It's more like...why does this image stick out at you? Why this image in particular? What sets this image apart from other novel covers? Why does this one solely remind you of an entire phase of your life? It's just the cover of the first book, right? Do the other books' covers also trigger you to think about this community? Or is it the characters that do it? Since you included the fanart, are you saying that this fanart is actually the trigger? I find focusing on one thing and explaining every detail fills up a lot of pages. You don't even have to think that hard, just write down every little thing you feel as you remember the situation. It's how I pull out 5 pages of bullshit out if my ass for my writing assignments.
Mm, I believe I mentioned that the first cover is what makes me think of the fanart since the fanart was the true "first cover."
*coughs* So this may be a bit late. Well, regardless, here’s the inferior final draft. I like just spewing my thoughts more than refining them, so I prefer my rough draft. Spoiler: From Antisocial to Less Antisocial You may be wondering, what does a blonde girl and a rabbit girl holding a hammer preparing to strike have to do with anything? Well, they’re both covers of a book called Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekaisaikyou or Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest. I discovered the title way back in 2016, probably around May? I was on a website called Kissanime, or Kissmanga. It’s hard to remember which sometimes. Someone in the Disqus comment sections called Kirito Kirigaya or something mentioned reading this amazing story called Arifureta, about a boy who fell down a pit and a vampire girl, along with some other girls who tagged along for the ride. The rabbit girl is something from before the story even got published. It was included in one of the chapters on Syosetu, the site where the author uploaded the story. It’s basically a Japanese equivalent of Wattpad, Royal Road, and other such writing outlets we have. Anyway, Japtem was the first team who translated the story and they used the fanart as a cover for their EPUBs of the story, which had ten chapters each volume. It was fun days then, despite the rather poor quality translation we were getting then. To go more into detail about the story, it’s first volume is about a boy, Nagumo Hajime, who was summoned to a different world called Tortus along with the rest of his class. Hajime, since that’s his first name, is an otaku, meaning he’s into anime, games, manga, and other such media. They’re generally looked down on in Japan, though I think it’s gotten better now? Regardless, he’s an otaku and has read about such scenarios in books, so he’s somewhat familiar with the setting. Everyone is requested to help the kingdom slay the demon race, and this is accomplished from the summoning magic that brought them there. People who are summoned have a higher “status” like in a game, and they can check this through a stone tablet that’s attuned to them with a drop of blood. Hajime’s was...weak. Pitifully weak. He was as strong as an average person, and he didn’t even get a combat class. Instead he got a job that essentially let him make holes and swords in relatively short time. As you could guess, with Hajime already being an otaku, he was bullied. Even before they came to Tortus his class bullied him. There were a few students who stuck up for him, but at the same time they were one of the reasons why he was being bullied. It got worse in Tortus as now his aggressors got their hands on magic. Hajime was worthless, and he knew this, so he holed himself up in the library so that he could learn as much as he could about the world, its inhabitants, and its monsters. Fast forward a few months and the class is visiting a dungeon called the Orcus great dungeon. What happens in there is that one of his bullies was jealous of his relationship with a girl, so in a crucial moment he blasts Hajime off a bridge. This was during a time when Hajime, the weakest person, was actually in the process of saving the whole class from certain death. Anyway, Hajime survived due to some lucky circumstances, but he came close to death’s door immediately. The creatures he found where he fell were much worse than what they were escaping from, and one took off his arm. He then escaped, had a mental breakdown, and set his mind on a goal: to get back to Japan. While down in the dungeon he met another person, Yue, and together they conquered the dungeon. The rest of the story is about him travelling to find a way back to Japan, along with him slowly developing back to someone who’s not a brutal killer. Around when I discovered this story is when I came back from visiting Japan. A few weeks after that I got a massive headache that wouldn’t go away and was triggered by motion. It was painful, so painful that I just didn’t want to lift my head half the time. A good way to describe it would be...a dull pain, like a constant hand squeezing your head, but it was your whole head. Whenever you moved the hand would squeeze harder. We went to the doctor a few times, and eventually seeked an occupational therapist. Regardless, I missed half of the term by then. Instead, I spent my time reading Arifureta until I caught up with translation. Soon I started looking at the sites other stories, hoping to branch out and find other interesting ones. None were quite as good as what I started with, but a few are quite notable and have been made into anime or are still being translated to this day. Among these are