#anonymous 4chan thread

[xbuster]

It’s honestly amazing how Pokémon fans continue to be the most gullible people on the internet.

[spookcataloger]

Location is Everything (2018)

[bogleech]

Today I learned that every single night, EVERY single night, someone anonymously goes on the 4chan cartoons board, the regular one that doesn't allow nsfw content, and posts the same graphic pornographic artwork of Peridot's ass as one or more multiple new threads for the same mods to delete again, then stops until the next night

[paperback-rascal]

Some brains are not like the others... or is it a shared unconsciousness?

---

PSYCHONAUTS © DoubleFine Productions

The Backrooms originating from a 2019 4chan thread by an anonymous user.

[octahyde]

wait they’re from 2ch this is A THOUSAND PERCENT FAKE LMAO

Ok I saw the PreCure Leak (as I’m calling it because I’m 400 fucking years old and have been there for every Precure leak since smile’s) of the Nightmare designs… they look fake to me (esp idias) because they’re way too uniform for the Halloween events and I will be disappointed if they’re real in that regard.

Regardless Leona looks fucking sick and we’re guaranteed at least him as an SSR, if not most of savanaclaw because they’ve never had a Halloween SSR whereas every other dorm has 2 (minus scarabia) and Hearts has like 3

[hellsite-yano]

everyone here knows I'm ride or die for 4chan culture and anonymity in general but 4chan specifically has been a shambling corpse ever since hiromoot took over and added garbage boards like /vt/ and let bait threads flood 80% of the site

doom general and the bbw threads will be missed though </3

[olderthannetfic]

Whenever I see the "there is no F/F content in fandoms, fandoms hate women" discussion on Tumblr, all I can think of is a phrase that is guaranteed to enrage half the Tumblr fandom audience, maybe more: "Have you tried imageboards?".

When I was younger, I used to frequent different anime and cartoon-themed imageboards. Big ones like 4Chan's /a/ and /co/, smaller ones meant for specific fandoms or kinks, non-English ones in my native language, you name it. The users were mostly straight men, and the F/F content and shipping flourished there. The "waifu threads" exclusively dedicated to gushing about female blorbos. The wast majority of kink content involving fictional women, either alone, with a nondescript self-insert man or with each other. The F/F fanart, fanfiction and ideas were just limitless, to the point where you would struggle to find one or two discussions about the guys in the midst of everyone celebrating the women.

The anime, cartoon or comic has a cast full of women? They will all get love. Women and men both? Women will generate much more discussion. One or two women amidst the cast full of men? People will mostly post about the two women, deal with it. Sure, there were designated boards and threads for the male characters, but good luck expecting there to be as much activity as there were in the waifu threads. The fandoms with lots of female characters, such as Touhou Project, thrived on these grounds, and much F/F shipping was had by everyone.

Now, of course, the imageboard culture is an entire separate beast. Right-leaning, edgy, bigoted - basically, what you get if you put a bunch of ostracized and lonely cishet male nerds in an echo chamber and let them feed each other bullshit all day long. A lot of the F/F art they made was sexual in nature, something that could be decried as sexualisation, but, the way I remember it, it was not much different from what is often done to male characters by straight women who ship M/M because they find the two dudes hot. A lot of gushing about waifus by the anonymous 4Chan dudes could be seen as misogynistic, despite the language being practically the same as when a Tumblr fandom girl is describing her blorboman and the things she wants to see done to him.

It all comes down to the the real life influencing the way we interact with fiction: male sexuality is viewed in a different light than female sexuality, despite both being more or less demonized in our society, just in different ways. Men are always predators, women are always victims. When a guy has sexual fantasies about a female character, he is a creep who wants to hurt real life women to enact these fantasies. When a woman has sexual fantasies about male characters, she cannot tell fiction from reality and is at risk of getting hurt by men while trying to enact these fantasies. And if either of them fantasizes about a same-sex couple, they are fetishizing queer people, obviously.

However, that's just how people roll - you cannot change what gender you are attracted to, and people with similar attractions stick together. It just so happens that the fandom side of Tumblr largely consists of straight women and queer men, so you get ships with guys, while the fandom side of 4Chan and the like largely consists of straight men, so you get ships with women. Both sides also happen to have cultures that don't mix well, and someone who frequents one place is likely to avoid the other.

I don't frequent 4Chan anymore, and I'm not big on fandom Tumblr, either, but Tumblr continues to be the unique place where I am more likely to stumble upon erotic fandom content featuring men than women, who are the majorly discussed and shipped characters practically everywhere else. I obviously do not excuse 4Chan's bigotry and rampant hateful bullshit, but my point still stands: if you want to see more F/F shipping and discussions of girl blorbos, but don't feel like making some yourself and creating a like-minded community on Tumblr, you should try your luck elsewhere on the Internet, especially when it comes to anime and cape comic fandoms. Tumblr is a unique place in terms of male-centric fandom content, and honestly, it's not that bad, if Tumblr isn't the only place you find your stuff at. It simply occupies a specific niche and doesn't offer much of everything else (though you can still find it if you look).

--

Now, be fair: plenty of imageboards are full of nominally straight guys who love millions of female blorbos... and art of Link getting wrecked.

[amphibianauthor]

Ao3 HTML/Coding Resources Part II

This is the HTML/Coding for Website mimicking resources in Archive of our Own (Ao3). To find Part I where I go over the Basics, General Text HTML and some Fancy Formatting (images, dividers, columns, photos, tabs etc. CLICK HERE!

