Was Red White and Royal Blue originally Social Network fanfiction? 

Writing “so that happened” after a gay kiss should be considered a hate crime

THIS is real investigative journalism

OK. So. I am outing myself here, but I was heavily involved in the Andrew/Jesse/TSN Fandom. Casey 100% is robin-pulasky and was known on Tumblr as robin-sparkles. When Red, White & Royal Blue was announced and I saw the author pic I had the wind knocked out of me because I immediately knew who it was. They were beloved in the fandom and Carry It In My Heart was THE fanfic. I wish I hadn't deleted my Tumblr years ago because I know I had evidence on there. AH!

I dont know why itd never occurred to me that the social network would even have a fandom, let alone andrew garfield x jesse eisenberg shipping, but of course there was. why wouldnt there have been.

As soon as you said “Merlin fanfic”, I felt like I was shaking off my dusty wraps and arising from my Merthur tomb I’d been sealed in since 2011

The fact that The Mortal Instruments isn't also referenced as one of the most popular filed serial number books is insane to me. Cassandra Claire's impact on the Harry Potter fandom should never be understated its insane.

This movie is the most fan ficcy thing I’ve ever seen but if you gave me a thousand guesses I’d never land on it being born from TSN

I know “filing off the serial numbers” has a bad connotation but I find it kind of heart warming that there are original books that started out as fanfics. I’ve read multiple amazing works by talented writers & the idea that people who work on their craft for free could one day transition to writing a published novel inspired by a fandom they cherished is very endearing to me.

What would have “made this a lot more interesting is if it were just a little more fucked up” is so true. Iconic reading of this material.

The thing about Jane Mulcahy is... Well. She proved that Casey McQuiston wrote Carry It in My Heart. Well.

To answer questions about not being able to use the Way Back Machine for Livejournal: 1) Livejournal had a pretty robust anti-bot tool so it was commonly used in fandom communities who were coming out of the closet but you didn't want your fic to show up on Google. You say "I don't want to show up on Google" and it prevented your entire blog from being cached from that point forward. This was opt-in IIRC but boy did a lot of folk opt-in. 2) Livejournal's account deletion tool was incredibly thorough. Anything you ever posted would be gone - journal posts, comments, community posts, etc. We're so used to Tumblr where reblogging means you've created a copy of a post and it'll live on in infamy regardless of whether or not the OP deactivates. I suppose this is to prevent uncountable dead posts, but that wasn't needed for Livejournal. The only way to get copies of those posts are if the author of the fic still has copies of their comment notification emails. Those emails contained the full text of the post plus the comment, even if the post was below a readmore. If the author commented on those comments, then the commenter would have the comment chain but not the full text of the post. At least then you'd be able to see the icon the author used.

interesting that you saw the portrayal of Jesse as pathologically introverted, awkward, inexperienced and neurotic as being antithetical to the author really liking him, because I think in the context of TSN fandom that IS a loving portrayal of him (and honestly somewhat accurate to how he presented himself on the press tour), and was why I would guess people related to him and were drawn to him and his dynamic with Andrew, who is pretty much the opposite but was so clearly fond of Jesse and good at getting him out of his shell

that archive page is so powerful. it's such a relic of a bygone era of fandom that just makes me feel a little empty remembering. it's so strange that a single webpage could bring up so much nostalgia for a fandom i was never even apart of

As for the meta of it all I think it's hilarious that the social network isn't considered RPF as well when it is so, aggressively real-person fiction. this is rpf rpf. I think about this all the time in regards to literally every preexisting IP and tv shows getting new writers 10 seasons in and adaptations and reboots- derivative work is taken unquestionably seriously, except for when it's strictly out of love. (& i cant stress enough how good this video is!!)

as someone who was in that (very niche, Very cringe) fandom and read the fic as it was published, this video has really touched me. i saw old mutuals' blogs in this. thank you for such thorough work (it was so exciting to see you piece it all together!), and for such compassion

When I was in high school I loved Carry It In My Heart so much I printed out the ENTIRE THING. It's still in my drawer in my childhood home. This video was such a fun blast to the past, and I'm so happy for Casey

thank you for being real and including the bit where you got "weird" about it. the end of this video made me feel the same way i do after every jacob geller video essay - strangely overcome and wanting to sob about the implications of some piece of media/creativity that had seemed so superficial before. i wish more fandom historians would be willing to let that much sincerity into their analysis without sacrificing the humor and irony the detachment from those years gives us. beautiful work.

