#I think fondly of those days

[novelconcepts]

There are few things I miss more about the Internet of Yore than how easy it used to be to find 5 million screencaps of your fave actor in any given project. HQ fansites, my beloved. Return from the war.

[pinksilvace]

I don't know if it still happens because I haven't been on The Bird Site in a while but back when I WAS on it, right-wing politicians would occasionally use the ScumVillainsSelfSavingSystem tag when talking about people they disagreed with. They, of course, assumed that it was just a tag for "scum villains" they disliked, not knowing that it was actually a tag for a Chinese BL novel wherein a demon lord saves the world by getting it on (sexy style) with his high school language arts teacher.

And then, fans of said novel would reply to their posts like, "Hello :D It appears you've used the wrong tag :) but that's okay <3" and then proceed to offer resources for learning more about the novel, as well as where to access (at the time) fan translations and how to otherwise support the author. This post isn't going anywhere, I just think about this a lot and marvel at the beauty of human nature

[bigothteddies]

one of my dreams as a bright-eyed freshie noob nsfw tumblr user was to one day have my own place with tons of extra rooms and to have partners and kink friends rotating in an out of the house like all the old big kink creators used to on here, making content and gif sets with my friends and enjoying our sexuality together

[flaticeball]

truly the fact that the cesspool of racism and other nightmarish ghoulery that is the chicago hockey team has a mascot who is my hand to gd named tommy hawk is just the cherry on the racism sundae. the nhl ought to owe me and every other indigenous person out there 20 dollars every time we have to be reminded this monstrosity of an organization is allowed to exist mostly-unquestioned.

no ethical consumption under sports teams etc nobody's teams are gonna be beyond reproach etc but like. some things are worse than other things. for example, having a racist caricature for your logo and a mascot named tommy fucking hawk is worse.

[seahydra]

Haven't posted the photo of my girlfriend being a complete failure in a while so everyone look upon her today. If you've seen him already look at him again. This is my favorite image ever

[not-poignant]

I was watching RotG and suddenly I could only see the meme with the increasingly large dominos. With the small domino being 'Pia watching RotG' and the big domino being 'Efnisien, Gary, Anton, Temsen, Gwyn and Augus all starring in the same a/b/o fic'. Does RotG hold a special place for you, thinking of all the stories you've written since?

Hmm,

Yes and no? There's an even smaller domino you're not seeing which is that I had written original characters and stories before this, and Augus in particular was based off an original character I'd written before (and not published) so like, Rise of the Guardians didn't *invent* him, I did, years before I ever watched the movie. But there's also dominoes that drove me out of the fandom, and it was my bitterness re: the fandom that prompted the writing of original fic in the first place.

So let me tell you a story, anon. If you don't want to know how toxic the RotG fandom could be, I recommend you just walk away now and know that no, actually, RotG doesn't have a special place in my heart, knowing I wrote original fic to initially escape the way some small pockets of that fandom treated me. Otherwise I would have written RotG fiction for far far longer, because as the old-timers will remember, I actually had a couple of longfic ideas lined up to go immediately after SAL that I abandoned because of well...everything.

I actually spent a while after finishing SAL kind of hating Rise of the Guardians because of some nasty drama and meanness/spite towards me, particularly in the last few chapters, and it took about 2-3 years before I could even consider watching the movie again or write for the fandom again. And then by the time I'd come back, all of my original stuff was established, and I felt a lot more comfortable, and a lot more 'fuck the haters' with some of the stuff I had previously had to deal with.

(Fandom wank beneath the cut, lol)

For example (self-harm and suicide mention) one person would specifically post graphic horrible self-harm photos complete with blood tagged into the RotG and blackice tag/s specifically to coincide with my chapter releases towards the end of SAL - and she was a BNF in the fandom in her own way, so *everyone* kind of knew who she was and what she was doing - and she blamed me and my story for the self-harm, and so I had people coming to me going 'do you realise what this story is doing to this person, don't you even care.' And of course I felt horribly guilty and distressed, but I was also at this point around 7/8 chapters from finishing the story, wanting to give everyone a happy ending, and after posting the last chapter I broke down and cried because I was just so relieved that I didn't have to be tormented by this specific person anymore or see these images as a survivor of suicide attempts and self-harm myself.

But also just crying out of sheer distress because of how horrible those last few weeks were, because like, if it wasn't for the readers I would have walked away due to the pressure and bullying and coercion to get out of the fandom just because I had a story that some folks enjoyed reading. That was a level of targeted hate I'd never encountered before, and have never encountered since.

Around that time a couple of small hate groups started up about me, and I would get messages like 'you realise there are hate groups about you, right?' and I'd be like 'please don't tell me about this, people can hate me, leave them alone.' Then there was the time I just got - over around 10 days - about 100+ messages telling me to kill myself because of SAL and how 'horrible' it was re: it's 'really dark themes' which I find hilarious now, but back then, was actually really stressful when it coincided with someone literally *harming themselves* or posting old self-harm photos on days I posted a chapter, talking about how the reason she was doing it was because she hated that my story was so popular when it didn't deserve to be.

Like, no, I did not have a special relationship with Rise of the Guardians by then, or the fandom. I hated it. It's why I stopped writing for it when previously I literally had so many ideas I wanted to write for Jack/Pitch. For years after that. I would remember the good memories I'd made with SAL, but a lot of readers followed me into original works. And otherwise, all I remembered was being forced to see those photos and this person's tags if I went into the tags to look for fanart to share and promote. I'd made some very good friends (some very best friends, actually), and some of us got the hell out of that fandom as fast as we possibly could to escape these people.

