Despite growing up with computers, I never really explored the web much (outside of a few specific sites such as the ABC Kids one to start, and later Neopets, Runescape, and Club Penguin), and thus missed out on the golden age of personal websites (or silver age perhaps, as a 96'er), but now I'm trying to make up for it.

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I was never really involved in online communities in the way that many others were, even when I did join deviantART in high school (Year 7 or 8 I believe, at age 12 or 13 most likely). I participated in some small group bases pieces and had some short conversations in the comments, but I mostly interacted with people I already knew, particularly my best friend at the time. We were deep in our own fannish experience - Bleach was our big thing, we had OCs, read/wrote fanfiction, saved & printed fanart, watched AMVs, and included some silly RP in our MSN chats - but I at least was not involved in fandom itself.

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I later followed an artist I watched to Tumblr, having some prior experience in reading Gurren Lagann askblogs there, and that artist drew a piece of Once-Ler fanart, setting me down a path into the Once-Ler askblog fandom. I got a little more involved now, sending the occaisional ask, drawing a piece of fanart or two, but still I was mostly separate. I hadn't made any friends. This did not particularly bother me though, I wasn't all that interested in making internet friends, though I definitely had some small parasocial dreams about some of those askblog "muns".

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The real step into fandom community though was when I ended up joining the Amino app. I think I started on the BTS Amino (I had gotten into them after someone at uni showed me the dance video for Fire), but the place where I found a some was the Sailor Moon Amino. I joined an event and made my first proper fan senshi, Sailor Fortuna (who now has her own website - yes see this is all relevant!), started commenting on posts and making my own. I learned some basic (phone-based) editing, got really into making aesthetic moodboards, got back into drawing traditionally, and joined a few group chats. I even tried some actual roleplay with internet strangers! I had spotted some other fan senshi around and started talking to the owner of a Sailor Capella, who invited me to try some roleplay, and I thought, why not try something (mostly) new? I then came across an OC that really impressed and intrigued me - a certain Sailor Ediona - and after checking first I invited her to join the OC RP I was in. Between that and meeting people in the Sailor Moon Drops group chat (run by the wife of the owner of Sailor Capella), I now had friends. In fact, it was here where I met several of my dearest internet friends that I'm still in touch with today.

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Side note, this is where the nickname Fab originated from. When I joined the amino and set my name, I went with "Sailor Fabulous", inspired by my love of Sailor Venus (who is of course fabulous), and the old Sailor Moon Abridged series depiction of her.

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As things went on in SMA, I briefly became a mod (my first experience), though had to step down not long afterwards due to starting my first full time job and no longer having the excessive free time (brought about by excessive procrastination) of a uni student. I still made quality (if I do say so myself) posts and ran events, just much less frequently than I used to. Eventually with that new job money though I bought a new laptop (the same one I'm using to write this about eight years later) and got back into digital art. I spent all most of my free time drawing now, particularly fan senshi, and with my core friend group being OC owners, I found that was my passion. After a rift with a former friend and the mod team, my core friends and I decided to make our own Amino, one dedicated to fan characters, and thus the Otaku Senshi Amino was born.

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We had a good thing going there for a while, with events and RP and in depth discussions. During this time I got back on deviantART thanks to the encouragement of a certain fan senshi fanatic called Aelloblu, and ended up finding and joining the Crystal Animamates Sailor Moon OC ARPG. This had another huge impact on me. Firstly it inspired me to try my own ARPG of sorts, hosted on OSA, the Interstellar Senshi Alliance, after I failed to get any of my friends to join the CA with me, but after doing a lot of work on it at first, I soon fell off it. Did I mention I recently got diagnosed with ADHD? Anyway, eventually we felt Amino dying down a bit, and decided to make the jump to Discord. This time I set it up, initially calling it the Otaku Senshi Alliance, though later changing to Fan Senshi Alliance, and it's still going strong. I also joined the CA discord server, and started talking with people there, as well as having been interacting with them in the comments on deviantART, and after a few years (that involved helping a little with the TH World) I joined the mod team. My main role is in creating decorations and wrangling the Discord server (and bots) to be neat and functional. I also got into Closed Species for a while, which I can blame members of the CA for lol.

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While all this was happening, Aelloblu, now on the FSA server, started reminiscing about fan senshi websites, sharing old ones and encouraging us to make new ones. I was intrigued, but unsure where to start. She ended up setting up a WIX site for my friend Junoh's Sailor Ediona and accompanying team and overall headcanon that I had been highly involved in, and invited us both to work on it. Junoh never really got into it too much, but I went a bit crazy about it. I set up so much, scrounged the FSA server, as well as old OSA and SMA posts, for old art and information, and compiled it all into the new site Aelloblu had named Ediona Blossoms. While I haven't worked on it for a while, there are still new things to add, and I do edit it a few times a year now. All this really boosted my confidence in my ability to make a fan senshi site, and I decided to try my hand at one for the OC that started it all, Sailor Fortuna. It was still WIX based, but this time I was starting from "scratch".