Announcing Sonic Supernova 2025!
I'd like to announce that planning for the fandom event Sonic Supernova 2025 is officially underway!
Sonic Supernova (Supernova for short) is an unofficial community event made by Sonic fans for Sonic fans, where artists and writers collaborate in teams to create unique fanworks for the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom over a creation period. During this time period, participants can also get to know one another in the social space created for the event, i.e. a Discord server. The end result is a fandom-wide, celebratory event aimed to contribute an explosion of fan content to the Sonic the Hedgehog community over a publishing period during which each team's creations are released.
What's special about Sonic Supernova?
Supernova takes inspiration from Big Bang events! Big Bangs are a popular and well-known format of fan-organised experiences. We wanted to make an event inspired by the Big Bang format but with aspects of it adjusted based on what fans like you and me would like to see in a collective fandom activity. Hence, instead of an explosion kick-starting the universe (Big Bang) we're naming our event after the explosion of a star that gives off light to a degree of a billion times more than our own sun (Supernova!).
For starters, we want Supernova to prize creators first in their humanity and their autonomy. Art is powerful. Stories are powerful. It can be as liberating, cathartic, relieving, and thought-provoking to read them as it is to create them, giving us the space to explore concepts and situations safely and at our own pace. So, to support a wider range of creative possibilities for our participants, Supernova will allow creators to make mature-rated content as an option for the event. Proper tools and moderation will ensure only adults who opted in will be able to submit and see mature works.
We also want to do team-ups differently for Supernova. In Big Bang events, artists and writers are typically teamed up via a blind match-up where artists select from a list of anonymised summaries of each writer's story. While this has its draws, our team is looking to implement different team-up methods where artists and writers get to be more aware of what project they're signing up for and who they're working with. The end goal is that participants are given the absolute best chance to be fully satisfied with the project and people they end up with for a creation period that will last a few months.
While it's still in its early days, we're also discussing features to make Supernova a memorable time for our participants, including making our own website for the event and offering exclusive digital art goodies for everyone who participates in it.
Above all, we at Supernova aim to put creators first. What we can say about the goals of Supernova—what we as organisers aim to accomplish—are the following commitments:
Bridging together creators in the Sonic fan community
Respecting the depth, diversity, and humanity of our creators
Upholding fans' autonomy to choose what content they wish to make and/or see
Organising the event in a transparent and considerate way
Ensuring creators' safety and no tolerance for harassment
Can I participate in Sonic Supernova?
Yes! Everyone will be able to participate in Supernova. All you need is a Discord account, an AO3 account if you're a writer, and a love for Sonic the Hedgehog!
As we're allowing fanworks with ratings ranging from general audiences to mature ones, we're working on a robust, thought-out system that supports creators' autonomy by ensuring people will only be able to see what they opted for. This will apply both for the Discord server hosting the event and the final, published works.
The event isn't restricted to visual artists and writers only. If you're passionate about making GIFs, graphics, music, animations, knitting, sculpting, or anything else, Supernova is more than open to you, too!
Unfortunately, we don't know just yet. We're still in the planning stages and we want to take the time to make sure we get things right, including getting community feedback on an interest check form so us organisers can make decisions with your wishes at heart.
We'll provide more information as we get closer to milestones in our development stages (like when we open sign-ups for the event!) and fully welcome questions, comments, and feedback from other Sonic fans! Feel free to contact us at the following accounts:
We hope to hear from you either in our inboxes, or through our sign-up form once it comes out!
On behalf of the Sonic Supernova organising team,
(a.k.a. blurredblu/shizuumi151)
