14 replies to this topic

[Patsy Dragon]

So I don't think this has been discussed much in GSAR's public space, and I'm curious to hear what people know or want from this union of GS communities.

Quote from the GSAR Facebook page regarding the Mixer:

Quote

What is the Golden Sun United Nations, you might ask? More simply referred to as the GSUN, The Golden Sun United Nations is a brand new partnership between the active Golden Sun forums—Aeiou, Golden Sun Hacking Community, Golden Sun Adept’s Refuge, Golden Sunrise, and Temple of Kraden—in an effort to strengthen our Golden Sun fan community and bring about bigger and better features for our members. This month, the GSUN is delighted to unveil our very first group initiative: the Golden Sun Mixers! These mixer events will be hosted at different forums throughout the year, inviting members to experience the unique features and personalities of each respective forum.

I'm excited to see where this goes, personally. =) I think it's about time for everyone to meet each other in a formal fashion. We needed to go beyond simply affiliating each other and sharing members. Most of us are adults, and I think, with our developed skills and capabilities, the GSUN can the next step forward for us to deepen our broader community. I'm just trying to understand my personal role in the development of all this... I have a few ideas related to my love for public history and archiving, but they're still very much a WIP.

[Shadowfyst997]

I agree very much with this line of thinking. Honestly, I'm so happy that the UN came about, because it makrs a significant moment for us as a community. The Golden Sun Community at large has always been very fractured. We're small enough that we're considered to be a niche thing by other people, but big enough that we got Isaac to the top 5 in the Smash Ballot. That's impressive. And yet, active member count on the most active of us is less then 30. Most of us are out there, in small pockets, small forums.

I have a dream. I have a dream of one day uniting all of those fragments. Not everyone has to like everyone. But if we can get together as a whole, we could do some pretty impressive things. The least of which is being one of the best fandoms on the internet.

[Patsy Dragon]

You know, I'm curious to ask about your ideas for how to bring us all together outside of mixers like this one. Would there be official meet-ups? Games? Dating services?

[Saturos]

Temple has about 60~ active members (as in, last 24 hours they were active), though of course there are many degrees of lurking there. xP But yeah, it's nice to encourage a bit of a cross-forum thing - I do think a lot of groups have migrated to newer social media platforms, so a true unification effort would require a bit more work there. I definitely think there are some interesting possibilities, though!

Speaking of public history, I wonder if a collective 'history of the fandom,' complete with major names and links to reference points, would be interesting/helpful =o

I think official meet-ups would be lovely! I was also thinking of like, an interforum Discord for the whole community, but I know that kind of stuff can get a bit dodgy sometimes - some people don't like large groups, and some peoples' personalities are like oil and water. Nonetheless, we could try it!

[Patsy Dragon]

Saturos, on 30 December 2016 - 03:33 PM, said:

Speaking of public history, I wonder if a collective 'history of the fandom,' complete with major names and links to reference points, would be interesting/helpful =o

I was thinking of something similar (easily accomplished with a Wikia or something along those lines). But I was thinking of creating online exhibits on specific themes/events/people. It won't be encyclopedic as much... but it would be interpretive, to an extent. I would like to create participatory exhibits as well, getting community members to help shape and flesh out the exhibits directly. But I would need to create the right framework first, and I'm not at that point yet. If anyone has any particular interest in history and/or public history and would like to work with me on this, let me know.

Saturos, on 30 December 2016 - 03:33 PM, said:

I think official meet-ups would be lovely! I was also thinking of like, an interforum Discord for the whole community, but I know that kind of stuff can get a bit dodgy sometimes - some people don't like large groups, and some peoples' personalities are like oil and water. Nonetheless, we could try it!

I was wondering if we'll see a GSUN Discord... I'm down for joining, that's for sure. =]

[kyarorain]

This seems pretty neat. Golden Sun fans need to unite and show their strength as a fandom that refuses to die. I want to become more active in the GS fandom myself since I've been neglecting it myself. I hope this takes off. I'll be sure to join this Discord if it happens, yup.

I'm currently trying to bring about the great revival of my GS site, myself... it's so dead. Not trying to shill or anything, but if it can become active again, it would be nice for TAOW to be included in this UN thing. But, yeah, not shilling, just saying.

