The year is 2025. okay!

[omnicrumb]

I've been meaning to say a few things here for a while, so I'm putting it all in one topic for the sake of organization. I specifically am essentially irrelevant to CalRef given at least my current and rather unfortunate historical relationship with the community existing only in the most glancing of engagement, but im still posting this just cause. :}

Calamity Refuge has existed for like seventeen years now (?!?), and currently the community is very small (outside of Nationstates for the most part, of course.) Relatively recently, and for tiered reasons that seem fairly complex and inappropriate for external speculation, Luca (The Arch-Administrator) and Emily (another administrator) have wholly withdrawn from NationStates, the CalRef discord server, and seemingly this forum [last accessed on April 02, 2025 and May 21, 2025, respectively]. I don't know how the server system for this forum is organized but this likely kind of puts this community's infrastructure into a weird place: the only people who have historically maintained it are absent, and really shouldn't/can't be expected to reappear. They have put a truly inspiring amount of work into this community, and I'm really sorry that I haven't spoken on this forum or much on the discord server sooner to express that.

Now, I don't really know anything at all (this is a recurring theme) but from my veiled (and likely biased) understanding of Calamity Refuge there are many very cool people in this community, and I feel like I should do or say at least something because I've mainly appreciated this place externally since my fairly convoluted discovering of it. The idea of making a community of real people, who work together creatively to spin fanciful tales and just Make A Place, or places, for eachother, feels so important and real to me, especially now when there are so many places where the internet is becoming an inhospitable and predatory slop silo. Even if Calamity Refuge disappears, I will keep the idea of it because I do really believe it is special, to work together and make a safe place - but I really hope and am willing to help to make sure that it doesn't!

So far this topic message has been kind of poorly organized but please do not worry it will be over soon! I mainly wanted to mention these things to communicate some context to be able to ask these questions, for any prospective readers who could happen by this forum again.

• Is it appropriate for people use this forum?
• How do you think I can help this community?
• Should we just "start over"?
• What do you think about the recent events in Calamity Refuge?
• Does anyone want to start a new roleplay topic? I have some world ideas but I'm not really sure how/where to post them onto the forum.
• What happens next?

Apologies for the eventual absolutely poor organization and inco[her/nsist]ent phrasing/prose. if this topic sucks let me know! I want to learn

[walrus]

1. I don't see why not if it still is online.
2. Make friends! I'm walrus. since we haven't particularly spoken one-on-one.
3. From my understanding this has been an option in the past, when a small group of highly motivated Refugi began CalRef anew. I don't believe such motivation at the previous scale exists within enough people currently to have me believe we could/should do so again though.
4. Lately it has been somewhat of a recurring theme in my life for people who have given so much to something possibly abstract, possibly real to step away in a manner I can only describe as hard to believe. I am privileged in this specific case to know *why* things happened the way they did, and it is still hard to believe.
5. Won't comment, as I'm not personally looking for RP at the moment.
6. Posting forum topics sounds like a decent first step.

[omnicrumb]

Hello walrus!!

Thanks for responding! I think i'm pretty much on the same page as you in general in terms of your answer...

1. I don't see why not if it still is online.

Cool! I also talked a little bit in the Discord Server since posting this and the CalRef utilities seem all good to use, at least at the current moment.

2. Make friends! I'm walrus. since we haven't particularly spoken one-on-one.

It's nice to meet you! ^_^ What do you like to do for fun?

6. Posting forum topics sounds like a decent first step.

:salute: I will be ascheme with prospective topics. [Take c/Bew/Prep]are!!