Speaking of nearly dead fandoms... if anyone drifts over here, I'd be glad of your thoughts.
LiveJournal provided a good forum for Mirage fans. Some of us met there. But it's not coming back. How do we get together now? Mirage is awesome--we know that--and there are many English speakers who love it or would love it, and would love talking about it, writing fic, doing vids, translating, etc., but what's the mechanism for bringing and keeping us in community?
These forums are terrific and would have worked well in 2000 when there were fewer fandoms and online distractions. But now, it's hard to remember to come here and check in just for Mirage without the constant pinging of social media.
Most of the newer Mirage fans seem to be on Tumblr, but this seems to me (I admit I'm biased) almost useless as a home for a community. It's oriented around pictures and reposts, not talking back and forth, and that ability to converse easily--ask questions, give responses--is essential to a real community, as far as I can see.
What about tagging? Is it possible to connect to isolated fans by, say, hashtagging on Twitter? That could perhaps advertise this forum, but then there's the same question about how to keep this forum alive without the routine reminders that it's here.
What am I missing? Does Instagram work for fandom? (I've rarely been on Instagram.)
I think there might officially, technically be a Mirage community on Dreamwidth. Or it would be easy to start one, but I think almost none of us are on DW or use it routinely as a community anymore. (I hear it's not smart phone friendly for one thing, and it's definitely not image friendly.)
I welcome your thoughts!
What some fandoms use nowadays is Discord, basically a chat room that can have different sub-channels. I really like it for lighter, more rapid communication. It might not be the best for sharing longer meta or building an archive of things, but if what is needed is a place where it’s easy to drop some thoughts or info whenever they come out and react and chat with a low threshold, then that might be good. I think it’s nice in small fandoms like this were you can more or less learn to know the people you are talking with.
Sorry for a late reply. You know, Discord came up in a session at the Kirk/Spock con I attended last year. A lot of people used it and liked it. It is not my particular thing. However, my love for Mirage is such that if there were much Mirage community there (I think there's not now?), I might get myself over there to check it out. Were you thinking there could be a Mirage sub-channel, or that anime/light novel/BL sub-channels might be a good place to mention Mirage info? If you see Mirage conversations over there, do let us know. Thanks!
I'm not in any BL or such general channels, just fandom and ship specific ones. I do mention Mirage there sometimes if there are any connections, such as actors or the like, but that's about it. I don't know if BL or light novel channels exist and am probably not going to look for them since I don't specifically care enough about them as such. If something like that exists and there was a sub-channel for Mirage, I would join though.
However, If we wanted a specific channel for Mirage, it would be very easy to make! It takes less than 5 minutes to set up. I would gladly do it if there are people who'd like to join. I do believe the threshold to communicate via Discord is a lot lower than any arrangement on Tumblr. The downside is that it's easy to get stuck chatting internally on Discord and stop posting things outside where other people can see it. So I think it's good for maintaining communication and excitement within people who are in the fandom, but for actracting new people the method would be something different.
I think it's possible to build a community on Tumblr just that discussion topics won't be as organized as an actual forum like this. It will depend on how the tumblr is built - I have seen some fan tumblrs that are designed like websites and make use of tags to organize information/discussion. Discussions can be done in reblogs (on the Tumblr app, they've made it very easy to reply to posts) and asks. The only thing about Tumblr is that building a following, especially at the beginning, is quite important for activity so there has to be a regular stream of posts (images, text, media, etc.) to attract fans to follow the tumblr.
//Endless Blaze//My DW//
Sorry for a late reply. Interesting. If someone wanted to set up and maintain a Mirage Tumblr, I would try to get over there when I can and figure out how to use and contribute to it. Do I remember correctly that Tumblr will not make searchable any tagged items that have external links?
Hello, I was browsing the Mirage of Blaze wikipedia page and it's nice to see someone/some people have updated about the characters section.
However, there are some incorrect facts like Minako is stated as Kagetora's fiance'.
If anyone is interested, we can work together to update the wiki page here;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_of_Blaze
Speaking of wikipedia, it'll be great for the English fandom if we can revamp the Mirage wikia page;
https://ayako.fandom.com/wiki/Mirage_of_blaze_Wiki
I saw how detailed and nicely organised the Trinity Blood wikia page is and I felt quite envious. It'll be awesome if we can collaborate to improve the Mirage wikia page too
Heya,If we're talking about communities, isn't a Facebook group or Page the easiest way to go? I'm guessing a lot more people have a Facebook than a Tumblr or Discord, and you could get notifications easily either by just following actively or tagging people.It's easy to start topics, share foto's or videos, or even documents and polls (for example a document with all translations up till now).I'm definitely up for any kind of fan community for MOB, so I would join whatever it is ^^
Myself, I'm not trained in editing Wikipedia and very rusty on Wikia with no time to learn new stuff, but I'd be glad to add content someone else could post. I'd certainly join a Facebook page. Is Facebook often used for fandom? I'd be glad to post a link to the Mirage-Trans list of translation links. Actually, here it is if anyone wants to post it anywhere:
https://mirage-trans.dreamwidth.org/profile
I do wish it seemed possible to co-locate some meaningful MoB fandom. As far as I'm aware, this site (which I love) is really it. And it's a wealth of stuff and very stable over time, but alas, kind of Web 1.0 being a discussion forum, not hooked up to any other media that would guide people to the fandom. LiveJournal worked well in its day, but MoB never made the jump to Dreamwidth (except the translation site), and DW itself doesn't have a big audience and is a fee-based platform.
For myself, I'm probably not going to much use platforms that are mostly designed to be emphemeral chat, of which Discord seems one? I just operate better in a fandom medium that is more asynchronous and archival--and oriented around longer form, more organized content, like blog posts and comments. But others might really be interested in that platform.
Now, this is at the edge of my awareness, but I feel like there are movements afoot for developing smaller scale, less centralized communities designed to support a few dozen people maybe... Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I don't really know what I'm talking about, just something a techie friend mentioned keeping an eye on.