After “the thing is” part, every time the word “thing” was said, I kept expecting an excerpt from the fanfiction to flash on screen

There was a Hetalia fanfic I read like 6-7 maybe 8 years ago where Alfred/America was the son of a female president, and Arthur/England was the prince of England and they have a romance. When I heard about Red, White, and Royal Blue, I initially thought it was Hetalia fanfiction.

The Stendhal Syndrome chapter brought *me* to tears. This is art. Cinema.

not only obscure fandom origins of popular work but a heartfelt elegy for fandom past as well? this video was surprisingly touching

Well. The thing is, the structure of this video essay is sublime. It literally has plot twists and foreshadowing. When you did the callback to the robin-sparkles Urban Dictionary entry, I literally laughed out loud.

I think the big thing with rpf is that like, as long as the fans do not put that on the actors, then it’s just a thing that some people enjoy thinking about. It’s when fans push the ship or content about the ship onto the real people involved that it becomes shitty; that can mess up their lives. Also the rpf writers I’ve known about over the years would be horrified at their works being shown to the real people featured in them. It does tend to be fans consuming the work who cross the line, because holding the line is what keeps the creators safe, not just the real people in their works.

I think of robin/Casey from time to time because I followed robin sparkles during a formative time as a teen on Tumblr (they introduced me to Sufjan and influenced my music taste so much when I was 16 lol). So this video is insane to me, I felt like I was watching a video about a high school classmate - but then I had my hair blown back by the last half of your video - it was so cool to see you do detective work on my high school experience lmao. I also got emotional when you showed the masterpost on lj, because I remembered their profile picture/avatar and suddenly I felt like I had done all the research alongside you, and that I had gotten a piece of my teenagehood back lol. I didn’t write any of those comments, but that was ME. Your bog mummy was ME! lmao. Anyway, thank you for this experience lol such a good video!

Interesting tidbit about "The Secret Prince," it was an insanely popular fanfiction a decade ago. Like, second high viewed on the entirety of Ao3 in 2012 kind of popular. So Casey being influenced by the fics concept isn't too out there? It's could be a kind of "Draco in Leather Pants" moment, possibly. Like all the people writing posh bad boy fanfiction, which then spilt over into general lit, probably didn't know the popularization of those specific tropes came from a famous HP fanfiction. In the same way, I could see a majorly popular "dating a prince" fanfic influencing someone in the fandom space either directly or indirectly, because I do know that at the time (around 2010-2012) that trope started to pop up everywhere.

Robin Pulaski might actually be a play on Robin Sparkles and Dr. Pulaski from Star Trek the Next Gen.

you are definetly my new favorite video essayist your sense of humor, charisma, writing, and super HARD HITTING JOURNALISM are unmatched

"Je sais pas" is actually correct colloquially (but more and more officially) following this phenomenon called jespersen's cycle where people introduce a new emphasis of negation (here pas) to double up and then slowly people remove the first one (here ne) but at this point je sais pas is almost textbook french as well so i doubt it required any research on their part lol

me reading the chapters before watching the video like yeah, the evidence, the ad read, the alleged title of the fanfic, STENDHAL SYNDROME????? This video did not disappoint, it was actually kind of incredible. Jane you're so cool and always killing it, keep it up!!

I think Casey might have learned from CIIMH for RWRB, esp in how they leaned in to the reality of Alex and Henry’s situation a bit more. Their dad died in 2014, which very inspired that aspect of Henry’s life (I think they’ve spoken about it) so I do wonder if maybe the Andrew character could have been similar to Henry Before. I think we all take bits of what we wrote and put it in to the next thing. I’m sure they’re connected, but only in that They’re written by the same person, who is someone who is v inspired by their surrounding (same). I think it’s nice to think about their improvements, and if anything it shows that they can improve. Also according to Wikipedia, Casey was raised evangelical Christian, so they are not Jewish (they could have converted, but that takes a long time and I doubt they had in 2011). I’m Jewish and “jewnicorn” is definitely very weird, but is forgivable lol Also I didn’t realize there were people who didn’t like Rose Tyler???? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m glad you brought attention to how they represent Jewish people in their fic cause having read both RWRB and One Last Stop, both by McQuiston, I couldn’t help but notice how in both books there’s one Jewish character and in both books that one Jewish character comes from an incredibly elite, wealthy family and I always worried I was crazy for feeling like there was a questionable pattern there so to know that might not just be in my head is honestly a relief. Not trying to rag on them I honestly really loved both works so much I just didn’t love that particular element.

