And don’t forget the competing school, Teddy Fallon’s Academy for Extraordinary Children, now with 50% larger prison cells! 
(I’ll lead myself out)
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Oh Man, the Kemetic Hellfire Club of New York.
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Annnnnd now I’m imagining Teddy Fallon dressed as Magneto. 
But yes, I would also highly recommend just interacting with the Forum as yourself. We’re here trying to discover every day a little more about how magiq works together, as a team, and I think that’s best done from your own perspective (more or less).
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This is a really interesting thread because I hadn’t considered creating an in-world character. What I LOVED about the ad campaigns that lead me here (it was through Insta, for the record, @CJB, and those graphics helped seal the deal) was that they were basically saying “so you’re into witchy stuff? Come this way, please.” It was like getting the Hogwarts letter! So fun and immersive from moment one. It kind of felt like an invitation to come be myself, but through the forum format that I grew up on. #internetmillennials
I think the differences that I can foresee for my in-world play versus my “real life” is that my magiq will have slightly more visceral effects? I really do believe that our intention creates the world around us. I say little (non-religious) prayers over objects before I give them to people. But here, I think I could add a little glitz to my magiq. 
Also, I go by my full name here— Carlisle Rose— and in my everyday life I’m almost always nicknamed Callie. I love my full name, but it’s pretty long and can feel ultra formal sometimes, so I hesitate to ask people to use it. The online world can be such a freeing way to really be our truest selves! It’s always been pretty cool that way.
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professer bernsteins school for extraordinary magimystics
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I’ve been thinking about this post all day. I am extremely new here but was instantly sucked Into the story (almost done with TMP v.2), what drew me here were words I have uttered for years now. Magiq is missing from the world, erased and no one remembers. But there are those that do…the memory lingers and something just doesn’t feel right without it.
What I love most about this forum is that for the first time I’ve met people that get me, I’m not crazy or out of my mind. Fantasy, imagination, reality are all the same. What we perceive in the mundane is a snowflake on the metaphorical iceberg.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on how far would I go to uncover more of the Truth of why Magiq is gone from this world. I’ve felt all my life that my reason for being here on the planet right now is to help unlock Magiq again. In world, out of world, it’s all the same to me. I had been resolved to finding clues relatively on my own. To discover a whole community of folks that are pooling incredible skills, talents, knowledge, wisdom and intent sounds like a worthy force to challenge the powers that have held this world on magiqal lockdown.
I am extraordinarily grateful to be here right now. Really, this forum is helping me more in my life right now than many of you know and I am so appreciative.
And to answer the question I have asked myself all day, how far am I willing to go?
All the way. I have felt Magiq as far back as I can remember and I will stop at nothing to learn more. I will sacrifice any amount of ridicule, skepticism, judgement etc. to help bring Magiq back.
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hmmmmm… There isn’t too many differences between Skylad and myself (I think Sky is a little more up himself than I am, but other than that we’re one and the same. I think that my false bravado comes from the fact that I’m very much safely tucked away behind a screen)
The Mounties have all been introduced to my family at one stage or another (Skynan; who refers to the Mounties as my “Climber friends”) Skymum (She has gotten to the point where she can rattle off a few of the Mounties names) Skydad, Skybro, Skyneice (she’s just sooo yummy!!! And SkySIL (sister in law) and they are all very true to themselves (well my interpretations of them which becomes my reality of them 
)
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My in-world self has better hair…
That’s about the only difference.
Magic/q using teacher with a big library of useful books, a stash of plants for all occasions and lots of practical magic/q advice.
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I think I mentioned this in another thread (or at least hinted that when talking about Cagliostro and his abilities).
I’m not a fan of when we get to magical realism and suddenly, out of nowhere, fireballs are cast with a single snap and one can summon a tornado because they fancy doing so. Even Umbrella Academy is a pushover for me (like, don’t get me wrong, it’s entertaining but, at the same time, it’s not a path I’d choose for myself) (I think I should add that I still wait for my Hogwarts letter nevertheless 
)
I come from the family that, fortunately, gave me enough exposure to certain things (like my godmother divinating from normal cards or my grandmother surrounding herself with weird books), so I’d rather lean towards what was classified as the cunning folk in the English history. Yes, you can do things alone but it’s not gonna be on a massive scale. Just simple things like weather prediction or minor warding (and I swear to any holy being, if someone quotes The Good Witch, I’ll get annoyed :D). The bigger the spell, the more taxing it is - but once you enter Neithernor (or somewhere else - Cagliostro already showed it doesn’t have to be the only place) Maybe that’s why I loved the premise of the magiqverse?
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You’ve already gotten loads of awesome responses, but if you still want more I’ll add my two cents?
I literally chose my name to be my username when I joined because I thought that’s what we were supposed to do? (Then quickly realized others didn’t, but I never actually get to have my name on Internet forums so I wasn’t about to change it 
)
So if that’s any indication about how I didn’t feel a need to adopt any sort of persona, then I don’t know what is.
See, we’ve built ourselves this amazing little pocket of the inter-webs where we are free to be ourselves, create, explore, and support each other. Overtime we’ve accomplished some pretty crazy stuff, and I’m positive we’ll do even more in the future.
