Jen, The Sarah Saga, And Where She Went

[null]

I read the ED article on Summoner Yuna. Wow. Just wow.

So what’s the lore? ACF was the proto-TLS? Or is it that everyone just migrated here when that went under?

Yeah. One day ACF went dark and never came back. Not sure if it was drama-related (not the first time) or SY forgot to pay the bills. The Outer God that stood up this site was ACF staff iirc. There were other refugee sites, but I think this is the only one still going.

ACF was like... well, the main sections and clubs were actually like TLS. A bunch of hardcore fans discussing FFVII, many of whom ended up here. Other parts of the site were like SomethingAwful. You never went into the Spam section without flame-proof riot gear.

Then you had these mysterious "teams". They were like underground members-only clubs and they did... actually I don't know what they were doing. Some kind of competition I think? But once in a while they'd erupt like a prison riot and hold mass protests. Some voices would rise above the crowd and sound off like Patrick Henry. It was actually spectacular to behold.

A lot of people used ACF like social media, which hadn't quite taken off yet. So the fandom weirdos you normally see on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit lived at forums like ACF. Others came for FFVII but stayed long after they stopped caring, and were discussing literally anything but FFVII. Combine that with teenage energy and e-relationships and you had a recipe for a metric ton powder keg of drama. The weird thing is the place had a billion moderators and that somehow made it worse.

 

[Lestat]

I'm honestly kinda curious who wrote the ACF stuff on there in general. I didn't bring it up since it kinda slandered people that are still on TLS and last I checked it has socials on it that are still active.

Hilariously, I was not mentioned there, though I believe my contemporary with whom I destroyed the Spam Games section was.

A mix of the spammers and folk from RoA.

Mostly though it was the doctor.

So then I’m right in assuming ACF was separate and people just migrated over here when it went under?

A fair few of us all knew each other from acf. The site was popular just before advent children was released and it was one of the most popular fandom forums back in the day which then became a gathering point for degenerates from around the world.

Sometimes I wish I'd been around in the ACF days, known the truly old timers that long. Then threads like this one remind me how glad I am I skipped that whole mess

I reckon you would have fit in just fine. Though your mental health would have taken a battering like mine did XD

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

I have three kids, my mental health has caught up. Also, fitting in on ACF... compliment? Insult? Bit o' both?

 

[Lestat]

I have three kids, my mental health has caught up. Also, fitting in on ACF... compliment? Insult? Bit o' both?

Wholly depended on what crowd you wanted to fit in with. If it was the spam crowd you were a dick and were also in somewhat obsessed (not so secret, secret club).

If you werent into throwing hate around you were in crystal inc.

If you had a stick up your arse you were in Renegades of Apocalypse (no offence X I'm talking about the dorkbeat days)

And if you just wanted to have a good time you were in fated children.

Care to guess where mage and I were XD

 

[Rydeen]

I have three kids, my mental health has caught up. Also, fitting in on ACF... compliment? Insult? Bit o' both?

I feel like fitting in on ACF as a whole was close to impossible, since the community was so fractured and divided. Since you come off as friendly and mild mannered, I think you would've been non-controversial.

I definitely had moments that pissed people off and was a shameless cringe factory, though I was also literally twelve.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

Welllll... Once upon a time I used to salivate in anticipation whenever someone said something dumb so I could argue and shit post at them for hours with an evil grin spread across my face I'm just old now.

 

[Rydeen]

Welllll... Once upon a time I used to salivate in anticipation whenever someone said something dumb so I could argue and shit post at them for hours with an evil grin spread across my face I'm just old now.

OK yeah you might've been in Somewhat Obsessed or potentially Fated Children then. Depending on the potency of your former edgelordedness.

I was actually a member of most of the teams at different points there. Technically you could only be on one team at a time. At first I was in Fated Children, but some members there were friendly with SO people, so SO people started joining while maintaining membership with SO and it became a whole operation/controversy. I did not have the social intelligence to keep up with SO without being burned alive, so I left and joined Crystal Inc. That one was my favorite probably. Idk what happened there but somehow I then ended up in the Renegades of the Apocalypse which I felt somewhat apathetic to. Either CI started dying or it got infiltrated as well; can't remember.

 

[Lestat]

Welllll... Once upon a time I used to salivate in anticipation whenever someone said something dumb so I could argue and shit post at them for hours with an evil grin spread across my face I'm just old now.

Welcome to the club brudda

 

[Rydeen]

SO were basically the wild cool kids and ROA was the student council/teachers pets. And the teachers themselves were.. something. Everyone else was just trying to get through it, enjoy their cliques, and ignore the raging dumpster fire.

