.:.Origins.:.

The origin of Keys is a pretty long story. It involved all of us in one way or another. It all started with my name and how I wanted to be a part of something that I thought was both personal and communal. I thought it looked amazing. And it started with our giving friend, Melissa who was willing to put it all on the line to give us all names. It�s all about the family: whether by blood or by friendship, which inspired the Keys.

This was broken into three parts, A Brief History of the Gens, Melissa�s First Hand Story and Continued History for ease of reading and organization.

A brief history of the Gens: What they were and their beliefs

First of all, one must understand the original Gens to understand the Keys. The original Gens we a creation of a girl named Trippy, also called Astrima. She was their leader and everyone in her group was given a name that included a color and an aspect (like BLUE iNTELLIGENCE for example) Trippy was the only person allowed to be Red, Nights of the game was the only purple and Orange was reserved for another character from that game (Claris). The funky spelling was so it looked like the NiGHTS lettering of the game (all capitals with the I�s lowercase) Except for a few of the Gens leaving (Pink and Cobalt, who thought she needed to grow up and not be so controlling), everything went well. She had a website that she met a lot of people on and made some of them Gens too. This is where Melissa comes in. She was made ORCHiD RYTHYM by Trippy. Then the main communication line, the forums, was closed down because Trippy said she it was too stressful to run anymore and didn�t want to let anyone else be the administrator. She also said no more Gens would be created (there were over 100). It saddened a lot of people because the closing was pretty random and it was a second home for many people, so Melissa created the Keys which were almost a mirror of the Gens to continue on the tradition and share the creativity. She also designed ORCHiD, which pissed off some people because it was Trippy�s thing. I personally thought it was cool she worked hard on her Gen�s /Key�s designs and who were they to tell her she couldn�t design her own soul? Then I started thinking, well, we can do better. We can be more creative than just copying the Gens. So we removed the rules: No primarys/secondarys, no odd spellings, yes to animals characteristics and powers that don�t relate to your Key (Such as Geranium could have dark powers opposed to just plant-like/earth powers)

This is Melissa�s reaction and her story of how the keys were created

�Once upon a time, there was a girl named TRiPPY. TRiPPY loved NiGHTS Into Dreams, a game about dreams and creativity. One night, she dreamt that her friends were dream creatures and saved her from a nightmare. To thank her friends, she created the Gens, dream creatures that personified her friends. Each Gen had an aspect and a color - for instance, TRiPPY was iNFRA-RED BRAVERY. TRiPPY created a forum for the Gens to talk and meet one another. She began making many, many people Gens, until there were nearly a hundred. Perhaps it was because there were so many now that she began to realize she had lost the meaning behind the Gens. So she closed the forum... the second home of many of the members. One member was named Mewtaila. Two days before the closing, she was named ORCHiD RHYTHM. Mewtaila loved the gift of her Gen's name very, very much. When the forum closed, she was torn apart. She decided to design her Gen to alleviate her sadness, but that only made things worse. She was cast out of Gen-dom for designing her own Gen. So she began making her friends Gens... a token of friendship from her to them, honoring their bond of friendship and keeping the lore of the Gens the same. An homage to the "real" Gens. However, she knew she could not keep calling them "Gens" forever, and her friends helped her realize this. So one night, oRCHiD, DoVe, GeRaNiuM, and SaPPHiRe created the SouL SPeCTRuM. They decided that the residents of the SPeCTRuM would be the KeYS to their souls. The KeYS would be given a name and a color, but they could either design their KeY or ask for oRCHiD or GeRaNiuM to design them for them. The KeYS would not be cast down for wanting to design themselves.�

Continued History

We introduced new Keys to the family. Obsidian, Platinum, Peridot, Sunlight, and Snow. It went on for a while and then, I asked Melissa what she thought of taking all the rules away. No primarys or secondarys ,which were at that time, symbols of hierarchy. No required colors or powers. No funky spellings (consonants capital, vowels lower case). No assigned colors. No requirement to be a humanoid. Everyone could do what they wanted; she thought it was a good idea. I always valued originality. I didn�t want our special friendship symbol to be a mirror copy of something else didn�t turn out so well, or for some people or be dictated by others. I thought �It�s your soul, you do whatever the hell you want!� :D and that�s how it should be. So we pretty much let everyone do as they please. A few of the rules remained such as a power limit (5) and weaknesses (3), because no one�s perfect (no Mary Sues, plz) Everything else pretty much went up in the air, and that�s how we like it.

We have continue adding to our family and I decided to create a new, better functioning, more enjoyable place to go for people who wanted to see what this was all about. I hope this is more enjoyable for people and everyone has fun here. <3

And that's the history

Note:

But we still respect out Gen history and Trippy, so don�t get the idea we hate them, because that�s not true. Melissa said there were many kind people on the forums, but we simply felt the need to have something closer and more personal with more freedom.