User blog:Avalair/Who exactly is Firebreather1210?

Hello (...it's me )

Jk haha, I suck at starting blogs but I feel like I needed to do this so yeah, here I go.

For those of you who don't know me, I am Avalair. I am a Chat Moderator, Discussions Moderator, Patroller, and Rollback on The LEGO Message Boards Wiki. Most of you probably have always known me as a CM, however there are some of you oldies who knew me since I first joined, and some others who knew me as a user on the Message Boards, the place that started this all. Firebreather1210 was my name on the boards, in case you were wondering, although I try to not get that out into the open because there are some people from the message boards (and offline) who I would prefer not to know about my existence here. I joined the boards on May 8th, 2013, which happened to be the birthday of the special friend who introduced me to the boards. I was a decent user on the LMBs, posted mainly in chatrooms and roleplays, wasnt really too well known but nonetheless I had quite a few friends. Then, not even 5 months after joining the place, I had decided to Google the LMB name of my friend in hopes of getting to the Message Boards. (I had lost the website for whatever reason, I was 13 years old and it wasnt that hard to type in "LEGO.com", but thats how it happened.) And thats when I discovered my special friend's page on LMBW, and I said to myself "You've got to be kidding me, there's a wiki dedicated to The LEGO Message Boards," well I had shortly discovered a mistake on my friend's page and, being the perfectionist that I am, decided to fix it. For some reason that led to me making an account September 15, 2013. I began editing, not following MoS of course, which caused me to get alerted by a special friend of mine, GideonF210, that there were special rules to editing pages. Thats when I discovered the small space on the internet that would suck away all my time for the next 3 years and counting... That's right, chat! I had logged on chat expecting to see my pal Gideon, hoping that he would be able to explain this stuff to me because poor old 13 year old Ava just wanted his friend's page to look good. Unfortunately Gideon was not online, instead I was greeted by a special user named Aravis. (Not linking cause IDK about her rules and stuff) Aravis was kind enough to tell me about LMBW Chat and she gave me a very good first impression of the place, though my questions about editing were never answered. I soon went back to the LMBs because I lost interest in the place, and just like that I forgot this place. Well, come March of the next year (2014 in case you forgot), I had noticed some users in Brickbook discussing some place they referred to as "YKW", when questioned, they explained that this meant "You know where" which barely cleared up anything for me at all. Well somehow it slipped past the mods that this meant the Wiki. I soon had remembered this place but realized the cost of some of my friends discovering this place as I had known the dangers of the Internet, especially a live chat room full of teenagers. Despite this, I had made a new account which was called Avalair. Do not ask about the origin or meaning of this name, neither of which I can explain. The only thing I know is that I used it as a passcode on my iPod at a point in my life (or at least something similar) and it became the inspiration for my username.

Well shortly after making this account, another two special friends of mine had found me on here. Both of which were high ranked users on the Message Boards at times and I looked up to them. They had both respectively left messages on my wall welcoming me here and I had began long quote chains with them as if this were the MBs. Well one day one of my friends had invited me on to chat. I went on, he wasnt on so instead I met Aok. He seemed nice enough. He was a mod at the time and like any new user I spammed the zany and plentiful emotes that this place had, so he told me to PM him and we could spam there. He and I, and this is one of my favorite memories of this place, spammed emotes for 30 minutes. We just had a PM and spammed the 300 emotes and were finding out all the secrets, and it was a blast. Well my friend never got on so I had to leave. eventually my friend got on, but that isn't important to me and none of the other things with him or the other one were, at least not to me. It was a sour time in my life, despite my new rediscovery of the Wiki, whether I showed the pain I was going through or not.

Well for the months of June and July 2014, I had been on chat for 4 hours straight and then some every single day of the week except for Sundays. I remember voting for Alemas as an admin even though I had no idea what I was doing, and having mixed feelings about other strange users who I had never seen on the MBs before. During these two months I have so many memories, from meeting one of my closest friends (who I still absolutely love talking to), to spamming Frozen lyrics at 4:30 AM when no CMs are on. I also have a memory of being the only user online along with Agent Spy at 5:30 PM on a Sunday and a troll comes on and begins exclaiming how he "craves to do terrible things" to me. I was horrified when he was banned so I waited a few days before I came back on. This instance made me realize that I might have the potential to become a Chat Moderator. Boy, was that a life-changing decision. I honestly still don't know how I possibly got 20 supports. I was a 13 year old who hadn't even joined a year ago, I barely talked in main, and not even that many people knew I existed. But somehow, just barely, I got 20 supports and 2 opposes on my RfCM. And on July 22, 2014, Agent Spy promoted me to a Chat Moderator and Alemas shared words I will never forget; "Well Ava, here's your star. Don't let it become a decoration," because, at that time, the concern was not if you abused your rights, it was if you didn't use them. Hah, how times change...

