The Geeky Side of Me
I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a blog post like this, but I haven’t had anything good enough to have as a focal point of it. I really enjoyed Kirsty’s blog post about her love for Doctor Who, and Rhiannon’s various geeky posts about playing Warcraft among other things. Although I’m not a fan of either, they were both brilliant reads.
Anyway, I’m not a geek in the regular sense of the word, my geekiness mainly resolves around books, Disney, fairytales and fantasy. Included in the fantasy bracket is of course Harry Potter. I mean what fantasy fan doesn’t like Harry Potter? I have liked, no loved Harry Potter since I was 11 years old, when I first read The Philosopher’s Stone. The book series is one of my all time favourite. Books I will forever read over and over again and never get bored of. Today I’m going to focus on Harry Potter, in particular, Harry Potter Wizarding World related role play on Deckleswood.com.
There are a lot of different types of role plays, but the type I take part in is chatroom based using * * to denote actions. Before I joined Deckleswood, ten years ago now, I’d never taken part in this type of role play, only the forum style one. Still using the * to show actions but it wasn’t “live” for lack of a better word. I think the live aspect of Deckleswood was what really had me hooked in the first place. Back when I first joined I didn’t know anyone else on the site, I found it by googling “Harry Potter Role Play Websites” and it didn’t take long for me to become addicted. I was 15, about to sit my GCSEs and I didn’t have many friends at High School. I loved drama, and acting, and this was very like acting, but in text form. I used to tell my parents I was revising on the computer but in actual fact I was on Deckleswood. I spent hours role playing, enjoying every second being a student in a magical school. I was still very bitter that I never received my letter to Hogwarts.
Taking directly from the Deckleswood website, the premise is as follows;
“Deckleswood and the town of Decklesby, are places created within a Wizarding World. The original framework comes from the imagination of JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. The school of Deckleswood was originally based on that of Hogwarts and the town of Decklesby has aspects of both Diagon Ally and Hogsmede. However as huge fans of Harry Potter, the decision was made to try not to step on the toes of already written “facts” of the Wizarding World. As such our story takes place in Canada, an area relatively untouched by JK Rowling’s writings. On top of that, our story and timeline is based much further into the future than that of Harry Potter. We created our own timeframe and date system – including the introduction of AVD as a year. AVD stands for “After Voldemort Died” and works similar to AD and BC in real life terms, meaning that any year that has passed since Voldemort died is now classed as X Years AVD (for example 149 AVD is 149 years since).” – ©Deckleswood.com
For those who always wished they could have attended Hogwarts, this is the place for you. With five original house Rubyblaze, Topazgale, Emeraldpeak, Sapphirelake and Onyxshadow and the school itself having a very rich history, it’s such a fun and immensely geeky pass time.
Over the 12 years the website has ran, it has been closed a couple of times (mainly due to life commitments of the admin) and thus the once thriving membership has now dwindled so there is always room for new people to join. At the moment the Decklesby part is all that is opening, with the school hopefully reopening later on this year. Decklesby is honestly, just as fun. You can make a character who can be anything! Ministry worker, store owner, dragon tamer, curse breaker, we’ve had it all (and I’ve played the majority of those) there is the chance for more than one character if you think you can handle it! There are always story lines to take part in.
The whole experience is difficult to describe but for me, the best thing to have come out of it, is the friends i’ve made. Deckleswood is actually the brain child of my best friend Bee. Together with her brother’s brilliant coding she’s worked hard on Deckleswood for over 12 years now and through the website we became friends. I’ve made many other friends and we have done a lot of fun things including annual meet ups for barbeques, camping (in the past) and visits to theme parks! Members are welcome from all over the world.
Even now at almost 26, I love Deckleswood as much as ever and despite it only being reopen for less than a week, I’m already addicted again. It’s such a good escape from mundane life. It’s a place where you can be anything you want to be (within reason of course) in the wizarding world.
If you’re a fan of role play or you’d just like to give it a try, you should head over to Deckleswood.com and sign up. It really is a place to let your imagination and creatively run wild. If anyone would like any extra information you can contact the admin on mail@deckleswood.com but there should be everything you need if you follow the link on the home page to “Move to Decklesby” and have a read!
Do you have a geeky side? If so, what is it?
(Everything related to Deckleswood within this post is copyright to Bel S & Deckleswood.com)
2 Comments
Rachael
Yey for all us geeks speaking about it on blogs – I have two geeky things – trains/model trains and star trek – both I intend to get around to blogging about them when I get a spare chance!
Bel Smith
Hahaha <3 DW love from me and the site 😛