K’ter l’oracne’ktr ESB’crkn rhl l’oac’rkthahrl tr’lac.
L’on t’hrl’ory, l’on l’oa’rhl’ktr tr’tract l’on t’rac r’ar r’arhl’rac.

(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)

Irons’ diary post about 4GET MARARTHON got me thinking, and I just now remembered something that had somehow slipped out of my mind completely in the last year or so.  At one point, I was ready to 4GET marathon myself.

I’m just going to start out with some history, since most of the people reading this (are there any?) probably weren’t around to know about this.  When I first joined the marathon community, I was not a mean person at all.  Ok, sure there were a few really annoying people here and there that I wasn’t very nice to, but overall I was a pretty supportive person.  I remember helping countless people set up mac emulators so they could map on windows.  Anyone new that came by the AIM room, I was more than willing to answer any questions, no matter how trivial.  I had a really good connection and could host large games with no problems.

Some time after I had made CTF and all of my CTF maps, my connection got too crappy to play games, and the fun had died out of the game.  I was ready to leave the marathon community.  But here’s where it gets interesting.  Just for the hell of it, I  remember making a concious decision to turn into a total jackass and just wait for everyone to get fed up with me.  The goal was to have everyone so pissed off at me that I’d have no good reason to stick around, even if I wanted to.  On the pfhorums, I just started posting vicious attacks at people for little to no reason just waiting for one of them to snap.  All I was waiting for was someone to stand up for themselves and fight back.  Something along the lines of “Who the hell do you think you are to tell me this?”  The problem is, that never happened.  No matter how mean I was, no matter how little of a reason I had, no one ever stood up to me.  I remember being very disappointed every time someone said “oh, I guess you’re right”, and I was determined to just keep trying.  Any time someone did stand up for themselves and fight back, it was pretty much always directed toward Ryoko, which I could never understand at all.

Due to no one ever giving me the reaction I was looking for, apparently at some point I forgot what the point of all that was.  What’s even more interesting to me is, I never really stopped being mean to people.  I think I toned it down a bit when I no longer had any specific goal in mind, but part of it seemed to stick.

There’s not really any point to this post other than looking back and realizing how weird this whole thing turned out.

Day 1

Dear Diary,

Today I checked Pfhorums as usual. There wasn’t much to see there. As usual lately. I mean, Moppypuppy got all huffy about his stupid topic (the one about the video, good God). There’s also a new scenario announcement: “lolnova.” It’s a joke scenario; whether the creators realize this or not is the only question in my mind.

ESB is getting some new adrenaline shot through its shriveled balls: some guy named “Godot” showed up. I swear something like this happened on Pfhorums two years ago… However, this Godot claims to be Hamish. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just ukimalefu posting more of his redundant crap so ESB never dies. We were so close, too…

Three posts from glory.

Day 2

Dear Diary,

I thought about things a little yesterday, and I just realized I haven’t played at all in a month or two. The nights just after my router replacement were joyous, full of netgames. I think I hosted a hundred within a couple of weeks. It was a new leaf for me, after the many months of non-gaming. Things were looking up.

Then what? I got drawn back into the CLIQUE meta-game. And I like it. I’ve got some comments from outsiders on JFO now, which might be because of the recent Pfhorums outage. I think I like the people here better than I like the game itself, if you can believe that. Why play at all?

Day 3

Dear Diary,

#alephone lately has been mainly join/part messages and discussion about Smithy. Don’t get me wrong; Smithy is a great program that will add new life to Marathon. It’s just a few years too late for me. I talk a lot about this program and others, but I need to face the reality that I’m not planning on mapping ever again. Sure, I might make a level occasionally, but I think everyone agrees that my heyday was over by the time I started Pelikan. It’s another case of learned behavior: making a fuss out of Marathon when I have almost nothing to do with it any more. Why bother?

