An Apology to Quinn Root bye everypony

Wow, well. This is something I never thought I would do. This post is going to be long, maybe a little all over the place. But most importantly this is going to be honest about what I have experienced on site as a whole, from the goods, and the bads. Fear not, there are many many goods, and few bads. However, those few bad things just. We’re a lot. And unfortunately make the goods not worth it anymore. If you want to read my rambling and reminiscing feel free to, but this is your heads up of what this post is about.
A lot of it is just me wanting to share my experience, so if you just want to know why I’m leaving, my reasoning is directly under the big green line.
If you just want to know how you can stay in touch with me, that is under the second big green line
My final goodbye is under the third big green line.
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I don’t know fully where to begin with this.
So, Hello! A lot of you newer second years and first years likely don’t know me, and a lot of older years probably don’t know what account I’m on now lol.

Most people call me Sunny, but I also answer to Oliver, and basically any nickname. For a while many people called me Quinn Root. Even when I wasn’t on that account people called me that because she was my very first character on site.
I think a lot of people who are like me, and have made a few accounts know how dear a first character is. While Quinn wasn’t perfect, and how I wish I could’ve changed things, she was mine. And I do love her dearly. And did when I deactivated her.

Why deactivate her if I loved her so much? Well, at the time I would’ve told you she was boring. That I didn’t have motivation. I had new and better ideas for a character. Now that it’s been some time since then, I think the real answer is that Quinn didn’t feel real. When I go to look back on my writing, sure I cringe, but I’m also stuck asking myself “why is she doing this? What’s the purpose of this story here?”
Unfortunately I haven’t found a satisfactory answer. Because bluntly, there is simply not one. I have no answers as to why Quinn did what she did. She had no motivation, no true drive. Part of that is on me as a writer. I can fully admit that. She was a little basic.
So more threads, yeah that’ll make me like her. I thought it would at least. But I think this is what made her just some npc to me.
All those threads I had, and I had a lot, they weren’t really, I don’t know how to describe it. So for lack of better words, they were filler. Almost every single thread I had on Quinn was filler. And it got boring super fast. They’re is one thing that she had going. Friends? Not friends. Friends? As, well, it didn’t feel that way. I talked about her friends, and things developing into friendships. But it never really took off. Because of a lack of follow up threads to show the friendship that took place. This is mainly from a lack of communication outside of let’s chat. From both parties, I to am to blame for this and I’m not going to say otherwise.
And yeah, I think that’s how I can describe Quinn’s plots and IC friendships. I told, and wrote, but there was no show.
There wasn’t any compelling connections between her that made me want to write. There wasn’t really much heart in those threads reading back, while I enjoyed writing her. I enjoyed writing. I don’t think I was very fulfilled.

“Sunny why did you make a new account then?”

A very good question, it was the OOC community. I won’t touch on André and Alexander. (Other characters of mine) because they suffered the same fate as Quinn. No compelling friendships. My activity also dropped around that time, and it effected them to. I feel bad, because they were my characters. But truly I don’t think I can tell you much at all about my experience on site with those two. Because I don’t remember.

Alex and André were nothing burger.
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I loved the let’s chat. It genuinely was so fun, I don’t want to get into it much. But especially on Quinn it was a wonderful escape from what I described as the middle school that broke free from the depths of hell to trap innocents. (A little dramatic but ya gotta add flair). It just, was bad. And the let’s chat was fun. It was phenomenal. I again, cringe a little looking back at it. But to be cringe is to be free, and let’s face it we’ve all done ‘embarrassing things’ in middle school.

So the let’s chat became a second home. I don’t know how many people remember, but I very much remember it going so fast that I couldn’t keep up with it whatsoever. There was so much random chaos, but it also had conversations over multiple pages. I was nervous to say hello there for the first time. But when I did I was overwhelmed with positive messages. I got a ton of people offering to help me get adjusted to site.
And I am thankful for it, without that, without people replying to my med (at best) threads that I posted without much thought, teaching me how to mention people, and color my text, I simply would not have stayed. I would not have written anything. I maybe would’ve stuck with the games room for a month or two before ghosting the site and forgetting about it.
But that didn’t happen.

Even if most of those people are inactive now I am still so very grateful to them. Because I would not have stayed.

