#wow this takes me back

[acidinthesnow]

(via brandnewphysics, celestialdefender)

[amphibianaday]

day 1765

[fanaticalthings]

Broke: "Dick Grayson was upset at a new kid taking over his mantle because he doesn't think Jason will be good enough as Robin"

Woke: "Dick is upset at Jason, not because he's suddenly taking over the mantle he created, but because Jason isn't nearly feral enough of a child to drive Bruce insane in Dick's place"

Dick: You wanna be my successor? Go swing from that chandelier right now.

Jason:

Dick: As a matter of fact, I need to see you crawling all over the walls. Make a ruckus, break some furniture

Jason: But Bruce-

Dick: SCREW Bruce. Your job as my new brother is to make his life HELL. Why are you so polite? Why are you so calm? Where's your DRIVE, your PASSION, huh? You may be worthy of the title of Robin, but are you WORTHY of being my disaster brother?

Jason, a little scared: I dont-

Dick, scoffing: The youth these days just don't rebel like they used to.

[jollysunflora]

#as someone whose experience WAS just reading the comic and occasionally skimming the forums this is fascinating#like to me megatokyo was this mishmash of interesting ideas that never quite came together#and left a mark because i was like.... 14 at the time#but i always forget the forums were their own culture#also i miss the early internet

I would love to know more about the social dynamic on the megatokyo forums. Half the people didn't even read the comic? What brought them there? What kind of tensions kept bubbling up? Fascinating to me

I obviously don't have the objectively correct answers, but Megatokyo as a comic started in 2000, and reached its peak in popularity around 2003-2006. This timing is *right* around the start of the 'second wave' internet-inspired boom in Anime in the west (which would crest and then crash spectacularly in 2008). Megatokyo was the right blend of influences at the right time - 50% western gaming/internet humor, 50% bishoujo manga aesthetics. As such it was a gateway drug for a lot of people to get into anime, and a lot of readers started with the comic and took the plunge into actual anime/manga from there. I would argue that Megatokyo actually played a small but notable role in making that boom happen.

Forums on the early internet were a total crapshoot; quality of discourse varied based on how good the mods were, how nice frequent posters were, etc. Megatokyo was lucky in that it had some great ones with a wide variety of interests & a lot of time to devote to the forums. It actually had a ton of subforums, reflecting that mixed crowd:

(A 2004 screenshot). You had the gamers, the weebs, the deviantartists, and as far as webcomic forums went Megatokyo was really smart about setting up infrastructure as soon as new interests bloomed.

In the early days of the internet, its important to remember there was NO default. If you want to talk about visual novels, you don't go to the subreddit, that doesn't exist, you just have to stumble on a place. Which means when you do stumble on a place, you have a very high tendency to stick with it. Here is where a little bit of webcomic history is needed: Megatokyo was founded by Fred 'Piro' Gallagher and Rodney 'Largo' Caston - Fred was the weeb side, Rodney the gamer side. Fred did the art and half the scripting, Rodney did the other half of the scripting. As you can probably guess that put a lot more work on Fred than Rodney, and eventually creative differences lead to them separating and Fred continued the comic as a solo project.

This event ushered in a tone shift in the comic - not at first actually, Megatokyo's peak as a 'gamer comic' was actually under Fred's solo direction, but soon enough he took it in more bishoujo anime directions. And honestly, webcomics were just so new back then! You gave *anything* a shot, you didn't give a fuck if it was good or not. I *still* read El Goonish Shive, a god damn fetish genderswap transformation webcomic but-I-was-too-stupid-to-realize-that, and its early comics looked like the mad scrawlings of a 12 year old because *they were*. As such, the schism in the webcomic combined with the fact that a bunch of middle school readers became highschools and their tastes changed, meant that half the audience of the comic just didn't like it anymore.

But the forums...those readers learned about Tokyo Mew Mew there! They found their Warcraft 3 guildmembers there! They trolled through Colin Powell's UN report on South African deliveries of uranium yellowcake to Sadaam Hussein and debated what that meant for his IRBM capabilities (spoiler alert: fucking nothing) there! So they don't even read the comic any more, but why leave - the way the forum is structured, "Story Discussion" is in its own subreddit anyway, its *built* for you to not care about the comic. And your friends are all here anyway right?

Back to the webcomic history, there was a LOT of drama around the split when it happened, and the growing weebdom of the internet was contested territory - weebs and gamers would sling mud at each other to paint the blueprint for how left-Tumblr/Social Justice Twitter would fight their endless civil wars with each other today. I - and I shit you not here, I am not making this up - was there for when 4chan launched a raid on the Megatokyo Forums because the Megatokyo folk were, by being 'anime fans', a bunch of loli pedophiles. 4chan! Accusing someone of being lolis!! It was great, the raid totally fizzled and people counter-raided /b/ with like Cardcaptor Sakura fanart, good times. All of this is to say, the people who stopped reading the comic didn't just sit quietly back - they got into tons of fights big and small with those who still read the comics, saying it was "bad now" and Fed had "Betrayed Rodney" and all that, and it was really just a proxy war for the weeb/gamer conflicts throughout the internet at the time.

