these casual shitposts are much more fun than the actual work of trawling through an archive, so here have some notes that will make way more sense if you go sift through maximumride.com yourself:
first, some light reminders for younger / less terminally-online fans: yes, posting in 2005 really was like that. spelling was often poor. (you could mark a certain demographic of posters by being really goddamn mad about not using capital letters or good grammar. in the years since, many of these people have shifted to a typing style more like what you’re reading right now, bc the way we communicate online is changing.) emoticons were all over the place. everyone had giant signatures with huge images even though internet connections were slow.
now. The Drama
as happens in a number of fandoms, BNFs ranged from normal human being to absolute maniac. mods/admins on mr.com were relatively inactive, so the social role that mods may fill was occupied by said BNFs. one of the mods who did post more frequently was Pasty.
the major discourse that i remember was this: posting about slash.
not posting nsfw or illegal material – just posting fanfiction with gay characters, or posting about how you enjoyed it.
there were a number of social cliques on mr.com, though as a shy lurker i was not really in any of them. whether you were or weren’t part of a clique, you would eventually recognize the names of frequent posters.
one of the most frequent posters was jemofgod, who maintained a fairly upbeat presence… and was very outspoken about being Christian.
mr.com had a fanfiction board, which i probably don’t have to describe in great detail. one of the more polished authors there was Hawkblade, who contributed a number of early slash fics.
these two posters got along like oil and water, but here’s the unfortunate kicker: all this was 10+ years ago and no evidence remains, so all i can give you is my blurry reconstruction of what probably happened.
important note: Pasty, one of the mods i mentioned earlier, was friendly towards jemofgod.
slash blossomed in popularity circa late 2005 / early 2006, though it was never as popular as het.
jemofgod really did not like slash, and was one of the most Online people on the board at the time. it is likely that she thought it wasn’t fit material for A Christian Forum / A Forum With Children On It.
(let me remind you: NSFW material was not permitted, and i don’t think any was ever posted, unless the RP board got way wilder than i remember. so we’re talking about fic with a rating somewhere around PG at most.)
there was weeks of fighting over whether slash could be posted / posted about, and eventually Pasty, probably sick of the huge amounts of posts, ruled that all slash was verboten
there was a letter-writing campaign to petition Pasty to go back on this – i remember sending one of the few messages i ever posted as part of this
there were themed forum sigs like this
and… if you wanna know what happened? i don’t know. i wish i could give you closure, but this recollection and the image are all i can give you.
(i mean, when i get around to it, the threads i intend to post contain posts by both jemofgod and Hawkblade, because their posting was notable in general. but nothing from this drama survives, as far as i know)
there you go, some drama from the infancy of the MR fandom, enjoy
some of these users may still be around, but i highly doubt they have tumblrs or will ever see my garbage posts.
…lbr a lot of us are ashamed of our posting in 2005, and i’m ashamed of my posting from 2005 to the present.
(that said there are a few usernames i saw in the mr.com archives who i think i may have met later, but either they don’t have tumblr or have long since deactivated.)
