Introduction to Awesometopia
What is Awesometopia?
Awesometopia works a lot like other land comms, except with no specific fandom. If you're familiar with those, you can skip this section.
Awesometopia is a team-based challenge community. Challenges are fan graphics, fanfiction, and random puzzles and games. We normally have a challenge of each type open, so you can be an active member even if you can only do one of those. (You don't have to enter every challenge.) With graphics and writing, there are usually both participation points and points for winning. That means that you can get points for playing even if you're not a great artist/author, but there are still those winner points as motivation to do your best.
All the points you earn go to your team. Your team has its own community where you can help each other out with the challenges. It's also a great way to make new friends.
Every three months, the team with the most points wins and then scores are reset.
Fandoms and our Spotlight
Unlike similar communities, awesometopia does not have one fandom. We use scifi, fantasy, and geek culture fandoms in any medium. We're not too strict about what counts. We do prefer you avoid fandoms that already have their own active land comms. We have a partial list of other land comms on our affiliates page.
Expect some challenges, especially the writing ones, to work a bit differently here than they do in lands where everyone has the same fandom. We have to do things such that we don't have a fandom popularity contest, where the fic that the most people understand wins.
The flip side of that coin is our fandom spotlight: at_spotlight. We call it Mystery Awesome Theater 3000. There, we look at a new fandom every week. There's a watchalong (where applicable; we also take games, comics, books, etc.), a discussion, and a challenge for that week's fandom. Fandoms come from nominations, so this is your chance to share cool stuff.
How to join Awesometopia
You have to apply. Otherwise the team system would break. Randomly watching or requesting to join our communities is pointless and will not make you a member. Our challenges are all flocked and community membership is only given to people who've applied.
1) Fill out the form at our sign-up post.
2) Wait for a mod to assign you a team.
3) Once we've done that, you will need to join and watch the following communities:
You need to join all the challenge communities, but it's up to you which ones to watch. There are three challenge communities:
We also have two optional communities, which you're strongly encouraged to join and watch:
4) Get to know your team. Each team has its own leader. They're all run a bit differently. Look around in your team comm and see if there are any important posts you should read.
5) Start entering challenges!
Take a look at at_awesomet, at_newnewyorker, at_wondersquare, and/or at_spotlight and see what the current challenges are. Then jump right in. The challenge posts themselves have instructions.
6) Get help from your team. You can use your team comms to post hints, tips, tutorials, and inspiration. (Just don't go too far. Doing the challenges for each other -- like by posting all the answers to a game -- is usually against the rules.) If you're stuck on a challenge, make a post for it in your team comm.
Awesometopia works a lot like other land comms, except with no specific fandom. If you're familiar with those, you can skip this section.
Awesometopia is a team-based challenge community. Challenges are fan graphics, fanfiction, and random puzzles and games. We normally have a challenge of each type open, so you can be an active member even if you can only do one of those. (You don't have to enter every challenge.) With graphics and writing, there are usually both participation points and points for winning. That means that you can get points for playing even if you're not a great artist/author, but there are still those winner points as motivation to do your best.
All the points you earn go to your team. Your team has its own community where you can help each other out with the challenges. It's also a great way to make new friends.
Every three months, the team with the most points wins and then scores are reset.
Fandoms and our Spotlight
Unlike similar communities, awesometopia does not have one fandom. We use scifi, fantasy, and geek culture fandoms in any medium. We're not too strict about what counts. We do prefer you avoid fandoms that already have their own active land comms. We have a partial list of other land comms on our affiliates page.
Expect some challenges, especially the writing ones, to work a bit differently here than they do in lands where everyone has the same fandom. We have to do things such that we don't have a fandom popularity contest, where the fic that the most people understand wins.
The flip side of that coin is our fandom spotlight: at_spotlight. We call it Mystery Awesome Theater 3000. There, we look at a new fandom every week. There's a watchalong (where applicable; we also take games, comics, books, etc.), a discussion, and a challenge for that week's fandom. Fandoms come from nominations, so this is your chance to share cool stuff.
How to join Awesometopia
You have to apply. Otherwise the team system would break. Randomly watching or requesting to join our communities is pointless and will not make you a member. Our challenges are all flocked and community membership is only given to people who've applied.
1) Fill out the form at our sign-up post.
2) Wait for a mod to assign you a team.
3) Once we've done that, you will need to join and watch the following communities:
- awesometopia
- Your team. This will be one of the following: teampiratefish, teamrocketgeese, or teamdragons.
You need to join all the challenge communities, but it's up to you which ones to watch. There are three challenge communities:
- at_awesomet is the media comm, where we post graphics/art challenges.
- at_newnewyorker is for writing challenges.
- at_wondersquare for games.
We also have two optional communities, which you're strongly encouraged to join and watch:
- at_spotlight for watchalongs, discussions, and fandom-specific challenges to go with our weekly fandom spotlight.
- at_tenforward is our social community. It belongs to you. You can post anything relevant to awesometopia here.
4) Get to know your team. Each team has its own leader. They're all run a bit differently. Look around in your team comm and see if there are any important posts you should read.
5) Start entering challenges!
Take a look at at_awesomet, at_newnewyorker, at_wondersquare, and/or at_spotlight and see what the current challenges are. Then jump right in. The challenge posts themselves have instructions.
6) Get help from your team. You can use your team comms to post hints, tips, tutorials, and inspiration. (Just don't go too far. Doing the challenges for each other -- like by posting all the answers to a game -- is usually against the rules.) If you're stuck on a challenge, make a post for it in your team comm.