So to answer the question of why I kept coming back, it was the community that I held so very dear to me.
———
I even went back to Quinn because I missed her. She had potential, but after reactivating her. It was that same curse of no lasting relationships. And she was a year behind, maybe two. So anyone I did thread with had gone onto different things.

I started working, I had maybe realized that pattern even if I didn’t know it. I wanted to make a character that people would want to interact with more than once, I wanted to plan everything so I would stay with them. I wanted to have fun. I can’t remember exactly how long I spent with my rough drafts of my next character, it was a little easy for me, as I took scraped ideas from my first two deactivations.

I took some inspiration from things, to see how I could lay out development.
Yes, you read that right.
I wanted a character that would change drastically from first year to seventh year.
(With how my other characters where, they’re wasn’t much room for development)

I also wanted to bring something I at the time, thought was lacking.
So I made a pureblood, blond hair, boy.

Lmao, ok joking aside. I thought my characters before where to sweethearted, to kind, and happy go lucky.
This what what I thought the issue was, so I has spent some good time in a google doc, writing down ideas, I knew I wanted a bully who hated the world, an easy way to do that was make a pure blood that hates muggles. But it felt a little, basic. So I added he was the only one in his family that wasn’t Griffmdor. And Oliver was born, his story fully revolved around him leaving this mindset.

It was new, and exciting. People liked him. What makes Oliver so so, different from the other characters though isn’t his personality and plot. It was that I actually made connections IC with him.
Those have shaped how he was supposed to turn out. I had so many different people that I made long lasting plots with for Ollie. I has so many different threads with the same person! Can you believe it? I was so insanely happy with how Oliver was going. He felt real to me, even if I think I took a somewhat generic plot line. Those people that I’ve role played with are what made Oliver fun for me.
We didn’t just make our characters interact then say, boom now they’re best friends. Because well, Oliver denied most of it. But we managed to make plots and threads I love. To the point where I reread them and just, I smile. I smile because this is what I have been missing. It felt like a true friend group.
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Now we’re a little past the reminiscence. I said there were some bad things way up at the start of this, so now it’s gotta come. This is the real hard part for me to write, while I can gush and gush about how much HiO was. I fully can’t deny that the community I cherished isn’t here anymore, if it existed at all.

I feel a swell in my heart while I try to find the right way to put this. Because there’s just not a good way to describe how it feels unless you’ve felt it.
Let me though once again state that I loved this site, I really did. There are so many wonderful people writing on here for fun. I’m happy to have been apart of it, and experience it.

The first big time that I something was off, was when I joined the discord server for the first time. Just for a little bit of context, I only got discord to join the HiO one. Because I wanted more places to chat with other players.
And frankly aside from my initial welcome to the server there wasn’t much else.
I fully can’t remember talking much in the discord ever, the most I did, is show up to post a banner or code. Maybe share an open thread. Not much conversation.

This is because the discord didn’t feel welcoming to me, as this is my experience. I know many people who joined and were able to befriend people on that server. And congrats! Genuinely, I’m glad that people are able to connect and click with other people.
I simply wasn’t able to, I’m not butt hurt over this, and truly not feeling like I couldn’t talk there very well may be just a me thing. As again, this is my experience. I am only speaking for myself.
And for slight relevance I joined way before Oliver.

Once I got on Oliver it sorta really hit me, and it’s not really a bad thing. The HiO let’s chat, and the HiO discord are not at all the same thing. Well, duh. Different places. What I mean is the environment, I was nervous to make my first post/message in both places. Extremely so in fact. My welcome on let’s chat was warm, and inviting. And made me want to keep talking there to get to know those people. I fully wish I could say the same about discord. But I just can’t, maybe it moved to fast, maybe I was a little immature, I can’t put my finger on it. But I’m also not going to stress about it.

