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vivianacht · 16 days

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making an important announcement about some things i’ve noticed in the gwendoline christie fandom that really bug me.

disclaimer: read this at your own convenience and discretion. i am not responsible for any sort of hurt feelings and frankly… i don’t care. if you’re mad about this, you are probably the problem. /lh

to start with id like to begin on a positive note so that i’m not diving into negativity, i don’t want to be completely negative about my experiences because i’ve actually met some of the kindest people in the world through this fan base.

the gwen fandom, the gwandom, the gwendoline christie fandom , the lesbian cesspool, has been an incredible experience that i’m grateful i’ve had the pleasure of being apart of.

i went through a rough patch during november, and if i hadn’t found out about gwen, or met such wonderful people during my time here , i honestly wouldn’t be here right now. i owe my life to these people, gwen included. i will forever adore miss christie and what she stands for alongside the friends i’ve made along the way.

and while i know someday this hyperfix will end, it’s really disheartening to me when a fandom is what makes me grow distant from things i enjoy. it happened before, i feel as though it is happening all over again.

and no, i’m not taking issue with anything like the catrissa stuff or the brienne and larissa ship going around or anything like that. i like that we can all be weird together and enjoy aus like catrissa and crackships like bririssa (not sure the official name that was decided lol). my issue is the amount of content i’ve seen that either focuses on gwen herself, or the strange relationship with minors, or the odd artwork of gwen, and the absolute disgusting behaviour towards giles.

gwen would be absolutely appalled seeing fanfictions of herself that involve nsfw or just her in general, anyone would, it’s disgusting to make works of real people in that setting. it’s like you’re treating them as an original character you can mould and manipulate as you see fit and using someone who is real with thought and feeling and consciousness for smut fics is not okay, or any fic in general. i totally get the hype around her characters, i literally have “brienne’s princess” in my bio and i’ve had “jane murdstone’s bloodbag” (in reference to my vamp au) as a name in a discord server.

but i think the fandom has begun to blur the lines between fictional characters and reality settings when it comes to gwen and the personalities she portrays on the television screen. it’s not fair to her. it’s disgusting. i’ve seen a minor do it, i’ve seen a grown adult do it. it’s something i don’t see shamed and frowned upon often enough and it’s really not okay.

on that note i’d like to quickly mention the photos, we alllll know what photos i’m talking about. the bunny one, the nudes, the ones gwen has expressed regret towards and wishes to not have them spread. was there not a “fan” who brought her a book of her nudes and wanted her to sign it? that person who was blocked on instagram by gwen because they reposted her nudes on their story and tagged her???? how can you refer to yourself as a fan after behaving so abhorrently? absolutely disgusting behaviour. as a collective fandom we need to stop touching those photos (metaphorically speaking) and leave them in the past.

i’ve been told of numerous circumstances in which adults have shown their nsfw works to minors in this fandom and it has to fucking stop. it’s disgusting!! how can you do that knowingly? i constantly ponder terminating my account after a minor got ahold of my nsfw work, and upon realising they WERE a minor it was as simple as blocking and moving on. it’s truly not that hard, folks. and the minors on tiktok who fight with others saying silly things like “that’s my wife” or worse. i’ve seen it all, i feel like, and the more i see it the more sick i become. i cannot stand it.

i have seen and heard of fans who have fat shamed gwen for that one pink dress she wore to the met gala. she looked so happy in that dress, and the audacity one must have to fatshame that poor woman on twitter then turn around and continue to proclaim your ‘love for her’ as if you’d done no wrong? are you fucking serious? are you mental?

and the sexualisation over the porcelain doll look, gods some of you are sick. those were not real breasts, people. considering the fact she wholeheartedly regrets her nude photoshoots , what possesses you to believe she would actually flaunt her chest in that outfit?

the blatant mistreatment of poor giles is not fucking okay either. just because you’re jealous of someone who makes her immensely happy does not give you the right to post something so vile and cruel about him. shame on you. why do you believe this is okay to post:

????????

are you serious? have any of you stopped to consider how HAPPY giles makes her? or is her happiness the last thing you ponder when you look at her? have you even noticed how unhappy she looks lately? have you truly paused to consider how she would feel about seeing this on your page, random twitter user, or the rest of you who think this is okay? bless your hearts.

and some of the absolutely horrific things i’ve seen about her online and the hurtful behaviour towards giles makes me question the difference between a fan and just the general paparazzi. because if you truly loved her and you truly loved giles then i would not be ranting into the fucking void about it for no reason.

i avoid interacting with pages i find problematic on here to keep from stirring the pot but tonight i chose violence and got reeeeeal pissy about how i felt about this place. it’s not okay what i see on here and it’s getting exhausting seeing the same cycle of content on a daily.

that’s everything i have to say, i think. i probably missed a lot that should be discussed in the comments but i’m done for now because i know if i go on i’ll probably cry.

before you post things about real people with real feelings , stop to consider how they will feel those real feelings towards the content you put out. chances are you’ll become less problematic and obnoxious that way. 💘

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mcytblraufest · 2 months

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MCYTBLR AU Fest: General Rules and FAQ

TIMELINE:

May 4: Discord opens at 0:00, Artist creation starts. May 30-31: Artists with a finished piece of Art can sign up. May 31: Artist creation period ends at midnight. June 2-3: Writers can claim art and be assigned to Teams. June 6-7: Writers who wish to be assigned a Beta Reader can sign up (this is optional) June 9-10: Beta Writers can claim writers/art and be assigned to Teams June 29-30: Check-in #1 July 26: Writer creation period ends at midnight. Unless you have an extension, you must be fully ready to post at this point. July 27: Posting period begins at 0:00 August 2: Extension period ends. Unless you are a pinch hitter, you must be fully ready to post at this point. August 9: Posting Period ends. All work must be completely posted by midnight.

ABOUT:

MCYTBLR AU Fest is a mini reverse-big-bang event where artists and writers work together in teams to make stories and art inspired by MCYT and set in an Alternate Universe.

EXPECTATION:

Artists must make a completed Art piece. Writers must deliver a story of at least 5k words, inspired by the art they signed up for. Dark or triggering topics or themes must be tagged for.

RULES:

You must be a member of the discord, for team matching.

Because of Tumblr, Ao3 and Discord TOS, you must be 13 to participate.

Respect your fellow participants, even when you disagree on fandom matters

You agree to work together with your teammate(s) to make a piece of art and a fic together, and link to each other's works.

All works must be MCYT-centric and set in an AU— no canon-compliance.

No AI-Generated content.

