Line to God

Fan: Did Tarquin's adventuring party have an official name, like Order of the Stick and Linear Guild do?
Rich Burlew: Vector Legion. TWITTER CANON!

— Twitter Q&A about The Order of the Stick

Basically, creators have two ways to interact with their fans:

The official channels, like the official website or forum, Twitter or Facebook accounts, a relevant popular media website (IMDb for movies, GoodRead for books, etc.). These are easily searchable online using a search engine. These sites and accounts are usually maintained by their promoter or agent.

Some of the unusual haunts, like a creator-made blog, LiveJournal,WordPress, website, DeviantArt etc, or in a One of Us moment, visiting and interacting with fans for a day on a popular site like Reddit or a fansite. This is becoming more common as creators embrace connecting with fans via New Media. They allow some level of interactivity, like allowing fans to place comments that are read by and maybe even answered by the creator.

These are NOT their personal accounts, just their public accounts which they themselves reveal to fans, and are known to interact there. Please respect their privacy and keep questions on their professional life and work as a creator.

Links to examples goes on the trivia page of the Creator/Work, not the main page.

Contrast Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things.

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Examples

Comic Books

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW)
  • Artist Andy Price has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter account.
  • Writer Katie Cook has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter account.
  • Artist Amy Mebberson has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter page
  • Writer Heather Nuhfer has a Twitter page
  • Editor Bobby Curnow has an IDW Publishing Forum thread specifically for asking him questions. Colorist Heather Breckel also frequently posts on the forum.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
  • Head writer Ian Flynn has his podcast, BumbleKast, where fans send their questions to and Flynn will answer.
  • Head writer and artist Evan Stanley has a DeviantArt account, a Twitter account, and a personal Tumblr blog called Draw many Cartoon where she'll be happy to answer fans' questions.

Fanfiction

• CP Coulter, author of Dalton can be reached via her Tumblr or Plurk.
• Arcturus/Bergamot Dreams, author of Warriors of the World has specifically set up a tumblr for this purpose.
• Nimbus Llewelyn takes pride in replying to every reviewer whose contribution extends beyond 'moar pls', replying to anonymous reviewers in the Author Notes on the following chapter from the question (though if it happens more than once or twice with one person, he starts begging the reviewer in question to just make an account as it would make things so much easier), and invites questions via PM on fanfiction dot net.

Films — Live-Action

• Travis Beacham, co-writer with Guillermo Del Toro of Pacific Rim, has a Tumblr blog where he already answered hundreds of questions from fans‎.

Literature

• Brandon Sanderson on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/user/mistborn
• Jim Butcher's LiveJournal
• John Scalzi has a blog.
• Katherine Kurtz's official Web site: http://www.rhemuthcastle.com/wiki/
  • And she usually joins an Internet Relay Chat on Sunday evenings.
• Neil Gaiman's blog.
  • Also another blog, his tumblr.
• Peter David's blog.
• Terry Pratchett was active on the Usenet group alt.fan.pratchett for a while in The '90s.
• Diane Duane has a tumblr, twitter, blog, and Livejournal. On which she writes occasional Sherlock fanfic. Talk about One of Us.
• Victoria Holmes, the mastermind behind Warrior Cats has a Facebook account. One of the other authors, Kate Cary, has a blog.
• David Weber posts with some regularity on his official forums. He is nicknamed "RFC" by forum users, in reference to his publicly acknowledged username, runsforcelery. Consequently, those forums are a much-appreciated source of Word of God.
• Tamora Pierce used to participate in a forum she co-founded with another author and shows up sometimes in fan communities such as Mark Does Stuff and Tumblr to answer fiddly questions about setting or discuss plot points in general.
• Valhalla author Ari Bach can be reached on Tumblr through his Facts-I-Just-Made-Up and The Walrus Squad blogs.
• Seanan McGuire has a tumblr and a twitter, where she sometimes answers fan questions.

Live-Action TV

• While Babylon 5 was airing, J. Michael Straczynski posted in the Usenet group rec.arts.tv.scifi.babylon5.moderated
• Leverage and The Librarians 2014 showrunner John Rogers blogs at Kung Fu Monkey.
• Original Concentration producer Norm Blumenthal started a Q&A thread on a popular game show forum.
• Ronald D. Moore often had AOL chats while he was a producer for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• The cast of Supernatural often live tweet during the episodes. William Shatner often joins in, continuing his feud with Misha Collins (AKA Cupper).
• Highlander: The Series writers Donna Lettow and Gillian Horvath particpated in a Usenet discussion group about the series.

Tabletop Games

• Several of the people who work on Magic: The Gathering have Tumblrs where they take questions from users.
  • Mark Rosewater's Tumblr, Blogatog, is where he answers questions regarding game design and Magic news, as well as his "Making Magic" column and a series of one-panel comics.
  • Doug Beyer's Tumblr, A Voice for Vorthos, is dedicated to answering questions about MTG's lore and flavor.
  • Rules Advisor Matt Tabak's Tumblr, Snarkham Asylum is for questions about the rules and game mechanics.
  • Gavin Verhey talks about strategy and deck-building on his Tumblr, GavInsight.
• The staff of Savage Worlds regularly post on the official Pinnacle forums, with one section being devoted exclusively to getting official answers to rules questions.
• Do not be surprised to see Paizo's staff on the Pathfinder boards engaging fans, expressing their opinions, and answering questions. James Jacobs is particularly vocal but not alone.

