Aleric's AFF Journey
Celebrating 5 years of AFF by sharing with you my journey here on this site! I wasn’t actually going to do this, but a few brats pestered me to (lol). I guess it would be fun, I really hope you enjoy reading as much as I’d enjoy writing this. Maybe you can get something out of it if you bother to read the whole thing, I don’t know heh. Feel free to fall asleep half way through o/
Aleric's AFF Journey
Despite the fact that my profile states I joined AFF on July 18, 2011—I had actually been around AFF for longer than that. I can’t remember the exact date but it was possibly late 2010, I just hadn’t thought to have joined the site until mid-year 2011 because my cousin had been trying to “officially” get me on AFF (create an account, more on that later).
I signed up to AFF under the username nobleA_x, some of you would have spoken to me when I had that username, (changed to aleric later on in my membership when the price of changing usernames was still only 200 KP). To justify my choice of username back then (ah, here we go), if you search up the meaning of “Aleric”, it’s such and such and the word ‘noble’ would appear. ‘A’ is a given, and represents the first letter of my name. ‘_x’ was just spontaneous (lol).
In retrospect, I think of nobleA_x as Aleric 1.0 due to the fact that I was a lot more social and spontaneous compared to what I am today (well what I deem as "spontaneous", probably not haha!) I resort this to the fact that back then during my Aleric 1.0 phase in 2011, I was a tenth grader who really liked K-pop. At the time not very many knew about K-pop, especially a lot of my mates back then. I did have a couple of friends that were females who shared that same K-pop interest. And I think that’s kind of what made me get along with a number of users on here in my earlier stages of membership, mostly females considering the lack of male users at the time. But through that affair, I think I established the greatest of all friendships on here. (Shoutout to all of my earliest friends, my ACJN circle, my noonas, my twins, Aaron, mama G.)
My social phase during Aleric 1.0 might have also been due to the fact that I wasn’t into graphic designing, (given that graphic design and Photoshopping has now taken up 2/3 of my AFF browsing time). It probably would have never occurred to Aleric 1.0 that he’d be maintaining a graphic-related thread. But it was an interesting phase because keeping track of my wall and trying to figure out who I had replied/who I hadn’t almost became a daily chore every time I logged in AFF. I’d feel so horrible for not replying someone for a long period of time due to my laziness (heh).
Subsequently, after I had changed my username to just aleric, I gradually became Aleric 2.0 (more so now)—now don’t get me wrong. I might be Aleric 2.0 right now with a few changes in terms of maturity, choices and the way I talk, but I’m still the same person. I’m saying this because I had actually gotten approached on my ask.fm by an anon who said they were one of my earlier friends and that I had a drastic shift in personality, like I was a foreigner to them. And did that dishearten me, a whole lot. Which because they didn’t even think to approach me rationally to talk about the issue.
Anyway, moving on. This phase was a little different in that most of my earliest and close friends had decided to leave AFF or no longer be frequently active on the website due to circumstances outside of AFF. It was unfortunate, but I understood why they had to knowing what they were going through. And frankly, I couldn't say anything otherwise because before I changed my username, I had a bunch of hiatuses myself. It was crazy, some went for weeks, some for months and there was one time when I was inactive for almost a year. It's funny how you can never really leave AFF, something about it—even if it's a fanfiction/thread or a friend you met on here—just stops you from completely obliterating the idea of coming back to AFF.
Unforeseen memory: I remember from this phase was the "stalker" incident, the person behind it turned out to be one of the sweetest people I have ever met on AFF. But my close friends on here got a bit of a fright from the incident. Can't really blame them if you knew the situation which I won't elaborate on. But yeah, that happened and I had to associate my real life circumstances which was something I said I'd never do. It was quite interesting.
So Aleric 2.0 became a time of not making wall post replying first priority (haha), I started to get detached from AFF in this phase because I'd be on Cubie or KakaoTalk and socialising with my ACJN circle there (June, Lette, Cessie — my Singaporeans), and a number of my other AFF friends. This might have been mid 2012.
I gradually started coming back on AFF around September, 2012, with much bigger plans that involved creating my first ever thread. In which you know now as The Boy in Seoul, a resource/graphic-related thread. But of course my intent behind creating the thread wasn't to distribute resources or share my graphic designing ventures. I actually wasn't that interested in graphic designing and Photoshopping at the time. I created the thread around November, 2012, after a few (what I thought were) successful photo blogs that were titled 'the boy in seoul'. So The Boy in Seoul thread started off as a "photo blog", little did I know it would grow to be something compeltely different haha! Below is a preview of what the thread looked like when it only had 8 views heh, I really treasure this gif and I'm glad I didn't delete it.