That Hamtaro poster I mentioned in my original comment was at some point banned because he stirred up political drama in non-political threads, got temp-silenced, and evaded his timeout to spam the forums with an anarchist manifesto about how the only thing we posters have to lose if we kill the mods is our chains. Shit was lit.

Of course the drama is what people remember but most people posted discussions of the latest Haruhi episode in peace. Still, the different subforums became very silo'd as a result of these trends. and they became in their own way separate groups. Then of course the 1st wave webcomic bubble settled down, Megatokyo's popularity waned, and the Forum Age of the internet died as Reddit+ rose. The forum slowly fell into disuse as a result, though it definitely stuck around with active members well into the 2010's and people posted about the Good Old Days, till eventually the old forum was archived and new one, primarily devoted to the comic which is still trundling along, replaced it a few years back. Still, hopefully this is a neat history of the forums from say ~2003 to ~2008.

[egophiliac]

new chapter 7 installment dropped how we feelin????

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND

THAT'S HIS DAD

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[queenofthedorks]

Oof there was a hot second where Nicholas Lea was the little black dress of slash fandom. He looked good on everyone and thanks to a lot of stuff being filmed in BC in the mid to late 90s he was in everything so crossovers abound.

I remember a long running fic series at one point that tied X-files, Highlander, and Once A Thief together with the premise that Alex/Cory/Victor where the same immortal.

Best fandom history commentary ever, courtesy of @tardistara

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

STOP I'm thinking about the part in Gravity Falls where Stan shows up with freshly bought (stolen) light bulbs only to see Ford screwing a new one in surrounded by family.

And OH my GOD. AGH.

Stan gets a little (ir)rationally upset about this because... It's.. Guys,,,

Stan perceives it as Ford once again easily receiving the praise and love of their family when he had to fight tooth and nail to receive even half of it.... I'm not well ✋😔

[krysmcscience]

BILLDUMP TIME (with transparency, because I can). Don't mind me, I'm just yeeting my goofy art at some way more talented individuals out of nowhere and then hauling ass back to the security of being a weird silent lurker ahaha

@tesscourtes and @beccadrawsstuff, respectively! These two Bills make a little prism of sorts together because of their recent crossovers on Patreon~ :3c Speaking of which, I highly recommend supporting both these artists! They do fantastic work! (TessCourtes and Beccup)

@qoolk on the left, and @monobmp on the right! I am such a sucker for these outfits~ OuO Go and check these two out, their art is phenomenal!!! >u<

@1spooky2me The most difficult Bill of the lot for me to draw, ahaha... Their art is so incredibly consistent and dynamic, I am, a little envious <:,) A little envious, but mostly impressed, so go look at their amazing art, what are you waiting for

And finally, @ckret2, whose writing is sublimely in-character and just a delight to read - they're a great artist, as well! I simply Could Not resist drawing their Bill in this ridiculous incredible and very fashionable pink feather dress, even though he only briefly wears it in their fic, so I also did a little bonus doodle of him in his standard hoodie to make up for it. XD (Also, as far as I'm concerned, Bill and Mabel were both correct in that lime green accessories make the dress Much Better.)

This is just a small selection of the human Bill designs I enjoy. I may draw and post more later on, who knows! Feel free to reblog with some neat Bill designs, either your own or by other folks - if any of the designs particularly call to me, I'll add them to the little list I've got going~ :D (Alternatively, if you really like my stuff and want me to draw something specific, you could...mmm...perhaps, commission me...? OuO)

Also I'm tagging Billford because uhhhh yeah, sorry not sorry, every single one of these Bills is getting shipped with Ford by the artists in some way or another, lmao

[crows-of-buckets]

Rook: I'm really worried about Davrin and Lucanis, they keep arguing with one another... Its very bad Varric, what if it effects them in battle?

Varric, remembering that one time Fenris broke Ander's nose then took a knife in the back for him in the same night: I'm sure they'll be fine kid. They're barely even arguing if you ask me

[ashipiko]

i am not immune to the niko beam

HE IS REAL. AND HE GRABBED ME BY THE NECK AND THREW ME INTO THE PAVEMENT.

[sixthieves]

And when we get side-by-side gif sets of this and that one scene in battle of labyrinth what then 🫠

[surreal-duck]

live drama adaptations part 2 (prev)

cast reveal and girls movie night 🔥

[panevanbuckley]

shoutout to all the backup ships! y'know the ones, when your main ships just ain't hitting right so you go back to a ship that took over your life for like a week two years ago??

anyways, if nobody's got me i know my backup ships have got me