Ok. Ok, so... I need to "gush" a bit. This will be a long post, so I'll put it under a cut.

Background: I'm from Germany. In the early 2000s, we had this big anime-themed fanpage called Animexx. I mean, we still have that page, it's just gotten really quiet over there with the rise of Social Media.

Anyway.

That page had/has everything. You could submit fanart, fanfic, doujinshi/fancomics, cosplay photography, you could roleplay, write weblogs, there was a forum, etc, etc. It still feels a bit of a dream, but I loved this page because you could find EVERYTHING there.

That cool cosplayer you saw on the convention? If you went on Animexx, you'd probably find them and could tag them in the photo you took of them (this is still the thing I missed the most when I was more active in cosplay...).

I sometimes look back at my old fanart and fanfic over there and read the nice comments I got.

I think their downfall was mostly the many, many rules regarding fanart quality, cosplay quality, and last but not least, the whims of unfair mods ... but that's a topic for a different post.

SO ANYWAY.

They had - still have - a section for fanarts called "Aikos Lieblinge" - Aiko's favourites (Aiko being one of the mascots of that page). I think they rotate each week? I'm not 100% sure, but it's always 6 pictures that get chosen? Tbh I don't really know how it works, I know you can suggest a fanart for it, and I assume the 6 pictures with the most suggestions get chosen.

Back then, it was a big deal. If you were among Aiko's favourites, you'd get pages after pages of comments. 60-100 comments on your picture were pretty common, really good pictures got even more.

I always looked at that longingly, I usually got maybe 2-6 comments, and the most I got were my very old One Piece fanarts where I actually managed to get around 20, and even 40 comments on one.

SO. ANYWAY.

It finally happened. I've been on this page for 20 years (joined in May 2004 and have never really left, though been inactive every now and then through the years), and today I opened the fanart front page to see...

My Heizuha picture on there! 🥺 I made it! I made it into Aiko's favourites!!

I try not to listen to the tiny voice in my head that keeps grumbling "well, NOW it doesn't matter anymore, it's not like there's still a whole lot of people active over there!", because even though that may be true... this stupid moment just has lifted my mood SO MUCH??

I KNOW it is useless. I'm not gonna get an influx of new followers over there, and a whole bunch of people commenting on my picture(s). But just knowing what it used to be... knowing that there were at least SOME people thinking my stupid little drawing was good enough to be suggested for this...

It makes me incredibly happy ='//)

Neue Seiten bei DIAS!

Die erste Seite von Kapitel 6 ist endlich online! Die nächste gibt's dann nächsten Montag. Dieses Kapitel hält einiges bereit! Ihr könnt den Manga auf Animexx und über die deutschsprachige Version von WEBTOON (Web und App) lesen. Feedback ist immer willkommen!

Nach der @animuc_de ist vor der AniRo. Nach einem gemütlichem Austausch zu unseren Streams mit dem Streaming-Team von uns und dem @animexx_events geht es für uns nun nach Siegen zurück. Es war eine wundervolle Zeit. Vielen Dank für die schöne Zeit und die Möglichkeit, sich austauschen und uns bei euch präsentieren zu dürfen. Jetzt heißt es für uns, die AniRo fertig vorzubereiten und zu zeigen, was wir Schönes können und vorbereitet haben! Neben der AniRo seht Ihr uns natürlich wie gewohnt 2x im Monat Freitags das Setting "Ratten!" streamen unter www.twitch.tv/animexx Natürlich kommen auch noch ganz viele News zur AniRo und zu unseren normalen Angeboten. Wir freuen uns auf Euch, Eure Paper Adventures #paperadventures #penandpaperrpg #penandpaper #twitch #twitchgermany #gruppen #team #gruppenfoto #münchen #hauptbahnhof #kaffee #aniro #animexx #anime #manga #siegen #siegenwittgenstein #event #ratten (hier: München Hauptbahnhof Gleis 22) https://www.instagram.com/p/CrsumZFtopa/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I know reddit sucks and all but all the alternatives suck worse for talking local current events. It's looking so bleak.

obsessed with my 2008 art, girl you rock that fursona with the emo bangs!!!!!

I just looked into my very, very old written stuff (from 2003, to be exact. So. 20 yrs ago, when I started writing fanfic)

And let me tell you...

It was bad 😂😂😂

Not... bad bad, but bad 😂😂😂

i miss talking with people about their art, talking about my art. having conversations about where we're going with it, what project is planned next. it's just my annual "i miss having an art community website"

You know any old nostalgic social medias that still exist? The only ones I've found so far are hi5 and Xat

Huh I didn't know hi5 was still around. Let me do some digging:

MySpace: still around (barely - looks like the front page hasn't been updated since early last year), but nothing like it was back in the day. Two clone sites that work and look the same was as old-school MySpace, SpaceHey and Friend Project exist.

LiveJournal is still up and some fan communities are still active there. It was bought by a Russian company years ago and there are some concerns about that, but it still works in the same way it used to. Still popular as a social site in Cyrillic-language countries. LJ's software was open source so there were a lot of clone sites of it. Dreamwidth is the main one in use, but DeadJournal and InsaneJournal are also still around.

Obviously DeviantArt is very much still popular for posting art, though looks very different than it used to.

Open Diary and Diaryland are still hanging in there! These ones were some of my favourites way back but not many seem to remember them, they were very early (pre-LJ, I think!) blog sites. Open Diary doesn't look nostalgic anymore but Diaryland does. I also know a lot of people from OD migrated to Prosebox, which is another neat little diary site (but looks quite modern).

Gaia Online still looks fairly active and the layout is largely stuck in the late 2000s!

ChickenSmoothie, a virtual pet site

Neopets is still going, though since so much of it was built on Flash lots of the old games etc are gone :(

Never used Quotev myself so idk how it used to be, but looks like now they are part quiz, part Wattpad-like site?

