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The Titan embed is the best means of integrating it on site, from what I've seen, so guests can sign up and ask questions. Unlike a cBox, you can actually get notifications from Discord on your phone, which means somebody who is out but checking notifications can dip in and help out any members or guests with ease. Unless your site outright bans talking about non-site things in the cBox, I don't see how Discord is any more of a culprit with this. Discord at least gives the advantages of separating different kinds of conversation - having plotting channels won't eliminate plotting from the general chatting channel, but it means the message gets to the right person and will be less buried like in a cBox. Burying it another issue with the cBox, where you can be answering a question from somebody but others are talking and burying it, so an ask-staff channel keeps this from happening. You can always bring conversations back from non-site things by posting questions related to the genres or some events on-site, and from my experience most RP Discords rarely stray too far. In the past, I've found cBoxes cliquey and it's difficult to form bonds with others because there's only so much you can talk before a conversation gets buried. Discord allows me to connect with more people, because I know that I can talk about this here, or that there, and the search feature means I can jump to an older conversation if there's a lot of chat. As for plotting but not playing, that issue comes with any social feature, including the cBox. In one RP Discord I'm in, I joined maybe a week or two ago, and while the cBox isn't active, the Discord very much is. We've discussed all sorts of plotting things and people have welcomed me in much more than I expected. In another, I run a Discord for a bunch of characters on-site and people can post their open threads there, or answer questions for character development which help you get more muse and learn about characters yours would know, which has resulted in several people writing with others they hadn't before. I don't see Discord as a passing trend. I see it as the successor of both cBox and Skype, until the next successor comes along in a few years. But given how long cBox has been around, I don't see that happening for a while, because the channel features make it the perfect chatting device for roleplays.

People will find something in common, besides RP. And even RP, with Discord, more communication is encouraged, and from plotting more, one gets more interesting stories to write. I like Discord. I think it promotes communication better than the c-box.

since discord's inception, I honestly like it way more than cbox as it feels more organizable. i have yet to integrate titan into my forums but it's a life changer.

While Webs summed up most of my feelings very nicely, I wanted to add one more thing to the conversation. I don't really understand where you got the idea that role players have little in common, because - while, granted, TNI is a much larger site than most - I find I have a lot in common with a number of members. I met my four very best friends through role play. Three of these were online, though one of those three I have now met up with IRL and we visit each other regularly. One of them I met because she had seen me passing notebooks back and forth during school, and wanted to know what me and my friend at the time were doing. This last one has been my friend since 8th grade - that is eight years of friendship, all because she wanted to try out writing with me. Of course, role players aren't all exactly the same, there are differences: the age range is major, people from all walks of life can join in, from all over the world, from different cultures and ideas, any gender, race, profession. Role players can have any other hobbies from video games to sports to woodcarving (yes, woodcarving). But at their core, every role player is a writer, every role player is human, and every role player desires to create something, whether that's worldbuilding or just fleshing out a character. Every good role player excells at understanding people who aren't like them - after all, if you couldn't do that, all your characters would be the same as you, or poorly written. So why would it be a bad idea for a bunch of different people who excell at understanding people who are different, with at least one common interest, to create a community together? Every single role play website I have been a member of for more than a week since I left Neopets more than eight years ago has been a community, and I've found friends there, even if those friendships didn't always last.

Personally, I'm not a fan of guests using discord to judge how active the site is. Go check how many recent roleplay posts there are in the past week. Go look at ACTUAL ROLEPLAYING. I have no patience for somebody who thinks idle chatter about unrelated topics is a good way to judge how many roleplay replies are being posted a week on any site I'm on. That being said, if Discord 'falls out of fashion' like all things eventually do, I'm not going to be grumpy. MSN fell out of fashion. AIM did too. Things change. Such is life.

I'm so happy to hear that you have come to a place of peace. There are a lot of situations in life where people will tell you certain things, but sometimes, you really do know what is best, what is better. You know your body, you know your life, and you know your board. Coming to grips with realizing that you aren't in the same race/environment as everyone else takes a long time and some mental effort in soul searching. Once you've realized that, you next realize that the same paths don't apply to you - because your board isn't like the others that get 10 replies a day, it's not going to die if you don't get any replies in 3 days - after all, for heaven's sakes, your board is how many years old, now? And then, after that, I think comes peace. I hope that you are in good health, that your family is well, and that you feel loved. I hope that your board will continue to bring you happiness and joy in your hobby, and sharing it with others. Hugs!

