Five Years (Warning: LOONG Post)

Five Years. Five Years of what?

Check my profile and you'll see.

Exactly five years ago today I ed this community. That's half a decade ago.

What? How?

2016/17

I it pretty well, it was a saturday afternoon during a time when literally every youtuber was getting sponsored by Amino, and it was the saturday afternoon when 13 year old me was finally getting tired by them and gave in and ed the app.

I checked out a couple of communities, this one was one of them since I had played the first Yo-kai Watch game not long ago and enjoyed it a bunch, so why not.

Funnily enough November 12th was the day Abdallah made a video with an amino sponsor in it as well, so a bunch of people ed this community that day, I know Jj and Chase also did and who knows who else. But it wasn't Abdallah who brought me here, I don't think I even knew who he was back then.

Anyways, I looked around the community for a bit, read some posts, but wasn't that active. Partly because I literally just forgot about amino as a whole but also because I didn't want to see spoilers for the second game, since it wasn't out yet in europe.

Apparently the first person I followed was at the time curator Kayli, I have no recollection of that but I still think they're cool. I would also shoutout my first follower but the list stops loading after scrolling not nearly far enough, luxury problems I know.

I came back a good while later, a little under a year probably.

I finally made my first post in September of 2017, an entry for the first monthly challenge. It got featured and I completely lost it over that, I never thought that was even possible, especially since it was my first post.

Apparently my current check in streak started on December 23rd 2017, that definitely does not *sound* right at all to me considering I had made 1 (one) post then and I've absolutely broken it in between and fuxed it with coins but that's the date I get counting back the days.

2018

My second post was in January 2018, it was ranking my favourite Openings of the anime at that time. Well, I still agree with the list, but wow is this written terribly. I hate looking at but but well, that just shows my writing has somehow gotten better.

From then on I posted at least every week, sometimes just multiple days in a row. I envy myself, I wish I still had the ideas, inspiration and or creativity to do that.

Around that time I also met some of the people who to this day I still consider my closest friends. Seriously I don't know where I would be without them, I'm extremely grateful to have them in my life. None of them are really that active anymore, but I still talk to them regularly, it's crazy to think about how long I've known them. Unlikely that you're reading this but shoutout to Seba, Sanes and Fluffy. And I know for a fact that he's not reading this but shoutout to Barus as well anyways. I seriously love you guys, you mean the world to me.

Some community events I having a lot of fun with back then were the Arachnus vs. Toadal Dude week.

The OG anime ended. It's funny to look back to that considering how sick I am now of seeing them do ANOTHER Nate show but back then I was devastaed about it ending and I am kind of weirdly nostalgic about episode 214.

I two other really early posts I made that are now deleted. One was celebrating 100 followers, I didn't know how auto follows worked so 100 people felt huge to me. It's deleted now because I went a bit too personal in it and I just never liked the post that much to begin with. The other one was talking about how I didn't want them to localize Blasters and instead skip to 3 which is absolutely hilarious because after playing both I like Blasters so much more. I wish I could go back and read it to make fun of myself. But I deleted it because people were, rightfully so, clowning on me hard.

Then, on April 1st 2018, that one thing happened. You know the thing. Wibble Wobble shut down. Yeah, when people thought that was a joke? Good times.

A week after we collectively realized it was *not*, in fact, a joke. And a week after I had to see daily posts acting like it was the apocolyose and a lot of people saying they would leave, I snapped. And in the span of like 15 minutes I wrote a post that basically translated to a more eloquent version of me saying "shut the fuck up, I get it, I'm tired, stop being babys".

And to my confusion it got featured for three days and reached over 100 likes, one of my 3 100+ likes post ever. Honestly to this day I'm still heavily confused by that, but I was happy I managed to resonate with so many people.

In one of the best moves I have ever seen Ez didn't make a sad event about it, but instead made it a meme challange. I only entered it because I felt absolutely sick and terrible and I was home from school with nothing better to do, I that surprisingly vividly. I made this video on my old terrible phone that couldn't render anything higher than 360p and it took me hours to figure anything out for what is a pretty simple video.

I didn't win anything with it, and I being kinda miffy about it back then, but this challange still makes me a pretty glum time in the fandom as one that made me laugh a lot instead.

In between huge events posts that I found funny.

Here's one about Whisper that is only funny if you've read my fanfiction that I'll have to mention later.

Here's a collab post I made with a friend that now looks extremely sad because Sanes deleted his old posts so the ither half of this just doesn't exist anymore.

Here's a favourite Yo-kai of each tribe post that I don't agree with too much anymore that I've been wanting to redo like 5 times and still haven't.

