#aunt-imogene

I have two. I love love lOVE the smell of clean laundry and also certain earthy-scented men’s cologne. 

(In celebration of 3K followers, I am doing 30 days of positive shoutouts to all the incredible people I’ve met through this fandom. Here’s Day 9 - superrrr late!)

I’ve never tried making a gif, but it sounds pretty freaking hard. In the Bughead fandom, we are hugely blessed with some of the quickest, most talented, most creative gif makers ever. And I say blessed for real, because without gifs, us Aussie viewers (who get the episode LAST) would not have been able to anticipate or prepare ourselves for the absolute emotional whiplash of Season 2 (I saw the infamous 2x05 kiss via gif first and managed not to throw up when I finally saw the episode, but I digress).

Let’s start first with why gifs are important. I love this quote from the makers of visual text-sharing app Pop: 

"The meaning of a GIF, like all visual symbols, is built through common cultural understanding. The reason a GIF of Jack Nicholson knocking on the door in The Shining says so much, so quickly, is because of the shared lexicon of popular culture. In this way, GIFs are elemental building blocks of the Internet’s language."

So our gif makers aren’t just artists: they are the builders and creators of the visual language of Bughead and Riverdale. They provide us with a common vocabulary through which we can communicate our flails and our cries and our excitement.

We are lucky to have so many of them. I’ve already mentioned @stark​ as one of our gif queens. Today I want to give some love to two of the best, who also happen to be some of the loveliest people: @aunt-imogene​ and @anasteeles​. 

@aunt-imogene​ is a gif-making legend and just an all-round amazing person. In the beginnings of my obsession with Dylan, she was right there - her and @jandjsalmon, being Norse god co-conspirators - quietly coaxing me along the path of no return, gif-ing video after video and sending me into a permanent Dylan spiral from which I have thankfully not recovered. She was also there to receive all my flails, to encourage my smutty fanfiction writing experiments, and to just be a friend. I know life has been a little tough on her, but I am grateful for her always and glad that she’s back in the fandom after a brief break. 

@anasteeles is what you would get if you put together a big bunch of pink roses, a cup of chamomile tea, and every 80s power ballad you can think of. She’s sweet and calming, but also epic and loud in her positivity and awesomeness. Her gif sets are top-notch, but beyond that, she is an incredible person who supports people so visibly, so unapologetically, and it’s just the greatest injection of spirit into the fandom. To hark back to the quote I put up there, not only is she building the language of visuals in our Bughead family, she is also building the language of empowerment and encouragement.