Honestly UQuiz is a nice little spiritual successor to Quizilla imo.

Still lots of old-school forums out there if you look for them, certainly not for as broad of a range of topics as there used to be but here are some directories to get started.

Looks like some country and language-specific sites that people mentioned in the notes like Skyrock, Metroflog (there's 3 of these if you Google??), Animexx and Kaskus are still active or trying to come back

MyYearbook became Meet Me

Vampire Freaks lives on as a store only

Bzoink, an old survey/quiz/forum site, is still around.

Of course, if you just want to look at old sites, the Internet Archive and Archiveteam's wiki are good places to start.

"There's always hope, whenever you're not expecting it ..."

~ Wonders exist.

*Twitter* *Animexx*

I’m not expecting people to understand that motive at all, but I wanted to mention the idea is based on a true story. On August 2nd ’23 was one of the darkest days in my life and I never want to forget what gift I received at exact that time. I'm thankful and now full of hope.

サトカス/Pokeshipping/AaMl | "Hope" | August 4th to August 11th 2023

Ohh hab dich grad durch Zufall gefunden. Werde zu Hause erstmal Deine Doujins lesen 😍 Animexx gibt's ja noch 😁

Das freut mich zu hören ❤️

Wünsche dir viel Spaß beim Lesen 😉

Nach der @animuc_de ist vor der AniRo. Nach einem gemütlichem Austausch zu unseren Streams mit dem Streaming-Team von uns und dem @animexx_events geht es für uns nun nach Siegen zurück. Es war eine wundervolle Zeit. Vielen Dank für die schöne Zeit und die Möglichkeit, sich austauschen und uns bei euch präsentieren zu dürfen. Jetzt heißt es für uns, die AniRo fertig vorzubereiten und zu zeigen, was wir Schönes können und vorbereitet haben! Neben der AniRo seht Ihr uns natürlich wie gewohnt 2x im Monat Freitags das Setting "Ratten!" streamen unter www.twitch.tv/animexx Natürlich kommen auch noch ganz viele News zur AniRo und zu unseren normalen Angeboten. Wir freuen uns auf Euch, Eure Paper Adventures #paperadventures #penandpaperrpg #penandpaper #twitch #twitchgermany #gruppen #team #gruppenfoto #münchen #hauptbahnhof #kaffee #aniro #animexx #anime #manga #siegen #siegenwittgenstein #event #ratten (hier: München Hauptbahnhof Gleis 22) https://www.instagram.com/p/CrsumZFtopa/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

i'm not big into the diru for reasons but sometimes their old stuff scratches a very specific itch

since you say youve been in the kuro fandom even before BoC aired, could you tell me about how it was back then? :D ive always been interested in learning how internet culture used to be, how things eventually changed, how they improved/declined etc, more so when the current community is pretty much dead. was there an experience that marked you, what do you remember most fondly? was there an event that excited the fandom more than any other (like the release of a chapter or smth)? which blogs were the most popular? Its okay if you dont want to tho, i understand!

Super interesting question! I hope I can provide some equally interesting information in return.

Before the fandom had reached Tumblr, much of it centred around a forum, or at least much of what I knew. It wasn't originally a Kuroshitsuji forum but a sub-forum of a Bleach forum, actually. I think it was called Bleach Asylum? And I don't know exactly how it came to be but I think that Bleach forum had lots of sub forums for then-popular anime and manga but Kuroshitsuji gained so much popularity and the fandom happened to gather there, so that sub forum really took off and it ended up being an anchor point for the fandom. I used to always look for the most recent scanlations there, back before we were able to buy them legally.

I didn't actively participate in that forum but I lurked occasionally. It was full of wild discussions, one of which was the "two Ciel(s) theory"/"2CT" as it was called back then. It had a strong following on the website back then already. I sadly don't remember any of the other theories that were making rounds back then...

I didn't really participate in much fandom stuff back then, limited my art posts to deviantArt and my personal facebook... but eventually, I made a tumblr specifically to interact with the fandom.

As for blogs, I don't really like doing any name dropping, especially because it would go into some people who used to ship sebaciel and turned anti, and other stuff I'd rather not talk about. I do feel like back in the day, there were a couple of gigantic Kuroshitsuji blogs with massive followings that got a LOT of asks every day (to the point where it seemed like a full time job to keep up with them). Discussion around sebaciel was very different, there have always been people who disliked it but unfounded rumours like "did you know that Kuroshitsuji was supposed to be a yaoi" made rounds without people questioning it. That always annoyed me a little tbh haha.

There was one fan artist on deviantArt whose name I sadly don't remember but I think they were THE kuro artist in Western fandom back then because their style looked very similar to the anime style. I still see their art sometimes.

And fun fact on the side, I grew up in German fandom spaces and we had a big website called Animexx (I think it's still around) that was dedicated specifically to all things manga, anime, and related stuff. They had really convenient ways of browsing on-site fanart, fanfic, doujinshi, cosplay, and other fan creations, as well as forums and ways to host your own fan events. Until the early 2010s, I hung out there a lot so until then, my perspective is distorted by that German lens. I used to post my early Kuroshitsuji fanart there too.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! I feel like I could go on tangents for much longer but idk how interesting that would be.

~ Underwater Kiss ~ [03|01|2023] - Pokeshipping

*Twitter* *animexx*

Last public update of my comic "Green&Gold" of 2023!

I'm really fond of this particular panel of Thea and Piet leaning against each other.

New pages go up to Patreon first as usual :)

Merry Christmas! ����

You can read the comic here (preferably on Tapas ♥) ->

G&G Website ENGLISH: TAPAS | WEBTOON GERMAN: Animexx | WEBTOON

average animexx user from serbia