LINKS:

Discord: TBA Ao3 Collection: Here

FAQ:

What is MCYTBLR AU Fest? MCYTBLR AU Fest is a reverse minibang-type event where writers and artists come together to create fanworks centred on MCYT and set in an alternate universe from canon.

How does it work? Artists will have a month to complete an art piece. After a month, once the art is complete, they will submit the art, with information about server, characters, relationships, and any warnings they are opting into, which will be posted anonymously for writers to view and claim, first-come-first-serve. Teams are assigned by mods, and then writers will have two months of creation time to make a pice inspired by the work (minimum 5k words).

What type of MCYT is included? We welcome creations based on any SMP, whether or not they have a canon tag on Ao3. Mianite, DSMP, QSMP, Hermitcraft, 3rd Life, Lifesteal, Witchcraft SMP— it’s all welcome.

Can I join if my Art is a Game/Web Weave? We welcome all types of art— web weave, game, traditional art, original songs, videos, etc. While the list is not exhaustive, we have outlined some of the baseline expectations for an art piece below.

What are the requirements for art? It is difficult to define precise expectations for art pieces, especially given the broad realm of things that could count as art. We are primarily looking for art that is complete to a level that you would normally post as "finished", ready to inspire a fic piece of 5k or more, containing an audio or visual component beyond the confines of the written word, that does not take more than an hour to consume. While you will have the opportunity to include your understanding of the world in things such as if the relationships depicted are romantic or not, the art piece must stand alone without explanatory text or extra worldbuilding.

The defined requirements for different forms of art are:

Digital or Traditional art: one piece, completed to whatever you would normally post as "finished", ready to inspire a fanfic.

Web Weaves: a web weave of at least ten elements, original or properly credited.

Video/animatic: a video at least 30 seconds long.

Other Art Form: other art forms such as fan games or original songs would fall under this category. If you wanted to sign up with an Other art form, you need to contact the mod team and work out what minimum expectations would be for your art.

Is shipping allowed? Yes. Because there is no broad fandom-wide consensus about how Creator boundaries are to be enforced in specific cases (whether it's okay to write beeduo as /r or /p is an obvious one, or whether it’s permitted to ship Joel Smallishbeans) or between specific fandoms (Lifesteal approach to shipping and boundaries is different from HBG is different from DSMP), the mods will not be policing any specific understanding of boundaries across the event. The event's motivating ethos is Don't Like Don't Read, in that artists will be able to specify for themselves if a given relationship is to be interpreted as romantic or platonic, and writers will choose to opt into that, and NSFW will have to be specifically opted into on both sides.

Is NSFW allowed? Yes. NSFW works are allowed, but must be opted into, both in terms of viewing art and in terms of creating fic. No one under 18 is permitted to opt into NSFW and attempts to do so will be grounds for a ban from this event and anywhere else the mod team touches. For the comfort of the greatest number of participants, and to conform with Tumblr TOS, anything with the tags Underage or Incest will not be permitted to be part of the event.

Are major archive warnings (noncon/graphic depictions of violence/MCD) allowed? Aside from the content rules governing NSFW (no underage or incest, for the comfort of the greatest number of participants), major archive warnings are allowed. Depictions of real life horrors such as genocide and slavery are not-uncommon motifs in MCYT fics, and the mod team is not interested in legislating which types of horrors, griefs or abuses are inherently worse than others and are therefore off-limits. Because holding writing to a quality standard or saying only survivors can write atrocities is unworkable from a moderation standpoint, the three mentioned major archive warnings (MCD, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Noncon), are permitted to be included.

However, Major Archive Warnings must be explicitly opted into by the artist, and writers are free to not include Major Archive Warnings that their artist has permitted. Delivering un-asked for major archive warnings is grounds for a ban from this event. The mod team reserves the right to warn other mod teams on both the MCYT and Multi-fandom side about your bad behaviour.

What kind of an information will I provide as an Artist? How long or detailed? Artists will be able to specify

the server their art takes place on

the characters in the work

whether the relationships in the work are romantic, platonic, or could be interpreted either way

if they are okay with NSFW work

what age group of people they are okay working with

the type of AU it is

any content warnings present in the work already (i.e. gore, eyestrain, child death)

if the work is nsfw

any major archive warnings they are okay with happening in the story

common fandom themes and/or triggering content that they are okay with happening in the story.

A DNW

What sort of fandom themes will I specify? While this will not be an exhaustive list of every possible triggering concept, the mods want artists to be able to specify if they are okay with dynamics that circulate in the fandom that may be triggering or people simply may have strong opinions on, and for writers to be able to sort by that. Some of the themes include domestic abuse, alcoholism, family dynamics, pregnancy, dubcon, torture, body horror, dehumanization, child death, non-consensual touching, drugging, etc.

What is a DNW?

Artists will have the opportunity to fill out a DNW, which stands for Do Not Want. This is anything that has the potential to ruin a fic for you, and is where you opt out of content that would trigger, squick, or just render the gift unreadable for you. DNWs must be phrased politely, (so no "No foster aus because they suck and you suck if you like them"), and they must be reasonable, (so no "no blood/injury" if the art depicted shows injury, and no attempting to box someone into a specific gift beyond what is depicted in the art, so no "dnw anything that isn't a modern au where scar is a theatre teacher and grian is a biology teacher and they live in a city named hermitopia and grian has a situationship with mumbo and scarian has a rivalry at a coffee shop for the half-price muffins and jellie has psychic powers she's manipulating the muffin market with" if that is not clear from the art), and they must be specific and clear, (so no “no triggering content"), but they can be as petty (disliking 1st person) or as broad-reaching (no modern aus, no specific ships not depicted, no crossovers with specific servers or fics) as you like. Deliberately breaking someone's DNW is grounds for a ban from the exchange.

Is Dark/Violent content allowed? As long as it is something that the artist has not opted out of, yes. For many of us, the source material that originally drew us to the fandom includes major character death, torture, murder-for-hire, death games, public executions and more. The fanfiction that arose from the source material follows in that trend. We will allow dark content to be part of the event, but it must be tagged for.

We also ask that participants use best judgement in delivering commonly triggering topics un-asked for. We reserve the right to ban people at mod's discretion for delivering unrequested triggering content, under the "do not be an asshole" rule.

Moreover, if your fic is rated E for any reason, (including violence or gore) your entire team must be 18+

How can I get involved? You can participate in this event as a:

Author

Artist

Pinch Hitter

Beta Reader

You can even sign up for multiple roles, as long as you’re very sure you can make your deadlines!

What is a Pinch Hitter? A pinch hitter is a person who saves the day and steps in when the original creator is unable to deliver their work for whatever reason, making a new work on an accelerated timeline. You must reach the minimum word count of 5k. .

