logging in again after so so many years and wow, i felt a wave of nostalgia and melancholy wash over me. clicking that globe on the top right of the screen and reading through all the notifications i left unread for years, browsing through my old blogs and logging in old accounts, i swear i could cry lol. so many memories made here. heck, when i first joined, the whole website was green. there's also the countless wall ad spams, the upvoting issue where people buy upvotes with karma points and stuff. speaking of kps, i think i was here before the karma system was implemented. i think that was 10/11 years ago. im 22 now and just graduated from uni and about to start my first ever job soon. gosh.. i remember coming back from school and log in to aff just to spend 6-8 hours of unsupervised internet access doing this and that. i always admired authors who were back then and can't wait wanting to be their age and still contribute to the site. now that im at their age, it's such a bittersweet feeling :)

i wrote fics, mostly exo ships, most of which i hope that they never see the light of day again because its too cringy >.< im sad to see that the fanfic side of aff isn't as active anymore. back then, there's always at least 3-10 comments per chapter and almost a hundred of subscribers upon publishing with no chapters yet. seeing that most fics only get 1 comment, a handful of subscribers and only a couple of upvotes with 8 chapters despite the story being well written must have been devastating for new authors. i guess maybe that's why a lot of authors moved to ao3. but remember, there's someone out there who will stumble upon your work many years later and appreciate your work deeply, so don't give up!

i dabbled in layout coding. i remember layouts are so huge back then. the galleries are so fun to browse through. layout paradise, cerulean themes, nefelibata, edelweiss, vanilerry and many moree. i remember that the galleries are so active in posting that there's always new layouts churned out almost every day. i remember looking at tutorials for poster making and looking into other poster maker's portfolios/shops too. enchanted, spotlight, luxicity, poster paradise, selcouth, g-way, music chibi, the boy in seoul, sedbau, creamysmiles, antidote, eyeliner baby, angelastyles and many more amazing people who contributed to the graphic designing and layout coding community and is probably well over ther 30s now. although i did see that some shops are still updating in 2024. wow! i also did open up a few shops of my own lmao.

i also roleplayed. im glad the roleplaying community is still active and very much still taking in applications. seems like everyone's preferred platform is discord now? 

anyway, i'm glad that this site is still alive-ish and well. it's so cool to see jason/nichiren (the founder) still posting, fixing stuff, and online after 15 years.