[quote=@Shorticus]
One thing that I absolutely love is having the opportunity to actually coordinate with someone to cooperatively write a scene.

Look, I know this doesn't happen very often for some reason. The easiest way to RP via a forum is to just take turns writing your scenes out. This works great for certain kinds of roleplays - nation roleplays, for instance - but not so well for others. It's those others that seem to hurt from the nature of forum RP. Simple conversations can turn into long paragraphs of nothing happening; action scenes can become a sort of competition to see who can write the bestest and meanester. Etc.

But when you shoot PMs back and forth with someone to handle a conversation, or when you use a chatroom or Google document to write out and edit your work together, there's this awesome since of "Holy crap, this is looking like a scene from a BOOK!" Paragraphs of nothing turn into witty discourse, back-and-forth snapping and comedy gold. Action scenes actually get the speed they need to feel like action scenes: one character swings, the other parries, and then his foot is kicked out from underneath him, and on and on the fight goes. It flows so much better, reads so much better...

And in the short time I've had this account, I'd had the opportunity to collaborate on a neat dialogue scene with someone, I've discussed future collaborations with others, and I've had pleasant conversations with players whose characters were going to be at odds with mine... It's a good feeling. I don't know if I'll have a lot more collaborative works while I'm on this site, but I hope I do.
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When I first started out roleplaying, it was a bit difficult to adjust my usual writing style because I was used to writing on my own - since I have full control over plot and characters, I had no qualms of drafting up interaction-heavy scenes. However, in RP where most players frown upon the notion of 'godmodding', 'metagaming', etc., it was hard to keep the RP moving forward...even harder when the players don't often share the same idea of how to develop the plot further, and both sides do nothing to take the first step forward because no one dared to "offend" the other/to be seen as an arrogant snob. 

Back then, I thought that RP was something like a restricted form of partnership storywriting.

...Until I met some wonderful players who are, thankfully, open to the idea of collaborative RPing instead of the traditional, linear back-and-forth style. It actually made RPing so much more exciting - just like you said: full of comedy gold, blood-pumping thrills and witty twists. More importantly, the overall flow really makes you feel that the RP is on the roll, not stuck stagnant in the middle of nowhere. It also helps to ease my writer's block - I mean, two or more heads are better than one, yeah.

Before long, I'm already deep in collab hell.

[quote=@Shorticus]
Also, I just want to say that it's nice to be able to join roleplays that let me post at a pace that's... well, more my own. I'm a busy student, and I can't always post at the same rate as everyone else. In the past, I've lost friends over my busy schedule: people I played tabletop games with, people I roleplayed on WoW with... Some folks I played with just couldn't accept that my schedule was unpredictable, that I'd have to skip some game sessions, that I'd have to reschedule things to study more, or that, yeah, I sometimes forget I have an assignment due until the last minute and so have to stop whatever I'm doing and get that assignment done.

But thus far, I've had great experiences on the forum and great leniency concerning my timetable. Folks don't mind that I expect to only be able to post <X> times per week. I haven't been throttled for posting something a day after I said I'd have it done. There's a lot of understanding in general. I'm happy about that.
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This.

While I'll be forever amazed at people who are able to dedicate so much time from their real life to cyberspace - for example, online gaming and forum roleplaying, it gets annoying when they are unable to understand that there are people who are unable to do the same, because ultimately we are all still physically living in the [i]real[/i] world, not digital (no matter how much most of us dreamed to, ha). Like you I'm still a student, and I also have other RL commitments/issues to deal with - and please, don't give me craps like time management and whatnot. I tried to make timetables but realized the hard way that it's difficult to follow through (long story, but let's just say that my RL is often unpredictable and I'm on the move a lot).

...Oh wait, this is supposed to be a thread for gushing, not for complaining.

Which is what I'm going to talk about now: that I'm very very grateful to some of my 1x1 partners for being graciously patient with my snail-slow progress and episodes of temporary disappearance, for not bombarding me with rude demands that I must post at least some form of purple prose immediately, for having mutual understanding and respect that we all have a life to live outside of a shared interest/hobby.