Toys

• When it comes to Transformers, there's a couple main venues. When it comes to the comics, the writers and artists can often be found lurking at the official IDW forums, or Simon Furman and Nick Roche have their own blogs. When it comes to the Transformers: Timelines fiction, the writers can be found at either the Allspark or the official fanclub forums (with the latter being paid-members-only).

Video Games

• J.E. Sawyer, lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas has a Formspring account in which he'll answer what he can about the game, either about the story/lore or the gameplay (though he notes that he has no involvement of the writing of DLCs outside of Honest Hearts). For certain questions however he's proven himself to be quite good at responding appropriately.
• Similarly, Chris Avellone has a Twitter account as well as a Facebook account. For a man who's big on deconstruction and has a strong anti-romance bent, he's quite a nice person.
• Charles Martinet has his own Vine and Instagram account where he posts short videos of him playing with Mario, Luigi, and Wario figures.
• As of 2015, the staff members of Everybody Edits play the game and interact with the fans. This is understandable, since all of them are Promoted Fanboys who were originally just part of the fandom. Some also use the official forum to communicate. This applied, but to a lesser extent, for the original staff members, who were more limited and inactive.^note Except RPGMaster2000, who was well-appreciated by the fandom for interacting a lot and responding to concerns and questions.
• Goodwolf Studio, the creators of Code 7 are most active on their official Discord server, where they'll often answer the players' questions about the story, characters and setting. They also have a Twitter account and (used to) post development updates on their blog.
• The official forum has a suggestion section, where people can post ideas on how to improve Stellaris. Martin "Wiz" Anward (and others) are also on social media like Twitter and like to chat with fans.

Visual Novels

• Love Joint, makers of Daughter for Dessert, Double Homework, and Shale Hill Secrets, have a website, a Patreon page, and a Discord channel with which they communicate with their fans. Palmer, the lead developer of the first two games, also had his own Patreon page before his untimely death.
• The creators of Melody have a website and a Patreon page, which they used to communicate with their fans during and after production.

Webcomics

• Pepper&Carrot has a Fediverse/ActivityPub/Mastodon-linked comment section for each episode of the webcomic, as well as for each entry on the author's blog. It also has official "community chat rooms"^note on the Libera.Chat IRC network, on Matrix, and on Telegram, all of which are bridged together, which are listed on its website's front page.

Web Original

• David Johnson of Economy Watch is active on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, Letterboxd and sometimes Facebook.
• In 2023, Jogchem Niemandsverdriet of Nobody Here opened up accounts in several social media sites, including a YouTube channel and a Discord server.
• Most of the Channel Awesome reviewers maintain their own Facebook or Twitter pages.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic creator Lauren Faust on deviantART.
• A lot of the staff of Adventure Time have formspring accounts with which they answer questions from fans. For example, there's Adam Muto (storyboard artist), Natasha Allegri (character designer/storyboard revisionist), and Andy Ristaino (lead character designer).
• Greg Weisman (of Gargoyles, W.I.T.C.H., The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Young Justice fame) has this in the form of the "Ask Greg" section of fansite Station 8. Notable for at least two reasons: one, that Weisman will answer any and all questions submitted to the site given enough time (so long as they meet the site's guidelines), and two, that the site has been in more-or-less constant operation since 1997. Overall, this has led to a searchable archive of well over 14,000 answered questions since Station 8 first opened. This may account, at least in part, for the truly massive smattering of Word of God entries for various shows he has worked on.
• Bryan Konietzko, one of the two creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, has a tumblr - though fan interaction isn't quite direct, he has reblogged fanart. (Some other people on staff have tumblrs also, like fighting instructor and consultant Sifu Kisu, who has an open ask box as of this moment, and co-exec producer Joaquim Dos Santos)
• Bounty Hamster creator David Freedman has a blog and an e-mail address and is still happy to answer questions about the show.
• Jason DeMarco, the man in charge of Toonami and one of the head honchos of [adult swim], is active on Twitter and Ask.fm and often answers questions about the block.
• The Dragon Prince: The twitter and reddit pages for the show gladly speak and answer questions from the fans.
• The Simpsons: A lot of the show's staff, both current and former, have Twitter accounts where they post Deleted Scenes, concept art, storyboard panels, script pages, and provide live commentary on episodes as they air. Some of the more active ones include showrunners Al Jean and Matt Selman, writers Carolyn Omine, Jessica Conrad, Rob LaZebnik, Matt Selman, Michael Price, and David Mirkin, and directors David Silverman, Wes Archer, Mark Kirkland, and Rob Oliver.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Some of the show's artists post concept art and storyboards on their Twitter accounts. These include Ian Vasquez, Benjamin Arcand, and Dave Cunningham. Executive producer Vincent Waller is also known to answer questions, such as confirming the existence of new episodes or the people who worked on them.

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