Announcement: The Big April 2022 Update

Here it is!

Here I am!

I’ve missed you all and have SO much to share with you. What I’ve been up to, what I’ve been writing, and all the big, cool changes coming to the community!

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First of all, I have to say, it’s so nice to see you excited and happy in one of these updates!

Second of all, I’m so excited for literally everything you mentioned! The forum migration sounds like it will open a lot of doors and take away a lot of behind-the-scenes stress and the avenues for interactivity??? so cool!

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“The weekend, if you celebrate it.” :cagsrip:
It’s been too long since I’ve had more than one day off at a time. (Last March, yikes)

I am excited for all of this! (Except for the creeping crud, hope that goes away soon)

That one video thing sounds an awful lot like a quiet version of the craft chat thing we did a couple years ago that started out as an hour and went half a day. :spiritseergimme:

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Yes! When I was describing it to my husband, I mentioned that I think it could spin off into less quiet hangouts connected to all kinds of social/hobby groups here!

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So first off, yay for boundaries and self-care! It’s so good to hear from you, and to see you excited for a project again!

Okay, holy moley, I LOVE everything about these new ideas! Sustainability and late-stage onboarding are probably two of the most complicated and difficult problems in just about any ongoing, long-term immersive project I’ve ever seen, and this is such a cool and interesting way to tackle them! I haven’t heard of any group in the past doing what you’ve described, at least not exactly - maaaaaaaybe the closest I can think of is the Black Watchman game Alice & Smith put out from 2015, in terms of having live interactive components you got to experience if you were playing through the game in real time, and the video game elements that were leftover for anybody to experience at any point afterwards. But even then I’m not sure how similar they realistically are, at least based on your description.

I am extremely excited to see what form all this will end up taking, and even more excited about it if it will help take some of that mountain of stress off your shoulders. Everything you do is so clearly a labor of love and we can feel it. You deserve good things, and you deserve mental health and stability. :cjheart: :cjheart: :cjheart:

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I. Can’t. Wait. For. More. CJB.

CJ ramblevlogs are some of my favorite content that comes from this forum outside of the in universe stuff.

Pumped about new non-Briarverse stuff. Pumped about new Briarverse stuff. Pumped about new living book concept.

I can say for sure getting into the community was a bit tough and gets more difficult as time goes on; I still don’t exactly feel like I have as clear an understanding of the story before this last year because I devoured the books to get to the point where I felt I could interact, so this new thing is going to make it way easier for me to convince new people to join our cult community

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the cult-munity, if you will

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Not me, taking notes on this video as it happens so I don’t forget anything I want to say. XD

Before I say anything else though: CJ, it’s so good to see you feeling better. Even before you said what was going on, I could hear in your voice that you were in a much better place, and I could see your spark again. Thank you for taking that time for yourself; I’m so happy you did, because I can see that you’re happier, and that makes us happy, too. :cjheart:

  1. I about fell over when you said “Hey, maybe let’s be in the same virtual space for accountability?” Because that’s something this community will be SO good for, and also something I desperately need in my life, no, I’m not crying, you’re crying. :joy:

  2. The migration sounds like a really worthwhile step, and I’m excited to see how that goes, especially with the native app!

  3. I love that you got that inspiration from Horizon and Elden Ring, and now in addition to future experiencing books together, I want everyone to hang out and play different video games together.

  4. Petition to make “Worth Wild” a thing, because honestly it’s kind of great.

(Also, is that a Flinterforge print pillow in the chair in your office? It just looks a lot like my notebook…)

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