The Archive of Our Own lyric trend brings a Tumblr meme to Twitter

A viral tweet is bringing the fanfiction community together under the lyrical genius of Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years," and it's bringing a long-running Tumblr meme format to Twitter.

The song was written for the 2011 masterpiece The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 but, thanks to the enduring enthusiasm of the Twilight fandom, it resides in the hallowed halls of evergreen meme material.

Emma Logsdon, a Twitter user and fanfiction enthusiast, brought "A Thousand Years" back into the spotlight with a viral lyric video that used titles on the fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own for each lyric.

The video, which they posted Thursday night, has more than 460,000 views and inspired other Twitter users to start using the meme format as well.

Tweet may have been deleted

Fanfiction writers are notorious for either not being able to think of titles or hating the titles that they do come up with, Logdson noted in a Twitter DM, so many resort to using tangentially related song lyrics.

Although Logdson is one of the first people to use Archive of Our Own titles for lyric videos on Twitter, this format has existed on Tumblr since at least 2019. Logsdon was inspired by the versions they saw on Tumblr while rewatching the Twilight series, and had seen other Tumblr users compile lyrics for popular songs using just fanfiction titles.

In one of the first iterations of this meme, Tumblr user sofiabanefics took screenshots of various titles to write out the lyrics to "Hallelujah," and another user lined it up with music. In another early version, Tumblr user partywithponies compiled the lyrics to "Take Me To Church" into a video of fanfiction screenshots.

Since the video Logsdon posted started gaining traction, other Twitter users and fanfiction enthusiasts began creating lyric videos for popular songs using Archive of Our Own titles. The trend spans fandoms, bringing together works inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hamilton, and Pokémon into one beautiful lyrical tribute.

Despite the wide array of fandoms included in these videos, fanfiction writing communities are relatively tight knit. Other Twitter users either recognized their work in Logsdon's video or found their friends' work.

"My favorite thing is seeing people learn about fandoms that shock them while people in those fandoms celebrate being there," Logsdon said.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Logsdon, an undergraduate film and media studies student who's studying fandoms for their senior thesis on community content moderation, is thrilled that their tweet brought this format from Tumblr to Twitter.

"It’s so great to think about," Logsdon added. "All these people writing fics for fandoms I might have never considered, joined together by the poetic significance of Christina Perri’s 'A Thousand Years."

It's so wholesome — if you look past the explicit content tags.