Looked simple ey? I still love it though heh. To state the obvious, no one really paid attention to the thread besides my friends who supported the launching. And the lack of attention didn't even matter to me because I just loved to share what caught my eye, coupled with the fact that I had such amazing friends that supported this unorganised thread.
It's the transition between a photo blogging thread to a more subscriber focused thread was when I started to incorporate graphic designing into the picture. If my earliest subscribers can remember, I started distributing miscellaneous materials such as blog "buttons" (view) that were custom made to the blog of the person who wanted one. I continued to experiment with my newly downloaded Photoshop. In result of that, I started creating patterns, my first pattern was 'Geometric' (view) that was distributed around mid 2013. This was a key turning point because from then on, The Boy in Seoul gradually became more of a resouce thread. Ever since then, it has grown considerably (in my opinion, I think).
It wasn't until I decided to revamp TBiS from what you see above to a new look that I brought it upon myself to learn how to code (a little more advanced than the basic coding I knew) and grasp div tags and how they work. It wasn't an easy process because there would be so many coding obstacles I faced and I had problems with the coding limits. The structure of any code that I created was disorganised and difficult to work with. This was probably late 2013, some time in October. During this time I started planning for Dandyand I wanted a new look to go with that plan. So, if you look at it that way I actually haven't been coding for very long. You can kind of tell with the layout I have now for the TBiS thread that there's still a whole lot more I can polish on. Which I plan on doing.
Entering 2014, I like to think it has been the best year so far for me and also for AFF (with all the new features). I've met some brilliant graphic/layout designers, collaborated and affiliated with respectable people in the AFF graphic community, met some gorgeous subscribers through TBiS.
Aleric's AFF Journey
Despite the fact that my profile states I joined AFF on July 18, 2011—I had actually been around AFF for longer than that. I can’t remember the exact date but it was possibly late 2010, I just hadn’t thought to have joined the site until mid-year 2011 because my cousin had been trying to “officially” get me on AFF (create an account, more on that later).
I signed up to AFF under the username nobleA_x, some of you would have spoken to me when I had that username, (changed to aleric later on in my membership when the price of changing usernames was still only 200 KP). To justify my choice of username back then (ah, here we go), if you search up the meaning of “Aleric”, it’s such and such and the word ‘noble’ would appear. ‘A’ is a given, and represents the first letter of my name. ‘_x’ was just spontaneous (lol).
In retrospect, I think of nobleA_x as Aleric 1.0 due to the fact that I was a lot more social and spontaneous compared to what I am today (well what I deem as "spontaneous", probably not haha!) I resort this to the fact that back then during my Aleric 1.0 phase in 2011, I was a tenth grader who really liked K-pop. At the time not very many knew about K-pop, especially a lot of my mates back then. I did have a couple of friends that were females who shared that same K-pop interest. And I think that’s kind of what made me get along with a number of users on here in my earlier stages of membership, mostly females considering the lack of male users at the time. But through that affair, I think I established the greatest of all friendships on here. (Shoutout to all of my earliest friends, my ACJN circle, my noonas, my twins, Aaron, mama G.)
My social phase during Aleric 1.0 might have also been due to the fact that I wasn’t into graphic designing, (given that graphic design and Photoshopping has now taken up 2/3 of my AFF browsing time). It probably would have never occurred to Aleric 1.0 that he’d be maintaining a graphic-related thread. But it was an interesting phase because keeping track of my wall and trying to figure out who I had replied/who I hadn’t almost became a daily chore every time I logged in AFF. I’d feel so horrible for not replying someone for a long period of time due to my laziness (heh).
Subsequently, after I had changed my username to just aleric, I gradually became Aleric 2.0 (more so now)—now don’t get me wrong. I might be Aleric 2.0 right now with a few changes in terms of maturity, choices and the way I talk, but I’m still the same person. I’m saying this because I had actually gotten approached on my ask.fm by an anon who said they were one of my earlier friends and that I had a drastic shift in personality, like I was a foreigner to them. And did that dishearten me, a whole lot. Which because they didn’t even think to approach me rationally to talk about the issue.