It's now June 28th, and Nintendo randomly tweeted about Blasters getting localized at 2 in the afternoon. Seems I was excited and didn't hate the concept of the game by then anymore, neat.

Jibanyan in Smash? Yeah right.

Shin being related to Nate? I still think that one was a good try, it would've been cool.

I got White Dog Squad on release day and played it for a good while.

I didn't it being THIS quickly but literally 20 days after Blasters came out they announced Yo-kai watch 3s localization. It's funny to compare this post to the Blasters announcement one because there I went "OH MY GOD YES" while in this one I went "What?? Huh?? I'm sorry??" Seems like I didn't realize it would be only one game as well.

Anyways I continued to play way too much Blasters and wow I also posted about it a ton at that time. We all had the realization how much of a shipping anything ironically, because it won't stay that way for long, that's my only comment towards that.

Ringonyan/Applenyan whatever you prefer to call him was added to World, and yes that is an important milestone in my amino career, if you can call it that.

I somehow managed to fool some people with my life got completely ruined.

December rolled around, and I made a batch of free to use christmas pfps. I don't think half of these are that great anymore but I vividly multiple people actually using these and that made me happy.

I obtained Yo-kai Watch 3 also on release day, the european release day because it was earlier, rare US L. I'm pretty sure I finished the story before the US release in February, but I *still* have not played much of the post game because it overwhelms me.

A day after the game came out I wrote my first issue as part of Yo-kai Weekly! And okay, I think this one needs some more explanation than that.

Going back a bit in time Yo-kai Weekly was a blog series made by Gamerald which was posted very much *not* weekly and talked about whatever was happening in the franchise lately, game announcements and mobile game events, all that stuff. But also challenges and events going on in the community as well as even having an interview and quotes segment for a while. It was a really cool concept and I loved reading them.

After the 5th issue Gamerald decided to make the series a team effort and I decided to in. Originally I was only one of the info collectors, meaning I posted whatever I thought would be interesting to include in our group chat so everyone knew it was going on, but when whoever was supposed to write issue 11 said they forgot and didn't have time for it I stepped in for them.

It was a really fun team experience, the people in it were cool to talk too, most notably MK, Topaz and Koro who I still consider good friends, I had known all three of them before this but being in a group chat with them made me talk to them more. And this was also the first time I kept more of an eye on what was happening in the community as a whole rather than just reading posts I liked.

But after issue 12 the whole thing kinda just collapsed into itself. What was supposed to be a short post break for the holidays turned into months, people left the team and nothing happened. The I set up for it ended up never really getting used and whoever originally had the email for it eventually deleted it.

I tried to revive it once, and that post was even the only one out of them that ended up on the featured feed, but nothing ended up coming out of that. I ended the blog with a "See ya'll in June!" as a *joke* because I didn't think we would take a 3 month break again, but it turned out to be a joke in a different way because there was no yk weekly in June, or ever after that one.

I eventually left the dead group chat because it was sad to look at, but this was still one of the best times I've had planning anything for amino besides doing it with the curator team. And really, I don't think I would have had the courage and confidence to apply for it, so I'm grateful for that whole experience for that alone.

But I'm getting waaay ahead here, let's jump back to directly after the first news post again.

It's christams 2018 and I got a switch! This is not relevant to my amino history but I love my switch!

At the end of the year I made a new years resolutions post as part of a challenge and well... some of those things happened? I didn't do any of the things I wrote down as my personal goals. I can tell you what the unfinished post I was talking about was though, it was talking about my thoughts for every Yo-kai Watch holder. I started writing it before Akinori was one of them. Then I finally completely dropped the concept and deleted what I had written down when Y Academy was announced lol.

2019

2019 started with the other two posts I've made that blew up and got 100+ likes. They were almost back to back, only a little over a month between them, somehow. One was about thoughts I had about Yo-kai Watch! which had just gotten announced back then.

It's kinda funny to look back on how I made a post about Shadowside... a month before they announced its ending. None of the characters on the list ever got Shadowside forms, not even in Puni or anything. And I don't think I need to mention how much of a disappointment Exclamation Mark was. Man I feel like I owe an apology to all these people.

I reached 1000 followers, and I made a Music Appreciation Challenge which was the first and only challenge I would do without the curator team and honestly still some of the most fun I've had holding any challenge, reading the entries to this one was so much fun.

This was also the last time I celebrated a follower milestone at all because even though I've long went over it 2k or 3k never felt as huge as 1k. Maybe I'll celebrate again with 10k if I ever get there.

