The End of TGP

[Bob]

I don't know if people will even read this because my site has been long since abandoned, but the time has finally come that I officially end my website. Starting this website was one of the weirdest, but best decisions of my life. It started as a middle school project, but turned into a love for web design, computer graphics, story writing, and friendships.

My website went through a few urls before I finally started paying for goatpen.org with my meager wages at the grocery store or as a substitute teacher. That decision to buy my own domain was made on September 19th, 2005, so we are approaching 12 years of owning the site. The site, pre-goatpen.org, started in 2002. It has been a bit of an expensive hobby (approximately $100 per year), but it was money well spent because of how it changed my life.

HTML was my gateway drug into coding. I took a web design class in my junior college and learned how to write HTML by hand. That inspired me to learn C++ in college, which is essentially how I saved a computer science program at my school. It isn't a big program (yet), but an awesome teacher started an initiative to bring AP Computer Science to my school, but sadly passed away before completing a full year of it. We were going to abandon the program because we didn't have a teacher, but my experience inspired me to take on the class, despite never learning Java (which is what we use in AP CompSci).

This website is the reason for so many skills I am proud of. I am no artist, but I love creating graphics in Photoshop, which I learned almost entirely for the sake of this website. I love design and page layout and regularly create well-organized pacing guides and other important documents used to help keep me organized as a teacher. And despite being a pretty poor English student, I learned so much about grammar and story-telling with my silly little stories.

I share this publicly because the most important thing about the site are the people who kept me going. A few friends kept me going in the beginning, but then I found some new friends who were just amazing influences. KennyD and Embodied Despair kept me going with their comments in my guestbook, leading me to create this forum. They inspired me to keep the site going and to keep making it better and better.

At the end of 2004, a wild Fleckenstein appeared on my forum and I made my first lifelong friend over the internet, followed by Wyvern, my second, only a few months later in April of 2005. You two were a really important component during a rough part of life. As with most people, high school graduation meant that most of my friends parted ways. I kept in touch with a couple, but I was more or less on my own at that point. We all had our own things to do, so I saw a couple people at school, sometimes in class, but it was generally just me alone most hours. But when I got home, I would turn on DreamWeaver to work on my website and turn on AIM to chat with you guys. Chatting with you guys while working on my website was often the best part of my day. And, between 3 new schools (high school, junior college, 4-year college) and a few jobs, it was really nice to have something stable in my life. So thank you both for everything. Long live the trio! Thanks for being such good friends! You even came to visit me and one of you even lived with me for a year!

Even though my site never took off, it turned out that it really changed my life outlook. When I first started my site, I was hoping to get thousands of hits and really take off in the FF nerd community. I tried a few things to get visitors to my site, but when my handful of fans became my handful of friends, I started to really value deeper connections over more connections. It was great getting to know all of you: nobodyspecial, agent0042, bloodfestbutterfly, countlieberkuhn, and all the rest! It's been a long time since I've used your forum names since I know you guys by your real names now--I read all of your stuff on Facebook, I just rarely comment and basically never post (hope to change that someday, but just too busy...). And now, as a teacher, I really see the impact of these deep connections as I get to know my students on more than a superficial basis (the ones I can anyway--200 students per year is a lot!).

So long story short: thanks for sticking with me over all these years! This site has been a part of my life--more than 15 years, almost half my life! But as much as I hate to see it go, it is time. It has been inactive for about two years and wasn't seeing much activity before that, so it's time to pull the plug. I'll still keep the forum up and running and I'll always be around on Facebook (just quietly lurking for the most part, but maybe I'll get more active there someday). So cheers and thanks to all my friends here! Thanks for the support! Thanks for the Mallboro! Thanks for the blitzball simulation! Thanks for everything! I wish you all the best! You're all awesome and I've always considered you all as part of the TGP team! Go team! Woo team!

[wyvernxk7]

Oh, Bob, I'm not crying... You're crying.

[Bob]

We can both be crying!

