 | This den community's story starts out in the Discovery Channel On-Line (DCOL) Nature Conversations bulliten board/chat room. At DCOL, a handful of people came together and started chatting as wolves in several wolf den threads. The concept was so exciting and so fun that it grew into a fairly large community... And branched into other animal groups, like unicorns, dragons, horses, even hyenas and lions. No one thought that anyone would object... We *were* talking about animals. In fact, we were talking *as* animals... Playing the roles so that we could understand them better. And yet... not everyone sees things your way. |
We were at our largest when the Webmasters of DCOL, mainly "Bonnie", told us we could only have 7 threads/dens for our role playing. Bonnie said it was off-subject to Nature Conversations, and if we tried to start up another thread, she would shut it down. Soon after that, we were shut down to two threads. Wolf Pack Alpha and Wolf Pack Omega. Then came Bonnie's announcement... The cyber wolfing would not be tolerated. The DCOL community was to be extinguished, and no pleading from the c-wolves would change her mind.
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If you cyber wolf, you might not have as close friendships as we at DCOL had. Meeting each other and cyber wolfing changed peoples lives, and though it seems unlikely, cyber wolfing had a profound effect on many of us. I didn't want to lose what gave us hope, and so I took action, and started a refuge for the cyber wolves. Without previous webpage experience or any idea of how I was going to accomplish it, I began the Everlasting Heart Territory. Now that I look back, I realize that leaving DCOL might have been a blessing instead of a curse, like we all thought it was. Being threatened by being broken apart made us all appreciate what we had, made us not want to lose our friendships more than anything else, it made us all closer together. Then we moved to the Everlasting Heart Packs, which was heavily under construction but was still our home. |
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Life resumed in the Everlasting Heart Packs... And kept growing. We continued to grow until we were even larger than we were in DCOL, and the Everlasting Heart Packs turned into the Everlasting Heart Territory. There was a single problem with the Territory... Unlike DCOL, no one at the Territory had a rank. There were no Alphas, Betas, or Omega wolves... Everyone was equal, but there was only one Webmaster. Me. There was peace for a time... And then when I tried to change things back to the way they were in DCOL... Things got messy.
After awhile I saw that the only way we could get any kind of the comradeship and closely knit ties we had at DCOL... Is if there was another crisis. And if I had to start that crisis to make them work together to continue on, I felt it had to be done. So I destroyed the Everlasting Heart Territory. Against all of the pleadings of the cyber wolves I cared for with all my heart, I shut it down. Yet I still believe it had to be done. And even though many of my wolven friends despise me now, I still think I did the right thing.
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So the cyber wolves of the Everlasting Heart Territory began the New Everlasting Heart Territory. I am proud of them, even though I feel that I can not show my face around them. They proved once again that no matter what we come up against, our hearts will go on, with each other. Sometimes when you lead, you see people differently than others. I saw my friends drifting apart from each other, losing the meaning of the Everlasting Heart Territory. Sometimes when you love someone, you have to sacrifice any privlidges of that love, so that they may find happiness. That is exactly what I did. From endings, though, bring new beginnings... Now that I shut down the Everlasting Heart Territory... I am rebuilding my site. A new game, co-existing in the real world. No longer the same old DCOL, EHT, or NEHT. |
Zodiac, former Webmistress of the Everlasting Heart Terrritory & current Webmisstress of the Ruins of the Heart