Anyway, moving on. This phase was a little different in that most of my earliest and close friends had decided to leave AFF or no longer be frequently active on the website due to circumstances outside of AFF. It was unfortunate, but I understood why they had to knowing what they were going through. And frankly, I couldn't say anything otherwise because before I changed my username, I had a bunch of hiatuses myself. It was crazy, some went for weeks, some for months and there was one time when I was inactive for almost a year. It's funny how you can never really leave AFF, something about it—even if it's a fanfiction/thread or a friend you met on here—just stops you from completely obliterating the idea of coming back to AFF.
Unforeseen memory: I remember from this phase was the "stalker" incident, the person behind it turned out to be one of the sweetest people I have ever met on AFF. But my close friends on here got a bit of a fright from the incident. Can't really blame them if you knew the situation which I won't elaborate on. But yeah, that happened and I had to associate my real life circumstances which was something I said I'd never do. It was quite interesting.
So Aleric 2.0 became a time of not making wall post replying first priority (haha), I started to get detached from AFF in this phase because I'd be on Cubie or KakaoTalk and socialising with my ACJN circle there (June, Lette, Cessie — my Singaporeans), and a number of my other AFF friends. This might have been mid 2012.
I gradually started coming back on AFF around September, 2012, with much bigger plans that involved creating my first ever thread. In which you know now as The Boy in Seoul, a resource/graphic-related thread. But of course my intent behind creating the thread wasn't to distribute resources or share my graphic designing ventures. I actually wasn't that interested in graphic designing and Photoshopping at the time. I created the thread around November, 2012, after a few (what I thought were) successful photo blogs that were titled 'the boy in seoul'. So The Boy in Seoul thread started off as a "photo blog", little did I know it would grow to be something compeltely different haha! Below is a preview of what the thread looked like when it only had 8 views heh, I really treasure this gif and I'm glad I didn't delete it.
Looked simple ey? I still love it though heh. To state the obvious, no one really paid attention to the thread besides my friends who supported the launching. And the lack of attention didn't even matter to me because I just loved to share what caught my eye, coupled with the fact that I had such amazing friends that supported this unorganised thread.
It's the transition between a photo blogging thread to a more subscriber focused thread was when I started to incorporate graphic designing into the picture. If my earliest subscribers can remember, I started distributing miscellaneous materials such as blog "buttons" (view) that were custom made to the blog of the person who wanted one. I continued to experiment with my newly downloaded Photoshop. In result of that, I started creating patterns, my first pattern was 'Geometric' (view) that was distributed around mid 2013. This was a key turning point because from then on, The Boy in Seoul gradually became more of a resouce thread. Ever since then, it has grown considerably (in my opinion, I think).
It wasn't until I decided to revamp TBiS from what you see above to a new look that I brought it upon myself to learn how to code (a little more advanced than the basic coding I knew) and grasp div tags and how they work. It wasn't an easy process because there would be so many coding obstacles I faced and I had problems with the coding limits. The structure of any code that I created was disorganised and difficult to work with. This was probably late 2013, some time in October. During this time I started planning for Dandyand I wanted a new look to go with that plan. So, if you look at it that way I actually haven't been coding for very long. You can kind of tell with the layout I have now for the TBiS thread that there's still a whole lot more I can polish on. Which I plan on doing.
Entering 2014, I like to think it has been the best year so far for me and also for AFF (with all the new features). I've met some brilliant graphic/layout designers, collaborated and affiliated with respectable people in the AFF graphic community, met some gorgeous subscribers through TBiS.
This year my focus has been well on The Boy in Seoul, also improving my graphic designing and Photoshop techniques.
This might've bore you to death, I apologise haha! (Is surprised that Keeper's AFF Journey isn't as long as this, possibly longer.) But it's nice to revisit the past to have that reminiscent feeling. It's kind of strange. You want to bring back the old times even though you know it's not going to be the same.
Aleric's message to AFF: Congratulations on your fifth year and continual success. Asianfanfics pretty much has everything from some of the greatest writers and designers in the kpop community, to innovative site features that makes the AFF contrast greatly to similar websites. We also have the most patient administrator here on AFF (boss nichi, the great). As thankful members of this website, we will continually keep this a safe and fun community for everyone. Here's to many more years!
Might be doing something for this celebration, look out for The Boy in Seoul updates! :)
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