EDIT: Err, NOT crying!

EDIT 2: Err...umm...!

[Bob]

And it's done. goatpen.org no longer exists. Sad day for the world... Well, our world anyway.

[wyvernxk7]

...It's been real, goatpen.org!

[Dale]

All of these acknowledgements . . . yet I get none?! So that's how it is?!

[Bob]

Hey Dale! Its been a long time since I've heard from you--figured you were done with the site. You were definitely a big part of my website life, too, just didn't think you'd even log back on. You've helped me become a better writer by proofing my stories and giving suggestions. You helped me understand the technical aspects of writing and how to make sure my writing retained my personal voice and tone while also following (enough) grammar rules to make sure the common reader could follow my crazy plots and writing structure. I could always count on you to give feedback and let me know how things looked from an outside perspective. Thanks for reading my stories and taking all of that time to help me improve them, not to mention all of the summaries, SOEs, and general website support!

[Fleck]

I feel awful that I visit so infrequently these days that I missed this wonderful post by a month and a half. I can't even really use the excuse that I'm busy, I'm just lame.

This website, these forums, and you guys have had such a massive impact on my life that honestly, if I had that What-If Machine from Futurama and asked it "What if I'd never stumbled upon the Goatpen?" I'm sure that the course of my life would be so wildly different (and most likely worse) as to be almost unrecognizable.

I was in high school when I found this weird little website from a totally unrelated Google search (Bob knows the history ). I didn't know much about fanfiction in general, but I was several years into my Final Fantasy obsession and found Bugging Sephiroth to be one of the most hilarious things I'd ever read. I quickly caught up to the most current chapter and then told all my FF-loving friends (and some non-FF-loving friends) about this awesome website and this hilarious story but I could never get anyone to muster more than a "oh that sounds nice."

I came to appreciate Bob's humor both in the stories he wrote and in his front page news blurbs. I was always too scared to sign the guestbook, so when Bob added the forums, I quickly signed up. I figured Bob was probably some ultra-cool kid who rode a Harley to school and dated all the cheerleaders (and some of the teachers) and wouldn't have any time to deal with a misfit runt from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. But not only was Bob the coolest kid in school, he was also the nicest and quickly made me feel welcome and accepted, more so than anyone else I'd known in my life up to that point. As I grew more and more detached from the friends and people I knew growing up, Bob, Gabe, and all the other people on the forums became more important to me than anyone else.

Because I felt secure in my friendship with you guys, I finally worked up the nerve to stop hanging out with the abusive and selfish friends I'd known from childhood and just commit myself to having only internet friends. It was sometimes weird when people would ask me who my friends were and I'd have to tell them that yes, I met them online, no, I had never actually met any of them in person, and yes, I was pretty sure none of them were murderers.

Due to the confluence of my continued inability to be a normal, functioning adult and Bob being a good guy who needed a roommate, I actually got to meet you guys in person and live in California like a cool kid! That year in California changed a lot of things and began me on the path that I still continue down towards this day.

And just when I thought I couldn't have more people willing to stick their necks out for me, along came Amy, who took me into her home and let me stay with her for WAAAAAAY too long when I was at one of the worst parts of my life. I would have probably never known her without this website, and I genuinely don't know how I would have made it out of that mess if she hadn't adopted me like a stray kitten. There's a lot of places in my life where things would have gone very differently without this website and you guys.

You guys were among the first people to be nice to me without ulterior motives. You were the first who appreciated my writing and weird sense of humor and encouraged me to continue with both. You guys helped me out when I was in trouble and put up with me for longer than most people would have. You guys were and are and always will be my best friends and the greatest people I know. I'm sorry that I've swung from being one of the most active participants of the site/forums to one of the least, but I promise to always check in as long as you guys are still around.

Stay awesome, friends.

[wyvernxk7]

So, I never put all my thoughts down in response to this post, opting only for the quick-candle and the (only partial) joke about crying up above. Perhaps I wanted to wait for Fleck to make his comment before posting my own as his tenure on TGPF preceded mine by a bit. BUT THE TIME HAS COME.

