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Introduction (and FAQ)

Hello, and welcome once again.

My name is Becky Thomson, and I am the webmistress of this site. My hope is that everyone who comes to visit will want to come back again, but you can’t really enjoy a visit to a site without actually knowing what it is about. How many times have you used a search engine to locate a site of interest to you, and turned up with a site in a foreign language, which you couldn’t understand, but obviously would have been really interesting if you could have? I know that has happened to me a number of times, and I’ve always found it highly frustrating. Presumably, those of you whom are visiting this site are Harry Potter fans, and will understand a lot of "HP-speak", but this might be a new experience for you. However, if you were to understand some of the history behind this site, I am sure you will enjoy it. So I decided to write this introduction to let you, the reader, in on some of the knowledge. Some of the information here is also contained on the FAQ page. If you want a short, sharp answer to a question, you can probably find the answer there, but this introduction will go into a lot more detail, and I hope you’ll find it worth reading. Otherwise, I may as well not have written it! ^_~. Now, back to the topic at hand.

So, what is this site? I am sure that is a question that you are asking. Raceme is a site which is compiling over a year’s worth of RP (role-playing) action into a neat, prose format. It was originated on the Ravenclaw Common Room forum of the "Virtual World Of Harry Potter" site (or VWOHP as I like to refer to it as, saving my fingers, and a lot of reading for you ^_~). The very first instalment of Raceme; Realisation, began as a message thread there on the 11th October 2000. Back then, it was not know as Raceme, and to be truthful, in conversation, Raceme is the name for it on the site, and it is referred to as "EJI". EJI stands for "Everybody Join In", which over time has been forgotten, and is almost a title in itself. It started off perfectly innocently; RPG’s in the common room usually come and go quite quickly, not lasting for more than a couple of weeks. When the first message was posted, nothing quite like what happened was expected. At first, the posts were coming steadily, a perfectly acceptable rate. But then, there was a discussion between myself and Sabrina. An idea of mine was mentioned, and then, no pun intended (oh OK, it IS intended) magic began.

After "Realisation" (EJI), there came "Reprobation", and then, before we knew what was happening, there had been five instalments, the shortest lasting for 42 posts, and the longest lasting for 185 posts (and for an interesting piece of trivia, one of the final posts in 'Requiem' still holds the house record for the longest post). So they weren’t exactly short. Those of us who had posted in them had had such fun doing so, watching a story unfold, that we thought it would be nice for other people to be able to read them as well. So I tried posting a new message onto the end of each thread, bringing them back from the depths of the message archive. On a small scale, it worked. A few people read it, and those who ploughed through all the messages said that they thought it was worth it. But, like any message thread, some of the messages were jumbled, and patchy, no matter how high the standard of writing was. It’s just the way that forum posting works. So it was suggested that the threads were edited: made into prose, and posted on Fanfiction.net, so that more people could read them. For a while, that was our aim, and editing of the threads began. But I then struck on an idea which took the original one step further: what about making a website for this? There was clearly enough story material, and there were so many possibilities for other features (and there are many other ideas for the future, btw). As soon as I had mentioned the idea to Sabrina and Tris, it was clear they liked it a great deal. So, here we are!

But what is Raceme all about? Well, it’s complicated, and if I truly wanted to, I could write pages upon pages about the story, the symbolism, and the true meaning. But in its essence, I believe it is a story about love and understanding. A group of girls within Ravenclaw house who learn that they are not quite as ordinary as they might have thought. There is a deep friendship within this group of girls, and I believe that it does have a lot of good morals, and though there are sometimes quite controversial issues raised, the central theme is about caring for one another.

I hope, with all my heart, that these stories strike a chord with someone, and if only one person can glean some enjoyment from them, I think it will all have been worthwhile. I hope that the Raceme story continues for a long time to come. We’ve already passed the one year stage, so here’s hoping that we can make it to two!

- Becky Thomson, webmistress. November 2001

UPDATE: I am writing this now for the official opening of the Raceme site, which, believe me has been a long time coming! We've passed the two year barrier, and are striving for three, with a new cast of characters. I feel my writing style has matured since I wrote this introduction, but I felt that it was worth leaving up, rather than writing a fresh one (although I have made a few edits). - Becky (December 2002)