come online and she's bitching about her brother." Of course, I never knew any of that about him? He insisted to never talk about himself. 

But... after I told him I read it, that was basically the end of whatever we had. He stopped signing on, I was heart-broken for awhile. I still had Luke to rp with, but he eventually stopped signing on as well. I think Ethan was the first time I had ever really loved, and it hurt for him to just leave like that. I even got an abandonment complex that a lot of people don't know about or don't understand. Even now, writing about it, is making me kind of sick.

I took a break in 2007, solely playing the XBox, where I met dale. In 2008, I met flag. The rest is history, I guess.

Ethan IMed me again in June 2008. I made the mistake of signing on my MSN one day, and he said that he was just bored (and drunk), IMing old friends. So basically, it was the drunk dialing of the IM world. At that time, I was having my little ill-informed fling with Paul. It was interesting that Ethan would IM me a few days after my birthday and cheer about me being 'legal now'. However, I was willing to throw Paul aside. After all, this was Ethan, the guy I hadn't talked to since 2005. I used a bit of discretion though because I knew it was too good to be true (especially if he was drunk). Naturally, he went AFK for awhile and some girl comes back saying "hey, this is _____, I'm gonna have to steal him away for a bit ;)" and I proceeded to block him. I didn't and still don't have time for that shit.

Luke was one that never found out about my vagina-possession, so when he contacted me in April 2009 and I told him I had a girlfriend now, he said "I thought you were gay?" And he said he had a girlfriend, so I asked him the exact same thing. Basically, he said he wanted to 'catch up' and we ended up catching up for five minutes and I haven't talked to him since.

Cheers.