Other Websites:

Texting

-How to make iOS Text Messages on Ao3 by CodenameCarrot, La_Temperanza

-A Quick Generator for Embeddable iOS Text Messages by 221b_ee

-imessage Skin by Adzaema

-Retro imessage by Adzaema

-Basic Text Message Work Skin by ProfessorMotz

- Bubble platform [workskin] by Khashana

-Chat Log HTML by deathbymistletoe

-LINE Messenger/Chat by imperiousmarshmellow

-IDOLish Rabbit Chat Workskin by associate

-Replika workskin by FaeriMagic

-Texting Workskin to match light/dark mode by irrationalpie

Tumblr

-Tumblr style CSS Tweaks by Aposiopesis

-Ao3 Workskin Testing and Tutorials by junietuesday25 tumblr DM

-How to make Tumblr Posts on Ao3 by phyyripo

-Plain Text Social Media Platforms by anubisms

-Tumblr Post Work Skin by tsukinosaugi

Twitter

-Repository - Twitter by gadaursan

- How to mimic Social Media in an Ao3 work by aerynevenstar

-Twitter Work Skin Template by etc e tal

-Twitter Workskin: Tweets and Profile by starskin

-Twitter Mock-Up by TheBrookesNook

Ao3/Fandom

-How to mimic Authors notes and Kudos/Comment Buttons by La_Temperanza

-How to mimic AO3 Comments by bittermoons

-How to add mobile Ao3 in your fic by DemigodofAgni

-How to make a fanfic style header Ao3 style by ElectricAlice

-Template for adding post chapter content by SpookyTesting

-CSS based full Ao3 fic integration (Header/Overview, Comments, Title, Summary & Buttons) by deciMae

-How to Mimic LiveJournal Posts and Comments by cursedcuriosities

-Dreamwidth Entries & Comments Work Skin  by folk_melody 

Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp

-Whatsapp Group Chat builder by FestiveFerret

-How to make Facebook Messenger Chat on Ao3 by ran_a_dom

-Whatsapp Work Skin Template Revamped by etc e tal

-Whatsapp group chat skin by ovely

-Instagram DMs for Ao3 by monarch_rhapsodies

-How to make Instagram DM mockup by xslytherclawx

-Penstagram chats on ao3 by deciMae

Snapchat

-Snapchat skin by Azdaema

-Snapchat Template for Ao3 by starskin

Reddit/Forum

-UPDATED Reddit Skin by diamine

-2020 Reddit Work Skin by timstokerlovebot

-Reddit Work Skin CSS & HTML by knave_of_swords

-How to mimic Social Media in an Ao3 work by aerynevenstar

-template Reddit Skin by spookedcroon

-template:Subreddit page by ireseen

-Ao3 workskin for Forum Thread by fencesit

-Ao3 workskin for Forum Thread [Expansion Pack] by AMereDream

-How to mimic 4chan posts without just taking screenshots of 4chan

Twitch/Youtube

-Mimicking Twitch Chat for fics by Ultraviollett

-Twitch Chat Work Skin by cherrari

-Workskin testing by tohmas [Youtube comments]

-Youtube Work Skin by 1864s

-Youtube Comment Section Workskin by LupaMoe

Discord/Slack/Zoom

-2023 Discord Theme Workskin by TrojanTeapot

-Discord Work Skin by unpredictableArtist

-Discord (Dark Theme) Workskin by Heterochromia_Mars

-Skin for Recreating Discord’s Server Member List by SpookyTesting

-Ao3 Workskin Testing and Tutorials by junietuesday25

-Slack Workskin by Khashana

-Zoom inspired Ao3 skin by mystyrust

Wikipedia 

-Fake Wikipedia article about a TV show: Work Skin by Anonymous 

-Wikipedia article work skin by styletests

-SCP Wiki Style Workskin by thesnager

Working Games in Ao3 Tutorials

Logic Grid Puzzle Work Skin & Tutorial by BookKeep

The Case Of The Clickable Murdle by VThinksOn

Review Sites:

Yelp Reviews by kiwiana

Amazon Reviews by kiwiana

Rate My Professor Work Skin by BookKeep

Video Game Dialog Mimics

-Dialog [workskin] by Clover_Zero

-Dialogue Workskin (with parallax BG effect) by mystyrust

-My S Ranks--System Windows by unpredictableArtist [computer dialog workskin]

-Tutorial: Ace Attorney Work Skin by QuailFence

-Among Us Ao3 skin by mystyrust

-How to Mimic Undertale Fonts on Ao3 by La_Temperanza

-Tutorial:Rain Code Work Skin by faish

-Balder's Gate 3 Documents Work Skin by Professor_Rye

-SpookyTesting has SOO many Nintendo based ones

–Mimicking Minecraft for some fics by Ultraviollett 

Runescape Right Click Menu Formatting by fennfics

How to put Z skits in your Tales fics by wingedcatgirl

How to make Honkai: Star Rail Messages by html_hell (jihnari)

Hold-hands inspired Texting skin by cursedcuriocities(SetsuntaMew)

Simple Linkshell Ao3 Work Skin by Pent – Final Fantasy XIV mimic

Homestuck Chat Clients by 77angel-skins

Workskin: Slay the Princess by ASpooky

Slay the Princess: Updated Workskin by Lilto

Misc. Sites

--How to mimic Deadpool Thinking boxes by La_Temperanza

--FetLife Skin [Work Skin] by Khashana

--Disco Elysium workskin by SarunoHadaki

--StarTrek PADD workskin by duskyspirit

--MDZS-themed letters by allollipoppins

--A Newbie's Guide to Podficcing by Adzaema [skin for podfics]

--Skin for making Character Intro Cards by SpookyTesting

--Kpop Photocards by legonerd

–OVR System Workskin by unpredictableArtist

-How to make Stylized CSS Card Links for your fics by buttertartz

-vroom vroom kachow: Formula1 Race Results Workskin by mackerel_cheese

Bonus: Ever wanted to see how crazy HTML can be on AO3? Try playing But can it run Doom? or Tropémon by gifbot

Happy Creating!

Last updated: Feb 8 2025 (Have a resource that you want to share? My inbox is open!)