 

[Lestat]

SO did have the best boobs and ass on acf thread which had to count for something

 

[Rydeen]

SO did have the best boobs and ass on acf thread which had to count for something

I'd always wondered what went on in the SO forum

Also, just randomly got a mental flashback of Mage sharing workout tips with me 17 years ago lmao. Yet I can't remember when my sunglasses are on my head.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

Mage is memorable, it is known.

 

[Cthulhu]

It is known

Can't believe I've been around this shit for 20 years now, although I have to say, the 4 or so years that ACF was around felt a lot longer than the X years TLS has been around.

Anyway, I was sort-of staff on ACF, I was a moderator for a bit when I was 18 (lol), left or was fired because of drama, rejoined later for tech stuff... I think. I don't even know anymore lol.

Anyway, the main issue with ACF was that the leadership was mostly disconnected from the members, to the point where the leadership hired staff that was completely outside of the existing memberbase because... I have no idea why.

I think that one day the owner just had enough of all the drama and closed the site, also because her special interest changed from FFVII / AC to Cloverfield (and before AC it was Oddworld). At the time some of us were also active on FFOF, one of many spinoffs that were mostly attempted copies of ACF (mind you, ACF itself was a copy of something else iirc); FFOF wasn't serious at all, just a load of shitposts, BUT we also had some of the more dedicated (to ACF) members, it was like an ACF refuge where we could shitpost about it in relative private.

After ACF went down, some more people came to FFOF. One guy (Hito IIRC) was like "But I still have these translations I was going to publish", so I was like, well setting up a new website isn't too hard, I can do tech stuff me! Ravynne came up with the website name and made the initial designs, I registered the domain and set up Wordpress; we did emphasize we didn't want forums until the site was well established, buuut after a few months that was the case, lol.

We went from cheap $5/month hosting to somewhat less cheap hosting to a dedicated server or two-three and we're currently on a Hetzner VPS. We went from Simple Machines Forums to vBulletin 3 to Xenforo for the forum software. Front page has always been Wordpress, although there were a few redesigns done over time.

Anyway. I'm not even that big a fan of FFVII .

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

It's like getting the story of how R'lyeh was conceived and built, only way nerdier on all counts. I love it

 

[GamerSkull]

I have to wonder how the people involved in Final Fantasy House feel nowadays. I believe this story is from before the Compilation.

 

[Lestat]

I'm guessing years of therapy have probably helped

 

[Ryushikaze]

Her encyclopedia dramatica page is easily findable. Though, it's worth warning prior to reading - it was written anywhere between 2004-2007. It was uh... a different time

I mean as cringe as it is, it does offer a lens as to how the discourse around her was, back then.

I always thought several of those pages were if not self published, at least self edited.

I think basically anyone of any renown on ACF did... lol

Not everyone, but there were a lot of 'em.

Sometimes I wish I'd been around in the ACF days, known the truly old timers that long. Then threads like this one remind me how glad I am I skipped that whole mess

When it was going well, it was amazing. When shit was going poorly and you didn't have to care it was amazing.

Yeah. One day ACF went dark and never came back. Not sure if it was drama-related (not the first time) or SY forgot to pay the bills. The Outer God that stood up this site was ACF staff iirc. There were other refugee sites, but I think this is the only one still going.

SY went nutso about Cloverfield to an even more unhealthy degree and stopped being in love with Sephiroth. Plug pulled.

ACF was like... well, the main sections and clubs were actually like TLS. A bunch of hardcore fans discussing FFVII, many of whom ended up here. Other parts of the site were like SomethingAwful. You never went into the Spam section without flame-proof riot gear.

Then you had these mysterious "teams". They were like underground members-only clubs and they did... actually I don't know what they were doing. Some kind of competition I think? But once in a while they'd erupt like a prison riot and hold mass protests. Some voices would rise above the crowd and sound off like Patrick Henry. It was actually spectacular to behold.

I still feel like the teams were essentially a practical joke setup that never got a payoff, unless the eruptions were the punchline.

I have three kids, my mental health has caught up. Also, fitting in on ACF... compliment? Insult? Bit o' both?

Both at once, really.

I'm guessing years of therapy have probably helped

None of the people in FF house who most needed therapy are the type of people who would ever work with a therapist.

 

[Lestat]

I never said the therapy wasn't court appointed

 

[HylianMogget]

“Well, it’s important to always remember one’s roots,” I say to myself as I spend time reading through the ACF Encyclopedia Dramatica pages. Also I read what I could find of the academic article.

I was on ACF for pretty much its whole drama-filled existence, but I mostly kept to the gfx section in the later years. That section’s not mentioned on ED, probably because it was (iirc) drama-free (the SotT stuff happened very early on in ACF's lifespan); it was a fun place. Funnily enough, ACF’s gfx scene actually owed a lot to SotT ripping sigs from Shinra Online (another forum) and the resulting cross-pollination, I think.