When do I have to join the discord? You have the option to join the dicord and hang out as soon as creation starts on May 4, and if you are an artist, you must join before sign-ups close on May 31. If you are a writer, you must join the discord before claims begin on June 1st. If you are a Beta Reader, we'd ask that you join before claims begin on June 9th.

How does team assignment/claims work? We will release a document with all the art pieces linked in it, and 24 hours afterwards we will release a sign-up form. Writers will be expected to list out out a top-five of artists they want to work with, and mods will match writers with art on a first-come-first-served basis.

How does Beta Reader assignment work? Shortly after writer sign-ups end, writers who wish to sign up for Beta Readers will be able to do so. In a similar way to how writers claimed art, beta readers will be given a list of summaries and then, 24 hours later, will be able to submit a short list of fics they want to help work on. Beta readers will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

What happens if there are more artists than authors, or more authors than artists? If there are more writers, some artists will be assigned multiple writers. If there are more artists, we will put in place a question where writers can specify that they’d be willing to make multiple pieces, and a (hopefully small) number of writers would be assigned multiple teams.

What if all the artists I list have already been assigned? If every artist you wish to opt into has already been assigned, mods will contact you and ask if you wish to be matched to people who have not yet been claimed. You will then be able to choose if you wish to claim other teams, or wait and hope that there will be more writers than artists, and multiple writers on a team will be opened up. If that happens, you can re-submit your list and be assigned as a writer to one of your original artists.

I’m in [insert time zone here]. What if I’m not awake when claims open? There will be a spot to input your time zone in the discord. Mods will try to open the claims at a time that works for as many writers as possible. The art pieces will also be available for 24 hours before claims so that everyone can view them and pick out the ones that are the most interesting to them. We will aim for claims to open between 7 a.m. and 1 a.m. for as many writers as possible across all time zones. If claims fall outside that zone for you, you’ll be able to contact a mod and we’ll work out an alternative method for claims for you.

I don’t know what time zone I’m in? Go to timeanddate.com and enter the nearest major city, and it will tell you your current time zone.

What’s a check-in and how do they work? Check-ins are there to make sure everyone is on track to finish their piece in time, and to communicate any issues with the mods! If you know that you won’t be able to check in on a specific date (lack of internet, etc), please contact the mods in advance.

How long should my fic be? The minimum word count is 5,000 words! There is no maximum word count, but we ask you to be mindful of how much you can actually create in these two months.

If I wrote a multi-chapter work, do I have to have it all posted by the end of Posting Period? You must post your work in its entirety by the end of the two-week posting period.

What does AU mean in this context? AU stands for Alternate Universe and in this case means anything that would make the work not able to be tagged as canon compliant. Alternate endings, role reversals, complete setting or plot swaps, and crossovers all count. As this is a fest specifically to celebrate AUs, we ask that the AU be a significant and celebrated part of the work, not something that could be skipped if you aren’t paying attention.

Can I create two fics for my artist? Absolutely! There is no maximum for number of fics you want to create, but again, be mindful of not biting off more than you can chew two months of creation time.

Can I sign up with two pieces of art? You are welcome to sign up as part of the fest with multiple art pieces. However, if you do so, we will ask that you prioritize which art piece you want to be matched on first, and you will only receive a match to your secondary art piece after everyone else has an writer. We’re going to proritize every particpant getting a team before we prioritize every art piece getting a team.

Can I sign up with a multi-piece art piece? If you want to sign up with a web weave that features multiple panels, a long video, a long comic, a series of connected art pieces, a song cycle, or any other more complex/more ornate work, you are welcome to. We just ask that you make sure you can complete your art piece during the month of artist creation time, and keep in mind that if your piece is sufficiently complex, that might restrict the writers who are able to sign up for your piece. But if you think you can pull it off, then go for it.

Can I sign up with a writing buddy— as part of a collab team? You are welcome to sign up as a collaborative team, either an art team or a writing team! We ask that you make sure you work together well, and when you sign up for an team, you must declare that you’re a duo, so people know that they’ll be getting multiple team members and not one.

Can I submit an art piece that is part of a larger AU? All art pieces must stand alone, so you can't have it that your writer has to consider other art pieces to make a work. The art must also be made specifically for the event. We ask that you not submit an art piece that was made prior to the event, or one that is part of an au you've posted about so often that it will effectively de-anon you. Brainstorming or sketching early is fine.

Once my art piece is done, when can I post it? Art and fic should be posted together, during the Posting Period at the beginning of August. Once you have your art done, you'll have to hold onto it for another two months, while your writer is working.

What if I need to drop out? It is your responsibility to communicate with us if you need to drop out of the event for any reason, and we do need that communication. We know that life is no respecter of fic and art deadlines, so no hard feelings if something happens. However, we would hate for any artist to end up having no fic for their art, so please think about this if you are thinking of dropping out close to reveals. Dropping out after the last check-in without informing the mods will result in not being permitted to take part in further events run by this mod team.

I have a question not answered here? Send us an ask on tumblr, contact @antimony-medusa on tumblr or discord!

#mcytblrsource #dsmp #hermitcraft #traffic series #qsmp #reverse big bang #faq

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kings-roar · 12 days

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credit card: prologue

summary: Yuu gets invited on their first journey to one of their schoolmates’ hometowns! But with the meager allowance given by that stingy headmage, they don’t think they have enough to cover the travel. Luckily for them, they’re dating a super rich (and surprisingly generous) boyfriend. notes: this is part one of my series: credit card! details/warnings: gender-neutral pronouns, yuu instead of y/n, adult!yuu, established relationship, leoyuu, follows EN server

ao3 link: xxx

It was on a lazy Friday evening in the botanical gardens when Yuu was approached by an energetic ball of energy, otherwise known as Kalim Al-Asim, and his childhood companion Jamil. Yuu looks up just as Kalim barrels into them with a hug. They laugh as Jamil begins to scold Kalim, reminding the latter to be aware of boundaries, something that is hardly in the young heir’s vocabulary.

“How can I help you, Kalim?” The prefect moves their homework to the side as they reciprocate the second year’s hug.

“We’re going on a trip!” he exclaims excitedly. Yuu tilts their head to the side.

“Oh? Well, congrats! I hope you have fun.”

“What are you talking about? You’re coming with us!”

‘… Huh?’

“Kalim,” Jamil’s voice sounds tired as he places a hand on his classmate’s shoulder. “You can’t just tell someone they’re going somewhere. You have to ask them first.”

“Oh, right! Well, Yuu, do you wanna come home with us?”