View Part I with HTML Basics HERE!

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

Hello Mara, i follow you for a while and i saw lots of your fanarts of narutaru, i became interested in it and a few weeks ago i decided to finally read it. Honestly, i loved it, (even if the ending was kind of sudden) and now its one of my favorites mangas.

I wanted to ask whats your thoughts on narutaru, and what made you like it. Its not a popular manga so its so hard so find others opinios and analysis, so i decided to ask you since its the reason i decided to read it.

hi anonymous, i just got power back from the storm; trees smashed several places around me;

if you asked me several years ago i could give you a better answer but present-day-me is fairly far removed from really having much passion for narutaru except holding on-to some memories of what i think i liked about it: it was a series i found very early back on maybe / b/ or /a/ on 4chan, likely in a thread about dark manga, and narutaru would be mentioned as coming across as some childish pokemon-esque comic that then turns really depressing--and i always remembered it being referred to as exactly shadow star narutaru, so i always remembered it as shadow star and associated it with the goofy little star guy--but i could never make myself read it because it was insanely boring and the art was incredibly lame, at the time; then in my self-harm spiral i read it (easily over a decade later) and i fell in love with it, because i thought that: it was a series utterly and completely empty and exhibited a real evil at its core that had no pretense to it or strive to be that, just that it was--like there is a permeable funk or mold crept through the architecture of narutaru more obviously shown through all the characters wrapt around some dumb moody issue (akira is the case study here), but shadow star never seemed something 'evil' because of those story-beats that are paint-by-numbers in misery-porn; take, for example akira explaining the connection with the shadow dragon, and how empty of a thing they seem and how their 'link' is like a vampiric one where a draining of the soul must occur and drain out through the human and into the queer little dragon thing when at perfect unity between the two, and how akira is nervously at complete resistance to letting this happen because (though she thinks she wants to die) there is something repulsive about having that precious self occult away into a moronic wall-eyed lump of clay ensof; then hiroko, my favorite, named as a shell heap and a good foil to akira because she is willing to completely drain off into oni and undergoes this malignant 'truth' there there:s an unreality to her life and her needing to keep living and her needing to be warped by unrealities that have been hammered down into strange forms of parent and friend and enemy and such-and-such; and, foil to it all are the latter characters who have completely been devoured by the shadow star, and sheol itself--all not really portrayed with a heavy dilemma or mood or misery, but a just-so attitude that "this is all completely empty, and that is completely fine;" it is a story not-so evil because of some subversion of good or resistance to good, but an evil because there is absolutely nothing inside of narutaru. if it seems a house it is only hiding decrepit flooring and rotting structural support, and if it seems even that then it is even less-than. plus, although i'd never watched an episode of the anime, it has a really nice ED theme that i liked to listen to during a breakup.

i was put off talking about it for some time because, may-be because of those surface Miseries, it seemed to invite "shared misery," sometimes over the self-harm, but also the 'infamous' censored rape-murder volume, and it felt like the last thing i wanted to invite into my life were other people sharing a love with me over images of rape and messages about how beautiful it was--something about all that felt rotten and against the shadow star, that there is something i just dislike about placing grace onto 'antithesis' of what is commonly good (rape bad? no, rape beautiful!) and that (and what i still like about narutaru) is its found-grace in an absence of values either good or evil--as from primordial churning chaos before something were, there were enough grace for creation to come-from, and for it to return-to;

but i might also just be a contrarian and don't like seeing myself in other people. didn:t go to church yesterday and just drove around with my mom; take care.

[tfwyouloveher2]

/r9k/Elsa Ten Years Later: A Retrospective

Ten years ago today, on July 22, 2014, r9kElsa is Suffering was completed.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the gravity of that event. Let's talk about it anyway :)

r9kElsa is Suffering was one of the earliest fan fiction works written for Frozen, its first chapter published only a few weeks after the movie's release, and was decidedly the most influential.

It was the first widely-read modern-alternate-universe take on Elsa's and Anna's characters, and the way it painted their relationship into a reluctant and tragic romance almost singlehandedly inspired the wider Elsanna ship.

Despite its legacy, it's not the most practiced prose, nor is the plot meticulously planned.

So why did it leave such a mark on its audience? And how was it conceived?

Come with me back to 2013 and we'll find out.

A History

Frozen was released on November 27, 2013, to unexpected critical acclaim and unprecedented box office success.

The internet was quickly buzzing with thoughts about it. A hundred communities in the far-flung reaches of a simpler Web gathered in their respective forums to articulate what the movie meant to them.

Within a few days, a few thoughts began to coalesce in many different places at once: these characters are important to us. They're relatable. They're inspiring.

And, in some strange new way, the scattered diaspora found that the message had spoken to their hearts: love is stronger than fear. There is hope.

The first Frozen fan fiction to gain any traction was "Songs of Ice and Snow", published on November 23 by a lucky author with the privilege of seeing a pre-screening of the movie. It would go on to reach almost 140,000 words over the next several months, and explored the characters in their canon environment, written to take place immediately after the events of the movie.

Soon though, another fic was written with a bold twist: For the First Time was published on December 3, and suggested something previously unexplored: a romantic angle to the sisters' relationship. Niche artists and shitposters had already asserted the notion, but this very early work fleshed out the idea into something surprisingly charming. If love is an open door, then For the First Time opened it just a crack, and readers everywhere were tempted by the glow from beyond.

One specific forum that was quick to latch on to the hard-to-swallow concept was /frz/, a thread on 4chan's /co/ dedicated to Frozen. The trolling effortlessly began to morph into ironic, then tongue-in-cheek, and finally occasionally genuine consideration of what this romance would mean. The trolling never stopped, of course; but in the margins, there was a growing understanding and even affection for this relationship. Why?

Like so much well-loved fiction, it was because people saw themselves in it.