Hang in there! There are those of us who will be okay with having a slower pace - heck, I know of writers (myself included) who actively look for those slower paces because they can't offer anything else. I know it sucks for now, but keep your spirits up! As long as the people who are there are still loving the site, things will improve!

Belated huggles and loves and good vibes to you! And don’t quit because of someone’s poorly trained crotchgoblin. 😜 You’re a wonderful writer and I know first hand how passionate you are about your Embers.

You cannot reason with unreasonable people! Do not let someone destroy what you seriously enjoy. You will always have my love and support, dear heart!

This is amazing

I have mixed feelings about discord. It creates the potential for a thriving or toxic community. Balanced at the edge of a blade, I guess. The ability to instantly chat with people is great for getting to know one another and make friends and for Admin to quickly handle issues (as easily as it allows for issues to appear). Instant chatting also tends to create friend groups and cliques which I don't condone in a roleplay setting. I hate that you can log into a discord and sometimes feel like you're part of a mean-kids-club. One of the things that I've always loved about online roleplay is that you don't have to be friends with the people you write with. You don't have to share a timezone or interests, just the love of the story you're building. I want to write characters being around one another. I want them to fight. To hate one another. To fall in love and break up. NORMAL ALL DAY EVERYDAY THINGS BUT WITH MONSTERS AND SPACE OKAY? Discord steals from this. I also hate how personal the chats get. I know we're a community and a safe space for people, but a game is not the place to bring your life's troubles. It is insanely difficult to moderate really sad posts. Do we just ignore them? Delete them? Talk until the sad shit has passed? Share memes until the cows come home? This is a place where we're talking about a game and one that is very serious for many members. You wouldn't interrupt a work meeting or presentation just to talk about your personal life? (okay maybe some would, but it happens so much more thanks to instant chat I just can't even). There's also a major bleed between character and player thanks to discord. I've gotten into huge issues with people bullying or shunning someone because they have an issue with their problematic character. Something that is easily mitigated when people just use what they know from the forum and write about it. It makes sense for characters to shun a misogynist, it doesn't make sense for players to shun the writer of the misogynist. With Discord people expect to know what is happening in the thread before it actually happens. I don't like plotting without writing. The writing is what I'm here to do, not chat to warn you about everything my characters are going to do and experience (because it might change when I actually see the other posts!). Overall, my mixed feelings are more negative than they are positive, and if Discord is a passing trend, then my hopes are raised. In the meantime, to combat Discord as an Admin I use it as a supplement to the Forum itself. I exist in our Discord only to set people right when players try to steer one another wrong. I sit in on the chats to aid with hype and moderate what everyone is saying to one another so they're not being as mean as I know they can be. I post in Discord what I post in the Cbox. All Admin Posts & Issues get dealt with directly on the forum, and joining our discord it is absolutely NOT a requirement. Some of my members never join the chats and I'm quite happy with that.

