The Holders

The following is a comprehensive history of the Holders and a rewrite of an essay I wrote all the way back in 2013 when I was a lurker in the Holders community. Wherever possible, I have supported my statements with citations to archived sources. However, at many points I rely solely on my personal memory of events and forum posts that never made it into the Wayback Machine. It is my hope that this essay will allow everyone to better understand and appreciate the history of one of, if not the, oldest containment fiction series.

The origin of The Holders is poorly document. Popular consensus states that the Holder of the End was the first Holder to be posted. According to the Wikichan :^[1]Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)

One day, seemingly a normal day on /b/, an anonymous user came and posted nine creepy directions to certain objects. After the original thread died a much-mourned death, Anonymous swore to take up the banner and continue the work in the original style until all the objects were found.

Wikichan also claimed that a user named Sonic-Blade created the first Holder “for the lulz.”^[2]Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)  The oldest archived Holders tales (specifically, the Holder of th End and the Holder of the Beginning) were posted to the /b/ board of 4chan shortly after 2:00 AM on January 2, 2007 in the middle of a creepypasta thread.^[3]http://web.archive.org/web/20071030231912/http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=18293951&x=creepy+thread These were clearly reposts, meaning that the first Holders Objects were almost certainly posted in 2006 or earlier.

The following section is based almost entirely on archives of the Wikichan Holders talk page in the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine only sporadically scanned the talk page while editors there would often “clean it up”, meaning that a lot of historical content has been lost. As a result, the historical record is fragmentary.

The first Holders “website” was actually a single article and talk page on Wikichan, a wiki of *chan culture created in late 2006.^[4]Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)^[5]Wikichan – Wikichan (archive.org) Members of Wikichan would copy over Holders tales from 4chan or submit their own, all of which was listed all on the single article page. The Holders article also had a parody section and some analysis of the various objects. On or immediately before August 26, 2007,^[6]http://web.archive.org/web/20071117061530/http://wikichan.org/index.php/Talk:Holders_Series#Can.27t_we_just the series list was moved to sub-pages of 50 Objects due to the large number of Objects that had been posted; the parodies and analysis were also moved to their own page. The original page was retained as a hub for these sub-articles. Members of Wikichan used the talk page to reserve Holder numbers, submit new Holders for review, improve the main article, or even just talk about the Holders Series. Wikichanners would also use the talk page for quality review, and would discuss removing or editing Holders that fell beneath their writing standards. Large numbers of editors posted to the talk page, although activity ebbed and flowed throughout its history. The Holders were apparently quite popular on Wikichan as a link to the Holders article was prominently displayed to the side of the website under the “must reads” section of the toolbar.

The date that the Holders transitioned to Wikichan is unknown; but it was no later than January 11, 2007. By the end of February, over sixty Holder’s tales had been posted to the article^[7]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) Text (taken from Revive’d section): “[w]ell, this is everything from Google’s cache of this page, dated at Jan … Continue reading At either the very end of February or the very beginning of March, Wikichan’s server crashed. As a result, everything posted to Wikichan from January 2-February 29, 2007 was deleted.^[8]Wikichan:Downtime – Wikichan (archive.org) Fortunately, members of Wikichan were able to recover the vast majority of Holder’s tales after someone posted a Yahoo cache of the old article from February 26.^[9]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) Following the restoration of the Wikichan article, the Holders series rapidly grew as Wikichanners continued to make new contributions. However, activity on the talk page greatly diminished after the restoration of the Holders article. The only event really worth noting during this time occurred in early March when Lynneth (one of the most active Holders contributors) added a chart to the talk page listing the Object and question associated with each Holder.^[10]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) After this, the talk page was largely stagnant until the summer.