So like, I would love to say that like, I feel nothing but fond memories thinking of the influence Rise of the Guardians has had on me, but no fandom that I've ever been in has ever had this kind of level of underground viciousness that developed as the story gained momentum.

When I wrote The Golden Age that Never Was I was truly detached from the fandom and the movie. I was writing based on my memories and feelings of the characters. I didn't look in the tags like I used to, and instead looked for when I was mentioned directly. I had a spike of anxiety every time I got an anon message while writing it, and I had to like...avoid fics and a bunch of other stuff to get through it.

I have watched Rise of the Guardians since and I do really enjoy it, but...I don't see the dominoes the same way you do anon, probably because of the way it all happened in my head, though I do think putting original writing on AO3 happened partly because I was in a hurry to get out of the RotG fandom. So in a way RotG is connected to that, but like, only because I was fleeing and abandoning all of my Pitch/Jack ideas as I went (to the point where people remembered them and still asked me about them years later and I was like 'haha oh no sorry I'm not writing those oh well maybe one day!')

Chances are high I actually wouldn't have written original fiction if my love for Rise of the Guardians had still stayed strong. I was ready to write two very specific longfics, and had done worldbuilding for both, and was talking openly about them, but towards the end of SAL I bolted from the fandom as fast as I could. The hate I got from specific corners of the RotG fandom is one of the reasons I started writing Game Theory before SAL was even finished - to cope with how I felt about the end of SAL and the hatred I was getting there. When some of those folks said 'omg I'll never read a story about Augus' I was literally like 'oh thank fuck, I'm going to be left alone now.'

Like...I got diagnosed with Fibromyalgia like 6 months after that, I cracked teeth because of how stressed I was, and I still have crowns in my mouth and teeth removed because of that whole period. I was sleeping an average of 3 hours a night.

...I feel a very special fondness for the people who supported me at the time, especially my good friend Silvia, who is still my beta and friend today. She is responsible for far more of the dominoes that have led to this moment than Rise of the Guardians could ever directly be. And I am extraordinarily grateful for the readers who have found my stuff since. Now the majority of readers of my original stuff have never actually seen Rise of the Guardians or read my RotG fics, and like, actually sometimes that's really nice, if a bit weird.

I have never, in my life, encountered a fandom that could get as toxic as pockets of Rise of the Guardians got, and I'm including Dragon Age: Inquisition in that, which had literal blocklists of asexual people, so you know I mean business! But as a final point, I do want to say the majority of people there were amazing, absolutely amazing, this is truly a case of a few bad apples spoiling the whole experience, and I'm still to this day gutted it happened like that, and have zero surprise a lot of people left the fandom all at once, at the same time, because of it.

[glitterghost]

brb mourning all the past mutuals/friends/followers that I've had delightful conversations or interactions with, who either have deactivated unbeknownst to me, or have changed their handles since we've last spoke and I may no longer recognize.

[arvandus]

Y’all…. Serious PSA: if you are a writer, artist, or contribute to fandom in any way, and you get interaction on your posts like tag screaming or comments…

Take a fucking picture of it if you want to be able to look back on it fondly in the future.

Because I’m looking at my old fics and old Touch chapters and between people deleting their blogs or changing usernames, for at least half of them, my comment responses are now talking to a void. Those comments/reblogs are completely gone now, wiped from existence except for my memory of them and my comments of gratitude. It’s honestly so, so sad. It leaves this emptiness where a person used to be. It really drives home the impermanence of tumblr fandoms.

So if you get a comment/reaction that makes you laugh or get warm fuzzies, take a picture of it. For yourself. Like a little digital photo album.

[harleyification]

Honestly, I wish there was a trend where people create their own Avatar line, like drawing/writing their own version of a Fire, Air, Water, or Earth Avatar.

Like, it's been 10,000 years with little of that history being given to us (especially not as easily now either) - we can easily fill up that time gap and insert our own interpretations.

[tiramisiyu]

i am a little bit surprised every time i still get notifications here bc i’m like “anything i’ve translated has 100% been added to the global server by now, ya sure you don’t wanna go with the official version?” LOL 

either way, thanks for still liking my work from before!

[pepprs]

idk how to reconcile my new self with my old self. also i fucking hate waiting. GRAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[hella1975]

hella I keep getting edits with some sort of original version of waiting room?? on my fyp and I'm gonna be honest waiting room wasn't a song that did me in quite as badly as the rest of you but this version I keep hearing literally rips my heart straight open😭😭 like I've been planning on fixing the no waiting room on spotify issue by taking it into my own hands🏴‍☠️ but now I know it's gonna have to be this version I'm not even bothering with lost ark waiting room. it's just gonna be waiting room og bc what the fuck?? "I never grew up with you, and you're not my waiting room" what the fuck??? with the haunting background noises literally WHAT THE FUCK????????

OMG IVE SEEN THAT ONE everyone keeps going on about the vocals of 'and you're not my waiting room' but i really cant get over 'i never grew up with you' like what??? WHAT??????

[lucifer-kane]

Watching The Bear really was a thing of like. I would have loved continuing on the path of chef/baker like I had planned since. Literally forever, but oh my god some of the culture and some people are elitist and I could not work well in that kind of environment.

[blackandwhlteaesthetlc]

Lol Olivia is a legend. If harry was hated on by the whole world and people were making memes and spreading lies about him, you would love for him to post a shady post on instagram. You are a disgrace to all women and to this fandom. Hell is going to be a way to good place for you

Okay, Olivia 🥴🥴🥴

[rodentsunite]

I still remember that an ex-coworker once told me mid-rush that I smell like a baby

[wednesdaysky]

I appear to have accidentally found a secret portal to Chrono Tumblr and oh my god I actually saw the words Icy Brian and my soul immediately left my body