Arceus, I have followed your work for many years and yet I hardly know you at all. But I can relate, I know your pain, I've been there. I was spending a car payment every year on hosting, and my service did not allow for monthly payments. The reality of my debt, finances, and whether or not this money was making me happy put my hosting down to die after year 2 or 3. One of the problems that I made early on was that I was too helpful. I tried to help people who didn't want help. They always resented me for it, it always ended badly, I was always butt hurt, and it was always a massive waste of time and energy. It took me years to learn the art of sitting on the sidelines, like everyone else, and watching the firework explosions from afar, instead of trying to wrestle the matches away from the person lighting them. I wonder if you tried to help people who didn't ask for help? If they treated you that way, certainly they weren't ready for your help, they just had good intentions and half-baked notions. There are many people who are very insistent and adamant that they do want help, but they don't want help, they want their very specific notion and experience and all of that isn't actually help and it isn't the help that they need. I know that this wound hurts. But give this a try, and I think that you will find yourself less abused. Remember that if you help someone who doesn't want help, all you get out of it is wasted time and energy and hurt, and all the person gets is a prideful and mean story about someone else, because they aren't capable of receiving that help. There is a lot to be said about paid services and the wisdom there. I asked for $10 once for an eternity of hosting and support, and many sites could not get that much; they were not serious. $10 is what someone would pay a month for ad-free on JCInk or Proboards. Because I asked for real money, people treated me better and more respectfully, they believed me more that I knew what I was doing. Far less people wasted my time. And the people who wasted the most of my time never paid. One of the reasons that I stopped hosting was because I found, like you did, that I wasn't really friends with anyone. I just had people who popped in every 5 years to ask me to help them with coding this or that. I suck at keeping up with friends, so half of that blame is mine, but the other half... When I would tell someone that I just don't have time to fix their coding issue, they would insist or just quietly not be my friend anymore. So now, I rub it in their faces with the truth. "I'm sorry FriendXYZ, I know that it sounds like a simple issue to you but it's looking like it's going to be 8 to 15 hours of hard work for me to track down and I think you could find someone who could do it faster for you at a roleplay resource site. I'm working two jobs, one below minimum wage, and I'm having a hard time." And then they don't bother me anymore, and all of it is true. It's a bit overly passive-aggressive, but aggressively standing up for myself was the other side of the pendulum that I had lacked all that time, and it helped immensely, and I have found my balance between both sides of the pendulum. There are some directory/resource sites where people come in to request help with their problems and it always amazes me at the minimum effort put in. That most issues are a few badly formed sentences that don't include what's needed to debug them. I used to get snippy at the staffers who moderated them at their inane requirements for a form always a form omfg why?! But now I understand that their real requirement was effort and to desperately and quickly weed out the wasters of time and energy as easily as possible. I have some skins and other things that I made for resource sites and people are over-entitled, not just to me, but to everyone. Providing ongoing support for those resources is utterly exhausting and about half of the time you ever spend on something goes into supporting it over all the long time its used. I am tired, Arceus. But I am not as tired as I was before because I put up my boundary lines and maintain them because I know they are my sanity, and because I know if I let them slip, someone is going to take advantage of me because that's why they needed to cross those boundary lines in the first place. Someday you will come to feel better about things, about yourself, about roleplays. But for right now, rest, find peace and serenity. Don't go back to hosting because right now it's unhealthy for you. I found that part of my desire to be a piggy-back host was to find my value as a person by being useful to others, because I felt I had no value otherwise, and many treated me just as I felt about myself. If you feel this way, don't be afraid to talk to a therapist, because life is short and they are the fastest, least painful, and most efficient way towards healing and being happy. I hope this helps you in some small way. Here is my discord if you'd like to talk sometime xexes#4702

I love you too! You're a fantastic person 🙂 It is saddening to see how people treat each other publicly in the forum rp community. I struggle to believe that they behave that way in meatspace! Good luck with your RP search though! I hope you find some excellent places 💖🙂

♥ Still love you and I miss your face. And it really is. It's saddening. :c

💖 Your beautiful work is worth being paid for anyway. It's not like you're writing HTML in a clearly labelled text area. But man the RP community, it's like we've traded basic decency for towering entitlement.

Besides being very expensive, the problem is that 1) reliable helpers are difficult to find (not to steal, to actually do their job, etc.) and 2) if she doesn't listen to me, do you think she'd obey a stranger, more, a stranger paid from her pension? She would say horrible things about the helper and about us together 😞 So it's my cross to bear, the main problem that I am not too prepared for it. I haven't even studied psychology at all in Uni. I am not sure how to relate to her, how to make myself understood and obeyed.

Can you hire assistance? I'm not sure if it is too expensive for you to get to help you. I can't really offer much in the way of help. But I can offer you an ear whenever you need it. ❤️

In the herp world, unsexed means they are too young to show sexual characteristics. All my unsexed are either juveniles or the lone skink, and skinks are kind of a crapshoot for gendering. My two eldest juvies are getting old enough to start showing, so if they suddenly have balls I'll know! Pictures will come once it warms up and I weigh everyone!

Eh, you can see what's actually happening on the Discord server and even join straight from the site (not just how many people) with the Titan integration, so there's that. Also, some people will indeed always want the new 'shiny' thing and require it, but it doesn't mean site owners have to cater to it. I personally love discord because I hang out there all day anyway, but for those who don't, they'll probably carry on using Cbox or whatever they have (or not use a chat system at all). While I get that it might be a trend, I think like any trend, there will be those who use it because it's expected, and those (like me) who actually find it practical.

