When I first began frequenting these forums a few years ago, I remember seeing "The Asylum" on the left sidebar and pondering what it could possibly be. A short while later, when I learned what the Asylum was for, it became somewhat of an object of intimidation. Not real intimidation, mind you, as words from one anonymous poster to the next hardly warrant feelings of unease. However, I suppose it's fair to say that just as a karma score or a post count mean something tiny and insignificant to me, they still mean something, and as such suggests that one actually does care about things as meaningless as anonymous co-posters.
I'm getting somewhat off topic now. In my early days, I thought the Asylum was just for immature kids who wanted to flame and attack one-another for no real reason, other than perhaps some odd sort of sadomasochistic joy. I assumed that nobody who came here to post would have anything of value to say, and even if they did it would quickly be shut down by other Asylumites. I avoided the Asylum because of these false inferences for a very long time.
The majority of my time spent on Alla used to be committed to the FFXI forum, but eventually I migrated over to OoT. For a long time I found these two forums sufficient, but after a particularly long dry-spell on both forums, I found myself meandering in search of something interesting to read or post about. This, naturally, led me to the Asylum, though I came somewhat reluctantly at first.
What I found was something unexpected. The posts here are by far the most entertaining, and often the most intelligent, that Alla has to offer. The Asylum also seems to be the most active forum of the bunch, and what's more is that, for a place that has a reputation of being harsh and hateful, there is a wonderful sense of community here, the likes of which isn't seen anywhere else on Alla, at least to my knowledge.
I've been eavesdropping on your conversations for some time now, though this is actually my first post in the Asylum. Perhaps I'm somewhat of a voyeur, but I don't have much to add. What that said, I hope the exchanges here maintain their luster. You guys make time go by at a much more acceptable pace.