Going to be real here for a minute, holidays have always been a sore spot for me. As a child I used to have a large family that came together on holidays to throw big parties, these times were so special to me. Unfortunately, when I was in middle school my maternal grandfather passed, and from there my family just fell apart. I'll spare you the nasty details, but at this point, the people who are still alive whom I consider my family has shrank from over 50 members to 5 and none but my sister live in the same state as me. On top of this, I lost touch with practically all my friends when I graduated highschool.
Before I found Tbt, I would spend my lonely holidays on 4chan, I felt a sort of kinship to these other lonely losers. Sadly 4chan lives up to it's reputation of reprehensible behavior. Lots of cyberbullies slinging slurs at eachother, and uneducated racists. I feel like it all stems from people feeling hated by society, so they want to find a target they can pick on to not feel so low. Despite this, I loved how the boards would interact with each other on holidays, they would make board specific valentines and wish each other happy holidays, it was a space I could visit where others also felt the sting of loneliness on what were supposed to be special days of celebration.
Enter Tbt. I made my account back 2014 when my sister got the both of us NL, and I was instantly hooked. My lifelong obsession with pokemon prompted me to want to catalog every item in the game, but I didn't have access to the DLC items as I picked up the game late into it's lifecycle and a lot of them were Japan exclusive. I made my account to find a way to trade for them.
I played NL quite a lot but I only used this site as a means to an end, specifically for getting the afternoon tea set, the shaved ice lamp, and all of the Japan 7-11 colab items. I got every item in NL cataloged and that was that. I didn't think about tbt very much for a while, until NH was announced.
NH dropped in March 2020, the day before lockdown started in my state. I was isolated in my house with only my sister and fiance and I did nothing but play NH with my sister nonstop for months. I remembered Tbt of course and when I decided to get serious about cataloging all the NH items, I logged back in to tbt and started to spend more time checking out the website. This was at the time of the 2020 tbt fair. The first event I ever participated in here, and the first time I really got to experience what this community was all about. No one was digging at eachother, they were all sharing their art and having fun lifting eachother up. Sure, not every entry is an incredible masterpiece, but people were having fun sharing their takes on prompts and complimenting each other's ideas. I absolutely loved it, and thought this is what a family should be. For me, Tbt has provided access to this incredible community where we can share our passion for a game about talking animals without fear of being harassed. I had somewhere to turn when I had no one else to share my holidays with. At this point I've all but ran out of things to do on my NH island, but I still feel urged to check out the latest tbt events. I'm incredibly grateful for all of the enjoyment the Tbt staff has brought me the last few years.
From the bottom of my heart I want to say thank you to the staff and community of tbt for keeping this website a safe space to enjoy our silly talking animal life sim, share our art, and build eachother up.
