On top of me being 6.5 years in wrestling rps, 2023 will see a 10 year anniversary for me as a wrestling fan, after my friend decided to finally watch some wrestling and try to hook me in after he became a fan of CM Punk (lol). Technically, I feel like I was a fan of women’s wrestling for way longer…this is what being a horny teen does to you. Thankfully I feel it transitioned healthily into both general wrestling fandom (especially as I got into Joshi Wrestling) and wrestling rps.
As per how I discovered wrestling boards? Believe it or not, it wasn’t AFW that I found first, but, through a wrestling webcomic Rival Angels - it was FAWN. Tl;dr, it’s LAW but instead of painted or model images, it uses irl celebrities for reference. Just as horny as this website lol. And yeah, it was definitely weird for a long while for my brain to understand that hey, there is a whole freaking community of perverts who find women fighting as sexy lol. About one year later I found AFW, and saw these really fun, well written matches with characters either original, on deviantart, or based on existing anime gals that were incredibly epic in scope. Some of my favourite writers are, sadly, off the roleplaying game now, but thankfully a good number of them from 2015-16 still remain active in roleplaying. And then, bored of wrestling games for a bit (bare in mind, the latest wrestling game at the time when I joined was 2K15, jesus christ), I decided to give this roleplaying thing a try with a few gijinka ocs that I had already made…and in some cases, accidentally won a contest for, lol.
I think I need to highlight that I am one of the most introverted people you would ever meet. Outside scares me, other people scare me, I am never the one to make the first contact with someone, and even if someone does, I fear them lmao. I would like to say I felt mega welcome in AFW at the time…but I wasn’t quite. I was still scared of interacting with other folks, would get nervous posting to the thread request on AFW, and then be MEGA nervous when I wouldn’t get replies, worried I did something wrong, etc. etc. Bare in mind that I was studying overseas at the time, and it wouldn’t be after a little bit that i would get friendships going on there as well.
That is not to say that some people didn’t make me feel welcome there. There was @anime_hentaifighter, who gave me my first match, there was @winner3 and @RJD who gave me more matches after that, and they are the people I still consider friends to this day, even if I sadly don’t interact with RJD as much as I want to. This also includes @SleeperAgent94, who I also sadly need to interact more with. There was also @Highfly, the eternal always awesome person of both AFW and LAW, who, even though gets all the love in the world, it always feels like he deserves a little bit more. There definitely were people I had issues is, but I do want to keep things relatively positive in this, so I don’t want to mention them.
A few months later, the big “titles” scandal of AFW happened, with winner3 being dissatisfied with how the title scene on the site looked. And of course, a few months later still, this would result in creation of LAW as a whole (after a few attempts to get another rp board going on pre existing blog engines). I feel like a new site was always going to be a good idea. This pretty much made the interaction field level, with old users of AFW, relative noobs of AFW, and completely new folks on LAW pretty much all being on the same level now. There were growing pains on the site, but it definitely helped with how active Winner, @Devilish53 and others were on growing the site, posting ads for it to reddit rp boards and messagine Deviantart rp users to come to the site. And this how we get wonderful folks like @LowDefinition and @ADarlingDucky to join the site. And on top of that, wonderful @Lunaspark would create what is now known as the wonderful LAW discord, which made it very easy to interact with other folks compared to very…very outdated messaging services that existed at that point. I cannot overstate how much I still love the discord, through all the good and the bad, and the very argumentative stuff within it. This is still my main place to be to discuss wrestling news, be they positive or negative. This is the thing that got me more into checking out indie and Japanese wrestling, and made it really fun to discuss the very…very cringy awful moments that happen in the industry. Even though some folks probably fell out of love for it, I still maintain that the discord server for LAW is a good place.
A few months later (to actually give a timeframe, I think we are in July), Winner requested me and RJD become mods for the site. This was a very interesting experience. I don’t have any idea for whether the “power went to my head”, but it gave me a better way to interact with folks. It made me feel less shy to talk to them, since well…I am on a bigger step on the website. It’s dickish to think about it like that, but ultimately, considering that now, after I was fired (shakes fist at winner3), I think this did ultimately the last thing I needed to crack open my shell and just…talk with people. Talk with folks like @riotgrrl and @DizzyKnight, who got me to more actively do softcore, yuri threads with Clara…and that’s basically her becoming my main gal.
There was wild stuff during fall of 2017/winter of 17-18…but I don’t want to mention that. I don’t remember a lot of specific things post January of 2018, they just come up when they are mentioned by someone else, but needless to say, in that time, the site has grown quite wonderfully. Personally I think Winner3 has done a fantastic job in how active and wonderful the site has become, with plenty of events by him or other for folks to do on an active basis…which I think is ultimately what enabled people to stay with the site month after month.
Last thing I want to discuss in this…let’s say timeline portion of my ramblings is, at least mine, removal from mod position. I wanted to do a joke but ultimately, best way to say it outloud is that I was just tired, but I felt off saying that outloud to Winner…though I think he quickly realized that and “fired” me from my position. It was startling…but I had to say in the end: “thank god” that that happened lol. After I got “fired” I felt I became more active with my posting, and felt actually more comfortable interacting with folks than when I was a mod…which is ironic considering that being a mod got me to be more interactive in the first place. I actually had more time now to catch up on stuff folks were doing, and get more stuff going for my own chars. I don’t know what folks ultimately thought of my time as a mod…but I hope that they didn’t curse me to the end of oblivion. That by itself is a reward enough for me.