On June 26, 2007 Wikichan user Lynneth  uploaded readings of the Holder of the End and the Holder of the Beginning onto Rapidshare. Lynneth would later do a reading of the Holder of Legion while Andromai would contribute readings of the Holders of the Lens, Youth, and Honor.^[11]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) These were almost certainly the first readings ever recorded of the Holders mythos, and would serve as a precursor to innumerable YouTube reading. Unfortunately, Rapidshare is now defunct, and all of these recordings have been lost. In early July, several vandals raided the Holders article and attempted to delete its contents. As a result, editing on the article was locked to people with registered accounts.^[12]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) A bit before August 3, Wikichan crashed again and editors of the Holders page were forced to restore it using a Google cache and copies of the Holders storied on user’s personal computers.^[13]Talk:Holders series – Wikichan (archive.org) (see text at very top) ^[14]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) On August 20, a contributor named Mr. Belpit took issue with another contributor stealing a Holder’s number he had previously claimed. In a back and forth with Lynneth, the two users agreed that the Holder that had taken Belpit’s spot would get a new number and that they would alert WIkichan editors to the existence of the claim list by leaving messages on their talk pages. During the thread, DScarface (the author who had taken Mr. Belpit’s spot) apologized.^[15]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) From August through October, there was some discussion about changing the preamble that introduced the Holders article hub.^[16]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)^[17]http://web.archive.org/web/20071117061530/http://wikichan.org/index.php/Talk:Holders_Series#The_Keepers^[18]In a bit more detail, the preamble consisted of an introduction to the series, purportedly found next to the corpse “a blind man, his body chewed on by numerous cats” whose body showed no … Continue reading Later in October, Mr. Belpit wrote edited version of the first 100 Holders to bring the Holders in line with “the format and traditions of the original few.” However, its unclear if he actually posted all of these rewrites; by the end of October, Belpit was only up to 41 Holders. DScarface, the only person responding to Belpit, was supportive and starting making their own edits.^[19]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) In mid-November, FBI-san, a contributor on fanfiction.net, started “spreading word” about the Holders.^[20]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) While details of  the ensuing events are sparse,^[21]The Wikichan talk page would not be archived again until early February. During this time, the discussion on FBI-san was apparently deleted. FBI-san’s fanfiction profile was deleted without … Continue reading FBI-san apparently attempted to claim ownership over the Holders.^[22]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)

In late 2007,  TheHolders.org, the first freestanding Holder’s website, was created by an individual known as Sysop to act as a stable alternative to the Wikichan website.^[23]The oldest edit on the wiki I was able to find came from November 27, 2007. A now-deleted forum post claimed that Theholders.org went live on December 27. It is possible that Sysop kept … Continue reading Sysops spent the next few days and weeks improving the website (such as by adding next/previous links to the Holders pages, creating a backup of the wiki, and adding categories to the wiki)^[24]The Holders Series – theholders.org (archive.org) and collecting Holders tales from around the internet.

Wikichan did not discover Theholders.org until January 12, 2008, when a member stumbled upon the website and posted asked about it on the Wikichan talk page. ^[25]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) The initial reaction to Theholders.org was overwhelmingly negative. Many people feared Sysop was trying to steal the Holders series like FBI-san had done previously; this was not helped by the fact that Sysop copied over Holders tales from Wikichan under his own name. There was also anger over the fact that Theholders.org members were writing their own Holders, partially because Wikichan disliked the idea of contradicting Holders lists and partially because this challenged Wikichan’s status as the “official” Holders source.^[26]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) Around January 17, a Wikichan user named Whatever posted a message onto Theholders.org.^[27]This message, posted to the Holder of the End’s talk page, may have been Whatever’s initial communication with  Theholders.org. I can’t be certain however, as the page’s edit … Continue reading Back on Wikichan, Whatever stated that “[t]hey don’t really seem malicious to me, just ignorant of the fact that there’s an official place to write Holder stories.” Sysop also appears to have made some token acts of submission to Wikichan such as keeping Holder 146 open because a member of Wikichan had claimed it. After this, the discussion largely cooled down and WIkichan seems to have begrudgingly accepted the existence of Theholders.org. Wikichan did however ban their users from copying over Holders from the newer website and placed a hidden notice (that would be visible when editing) at the top of their article proclaiming themselves to be the official Holders source. There was also some lingering uneasiness about the existence of two listings; one member stated they wished Theholders.org would direct their writers to Wikichan to “learn the ropes.”^[28]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org)

By February 2008, both Theholders.org and Wikichan had received a surge of new contributors. With these new contributors came a decline in quality. After an off-site discussion with Mr. Belpit, DScarface made a post to the talk page expressing their concern that newer writers were favoring quantity over quality and documenting many alarming trends in newer Holder’s Objects. These trends included:^[29]Talk:Holders Series – Wikichan (archive.org) * Objects that focused on mythology over the more traditional magic and   mysticism. * Overly long stories that read like role-playing game guides. * Objects that gave Seekers “insane powers” that made obtaining additional Objects trivial. * Failure to proofread The ensuing conversation quickly jumped to Theholders.org. Judging by the comments, views on the newer website had reached the point of lukewarmness: posters noted that there were some high-quality Holders on the new website, that they did have some quality control, and that they were absorbing poorly written drafts that would have otherwise gone to Wikichan. Wikichan still saw itself as the superior Holders source, but the animus from early in the year appeared to be gone. The following months on Wikichan were uneventful. On the talk pages, there was discussion about recreating Lynneth’s Holders chart and of the similarities between the Holders and The Lost Room (a 2006 miniseries about objects from an old motel room with weird powers). By mid-to-late April, Wikichan had written or catalogued approximately 217 Holder’s Objects (based on a rough count from the available archives). In mid-May, Wikichan permanently crashed.^[30]A bit more specifically, Wikichan crashed on or between May 11, 2008; (the last actual archive of Wikichan on the Wayback Machine) to May 16 (the next attempted archive of Wikichan which shows only a … Continue reading Theholders.org thus became the sole source for the Holders.

