Hey, Eddheads. I'm writing this because something very important to me happened today. One year ago, my life was permanently changed when I discovered quite possibly one of the greatest webtoons on the internet, Eddsworld, in an unlikely way. Today, I wanted to share the story of how it happened. Will I go into way too much detail? Yeah, probably. Will it be boring for some people? I'm guessing so. Will anyone even read this? I have no idea. But this webtoon has changed my life in so many ways, I felt the need to pay homage to it in the little ways I can, like writing this.

May 3, 2021, started out just like any other day. In fact, it was like any other day. The evening, however, would quickly become far from normal, at least for me. I was home alone and sitting on the couch after a long day of virtual school, watching YouTube on my iPad. I began to watch one of my favorite videos from my We Are Number One meme phase, Wizardly's We Are Number One but it Makes No Sense at All. I decided to go grab some chips or something from the pantry, and I brought my video with me. While I was in there, one of my favorite parts of the video played. It basically replaces part of the lyrics with Tord saying "giant robot." I'd seen and heard this segment dozens of times, but this was different. I was curious as to where the clip came from, and thanks to the captions (which are hilarious, by the way), I knew the name of the character. I searched it up, and the results were… confusing, to say the least, since the FNF vs Tord Mod had been released recently (obviously, I had no idea of this).

Eventually, I was able to find The End (Part 1) and began watching it, but needless to say, I was more confused than ever. I realized I had to do more "research" before watching this video (namely, watching other videos with Tord in them), but decided to do it later. I probably never would have, but luckily, the YouTube algorithm came to my assistance by immediately putting Just a Bit Crazy in my recommendations. I watched it and was addicted. I remember thinking, "This is the sort of thing that's gonna get stuck in my head during math class." (I had math first thing in the morning, and lots of songs tended to get stuck in my head when I was bored. And yes, it did end up getting stuck in my head). From there, I just started watching more and more Eddisodes, and by the end of the night, I was addicted.

Interestingly enough, this was not my first time hearing about Eddsworld. There had been two other instances where I had briefly crossed paths with it. The first time was in September 2017, when a similar scenario happened: I wondered about the origins of the "giant robot" clip, but instead of searching Tord's name on YouTube, I searched it online and got Eddsworld results. I quickly dismissed it, believing it to be some random TV show. The second time was in October of 2020 when I watched Brock Baker's "We Are Number One But It's Sung By 30 Villain Impressions." One of these impressions was (pretty obviously) Eduardo. Unfortunately, history repeated itself ("oh, so he's from that giant robot show or whatever haha.")

While my introduction to Eddsworld was all sunshine (lollipops) and rainbows, my introduction to the fandom certainly was not. It lowered my mental health for about a month. This was partially because this was really my first experience with a toxic fandom; my other main fandoms, Animaniacs and Hamilton, had little to no toxicity that I was aware of. I thought of leaving the fandom a few times, but it had already sucked me in. And in this case, the good definitely outweighed the bad.

Eddsworld has led me to discover so many great songs and artists, including my favorite singer, Lesley Gore, my favorite song, Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows, and my favorite band of all time, Fall Out Boy. It also got me into one of my favorite video games, Friday Night Funkin (remember the Tord mod?). It's inspired so many fanfics and characters of mine who were originally Eddsworld OCs, but I'm fairly confident they could survive without a fandom. I hope to write character bios for many of them soon. Not only that, but I also began tracing Eddsworld characters (since I'm not a great freehand drawer), and from there, I began tracing friends, family, and OCs. Eddsworld has really helped me find my own artistic talent!

I've also bonded with many people through Eddsworld, both people I already knew and people I hadn't. One of my closest friends falls into the second category, and without Eddsworld we probably never would have become friends in the first place, which I think is pretty crazy. Really, Eddsworld has changed my life in so many ways I never thought possible.

I'd like to thank Edd Gould for sharing his world with us, and the people who kept it spinning despite all the crap that was thrown at them when it would have been so much easier to quit. I'd also like to thank Wizardly for their We Are Number One video; without it, I wouldn't be writing this message (I do suggest watching the video, it is hilarious. Use the captions!). One of the very first things I did after discovering Eddsworld (like, within the hour) was search up fanfiction, and the first Eddsworld fics I ever read were flower1815's Old Habits Die Hard and My Little Test Subject. I want to thank them for giving me the best introduction to Eddsworld fanfiction I could have asked for. Thanks also to yes-asil for their cute comics, adapting them into fics is super fun!

And last but not least, thank you for keeping Edd's world spinning and for reading this 1000-plus-word message which basically just features me gushing about how wonderful Eddsworld is, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But as cheesy and unnecessary as this message is, there is something that is neither cheesy nor unnecessary, something all Eddheads can agree on.

Together, we will keep Edd's world spinning.

Thank you.