Hey Poptropicans! The Pop Creators have been cooking up some collaborations with us here at the PHB, and over the next few months, we’ll be sharing some interviews with each of the PHB staff.
First up: yours truly, Slanted Fish! The Creators tested the waters of this blog-founding fish with an interview last year you can read here, but for this round we’ve got a splash of new content as well. Let’s dive in!
Read the original interview on the PHB or Creators’ Blog. The following is an excerpt from Poptropica’s refreshed interview featuring the new content.
From your perspective, how have you seen the Poptropica Help Blog (PHB) and community change over time?
The biggest change I’ve noticed personally is that the kids have gotten older, both in the PHB community and the fandom at large. Though Poptropica has always been aimed at kids, it’s fascinating to see how teens and young adults (myself included) still participate in the fandom, often returning from childhood nostalgia and sticking around for the community and inspired storytelling (perhaps even creating some of their own). Of course, young kids are still around. From my perspective, even children are capable of enjoying Poptropica’s more sophisticated stories, particularly those from the classic islands.
As for the PHB itself, it’s definitely grown in professionalism over time. When it first started, we were a group of mostly 10–12-year-olds just starting to learn how to run a blog together, with all that entails. We’d create cringey graphics, ramble on in our posts with inside jokes told in all caps, and occasionally have drama spilling over in the comments. Not that we manage to completely avoid that now, but we’ve come a long way since the start and our style has definitely matured a bit. Nowadays the blog is proud to present content that is more consistent, organized, informative, balanced, and still with a touch of fun!
6. What inspires you?
Inspiration can come from anywhere: an interesting article, artifact, artwork… and it’s important to find some good ones, as that shapes our thought patterns and, eventually, the kind of person we become! As author Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Besides traveling the islands of Poptropica, I enjoy looking at real-life nature, listening to music and podcasts, and learning the stories of people past and present, as ways to be refreshed and inspired.
Outside of Poptropica and your PHB involvement, what are you passionate about?
Perhaps it’s cliche, but I’m an advocate for making the world a better place, which can look a million different ways, including social justice, environmental sustainability, and everything in between.
Touching back on my work with the PHB, and outside of it, I’m also passionate about language. I love conveying ideas through writing, discovering just the right words to use, and appreciating a good pun or poetic line. English is my first language, but Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese are part of my life, too. Being curious about languages opens up new worlds!
Big thanks to the Pop Creators for having me on the official blog and for their efforts connecting Poptropicans with fun content — and more to come. Catch my full interview with Poptropica on their official blog! 💙
~🐠
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 