Following the collapse of Wikichan, Theholders.org saw a surge of brand new users two of whom, Arca and Torodugoru, would be promoted to moderators by Sysop. Original characters such as Jack Empty and Edo were added to the series in 2008 and 2009, respectively. ^[31]Jack Empty is an entity who is utterly soulless and empty on the inside; he is somewhere between Seeker and Holder. Edo is described as non-existence incarnate and as a devourer of life and reality. New Holder’s Objects were also posted at a rapid pace. Data from the Internet Archive shows that in 2008, Theholders.org went from missing the vast majority of the purported Holder’s Objects in January to having less than three dozen unclaimed slots in December. (In the above chart, columns represent actual data from the Internet archive while the dotted line is a trend line) While the growth looks impressive, it was fueled by poor writing. The website allowed users to immediately post Holders Tales to the Object list without any sort of review. In theory, users were supposed to work with other members once the story had been posted to improve it. In actuality, many members posted Holders Tales and then ceased responding to the Holders community. Theholders.org lacked any standardized form of quality review beyond moderators deleting the worst of the worst and placing the rest in the Needs Revising category. Even when an Object was deleted, it would be quickly replaced by another poorly written Object. Poorly written Objects quickly filled the main list. As there were only a limited number of slots open, every poorly written Object represented a well-written Object that could not be posted. On December 3, 2008,^[32]The Holders Series – theholders.org (archive.org), the Legion’s Objects category was created. These Objects consisted of 2000 additionally Objects that had been collected by Legion (a Seeker of mythological status) and that were now considered lost.^[33]The Holders Series – theholders.org (archive.org) Many of Legion’s Objects were just standard Objects with numbers exceeding 538. Others depicted Holders’ realms that had been utterly wrecked by Legion. After the main Object slot was filled in early 2009, Legion’s Objects would be the only place to post additional Objects. In February 2009, a forum was added to the original website.^[34]The Holders Series – theholders.org (archive.org) An active community quickly formed on it, which existed to a greater or lesser extent until the summer of 2013. In October 2009, Arca made a forum post requesting forum members go through the main website, identify any Objects that were poorly written, and offer solutions as to how they could be improved. Arca also requested that anyone writing new Objects message him so that it could be added to the main list if there was a deletion; Arca hoped this would allow well-written Objects to beat out poorly-written Objects whenever a slot opened up. While Arca’s post resulted in many pages of discussion, it did not result in a noticeable improvement to the writing quality of the website.^[35]TheHolders.org • View topic – We’ve got work to do. (READ ME) (archive.org)

As time went on, community activity dropped to moderation and a few core members. The year 2012 nearly marked the end of the Holders series. Torodugoru and Sysop made their last visits to the website in January and February (respectively). Spammers became a major problem during this time period due to the loss of staff. Spambots quickly filled the forums with posts consisting of random text plucked from various websites.^[36]An example of a spambot post can be seen here.The sole active moderator, Arca, and the last of the core members continued to post on the forums throughout the year 2012.

Efforts to revitalize (2012-July 2013) Discussion about revitalizing the Holders started around the summer of 2012.^[37]TheHolders.org • View topic – We’ve got work to do. (READ ME) (archive.org) These discussions became far more frequent by the end of the year. KingFisher and Taneli quickly established themselves as leaders in this recovery effort. Eventually, the remaining users held a vote and agreed that a second generation of Holder’s Objects was needed to preserve the Holders. Many forums posts revolved around how this would be accomplished, what stories would be kept and what the new quality requirements would be. However, it became apparent that theholders.org website would not be a suitable place for the new generation. With Sysop missing and Arca only occasionally active, no one had the technical controls over the website needed to make a new generation successful. After several Skype conferences, the decision was made to migrate to a new website. During the efforts to move the community to a new website, Arca and KingFisher started to disagree over the role of the community in the Holders. Arca believed that the primary purpose of the Holders website was writing and that any community forming was a secondary concern. Kingfisher emphasized building a community so more people would want to post writings.^[38]Arca made this post as a direct result of the disagreement.

