Finding a Home in NationStates
Part 1: The Journey to Europeia
Written by Creen Free
My first contact with Europeia has, unfortunately, been lost thanks to time and NationStates's limited server space. The Saturday before last- or was it the Friday?- marked a number of important events for me. After months of sitting quietly, invisible, without a name or an account or a country, and reading through the WA Resolutions, the debates, the discussions, it was time for me to actually join in the community. I was going to rise, to get involved, to lead- or so I expected
The Commonwealth of Creen Free was founded, and in poured the recruitment telegrams...
In poured the recruitment telegrams...
In poured the recruitment telegrams.
I had a general idea of what went on with regions, although I didn't have much personal experience. I had a rough idea of the ongoing conflicts between military forces, I understood endorsements, and so forth- but I had no idea the level of region diversity I was going to experience. Totalitarian dictatorships and anarcho-communes fought with My Little Pony and Harry Potter interest groups for my support, and somewhere buried in the mess of adverts and enticements was a message inviting me to Europeia, where I could take part in the local government, where I could get involved in the military, where I could participate in a whole manner of programs in any branch of the government I could possibly want. I can't tell you what exactly it was that made me follow that telegram in particular, but it lead me here.
My first weekend in Europeia was terrifying. Like I said, I either joined on a Friday or a Saturday, but oh god - I was scared. There was so much to do, so many pieces of advice or lists of ways to get involved and when I clicked one link that seemed interesting it lead me to another page with twelve more. I should be active in the community, I should post on the RMB- but, also, I should register on the forums because the RMB wasn't where most of the community was. I should get on the discord, I should apply to be a citizen, I should apply to the military, I should apply for the Citizen's Assembly, I should join a Ministry, I should vote in the world assembly. Some of it seemed familiar, some of it matched with what I thought I knew about NationStates, but for the most part, I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't even post on the forums yet because the validation email hadn't gone through and I was worried I'd typed my email in incorrectly when I registered - How did I fix that? I'd joined the discord, but my name stood out in glaring white because I wasn't a citizen yet, how did I fix that? My profile picture on the forum was approximately 1/5th of the size of everyone else's - how did I fix that? And what the hell is an endotart?
It was the Discord that saved things. Even with my name a different color, I was still able to speak there. There was a debate about the power of US states, I remember, and someone eventually asked if I'd posted my citizenship application on the forums (No.), and pretty soon someone had helped me validate my account. There were some of my problems solved - now I just had to wait for someone to respond to my citizenship. Maybe I'd done enough for one day - the conversation had died down in discord. I could just log off and listen to a podcast. I needed to catch up on Welcome To Night Vale, anyway.
Europeia provided a better option with the arrival of a quick blurb - a link to something called "mixlr" where some people would be talking. It was nothing formal (although I've listened now to a pretty sizeable chunk of the more official things saved on the channel), just some people chatting with each other and the audience, but suddenly how long had passed? Three hours? Four? There was something relaxing about the voices on the radio, and even though I was still psyching myself up to say something in the chat, I felt at home. Already, although I'd hardly talked to anyone directly, the community had opened itself up to me, and the overwhelming number of ways I could get involved didn't seem so stressful anymore as I thumbed through the tabs, reading them carefully one-by-one. I wanted to start doing things then and there, but it was late, and I was exhausted.
The next morning, when I woke up to an accepted citizenship application, I had only one question left for the region of Europeia:
What the hell is an endotart?
