I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past

I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past (often known as the Albinopocalypse post) is a Tumblr text post and essay by rex/vintar, originally posted in 2015, which details the South Park fandom's early history, which has acheived over eighteen thousands notes. The original post is located here.
The events referenced cover the culmination and end of the first creative era of South Park fandom, from 1997 to 2001, discussing the influence of certain 'Big Name Fans' on the fandom, as well as original characters, Mary Sue criticism and self-insert fic, and the consequences of the early authors' coordinated efforts to co-exist in a shared universe leading to significant conflict among the fandom.
In follow-up posts, Penny McFarland is identified as the genesis of all original character shipping fiction.
==Original Text==
i was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past and i realised that my first proper fandom experience is by now completely wiped from the net thanks to age. i feel i have some responsibility here to document an extremely belated fandom wank so buckle up and let me sing you the song of south park fandom circa 1998-2001 
so back in the day there was a big south park site and, while it had a fan creation section, all the art was crude ms paint drawings of the characters and all the fic was canon-type scripts written and posted in the hopes that the author would get picked up as a script writer for the show. one day someone posted a little romance story between kenny and a palette-swapped girl version of himself called jenny. all the girls on the forum went ‘wait, that’s a thing? we can do that??” and suddenly there was a deluge of ocs the likes of which i’ve never seen since 
everyone had at least a couple. it was what you did! everyone wrote endless ‘a new girl comes to town and dates a character’ fic, then rped their characters with everyone else. everyone was friends, and all their ocs were friends! there was buckets of fanart, and people drew diagrams of the town to show where everyone lived, with new households being added all the time like a bizarro multiplayer game of the sims 
but the longer this went on, the more a weird tension started to develop. if all the fan characters knew each other, then they all existed in the same universe. if they all existed in the same universe, how could they all be exclusively dating the same character? if you were writing a fic about kyle, but five of your friends had ocs that were his true love, what did you do? who did you pick to put in your fic?
one day bnf 1 decided to answer the question once and for all, and wrote a future fic where all the canon characters got married to her and her closest friends’ characters, and they all had lots of oc babies, and so even if other authors wrote about other ocs maybe sort of kind of at some time dating the canon characters, her ocs still won in the end, neener neener
at which point bnf 2 went ‘well that’s just one possible future’, and wrote the beta future, featuring her and her friends’ ocs
and everything went fucking nuts. everyone made a future. there were dozens of the fucking things, with everyone jockeying to get their characters married to the best possible available match. your character was cartman’s girlfriend in your own fic canon? well, she was married to pip in the alpha future, tweak in the gamma, and cartman in the omega future, because your bestie started that one and reserved him for you. not only that, but each couple had different kids in each future, so suddenly each oc had a dozen children across multiple timelines, all of which needed art and fic and character development and rping and and and. a vote was created to give an award to the best new character each month, and a directory was started to keep track of all these fucking futures and all these fucking babies
bnf 1′s plan had backfired. instead of neatly solving the problem of one interwoven yet exclusively non-overlapping present, she’d spawned two dozen horrible baby-laden futures
so she bypassed the problem of romancing canon characters altogether. unlike the fun silly tone of the rest of the fandom, she sculpted a new oc out of pure tragedy. he was, in her own admission, half rei ayanami and half squall leonheart, a sad scarred loner with a tragic family life. he also had albinism, which proved to be significant in a way no-one could have predicted
she and a friend wrote the story of the friend’s oc befriending and eventually saving the poor traumatised angstbucket from his abusive parents. it was purestrain melodrama, but the fandom was at best 13-19, and it became the biggest hit. it was like 10k, which was downright novel-sized in comparison to the script-format 700 word fics that were the norm
everyone loved squall ayanami and his plucky girl saviour! there was oodles of art and squealing over the fic, and he took over the board as its favourite character
and then bnf 2, who was tbh a bit of a shitstirrer, debuted their new character. who also had albinism. and whose parents were killed by the mafia. and he was deaf. and had rainbow hair. and a robot arm.
bnf 1 lost their shit and accused bnf 2 of plagiarism, bnf 2 screamed back, and the fandom broke down into yelling matches. i’m pretty sure the phrase ‘YOU DON’T OWN ALBINOS’ was used in complete seriousness
half the board tried to play peacemaker, half took sides, and eventually bnf 1 left and started her own forum, leaving bnf 2 basically to run the first forum
it was fucking weird, okay. whole swathes of ocs were now persona non grata at one forum or the other depending on which side of the plagiarised albino wank their author had fallen on. if you wanted to be involved with one forum, you were assessed by a tribunal of trustworthy fans to see if you were likely to be a spy for the other side
the fun started to dry up now that mommy and daddy were fighting. people left, put off by the drama, and, with the remaining fans split down the middle, it started to die off 
bnf 1 kept making huffy comments about That Other OC ruining everything and being ridiculous 
bnf 2 announced her new oc: a half-human half-rat furry, escaped from a lab, who was– because, you know, lab rats and all, it made sense– albino
bnf 1 deleted her forum
a lot of people still tried to keep chatting and rping through icq, but it just wasn’t the same. that little part of fandom died, killed by an overabundance of albinos. it now lives on only in my heart and in my fond memories of the stupidest fandom slapfight i’ve ever been party to, the end
The post attracted significant outside-fandom attention.
==Further Details==
A few follow-up posts included art alongside descriptions of some early original characters and some commentary on the post informing some of the incidents referenced further.
==External Links==
*Post on Fanlore