ACF essentially morphed into a truly unhinged combination of FF forum, /b/-esque spam section, and private team forums. Being on it was kind of a formative experience and I think did/does provide some real insight into things like community dynamics, internet culture, and fandom and fantasy.

As for the FFVII house saga, I'm only familiar with the very basics (essentially it was an abusive mini-cult? And then Jen went on to be similarly abusive in the Hannibal fandom, and is still out there somewhere?), so whenever this thread gets bumped I have no idea what's going on but I kind of enjoy being bewildered so I tend to read it anyways.

 

[looneymoon]

I was merely a very underrage year old lurker pearing in on all you lolcows

I did sometimes post in the shipping/character clubs. A lot of the main ones (Devotion and Faith) are carry over names from ACF. This was back in the day before portmanteaus took over for shipping purposes.

 

[ForceStealer]

I was a mod, but only a section mod for the FF sections, and mostly stayed there like a good little nerd. I was technically in "Fated Children," but I didn't really participate and so was mostly unaware of the intergroup dramuhz, hence my lack of an ED page

This was back in the day before portmanteaus took over for shipping purposes.

Huh, you know I never registered that... I knew those names were from ACF, but had forgotten that getting a themey name was more the norm than simply mashing the names together (not htat cloti and clerith weren't still around). Interesting obervation

 

[Odysseus]

Seeing as this was necro'd again, I might as well mention I compiled basically ALL contemporary accounts of the FFVII House into a big PDF document last year. Was gonna add the Sarah Saga stuff and beyond but I never got around to it (had more important projects to do). I could export what I have now if anybody wants to look at that.

 

[Rydeen]

“Well, it’s important to always remember one’s roots,” I say to myself as I spend time reading through the ACF Encyclopedia Dramatica pages. Also I read what I could find of the academic article.

I was on ACF for pretty much its whole drama-filled existence, but I mostly kept to the gfx section in the later years. That section’s not mentioned on ED, probably because it was (iirc) drama-free (the SotT stuff happened very early on in ACF's lifespan); it was a fun place. Funnily enough, ACF’s gfx scene actually owed a lot to SotT ripping sigs from Shinra Online (another forum) and the resulting cross-pollination, I think.

ACF essentially morphed into a truly unhinged combination of FF forum, /b/-esque spam section, and private team forums. Being on it was kind of a formative experience and I think did/does provide some real insight into things like community dynamics, internet culture, and fandom and fantasy.

As for the FFVII house saga, I'm only familiar with the very basics (essentially it was an abusive mini-cult? And then Jen went on to be similarly abusive in the Hannibal fandom, and is still out there somewhere?), so whenever this thread gets bumped I have no idea what's going on but I kind of enjoy being bewildered so I tend to read it anyways.

I think I remember you from there. I had no idea people were plagiarizing their sigs. However, given the community and the era, I'm not really surprised. There did seem to be some very talented people on there, regardless. I got roasted to a crisp and began following tutorials. I got really into it, and when ACF ended, I brought a lot of what I'd learned to FFF's community and would help critique their pieces, and considered becoming a graphic designer. We built a really cool GFX community on FFF and it was fun to be apart of it.

 

[Ryushikaze]

I never said the therapy wasn't court appointed

I said they wouldn't work with a therapist and I stand by that. Even if mandated to go to therapy they would be obstructionist and antagonistic. Someone has to want to change for standard therapy to work.

I was merely a very underrage year old lurker pearing in on all you lolcows

I did sometimes post in the shipping/character clubs. A lot of the main ones (Devotion and Faith) are carry over names from ACF. This was back in the day before portmanteaus took over for shipping purposes.

Some of the more esoteric ones got really elaborate names as I recall.

I was a mod, but only a section mod for the FF sections, and mostly stayed there like a good little nerd. I was technically in "Fated Children," but I didn't really participate and so was mostly unaware of the intergroup dramuhz, hence my lack of an ED page


Huh, you know I never registered that... I knew those names were from ACF, but had forgotten that getting a themey name was more the norm than simply mashing the names together (not htat cloti and clerith weren't still around). Interesting obervation

I too was a mod for a bit, and was given an amazing amount of power in the backend for how little actual power I was supposed to have. Not sure if that was genuine incompetence from whoever set my permissions or what.

 

[Rydeen]

I too was a mod for a bit, and was given an amazing amount of power in the backend for how little actual power I was supposed to have. Not sure if that was genuine incompetence from whoever set my permissions or what.

I've got you beat. I was accidentally given God Access to an entire public-facing website for a hospital system, even though it had nothing to do with my job. I reported it to the admin and they just said, we can't fix it, just ignore it.