Ark, The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and Magi’s Grandson. Soon I caught up to those too, so I looked elsewhere. I remember seeing a site called Novel Updates in Google every time I searched for Arifureta sometimes, which I did to find the table of contents of Japtem’s successor Durasama. I don’t remember why Japtem stopped translating, but they did. Anyway, Durasama skipped a few chapters because we had summaries of what happened during those chapters in pastebin- yep, summaries. We also had some really bad translations that could only be found on Google Drive that was about twenty chapters long, and eventually the translation ground to a halt due to the chapters being long and hard to translate. It was no longer worth it to translate the chapters, despite the large following it had. Luckily it was sped up by someone called Elemental Cobalt, and later completely taken over by BakaPervert. It’s now up to date with the latest release, and the published novels are being translated into English, along with an anime adaptation set to air this summer. Yet, how I found out about that was through Novel Updates, a site which I first thought was a pirate site. It’s anything but that, as it actively filters out pirate sites and instead posts chapter updates via links to the original translation site. Suddenly a whole new collection of novels opened up to me, and I started reading like crazy. I rediscovered a site that I abandoned called WuxiaWorld, and started reading some of their translations. I Shall Seal the Heavens, Against the Gods, Wu Dong Qian Kun, The Great Ruler, Terror Infinity, Tales of Demons and Gods, and more all on one site, yet easy to track on another. What’s more is that there was an active forum, Novel Updates Forum. NUF was a place to find new stories, share recommendations, recall lost chapter placements, and remember forgotten titles of stories. It also had the developer of the site, Tony, as an active participant. Throughout the summer as I laid in bed doing nothing but suffering through a headache, I found myself visiting that forum more and more often, and now I visit it everyday to chat with people, play community driven games, or just mess around. One day there was a thread on NU’s homepage, where they sticky some of the new threads to lure, er, let people in on what’s going on in NUF. It was titled NUF Private Academy. A person by the name of LivingCorpse started it with the intention of...well, having a school to roleplay in. However, this is a community that has been influenced by anime, Japanese cultuer, Chinese culture, and Korean culture. How could we make it an American school, or even a normal school? I was the seventh poster, making me the sempai to mostly everyone. My post? Nominating one of the mods to be the mascot, since we needed one of those and a student council. Somehow, by voting, I got the place of secretary there. Yet, I still didn’t know exactly what to do there, as it didn’t have a purpose except to farm likes. I mean that in the most literal sense, too. Tony is a cruel person who likes to set unattainable goals for us, and also limits us to around one hundred thirty-five likes per day. Each like refreshes twenty-four hours after usage. To farm likes you basically make a thread with no purpose, such as a poll to make fun of Tony, and start randomly talking. Soon enough people start liking your posts, and bam! Like famring. Anyway, to get back at Tony, we call her a woman. We also reference the time he had a male stripper as his profile picture to mess with him. Anyway, we farmed likes there because we only have a hundred or so to spend everyday. Things quickly became a mess when aliens attacked the school, my online moniker Fossil made me a skeleton, and squirrels. Lots and lots of squirrels. Oh, a fountain also got polluted and now any of the “mob” students who drink it will be absolutely loyal to LivingCorpse whose gunpla we frequently sell off for millions. For me I was having fun getting to know people, as well as mess with them. I was opening up quite a bit then, and I’d have to say that now I’m a lot more confident and outgoing. Heck, over the summer I’m hoping to fly down to California to meet up with one of my online friends. Regardless of that, all good things must come to an end. The academy is now, sadly, quite dead. I think that by now it’s mostly a bit of we don’t know what to talk about, so everyone slowly drifted to other parts of the forum. That’s where I found the Magic Association, the Adventurer’s Guild, and more. Around then, though, someone by the name of Kurono slid into my PMs and asked me if I wanted to join his Discord server for the forum. I said yes, and now that’s my second most used form of social media, NUF being the first. Once I was on Discord I was suddenly being invited into voice chat sessions, talked to a lot of people, crossed a few lines, and eventually learned more about myself. By now I’d say that these past three years are some of the most fun for me. It’s shaped who I am, and has helped me quite a bit in life. Sometimes I even use the forum for things like surveys and questionnaires because I know how kind people there can be. I honestly could not imagine my life without it now. What’s more, all of it started because of one comment on an anime that lead me to one great big story, one that’s by far still my favorite to this day. Anyway, thanks to everyone here, especially the staff, the mafia crew, AG, MA, and the NUF Private Academy "class" for being fun to be around! Here's to many years more of fun!