In Elsa, some saw a shut-in who just didn't want to be ostracized anymore. Some saw a dutiful figure who couldn't allow herself to be happy.

In Anna, some saw a socially awkward romantic, starving for affection and acceptance. Others saw an endlessly forgiving empath.

And in both, they saw someone who might understand them.

And in that moment, they fell victim to the fantasy: that two people could be so different and yet could love each other so unreservedly. That two people could understand each other's failings and doubts and grief, that they could be so wounded by each other, and at the end of it all, still sacrifice everything for the other.

In a world of cynicism and transactional relationships, it turns out that these sisters bound by blood scratch an itch: a need to be accepted despite all our flaws. And in some corners of the internet, there grew an quiet desire to be loved like that.

It was in this context that an anonymous /co/ reader, usually only browsing the board for DC comics, began to engage with /frz/. She hadn't ever written fiction before, but at the moment unemployed, was sucked in by the concepts being set forth. She wrote a first chapter that was an exceptional attention grabber, starting with the line "She heard the crossbow bolt thud into her shoulder before she felt it." Many readers will recognize that opening line immediately from Frozen Fractals. The first chapter was initially published in a pastebin for /frz/ to read, on December 6, with promises of violence, cuteness, and sex. Despite very little initial response, the anon is fully engrossed in her work, and posts the next few chapters in the following two days.

Over the next couple weeks, Frozen Fractals becomes the foremost image of the romantic portrayal of the sisters. The writing style is unpracticed, the character choices sometimes stretch disbelief, and the story is occasionally brutal; and yet, the work is outstanding.

The critical response is enormously positive, even reaching the point of other fiction authors in /frz/ asking the author -- having at this point earned the nickname "Fractals" or "Frac" -- for writing tips and constructive criticism. Additionally though, there are some constructive criticisms offered back, which undoubtedly aided Frac's later work.

During this same period, the image of Elsa being a broken, self-doubting recluse, while Anna waits determinedly for her to open her door to the world, begins to take a more distinct shape in the /frz/ threads.

Anons start to see Elsa as one of them.

And so it began, slowly at first. But over the next couple weeks, this idea started taking center stage in threads.

And then, the first greentext from the character of /r9k/Elsa:

There grew a consensus, a common understanding of who this persona was.

It was initially tongue-in-cheek. But later, like Elsa's monster, it was often the person that we most fear to be.

And the storm raged on.

Then, the next day, a turning point is reached: a greentext that realizes the core of the character. These 12 lines precipitated years of community fixation and the story that would come of her.

And the rest is history.

Over the next few days, an onslaught of r9kElsa greentexts are posted. For a short while, threads are overwhelmed with discussion of the character. People can't stop talking about it.

Some suggest temporarily banning it from threads so as to stop derailing every discussion.

Despite the proposed ban, some discussion continues behind spoiler tags. Frac is wrapping up Frozen Fractals and becoming increasingly engrossed in the character.

Then, finally, on the Winter Solstice 2013, Elsa's first birthday, tfw She Loves You is posted on Fictionpress.

Frac posts it under an alias in an ultimately-doomed effort to fly under the radar.

Over the next few days, up to and through Christmas 2013, Frac cannot stop writing. She writes ELEVEN CHAPTERS in four days. The rest of /frz/ is caught up in the r9k storm right along with her.

And then, there's a pause. A couple days go by without update. Finally, a few days later, chapter 12 Drawfriend is posted, and Frac seems a little burned out. Anons ask her what's up.

She realizes that her story is beginning to diverge from the greentexts that /frz/ has written. What started as a collection of one-shots based on scattershot 4chan replies is beginning to feel more important than that. None of the offered greentexts are hitting the spot like they used to. Somehow, the characters need more.

From this moment onward, Frac takes a new direction. Only a couple chapters after this point (16 and 21) are based on greentexts, and even those are loosely adapted. Instead, the fic ceases to be a collection of one-shots and starts forming into a true story, the story that everyone now knows and loves.

She posts the next chapter the same night. Chapter 13 Past is in the Past is a unique installment in the series, going back in time to detail the moment Elsa believes that she fell for Anna. It briefly scales back the angst and drama, and gives a cute slice-of-life of a simpler time for the characters. Some consider it the most human chapter in the story.

From this point on, the story progresses in a remarkable way. In case you haven't read it, I'll avoid too many major spoilers here. But as you can imagine, certain chapters (like 20: Implode-Explode) prompted clamorous reactions from the /frz/ threads.

After a few more weeks, other sites start taking notice of what's happening here. Tumblr picks up on the fic and begins rallying behind it. Artists begin painting r9kElsa portraits. It's when r9k starts wrapping up that r/Elsanna is founded and starts gaining traffic.

Other well-known stories also start being published once r9k hits its stride. During a very short period between mid-January and early February 2014, you see Extra! Extra!, A Formal Arrangement, Feel, Don't Conceal, Drum Major, You Are, A Snowflake in Spring, Winter Girl, the Cake Fic, and others published for the first time. Almost every modern-AU fic can trace its characterizations at least partially back to r9k. In some cases, e.g. Tessellate, much more than partially!

A Reason

If you read any post or thread from any Elsanna community in 2014, you'll find one thing repeated over and over: r9kElsa is Suffering brought me here. The story is the most common elevator pitch for the ship, because especially at that time, it meant something more to people than just sexy cartoon girls (though it undoubtedly meant that too).

In a world of isolation, where many traditional sources of community have been whittled away, people are desperate for hope.

This is the core of why Frozen succeeded so tremendously.

It came at exactly the right cultural moment, when both adults and teenagers the world over were feeling more alone than any prior point in history; and it showed that there's a reason to open your door. Even when you're feeling like there's no way out, like no one could ever see past your faults and doubts, you can remember that there IS hope. It's not in Prince Charming or a genie in a bottle. You can have hope in knowing that there are other people, broken in their own ways, who WILL love you for you. Unreservedly.

