Fandom Snowflake Challenge #13

Fandom Snowflake Challenge — January 25th

❄ Challenge #13 on snowflake_challenge.

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Community

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

I've shifted my focus a lot in the last couple of years from fannish things to writing things, so the spaces that are particularly fan-oriented I don't frequent as much anymore. Shoutout to the Stargate discord (fantastic people and a watch party every Sunday), and the dwrp plurk sphere (plurk being my favorite social media structure, tbh), and honestly tumblr (nothing else is quiet like it, 33rd most popular social media in 2026 or not, lol). I haven't been back to these places in a bit, though, in favor of discord servers dedicated to writing as my current community of choice. (I have like... *counts them* Uh. Four I frequent daily/weekly. Plus two bigbang ones. Not counting the several massive ones that I mute because they're too busy, lol.)

I think, however, I would like to talk about roleplay forums. Not any one in specific, but just as, hrm, as a bit of an abstract concept. Not dwrp, because that is it's own beast, and prone to jamjars (which is still awesome, but cannot capture the vibe of a forum.) Forums are out there, still, and some of them are elaborate as all get out. A friend of mine was roleplaying at a pokemon site that had all sorts of like...point-buy systems and battle in prose and he had his little characters traipse through this world and it's...

I know no better media than I do ones that I've roleplayed, and my first instinct when I love a thing is to find out how to explore it, in depth, by puppeting characters around the world in which it is set. I started with Pern Mu* and I've never looked back. I've prodded Tolkien (briefly), Wheel of Time (back in the day), and have had a character ride a dragon in a dozen different little weyrs over the years. I've spent a great deal of time in the Black Jewels universe, and ventured into Digimon and Pokemon with a friend, though those didn't quite stick. I attempted Gundam, once (and perhaps never again...), and dabbled in worlds with friends where I'd never actually read/watched the original media for it. There's a different focus, too, when you're on a forum and (likely) roleplaying a fandom OC, because it's not about the book characters, at that point, it's about exploring the edges of how the world is built and finding the seams and interesting implications. It's about putting yourself into that world for as long as you want, with other people who are just as excited about it as you. It lets you live there. I could write so much meta about the book, game, and movie worlds that I've inhabited over the years, about all the little details that you don't think about have been implied by the big things that define the world.

I just love it.

I don't have an active forum that I play on right this second, but whenever my schedule lets up, you bet I'm going to be finding one. :)

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