Jamil smacks a hand to his forehead as Yuu continues to become more and more confused. What does he mean, “come home with us”? Is Crowley kicking them out of the campus? Did Grim do something whilst with the Heartslabyul duo? Yuu thought they could trust those two, but maybe they were wrong.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Jamil explains with a tired sigh. “Kalim and I are heading back home, to the Scalding Sands, for the Yasamina River Fireworks Fest.”

“And since you’re from another world, I’d love to show you my hometown, Yuu!” Kalim adds with a beaming smile. “We got six VIP seats, so you and Grim can both tag along! Oh, maybe I should hit up the guys from my Pop Music club too!”

“Wait a minute, you are one of the organizers of the event, Kalim, and as your attendant, I will also be at your side. Inviting Grim and Yuu last minute is one thing, but adding even MORE people whilst we’re busy is too much.”

“It’ll be fine, Jamil! The more the merrier, as they say. Besides, They can take care of their own, right?” Kalim looks towards Yuu with shining, puppy-dog eyes.

“Um, sure.” they nod hesitantly. “But what about the cost? As you can probably guess, Crowley isn’t really on the generous side…”

“Well, the seats for the festival are covered by your tickets. The street food is pretty cheap though! Maybe you could ask the headmage to lend you some more money?”

“Eh, I doubt he’d agree. Grim is also a really big eater.”

Suddenly, a figure jumps down from the tree Yuu was leaning against. The Scarabia duo jumps in surprise, whilst the prefect merely smiled. The figure, ignoring his two underclassmen, ruffles Yuu’s head lightly before sitting down beside them. His long tail curls around Yuu’s wrist as he yawns.

“Hey, Leona-senpai!” Kalim’s the first to recover from the unexpected guest. “Can’t believe I didn’t notice you up in that tree.”

“‘Course you didn’t,” the beastman smirks. “An herbivore like you would never be able to detect a beastman like me.” The comment doesn’t hold much malice in it, if any, and Kalim continues as if nothing happened.

“Well, anyway, were you able to hear everything? Do you wanna come with us?”

“Kalim!”

“What? Leona-senpai is a classmate of ours! Besides, it would be rude not to invite him after hearing us invite Yuu and Grim.”

Leona yawns again as he nestles himself closer to his favourite human, who also happens to be his partner. His eyes are only half open, a sign that he’s just about ready to fall asleep once again.

“A trip to the Scalding Sands? I’ll pass; not a huge fan of large crowds. But if you wanna go, Yuu…” He stares into his lover’s eyes, waiting for a response. The prefect gives it a thought before answering.

“Hm, well I would like to go, since the festival is a once-a-year event. After all, who knows if I’ll be here to experience it again.”

Leona ignores the twinge in his heart at the thought of his favourite herbivore leaving his side, opting instead to reach into his pocket. He takes out a leather wallet, opening it with one hand and expertly fishing out a thin object. The prince places it gently into Yuu’s hand and quickly tucks away his wallet.

“There, now you can enjoy yourself without worrying. Just don’t let that little weasel see it. He might think this means he can spend on whatever without thinking.”

Yuu’s eyes widen as they unfurl their hand, their gaze falling on a shiny black credit card embellished with gold printed words. LEONA KINGSCHOLAR bedazzles the front, and a shiny crown emblem is stamped at the end of his name. The name of some unknown bank, as well as other details, dot the rest of the card. They flip it over and over, studying it carefully to make sure it’s real. Kalim and Jamil’s faces are also aghast as they recognize the card.

“WOAH!” Kalim gasps. “Is that a black card?! I have one too!”

From the sounds of Kalim’s voice, a black card seems exceptionally rare. Perhaps only the rich and royalty could own one. Either way, Yuu remained quite shocked at the mere fact that Leona trusted them enough to loan them his card. After all, he’s a prince! If Yuu ended up misplacing the card, and it got into the wrong hands, then who knows what could happen to THE prince of Sunset Savanna if his royal funds were taken.

“See? You’re all set now. Now hurry up and leave. You’re digging into my date time.”

“All you’re doing is sleeping…” Jamil mumbles, though it still reaches the beastman’s ears. “Whatever. Let’s go, Kalim. Because of you, I have to rearrange a bunch of things.”

“I’ll pass the news onto Grim for ya, Yuu! Be sure to be at the Mirror in the morning!” Kalim waves to the prefect and beastman as he’s dragged off by Jamil.

Once they’re gone, Leona gently brings Yuu closer to him, nuzzling his face into the crook of their neck. The prefect smiles and softly begins to brush their fingers through the prince’s brown locks, eliciting a pleased noise from the back of his throat.

“Thanks for trusting me with your card, Leona. I’ll be sure to keep it safe and use it wisely.”

“‘s all good,” Leona’s words come out slurred, the familiar and comforting scent of the gardens and his love lulling him back into dreamland. “Just want you to enjoy yourself.”

Leona finally falls asleep, and Yuu joins him once they’ve packed all their things. Trying to do homework now would be futile, it seems. The two peacefully slumber in each other’s embrace for the next hour or so, until Grim and Ruggie came to bring them back to their dorms for curfew.

#credit card series #twisted wonderland #twst #leoyuu #twst leona #twst yuu #leona kingscholar #leona kingscholar x reader #leona kingscholar x yuu #jamil viper #kalim al-asim #al'ab nariya

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azirafeast · 6 months

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I am SO EXCITED for the 4th Annual #Azirafeast, The Feast Day of the Angel Aziraphale, an inclusive fandom event! It’s celebrated November 19th and is a made-up holiday that brings the community together, regardless of how a person participates in fandom.

On November 19th, everyone is welcome to celebrate the Feast Day of Aziraphale by drinking cocoa and wine, eating good food, reading, being stylish on their own terms, enjoying the company of friends and embracing the spirit of Aziraphale! Please share your pics on socials with #Azirafeast!

Creators are encouraged to show Aziraphale indulging in what makes him happy or why you love him (canon or fanon!) Create “Lore” for why Aziraphale has a feast day! What miracles throughout history has he performed? Creations can be dramatic, serious, sexy or silly!

All forms of creation are welcome: Draw, write, sing, act, sew, bake, cosplay or anything else! However YOU want to appreciate our favorite angel. All variations, versions and representations of Aziraphale are welcome on the feast of Aziraphale.

Anything tagged #Azirafeast or I will reblog, the same for Instagram and Twitter. I’ve had a permanent highlight on my Instagram for the last 3 years, and maintained this tumblr. Check out what others have made for previous years!

There is also an AO3 Collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Azirafeast

Anything added to it I will promote on my socials for #azirafeast.

