On this month 10 years ago, I became an Alvin and the Chipmunks fan after being intrigued by the classic Chipmunk voice technique after seeing the Nostalgia Critic pull it off in his AATC 2007 movie review video.
Now, I have already listed my history of being in this fandom plenty of times throughout the past ten years (even on my Forum introduction post, which you could see here: My Introduction), but as I have predicted, even more has happened to me regarding my Chipmunks fan status since even then!
My fan involvement in Alvin and the Chipmunks was slow, but sure. It started with test voiceovers of random Chipmunks quotes. Then it escalated to making fan covers. And then at the start of 2017, I truly got into the fan community and started interacting and becoming friends with them. I since collaborated with a few of them and published audio plays of their fanfics, as well as all of my own, self-written fanfics. The biggest achievement of them all was when I collaborated with Torchu212 to create a fan-written conclusion to the 2015 TV series in May 2022, deconstructing how Dave kept constantly mistreating Alvin throughout the series (or so Torchu alleged). The runtime of that audio play was an hour and 15 minutes, and I wouldn't have it any other way!
But even then, it still didn't stop there. The very next year, I wanted to give a fourth member to each of the Chipmunks & Chipettes. Since I was friends with Torchu at the time, I instinctively added his OC Beckett to the Chipettes' roster as the "Fourth Chipette," but I couldn't find anyone who created a male "Fourth Chipmunk" OC for themself, so I decided to create my own based on the first Sonic the Hedgehog OC I have ever made, Marc the Hedgehog. Since creating that Marc character, I have used it as my avatar whenever I play video games that use character creation, and when I play games that requested a name input, I always enter Marc, and when it's games that required initials, I enter MTH. I ultimately decided to base my Chipmunks OC off of that Marc guy, and his visual design was based on my Mii version of him. His name was Marc T. Hanson. More details about him are in this forum post: Marc Hanson
Since first creating Marc Hanson, I have spent the remaining years of my Chipmunks fandom solely creating stories surrounding him and further fleshing out his character, and because I added Beckett to the roster, Torchu even pitched in, and together, we created interactions between the two. One of the highlights of Marc's character development was giving him high-functioning Autism to compliment Beckett's homosexuality, because as someone who is autistic myself, I feel dejected whenever anyone uses the term as an insult and whenever a corporation uses an "Autistic" character in an overly stereotypical way.
But then, throughout 2025, I gradually wound down fan activity in Alvin and the Chipmunks until the beginning of this year, where I stopped showing interest altogether in favor of Sonic the Hedgehog again, though not because of the latter's 35th Anniversary at all. I really wanted to complete some of my Sonic fan projects that were in the pipeline, but after years of getting stuck at a certain point in the story of one of them, I turned to an AI "Story Continuer" out of sheer desperation. And then after experimentation and being satisfied with the results, I decided to realize some of my other Sonic story ideas using not only this "Story Continuer," but also a companion "Story Generator," and after making a mistake on where to go, I fixed it by using a general chat bot, which is where I went to for all of my fan stories since.
Needless to say, nobody in the world was happy about my decision to start using AI in anything. When I first sent the finished script to one of my Sonic voice actors, he rejected it because it was partially written with AI. And then when I announced a suicide livestream everywhere over a Sonic OC creator disapproving of me using AI on said OC, the entire Alvin and the Chipmunks community turned on me overnight, including Torchu! Because of this, I started blocking him as well as anybody else who's just as against AI as he is, and because of that, I struck Beckett from my Chipmunks canon.
Because my OCD wanted to see the same number of members between Chipmunks & Chipettes, I decided to compensate for it by killing Marc off from suicide. However, over the next few days, I gradually started to gain the mindset of anyone who would disagree with me killing him off for any reason, and AmbitiousAlvin seemed to agree. So, I started creating a "Fourth Chipette" of my own to replace Beckett, and even though I finished fleshing out her character thanks to advice from AI, I still don't feel like contributing anything else to the community, and I haven't felt like it since January of this year.
So, as a result, I am officially retiring from making Alvin and the Chipmunks fan content, as well as participating in the community. I know it's a shame that I'm wasting my 10-year-anniversary of being in this fandom on doing absolutely nothing, but making Sonic the Hedgehog fan projects is all that I feel like doing at the moment. I don't know if I will EVER rejoin the Chipmunks fandom, but if I do, it will only be because I would have become interested in the franchise again. I know that there will be a movie reboot in 2028, but I have a feeling that my interest in Sonic will overpower any desire I may have to see that movie in the theater.
So, goodbye, everyone. It was a blast being in this community for the past 10 years, even though said community now hates me for even thinking about getting into AI...