My Place in Poptropica: Ylimegirl

This is the My Place in Poptropica story of Ylimegirl, a Poptropica player who helps out with the Poptropica Wiki and Orb Legend. See the bottom of this post for details on sending in your own MPIP!

You may or may not know me. I’m known as empressotime or Cuddly Eel on Poptropica and Ylimegirl or Ylime pretty much anywhere else. I’m an avid wiki editor, a cartoon watcher, and Poptropica player who is also working on a game inspired by said site. But before all that, I was just a young girl who enjoyed using the computer. (Cue flashback…)

Before 2011 | Internet Exploring

As a kid, when I wasn’t playing with my younger brother, I was on the computer. And I loved playing online. Some sites I remember were Barbie, Polly Pocket, Bob the Builder, PBS, and a lot more kid sites. I’m sure most of you know that in order to join an online world, you need your parent’s permission. Yeah, I didn’t do that. I had an email address from my parents, and I used that as my parent’s address. So I signed up for all of these worlds without their permission! Not that scandalous – because is it really that bad to have a secret account on the Barbie website, of all places? Probably not.

As as a sidenote, I discovered Wikia at some point around here, but didn’t edit much since you couldn’t join Wikia until you were 13, and for once I was actually paying attention to the age limit.

Late 2011-Early 2012 | Another Online World

It was fifth grade, I was eleven, and… to be honest, I don’t quite remember how I discovered Poptropica. All I know is I discovered it around the same time I tried out Club Penguin, and my best friend also played it. At any rate, I was in love. I beat the majority of the islands on one account, and then when I wanted to replay one… I simply made another account. And another. And another. And… yeah.

By the time the Restart Island feature was introduced, I had about seven different accounts. How I chose to only use my current one, empressotime? It was the only one I’d beat Mythology Island on… because the aforementioned best friend beat the River Styx portion I was terrible at getting past. When it came to Poptropica fanblogs, the one I used was Poptropica Secrets, and only that.

Throughout the rest of the school, Poptropica was gaining popularity because it was one of two, maybe three sites allowed by the school to be used in the computer lab. Due to this, going into said lab at lunchtime was often met with a multitude of blue screens. And since it was so popular, I was never able to claim a computer. Instead, I stood around, kind of like a creeper I guess? But I began to volunteer assistance to when people were stuck on islands, and people often started asking me to come over instead of me just popping over and giving unsolicited advice.

Unfortunately, sometime later Poptropica was, for some reason, removed from the list of OK sites, and I stopped doing that. Also, I think I might’ve looked at the Poptropica Wiki at one point. Maybe.

2012 | Continuation

I kept playing Poptropica, and at one point got a three-month membership that later expired, and I never bothered to renew. Around this point, my Poptropican looked crazy with the Gamer Girl goggles, the color-changing shirt, and green Betty Jetty hair.

But when SUIs were announced, they bugged the heck out of me, and I stopped playing since they were just so… glitchy and cumbersome, the audio was not engaging, not to mention that they barely fit on my laptop screen. It felt like many of the things that had attracted me to Poptropica had vanished in favor of being modern and cooler. And thus I was off the map (ha) of Poptropica for many years.

2013-2014 | Real Life

While I wasn’t playing Poptropica, I was still playing Club Penguin every once in a while. Sorry, I just really liked the Ice Fishing Game! I was also entering middle school and was dealing with emotional stuff of my own, so I was kept busy. I also got a Wikia account on the day of my 13th birthday, and started editing on various wikis often. I also ended up getting a Tumblr in February of 2013, a few months before my birthday, at the URL ylimegirl, then changed to agarnernon, and now it’s currently at sarcasrnspasrn.

Where am I going with this? Well, prior to joining Tumblr, I looked through the tags for information about the webshow Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse. I found out that apparently someone had discovered an advertisement for it on Poptropica, so I dusted off one of my accounts, EvilShapeShifter, and sent the account name and its password to the Dreamhouse blog thekyan. He used it to take the picture, and now that account is famous I guess. Also at some point during this, I released my extra accounts to the public with their passwords, so I have no idea what’s going on with them anymore.

2015 | Back and Better than Ever

One day while bored, I decided to check out the Poptropica Wiki, after trying to edit the Club Penguin Wiki earlier and abandoning it after getting annoyed at how daunting that task was. So it was natural that I just tried the next online interest of mine from four years ago: Poptropica. I found myself fixing redirects (generally my first order of business on any wiki I edit), combing through various pages to find grammar errors, and fixing up templates. I also naturally started playing Poptropica again, and that’s when I decided to make my current purple-themed avatar, for asexual as well as aesthetic reasons.

My hard work garnered the attention of Andrew Wiles, also known as HPuterpop – but I had no idea the importance of this dude since I hadn’t been in the Poptropica community for ages, and definitely not on the PHB. He ended up asking for my Skype, and we began talking about wiki-related stuff and then pretty much anything that came to mind. Turns out we have a lot in common when it comes to the shows we watch!

He eventually convinced Paul (Ultimate iPad Expert) to make me an admin on the wiki, and I worked a ton in CSS and overall theme design. When we ended up moving to Gamepedia, I helped implement Andrew’s art into the CSS. He also made my lovely avatar on Gravatar, and I came up with the name for the PoptropiComic. (Fun fact: Another name I tossed at him was “Island Poppin'”, you know, like “Island Hopping”, but with Poptropica? Yeah, it’s bad.)

My bigger achievements came later when I beat Early Poptropica on the re-release (when they added a World Champions Map)… at the impressive rank of #56. What I think is impressive is coming in fourth in the state of California! 😛 I also later came in third place for UiPE’s fanart contest (and now have a meme-faced Cuddly Eel to show for it) and came in *freaking 4th place* for the Champions Map race of Reality TV Island, which I did during lunch and was almost late to class for it (no regrets). Andrew can confirm, however, that I was quite stressed and sent a lot of garbled text at him over Skype. 😛

2016 | And beyond!

The PoptropiComic later became Orb Legend, and I talked to Andrew a lot about plotlines and future plans, as well as coded some of the basics required for the game. My avatar also later fit into the story, but you’re going to have to wait until she’s introduced for more information 😉

I’m excited for the islands that are coming ahead, continuing to work on the Poptropica Wiki, working on Orb Legend, and continuing to talk to the friends I’ve met over the last year thanks to Andrew.

Thanks everyone,

Emily

P.S. The “Ylime” in Ylimegirl is just “Emily” backwards! What a twist!

P.P.S. The other account names I’ve used are Ylimegirl, Ylimegirl2, Ylimegirl3, Ylimegcat (heard it in reference to the cat Garfield), Ylimegcat2, Ylimegal, EvilShapeShifter (inspired by the costumizer), and EmpressOTime (inspired by Time Tangled Island). I assume the other names are self-explanatory. 😛

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