Comically MUD

14 years ago, we didn't have "online" gaming. Sophisticated, powerful machines chunking out shared graphics over a truly World Wide Web. We had MUD. Multi-User Dimension. Text based D&D-type games, in which we roamed from one "corner of the forest" to a "clearing in the forest" to "village gate" to another.
"You have entered a corner of the forest. To the south is a winding road. To the north there is a clearing..."
We ganged up, attacked trolls, fought wizards, and chatted happily with people from all over the world, as they converged in one university server or another. You had to earn your right to emote, then to shout, then to ask favors of the gods; the almighty sys-admins that could smite you without a word if you stepped out of the boundaries of good taste. You would suddenly find yourself in front of a mute x-windows prompt. To others, a message would appear on screen, informing that you have evaporated back into the void from whence you came.
I quit playing (army got in the way) and never got back into it. Today, I don't think I relate anymore to the online games people play. Now there are graphics, you can talk to the people (with sounded words), and God knows what's next (maybe you could scan our face unto whatever character you're playing). Text-based MUDs gave us none of that, and it all happened only in our heads. Making it, for me at least, much more real. Characters, behaviors, antics, all constructed infinite shadows of the same person. Each gamer developing an opinion about everyone else, solely on what they wrote and how they described their characters.
It was an interesting, albeit futile, exercise in trying to figure out what the person on the other side looked like, sounded like, reacted like, in real life. Now, it is much less mysterious.

Another fun thing I left behind were comics. I never was a HUGE comic books fan, but I did enjoy them, and hung around with people who kept me well informed. Israel is pretty much a desert island when it comes to comic books, and I could think of only two stores in the whole of the country, both catering local publications, and the large out of country publications. There is no real room, and no real market, for the completely original, unusual, unorthodox, and sometimes just plain corky. You got your greats and knowns, but the real fun came from the bizarre.
For the rescue, come Web Comics.
I discovered this world 6 years ago, and have become addicted to finding new strips to follow. I have to admit, I like the wired and random ones better than the online graphic-novels. It is just simply too hard for me to keep up with a long list of stories, developing once a week. I like a few. Michael Poe is always good (Exploitation Now (which is done), Errant Story) . And there are a couple more.
My recent favorite is Devil's Panties by Jennie Breeden. It's been around for a while, but I only recently discovered it. First of all, it really good, and pretty funny. Adulthood insecurities - nothing ever funnier!
Side story: Jennie is a horrible speller, due not to a fault of her own. She has a huge rant about people continually commenting on her spelling errors, and vents vehemently on a page on her site. The funny thing was that as I was reading her little wild-fire paragraph, I noticed that the page's ad was for a desktop, web-based, dictionary and spell checker. Irony has always made me laugh. I e-mailed this little cosmic interruption to Jennie, and she has been very kind in responding (I make a point to not bother people I don't know directly, but this seemed too funny to ignore). The nice thing was, that in future, rather random intersection, she actually related me to my original mail, which I thought was nice.
Back to my point....remember, I still need to explain what this has to do with MUD.
Strange, but it is the first autobiographical comic strip that I read. There probably are more out there, but I have not stumbled upon them yet. Sure, a lot of web-comics draw a main character which is, rather expectantly, a comic book writer (drawer), or a web-comic or both. The characters lives are never a reality. In DP, the scenes are taken from real life (Jennie's) and I was surprised how strange that made me feel. It dropped me back all those years ago, where I was trying to imagine what was real and what not so much. I know that whatever is drawn on the comic strip is an exaggerated, funnier, version of the reality, but it is still wired to think that there is a really person behind the character, and at least the thoughts are real.
Among my many sins, I am also a frustrated fiction writer (possibly a frustrated blogger, too), and many times things that happen to me in the day form a picture or a scene or a prelude to a dialogue. They form the basis to almost anything I write. But it's never me.
I find it very odd, trying to think that there are hints to the real Jennie from her "Jennie"-comic-proxy.
It's a stretching exercise, trying to imagine the real scene, or the inspiring scene, from the one we read in the comic strip. It gives, for me, a whole new dimension to the strip, that is rarely gained from others.
I hope she never reads this, because it sounds a little creepy, and I appear insane.