Good to see you're still kicking, Ali. Your rant popped up on my feed, and you made some good points.
2025 Tumblr PC RPF fandom was peak. It was a real community with a lot of fun and silly ideas and creations.
And then E* kicked it, L* killed it, and the PC buried it. All in a year.
Like, out of every group of male YouTubers I've ever watched, PC probably handled their discovery of shipping the worst. Vernias was probably the only one not completely mortified with the idea of parasocialism (though that is just straight up a guess).
RPF is definitely an easy way to grow a fandom, but these guys were not ready for their audience.
what hurts the most looking at the party crashers and their decline was the fact i know they could've been something big. They had a genuinly dedicated fandom with active communities on twitter, tumblr, and even wattpad (dont ask why I know) and ao3. They had the fanartist, the fanfic writers, they even had cosplayers (though mostly for halloween costumes) and people who actually loved them. They had that funny dynamic, funny videos, gimmicks, the drive to be something big but they just, never followed through.
I don't know if ive ever made this point in tumblr before but they expected a smash bros fandom, but instead got something akin to a minecraft fandom. To anyone else this would've been trivial, or even good. Fanart and posts on twitter serve as free advertistment and well you don't get that with a smash bros fandom. But then there was a diffrent side to the minecraft fandom, aka the shipping/rpf side and they got so fuckign scared. I don't know why honestly. shipping is apart of most healthy fandoms so to me (an ex hermitcraft and dsmp fandom-er) it was normal, if anything is was a sign that the pc fandom was thriving and doing well. The pcs saw it and decided to nuke their fans. Brent, perhaps is the most obvious example. he constantly talks shit about his rpf fans, but he does it in a vauge-posting way where it could refer to the public pctwt fanartist. this leads to more "normal" fanartists to move away cause why stick on a fandom where your creator actually hates you? This spirals until, well, no one sticks around.
Rant/essay over (for now)
I honestly forgot who E* and espically who L* were for the longest time, but yeah they did NOT help the rpf side of our fandom. There was also that one ex-dreamnotfound shipper who straight up posted porn on public pctwt but we were already shot dead by E* obsessive behavior and L* being, well L*.
I honest to god think vern supported/encouraged the shipping (TO AN EXTEND). he really played into the queerbating ship and hes iconic for that.
And i do really miss prime pc tumblr. I love all the aus and fanfics and fanarts and just everything with this space. somedays I wish to go back, hit the boys in their face and tell them how good they have it. I wish more aus were still being written and I wish I knew less about the boys so I can still love them without knowing all their problems.
thank you anon for yapping to me, hope to see you around teehee