I wrote character bingo that was going around at that time, and I hate looking back at this because I'm so sorry Shin and Itsuki, I love you, I just literally had no idea who you were because I hadn't seen Forever Friends yet.

I reached level 16, and that was also the last time I made a post about a new level milestone. For both 17 and 18 I was hoping people wouldn't notice. When you're in the top 3 it starts to feel more depressing rather than an accomplishment I won't lie to you about that. Not gonna lie I'm not even sure when I reached level 18, going off screenshots I have on my phone it must have been either late 2020 or early 2021.

Then I started Accidental Timetravel, the fanfic that was never supposed to go on for as long as it did. It was supposed to be a short fun thing and it turned into 15k words over the span of almost 2 years. Oops. It's still my child.

And yeah, Chapter 1 of that was the last post I made before becoming Curator.

Going back in time for this bit again, there were multiple posts criticising the curator team for a few things popping up.

Under one of these posts I met some no name new guy who I had never seen around before named Spenjo. And we got into an argument about the curators. Yes, I kid you not, this is how we first talked to each other. I wish I ed what the post was because reading that desaster again would be very comedic, alas I do not and can't find it.

Weirdly enough considering it was an argument and this is the internet it ended civilly and with me agreeing that things could be better. We talked a bit after that, interacted with each others posts, I entered a challenge he did and I generally thought that this Spenjo was a pretty cool guy.

Ezrith owned up to the critisism and made a response post for it, which is still something I really respect her for. Shortly after that curator applications were opened, and I decided I would want to go for it.

I wish I could say it was something I did nonchalantly on the side, but I highly stressed myself with this. I spent hours trying to think about what to say and had my friends read over it multiple times. And then I eventually worked myself up to hit that send button.

I don't if this was the first time I applied for curator, but I know I applied for the welcome committee once and didn't get accepted for it. I didn't think I had much of a chance anyway, because a year prior I had gotten a strike due to being evolved in an unfortunate situation.

The couple of weeks following were weird. First I lost a couple of my titles I'd won from a challenge, I wasn't upset because they were predetermined ones and I never really cared too much for them to begin with, I was just utterly confused. Still am, because I never asked about it. I guess Ez and Crim didn't want the new curators to have predetermined titles for some reason? No one tell them that Bony General also wasn't a custom one.

Next Ezrith dmd me asking for my discord tag, and it didn't help me clear my confusion. I gave her my , accepted her friend request and wondered if I should be scared or excited. It could've been about me being chosen as a curator but it could've also been trouble I didn't realize I was in.

Then one morning I woke up to 200 messages in a new group chat on discord and the "Look At Me I'm Important" notification on amino, needless to say it was a wild morning.

I was now a curator! And hey, that one guy was there too. The one who would, for a while, be known as the Level 9 curator. No Evan, I don't care how much time has ed, I will not ever let that go, it's still funny.

The first things I did as curator was accept wiki submissions and disable a random trading post and it felt so extremely weird back then.

The first post I made after becoming curator was talking about Forever Friends like nothing had happened because 1: I adore that movie and I needed to let my thoughts out, 2: I'd been writing it for a week and 3: I didn't even know what I would say in a "hey I'm curator now" post lol.

They announced the PS4 port of ykw4 and sometimes I still forget this exists, it still feels like a fever dream.

I held my second ever challange and my first challange as part of the mod team for Halloweek 2019 and I just now realized how similar this is to what I did this year, oops. No one noticed. This was also a really fun one looking back at the entries.

Then I posted the best art I've made to date. I don't even know why I still try drawing because I will never top this one. How did this get 52 likes without being featured? It was just that good.

The year came to a close and I really wanted to edit with world christmas variants, alas there were no high quality images of them. Level-5 Please just drop more hq artworks on your twitter.

2020

Bleeding over into the new year was the Katie and Hailey deserve better post. I was really terrible with meeting my self imposed deadline for this one, I really wanted to finish it before new years, but maybe it ended up better written for it. They still deserve better, nothing much has changed.

In February I got into Toilet Bound Hanako-kun so I did a comedic crossover edit between Hanako and Hanako.

Here's another post where I missed my own deadline of posting it on cat day but that probably is also better off for it. I may have been terrible with posting things on time but, hey, at least I managed to post it.

In March I gave video editing a shot again, something I hadn't done in ages, and posted my first Yo-kai Watch AMV. I how nervous I was about posting it and how relieved I was when it was recieved really positive. It was kinda the start of me rediscovering a ion.

This is the part where I plug my Youtube channel because if you don't see me post here you're more likely to see me post there, just not ykw stuff.

Wai Wai Gakuen got a demo, which is something I also tend to forget about, and this is still the only post ykw3 game I've played.