Frozen has been criticized for its resolution being too easy. "Love," they say, "what a shallow fix for everything!"

They are wrong. Love is an anomaly of nature. It breaks every rule. It is supernatural and spiritual and it is real life magic. And realizing that you can always choose to love the fixer-upper beside you is the surest way to thaw your own frozen heart.

r9kElsa is Suffering has likewise been criticized for its ending. Readers wanted to see something sexy, thrilling, or at least certain. Instead, they got something ambiguous and thoughtful.

Personally, the last two chapters are my favorites of the whole story.

We see a broken family trying to piece itself together. We see a father reckoning with his abject failure, and seeking a new way of living with his family. Any parent would feel overwhelmed, angry, afraid in that situation. He doesn't want to be consumed by fear and frustration. He just wants to love his daughters. And he does. Even after everything, he does.

And critically, he trusts Elsa to make the right decisions, even when he himself doesn't know what they are anymore.

And then, ultimately, in the final chapter, we read a beautiful mirror of the first. Elsa is in her room, but the curtains aren't shut anymore. Sunlight streams in through the window. Anna enters freely, their tension long released by their figurative walls having been dismantled.

In an often-overlooked moment of clarity, Elsa ceases to be consumed by her preferred method of isolation, her computer. Whereas in the first chapter, she can't look Anna in the eye, and only stares at her ever-illuminated computer screen; now, she does something new. She turns off her monitor and momentarily contemplates her reflection in the black mirror. Who is the woman she sees staring back at her?

She would be unrecognizable from the girl who sat in that chair six months before.

Finally, in the last moment, Elsa is faced with making the "right decision".

Unburdened by fear or requirement, she is prompted for the first time to determine honestly what the right thing is, for herself, for Anna, for their family.

She hesitates. What is right? Is it right to push Anna away?

She decides. She loves Anna, and she's never going to erect a wall between them again.

Her father asked her to remember what's important. Anna is what's important to her. All of the rules, all of the shame, all of the worries -- they don't matter.

You love her, and she loves you. That's all that matters.

Dear reader: today, now ten years older, remember what matters to you. Love the people in your life. Love boldly and selflessly and unreservedly, and frozen hearts will begin to thaw.

- tfwyouloveher

---

A/N: many thanks to the people and resources that made this retrospective achievable

frac, also known as @kate---kane and anonelsa, who so many of us have to thank (or curse?) for our years spent in this community

desuarchive.org and archived.moe make this digital archaeology possible

/frz/ will hate me for posting their activity across the web but I don't mind :)

there is a wealth of fascinating and entertaining material in the /frz/ threads of these archives. I spent weeks reading through old threads long considered lost for this post

neiromaru and @spooths are among the top connoiseurs of frozen fanfiction, and their ancient lists made this research much easier

the various archivists on r/elsanna and elsewhere who saved so many important pieces of fic history before they were deleted

the dropbox and mega archives were instrumental

enormous thanks to my editor, who ended up rewriting most of this post, but who wished to remain anonymous. seems unexpectedly appropriate :)

[kunosoura]

I’ll get tempted to go on 4chan sometimes because I miss just being able to anonymously jump into ongoing discussions of something I like but the site is borderline unusable nowadays because everyone is tearing each other apart about culture war shit. The unfortunate thing is that 1% of the time there’ll be a thread where I discover a new game or movie or show or manga or something with genuinely engaging webms/discussion and I find something new I genuinely enjoy.

[conceptofjoy]

strider your radiocuntivity is melting the slaynobel reactor please stop!! youre pussifying the land for generations to come!!

ranked popular social medias mediocre to worst.

reddit: the ads are annoying as fuck but the sbahj community aight. users are kind of awkward interacting with each other though, app full of [BEEEEEEEP]. its the most functional out of the others. ok taking that back, its the most functional DEPENDING on who the moderators are. that being said, r/sbahj is a little too functional and im thinking of hiring someone to grab a cheese grater shred that shit up.

twitter (not X): the popularity was the best thing about it. easy way to interact with fans, couldnt send death threats though. plus the character limit was a drag, i couldnt get a single thought out without having to make a thread. the other option is to take a screenshot of your notes app and fuck no was i not doing that. on one hand you look lame as fuck, the other you look dorky as fuck. you cant win.

4chan: they're all freaks since its all anonymous but they're funny ones. sometimes you cant find good shit though and its all just thread after thread of a guy posting an img of a horse cock not getting it wasnt funny the first time. this is what X wanted to be with the "free speech" musk said he has. if i cant tell someone their mom sucks me good and hard through my jorts then whats the POINT.

instagram: basic, does its job. used to be catered towards hippies and it still is, but through the influx of immigration from X its semi-tolerable. instagram REELS though? i should release a sbahj movie like that.

tiktok: people my age dont use it unless youre tucker carlson licking the boots of young adult conservative college men. its just fucking sad.

X: after that dick measuring contest with musk i had a few years ago, its unsurprising im still banned. so what i fucked your girlfriend get over it dude.

tumblr: [deleted due to over abundance of homophobic slur usage]

honorable mention:

jeremy renner app: jeremy renner app.

[lunaeverywhere]

How 4chan works

So, I've noticed a trend lately. Well, I say "lately" but it started with Q-Anon, when a bunch of people decided that listening to people with tripcodes wasn't a dumb idea you should never do but instead a cornerstone of politics. And this trend is best definable as "misinformation solved by understanding how 4chan works". I am here to explain how 4chan works, as someone who spent her early 20s on /tg/ and /m/.

