Confessions of a Harry Potter Addict

Section 8:

Tantric Allure

Hi, my name is Alyx.  ::waits for resounding chorus of "Hi, Alyx"::  And it's been no time whatsoever since my last fix.  I'm shooting up even as I write.

I do know, however, that it's been an age since my last update.  Sorry.  Life happens.  But now I'm back in the swing of things, and in such a way.  For I have rediscovered the joy of online roleplaying games.

Now, the one I'm currently involved with is not my first foray into this wonderful world, but it's so far the most encompassing.  I've been an avid roleplayer in other genres since the age of eleven, starting off with Star Wars and moving on to more general fantasy worlds.  But at the moment, I am entirely absorbed in a Hogwarts rpg on livejournal.

It started out innocently enough.  I signed up with an original character, one I'd played before in another game.  It was supposed to be easy.  Low-key.  A way for me to amuse myself every once in a while.  Post once or twice a week, get involved in a few chat room sessions.  Nothing deep, nothing serious.

I should have known better.

I update daily.  I spend more time IMing the people in the game than my other friends.  I check the character journals every time I'm within arm's reach of a computer.  And every single night for the past week, I've stayed up until truly ridiculous hours, just so I could keep playing the game.  Each session somehow becomes more prolonged than the one before.  I'm building up endurance.  I'm downing Red Bulls like they're tequila shots and eating more gummy bears than any god could intend for its creation to digest.  And it feels better every time I do it.

Yes, friends, I have entered the world of tantric rpg.

What, you may ask, is tantric rpg?  It is the fine art of devoting a truly ridiculous amount of time and energy to a roleplaying game, so much so that your friends may truly begin to worry about you.  But that's okay.  'Cause it hurts so good.

Our sessions last for hours.  My record thus far is thirteen straight hours – no small feat, when you consider that we started at 7pm, and I had classes at 9:30 the next morning (which I inevitably slept through).  As I write this, I'm working on my sixth hour for the evening, with no end in sight.  In fact, we're about to open up another segment of our plot.  I plan to be up until at least 8am.  If my Harry Potter obsession was in need of help before, by now I'm on to requiring a 12-step program.  It's incredibly addictive, and, like any true junkie, I just can't seem to stop.  I find myself telling my roleplaying cohorts that "I'm really going to bed at 2 tonight, guys".  By the time four o'clock rolls around, it's "Alright, just one more hour, and then I have got to get some sleep."  Soon the sun is rising, and I'm abandoning any hope of getting more than two hours' sleep.  My roommate's alarm clock goes off, and I insist to her that I did go to sleep, really, but woke up again and decided to get back online.  Eventually I'm entertaining ideas of just not sleeping at all.  Because I had to finish that scene!  It was so wonderfully dramatic, after all.  But then, they all are.  And hence my problem.  I can't seem to cut myself off.  My roommate is threatening to unplug my Ethernet cord and make me go cold turkey.  But she can't get me down.  I will continue to devote my waking and sleeping hours to this game, because it amuses me so.

This is all made so much better by the fact that my character and her friend have made the close and personal acquaintance of a sentient wall in the dungeons, named it Snout, and gotten in detention for it.  Bonus points to anyone who gets why they named the wall Snout (keep in mind, they're Ravenclaws).

Until next time!  I've got an rpg to attend to – my character's about to get a rather lecturing owl from her mum!