The Rebel Faction would make a great story.

Over the years I've been here, I've seen this place many ways - a Star Wars forum, a politics game, a writer's workshop. Some of you have been here longer than I have, and can remember the truly distant past when TRF first split from... oh heck, if I can even remember who. A lot of names have risen and fallen, a lot of game rules have changed, a lot of great stories have been written and a lot of fun has been had.

If there's one regret or fear I have, though, it's the idea that when TRF dies (and it will die, sooner or later) everything that happened here will die with it. Who will remember the great posters, the great stories, the clashes, the lessons learned, the problems overcome? I was here for half of them, and I can hardly remember them myself anymore.

TRF has a story, but it's not one continuous document, it's a mosaic made up of thousands of smaller stories. The battlegrounds is made of threads, each detailing a small story that - when taken as a whole - make up the active history of the galaxy. No one has time to read the whole battlegrounds, however, and many threads are only ever half-finished. Much of what TRF is exists only in our minds as we remember it, or in a sort of oral history passed down in summaries and recaps told to future generations. TRF's story hides in the heaps of OOC forum threads, in the stacks of forgotten battleground stories, in the banter and flamewars of the rebel cafe. It resides in the memory of our veteran posters, a group whose number can only diminish and who take with them our one connection to the past and the foundation of the galaxy.

What I'm saying, then, is that we need to act. We need to act now, while there are still enough of us to piece together and preserve the history of TRF. We need to be ready for the end, so that when it comes we will have some form of closure, will have something to hold forth and say "This is what I was a part of, this is what was part of me. These are the people I knew, and this is what we created together."

I'm not saying that the story of TRF is over, far from it! We've limped along in the past, and what I've come to realize is that there's always quite a lot going on here, it's just not as obvious and boistrous as it once was. People post in the battlegrounds, but they aren't the same people who once did. The territory-wars of yesteryear are gone, and with them go the meandering OOC flame-war threads that littered this forum once not too long ago. TRF is still quite alive, albeit in a different way, and I think we might never return to what once was. Why lose the past, then, when we should be celebrating it?

If you're still not sure of what I'm talking about, look up Omnae's incomparable "Of Endings" series. In it, he takes the story of TRF - our characters, our history, our creations - and turns it into a complete tale with a clear arc. There's no need to piece together the whole story from a dozen threads, the story tells itself and is quite natural. Omnae tried this in grander fashion before, but the plan faltered somewhat (Fall of Simon Kaine) because the inherent challenge with involving the entire community in a piece of writing is that the entire community isn't on the same page. Once again, that method doesn't produce one story, it produces several and intersperses them for us to piece together ourselves.

I don't have a complete plan of any kind, nor would I dare to try and speak for the whole community when really the story of TRF is one we all, past and present, have produced. We need to come together and decide just how we can best commemorate TRF, either through some sort of story, or a collected history, or a "highlight reel" of threads that tell the history of TRF when read together, or perhaps a collection of personal accounts - whatever we do, we have to do it together, and ideally involving as many of the old-timers as we can drag out of retirement.

From the good times to the bad times, from the Drayson incident and the Endgame that took Coruscant and the relocating of the New Republic to Corellia and the breakoff Chiss Empire and the Crimson Empire and the Rogue Empire and the alliance against the Jutraalians' Death Star and the double-abolisher incident and the battle of Corellia and the Venerations campaign and the Tholotian Republic and the GLF terrorist campaign and the Coalition founding and refounding and the Mon Calamari Republic and Gash Jiren and Kas Katta and Darth Snacks and Darth Exercon and Organa and Zark and Hyfe and Ren and Beff and Damalis and Gue and Kyrick Zen and Kamon and Teebo and Griff and Hex and on and on...

And everything. Now and forever. We need to tell the story of The Rebel Faction, this I believe more than anything else.

Something massive like TGC has would be cool. A thread or even forum detailing the history of the board, its stories, its players, etc. That is if anyone had the time or energy to build/maintain something like that.

I'd like to voice my profound support from the land of the lurking.

I nominate a very angry jew.

Sounds like a great idea.

I think a good place to start would be to revive the "Timeline project" we had going a while ago. That was surprisingly complete, even if the events themselves were left relatively dry and bare-bones. A more fleshed-out take on the timeline where we link relevant threads and share our own recollections of TRF history would make a good jumping off point for any further projects.

I never actually contributed anything to the overall storyline of the forum, for the record.

I am out of town right now and I will be in Yellowstone National Park from the 21st of August and back in town on Sept 3rd.

Dolash, I like this idea and I will support it to the best of my ability. I am not sure what TGC has (that Hyfe mentioned) but I'll take a look when I can.

It is a good idea to ensure the work and history is preserved...

Large portions of the past have already been lost, and the entire TRF timeline has shifted as a result. Characters and plotlines from our origins on TGC where the timeline centered around Jedi vs Sith plotlines have long since been dismissed and forgotten, and so that entire segment in timeline history has been filled in with canon events.


The TRF universe I am familiar with is not the same one you all know and love now. And so it is my sworn duty to document the evidence that Gash Jiren was once a goody two shoes Jedi both IC and OOC! Well, and some other stuff.


HAH!


:p ;)

Okay, so let's get down to some brass tacks. Just what is it we want to do? Let's hear your ideas.

For my part, I think there are several central things that need to be preserved. Firstly is our memory of the membership - were this a perfect world, we could get every old poster to come back and provide us with a personal profile write up, a list of their favourite threads, and a picture. Odds are this is unrealistic, but if we call back everyone we still know from email and IM lists, we might at least be able to get someone who knows whoever we're missing. In that sense, we could scoop up a few contributions about everyone. Anyone we can't find, those who knew them could write up a bit for them and list a few prominent threads. Remembering our fellow writers and their contributions to this little community is probably the most important part of the project, as I'd rather forget all the great writing there is than forget the great people who wrote it.

After that, something like a timeline would be good, albeit a bit fleshed out. Maybe we could write it as you would a history textbook, moving from year to year and describing the great rises and falls as it goes. This timeline could be pieced together from all our memories and linked threads, and fleshed out as we go by those most familiar with the period in question. In it's completed state, it'd be great to be able to read from the start of TRF's history to the end and have some sense of having followed the arc of it's story.

Assuming that file size is no boundary (this is a parting gift for everyone, we might as well go all-out), we could also archive a whole stack of threads in some sort of appendix section. That way the timeline itself and any reccomendations section could directly link to the thread in question if someone wanted to read it. This section wouldn't be for every single thread, so half-finished abandoned projects would mostly be left out, as would most run-of-the-mill planetary takeovers or short, indecisive battles. Instead, this would be a collection of threads that are agreed to be the best stories, or the most pivotal in history, or the most significant to a group or character's progression. Naturally, this section would be quite large indeed, but would probably belong somewhere near the back to be perused at leisure.

Those are three things I think are especially important to preserve, covering three pillars of TRF - the overall story, the individual works of great writing that made the story, and the fine people who did the writing. There'd also be room for a "special features" section collecting some of the random crap we've produced over the years related to TRF, like little movies, drawings, etc.

Thoughts? Advice, criticism? I don't want to hog podium, though I do feel pretty strongly about this project, so I'd be eager to hear someone else's suggestions.