I have always wanted to give back to the community. Always. It was why I was so happy to have gotten staff.
You may be thinking “wait, staff??”
And yeahhh, I can’t blame you. I wasn’t a great staff member, hell, maybe not even a good one. For a brief time I was the headmaster of Ilvermorny. That was a roll a was honored to receive. I had so many ideas for it, so many things I wish I could’ve expanded upon.
I won’t mention much, but my onboarding that was supposed to be roughly an hour, lasted three. And my lunch ended up cold, I couldn’t unmute my mic for personal reasons, so I was using chat to ask questions. But chat was looked at briefly and infrequently. And when I did get an answer, I had already forgotten what it was about. It was all a lot, moving fast, and a little bit disorienting.
I think that basically sums it up.
I wish I could’ve done more, fully I do with my whole heart. If there is one thing you take away from this please let it be how much this site means to me.
I had to leave staff for mental health reasons, and wasn’t able to do much because of how I was struggling irl. It wasn’t fair to the Ilvermorny iNPC’s it wasn’t fair on me to try and do something I physically couldn’t do, it wasn’t fair to Alyss who would remind me/politely tell me to do my staff work. And answered my questions. So I apologize to all of you reading this, but also thank you for that chance.
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I’m trying to touch on everything I’ve been though on site, truly I am. I want to keep writing, on and on and on and on. Share every memory I have, mention everyone by name. But I can’t, this is already long, and believe it or not I haven’t gotten to my main point.

If you’ve read this far, I’m both impressed and sorry.


——————————————
So, after so many years, and four characters. I am leaving. I have been going back and forth on this, for months to be fully honest. Not just because of this AI debacle. For lack of better words, that was just it. It was the last thing I needed for my eyes to be opened to how HiO truly works. It’s so disappointing to me, because if you did read my above text the community was my favorite thing about site.

That community isn’t a thing.

Nope. I saw it when I was Quinn, I just either didn’t pick up on it, or didn’t care, or it was just not out there clearly like it is now. The HiO community is divided, always has been. Groups of friends had strong bonds, and that is what I mostly mean by lasting connections. It’s very hard to make IC connections, if you don’t have them OOC. And if you don’t have that, it’s just hard to have fun writing collaboratively.

As isn’t that what HiO is? Writing together to make the site feel alive with different characters?

Maybe it’s what it’s supposed to be, but with how large it is it’s just pain hard to do. No fault really, sometimes things just don’t work how you want it to.
HiO as a whole is a place we are all on, but that’s kinda the only thing connecting every one of us.
Unless you make a group of friends to plot, and thread, and talk with it’s hard to find enjoyment.

I only recently found that, it’s such a wonderful thing. There’s nothing better then when your plotting with someone and have an, “oh! O! And, and then we-!” Moment. Where everything just clicks and the ideas don’t stop.

The AI thread has shown me that HiO as a whole, not one member, not one group, this is not targeted. HiO just, damn, I’m really struggling to word this. It’s not what it used to be. I don’t stand for gen ai. I don’t think it belongs anywhere near creative spaces.
The sites usage of it isn’t the sole reason I’m leaving. Just the most recent one.

So, to roughly summarize, I don’t think the community is close nit. There are small close nut groups on HiO as a whole. And that is what I loved, that’s why I stayed, because I love how one site connected people over the world with these cool plots.
But it’s not welcoming. I have found my community, they agree with my thoughts on AI. And the sites allowance of it it has driven my community away. While no one seems to care about that, And I just won’t have fun without them, to anyone reading this, I hope you find a community to write with, I hope you enjoy it, I hope you have as many fun threads that I have had with Oliver. I just ask, I beg even, that you open your mind to new people, because it hurts when you try to find one and all of them are closed.


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With that said, I can’t bring myself to deactivate Oliver. It’s for somewhat selfish reasons. I want to be able to read my threads. All of them, on all accounts I’ve had. I will be closing HiO for a while. But I need to know that I can come look at my development as a writer, because this site holds it all.
You may owl me, I just can’t promise if or when I will get to it.
However. Feel free to dm me on discord for whatever reason at all, my dm’s are always open.
Average.monster_consumer


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This is the final thing I need to say. I’m sorry to Quinn Root, she, the younger version of me, they would be devastated to see things from my perspective now, I would tell her that I left after much consideration. She would be confused. Because how could I leave something I love? And that’s the hard thing, I still love HiO. I still love the people on it, even if we have different opinions. But I can’t stay. I’m sorry to Quinn Root that I’m leaving, I’m sorry to her that she couldn’t make a group like Oliver did. And I’m sorry that I just couldn’t develop her. I want her to know that she’s near to me, and I think of her often and of what could’ve been.

I miss you Quinn