GIFCon 2025: Queering the Fantastic – How to Join Our Discord

Event registration can be found here including tickets for Workshops, this year’s Seminar, and the Networking Event.
Paper Speaker abstract and bios can be found here.
Keynotes and this year’s Reading List can be found here.
Workshops and Roundtable information can be found here.
The Crafting Your Queer Fantasy TBR post can be found here.

About GIFCon’s Discord

After the pandemic, GIFCon moved our conversations online with Discord and we’ve stayed there. In our Discord, we continue to connect people across the world for social conversations in the current digital age.
The GIFCon Discord is supplementary to the conference, it’s completely optional to join, but many of our excellent events and continued conversations during GIFCon take place in this online space.
This discord is a way for attendees and panelists to continue the conversation after panels, socialise, find links to GIFCon social media, technical support, games, and social events such as our Research and Artist Spotlights in the weeks leading up to and during GIFCon. The GIFCon Committee has tried hard to make the Discord as welcoming as possible to those both familiar and unfamiliar with Discord and we really look forward to bringing together attendees, speakers, volunteers, and committee alike on there.

Our Discord is a moderated and personalised online platform that abides by our Code of Conduct, with different chat “Channels” organized by panels and/or interests. Users of our Discord must explicitly agree to our Code of Conduct in order to join (or see) the conversation. Any users in the Discord who violate this Code will be muted or potentially removed from GIFCon’s Discord (read our Discord rules for full Discord policies). We also have several help channels within the Discord to help get you started or reach our team of Volunteers with questions.

We know that some of our attendees may be unfamiliar with this platform and therefore, we have put together this short guide with instructions for accessing the GIFCon Discord below.

Step 1:

Follow the Link to Join the GIFCon Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zCQ52AmggS

If this is your first time using Discord, you will need to create a username and enter your email (you will then need to confirm your email with Discord).
If you already have a Discord account you will need to log into your account.

(Image 1 is a screenshot showing a Discord login for first-time users of Discord when using the join link.)

Step 2:

Read the Rules of our Discord Server and Agree to our Code of Conduct

When you first join our server, you will only be able to view our Rules Channel. Each Discord server is unique as each server owner can personalise a server with specific permissions and different chat and voice channels. The GIFCon server is organized so that users must agree to our Rules or they cannot actually enter our Discord and see the rest of our channels where conversations are taking place.

(Image 2 is a screenshot of the Discord showing the point of view of a user who has joined but as not agreed to the code of conduct. A white arrow overlaid on the screenshot of Discord draws points to the left where the only server Channels visible are “rules” and “Voice Channel”.)

The white arrow in the image above points to this server’s Channels. Until a Discord user agrees to our Code of Conduct in the Rules Channel (the top channel visible when first clicking the link), then they will only be able to see this limited view of the Discord where all other channels are hidden.

If you read through the post in the Rules Channel, you will see that it asks you to react with a thumbs up emoji to a specific message. If you use this thumbs up, you are explicitly agreeing to our Code of Conduct (CoC) and Netiquette, which is required to enter any digital space hosted by GIFCon.
Reacting with the Thumbs Up emoji and entering the server is as simple as clicking the Thumbs Up button at the very bottom of the Rules message.

(Image 3 is a screenshot of the Discord showing the cursor hovering over the Thumbs Up emoji. Clicking this emoji means that users agree to the Code of Conduct and is necessary to enter the GIFCon Discord Server. User names of specific users has been blurred with rainbow images for privacy.)

You can see that a large number of other users have similarly reacted with a Thumbs Up to the correct message in Image 3 and you just need to click this emoji in order to agree to our CoC.

Step 3:

Enter the GIFCon Discord and Start with the “Getting Started” Channel

Once you have agreed to our Code of Conduct by reacting in the Rules Channel, on the left-hand side bar, you will now be able to see the entire server not just the Rules Channel. It is imperative that you agree to our Code of Conduct in Step 2, or you will not be able to see the other conversations.

(Image 4 is a screenshot of the GIFCon Discord server with all channels now visible including a voice and video channel “Voice Channel (radio GIFCon), a chat channel “getting-started”, a chat channel “ask-for-help”, a chat channel “networking”, a chat channel “chat”, a chat channel “playing games”, a thread channel “queering-the-fantastic”, and chat channels for each panel, “panels-a”, “panels-b”, and “panels-c”. There is a large white arrow overlaying the screenshot pointing the left to draw attention to the newly visible channel menu.)

Contrasted with image 2 in “Step 2” above, the white arrow in this image (Image 4) points to all of the server’s Channels that are now visible because the user has agreed to the Code of Conduct.

Until a Discord user agrees to our Code of Conduct in the Rules Channel (the top channel visible when first clicking the link), then they will only be able to see this limited view of the Discord where all other channels are hidden.

Congrats! You can now interact in the GIFCon Discord server! If you’re unfamiliar with Discord, you should read the “getting-starting” channel which explains the GIFCon Discord in more detail!

Happy Chatting!

Important Tip:

Discord assigns users Roles within a specific server. In the GIFCon Discord server, you can visually see if you or someone else has clicked the link to join but NOT clicked to agree to our terms and conditions. Their username in the Discord server will appear as bright red, as with the account “Tester” in the image below.

(Image 5 is a screenshot of an automatic message in the main Chat Channel showing the user “Tester”, whose name appears in bright red and text indicating they joined the subreddit at 1:36PM.)

If you right click on their name and view their profile, you will see that they only have the Role “Joined” assigned, which means they clicked the link to join the Discord, but have not agreed to the Code of Conduct in Rules and cannot see the rest of the Discord server. This is why their name appears as red.

You can right-click on a person’s name in Discord and click “profile” for a pop-up to appear showing the user’s active roles in the server. As you can see in Image 6 below, if you view the profile of a user who has not agreed to the Code of Conduct by reacting with a Thumbs Up emoji, in this case a profile for “Tester”, they will only have the role “Joined” indicated they followed the join link to our Discord, but have not agreed to the Code of Conduct and therefore cannot view the other Channels.

(Image 6 is a screenshot in Discord of the user profile of “Tester” with information on their history in the server and under “About Me” it shows “Roles” with only a red circle and the text “Joined” listed under Roles.)

In contrast, a user who has agreed, will not appear red and will be automatically assigned the Role “GIFCon 2025” as shown with the user Tester in Images 7 & 8 below.

(Image 7 mirrors Image 5 except that the text “Tester” now appears in purple rather than bright red.)

(Image 7 mirrors Image 6 except that in the profile for “Tester” under Roles is now listed “GIFCon 2025” with a purple circle to the left of the text in addition to a red circle and “Joined” to the right of this also underneath Roles.)

Thank you for viewing this guide and if you have any further questions about our Discord you can reach us via email at GIFCon@glasgow.ac.uk.

We hope to chat with you soon!