Venerable Shard Users - How Do You Deal?

[Kasimir he/him]

15 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

Oh, absolutely.  I've never even looked at those forum subsections.  I stick to Cosmere, Coppermind, Brandon, and a few General topics that catch my eye, like math/science, puzzles, fountain pens, and this one!   

Reasonable, got it  Nice to have you in the fountain pens one  

[Seonid he/him]

Sorry if this is a little bit on the thread necro side of things, but as a venerable Sharder who's just coming back to the forum, I have all the feelings. I joined more than 10 years ago, and basically retired about 5-6? Before the pandemic I think.

Honestly, I came back for nostalgia about the worldbuilding and feedback I got here, and since I'm finally back in that space again in my life, I wanted to see if this space could respark some of the old magic. I'll give it a couple months and see

But I know how you feel. My life situation has changed completely. I've gone from a college student playing SE and other RP games in my spare time (even during class!) and watching my younger Sharder friends graduating high school and leaving on LDS missions (many of them) to a mostly-functional adult with a semi-stable government job and 4 kids.

Something like 90% of the people I knew and interacted with are gone, I'm so out of the Realmatic theory space that I can only watch the basic concepts float by from a distance (and I even have a degree in physics), and I don't really have the time/bandwidth available to devote to a game of SE, which is what I used to be heavily involved with.

I'm still catching up on who's still around, but to be honest, half of this post was about saying hi @Kasimir. It's been a while.

[Kasimir he/him]

On 9/14/2025 at 2:07 AM, Seonid said:

I'm still catching up on who's still around, but to be honest, half of this post was about saying hi @Kasimir. It's been a while.

Sorry for the further necro because I needed to take a break from the Shard and then you know, COVID/Influenza A whichever the hell it was was whack and I'm still tired as hell three weeks later or whatever it is. But hi ancient Favourite Person of the Month, I'm glad we could reconnect  

On 9/14/2025 at 2:07 AM, Seonid said:

Honestly, I came back for nostalgia about the worldbuilding and feedback I got here, and since I'm finally back in that space again in my life, I wanted to see if this space could respark some of the old magic. I'll give it a couple months and see

More than fair tbh.

On 9/14/2025 at 2:07 AM, Seonid said:

Something like 90% of the people I knew and interacted with are gone, I'm so out of the Realmatic theory space that I can only watch the basic concepts float by from a distance (and I even have a degree in physics), and I don't really have the time/bandwidth available to devote to a game of SE, which is what I used to be heavily involved with.

100% get this though. It's a weird kind of disconnect. I wonder if we'll see it more and more over time too because communities age and there might be one more gen of Internet users before us feeling this process out. IDK, I just recall there's a parallel in fandom too. The pre-AO3 gen and the post-AO3 gen divide is pretty strong, with a weaker divide between those who remember mailing lists, geocities collections, and listservs (holy conflation Batman) and those who don't.