Oh man, The Goat Pen. My good friend Adam (who coincidentally just got married today [holy shitstank!]), was one of the first people to sign The Goat Pen's guestbook (under the username "Onewingedmadman"). He had pretty overbearing parents, but they grew used to me as I swung by his house frequently to hang out. We used to play video games on the regular, especially the PSX Final Fantasy games and Genma Onimusha for the Xbox (Oh my god, Ayame still creeps me out)... Anyway, who knows how he lucked across it, but he found "Bugging Sephiroth" and was awesome enough to share the story with me. Like pretty much all the other testimonies of TGP fans will say, I was hooked.

It was the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005 and I was, for the most part, painfully shy in social situations beyond a very tight group of friends. I was 17, and I literally had difficulty hanging out with any one group of people for more than a very brief period of time before the numbers overwhelmed me or my brain was laid out by social anxiety. I was not always in the most stable of places back then and I felt lonely all the time (despite my social fluidity and my fair deal of real world friends, the fear prevented me from connecting consistently) and in the middle of all that, The Goat Pen was this safe, moment-to-moment experience that I could have in the confines of my own home. Naturally, I gravitated to the forums and AIM (RIP), where I met these funny blokes: Bob, Fleck, and KennyD and quickly became acquainted with their quirky humor and generous, if at times appropriately guarded personalities. I spent so much of my teenage life engaged with these awesome people, sometimes for hours at a time. Chatting about Final Fantasy, rehashing life and how much it could suck or what the hell to do about one of the many things teenagers haven't gotten figured out yet, I was more open with Bob and Fleck than with anyone I'd ever known before (and by that time, I had already flunked out of one half-year relationship)... yeah, it seemed a little crazy, but also deliriously exciting to tell my worried family about the fact that, YES, there were other people out there like me who I had found a place with in this little sanctuary within my computer screen.

Way back, maybe two years before the forum, I had exchanged stories and musings with my mom via email between my bi-monthly weekends with her, and it had always been a great opportunity for me to communicate and stay close with her. I'd tried doing that with Adam a year before he directed me to Bugging Sephiroth, but it didn't last very long, as his interest waned quickly. However, after beginning to participate in some of Bob's collaborative story ideas on TGP, namely the spectacularly bizarre Squall Online Experiment (perhaps the absurd, extended universe we created for it is a large part of why VIII is tied for my favorite Final Fantasy game), I brought forth the crazy idea of making a wholly new story in the forums and the three aforementioned blokes were all in! Holy crap! Suddenly, I had my own little writing team making up stories and experiences for the barely-formed characters I had originally conceptualized a year prior. I spent this October rereading what became known as The Goat Pen Underground Story Factory and alternating between laughing and cringing. For over a decade, I hadn't really reread the story we made, because I think part of me knew it was a cherished sum of mediocre parts. It took me a long time to be able to look back at it objectively, in other words, because I didn't want to reduce it to the story. It was always more than a story to me.

I loved traveling with my dad growing up, taking to the road and exploring the wide open country. By the time I was an adolescent, the opportunities for us to do that were all but gone and my dad spent an inordinate amount of time (considering he was the only other member of our house) in the next town over with his long-time girlfriend. By with the story I was compiling with Bob, Kenny, and Fleck, I could hop out of my own stagnant reality and take a road trip any time. There's a reason so much of Ipsen and Trix is tied to the fate of Ipsen's car and why Trix is always searching out the adventure and excitement of "Vacation:" they could go where I couldn't. They could talk freely and challenge fate with catastrophic or humorous results when I couldn't. The characters had started out as facets of me and became their own people when Bob, Kenny, and Fleck (especially Bob and Fleck) invested themselves into their behaviors and adventures. Through the story we made, I was able to connect with others on a different level than I ever had before. That was what Ipsen and Trix always meant with me: for better or worse, it was an amazing chance to spend time with two of the best friends I've ever made in the 30 years I've been alive.