I'm torn about Discord. It's handy, and I like the combination of RP channel chat and IMs. Although the quiet cbox makes the site look much less active than it is. I'm not sure how long Discord will stay a regular feature.

I don't typically peruse blogs or post on these much, but the new comment above brought this post into unread threads so I took a look. Anything to do with communities as a topic makes me take a look. I also followed the link and read the rest. This was the kind of thing that my coleaders and I went on a journey for; we aimed to build a community of likeminded folks who looked at the experience as collaborative. We felt that longing that you did. There are different kinds of roleplayers out there and we wanted specific ones. I showed this to one of my coleaders and the rest of the sentiments came out: We decided two things were key: Trust and Patience. If things slowed down on our board and they frequently do, we were patient because we believed that a solid, strong community with beautiful bonds can be a slow burn. People can't always write all the time, but they are enthusiastic about doing so when they can. They're enthusiastic about plotting, sharing links, and learning new tidbits of history and information. Even the most active ones have periods where they slow, the beauty is that we come back where we left off. They're also incredibly laidback, witty, and will chat about anything under the sun as I will. I love that we tease each other and joke about things, that we don't harp at each other or exclude someone for a perceived slight, or make the environment feel oppressive under the weight of moods or shadow of arguments. From one of my close friends: "It's what a lot of people are hoping for but don't have the right mix of either people or skill sets to foster it. Nor the willingness to admit it isn't about a constant buzz all the time. It's about the feelings your members have for the place and one another. We all get on and can spend hours just talking, playing around, but we bond. When we write? it's better because of bonding." One of the important things is that we emphasize that we're in this for the writing more than we are for the playing. We don't control how often they can post, how many characters they can have, and what sort of plots they can run. The reason for this is because we wanted this to be a shared experience and treat everyone as equals. As partners in crime. As adults. I really think this is what makes it feel like a community and not just another game. There are a few things we don't allow -- like you don't get to decide if the writers don't have a life because they want to write or make snap judgments on their preferences in plots they want to do.

Hey Elena, Just perusing the blog section of RPG Initiative and saw this post. I totally get this desire for community. It's one of the reason's I restarted my site -- to try to build that kind of community I experienced there years ago. It's hard though. Everyone has an idea of the specific way they want things to be, the way of doing things, etc. It seems roleplayers are extremely subdivided. On top of that, what you're describing and what I also like requires people to like to write, not just "play" as an imaginary person. You remind me of me, in that I want to write, to focus on creating a good story, to do it with a community. I'm not as into "discussing" what we're writing ahead of time as it seems you are. Typically, I enjoy the mystery of seeing where the story goes when steered by a group. It's different than what I would have planned out, or they would have planned out, or what we would have planned out together. There is a kind of expectation of the unknown. I love that. But yeah, it is hard to find people to share in community. It's a slow process, and people come and go.

I don;t think so. All are fiction, but not all are fantasy. There is historical fiction and historical fantasy. As long as I don't have mermaids, amazons and countries which don't exist on the map, it is not fantasy, but historical fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy Here also it is shown that fantasy is a subgenre of the fiction, but not all fiction is fantasy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres#Genre_categories:_fiction_and_nonfiction Fantasy – fiction with strange or otherworldly settings or characters; fiction which invites suspension of reality So yes, as long as the reality is not suspended, it exists "real life" fiction...

With lizards, you usually sex them by looking at the pores. Since their babies can be tiny, this requires a jeweler's loupe and you can get females presenting false pores or just none at all. It's a pain, so most are sold unsexed or after they've begun to show (in males, this means BALLS! In females, more pore definition.) The balls are actually their hemipene, (they get two dicks!) Reptiles don't pee in the usual fashion. They pass urate, like birds. Dry white bits with their feces. Here's a guide on sexing cresties: Here's a less complicated one: All the geckos in those images are old enough to show an obvious bulge. It's harder when they're ~2-4 inches big and have no desire to sit still!

That is normal. The site is a living thing, and it belongs to those who write actively. If you have been aside, you didn;t have a vote on the current affairs. And if you return, you are welcome, but your hiatus had been long and people might fear you are going to vanish again. Some are newer. Some don't remember you too well...

Aww Froobyoob, I feel for you- but this made me laugh!

Girl, you're the Blob Slayer! My dreams are nothing compared to this. XD I have these delusions of grandeur where I'm epically doing drum solos and erryone is moshing to it.