genuinely was very moved towards the end when you found that robin sparkles page- just because I know exactly what feeling you were trying to describe. Seeing all of the comments about the fic from fandom members made the page feel so alive, like it was still happening and we were experiencing it too, even though the moment has long passed. And it does feel like a moment of collective, innocent joy- now kind of sorrowful, just because it's gone. Like you said, those people are probably all different now. Adding in that moment from In the Mood For Love really got me lol. Over here feeling emotional over a red, white, and royal blue fanfic conspiracy video smh.

this kind of thing is always fascinating to me as a writer and someone who wrote fanfiction previously before being published with non-fanfic fiction and nonfiction and then returned to the world of fanfiction. not every fanfic writer will file the serial numbers off, but fanfiction was an avenue to experiment freely without scorn of academics and peers. if people find the work i wrote as a teenager, it's vastly different than the short stories i later wrote. the short stories are also vastly different from what the fanfics i'm writing now. people who write novels often will have written several novels before even daring to send something to an editor for publication. thanks for finding the truth on the matter, great video.

"Blast! Undone by Urban Dictionary. No matter! This isn't over! We'll meet again! You'll see Mulcahy! You'll *aaallll* seeee!" - Casey, probably.

i've seen so many fanfic readers/writers absolutely DRAG other writers for writing in 1st person. i don't really know why. i've always assumed that it was in response to the 2010s wattpad era of fic. but cringe culture is dead, and i've seen more people write in 1st person now, so yay 🎉

ive literally never heard about it being social network related before and im unsure as to if this video will destroy or improve rwrb for me

The hot about burning musical cds from the library onto the family desktop really hit home lmao

hey why is that skeleton in the back slaying so damn hard

I don't usually leave comments on RU-vid but I wanted to say that I love this video. Particularly the Stendhal Syndrome section and the empathy you convey in it.

tsn and tsn rpf being my first fandom, this was such a trip. the bit at the end made me cry, like it was such a time and bright spot in my life. i havent read or watched rwrb, but its crazy to know that casey could be robin sparkles. i still have the ciimh pdf on my laptop. 😂 and the podfic of it too. so many memories 😭

You are such a thoughtful video essayist and when I say I am STOKED to watch this, I mean it 🎉

You are such an excellent creator. I think unlike the original fanfiction, this work actually grapples with the space it occupies and finds meaning in that via the ending. A video essay like this is content created from content (in this case, content created from content about content cobbled together from a rough history), and truly how could you or I justifiably watch and love this video, as I did, if we pretend to revile any work that isn't supposedly 100% original? There's a joy in creation even if that creation is reinvention, or retelling, or a simple copy and paste. I really, really appreciate that you respect that joy.

Gotta say that I always felt that Red White Royal Blue had roots in fanfic but oh boy now that was a ride and definitely not from the fandom I was thinking 😂

NOT ARMIE HAMMER ☠️☠️☠️☠️ I lost my shit every time the Justin Timberlake picture floated into frame 😭🤌

I’ve only watched 20minutes of the video so far but it’s got me thinking about how much subconscious knowledge you gain about fandom just being submerged in it. I’m way too young to have written or read social network fandom but it’s vaguely known that there was a fandom surrounding tsn just from old edits reappearing whenever Andrew Garfield has a renaissance. But what strikes me is that just from the way people have talked about rwrb being a modern royalty au tsn fic I could have told you it wasn’t. Not because I’ve read the book or the fan fiction but because you just know what kind of media get what kinds of super popular fandom defining fics. For an rpf ship of actors a modern royalty au as long and expansive as rwrb that’s well written and popular wouldn’t exist. The au ecosystem is something I’m personally so interested in and for reasons I’m still pondering, more niche rpf is not going to have such a specific au like modern royalty as an incredibly popular fic. It’s the sort of au people write once every other au has already been written or something your mutual is writing but never actually publishes more than a chapter 😅.

When I heard "Robin Pulaski", I thought it might've been a How I Met Your Mother reference, but then I remembered her last name was Scherbasky, which only rhymes.

i didn't expect this to end on such a fond note for the bygone days of fandom. i think i'm about the same age as casey and the others and it makes me nostalgic for a sssslightly more innocent time online. thanks again for your videos!!

the thing is... well. i never read carry it in my heart since i was never big on rpf but the tsn fandom was a good time, and this video was a pleasant reminder of that. also incredible attention to detail!

your response to finding the archived fic masterpost was so profoundly relatable. i'm in my mid thirties now, and have been a fandom participant for over two decades. the thought that these once vibrant communities are now barely even a memory, if at all, lost to a different era... whew. heavy stuff lmao.

