Sometimes I still think about it. Being 15, and being neck deep in the Leviathan fandom. I spent nearly all of my online time doing fandom activities: scrounging for art, devouring fics, and most of all spending hours and hours on the Westerforums. The Westerforums were from a time when every author and every book series had their own dedicated niche of the internet, and they were the first place I really felt was mine on the internet. If I wasn't actively on the forums I had my email open in another tab so that I would get a notification when someone replied to me or one of my favourite threads. It was 2010 and 2011, and the Leviathan fandom was in its heyday. Which wasn't to say it was incredibly popular. Even at the time, when the books were still coming out and the number of fans was only growing, it wasn't as if Leviathan was one of those hit 2010s YA novels that would go on to get movie deals and stay popular for years. We were a smallish fandom, and that made it feel even more special. It was a secret club, just me and a couple hundred of the internet's coolest teens. And now I get to tell you about it!

A Westerforums Retrospective

I don't remember how I found the Westerforums. Probably I was just searching for more information on the incredible book I just read and found Scott's blog, and the Westerforums from there. All I know is that I signed up with the username LiterateChick (if by any chance you were there at the same time and remember me (or don't remember me and just know you were on the forums during 2010 and 2011) PLEASE hmu!!!!email me!! featherfae∅@gmail.com!!) and started chatting.

I'd never been very outgoing in online spaces, not since I tried going on the Eragon forums and got bullied off for being home schooled lol. But the Westerforums were so welcoming and I loved it there. I still didn't often venture out of what I thought of as MY space, which was the Leviathan boards. There were more conversations going on in other sections of course, but the Off Topic section was full of the older girls from the UgliesScott's most popular books by FAR was the Uglies Trillogy boards, and they always seemed far too cool and intimidating for me to talk to. But I was happy in my little corner. I made some friends, we even followed each other on DeviantArt and Fanfiction.net, which felt like the ultimate sign of online friendship at the time. While I was scrounging through the forums using the Wayback Machine I found so many posts by usernames and icons that were instantly incredibly nostalgic to me, and I genuinly hope yall are out there doing well. There are so many more people I know I was buds with but the Wayback Machine is limited, so I could only open a few pages out of the probably hundreds I would have liked to go back and see.

There was a great moment where I was on the forums basically all the time, debating what WWII would look like in the Leviathan world, gushing about our favourite characters, talking about how cool the beasties and machines were, and in general being weird teens that were into steampunk and an only kind of popular YA novel. It truly lives on in my mind as the golden days of me on the internet.

My exit from the Westerforums wasn't anything special. The final book in the series, Goliath, was about to come out. Everyone was so excited for the final book in the series we all loved, and the forums were absolutley blowing up with theories and hopes and anticipation and it was so insanely fun. And then the book came out and I couldn't get my hands on it for a whole week.

I spent that week avoiding the forums like my life depended on it, hoping so badly that the next day I could go to Chapters with my mom and get her to buy me what was, to my mind, the most important book in the world at that point. When I finally did get it it took me about a week to read, so by the time I was finished and was ready to get back on the forums again I was two whole weeks behind all the discussion and new fanart and I felt behind the times, and besides, in those two weeks I had discovered Tumblr and my internet time was being devoted to a whole new space. So I stopped logging on, turned off my email alerts, and never went back.

I had the urge earlier this year to check on my old Westerforums account. I think it was after the Leviathan anime was announced, and I wanted to see if people were still on there getting excited about it. Sadly for me, the forums were shut down in 2020. I managed to get some screenshots thanks to the good ol' Wayback Machine, but most of those forum messages are gone forever now. Going through the old threads and reading messages that are nearly 15 years old now, and knowing that the vast majoity of them are lost to time, I feel a genuine sense of loss. I don't know why they decided to shut the forums down, but I can guess. It looked like activity was really low in the most recent captures I can find. Still though, there's a huge part of me that wishes it could have stayed up, as a monument of early 2010s fandom if nothing else. I don't know if there's anyone else out there mourning this one out of probably hundreds of deleted forums, but if you were a past Westerforum regular and you miss it, same bro. All those endless chats, all those forum meetups, the sharing fic and art and being goofy together, it will always live on even if the text is gone.

I've gone through periods of really missing the Westerforums since I left, and I wish I hadn't been quite so dramatic as a teenager who for some reason felt the need to cut herself off of the forums in one go. It will always live on in my mind as a fantastic time in my chronically online life. Miss you Westerforums, may you keep on being remembered.

Fanworks I still think about