We spend our whole mundane lives wearing some sort of mask for other people, and one thing I’ve loved about making online friends is that there was never any of that.
You don’t stumble upon this community and feel accepted and feel the sense of belonging because you’re portraying who you wish you were. You as your individual and unique self is what connects to all this, and to all these fantastic people.
It’s a situation where you get what you put in. I understand that not everyone is comfortable being open about themselves online, or not everyone has really figured out who they are (I’m still learning everyday) and some people would rather use a persona, which is all fine and valid and totally okay. In my experience though, I’ve found using my feelings and beliefs - about the world, about people, about magic/q - to help you answer some of the questions of how you fit into all this makes you that much more invested in this community and what we create.
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So many good responses here, but I just wanted to chime in and say that I super relate to @Viviane and @Ginger here…I joined at the third assessment, so pretty late in the game. And I think in my “welcome thread” post I was pretty upfront about coming in through a social media ad. I don’t come from an RPG or tabletop gaming background, so it didn’t even occur to me to interact here as anything other than myself. I think there are definitely parts of my personality that are amped up, but maybe mostly because of the medium? Like, I’d say in person I’m usually quieter around people I don’t know, but since there’s no actual people in front of me on the forum, it’s easier to be silly and weird and “loud”. I think going through the narrative events of TMP/Secret Society has made me put a little more thought into how I write my reactions here, because it feels like I only tangentially went through some of this stuff? Like, for events I did the things that “Tinker” would have done ( sit in the dark in my bathroom with a lantern, on google hangouts, chanting at a soul storm ) but I didn’t physically experience the in-game consequences. So when a new spell opportunity or plot point comes up, I have to think through what someone who went through “Tinker’s” experiences would feel about this new thing…but it usually comes down to “if this happened to me, how would I proceed”.
…that was probably a whole lot of nothing new, but there’s my two cents
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I updated the wording in the Beginner Spellbook yesterday because it mentioned creating “your persona” on the forum and I think that might’ve been a little confusing.
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To be honest, this thread did not go where I expected but I love where it went. These responses are so well thought out and very informative about how the individuals of the community tick. I haven’t developed myself in-world yet but my username, Spina, is my last name and it means thorn in Italian. I was trying to set myself up to go either realistically or purely fictional. This thread makes me glad I didn’t paint myself into a corner.
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My username might be the surname of a self-insert from an HP fanfic, but is definitely the name of a town along I-75 in Georgia that has a giant cow statue outside a Dairy Queen on that exit.
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I will forever associate you with a cow statue and I thank you for it
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This has been a most helpful thread for my overly -anxious brain. Like @Spina I’m still sorting it out. I just finished Cosmos and Time so I feel I now have the full context for it all.
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I’m new to everything but if I had a choice between being myself or making an OC, I’d rather just be myself. The 15 year old Chicagoan who became a mountaineer by luck, or was it by fate?
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Hi, I’m new to this all, and having read this thread I feel like it’s definitely pushing towards being Me+ as the in-world persona. I’m not sure I can do that, for various reasons including bad memory (was that the real me or the magiq me who did that?) And also just habit.
Would it be okay to use a different name for my in-world persona? I don’t necessarily have to make a whole new character, but a different name would help me differentiate. I do enjoy character creation, and trust me, I know how to run a good npc, but if the vibe here is ‘self but magic’ would it still be chill to juggle a different name?
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Hey, @SabineBean - great question! In general, I’d say it’s pretty much up to you. Many of us don’t use our real names on the Forum. My name isn’t actually Viviane, but that’s how I refer to my “me + magiq” persona. A username change is a little different (we don’t typically allow that because it breaks @ mentions, etc.), but in terms of how people refer to you on the Forum, you can use whatever name or nickname you want (within reason and the Forum rules, obviously.)
Generally, when we say “self but magic,” that’s primarily in reference to the majority of details that inform our backstory and participation in the narrative elements of AGP storytelling. For example, Viviane lives near Washington D.C. and works in education research because those are things I do. The similarities make the roleplay feel that much more immersive and rewarding (e.g., “Sorry I’m late to help with casting this spell, I’m trapped on a train during rush-hour while the Metro is on fire” might actually be true), and has also helped us make some deeper connections through sharing our real-life circumstances (pets, hobbies, etc.)
Hope that helps! Feel free to respond here, or message me or a Guild Leader if you have other questions. 
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Somehow I missed this thread. To echo what Ginger said, when I started (Fragment 2) I had actually picked a ‘username’ like I did on every forum. After a few days I realized everyone around me was named Mike, or AlisonB, or some other ‘real’ name and I figured I’d try being ‘me’ as well. Edit so I changed my username to Robert.
And to echo what @Viviane just said I picked Robert because it’s technically me, but it’s a name I never use in real life (except with telemarketers so I can pretend I’m not home.) So it kinda fit the line between ‘fake’ and real me.
Basically Robert is (Bob + magiqverse belief + the tendancy to freak out at suggestions of changing history + a borderline unhealthy Lauren obsession). I’ve accumulated a few ‘character quirks’ over the years kinda organically.
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