Probably one of the absolute most insane things I've done was count all the Cat Yo-kai in the different games, by hand, and calculated the percent they take up in the medallium, just to spite a friend. It's interesting data tho.

The summer of that year was pretty agonizing, if you were active around that time you probably know what situation I'm referring to. Spenjo had been promoted to Leader earlier in the year, Cain who had been the only other curator besides me at that time left the team and Ezrith also announced that she planned to retire sooner rather than later.

So I was literally the only curator left for a while.

I won't lie, I also very much felt like throwing in the towel at first at that time, just walking out backwards through the door and never looking back.

But I couldn't, I knew I would feel terrible about it and I couldn't with good conscience leave my friend on his own. I couldn't leave the community that means so much to me behind in a state like that.

So even though it sucked at that time and I hated it I worked through the panic and modded the amino kinda on my own for a while. I don't regret it.

Though when we finally added new curators in September it was a huge relief and it felt like someone finally kicked that rock off my back.

Karis and Mosk weren't around for long, but Whisper, Cat and Mahd still are. Huge shoutout to you three, you're the best, seriously.

Back to posts, I released the Be Somebody AMV, still one of my fav ones. "I can't believe I found the motivation to make another AMV either. Especially in the same year." Heh. I've made 15 amvs, 8 mep parts and counting(?) this year, but then again I've had more free time and motivation for it.

I cheated in Clawnyans Death Quiz by commiting suicide and breaking the law.

Then I completely and utterly wastes all the playcoins that I had accumulated by hard work throughout the years to satisfy my own curiousity.

ATT reached chapter 10 with a new tone to the story and I also finally switched out the preview image.

I held the November Monthly Challenge which is funny because I'm also holding the November Monthly Challenge this year. Right now. You can the current Monthly Challenge here:

-> http://aminoapps.vertvonline.info/p/fg7qii6 <-

the Monthly Challenge.

*ehem*

Later that month Ezrith retired from being a leader. I knew it was coming for months, but when she actually left it was still both shocking and sad. There's a difference between knowing something and that thing happening, yknow.

I've had my fair share of disagreements with her, but overall I'm still very grateful for the things Ezrith has done and I think she's a great person, thanks for everything, Ez.

Spenjo was now the Agent/Main Leader/whatever it's called and I've seen people say that the switch was a turning point but... honestly? Internally, or at least from the way I saw it, it wasn't that much of an abrupt change since Spenjo had been doing most things for the longest time already.

Towards the end of the month we added a few curators again and honestly these and the last curators were so close together in my mind that I tend to forget they weren't added at the same time sometimes lmao.

Nene dipped out extremely quickly, sadly. Chase was around for really long and only left recently and Jj is still here. Shoutout to those last two as well, you are also the best.

Medal Wars shut down to barely anyone caring about it, I put a lot of effort and thought into making a post looking back on it without really caring about the game itself all too much either.

Hino dropped a bunch of Y Academy concept art on twitter and wow do I wish they would do this more, I love seeing old concept art, it's always fun.

I participated in the Secret Santa Spenjo had organized and MidnightStarHunter drew ATT fanart as my gift. This is one of my favourite things ever and it always will be. I link it at every possible opportunity I have. Sometimes I randomly look at it and try my best not to cry.

Two pretty major things happened in December last year.

I won Member of the Month. I how I amazed I was that I was nominated in the first place, partly because I didn't expect people to think of nominating curators. This is one of the rare times I genuinely watched the poll as it was going on and seeing people vote for me and then actually winning it was very heartwarming.

Then at the end of the month I was promoted to Co-Leader. Can you believe we're slowly creeping up on it having been a year since then? I kinda can't.

Apparently multiple people had known this was coming before it happened and no one had told me lmao.

You'd probably think this would have been a major conversation but it basically went Spenjo dming me "Hey you wanna be Co-Leader?", I shot back a "Sure I'd love to" because we both knew I wasn't saying no and he said "Great I'll announce it tomorrow".

2021

My not-knowing-what-to-post-after-getting-promoted streak continued as my first post as Leader was Smash Bosses in Yo-kai Watch in January which was part of the Bean Games.

Yeah, the Bean Games? The elimination game made by Bean who's said he would bring them back like thrice now and never has? Yeah those Bean Games, I participated in those.

My favourite challange was when Mao and I both had to sing Baby by Justin Bieber when it was like 1 AM for me. I still have to lyrics memorized unfortunatley, the rap part was the worst I never managed to get it right. Good times.

This January I turned 18. Evan made a post calling me out and I got the highest amount of Happy Birthdays I ever recieving, it was a good day.