Day 4

Dear Diary,

I launched the 4GET MARARTHON campaign. Some might ask why, and I will answer them in the privacy of this journal: for me and for Wolfy. Both of us have things we want to accomplish that became twisted and unrecognizable at some point in the last four years. I want to write, and my prose lately has taken me to new and frightening places, causing me to draw unforeseen conclusions about myself. Treellama went to school for his music, a noble goal. We both need to forget Marathon. There’s a word other have used in the past for the act of forgetting the game, but I don’t dare utter it just yet.

Day 5

Dear Diary,

4GET has already produced fruit. I wrote more in Earth Mother. Wolfy finished a song he began months ago. There’s not much of a choice now.

Now

loch

~~~~~~~~~~

(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)

♫ Did you ever know that you’re my hero ♪

I got this meme from one of our sister sites, the aptly-named clique.blogspot.com:

I AM IN A CLIQUE MEME!!!

What is your clique’s name? CLIQUE.

Who founded your clique? Hotmodal.

Who is the prettiest member? Ray. Bridget.

Who is the richest member? Treellama.

What is the hottest boy your clique has tamed? I don’t know about boys (maybe Thermoplyae or Bridget could tell us), but most of us would agree that more than a few hot sisters have fallen to our charms.

What is the official mascot of your clique? lochnits

What is your clique’s clothing style? We mostly wear crappy clothes, because not much comes in AGENT ORANGE/GAN GREEN. The sisters aren’t complaining, though.

Who is the least likely person to be accepted into your clique? There are so many, it’s hard to chose. *blushes* But if I were forced to answer, it would be MarsMartianMan.

Who is the most likely person to be accepted? Patrick!!

Where does your clique hang out? #alephone, sometimes here, too.

What is your clique’s favorite store at the mall? Two words: Hot. Topic.

Are you close enough with your clique to call them sisters? Considering our genders and sexual attitudes toward hot sisters, this is extremely creepy to think about. Bridget is probably into it, though.

I will grant you one wish. What is it? Stop camping.

Marathon is the German Language of first-person shooters.

It is at times cumbersome, often full of subtleties, reviled or ignored by most unacquainted with its charm. To whom, then, do our own CLIQUE minds correspond?

Ryoko: Richard Wagner. Wagner is known for his dramatic, romantic, overblown musical style, the themes of which were eventually adopted by the Nazis. Ryoko’s maps are crazy big, grandiose, and so on. And he’s a Nazi.

He deserves nothing he has.

Treellama: Thomas Mann. Mann was an astounding writer, and is one of my personal favorites. He opposed the Nazis and went into exile during World War II. Treellama is pretty reasonable, and he privately hates CLIQUE. Like Treellama, Mann had better things to do than hang around those losers.

you guys are so negative :(

W’rkncacnter: This is where it gets tricky. I’m going with Karl Marx on the grounds that communism = JUICE.

HALF OF MY TEAM IS NOW OUT OF JAIL.

Thermoplyae: Thermo is kind of mysterious. He also likes numbers. Therefore, the most suitable choice is Gottfired Leibniz, one of two losers who invented calculus, and the man who brought us binary. I’m sure he would be just as content to program in ML as Thermo is.

*spills dixie cup beer*

Ray: If anyone had owned an imageboard based on Germany back in the day, it would have been Goethe. Let’s look at Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust, from a Ray’s perpective—that is to say, Faust v. Mephistopheles: King of Fighters Romanticism Edition!!

then you will be 1/infinity as cool as me

Irons: I’m half-genius, half-crazy. People try to understand me and usually fail (unless they are my CLIQUE contemporaries). I created an übermensch named Hotmodal. I am Nietzsche.

loch nits olmec taps you the eight-foot-tall Burton

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by the corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

—The bard’s noserag. A new art color for our Irish poets: snotgreen.You can almost taste it, can’t you?

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

—God, he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea…

James Joyce, Ulysses

We now have a new home; be sure to update the millions of bookmarks and links pointing to us. I’m trying to squeeze everything into a reasonable facsimile of the old site, so hang on for the next few days. Other than that, enjoy!

I’m late to the party on this one; thanks #a1 for finding worthwhile stuff while I’m at work.