I'm so glad you did this and got to the bottom of it! Truly beautiful to watch, and as someone who discovered TSN fandom 10 years after its heyday myself, seeing you walk through those same convoluted paths with deleted livejournals and finding archived copies of fics, and reading the comments from people who surely live entirely different lives now, PAIRED WITH THAT DAMN TSN MUSIC evoked a very specific unnameable emotion I wanted to tell you: it is a true Eisenfact (lmao) that Jesse is a fan of obscure musicals (which is why I even fell down the rabbit hole to TSN in the first place, watching his interviews where he talks about Merrily We Roll Along and A New Brain). Absolutely he seems like he'd love the Fantasticks. I remember he once said his favourite musical was Floyd Collins which was (and still is) absolutely hysterical to me. What a strange person! I love that! Also I wondered if you had stumbled upon "The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Social Network Press Tour" article on The Niche Blog in your research? I think it's a great read and really gives you insight into the headspace that Robin and their audience were in

i just want to say that i absolutely adored the stendhal syndrome segment of this video!!! i am heavily involved in fandom culture and read fanfic so much it’s embarrassing and probably unhealthy but the longer i’ve spent in fandom, the more i’ve come to appreciate it. yes of course there’s weirdos and silly stuff etc etc but overall i think we’re all just using fandom as a medium to escape and try to feel a bit better. when i read the comments on a fic that i love, i feel an instant connection with these people that i know nothing about and it’s so special to me. it was really cool to see someone else describe how they experienced a similar feeling 💜 great video!!!

It's possible that "robin-pulaski" is a Star Trek OC. TNG Season 2 had a character named Dr. Katherine Pulaski and it's totally possible that this writer made up a daughter or something.

man i cried at the standhal syndrome bit man, it gave me a rush of nostalgia from being one of those kids commenting on fics and telling authors how what they wrote got me through the day. this essay was so surprisingly thought provoking i'm so glad i clicked on it ❤

The “je suis pas” thing does make sense bc in conversation French you often will drop the “ne” in a sentence. everything is bad tho

I really related to that last section. There is something about seeing relics of a specific moment in time, and that moment being a youthful, earnestly joyful moment, that hits different as you're aware that you're getting older, and if you kinda grew up in fandom, which I know for sure I did, its both a childhood nostalgia moment and hits you with the painful awareness of the passage of time and change. It was such a big deal for all these people, the author, the beta readers, the audience, a celebration of creative joy and community, and it was just a drop in the ocean that is fandom, this little circle of people who have long moved on from it into totally different lives. It was such intense joy for all of them, but also so brief and transient and you don't even realize this about such moments until you look back on it from the vantage point of the future. I find myself looking back on some of my old teenage fandom memories similairly, a lot of it was kinda cringy and embarrassing for me to look back on and none of the people I shared these moments with are the same people we used to be, many of them I've lost contact with, but we shared very similarly earnest, joyful creative moments that were all special to us at the time. And I don't even want to return to that time, we've all moved on, it's just a sadness that it has passed and it's over and how much everything has changed. Also for what it's worth, I looked it up and McQuiston said they grew up attending Catholic school, so, probably not Jewish. And the lines you called out did make me go very 🤨because it is the kind of stuff or injokes we make among ourselves but it reads very weirdly and questionable coming from someone totally divorced from it. But also I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here because it does seem like the kind of joke or thing you say/do when you're a young teenager and don't really know better, plus, like you said, its very much late 2000's- early 2010's internet humor at play.

god i just know i will never be able to read a casey novel again without seeing "well." and "the thing is" pop out at me at every instance

okay it was SO funny hearing u say “if u like the guy why BULLY the guy??” bc initially i was so confused as i would absolutely say one of my fav actors move like a serial killer on uppers- but then more examples came and yeah 100% i get ur point