I know I don’t have the biggest following, but the idea is that on the feast of Aziraphale even fans who don’t have a large social media presence will still be seen, still have their experiences noticed, and will feel part of a community that cares.

Folk can get stressed about creating by a “due date.” I encourage folk to post early if they want, and to keep posting after Nov 19 if they miss the day or don’t finish in time. Aziraphale procrastinated on preventing the apocalypse, you’re just embracing that energy!

And remember, you don’t have to “make” anything to participate. Eating cake and lying to your boss is a great way to celebrate! Confuse some customers, watch a nature documentary, get drunk, be kind to someone (Muriel) who is new but trying their best!

Just make sure to tag your contributions with either #azirafeast so we can celebrate with you! Please feel welcome to take my words and reshare anyway that you like, and make your own posts to generate awareness! Please do share in any fandom communities you’re a part of, or feel free to try to convince people IRL this is totally a real holiday.

I do not run, own, control or anything of the sort in regards to #azirafeast. The idea came from Cliopadra and a private discord server, and the brilliant folk there picked the date and ran with it. I encourage folk to participate because I think it’s a lovely idea! It is NOT “mine.”

#azirafeast #feast of aziraphale #good omens #the feast of aziraphale #Azirafeast2023 #Azirafeast announcement

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 6 months

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AITA for entertaining a friendship with a child?

okay so this might be a weird one or even a controversial one i honestly have zero clue how other people will receive this, apologies in advance if i ramble!

to begin, i (23ftm) and this kid (15f) first met about a year ago. one of my best friends (23m) is a pretty big model and tiktoker and she was a fan of his, and she was pretty recognized online for making cool edits and stuff of him and coming to meetups etcetera, so he knew of her from there, and over time with always seeing each other at meet ups and her being in his discord server (where i mod) she kind of became pretty well known to us.

an important thing to note is that she's SUPER neurodivergent and she's had a really tough life. she lost her older brother a few years back and she's (i'm not sure of the correct way to put it, her family is originally from the netherlands and their english is kind of in the works so this is how they put it) developmentally behind a few years - her parents describe this as her being "mentally more 13 than 15" but her behaviour to me is even younger than that. she's very very innocent and trusting, very overemotional and sensitive to criticism etc, loves stuffed animals and pink and cartoons and all of that. she's told me she feels like a little kid sometimes and will talk/act like one so maybe there's an element of trauma-rooted age regression there, i'm not super sure - i'm not gonna get into detail but she's talked to me about her life a lot and she's had some pretty fucked up shit happen to her.

from the beginning she pretty much imprinted on me - she's told me before i remind her of the big brother she lost, and ever since then she's called me her "big brother" and "family" etc. at first i was more just playing along with it to make her happy but over time she really has become something like a little sister to me, i feel super protective of her. i want to become a teacher after college (not to mention eventually a parent with my fiancee) so i think at least part of it is that taking a kid 'under my wing' so to speak is giving me experience with it all. i've always been kinda paternal/protective over kids in general but i was the youngest sibling in my family so i never really had anyone to utilise that on before

she does rely super heavily on me emotionally, especially because after i found out she was being bullied pretty badly at school i started dropping by to keep her company during breaks/lunch and making sure shit was okay (which her still-living brother used to do, but he's a famous?? - unsure How famous, i don't know sports at all - footballer/soccer player who's often in another country and can't see her often anymore), and i've been working with her to curb that. i'm actually currently working with her parents to find her a good therapist and support system. she's no longer in the tiktok friend's discord just because it was getting a little all-consuming for her and we encouraged her to take a break, but she's done a TON of work on herself and maturing since then and she does plan to rejoin at some point soon.

however, i find it really really hard to gauge whether being so close with a child is... like normal? or not. i honestly can't tell if it's kind of the internet caution about adults talking to minors kind of warping my brain and making me overly wary of what people will think or if i'm doing something wrong or if it's genuinely like a weird situation, so i guess i'm looking for outside perspectives.

the things that make me question it is that like i said she's very 'mentally young', she's very sheltered, and there definitely seems to be an element of her kind of replacing the older brother figure she lost with me. on top of that, we met through her being a fan of my friend, and though she's now separate from that i worry there could still be an element of power there because i'm close with the guy she calls her idol. her family knows me and seem totally chill with everything, but they've told me she tells people at her school that i'm literally her brother and basically 100% talks about me as if i'm her biological family, which i find super sweet but at the same time wonder if it's healthy.

she obviously needs therapy and hopefully soon we can get her it, but: AITA for entertaining a sort of found family dynamic / friendship at all with someone very vulnerable and young or is this genuinely helpful for her?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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filmbyjy · 2 months

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MINESTREAM

SYPNOSIS > Wanting to start a new stream series with his best friends, Jay had a bright idea of playing some simple Minecraft with them. Everything was normal, until he realises there is another person in the call with them. He quickly learns that it was ni-ki’s older sister, (name). Watch how streaming a simple game of Minecraft can dig up some interesting feelings between the main leads.

EIGHT – asscrack

MASTERLIST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

a/n: the inspiration behind jake’s little world naming…that was the first word that popped into my head. don’t ask why. I’d like to know too.

finally after so long with multiple technical issues on jay’s end, the minecraft series could officially start. he could hear jake and ni-ki just chatting about the free online soccer game they found on steam. his eyes gazed the mute button right beside your username. the other boys had turned on their cameras in discord while you and angel(Yvette) didn’t.

he hasn’t once heard your voice. well, he could barely hear your voice since he shut ni-ki’s stream off earlier due to the boys attempting to catch something. he only heard your giggle once and that was it. nonetheless, in that short moment he thought you sounded adorable. his heart drumming in his chest, wondering how your voice would sound like.

he shook his head and clicked on the stream button. as per usual, he puts on a waiting screen to tell the viewers that ‘hey, we’re going to play soon. please wait.’

he unmutes in the discord, “hey, everything has been set up. I just wanna ask what should the server name be?”

“asscrack.” jake suggests as he looks up from his computer and directly into the camera.

“what?” heeseung speaks up as he was caught off guard by the weird name.

“I don’t know, don’t ask me. I’m shit at giving names to things.” jake shrugs. the other boys deadpanned at him.

“let’s name it…sunoo and the boys.” sunoo suggests.

“as if. just put the default ‘My World’ that’s the easiest. not a single hassle to the world.” jungwon adds.

“Alphas.” sunghoon voices out.

“uhh, have you forgotten there are two girls here?” ni-ki says.

“well, who cares about that. Women can be dominant too.” sunghoon shrugs.

jay sighs, “I’m just going to call it MineStream.”