Let's take it from the top: 4chan.org is a message board where users are not required to make an account, and the majority of the topics are about posting images of things. It was created when its original creator, Moot, was mad he wasn't allowed to post loli to other internet forum Something Awful, and was later sold in the mid-2010s to its current owner, usually just called Hiro or An Hiro. Its seperated into "boards", the topic-focused communities that dictate the topic of posting. These are not user created, rather the site's admins create them, and there's currently a little over 50 of them.

You might think these are usage-based; that is, when you want to talk about a thing, you go to the board to talk about that thing and post about it. And some people do use 4chan this way (insert screenshots of the "where do you talk about paintball" threads, if I could find them), that doesn't tend to be the case. Rather, people have boards they like to frequent, reading and participating in the discourse as they see fit. This results in each board having its own distinct culture: /tg/, traditional games, has a very different culture than /cgl/, cosplay and gothic lolita, or /ck/, cooking and food. A common phrase on 4chan is "4chan is not /b/", and to a lesser extent, "4chan is not /pol/". These are the "random" and "politics" boards respectively. They have the worst culture, even as reputation among other 4chan users. If you hear about some misinformation coming out of 4chan, it's usually from one of those two boards.

No board has a good culture, by standards like "people treating each other with decency" and "not using racial slurs", but some boards are better about it than others. The ones wholly dedicated to image posting tend to be, if not well behaved, at least quiet. Boards having different cultures also means that some boards dislike each other. /m/, Mecha anime, hates /mu/, music, because people often go to /m/ assuming it's the music board and post about music without noticing that it's about giant robots and karate bugmen. Everyone hates /pol/, but especially /po/, papercraft, because they're a quiet board that probably has the best culture, but are one letter off from the board everyone hates so they get similar posting to /m/, but the posts themselves are worse.

Describing every board's culture and conflicts is a task I neither want to do, nor consider in the scope of this post, but I've established that 4chan is not even remotely a monolith. Now, onto the actual posts themselves.

Anyone can post on 4chan, and you do not need to make an account to do so. Most people who post on 4chan have not. Rather, when you go to post, you are given an option to fill in a name, or leave that field blank and simply be "anonymous". Unless you have a good reason, people don't use names, and you will get made fun of for doing so. When I was on /tg/, a user who used the name VirtualOptim, or "virt", got famous as a namefag (the "-fag" structure is common there, "namefag", "drawfag", "writefag" and with a few exceptions including namefag is not meant derogatorily, it's a weird bit of culture) to the extent that anyone posting with the name would get a flood of responses consisting entirely of "kill yourself", similar to "kung pow penis" for a certain memed tumblr user. There is nothing preventing a user from using the same name as another user.

If it's important for a user to make clear that they're a specific iteration of that name - for instance, they're running some kind of game, and want it to be clear which posts are "official" - this is one of the few cases that names are acceptable, and a second identifier comes into play, the tripcode. A tripcode is something like a password, a phrase put through a simple encryption that's just enough of a pain to de-encrypt that it's not worth the time to do so for the extremely low reward. If you've ever seen a post with a hashmark followed by a bunch of letters and numbers next to the name, that's a tripcode. You'll notice I didn't say these are secure. They aren't, and someone who really wants to can easily crack a tripcode and use it themselves. They're meant as little more than a discord discriminator, not a genuine secure password. This, combined with the general board culture against being identifiable, makes being a "tripfag" (again derogatory), something to be avoided unless completely nessecary.

I've also heard people saying something like "they deleted the post/thread, because they got caught". For starters, 4chan posters know everything I just said. They know they can claim so much deniability on everything they say. They know most people post anonymously and that if you make an unpopular post, its basically impossible to tie that post to anything you've done before unless you volunteer that information.

But also, posts get deleted all the time. Users who pay for a "4chan pass" get a variety of privileges, including the ability to delete their posts, but also moderators delete posts all the time for reasons as simple as "I feel like it" (rule 2 of the internet, coins 4chan themselves, "there's no rules on moderation either, enjoy your ban"). Additionally, each board has a limited number of threads, and when a new thread is created, an old thread "falls off" the board. Essentially, place all the threads in a row, and whenever a thread is posted in, it moves to the top of the list. When a new thread is created, the thread on the bottom of the list is deleted. Additionally, when a thread hits a certain number of posts, new posts stop moving it to the top of the list. This is colloquially called "autosaging", because "sage" used to be the command you could input on a post to make a post not bump a thread to the top of the list, usually done to insult the OP of a bad thread.

Autosaging/automatic thread deletion increases the anonymity of posting, since eventually even the post itself vanishes, so people can't even call you out for it in the thread where it happened. Third-party archives exist, but they are both prone to going down and often miss posts or entire threads. All posts are transient and none of them can be traced to you, nothing matters, so people just say anything.

So, if both ways to identify yourself are both secure and unpopular, and the record of discourse vanishes quickly, how do you trust information coming out of 4chan? Simple: you don't. If anything, board culture is/used to be that you listen to tripfags less than anonymous users. Q seems to have changed that somewhat, but "when did we start listening to tripfags" has been a question I've been asking myself since that started. If 4chan says the sky is blue, find a window. If someone posts claiming to have security clearance or actually be someone, they're almost definitely lying or joking. Nothing could possibly happen to a post or thread to increase its credibility. Everything said on 4chan is lies told to make someone mad until proven otherwise, and they'll often openly admit that, I'm not even saying anything they don't already know. 4chan isn't uniformly a monstrous place, but they're at their best a bunch of idiots posting about elf slav, what do.