What the heck do you do to get these nightmares?!?! (I'm sorry but that's kind of hilarious.)

Great article. I would also like to comment that if this sort of thing happens a lot, perhaps it may be more advantageous to think about what is happening. Are you as a person becoming too close-minded and intolerant of others who may be different? Is someone trolling your site and sending around ill-fitting people? Is your advertisement sending the wrong kind of message?

I'm pretty certain the only reason I didn't scream was because I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing xD My brain just short-circuited

I would have screamed if I walked into the kitchen at 3 AM and SOME STRANGE MAN WAS SITTING IN MY KITCHEN.

Second kay, laughed way too hard! LMFAO!

It's strange how saying some things actually get you to let go of those things, like they have some sort of energy you've kept for so long and then you give it air and it ... goes off on its own? It becomes something else, not even necessarily negative anymore but positive at times. Also, you're never boring. I'm reading your stuff and you're not boring at all.

I feel another, vital question to consider is whether or not you have the time to dedicate to the sites. Not only how much you need to dedicate, but whether or not you will be satisfied giving both sites the attention you feel they deserve and whether or not you would be okay with one being put on the backburner and potentially suffering for it because another needs focus. Can you manage multiple sites (presumably on your own) while still having time to work, sleep, have a social life off the computer, pursue other interests, eat, and take care of yourself? Sites are needy creatures.

I went through all these checks when making a new site, in 2013. I went, I made it, all the time I was seeking for a co-administrator, I didn't find a reliable one (yes, a few said they wanted to run the site with me... but without actually doing anything more than, in a couple of occasions, create a character and writing 2-3 posts with it - but the others hadn't even finished their characters, not to say about taking part in worldbuilding or anything else). In the meanwhile I wrote all the documentation needed, I had it ready to be opened... And it never opened because I have never found a co-administrator to run it with. Not even members. I would have been fine with a membership of 3-4 reliable people; this kind of site, how I had thought it, would have been doing well as long as there were 3-4 people willing to write a Viking story together. I made a plan of action, I stuck to it, my ongoing site had never suffered because of this. I told my members that I was opening it, I would have loved them to come to the other site too, but it didn't happen. So... my Viking site never opened. And I am still wondering about something else, related - if it never opened, I can't say it died; so is it a failure or not, for me as administrator?

You are very welcome @Elena I figured that you could use a cool one. I based it on the calendar image I made for your site.

Thank you very much for everything. Including for the nomination and for making me a blog cover <3

Wow. All book stores must be wrong. I will inform them immediately (j/k as I know people always think I am being serious). But yes: it is common to file fantasy under scifi, so if that's your take on it, I can live with that. You could make it easier on people to just rename scifi to scifi/fantasy, like we had in the book store. Never confused the customers we had. In fact, it made it easy form people to cross over from hardcore scifi to fantasy, because it does require the same mind set and suspension of belief. (But seriously: this would make a very very nice subject of study, for high school essays or even uni lit studies. Go! Write it!)

@Blackjack Bart The separation is there, that is why you can select multiple genres that your site can fit into. If someone wants a Tolkien type site they would simply choose "Medieval Magic". The way we have the genres is you can choose up to 3 categories that your site fits into and they are displayed so if they have a "Sci-Fi" with Aliens you choose "Sci-Fi" but they also have elves and what is defined as "fantasy" elements as you are describing they can also choose the era and magic so if it were a modern site it would be "Modern Magic" if someone filters by either they will get that site but they will also see that it's not just a Sci-Fi or a Modern Magic site but a combination. This is to help with exposure of sites that don't fit under a single genre we are just defining why the word Fantasy was replaced with Magic. For me when I see "Sci-Fi Fantasy" I don't think elves and vampires. I think of technology, space and maybe aliens which still fits under the "Fantasy" aspect above described so when someone is looking for a "Fantasy" it's not descriptive when Fantasy spans so many genres in different aspects and can get really muddy as to it. This is actually part of why we are doing it this way. While Sci-Fi can include Magic it's not 100% inclusive but a Sci-Fi can be a Fantasy (aka aliens and space colonies etc) but not include any magic. The broadness of the term can be crossed so easily it's nearly like saying "it's an RP" when it comes to defining a genre as "fantasy". We don't want that. We want the sites to be defined by what they have.