The way my heart literally jumped in my chest when I saw that my favorite Degrassi content youtuber was talking about TSN fanfiction was unbelievable. I was in DEEP with the social network fandom (there are half a dozen old fanvids on my channel to confirm this, one even based on another RPF lol) and I remember reading this one! It had a big impact for sure. And the characterization of Jesse as neurotic and awkward was pretty standard across all TSN RPF. There were always a few things that were constant no matter the AU: Jesse loved cats and was anxious, Andrew had a great taste in music and was sort of too physically affectionate with everyone. The emotion that you experienced with finding the livejournal masterpost resonated with me, too. I was there so it's different, but you are right--my life is totally different now. I was active in online fandoms as a creator and consumer back then and now I'm ~too busy to have hobbies~ because I'm a mother. It's kind of wild to wonder what changes the people I knew then must have gone through in the past 13 years. Makes me sad to be SUCH a grown up now, even if I was already an adult at 20 back then.

HELP I cannot be the same after 48:58 what is that tension this was a propaganda video to get me invested in this RPF (on a real note though this video is really good I don't know how you fit in so much interesting info in here and your whole micro-journey was just really interesting)

i remember spending 30 minutes finding the pdf of ciimh, and i felt like sherlock finding a pdf of it. i've written my fair share of tsn fic, and when i found this sub-section of the fandom, i remember being entranced by robin-pulaski's story. this really brought me back to the emotions and feelings, hell i started quoting your chapter transitions bc i knew this movie so well. this made me so happy and yet it made my heart hurt so much. a wonderful wonderful video, thank you.

I kind of love the way you described being in awe of the archived page. It was actually really beautiful way to portray your reaction and emotions, and I think we could all stand to look at harmless older internet “cringe” with more of that attitude ❤

Jane, I thoroughly enjoyed this deep dive into past internet culture. As a gay man who found out he was gay by falling head over heels for "that one guy", I can tell you it does happen outside of fiction. Having that realisation changed my life. I also could really relate to the Stehndahl syndrom section, having been active on the internet since the days of bulletin boards, the "captured in amber" remains of people's lives you can find on the internet archive pages feels very poignant to me as well. It can be very moving to see these glimpses into the daily lives of real people from that era perfectly captured in a moment of time. And as far as whether or not Casey may be Robin? It seems there might be enough circumstantial evidence to say "possibly", sure enough. However, the thing is, well, those speech patterns are a common Southern thing. So that particular link isn't that convincing for me, since both authors seem to be from Texas. I don't know. I loved how you went through your journalistic method, though, and I felt you were as thorough as you could have possibly been. I do think that even if you could prove a clear link between the two stories, it wouldn't matter. Who cares if Casey McQuiston honed their writing skills by writing f online fanfiction over a decade ago? We shouldn't shame an author for their early works, even if they're terribly cringy. What matters is that Casey has written a very successful novel that's been made into a very successful movie, that Ive heard almost nothing but praise for. Admittedly, the worst criticism I've heard was that it was "a piece of light fluff", but considering when she wrote it, that was definitely something we needed, and still do. Thank you, Jane, for this wonderful dive into a very interesting tangent, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

we are seated, jane

As someone who also considers myself a fanfic historian, this was such a treat,, thanks bestie

I think the character of Andrew Garfield just wanted to impress his crush/secret bf by speaking French but he doesn't actually know how very well but he knows his American boy won't know the difference

I adore The Social Network as a movie so i have dipped my toes in its fanfiction but never waded into the RPF waters so thank you for the deep dive. I will say Carry It in My Heart reminds me of one of my absolute favorite Sherlock fanfics from back in the day called Perfromance in a Leading Role. That story re-imagined Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as actors who meet as leads in a film and slowly fall in love. I especially love how that fic not only told a really compelling slow burn romance but had a significant storyline that exand the hardships of being in the closet as an actor and the mental strain being closeted can have on relationships as well as the ways coming out can negatively effect your career as an actor.

The thing about this video is there's a lot to comment on but I just love that Jane is a fellow Rose Tyler defender. Well.

I’m surprised more people didn’t realize TSN has fanfics. The very beginning of the movie has this exchange between Mark and Eduardo after Mark and Erica break up: Mark: I need you. Eduardo: I’m here for you. (With the twist being Mark means he needs an algorithm Eduardo came up with, while Eduardo thinks Mark was asking for emotional support.) But man, those lines of dialogue and their delivery were like fanfic catnip.

