User:TonyV/Taxibot Belle

Are you Taxibot Belle?

Since this comes up every few years and there is continued confusion on the matter, I thought I would write it once so that I don't have to keep typing it up over and over.

The Real Belle

I have a good friend I've known for years, Belle. Back in May 2005, I had been interacting with some of the Taxibots on Virtue and thought it was a cool idea for a group. I decided to create a Taxibot for myself, and on Belle's birthday, I created a character named Taxibot Belle as sort of a tribute to her. Eventually, I decided to try to expand the group on Infinity, so not having character transfers available, I re-rolled Taxibot Belle there. (There's still a Taxibot Belle on Virtue, though relatively low-level.)

Belle in real life is a lot like Taxibot Belle. Super nice, bubbly, cute, always optimistic. She's also kind of a private person who doesn't get into social networking sites, doesn't like giving out personal information, etc. There are good reasons that I won't get into, but I'll just leave it at, I don't blame her. She doesn't post much on the official forums, though I've seen her pop into the Infinity forum now and then, especially around events.

A year or so later, Belle actually ended up becoming my roommate. I have a three-bedroom house, she needed a place to stay, so here we are. She knew about the Taxibot Belle character, but she's not a fan of video games like I am. Still, she was intrigued, so she started watching me play. Now and then when I had to go away or couldn't show up, she would step in and be Taxibot Belle for the night. Over the course of a few months, she was playing Taxibot Belle more and more and I was hardly playing Taxibot Belle at all.

The Switchover

There was also some internal gnashing of teeth and drama going on within the Infinity Taxibots, and eventually, I got sick of it and stopped playing Taxibot Belle altogether. For a while, it looked like the Infinity Taxibots would simply disband. Belle had grown fond of the character, though, and kept playing her. She would still help out other people as much as she could, but there were no formal events like badge tours and such that we had been doing.

Belle was playing the game more and more, though, and there were several times when we wanted to play together or play at the same time, not necessarily together. I had an old account that I had been using for testing stuff for the wiki that was still active. Belle understandably didn't want to start the Taxibot Belle character from scratch, so I decided to let her have my account and I took over my old testing account. We swapped up global names so that the account that had Taxibot Belle on it was @Taxibot Belle and my old testing account became @TonyV. I thought the confusion would end there. Apparently, it didn't.

Continued Confusion

Probably the greatest source of confusion is my fault. When I played Taxibot Belle, I played her faithfully. Being a roleplayer, I always played her as in-character. If you sent a /tell to @TonyV, I would reply to you as myself. If you sent a /tell to Taxibot Belle, I would reply as Taxibot Belle. I still do this for a lot, though not all, of my characters; especially the ones I really care about.

To make matters worse, there are still vestiges of the two accounts getting intermingled. On the official forums, I didn't want all of my posts to suddenly show up as being posted by Taxibot Belle, so I left the accounts there unswapped. When you see a post from me on the official forums, it is actually posted from the account associated with Belle's game account, and vice versa.

Another annoyance has popped up during closed betas. Apparently, they transfer the entire user account database over, although only a few are opened up for access to the beta. When I've been invited to closed betas, it has always been my older account--Taxibot Belle's game account--that gets the invitation. Once I get into the beta, though, because the whole user database has been transferred, the global @TonyV is taken (and weird enough, someone else has taken @Tony V also). Since my @TonyV game account doesn't have access, I can't log in to swap them. Belle doesn't play in the betas, only I do, but because of the account/global name issue, I show up in global channels as @Taxibot Belle.

One thing that does irritate me, though, is that apparently there are still some people out there who think that Belle and I are one and the same. Personally, I don't care. Belle's a lot nicer than me, and frankly, I'll never turn down the good karma. However, it does bother me when I feel like someone is taking a cheap shot at Belle thinking that it will affect my reputation. She's one of the most kind and sweet people I know, and she has worked tirelessly to help other players. She's always done so with no expectation of reward or thanks, and has put up with some crap that would have had me cussing people out. If someone has a problem with me, I make my e-mail address publicly available (tonyv@cohtitan.com), and I see and respond to PMs on the Titan Network forum and the official forum. If someone has a problem with Belle, I think they're probably mentally deficient, but she can be reached at @Taxibot Belle in-game, and makes her Taxibot e-mail account (belle@cohtaxis.com) public.