Being that the confusion comes from people putting "fantasy" without any other delimiter is the problem and since multiple types of "fantasy" can fit under the umbrella we are nixing it as a used genre term. By removing it as a genre we are simply making a more focus based genre setting instead of allowing an all encompassing term.

The debate can go either way. Even if it "can happen" in real life it's still a fantasy, an imagining of "what could happen" therefore, "not real life". We exclusively made sure that the fantasy was changed out with "magical" and thus fitting the difference that you are pointing out. In your example, if you were a Historical with Mermaids you would be a "Historical Magic" setting and not just a "Historical" setting. This is there as there is a real blur to Fantasy and it's meaning and it is thrown around too regularly to be clear. We're making a clarification on what it means here and why we do not use it in our listings.

The conclusion is that we could go along well, sharing the fascination about Vikings, Byzantium and Alienor of Aquitaine... <3 However, I can talk more about weapons, literature and other historical details (besides maritime discoveries too) than fashion. I don't know about any Reign, I don't think it was broadcasted in my country, but I know that I can say only roughly about the period of the clothing when I see it. Yes, I don't want to see a Roman toga or a knight's armour in the 18-th century, but I can't say which clothing is appropriate for Tudor era and which for King Charles or any of the King Georges which had followed.

Thank you very much for writing this! I love Vikings too, and I know their longships were made to enter the narrowest shoals and rivers. And many Vikings of noble families had been schooled by serving as squires to knights of the more established areas (Rus knezates, German town states, etc.), or as Varangian guards in the Byzantine Empire. As for rights... one should listen to an Althing meeting to see how it was about rights... of course they had, and the Althing was busy to judge and to make justice, its decisions being sometimes the banning of the wrongdoer...

A wonderful depiction of a Christmas Day. By reading it, I was transposed in that athmosphere of an American (or British, but I think American, because he said Santa, not Father Christmas) Christmas holiday. I loved them both, Chase for the mastery of describing a five years old's antics and Chance for knowing the responsibility of being a big brother, protective and indulgent at the same time. I love your writing.

Might be. I have never experienced this very much aimed towards general planners. I think unless someone is doing what I mentioned, single-handedly planning everything without allowing input from their partners, it's just rude and petty to say that. After all, most people have a vision and like to have a general idea about how to reach it. And most people are flexible and know that sometimes the story will take its own path and not go 100% according to plan.

As I saw it, it is an attack on the planners in general. I think people can plan in 2-3 or more, depending on the thread, and arrive to a common agreement which suits them all. Yes, sometimes a person can have a scene in his mind, and in that case he should communicate with the others and listen to their ideas as well. Usually several people's ideas enhance the scene. In other times, we write your scene how you see it, you'll write next ween another scene how we see it. It's always about mutually interesting stories.

I would say people say this more often to people who completely disregard what their partner is doing? I have had one particular partner who would write long posts moving and speaking for my character without any kind of previous communication, because he wanted the story to go a certain way and if I didn't follow his script, he would just take matters into his own hands and move my character to do whatever he wanted. So, yes, if a person can't accept any minor deviation from the plot they have in mind and see their partner only as a tool to achieve what they want and not as someone who can and should have a say too, they would be better off writing a novel. I don't feel it's an attack on roleplayers as a whole, just on a specific kind of roleplayer?

If you do continue the story, Elena, I would love to see it! I do feel bad because I know I could have brought the site back to life if I'd just put in the effort, but I didn't feel the same drive I used to feel. I think I realized that administrating isn't really for me, and I'd rather be just a player. I'm sorry I didn't get to roll out much of the story. If you have any questions about it or anything, I'd love to tell you what I had in mind so that you can continue it.

I think there is a difference between liking a character and 'fangirling' over one if that makes sense. You simply approach it differently and keep it mostly to yourself. Where for others they might choose a pb because they think its hot, while you choose one because they fit well not because you might want to sleep with them. So I do not think you are a hypocrite as you do deal with it differently and there is nothing wrong with being a fan of someone, just don't shove it into someone's face.

If you really loved it, you can do your own celebration at home. Organise a costumed party, have fun watching a spooky movie... and your friends will thank you for the idea! It doesn't matter much what's celebrated or not in your country; anything is worth celebrating... because we exist, and an escape from daily routine is refreshing. Since I met my husband, who is into Oriental culture and civilisation, we keep celebrating Chinese New Year. It is our little celebration and it is fun...