I don’t think I’ve had this much whiplash learning about a novel’s fanfiction origins since learning the Mortal Instruments was a Drarry fanfiction

I thought The Andrew garfield one was ment to be The british Prince one, cause he was british, I didnt even remembered he was BRAZILIAN in The social Network 😵

Im commenting again after watching the video, and i really loved the stendhal effect section. Being in awe and reverence of someone's pure passion to the point of creation, so much so that you yourself created a visual media to share your reverence and awe made me cry. Ad itll probably make someone tem years from now cry too.

your note at the end about the wayback machine capturing a moment in time really hit me... i used to be very involved in fandom some years back (i was chronically online very young lol) and recently i got the urge to go back and look through some of the old fics and artists and pages i used to follow and. a lot of them are just gone. i have vivid memories of some of these artworks and writings and interactions i had with some of these users and friendships i formed and a lot of it is just gone now. all that art, even if it wasn't a masterpiece, is just gone but all the emotions and attachments i had are still here. a lot of the accounts that stuck around are dead too... scrolling through the ruins of a place i used to visit. visiting the graveyard of a friend i used to have. i wonder where they all are now.

honestly this video is a really well researched and beautifully nostalgic look into the past, i went into this expecting a corny fanfic search but left with nostalgic feelings i havent felt in years. thanks for the amazing journey!

i have not seen a fanfiction mystery video essay like this since sarah z did my immortal - thoroughly entertaining i am literally on the edge of my seat

As someone who's gone on multiple livejournal deepdives it always hits me how I'm connected to people who had the same love for a thing I like now decades ago through their posts. Finding a post that feels like a little niche piece of history is always so strange and it makes me wonder where they are now (like the person who made a post a few hours after the first episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia aired saying they thought the characters were gay. I keep wondering if they're still watching and know they were so right). Idk I just always love seeing other people love what I love and I get weirdly sentimental about a lot of things

Just to add one more little piece of evidence to the pile, there's exactly one save of the old robin-sparkles tumblr that's accessible through Wayback Machine, saved on April 17, 2010. (This would predate their Social Network fandom days, as that movie wasn't released until that October.) There's mostly a lot of Destiel posts (no surprise lol), and one about Zac Efron. Their header declares their interest in "SPN, HIMYM, TO, OCD, ADHD, GAD, LOL, WTF, HP, LOTR, AND OTHER ASSORTED ACRONYMS". (There's... a lot to unpack there. I have no idea if Casey McQuiston in fact has OCD or ADHD, and it's really none of our business. In terms of the fandoms, it might add a bit of evidence if we knew Casey McQuiston had been into those things, although none is exactly a super rare fandom. And I'm honestly not sure what TO or GAD even stand for, but maybe I'm just being dumb there.)

this is a beautifully written video. an extra meta: the journey you take us on in this video is a story in and of itself; parasocially, another layer of fiction?

god, what a journey this has been, like I just mindlessy clicked on this video to pass the time put a few minutes in my ass was seated and I was enraptured in this story for the full hour and eleven minutes, I was not expecting to feel kind of touched and the sweet sorrows of nostlagia by the end of this , also not expecting to learn fascinating TSN behind the scenes facts, 10/10 video essay, I'm a changed man.

I really liked the last part of your video where you talked about the effect seeing this old fanfic and the comments had on you. I recently went back and read a couple of old fanfictions from a fandom that I haven't really been a part of in a long while, and it also really moved me for some reason reading the comments and author notes and everything because it reminded me of that time in my life and it's truly like finding a message in a bottle.

I know exactly what you are talking about with the phrases! I once read a lot of fics from the same author and it made me so mad because in every chapter of every work they'd use the phrase "lost the plot" and that's like so not common!

The last part of your video was so sweet. It brought back a lot of fond memories I had from my teen years when I was part taking in fandoms too and even writing a few fanfics or creating fan edits myself.

this video is SO good and so funny and also so sad 😭i definitely understand this feeling when you see something old in the internet and realize that the people involved probably don't even remember that anymore. these digital ghosts always make me feel weird, they are there but not at the same time UGH i loved this video so much you’re so smart

This was my first video of yours. Happy that youtube reccomended you. i really appreciated, as with a lot of other commenters have said, your end section. i loved that you were able to have one of those 'beauty of the world and all its weird things' moment, and that you shared it with us in such a kind way (the quotes from wong kar wai honestly touched me so much i had to go write them down before continuing the video, it's been so long since i watched that movie). Fandom and fanfiction was so much of my teen years, and the positive affirmation i got as an anonymous fanfiction writer helped me so much during that time. I think i've been good about not looking back at it and cringing, as i remember some old tumblr post or another that basically said "you should never be embaressed of the things that made you happy once" especially if they are not harmful things. I hope that we can all be kind to our former selves, even if they don't really exist materially anymore. Not to sound sentimental or cheesy, but I am really feeling sentimental and cheesy right now!!

