It's been a really long time, hasn't it?

I made this account back in 2013, under a completely different name, but I've changed it now so that my friends can't track me down and make a fool of me. As I'm writing this, it's been seven whole years since then. The thing is, I missed out on a lot of this stuff growing up - little communities on the internet, people just sharing things they like with one-another, and so when I came across this site, I ended up putting a lot more effort into it than I'm comfortable admitting. Although, saying that, I don't think it was wasted time.

I remember writing my first fanfiction and thinking it was the greatest thing I'd ever made. It was something like 40000~50000 words, almost as long as an actual novel. Sometimes I wonder where I got the motivation from. Reading back on it years later, it was so embarassing I had to delete it, and all the other fanfiction on my account too. That isn't to say that I don't appreciate those stories for what they were, though. I'm still into writing these days, you know, and staring back at all of this reminds me of how much I've improved over these 7 years. Although back then, I was writing a chapter or two every day, usually a couple thousand words long each - now I can barely get a sentence or two in without feeling a little dissatisfied with something. I used to love watching the views on my stories, and the follower counts and the favourites, watching my own fanfic progressively move further up the rankings. In some of the smaller communities I wrote fanfiction for, I was nearly at the very top. But getting reviews was the most wonderful thing of all. Actually hearing people saying they enjoyed something I wrote was something I always looked forward to. Whenever I saw the review count go up on a story, I used to get so excited. Whether it was praise or criticism, the fact that someone took the time to even write it out meant the world to me. I almost miss that feeling, as amatuerish and as inexperienced as I was, because it gave me something to look forward to.

Maybe that's what keeps bringing me back. Up until a few years ago, I was still getting private messages every few months, so I signed in every now and again just to answer them. They've stopped now, but even so, I still come back sometimes. I think a lot about the people I kept in regular correspondance with, and the authors of the fanfics that I saw updating alongside mine every week - do they also feel the same way I do about this website? I wonder if they also come back occassionally, just to remember what it felt like to move through the menus. It's funny. I still remember exactly where everything is, even though I haven't written a fanfiction in so long.

Or, maybe that's not the case anymore. Despite the nostalgia and the happiness that I feel when I see this place, the empty account that I left still leaves me feeling unfinished with what I started doing here. I want to put a nail into the coffin of this account, and I want that nail to be a fanfiction, written not by the me of 7 years ago, but by the me of me now. I said I improved, but it's not really polite to say something like that about myself, is it? I should do what I always used to do back in 2013, and let other people decide if my writing is worth anything. Although, that being said, I haven't started working on anything like that yet. Maybe as you're reading this, there's a single story on my account, written in 2020, and if that's the case, then I've left my last mark on the site and I've logged out of my account for the very last time. It really was wonderful.

And, if you really are reading this, whether it's now or sometime in the future, then thank you. People like you are what made me the happiest back then, when everything was so simple.

Goodbye now, and thanks.

- Oreoboros (or, Cupzy)