I am fucking haunted by a terrible piece of writing that was shared on Livejournal (though it from an older actual published book) sometime in the early 2000s

If anyone knows what it is or can find it PLEASE let me me know as I need to read it again

Its an excerpt from a story about a woman and the fey? And there is a moment where the fey king? Prince? Casts a spell on her and then there is this long ass section of the worst purple prose of your life

Dude uses like 5 metaphors for every single body part! Like this isn't an exact quote but it's like "her toes were like snails, small white stones delicate bones, small white shells"

And the dude describes her ENTIRE BODY like that feature by feature!

This was posted in a writing group and blew up

There was a dramatic reading!

There was fan art!

AND I CAN'T FUCKING FIND ANY TRACE OF THIS TERRIBLE WRITING ONLINE

It's SO bad and I need to 1. Read it again and 2. Make sure Tumblr is aware of it because good god

Top icons posted to @oldinterneticons in February 2024

I have polls now ahaaahahhhahahaaaa

old livejournal icon i found

Leaving aside the question of people reading your earlier content and making fun of it-- I got uneasy when the LJ servers were first moved to Russia. Shortly thereafter I downloaded all my content so it could be moved to a Dreamwidth account (more archival than anything else)... then deleted all the posts but one on the LJ account.

For those of you with old LJ accounts who've been thinking about this: the above article will talk you through the process of migrating your posts to a WordPress blog.

I MISS LIVEJOURNAL ICONS AKA BLOG JEWELRY. I MISS WHOLE COMMUNITIES DEDICATED TO MAKING THE MOST INTERESTING 100x100 PIXELS EVER. THE ART. THE PRETTY. THE VARIETY.

You ever clutch your phone to your chest whenever you finish reading a fanfic and you're like, sighing and thinking "yeah, that one's gonna stay with me forever" and smile all content and happy to yourself because you just read the most amazing thing on earth

we gotta bring back livejournal and wordpress and forums and weird little blogsites that aren't connected to any social media presence at all its just people online doing online things. the internet is so small now bc we're all squished into the same sites. we used to be so spread out. we used to be a proper decentralised digital culture

I swear I get one of these damned reblogs at least once per day.

E-mail threading is closer to Tumblr than LJ functionality, yet we managed to have oldschool discussions on mailing lists for years. Same with forum threads. Early LJ's search function was a horrorshow on par with Tumblr's. Shit was in locked journals just like things are hiding out in private discords today. People often took their public LJ discussions to the privacy of AIM or Y!M. People who did post their fic to LJ often serialized it there before posting the long-term copy to an archive where it was more findable, and some posted to archives in the first place, just like the split between social spaces and AO3 today.

Even moderation isn't necessarily that different if we're comparing personal LJs to personal Tumblrs rather than LJ coms to Tumblr tags. Modern puritywank looks a little different, but I promise you there were plenty of cliques and assholes back then.

I did love the height of LJ fandom in like 2005, but man... if there are this many sad LJ refugees still languishing on Tumblr, can't we just talk to each other in the style we used to?

LJ style community is within reach.

Just post like you used to and interact how you used to.

It wasn't the site features that made LJ fandom happen: it was people.

Top icons posted to @oldinterneticons in March 2024

another post made me remember that back in the day, SO much fic wasn’t tagged. You were lucky if you knew what fandom the kink meme 24 part comment fic on someone’s livejournal even belonged to.

That isn’t to say that we can’t or shouldn’t tag fic these days. But we’ve come SO far in such a short amount of time. Give some grace to authors and be kind with your expectations.

(perpetual plug that “chose not to use archive warnings” is a totally valid and acceptable tag/warning)

A tale retold

I first told this story some twenty years ago, and it happened even earlier than that, so here's the Modern Retelling with Historical Context:

For many years, I had—well, you've heard of naturally curly hair? I had unnaturally curly hair. I had a stylist so brilliant that she was able to give me occasional perms that no one could tell were chemical. NO, FOR REAL, I constantly got compliments on my long, rippling hair. In reality, my hair is deplorably fine and flat, although I'm told I have a ton of it; putting in some wave made me feel better, you know? I just wanted to co-wash, air-dry, and go live my tousled life. But after my spinal surgery, I just couldn't spend 2-3 hours in a stylist's chair anymore. And so, after 20 years of my best Galadriel impression, I've had to make peace with my natural texture, the only thing about me (I realize now) that is actually straight.

But this story takes place back in 1996; I was a junior in high school, and I had the freshest of perms. Just absolutely exuberant. Downright Pre-Raphaelite. It had only been done the weekend before, and it usually took about two weeks for the curls to settle down and look less poodly natural, but I wasn't going to miss Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. When I was in grad school years later, my Shakespeare professor went to the mat for this movie, declaring it the best adaptation of any of his plays. And she wasn't a Leo fangirl, either. I tend to agree. And I got to see it on a big screen, opening night, with my best friend and my fresh luscious elbow-length '90s 'do. Banger soundtrack, the big bold visuals that tip over into Maybe Too Much in Moulin Rouge—I'm enthralled, I'm absorbed. Claire Danes is weeping over Dead Romeo, and we all know what’s about to happen in this, a 400-year-old play, but you still hope against hope that somehow it won’t this time. And then I feel something that's not emotion.

