The History of AJ Blogging (pt.2)

Hey Jammers! Welcome back to this series on the history of AJ blogging. It's early, but I had some extra time and thought "why not post?"

You know if some random person who knows nothing about Animal Jam were to stumble on this post, they would probably think they just discovered the most obscure subject ever XD

I have no idea how long this series is going to be, but I guess my goal is to showcase all the blogs I can remember that meant something to me. Let me know in the comments if you remember any as well! :D

To start off, here's a pretty well-known one:

This is not how the blog looks now– I used the Wayback Machine to try to find how the blog looked as I remembered discovering it. Like many AJ bloggers, of course, LoveLost changed the background seasonally. Maybe I should do something like that to keep with the tradition... Hmm...

LoveLost goes by a billion million names but I'm just going to say LoveLost because thats the name I like the most, I think.

If you know anything about the heyday of AJ blogging, you'll know about Animal Jam Flash. It started around the same time as Animal Jam Spirit, and it was known as having a huge collection of unreleased/glitch item/feature pictures (which it still does, for reference). I think even the Animal Jam Wiki has used LoveLost's images (whether they had permission is dubious lol)

Here's something from 2011 that you've probably never seen before:

Weird raspberry eye things. Here's the link to the original post.

LoveLost's Animal Jam Flash means a lot to me. Before I had my blog, I was a dedicated commenter and I signed all my comments with "~DoomyPanda" and used way too many :3 emoticons. Once I made my blog, LoveLost promoted it in a link at the bottom of a then-recent post and really helped me attract readers. I'm very grateful for that.

That blog is basically inactive, with some spotty posts every year or so, but I really hope LoveLost is doing ok. I hope all the past AJ bloggers are doing ok, because to be honest when some quit my paranoid brain thought they died lol

Oh! Before I forget, important side note: LoveLost invented the idea of a plushie story blog with her tale of Breadstick the Croc.

This next blog is a little less well-known:

The layout of the Animal Jam Rapids has gone completely unchanged since it was mysteriously abandoned after a normal daily post. 

At the time, this was actually my favorite blog to read. Trickertreee was a really positive/friendly person and it seemed his personality was just as bright and colorful as his blog's layout!

Aside from daily posts, TT had a large archive of stories, AJ graphics, and newspaper screenshots on some separate linked blogs. Looking back at them now, they're actually still a great resource 

TT's story archive (Tales of Jamaa) is, of course, inactive, but it makes me happy to this day. I hope it never gets taken down:

Here's something from there that made me smile:

:')

I think I'll talk about two blogs per post in this series because it seems that's all I have energy for. Expect the next one in a day or two.

But before I go, I keep having this thought: Why did things on Animal Jam have to change for the worse? I still love Jamaa, but there have been many bad decisions by AJHQ, artistic, business, and update-wise, that have eaten away at the game's integrity. If you've read at least one of my many rants, you know what I'm talking about.

With Animal Jam Stream, I try to do what I can to rekindle the community on Animal Jam. A ton of people play AJ, but we are more fragmented than we used to be.

Sometimes though, I feel like I can't do enough to help make the change we need. Jamaa needs you guys, too.

Something that inspires me, though, is Club Penguin Rewritten. If you're not aware, after Club Penguin shut down, some fans put together a new playable version of Club Penguin that is just like the original and has a big community behind it– the catch is, it's just like the original in its heyday of 2006-2010

Even though I have zero coding knowledge and zero time for a project like that, I still wonder: what would happen if I made a version of AJ that was just like it was in 2012? It's a fantasy, of course, it's way too hard for me, I'm already too busy, and it's probably against the rules (though somehow CP Rewritten is legal). Besides, I'd much rather be a player of a game than a developer/moderator.

For now I'm just hoping with all my heart that AJHQ remembers what their game is all about: conservation, natural science, friends, and creativity.