reminiscing about animal jam!!

animal jam classic was my life during 2015-16!! played it all day with my online friends at the time, and it feels nostalgic going back to it for a little bit, but it's a shell of its former self unfortunately </3. 

my love for making art and expressing myself through art stemmed from animal jam! i enjoyed the AJ Art Studio in particular and made a lot of masterpieces there. getting a good grasp on its limited tools was a challenge, but also satisfying to finish and make my artwork of my animals into den items.

roleplaying as warrior cats was. interesting. in sarepia forest there'd be wolves clad with swords and fox hats slaughtering each other while using the most flowery vocabulary from thesaurus.com. no miss no dodge no nothing. 

school roleplays were equally as fun with so much bickering and playing through the mean girl movie plot every single time. i just roleplayed as the quiet bookworm most of the time with nerd glasses, purple clothing items, and experiencing the chaotic atmosphere. I especially enjoyed watching bunnies have unserious catfights and players roleplaying as children of the Alphas. 

my investment in worldbuilding and lore in any game started with animal jam, and i absolutely pored through each story adventure and fan theory. of course, it was a children's game so the storytelling and content is straightforward and simplistic, but my love for analyzing lore and stories stemmed from other players looking for small details that potentially played into the game's setting, but although they were often farfetched, they were entertaining and creative! it was fun speculating about what will happen in the next story adventure. 

so like this game changed the trajectory of my life and i'll never be the person I am today without it! it was super fun participating in my first strong online community at that age, and it feels good to relish in that nostalgia. im reallly sleepy so this blog post might be a tad wonky in grammar </3