slanted fish – 🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺

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!

PHB team pic by (Dr.) Ashley Lange, Poptropica Creator (2014)

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.

Journey: The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.

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!

Fish Face: These ocean-dwellers are getting animated.

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! 💙

~🐠

Hey Poptropicans, it’s Slanted Fish! 🐠 If you’ve been checking the Poptropica Creators’ Blog lately, you may have seen my first guest post shared there this week. And if it’s your first time here, perhaps because of that post: welcome! Here on the PHB, we’re all about Poptropica. 😄

Introducing myself on the official Pop blog through my Popsona — read it here!

You can see the post for yourself over on the official Pop blog, but it’s basically about creating your own Popsona, or Poptropica persona for your game character. It’s a fun activity that’s been part of the fandom for years, and you can find even more Popsonas from the PHB team here.

Of course, the PHB is a big part of Slanted Fish’s Popsona story, so I had to include it in there as well — and am grateful that the Creators included a link here, to the “Poptropica fan publication known as the Poptropica Help Blog.” Still, the PHB is bigger than just my story — it includes all of you who read it and follow along with us! 📰🏝

Speaking of Pop blogging, don’t miss out on the other fantastic guest posts from this week! Purple Paw (a fellow PHB writer) blogged about what makes Poptropica special to her, while BraveSky waxed poetic about the game’s many adventures. And if you’re feeling inspired, you can also share your musings about Poptropica here on the PHB! ✏

In other news straight from the Creators’ Blog, the Video of the Week series continues with a two-part walkthrough of Timmy Failure Island by Siblings Ahoy! Check out part 1 below and part 2 on the Pop blog:

By the way, the PHB has walkthroughs for every island listed on our Island Help page! Each of our guides comes with video and written walkthroughs, as well as other fun stuff like the lowdown on Quippy’s store items, trivia, album photos from the old days of Pop, and more.

That’s it for this update! Share with us in the comments: What’s your Popsona story? What do you want to read about next on the Creators’ Blog? And any theories as to why Timmy Failure so brazenly walks around without pants??

Be sure to check out the posts below to know what else is happening in the Poptropica fandom, from Island Flash-backs spotlighting the classic islands from the Flash days to free membership giveaways! At the PHB, we’re always busy cooking up ideas inspired by Poptropica. 🌤

🌟 Keep on popping on, Poptropicans! 🌟