You made me cry with the In the Mood for Love quote 😭

Truly one of the best video essays ive watched this year. I love how well you guide the viewer through this entire epic of an investigation. I especially liked that last section and the kind of shock of empathy you felt

I spend a lot of time perusing Songmeanings for the exact same reasons you talk about in that last section - it's so astoundingly beautiful to see these forgotten comments and memories from like the late 2000s and early 2010s, it's brought me to tears several times. Great vid!!

This was such a wild ride! Thanks for taking us along this journey with you.

something about your explanation of what finding those archived pages did to you reminds me so vividly of me, sobbing on the floor of my university archives reading a letter from mother to child, expressing her deep, caring concern over an issue she didn’t care to put in writing. it was a letter i had found completely by chance but had entranced me, and for a short while it became an obsession to both solve the mystery and purge the memory of reading this letter from my brain. eventually i had to give up, as i lost access to the archives, but you brought up those feelings for me, when i really was just expecting a simple, lighthearted video about old fanficion. thanks? i guess.

omg this was so great! this vid has been sitting in my youtube recommendeds for a bit now so i finally decided to watch and i'm so glad i did. i did not know i needed a legitimate prose analysis of a fanfiction from over a decade ago but i guess i did! also that stendhal syndrome section was fantastic bc Yup sometimes finding timecapsules of older years from the internet is so awe-inspiring. thanks for the vid!!

I love how you went on the hero's journey here, also thank you for verbalizing my exact thoughts in the 2nd to last chapter of the video I have this habit of looking at ancient fanfictions on old forums (from like, the 2000s-2010s) and looking at the comments, it just feels like peering into a different universe

This is an insanely great video. The editing, pacing, the different sections. Seriously brilliant archival work too. The last few sections made me think of the song/RU-vid video “My Hope” by Molly Lewis, which is all about people forgetting their MySpace passwords and being unable to take down their pages. Again, amazing job with this video

the thing about this video is, well. its exactly the hard hitting journalism we needed 🙏 tysm for this, love your videos

i just found your channel from your other rwrb video, and a new video already dropped omggg i’m so excited!! this is truly the type of extremely niche content i love

I gotta be honest, your speech at the end about the fanfiction master post, as well as the whole video in my opinion, is perhaps a perfect representation of the inner movements and workings of fanfic, especially of that era. I feel like in a way the video represents fandom as a whole. Its hard to say why though i just feels so strongly that it does. It almost makes me proud to be a part of fandom as a whole.

I need you to understand that seeing your videos on RWRB pop up on my sub feed is what finally prompted me to read the book, which had been on my “maybe I’ll read this in the distant future TBR” because I love watching all your videos and absolutely had to watch this one with its bonkers title, but didn’t want to be spoiled for the book. Thank you for your service and motivation. (I gave the book 4 stars, it was good, but I’ve read romances I connected more with)

at about the hour mark, I literally got chills... on a youtube video about social network rpf. You are such a talented story teller lol, what a fun ride

i love it when these types of research videos have emotional moments and the way you described it i felt that breeze of ages past and how all of these people are somewhere else by now. A beutiful video, thank you

This ending segment is absolutely why I love you. You are just amazing, very good, 10/10

Haven't read this book, nor the fic, nor have been part of Amy of these fandoms, but damn, what a video. I've loved watching it. The end having you share your experience of finding the master post is what made it feel so memorable imo; as a huge fan of fics and fandom communities and interactions that was super emotional, sooo. thank you lots for including that, and doing this whole video too. subscribed 😌💜 love from Argentina!

AAAAH First of all, thanks for not joining the bandwagon of bashing on fics and its authors, it's really refreshing to see commentary from fandom people. Second, this is reawakening my love for TSN. Sadly, I wasn't into the fandom at its peak purely out of language barrier (my english was pretty rusty back then), but when I rewatched that movie around 2013 I went head first onto the ao3 tag bc good lord, the rs of Mark and Eduardo was so tormented, I loved it. All I can say is that knowing the author of RW&RB was into the TSN fandom it truly adds to my enjoyment of the story. So... yeah, thanks for this deep dive that came (apparently) out of nowhere on my recommendations. Great work!