The Welcoming Committee

[Natalie]

Hi Wisdom! Welcome to CalRef! Let me know if you have any questions.

[Luca]

Welcome Silvian to the forum! 

[Emily]

Welcome Silvian :)

[Copyn]

Croeso Silvian!

[Natalie]

Welcome!

[Emily]

Welcome Sakana! It's nice to have you here :)

[Sakana]

Wanders in reading a book

What? How did I get here?! This isn't the library...

Anyway, hello everyone! My name is Fish or Sakana and I'm a college student. I use she/her pronouns and am here to insist that Luca is a wonderful person since she won't admit it >:(

This seems like a nice place and I can't wait to meet y'all!

[Luca]

Hi Fish, you are a lovely friendo!

*gives you a proper tea service*

Welcome to the forum 

[Emily]

Hi Fish it's so good to finally meet you! Luca has talked quite a bit about you and I was excited to meet you and you seem super nice!

*gives you a proper tea service*

Victoria has been redeemed!

[Natalie]

Hi Fish! Nice to meet you! What do you like to do?

[Sakana]

*gives you a proper tea service*
Welcome to the forum 

Thank you and thank you ^_^
It truly was the worst afternoon tea I've had.

Hi Fish it's so good to finally meet you! Luca has talked quite a bit about you and I was excited to meet you and you seem super nice!

Awwww  Hopefully they said good things O-o
I always avoid forums so the fact that I'm here makes me slightly uncomfortable, but I'll survive 

[Emily]

Is there anything in particular that makes you avoid forums? I mostly ask so that we can work on fixing whatever might be making you uncomfortable. You shouldn't have to suffer through things if you don't have to.

[Copyn]

Welcome welcome! Nice to see a fellow animal-named buddy
weird question but may I call you 魚? c:

[Sakana]

Is there anything in particular that makes you avoid forums? I mostly ask so that we can work on fixing whatever might be making you uncomfortable. You shouldn't have to suffer through things if you don't have to.

I wish I knew, but I don't. It's probably that I'm just not used to forums in general. I can survive my forum phobia :p

Welcome welcome! Nice to see a fellow animal-named buddy
weird question but may I call you 魚? c:

Hahaha, yes. 魚 is fine. The name actually comes from someone named Qish, but I have gone by Fish for a really, really long time. Fish turned into Sakana when I needed a username!

[Copyn]

Woo! More excuses to use Japanese

[Sakana]

Woo! More excuses to use Japanese

Who says you need an excuse to use Japanese?! Just speak in Japanese all the time and I'm sure that someone will eventually come along and go "Oh my gosh, I actually understand what you're saying!"

[Emily]

I once had a friend who went by Okami online, and then someone shortened it to Kami and she didn't realise that was god or deity in Japanese, and went with it for a while. Once I pointed it out to her in 2007, she kind of had a miniature freak-out because she's super-duper religious and was suddenly faced with the fact that she'd gone by the term "God" online for like two years.

Anyway I had nothing to add. I once went by Silver Fox in Abenaki, because a friend of mine at the time was part of that First Nation tribe and sort of coined that name for me. Wôkwses Wibegwigo, she was M8lsem Sezowozo. But that's the only time I've ever really gone by an animal name online. I think it's neat.

[Sakana]

I once had a friend who went by Okami online, and then someone shortened it to Kami and she didn't realise that was god or deity in Japanese, and went with it for a while. Once I pointed it out to her in 2007, she kind of had a miniature freak-out because she's super-duper religious and was suddenly faced with the fact that she'd gone by the term "God" online for like two years.

That sounds like an awful experiance for her. Did you know that was what it meant the entire time?

Anyway I had nothing to add.

Lies I say! All of that was things to add!

I once went by Silver Fox in Abenaki, because a friend of mine at the time was part of that First Nation tribe and sort of coined that name for me. Wôkwses Wibegwigo, she was M8lsem Sezowozo. But that's the only time I've ever really gone by an animal name online. I think it's neat.

That's really interesting. Were you saying it was neat to use an animal name or are you talking about the name you went by?

[Emily]

I actually didn't know what Kami meant during that time. I had heard of the historically most famous Japanese word to North Americans, anime manga otaku hentai kamikaze, and I knew that meant "divine wind", but I didn't put together the fact that kami in that and the standalone word kami meant such a broad array of words.

I think that using animal names for your username is a neat idea. Also, while I liked the one that she had more (it meant Painted Wolf, which was her official name within the tribe), I came around to appreciating the one I was given. I was a sort of naive teenager at the time though and was just happy to have someone who wrote nerdy RPs and played games with me, so I didn't realise I was being fairly well dragged into furry culture  I just thought it was neat that she drew us as these characters.

[Luca]

Oh my lord, there's so much to catch up on. I'm pretty sure I need to welcome HumanSanity, Ara, Jules, FLP, Dax, and Dyll to the site. The spam is already going to my thighs, but I'm very very happy you're all here. Hope we can live up to expectations.