“lame ass name.” jake says. jay turns on his camera on discord and zooms in the camera to his face. he gave jake a death stare and so jake awkwardly laughs it off.

“okay, you scare me. I’m sorry.” jake pouts.

as for you, the moment jay opened his facecam. your eyes widened, a tiny gasp left your throat. since no one could see/hear your reaction due to you being muted and your camera was turned off, you were basically in shock. that man is most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

the way his eyebrow raises as the rectangle glasses suited his face. he was just in a simple black shirt and his jet black hair was parted prettily. good lord. you were going to play with him? you were going to play with all these pretty boys?? oh lord.

“okay, the world is loading so wanna do the intro when we all load into the world?” jay asks.

“yeah, we should. we have new guests here and we have to introduce the fans too!” sunghoon says.

“alright, I’ve already loaded in. I sent the world invite into the discord. by the way, there are mods that I added to make the game more interesting.” jay says.

“the only interesting thing we should try to do is do hardcore mode or like a ‘if one person dies, everyone dies’ kinda thing.” sunoo suggests.

“we could do that for another time.”

you had clicked on the link and waited to load into the world. since ni-ki helped to create your account, you could easily go in and of course he was your first friend in the game. you had finally clicked turned on the camera in discord and so everyone could see you. you weren’t exactly streaming but you were recording for a video since ni-ki suggested that putting up videos onto YouTube also generates money. once everything was settled, jungwon claps his hand and starts off with the intro.

“hello everyone, today we are-” ni-ki’s character punches jungwon’s as he was talking. “ni-ki!”

“whoops misclick.” ni-ki says. jungwon rolls his eyes.

“today we are playing minecraft! woo!!”

“the premise of how this started. jay hyung wanted to do a series together that was nostalgic and so we decided to go with minecraft because who doesn’t love minecraft!” sunoo says.

“besides our normal friend group, we have two other people on here! let’s welcome angel and (name)!”

“hello hello.” angel says. her little vtuber character moves and tracks her movement.

“woah, cool character, angel. it’s really pretty.” sunoo says.

“oh, thank you.” angel smiles. everyone’s attention was now on you.

“oh umm, hi. I’m (name). I’m ni-ki’s older sister.” you waved towards the camera. everyone was mesmerised (excluding heeseung and ni-ki), you were beautiful.

“good god.” jake says.

“you have a very sexy voice. would love to hear that all night-” sunghoon gets cut off.

“sunghoon hyung, i will find a way to ban you from this server.” ni-ki warns him.

you giggled and jay’s heart melts. god, he’s a simp but he can’t show that…his facecam was turned on. jay turns to read a couple of his comments. most of them were simping for you. kinda made him jealous, not going to lie. plus, it didn’t help that jay had this overlay thing where whoever talked, it would display the person’s facecam (if turned on) from discord to his livestream.

— “she’s so pretty.”

— “wow, she’s so…no wonder she’s ni-ki’s older sister. the family genes are so strong.”

“let’s just start playing. gather resources everyone.” jay says.

and so everyone does. each of them collected wood, from the trees. you sat there looking clueless and so jay comes up to you in game.

“something wrong?” he asks.

“oh, sorry. this is my first time playing minecraft so I have zero clue how to do things.”

“want me to guide you?”

“sure.”

jay happily guides you on how to play the game, from punching wood to making crafting benches and finally making tools. jay turns to read the comments for a bit,

— “woah, what is this visual couple going on?”

— “yoooo, they would look cute together! like wow.”

jay was satisfied by the comments. he can’t help but look at your facecam, your concentrated face as you mined for stone and attempted to make stone weapons.

“hyung!” jungwon whacks jay’s character. it causes him to turn around.

“did you have to hit me.” jay deadpans.

“whoops, anyways. ni-ki and sunoo found a cave. I don’t remember minecraft caves being fucking huge.”

“there was a huge update I believe 1-2 years ago so yes, huge cave.”

“they also found a mob spawner with saddles in the chest and jake hyung stole them to try and get horses.”

jay sighs, “can’t say I’m not surprised.”

“are you and (name) noona flirting?” jungwon suddenly asks. it causes you and jay and to look at each other in game before turning to jungwon.

“no? he’s just teaching me how to play minecraft.”

“yeah, she doesn’t know much about the game so what better way then to teach her?”

“don’t believe it one bit. next thing you know, we will have a couple in a minecraft server who share a house together, sleep together and have cats and dogs together.”

— “oooo, jungwon is onto something.”

“the comments are agreeing with me.” jungwon smirks.

“shut the fuck up, my friend.” jay shoos jungwon away. the younger boy runs off to find sunghoon, who wants currently getting chased by a creeper.

jay sticks by you throughout the whole thing, he gives you tips and even hands you some stuff.

“we are making a community.” heeseung says.

“and why?”

“because with 9 people on this server, all the resources are going to be sucked up. also I am not sharing a house with any of you. especially, (name). she’ll make the house with pink wood.”

“there’s pink wood?” you say.

“there is, you just need to find a cherry blossom biome.” jay explains.

“why are you helping her?” heeseung asks.

“because she doesn’t know how to play and I’m just being a gentleman since you guys aren’t helping her, clearly.”

jake bursts out laughing, “I’m sorry but this is the first time I see you being so gentlemanly to a woman.”

“do you want me to set myself into creative so I can blow up your shit dirt house.” jay threatens.

“go ahead, I feel like renovating it anyways. just let me move my stuff first-”

sunoo quietly hands jay some tnt and a flint and steel. before jake could even grabbing his things from the chest. jay covers his base with the tnt and ignites it. it hisses.

“(name), I suggest you run if you don’t wanna blow up.” jay warns.

“oh.” you quickly dashed out of the way and the explosion was massive. it causes sunghoon to yell.

“I had a pet dog in there…” jake says.

“too bad, mess with me again and I’ll burn your next house.” jay says.

jake definitely learnt his lesson of not teasing jay during this session.

taglist[open]: @bldelaine @velvtcherie @shalkeren @kgneptun @yenqa @dammit-jjk @sionshiii @enhaz1 @mrchweeee @ncityzenz @autumn583 @okokok4 @ariadores @n1k1mura @kwiwin @drunkdazeded @justkatey @thatsroug @auesoooo @bunchofroses07 @j4ysluv @heeseungwifeyyy @smouches @bubblytaetae @dimplewonie @brachioanton @blackhairandbangs @heestrawberries @amesification @rizzshimura @y4wnjunz @rainyjy @pkjay @simjyunnie @imtoanonymousforyou @jungwoneez @jeongingf1 @astrae4 @heartswonn @pinkishyngs @heeseungsbabyy @in-somnias-world @ramenoil @wantmatthew @leehanascent @kayyssw @allisonleannn @kim2005bomi @saurxcream @urmomssneakylink @zyvlxqht @honeyboobear @ddazed-lhs @bee-the-loser @sunkislove @eleanorheartschishiya @jayjongie @woninluv @artstaeh @jwnghyuns @junissy

(want to be added into the taglist? just send an ask or fill up this short form here!)