And looking back at it now…it feels weird to be in a position for people where @Lunaspark and @Devastated and @Devilish53 and other long time AFW folks were for me when I started this thing. Like…I have people who are fans of my characters now. @CaptainL and @fotoskip have mentioned as much. As much as I want to joke and be very negative about my own writing, the immediate thought is: “why lol. I am such a shitty writer.”. But obviously, the second though, one that I feel everyone has every time they read a: “Yeah, I enjoyed the thread, thank you so much” is just…joy. I feel very glad to write alongside such talented writers, some of whom are actually pro-writers who actually have a book published on Amazon like @Kreydos, to the point where part of me feels like I am not worthy of praising them because of how bad a writer I am…but ultimately, I am happy to have created so many awesome stories with you folks.
One last thing before I do my run down of thanks personal to each and every person is just…the idea of doing this reflection post now. 5000 is a solid number after having been on this site for almost 6 years, but it’s nothing special, people have either hit or are hitting 10k by now! And there were plenty of chances. Ultimately this post is something that would’ve been a post to the old compliments thread that we had. ANd there are 2 reasons for it: 1 - I didn’t quite know what to write at the time, and 2 - I was afraid of forgetting to mention folks that were important for my growth on this site and to my characters…and ultimately now, I decided: “fuck it, we do it live, and then apologize later”
And with that, I wanna go into the final portion of this, my personal thanks to specific people. If I haven’t mentioned you, I want to apologize in advance, and I want you to know that, if we just interacted on AFW/LAW/Deviantart or elsewhere, I thank you for being an awesome person.
So:
@winner3 - you were always going to be mentioned first despite the “3” in your name lol. There is nothing of this without you, no LAW, no fun PPV ideas, no fun stories by various folks across the site. You are awesome, dood, and I hope things go well for you.
@ADarlingDucky - Thank you for being your awesome, occasionally lewd and rude, self, and still creating awesome doods and ladies to this day.
@RJD - hopefully you’ll have time to read this - but thank you for being so warm and welcoming early on in both AFW and LAW.
@anime_hentaifighter - for always being very welcoming to rookies, including myself, whenever possible.
@LowDefinition - for being a wealth of knowledge of Puro-wrestling and making me feel happy to be a wrestling fan. Even if I don’t always post to your live Nooj and Noah reactions, I do try and read them as often as I can. Your enthusiasm for Puro is very infectious, and without it, I honestly might’ve dropped being a wrestling fan in times where I felt I was tired of wrestling.
@Lunaspark and @Bear-Pin - it is always funny and great to talk to you guys about anything, be it muscle ladies, wrestling, rps, drama in any community or the world, Doctor Who, and the like.
@Lunaspark, @kerfine, @TheManVan and @Devastated, and other folks who were on AFW circa late 2016 and earlier - for your stuff being an inspiration for me to start this wild and wacky journey
@CaptainL and @Bare - for being much…much better at this mod thing than I ever was, while also managing to still do a ton of posts at the same time and write a ton of awesome stories for your gals.
@ColorVirus - for practically drawing every LAW character that exists when people ask you lol. You are an excellent artist, dude, and it feels like a privilege to have seen your skills grow since 2018.
@Ink - for just being an awesome dood. Legitimately, thank you for kind of making the voice chat more active, and making me more comfortable to just…talk with people lol. Really enjoy discussing LAW, wrestling and just do deadlock memes with you dude.
@xalex and @thesteedman - for not just being amazing writers and people but also amazing 3D modelers who have done a bunch of awesome LAW art. I very much consider the two of you my close friends, and apologies if that isn’t clear from me on occasion.
@DizzyKnight and @RiotGrrl - For being awesome and doing cool stories with your gals, but also helping me form my characters’…well…character lol.
@oldandjinxed - Even though they haven’t posted much to the site, they are probably one of the earliest people I know in the whole “wrestling rp and pic community”. They are a really good writer from the stories of their’s I read on FAWN back in 2014, and I thank him and other artist for showcasing just the different ways love of wrestling can be showcased on the internet.
@Underdoggo - for eternally being one of the best RPers on any of the boards, and deserving a lot more than what was given to you, praise or titles-wise.
@skip-stop - Even though our friendship is fairly recent, I very much thank you for being a really good friend in this time. It’s always a blast to talk to you
@Knocked @kerfine - You are much better than me with Fire Pro. Both of you helped people visualize how their wrestlers would move and act in the ring if they existed in real life, and do this much better than me.
@dlamp - for really awesome stories we’ve got going on, and being very informative with your blogs on the site, definitely helping folks both old and new think about their writing, and their likes and dislikes on it.
@Devilish53 - for helping this website grow for a while, as well as all the busty and booty ladies.
@PrinceArjuna332 - for sticking with me with ideas that took either way too long or I feel didn’t make enough sense XD
@Highfly - for once again, being awesome to everyone, noobies or old folks alike.
And to finish of, thank you to everyone for inspiring me to write to this many posts across AFW and LAW. Here’s to 5k more…and hopefully even more on top of that.