[Patsy Dragon]

I used to be a member of TAOW (Silverpine), so if you need anything from me, just ask. =)

[What? Again?]

So what I want done is for all of us to collect all the fanwork and archive it as a memorial to all the fallen GS sites such as Golden Sun Syndacte or Golden Sun Realm. It would be great if we had a way to preserve or archive them.

[Patsy Dragon]

Regarding Syndicate's fanart, all I'm finding is in their Arts & Graphics subforum are posts with broken attachments and links. =( And GSR's forum is gone, so...

But GSR's fanfiction archive is still up and running. The most recent story there is NC-17, but I digress... I'd suggest folks to contribute to that when they have a chance, especially if they've written anything for the Mixer Contest that's happening right now!

[Umbra_Clan]

Patsy Dragon, on 30 December 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

You know, I'm curious to ask about your ideas for how to bring us all together outside of mixers like this one. Would there be official meet-ups? Games? Dating services?

GSAR Tinder

No but really, the UN is a cool thing that I approve of despite my own regression into lurker status. All this talk of fanfic stuff is making me want to write again, but not sure what exactly.

[Ignatius]

kyarorain, on 30 December 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

I'm currently trying to bring about the great revival of my GS site, myself... it's so dead. Not trying to shill or anything, but if it can become active again, it would be nice for TAOW to be included in this UN thing. But, yeah, not shilling, just saying.

I had literally never heard of The Adepts of Weyard until you joined, heh. Will check it out!

What?, on 30 December 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:

So what I want done is for all of us to collect all the fanwork and archive it as a memorial to all the fallen GS sites such as Golden Sun Syndacte or Golden Sun Realm. It would be great if we had a way to preserve or archive them.

An interforum art archive, at least for visual art, is a really neat idea. Even with just the five current GSUN sites - GSAR, Sunrise, ToK, Aeiou and GSHC - it's impossible for one person to keep up with everything that goes on and still have a life outside of that, heh. But visual art is quick and easy to absorb, and fanart is generally easy to appreciate across the forums, because we all already know the backstory.

kyarorain, on 30 December 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

Golden Sun fans need to unite and show their strength as a fandom that refuses to die.

Golden Sun! Fandom! Don't die!

[What? Again?]

Iggy, I meant are the ones that are officially dead and the sites shutdown. It would be great if we recover their work and archive them. Sorta like how we have this http://www.gs-adepts...chives/asksheba
It would be fruitless to archive things from currently active sites.

[Ignatius]

I think creating one place where art from every forum, live or dead, can be collected, would indeed bear fruit, for the reasons I outlined above, as well as the fact that according to what Patsy's saying, a lot of art has already been lost because the sites died and, as far as we know, nobody started a project like this.

At the very least, for this to work to any significant degree, we'd need a better archive system than the one currently hosting Ask Sheba, which probably sees about as much activity as those dead sites; there aren't even any easily accessibly links to those archives on the active part of GSAR as far as I'm aware.

[Rolina]

GSO's going to be working on a better framework for various fan creations, such as characters, spells, summons, items, etc.  Perhaps if there's stuff to salvage from other sites, we could host it alongside the stuff we've come up with.

I think when we move to the new site, we'll likely have a gallery we could use too.  Depending on how things turn out, we might be able to host a lot of that art and stuff so it doesn't get lost.

[Gnarlymaple]

kyarorain, on 30 December 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

This seems pretty neat. Golden Sun fans need to unite and show their strength as a fandom that refuses to die. I want to become more active in the GS fandom myself since I've been neglecting it myself. I hope this takes off. I'll be sure to join this Discord if it happens, yup.

I'm currently trying to bring about the great revival of my GS site, myself... it's so dead. Not trying to shill or anything, but if it can become active again, it would be nice for TAOW to be included in this UN thing. But, yeah, not shilling, just saying.

fwiw if you ever decide to pull your site into the 21st century, you're surrounded by people who know web development and I bet someone would be willing to help

then again as it is, it really has some historical value that makes me long for the good ol' days....

Anyway, I've tossed around the idea of a cross-forum Minecraft server for those interested in that game, but idk what the interest is among everyone. It's one of those games that people tend to drop and pick back up in waves.

we could always just make our own golden sun or a spiritual successor for a community project