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jr-bigbang · 19 days

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We’re thrilled to announce our 2024/25 James/Regulus Big Bang! ☀️✨

For those who may be unfamiliar, a ‘Big Bang’ fest brings fanfic writers and fan artists together in a collaborative space to create illustrated fanfiction for a particular pairing. Over the course of several months, writers will write fanfiction centered on ‘Jegulus’ (James Potter x Regulus Black). Artists will then ‘claim’ those fics and create art for them!

Community is the backbone of fandom and we’re so excited to create a collaborative space for authors and artists to work together to contribute fan works to a ship that means so much to us. As we get closer to the fest, we’ll be sending out invitations to our Discord server so all of us can mingle and bond over our shared love of this ship!

We hope you follow along and reach out with any questions (or general excitement!). For additional information, including our schedule, look under the cut!

Love from your mods,

@wolfpadx, @just--vi, @imdamagecontrol, @badhairred, @lemonlans, and @steveahoi

Authors are expected to submit one fanfic that is at least 20k words long (and no longer than 200k words). Since this is a J/R Big Bang, Jegulus must be the primary focus/ship. Secondary or background ships are permitted but must not be the focus of the fic. Authors are allowed to collaborate on a fic, but may only submit one fic (that means that if you co-write, you may not also submit an individual fic). Because of the timeline and word count expectations of the Big Bang fics we require all authors to have at least one existing published fic of 20k words.

Artists are expected to submit at least two pieces of work per fic, including a banner and a piece of artwork. Artists may submit additional pieces of art for the fic they claim but are not required to! Artists will be allowed to select one fic to illustrate during initial sign ups. Artists may be allowed to select additional fics if some remain unclaimed!

Betas are welcome to join the fest! Authors are strongly encouraged (but not required) to use a Beta. Authors may bring their own Beta into the fest (we simply ask that they sign up as any other Beta might), or, if they do not have a Beta and would like one, the mods will pair an Author and a Beta for the fest.

Rules and further information will be released soon. We wanted to introduce our fest to you now to give you all ample time to plan your fics since this is an open-prompt fest (meaning you decide on the plot so long as it is James Potter x Regulus Black-centric), and to shuffle your schedules/WIP plans around if needed.

Schedule

#jrbigbang #jegulus #regulus black #james potter #sunseeker #reblog for more reach!#we'd love to see all you lovely people there #marauders #fanfic #marauders fest #jegulus fest #starchaser

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haunting-heroes-creative-games · 4 months

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✨ Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Haunting Heroes Discord But Didn’t Want To Ask ✨

Are you looking to join this DPxDC server but don't know what it's about? Are you new to Discord and want to figure a few dynamics about it first? Then this is the post for you!

We're Super excited to share with you some of the features you can expect when you join the Haunting Heroes DPxDC Discord server.

🔷 I’m new to Discord. What is Discord?

A noble question. Discord is a messaging/private server application where you can join servers to chat, text, and video call people. Lots of fandoms have servers dedicated to their beloved show/book/comics/blorbos

It’s a popular platform because a) it’s free and b) it’s very easy to organize.

Haunting Heroes, as such, is essentially a private chat room where you can talk about DPxDC with other fans. There are other DPxDC servers, but you can never have too many!

🔷 What do you do on Haunting Heroes?

We do a lot! If you’re here, you may have seen the results of the Writing Games we’ve played, like "Who Wrote That?" as well as "Guess That Fic" (a fun way to give fic recs AND test your DPxDC fic knowledge!).

We also share updates of fanart, non fanart, and fan fics, as well as recommendations to stories we’ve read and enjoyed.

And we have plenty of ways to discuss ideas: from canon resources to headcanons that intrigue you; from prompts to workshopping your story ideas; from asking for a beta-reader to sharing your progress. Sometimes this even happens live while doing a sprint with others.

🔷 What does ‘18+ SFW’ mean?

18+ is fairly straightforward: you have to be 18 years or older to join our server. So why SFW?

We decided to emphasize the Safe For Work aspect not because no NSFW content is allowed—we have a flourishing NSFW category as well as a Dark Category with channels for people to talk about it to your hearts’ content! We welcome more mature content, but not everyone wants to engage in it, or only want to engage on their own terms. Being able to curate what you do and don't see is important to us, hence the separate categories (and having to self-select a role to see the NSFW + Dark channels)

We add SFW when talking about HH because ‘18+’ on its own has certain connotations (just like ‘adult content’ or ‘adults only’).

Why, then, are we an 18+ server? We appreciate the under 18s in our fandom, and there are lots of fandom places that are open to all ages (for example, this blog!). But there are older fans who feel more comfortable in an adult oriented space. We noted that a place for adults only in the DPxDC fandom was missing, and wanted to fill that niche.

🔷 Why Should I Join?

✏️ If you’re a writer, you can find a beta reader or ping the Ideas Helper role if you want some help with your story. You can find and share resources for various things, such as writing, art, and how to use A03.

🐱 We also share lots of pictures of our pets!

💡 We have fun emojis and stickers unique to Haunting Heroes, many made by people who are part of the server.

⭐️ We have a starboard! If someone says something you find funny, react to their post with a star emoji; if a post gets 9 stars, it gets shared to the board! It’s like the highlights reel at the end of a Mario Kart Race, but user generated. It's a good way to quickly know what's been going on in the server.

🐰 Our Bunny Hutch (AKA prompts sharing category) is always hopping. Enter at your own risk! You may go there with the intention of dropping off one prompt for someone else to adopt, and leave having adopted 4 new WIPS of your own!

And most importantly, we are a fandom community looking to share with each other the things we love doing or seeing in the fandom. You are likely to find writers, artists, and commenters you know from AO3 or Tumblr, but you might also find new friends to hang out with or be inspired by new things while lurking.

🔷 What can I expect upon joining?

☑️ Once you join, you will have to read our guidelines to make sure you agree with them and know what you can expect in terms of how we handle the server.