On July 7, 2013, Taneli created a new temporary forum at http://theholders.jfbs.net/ to serve as a central planning hub for the new website.^[39]The Holders Forum (archive.org)  The forum was abandoned after only a few weeks upon the creation of the permanent website. During its short existence, the forum maintained a section for posting and reviewing new Holders stories.^[40]The Holders Forum -> New Stories (archive.org) There was also discussion about what Objects from the first generation to include in the second; there was general agreement that some Objects should be kept but no consensus on which.^[41]The Holders Forum -> Keeping old work (archive.org) Back on Theholders.org, Arca was the sole active community member who had stayed behind. He eventually went dormant and the spambots started to take down all of the stories from the original website and clog up the forums. The first-generation website was dead from thereon out.

Taneli created the new Holders II website by July 23, 2013.^[42]Holders Series (archive.org)  She immediately locked the website to editing and told anyone with Generation II Holders stories to post them to the forum.^[43]http://web.archive.org/web/20131015234743/http://holdersseries.com/rules.html The website itself is barely archived, but I was personally there for the events. People were initially incredibly excited. By this point members of the Holders community had generated a huge backlog of new stories and were eager for them to be published. There was also a ton of discussion about what the new Holders series would look like and about archiving the original Holders Objects from Theholders.org (which by this point was completely overrun by spambots). During this time, there was apparently a lot of drama amongst leadership and in the Holders Skype chat. I did not have access to any of these discussions, but the fact they were occurring managed to slip out. As time went on, activity on the website started to die down. Taneli successfully archived the Holders I stories, but no one was able to actually publish the stories that had been written specifically for the new website. Conversation on the forums died down almost completely as members just waited for something to happen. Nothing ever did.

On November 26, 2013, Sysop finally returned from his long absence. He reverted the main website to its July 1^st version (which restored the series list) and deleted most of the forum to eliminate spambot posts. He also claimed that “theholders.org@gmail.com now forwards to my personal e-mail address and flags incoming messages bright and bold”. The next day, Sysop stated in the forums that he would start improving the website’s software to prevent future spam attacks.^[44]http://web.archive.org/web/20160804044408/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3773&start=0^[45]https://web.archive.org/web/20200430031722/http://theholders.org/?Special:News By November 28^th, the Second Generation website was shut down by Taneli and the community migrated back to TheHolders.org forum. By this point, the community had lost interest in the second generation of Holders and were largely discussing ways to improve the original series. Contributors refocused their efforts on improving the original series while the second generation was effectively abandoned.^[46]http://web.archive.org/web/20160804044408/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3773&start=0 Unfortunately, Sysop’s changes had the unintended side effect of completely locking Theholders.org to editing. He made a forum post on December 18 claiming he was looking into the issue;^[47]http://web.archive.org/web/20160804035224/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3808 this was the last time Sysop would ever be seen. Many contributors attempted contact Sysop in the following years, but none were successful. The main website would not be edited again until December 2019, when Arca made a test edit to a Holders article.^[48]https://web.archive.org/web/20200430031734/http://theholders.org/?Special:Recent_Changes Presumably, his moderator permissions allowed him to bypass whatever was locking out the general membership. This would be the last edit ever made to Theholders.org. As for the forum, activity heavily died down after Sysop’s temporary return. Over the following years, a few older users would occasionally pop in and newer members would sometimes question what happened to the website. There would also be occasional discussion about reviving the Holders, but these discussion never went anywhere. Theholders.org would eventually crash for good, most likely in late 2020 or early 2021.^[49]The last archive the Holders website I was able to find came from October 1, 2020. Theholders.org was unquestionably deleted by February 27, 2021. I had published The SCP Foundation on 4chan and … Continue reading

In 2017, several members of the forum started discussing creation a DIscord server. At least two users created Holders themed Discord servers, but they would all end up deleted or abandoned.^[50]http://web.archive.org/web/20200926091022/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3859&p=10714^[51]http://web.archive.org/web/20200926083825/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3878^[52]http://web.archive.org/web/20200926072350/http://theholders.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3858 Another Holders Discord, appropriately titled “The Holders”, was created in July of 2018^[53]the date of the first post of the “General” category; the link to the website made its way to Theholders.org forum before its deletion. Unlike the forum and other attempts at servers, the “The Holders” Discord server has remained incredibly active and often receives multiple posts a day. A few of the members were members of the older website, but many are new to the community. The Discord server maintains a story compendium. Created in 2019, it has recieved a trickle of Holders tales and other stories from the Holders mythos. There has also been some discussion of another revival; a few members even created their own Holders websites. WHowever, none of these efforts have really taken off. What the future holds for the Discord is a mystery. Perhaps it will die a slow death as its members lose interest and the last bastion of the Holders crumbles into obscurity. Or perhaps the members may rally around a new website, and the Holders series can begin again. Only the future will tell.