Something behind me. In my hair.

It's clammy. This tiny moist hand... creeping... up my neck.

Bear in mind, these are classic movie theater seats, not the big recliners you get now. My head is vulnerable to rear attack. And these tiny fingers, like a gummy little doll's hand, are crawling up my neck, under, through my hair. I am now sitting bolt upright, frozen. What the fuck is going on. It’s still creeping like a little spider up my scalp to the back of my head—put your hand up to yours, get your fingertips to the roots of your hair and really get a sense of what this feels like—

These fingers close, slowly, around the greediest handful of hair they can get hold of, and YANK.

I whip around while Juliet is sobbing—darkness.

To this day, I have no idea who (or what?) that tiny hand belonged to. I mean, you gotta think it was a small child enticed by the siren song of my curls, right? Some parents just didn’t spring for a babysitter on a big opening night, and there’s a Millennial out there with some real interesting core memories, I guess? I couldn't make out anything in the darkness behind me, and we were at kind of a key cinematic moment, so I didn't have time for more than a stern warning glare To Whom It Might Concern. And then I held onto my hair for the remainder of the movie. I chopped it all off within a few months, and went to college with short, straight hair, unable to forget the Cursèd Touch of the Hand. lol jk I just wanted a change and regretted it instantly.

So, happy 20th anniversary to the story I told on the Fametracker forums all those years ago. I can still remember exactly what that hand felt like: tiny. And moist.

Some non-ao3 Wolfstar Fic Recs for while ao3 is down

Hi so this is just a quick impromptu fic rec list, because ao3 has been down, so I thought a short rec list with fics that are hosted on other sites might come in handy while we all patiently wait for the amazing volunteers at ao3 to defend the site against the hackers. Also, I've seen several posts saying this and just want to add my voice, I think if you have the money to do so, giving a bit of it to ao3 would be a great thing to do, when the site is back up and running.

Okay enough of that, let's get into the list, in no particular order, these are just some of my older wolfstar faves off the top of my head, probably most of them are going to be fics I have recced on this blog before but I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as too much enthusiasm, especially when it comes to fandom.

The Shoebox Project

If you ever thought about wanting to read the Shoebox Project but were intimidated by its length (or by all the separate pdf files), maybe now it is time to reconsider? It's an absolute wolfstar classic, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will give you all the marauders and wolfstar feels you could ever want! For me, when asked for just one wolfstar/marauders fic rec this is always the one I would give.

The Door through the World

Okay you didn't expect me to write a fic rec list of older wolfstar fics and not mention this one, did you? This is the 2nd fic I will always and forever rec, a magical realism AU (kind of), the story is pure magic. I found that it is still accessible via webarchive, even though it is hosted on ao3.

remuslives23 Masterlist

Here is remuslives23's masterlist, on livejournal. They've written so many great fics, Muse in particular is one of my favorites (a muggle, artist AU), but the whole list is worth checking out!

picascribit on ff.net

Picascribit also posts all of their fics on ff.net, and I think I've recced most of their longer wolfstar fics on this blog over the years already anyways but two of my personal favorites are Highland Fling (a muggle AU set in Scotland) and Discards (a muggle AU set in Seattle with trans!Sirius), but I love all of their fics!

wolfstarwarehouse's ff.net rec list

wolfstarwarehouse posted a ff.net rec list in 2016, I remember reading All Kidding Aside and To Kiss a Bloke off that list back then, I don't think I've read the other fics but maybe now is the time for me to check them out!

Beekeeping in the Daylight podfic

Beekeeping in the Daylight is a wonderful muggle AU by halictus-writer and there is now a podfic by itsaash with a non-ao3 download link.

Alright I think I'll post this now and if I think of any more I'll just add them or make a part 2. If you have any faves you'd add to this list or if you're a writer who also posts somewhere else except ao3 feel free to add yours as a reblog or comment, so the list gets longer! <3

Version 2 of "how did you get to Tumblr"

options expanded based on not making this poll in the middle of the night and recurring answers in the tags and replies of the original poll

Tumblr only lets you have up to 10 options for a poll, so I had to group some together based on either conglomeration or vibes. :(

Intentionally left out a blanket "other" option. I highly recommend you pick the option closest to your experience, otherwise just go with the last option and tell us in the replies/tags.

Avatars via sweetlittlelie1 on Livejournal, 2009

Hello!

So, I made this account on a whim. If it turns into nothing, cest la vie.

But this is an account inspired by the likes of @haveyouwatchedthisyoutuber-poll @haveyouseenthisseries-poll @haveyouplayedthisgame-poll @haveyouseenthismovie-poll @haveyoureadthisbook-poll @haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll @haveyouheardthisband etc. etc.

As the name suggests, this account is all about fanfiction! Submit any fanfic you want and find out whether the general Tumblr population knows it. And hey, maybe a few people will discover your suggested fic and fall in love with it!

Here's the google form to suggest your favorite fic, from any site. Go nuts!

Reblogs and whatnot are always appreciated :)