@floraone, Happy Birthday, Love!!
I can’t art you something beautiful like these other amazing artist can. (Which, btw, omg, right? I can’t even believe their art!) And you know how much I’ve been struggling in with my own crap right now so I haven’t been able to write you up anything like these other fantastic writers. (I mean, come on. They are so fantastic, am I right?) I haven’t even had time to leave reviews because I haven’t had time to read, like, anything! I’m slacking so hard...sorry.
What I can do, though, is reiterate how much you mean to me. I know I’ve told you this before but I feel like I really need to drill it in your head because you need to know how special you are and what you’ve done for me.
When I came back to this fandom all those years ago, it was you who gave me the confidence to try and write my first smut. Now, we can all agree, it’s pretty rough. It’s okay. I know it is. Lol! But we all had to start somewhere, right? And I’ve grown so much since then. That’s because of you. You have given me, and SOOOOO many other writers, artists, readers, and just people in general the ability to be more confident in anything having to do with sex and smut in any capacity and have taught us all more about things we didn’t even know we didn’t know! We all have you to thank for that. And continue to thank for because you continue to teach us every day!
And you’ve given me friends. All of the fandom friends I have now is thanks to you. I saw the friends you had in the fandom and thought to myself, “I want to be like them. I want to be cool and have friends who love what I love.” And eventually, after watching you interact with your friends in the fandom, I gained enough confidence to start interacting with people on my own. I started making friends also. And slowly but surely, I grew a big friend group that eventually led to you. Now my fandom friends and my friend friends, and I seriously do not know what I would do without any of them. And I have you to thank for giving me to courage and want to put myself out there and find them.
Let me tell you, I am not ashamed to admit that I fangirled like a mf when you first joined my group. Like....really fangirled. Lol! And not just because you were FloraOne, one of the most well known fanfiction writers in the fandom. But because I knew what you’d done for me personally. How you’d helped me grow as a person, even if you hadn’t realized what you’d done. You will always be the reason I started writing again, the reason I started looking for friends, the reason I started that chat, and the reason our group eventually found each other. So on your special day, I want to say Happy Birthday, and thank you for giving me the life I didn’t know I needed, the life that I love, and honest to God, the life that has probably saved me. Because with all I’ve been through the last few years, and especially this one, I couldn’t have made it through without all of you.
Thank you, Flora. Happy Birthday.
