#(shwarmi how do you stay in fandoms so long??) im autistic

[shwarmii]

i love being the Older, More Experienced Fan of something so i can help the new fans out (opposite of gatekeeping bc its more like im one of those sign-spinners outside a pizza place you just fell in love with)

like ive been a One Piece fan ever since i picked up the manga from my local library at 9-ish years old (kind of funny: i had no anime/manga-loving peers, and tho my brother liked anime/manga, he didnt discuss it with me; i found it on accident because comics and manga were put together. so no one recommended One Piece to me and, in fact, i had wrongly assumed it wasnt well-known just bc my peers didnt know it. i just had read all the other manga in our teeny section, so that was how i started reading One Piece: out of pure "i guess theres nothing else new" lmao rip. id only been avoiding it because, it had the most volumes out of any other series there, yeah, but it was also missing random volumes like 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12 type shit. but id go to Barnes & Noble and read the missing volumes and not buy them bc i was poor and watch the show online to fill in the library's gaps)

and now, bc of the live-action show, i have friends and people i am a fan of getting into One Piece. and the anime-onlys of both, i get to tug on their clothes on our private texts or in their comment sections/their askboxes and say "go and switch to OnePace.net at some point. youre fine for now, but the anime eventually pads shit out and ruins the pacing (thus hurting the fights and comedy) because they didn't want to catch up to the manga's material. so OnePace.net is an edited version of all the anime series' episodes to better match the manga's pacing". which i then do tell them the difference between filler (beach episodes type shit, i love those) and padding (making a 15 second arm-wrestling match last 2 minutes, and have much of it be repeating animation where the two guys are just teeth-gritted and glaring silently with those Anime Growls Of Efforts) and that, in my opinion, One Piece does have plenty of good anime-only filler— which OnePace does cut out. but, it also cuts out the padding. and the padding is a REALLY BIG problem the further you get into the show. so watch the filler episodes/movies if it sounds fun to you too, but otherwise just switcg to OnePace. at some point. like. the beginning of One Piece's anime is fine because they had a lot of manga content then, so it isnt an issue until later but, yeah, at some point: switch over lmao

and now i have a bunch of anime-only friends texting me thanks as well as content creators, because i just pointed them towards something they didnt know they would need and now will fully avoid a problem they didnt know would eventually happen. its cool and exciting to see a fandom take care of one another and the source material like that. it also helps shine a light on WHY people complain the One Piece anime is too long AND helps you avoid that shit

bc, yeah, a lot of fans say "ditch the anime altogether, it gets slow; the manga is better" but i think you should encounter media the way you want to. if you have options, take your pick of those options. i like both because i like seeing how things get adapted, what do they change, add, leave out, so on. i like watching subs and dubs for that same reason, so of course i like reading manga in tandem with watching anime too lmao

and idk, it just gives me joy to see new fans reply back to my Fandom Elder tip/s with a "OOOOHHHH THANK YOU" and whatnot. gives me serotonin ♡ like hell yeah, no problem, have fun on my lawn, you whippersnappers, ill be here in my rocking chair if you need me lmao rip