I made tierlists for every game until 3 and I will never do anything like this again it look so unbearably long.

I have been to multiple of the Movie Nights we hold to celebrate milestones, but the most memorable one to me was the one where we watched the Y Academy movie. This is for the most part because unlike the other movies I've watched 5 times I hadn't seen this one before then. The movie wasn't great, the comments by the other people watching it in the server made it soo much more entertaining.

In February post about the first trailer, and honestly the only reason I did was because no one else was talking about it. No one cares about this show. It's still currently airing. There are like 2 people in the english fandom who watch it.

May was taken up by Donut Domination which was such a fun event to plan and watch play out. I me and Evan being in vc having no idea what we should call it, then Chase walked in, said "Donut Domination" and we both screamed.

In March Yo-kai Watch managed to trend on twitter and it was one of the only times I've cared about twitter trends. I'm still not certain how it managed to get there but it reached big names and even english vas used the hashtag, it was huge and probably the most exciting thing to happen in the wider english fandom for a good while.

For april fools everyone in the curator team changed their profile to Sans and made a joking goodbye post and it was funny to me until a few people actually believed it, then I felt kinda bad for it. I also confused people by turning off levels which wasn't even my idea, it was Soys lol.

This headcanon post massively got out of my hand and is way longer than I had intended it to be.

Towards the end of May ATT concluded with the last two chapters being posted back to back. I'm still really proud of them. They didn't go off with as much as a bang as I hoped they would but honestly with how many times it was on hiatus I don't blame anyone for losing interest.

I talked plenty about my thoughts on the entire fanfic in the end notes of chap 15 which is why I haven't mentioned it much here, just read that instead if you're curious or want a refresher.

During May bleeding into June I participated in Soys 100 Days of Hell, I was pretty inactive in the chat at first until I eventually started taking it more seriously and then it was pretty fun. I died on June 24th, the 24th day, out of my own stupidity and breaking 2 rules at once because I forgot about them.

Yo-kai Watch 1 for mobile was announced and it was the worst live stream I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. Not even because of it being for a mobile port, just the whole live stream was kinda boring. I watched it in a discord server and that was the entertaining part about it, I don't think I would have stayed for the whole thing otherwise.

Soy started a Minecraft Realm and I played it for a bit. I built a house, then Shrimpy kept breaking into it until I gave in and we moved in together, and then I kinda stopped playing because I didn't have the motivation. Those couple of times I did though were really fun, especially playing with Shrimpy.

I reached a whopping 200 posts with showing off my ykw merch. And I know others have made more, but I have never once shown off Puni pulls, so that has got to be a seperate category.

We held Halloweek and even though not as many people as hoped ed the entries we did get were still really good.

And now we're... here, huh.

The two latest posts excluding challenge related ones are the MEP part I did.

Current day and age.

As I'm writing this it's Wednesday the 10th, 2 days before this post is going up. I don't when I started writing it but it must have been towards mid to end of October, I'm surprised I managed to finish it in time.

Being where I am is both an honour and very stressful at times. Not everyone is happy, not everyone is going to like you and sometimes it just flat out sucks and frustrates me.

But for the most part I love being here and I love what I do. When I was promoted I only saw positive comments and every single one of them made me emotional.

I love this community, the people in it and I love being a part of it.

I don't like talking about my personal life here but the past 2 years for me have been, for a lack of a better term, absolute fucking dogshit, so having a place here is nice.

The things I mentioned in this post very obviously wasn't everything that happened, 5 years is a long time. It would be way too much for one post and I don't even a lot of the things that happened, and there are some things I don't think deserve to get brought up again. These are just some of the post I think are more notable and events that I do happening.

Thank you to everyone I've mentioned in this post, and if we've had positive interactions in the past and I didn't mention you then still thank you too. <3

And thank you if you actually read this entire mess!

This is starting to sound like a goodbye post but I assure you it's not, I currently do not have any plans to leave.

This post is really more a filler recap episode in the middle of the season.

I know I haven't been posting that much the past couple of months but I'm still here and active, I read posts and I check in chats. I just don't post because I don't want to force myself to write anything and you don't want to read something I forced myself to write because it wouldn't be great.

So, off to another five years(?)

Let's see how the future goes.

This post was inspired by THE POST made by Chase which is about exactly the same amount of time as I've been here from a different perspective. I told him I would do something like this for November 12th when he posted this and I did.

I'm gonna leave you off with the only image I will bother putting in here, the iconic obligatory oldest screenshot of my profile I could find. It's not even my screenshot, it's from here, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I never proofread this

Alright Peace now 🤟