I was fortunate enough to have parents who were laissez-faire/cool enough to indulge me when I came to them shortly before graduating High School and said, "I want to help my friend from teh internets move halfway across the country to California and meet our other friend from da innanet!" Who knows how crazy I must have seemed, but, miraculously, I was able to convince them that my judgment was sound and I wasn't flying off to the midwest be abducted by strangers. Traveling across the country with Fleck was surreal and sometimes I didn't know what to say without the veil of the internet to provide a safe pause and filter, but the soundtracks I'd prepared for the ride and my ability to quickly(?) learn how to drive stick shift kept us moving and focused. And besides, we had this epic goal: the reach the mythic realm of The One True Goatbob, which we'd only heard about in fairy tales and hushed whispers. We had a crazy trip, driving through the endless flat of Iowa only to be met with what we were pretty sure was a night tornado (though it might have just been an insanely bad storm... I have video of it though: lightning going off every two seconds, both of somewhat convinced we were going to die). To really drive the point home, we spent that night sleeping in the car in the middle of a graveyard. The next day, the flat land continued through Nebraska before we hit the Rockies and realized that the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack was pretty much the best damn thing to complement the gargantuan mountains that were suddenly all around us. And finally: California. Being in the same place as two of my best friends in the whole wide world meant more than just about anything at that point in my life (and by then, I'd already failed out of a second 9-month relationship). AND, I was lucky enough to get to do it AGAIN a YEAR LATER! I've visited 49 of the 50 states, and I'm happy to say that I checked off 48 and 49 in Fleck's car as we drove away from California and through Oregon and Washington. Holy crap, most of the things I can remember clearly about my late teens revolve around The Goat Pen in one way or another.

Somewhere along the line, when you have had such a consistent experience of being able to come home to people who seem to always be around and speak consistently (even though it's through text) and with a constant, tangible core of friendship, you begin to understand that you're not just a piece of shit... that you're worth spending time with... that people will stick with you even through the times you can be a dick (and if you look back, I started a bit adversarial to Fleck on the forums and had more than a few interactions with some users that were less than fun and perhaps over the line on both our parts)... and you learn that you have a place in the world. Maybe that's not a universal experience, maybe I was just lucky enough to see it that way, but I owe a lot of who I am now to who Bob and Fleck were to me then: ambassadors from the big empty world who held out their hands with the unwavering grip of friendship.

Over the years, other cool people - NS, Amy, and the Count - gravitated to our little online safe house, and it continued to be incredibly gratifying to know that there really were more of us out there! The exchange of ideas, friendship, and story games they all added to only enriched an already great experience.

Man, I've gone way down the self-reflective side of things without even delving into Mallboro and the Blitzball league, both of which kept us crafting collaborative stories and hanging out with each other long after we closed the book on Ipsen and Trix. Not to mention the literal hundreds of games of chess Fleck and I played online! Boy, does the list go ever on.

In 2011, a year into my current relationship, I decided Brittany had lived enough of her life without seeing most of the country (she'd only been to three states! Ack!), and on top of that, I wanted her to meet some of the most important people to me in the deal, so we traveled across the US in a 24-day extravaganza. About a week of that trip was spent in the presence of Bob or Fleck, and again, it was surreal and great. In 2013, we moved down to Austin, and Amy was gracious enough to host us for the night on our way down, despite having never met us before. Yet again: validation in my belief in friendship and in the goodness of people (at least the people I knew!).

That brings us to 2017, when TGP finally shut down. It truly signifies the end of that chapter of all our lives, but even now, as time and life have sent our focal points in different directions, I'll always know that somewhere across the country, I have absolutely incredible people as friends, and I'm forever grateful for a little bit of luck and a whole lot of BS for making that happen.

Thank you all. I love you (yeah, even you).

[KennyD]

Goatpen is the internet.