Hello! It has been ages! Well, not literally ages, like, you know, ages, but like a LONG TIME! Five years to be exact! Actually, I am not being exact! If I was being exact I would say 1893 days! I have been keeping track of this in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet!

Wow I really need to learn how to use Microsoft Excel to its full potential!

Anyway, GENE AND BLAKE are saying goodbye to HTMLGIANT and therefore have opened up posting to all of HTMLGIANT’S former members! Whoaaaaa! It is like a GHOST PARTY in here! Or it is like that scene in Metal Gear Solid 3: THE ONE IN THE JUNGLE NOT THE ONE IN THE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX LIKE THE OTHERS where you have to walk down that path with all of the dudes that you killed except they are ghosts! You may think that I am using a lot of exclamation points but it is actually because I am no good at Metal Gear Solid! and I keep getting! discovered! snake? snaaaaaaaake!?

ANYWAY how is everyone!? Do you all have twitter now? I hope so! Are we on ello? Haha just kidding I know you’re on ello even though no one knows how it works! The internet has gotten really weird since HTMLGIANT launched! How is your book? Oh that’s good! I’m sure it’ll get picked up right away. I believe in you!

This is where I get nostalgic! The internet was super magic back in 2009! No one really knew what writing was! Or there were independent presses out there! Or that every single day of the Internet has kind of turned into AWP CONSTANT WHEEL OF SADNESS, INTERNET, INTERNET with all of these voices and ways to express them! Writing was just some thing we did because we were kids who grew up making up stories in our heads and at some point we thought it’d be a good idea to write them down! Sometimes I feel like writing is the scene in the sports movie (do you watch sports? do you watch sports movies? you should really start they are great! both the sports and the sports movies! you might not understand the sports movies if you do not understand sports but that never stopped anyone from comprehending the human condition am I right?) where the star player (that’s you!) is feeling really down because he is not making super awesome basketball shots or super awesome touchdowns (ROLL TIDE) and at some point they have to remember what it was about the game that they fell in love with in the first place! And then they go out to the park and meet some ruffian teenagers who are just playing 4 the LOVE of the GAME! And then they regain their smile and go out into the world and win CHAMPIONSHIPS!

Sometimes there is a lot of digital noise when you are thinking about ‘being a writer’ and it can be super discouraging! I’m not saying that HTMLGIANT didn’t add to the white noise symphony (lol what did i just type (c) brian oliu) but it was a pretty nice beacon at times! I know it was for me! It is something that I am super thankful for and even though it wasn’t the best days of my life like that dido song (no not white flag the other one that was sampled in that m&ms song) it was pretty great to see in a weird vast sea of vastness because good lord that Microsoft Word document (two plugs for MS Word someone buy me a copy of Microsoft BOB if you are reading this, Microsoft) is absolutely terrifying when it is blank and extra horrifying when it is NOT blank and you have this thing that came out of your head and your heart and you are just like ‘what is this what do i do this how do i do this’! And this was a place where there were people like BLAKE and GENE and ROXANE and DONORA and MARK and MIKE and KYLE and MATT and JESSE and CATHERINE and JJ BARREA and SNACKPACK who were earnest and honest about writing and publishing and what it was to do these things in a magical world of land! Wow.

GOODBYE HTMLGIANT may you be like one of the stars in the background of your Web 2.0 design and shine brightly above us until you burn out and explode into a whole bunch of weird nothingness when website hosting dues come around because I’m pretty sure that’s how astronomy works but who knows because space is a mystery and so is writing on the internet but y’all made it less so and maybe Chelsea’s baby image of me won’t be one of the first images that comes up when you image search my name on google because that scared my mom once and she wondered if there was a way to take it off

xo

Brian Oliu, famous writer