[snowbunnytrick]

it's so hard to choose and i kind of want to ask you to explain all of them but particulary /b/tard pattycakes is the funniest thing ive read all day and im dying to know what its about

thank you so much. it delights me every time i remember it's in my folder

FUCK OFF RE:DEGENERATE ASSHOLE Anonymous 09/07/08(Fri)15:50:47 No.717794 >

I don't care how pissed off you dumbfucks get becus I'm namefagging. I DONT CARE. I want that fuckers head on a pike and you KNOW the asshole I'm talking about. I'm tired of his fucking loli threads and retarded secrets threads and how every time I post pics he responds with stupid shit about how he wants to lock me in a basement because he's a faggot creep. I'M LITERALLY UNDERAGE. I'm sorry for posting face pics, okay???!!! Maybe I just want someone to tell me that I'm not the ugliest lamest most disgusting guy I know and that I'm just average (I'm fine with being average) without getting sexually assaulted on line. Go back to /lit/ you pretentious piece of shit fucker. Eat shit and die I'M NOT KIDDING.

>> Anonymous 09/07/08(Fri)15:52:03 No.717795 > i cant believe you want me this bad. ill send you my address if you want. you can be my penpal and then maybe you can stop shitting up the boards with how hard youre jacking your little boy cock off to me. ive saved at least 3gigs worth of pix of you. i think youre an angel. i love you.

~

basically patrick is a miserable shut-in computer nerd who spends a lot of time on vintage 4chan and he gets his ass chewed regularly for posting very badly on there and pete develops a psychosexual relationship with him after he starts posting pics of himself for validation and the feelings eventually become mutual. i can't get enough of internet-based aus

wip game asks <3

[godtier]

Hey, I never was on livejournal so can you tell how crazy it was pretty please?

hi there, anon. i passed out right after you sent this, oopsie.

but sure, i can regale you of the times. be forewarned: this is gonna be a beefy post.

to clarify, this was probs how it was between 2004-ish (and probs a bit before, but i wasn't super into fandom on LJ before 2004) through 2010. i haven't used LJ in eons because of the migration of fandom stuff to tumblr, actually, and RP stuff to dreamwidth, but that's a different story.

but on LJ, there are these forums called "communities." tumblr actually just recently started testing with this format and i keep meaning to try it out. the idea is that, rather than people coming to someone's personal blog for discussion, they'd congregate on these forums.

if you've ever been on reddit, it's similar to that. you join a community, you read the rules, you post or reply to posts, etc.

well, on LJ, things were sorta like reddit only like... cattier. on reddit the stereotype is the neckbeard admin, going "☝️🤓 WELL ACKCHUALLY," but on LJ, it could veer more into mean girls territory. an admin could be two-faced, biased, and develop personal relationships with members (not like... dating-wise, though that probs happened, but more like favoritism).

a lot of fandom communities had applications you had to fill out. you had to basically sell yourself on why you deserved membership and an admin could just straight-up disagree with your application and that was that. they could also refuse to allow you to reapply.

an admin could also kick you out because they found you personally annoying. not even like, trolling, but they found you to be just annoying to be around. they'd kick you out for that.

beyond that, there were the anon comms. basically, a community where an admin would create a post and users could respond to it anonymously, similar to 4chan, and create threads about various things.

some anon comms were great. there were the "anon fic" comms for different fandoms where someone could anonymously request a fic (the ship, the prompt, any other details, etc), and other anons could fulfill the request. i ran a few for various fandoms i used to be really active in and i even fulfilled several prompts across several other posts. it was p fun!

however, those were quickly overshadowed by the drama ones. they were basically places where anon users could shit on other users and talk about the latest gossip in different fandom circles. this started with fandom-based stuff but exploded outward into the RP community, where it's still continuing on dreamwidth, LJRP's successor platform.

it could get really heinous. some anon comms had looser moderation than others. you could get away with so much and, unless you gave yourself away or accidentally logged in while replying, no one would ever know.

these comms also perpetuated bullying in a lot of ways, while others were threads to discuss bad behavior in the community. i'll admit, some of it was warranted, like people being creeps or just not having proper RP etiquette, but the level of bullying often outweighed the crime. sometimes people would gossip about others for sharing too much personal info (oversharing/trauma-dumping), pity-partying, e-begging, or just being a bad writer or having really bad takes.

it got to the point where a lot of RPers and fandom participants left entirely because they couldn't stop themselves from scrolling through the anon comms, just to see if they were namedropped. there were tutorials on how to block the anon comms on the browser level, meaning that even if you typed it in, your browser would refuse to load it. some people had to resort to that in order to stop themselves from reading it.

keep in mind, though, that a lot of this stuff was contained by comparison. on LJ, you could turn off anon messages and comments entirely, much like tumblr with anon asks. and you really didn't run the risk of your fandom drama bleeding over to your twitter or facebook account.

so that changes the way fandom operates. back then, if you were getting bullied really badly, it was comparatively easier in fandom to devise a new identity, a new account, slightly modify how you spoke, and then bam, you're back in the fold and no one's any the wiser.

nowadays, y'all in general are obsessed with mingling your personal, IRL stuff and deets with your fandom inclinations. it makes you ten thousand times easier to not only dox, but to humiliate and follow you around, even if you change accounts.

op sec (operational security) is something i'm extremely passionate about. if anyone wants a full-ass post about that, i'm more than happy to throw one together.

but anywho, i hope that shines some light on how shit went down back then. if i think on it more, i could probably come up with some really wild stories, but it's been so long that i can't remember anything specifically that was super-duper wild. 8( give me a while and maybe it'll come back to me, like a long-forgotten tryst.

inb4 "i ain't readin allat" SRY I'M TOO VERBOSE Y'ALL I CAN'T HELP IT 😭

[vashtijoy]

objectively, just objectively, the ‘phansite’ and ‘phandom’ are the worst names they could of come up with. just. ptsd all around whenever i hear it.

I feel you, anon. It gives me flashbacks to 90s leetspeak, where "ph00l" and similar usages were so in vogue. But let's not forget that Mishima comes up with the site, and Mishima (named for dead author Yukio Mishima, who was so desperate to be cool that he ultimately committed seppuku) is also exactly the sort of guy who would have thought leetspeak was cool. All this stuff sounds kind of cringy because Mishima is cringy.