Well, for the first few months of me having my rights I was pretty good with them. I banned, kicked, participated in the community events, made so many great friends, and realized how spectacular of a place this was. Then came October and school had started and I was having a difficult time keeping up with LMBW, the LMBs, and schoolwork at the same time. I cut out the former two mostly out of my life until about January, with occasional pop-ins here and there. I returned towards the end of January/beginning of February 2015, around this time. I had noticed new users and I happily welcomed them and such, made new friends, including Codyn329, who had a huge influence on me. It was Cody who got me interested in programming, and now its one of my favorite hobbies. (Though lately, I've been lazy about it) I also met Spiderman and Lunaicus and Vonness11 who introduced me to the wonderful world of anime. I became good friends with some of the admin team and aspired to join them someday.

Through the next few months I had begun to go through some difficult times offline as well as online. I realized that a friend who I had looked up to and trusted was reflecting negatively on me, as a person. Stunting my emotional and mental growth, if you will, though I hold no hard feelings towards him or anyone else who was involved but I had to get away from that because I was becoming someone who I was not nor wanted to be. I did not handle the situation well. How could I? I was a sheltered 14 year old who was given power on an internet chatroom full of teenagers and young adults. However, that is not entirely to blame for what's coming next....

Some of you may remember the worst time of my life online, you experienced it with me because I brought all my problems to you guys and you had to suffer because of what I was becoming. I was easily the worst Chat Moderator on the team and I thought I was the best. I won't get into too much detail, but I was a homophobic sexist spoiled rotten brat with too much power. Someone disagrees with me? *Bam* you were kicked and harassed by me. I could not join chat without getting a PM from someone saying "You are a horrible person, I've told the admin team about you," and at that time it hurt me very bad. But how can you become a great person without experiencing a little pain? And though I disagreed at the time, I needed that. I needed that little shove and attack because that's how I was treating innocent users, except worse. I couldn't tell the difference between a troll and an innocent user, and as a mod, that's a problem. I was warned of demotion twice. Two more times than I should have been, but for some reason my behavior was not improving… It wasn't until a group of legitimate trolls made a compilation of just about all my failures as a mod. Reading through that was not easy, it even brought me to tears, because it took a bunch of trolls to show me the monster I had become. I'm rather close with those “trolls” now, which I find somewhat funny because there was a point in my life where my goal in life was to make them suffer and theirs was to annoy the snot out of me.

After that point I had tried my absolute hardest, no matter what it took, to bring my reputation back to the way it was -- no, even more than it was. I had met some amazing people during this time, including Slicer Vorzakh and Kira26 who have acted as my support team. I'm especially impressed with Slicer and what he has become. (Kudos to you, buddy c:)

That summer, a year after I was promoted, I really tried to improve. I got more involved in the community, lightened up a bit, but also got more mature. When October came around again I did have to go inactive for about 2 weeks due to school, then my activity was spontaneous, but come January 2016 I am fully active and enjoying myself and this wiki.

I have made friends offline but never have I found a friend I could trust and talk to as easily as my friends on LMBW. You guys rock and I love you all, I really do. Though it may sound silly, this place really changed me. I learned so so much and met so many amazing people. There's not one of you who isn't important, remember that. Every single one of you, including you, reader, has influenced me in some way or another so if you ever feel worthless just think about me, please, you matter to me and there is at least someone else out there who you matter to.

However, I did not write this unnecessarily long blog as a “you are special” speech. I wrote this so you could know more about me because typically I'm a closed book and there's so much inside of me that no one knows about. (However, I do warn you, you will probably regret PMing me because I am so boring. Like I stink at making conversation.)

I would also like to know what you think of me. If you've known me since I joined, have I made progress? Honestly anybody is welcome to just comment what they think of me and if I've improved and how I can improve further.

tl;dr: Basically I've been through a lot and I want to know what you think of me. This place was and is a huge part of my life and I will never forget any of you. I love you, and rock on.

~The one and only, Firebreather