Let's let him tell us all about it:

Mishima 怪盗お願いチャンネルだよ。略しS『怪チャン』ね。 kaitou onegai channeru da yo. ryaku shite "kai chan" ne It's the Phantom Aficionado Website. Phan-Site, for short.

怪盗お願いチャンネル kaitou onegai channeru Phantom Aficionado Website Phantom Thief Requests Channel

Look at that for a moment. Mishima's site is not really a fan site, despite it being called an "aficionado website". It's a request site. While it acts as a fansite, and Mishima intends it to try and control the narrative regarding the PTs, we mainly experience it as the place Mementos requests roll in—hence its name.

怪チャン kai chan Phan-Site

You see what they did there? The Japanese kai chan takes the first syllable of kaitou and channeru and forms a portmanteau—very commonly done. The translation does the same, stripping a syllable from phantom and website.

The full name gets shortened in various other ways:

お願いチャンネル onegai channeru Request Channel

怪盗チャンネル kaitou channeru Phantom Thief Channel

Online, the site describes itself as 怪盗ｃｈ kaitou ch, paralleling 2chan, 4chan, and all the other chan-style imageboard sites that originated in Japan. This is essentially what the Phan-Site is—a 4chan-style anonymous imageboard. See that ＠名無し nanashi at the bottom? The message is signed "nameless", or "Anonymous", the default name used on 2chan.

By the way, it really bears mentioning here that Futaba, our resident, hacker, geek, and representative of geek culture, is named after 2chan—also known as the Futaba Channel. 佐倉双葉 sakura futaba, "Futaba Sakura". 双葉チャンネル futaba channeru—2chan, or the Futaba Channel.

Her mother, Wakaba, is named after a piece of backend software 2chan uses: "Wakaba is a Perl imageboard script with a SQL backend to store thread information."

quietly removes Perl hacker hat

usage

Mishima's website is overwhelmingly known as the "Phan-Site" or kai chan, of course. There's a general trend where people start out calling it the kaitou onegai channeru, then quickly move through some variant on onegai channeru or kaitou channeru to more or less use kai chan.

Are there any interesting trends? Sure. Haru (who admittedly comes in very late) never uses kai chan. Akechi never mentions the site itself, though he has a few mentions of the rankings. Joker always calls it the kai chan. Most of the team manage an occasional onegai channeru, kaitou channeru or kaitou onegai channeru at one point or another—even Ryuji comes out with the full site name quite late, under stress. Mishima, of course, mentions the site more than anyone else—possibly as much, or more, than all the PTs put together. But even to him, it's virtually always the kai chan.

Many background or minor characters have one mention of the kaitou onegai channeru, or the onegai channeru, or the rankings.

"the phandom"

This is funny, not least because Joker is so puzzled by it: Mishima is using this term he doesn't recognise, which users of the Phan-Site have thought up for themselves. But the original is rather different:

Mishima アクセス数、着実に増えてるんだよ。これ、本気で流行語狙えるかも。 akusesu suu, chakujitsu ni fueteru n da yo. kore, honki de ryuukougo neraeru ka mo That's what users of the Phan-Site call themselves! It's really caught on as the forum's gotten more popular. Well, the hit count is going up and up, you know. I really think this label could catch on!

Just look at this. Mishima has earlier described fans of the PTs not as a generic "the Phandom", but as 怪チャンユーザー kai chan yuuzaa—"Phan-Site users"!

Mishima is not describing an organically developing fan culture here. This is Mishima the entrepreneur, aggressively building what he sees as his brand. honki de ryuukougo neraeru ka mo—"I honestly think we could aim to get this phrase on everyone's lips".

Of course, in English, "Phan-Site users" sounds incredibly bland. It needed to be spiced up—not that it's exactly peppy in Japanese AFAIK. But this is the point, underscoring why Joker is so unsettled and what's going on in Mishima's confidant: if you're talking about the PTs, Mishima wants you to be talking about his website.

In fact, in a way, Mishima is on the same page as Shido and Akechi—and, more innocently, Ryuji. He wants the Phan-Site to be massive. And he's doing everything within his power to make it that way.

"phanboy"

This one's used a few times, too. When you draw on the blackboard, people can ask if you're a Phanboy:

Students {family name}って、かなり��怪盗マニアか? {family name} tte, kanari no kaitou mania ka? Is {family name} a Phanboy?

kanari no kaitou mania ka?—"Is he a bit of a Phantom Thief fan?" "Is he this interested in the Phantom Thieves in particular?"

You can ask Akechi if he's a Phanboy—literally, of course, "are you a Phantom Thief fan?":

Joker 怪盗ファン? kaitou fan? Are you a Phanboy?

This page goes into the distinctions between otaku, mania and fan:

The difference between "otaku" and "mania" is vague, and there is no particular definition. However, in the field of linguistics, there seems to be a difference in that ``otaku'' refers to ``people who are only interested in one thing,'' and ``mania'' refers to ``people who concentrate on one thing.'' ... The difference between ``otaku'' and ``mania'' is still ambiguous, but in general, ``fan'' is used with a slightly more subdued nuance than the other two.

So the students around the blackboard are going "Wow, we didn't know he was a fan!", while Joker's question to Akechi is maybe more delicate, more like "Huh, are they growing on you?", or "Since when were you a fan?" Like in English, you might not mind someone calling you a fan, but you probably don't want to be known as an otaku, which suggests that you're too interested, and probably live in a basement.

"P-Thieves"

This one seems to have no original equivalent. The few lines that use it either don't name the PTs at all, or they use 怪盗団 kaitou-dan, "the Phantom Thieves". This is an artefact of "Phantom Thieves" just feeling much more unwieldy in English than kaitou does in Japanese—abbreviations for it would inevitably crop up.

But this one sucks. Can I do better? I'm not sure I can, lol.