☑️ There are also roles to be selected so you can customize your experience. Some roles will allow you to give information to other members (such as the pronouns you select), others will give you an aesthetic (such as color roles), others are pingable and alert you for specific activities (such as movie nights ,or a new writing game being set up, or when someone wants others to bounce ideas). Some will also grant you access to specific sections in our server, such as dark or nsfw channels, which won't be visible otherwise.

☑️ Don't forget to also select the 18+ role which grants you acces to the whole server. This one is made specifically to confirm you agree with the guidelines and are 18 or older, since that's our sole requirement to join the server.

☑️ Once you define your roles, you can check our server roadmap to guide you through the many channels we have in the server with descriptions for each of them and the bots we have available to help through the experience.

☑️ Don't worry if you get a few pings upon entering: we have a welcome mat where others will greet you once you're in.

🔷 How can I join?

To join, send us an ask confirming you're 18+ and someone in our team will send you the link. You can find the ask box as "Ask us anything here" at the top of our blog or clicking here. Please make sure you check your inbox for our reply. If you sent us an ask and haven't gotten a reply in 48hrs, please let us know either replying in this post or contacting one of our mods.

We hope you have fun and fulfill your hero-haunting needs💚👻

#haunting heroes #server promotion #discord server #dpxdc #danny phantom #dc

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tavyliasin · 4 months

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Villain-Fucker Angst Hours

Good timezone, darlings~ Are you ready to get all up in your feelings? No? Me neither, loves, but here we are regardless so the words are going to flow as they usually do... This is focused on Raphael from Baldur's Gate 3 and his fandom, but the latter section can easily apply to any villain fandom.

Self-Analysis of Devil-Fuckery, Or Why Do I Adore Raphael When He Is Very Obviously Evil: A Short Essay by TavyliaSin (Who Still Cannot Name Anything With Less Than A Full Paragraph) ((NSFW)) (((Game Spoilers)))

The following may discuss heavier topics, but without specifics, so whilst it should be safe for most to read without triggering any difficult memories please be aware of Raphael's entire vibes, the content and context of his story, and I'd also like to mention that this isn't a "woe be us for we are terrible people" piece, it's actually more about:

"There is an inherent kindness and warmth to much of the Raphael fandom, and I think there could be some common threads behind that, pulling us all in closer in a comforting blanket that we wrap around each other to keep out the cold of the world."

So, what in the nine hells am I on about? Well. Raphael-fandom is a wild and wonderful place to be. The rest is in sections, so feel free to skip through to what you feel is relevant to your interests. I am so prone to waffle I should open a restaurant~

Who Are Fans Of Raphael? What Do They Want?

We are feral, unhinged, all sheets to the wind "I want that devil man, carnally, and there is no force in all the planes that could stop me". There's the vanilla to the extreme and every level in between, tops, bottoms, versatiles, Doms, subs, and switches - there are a whole lot of people who would love to get their hands on either (or both) of Raphael's forms, for a simple smooch or something far more spicy~ [edited in] To add on to this, not all of us even desire him in a sexual way, for many it is romantic, soft, or even just the rather pleasant thought of spending an evening with drinks by the hellfire because he would be fascinating company. Aces, Aros, and AroAces may all find themselves well within the devilish corners of fandom too~ which is a whole other essay~ [end edit] So, I see you. I'm one of you. Extremely loud and utterly hingeless in my fan appreciation for Raphael. He's one of my favourites to write about, I seek art of him, and the same goes for his mirrored other half, Haarlep, who I arguably love more despite there being far less content of them in the game.

And the Fandom? The Vibe?

From my experience in the Raphael Fandom areas, we have a very deep and abiding understanding of consent, respect, and treating each other with an absolute and uncompromising kindness. We've had talks about keeping each other safe in fandom, exchanged details of people we have encountered who need to be avoided, even shared details between moderators of different fandom servers to pre-ban people proven to be creeps and/or art thieves. We've also discussed consent, including the issues with it in the game, and how areas of the story can only really be considered dubious at best and could easily be triggering for people. And these discussions have been open, honest, fair, and with the acknowledgement that most of us love these scenes anyway. So there's a sense of care that runs through everything, behind the horny-posting and fan content, behind the endless thirsting after our favourite fictional characters. We have a depth of kindness that warms my sinners soul every time I see it.

What Does This Have To Do With Self-Reflection, Raphael, or Villainy In General?

Well let's look at Raphael. He's a villain, obviously. He's manipulative, devious, and inherently evil by his very nature. He keeps Hope chained in his basement, constantly subjected to endless torture. There's also mention of how Gortash was sold into his service at a young age, clearly not an enjoyable experience given the other details and how things turn out (particularly as Raphael would need Gortash's own plans to fail entirely in order for him to succeed in his own and get that crown). And as fans, we accept that. We don't sit making excuses, or trying to say "well actually Gortash is a little shit and Hope probably deserve it", and we don't shy away from or conveniently ignore those darker sides of him with malicious intent to enable more evil to flourish. What I noticed, when I allowed the thoughts to continue, is that there is a theme here.

If Evil Can Be Loved Then So Can I

That's the core. Of course, darlings, I am not claiming to be a heinous monster. I certainly do not have a laundry list of crimes that would make the devil himself say "Uh, that's a bit much." But I sure as fuck treat myself like I do sometimes. You see, I think a lot of us have that tendency, to judge ourselves far more harshly than anyone else. Our patience, understanding, and forgiveness for others runs deeper than the Mariana Trench, but when it comes to our own flaws? One minor mistake and we think ourselves to be the worst beings ever to disgrace the earth. Thus, the villainy we see reflects how we are treating ourselves. So by loving and accepting all of those things that should be terrible, hated, we are actually learning that no matter how poorly we think of ourselves that we can be worthy of that same love and acceptance. We are extending the affection we are unable to show ourselves to someone we see the worst parts of ourselves amplified within. And that's why villains attract the people with the most kindness. The most forgiveness. Because it takes someone with a truly huge amount of empathy to find love for the embodiment of evil.

Or, IDK, maybe villains are just hot and we're too far down to care.

But wait, before you go!

THERE'S SOMETHING WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT.

All of this is about FICTION. We should never be accepting of the kinds of evil we see in the game irl. We do not owe anyone kindness if they do not show it to us.

What is hot in fiction is not always OK IRL.

Look after yourselves out there, remember that consent is key in all things, and please do try to learn to love yourselves, darlings, you are worthy of it and you should judge yourself by the same standard you judge others. If you are in doubt, if you are worried, if you feel afraid - reach out, talk to someone. There are many who will listen.

Treat yourself as you would treat a friend. You deserve that much.

Oh, and all Raphael fans who understand kindness are welcome around me, any hour of the day, I adore our little fandom circles and would gladly collect all of us together. I'm following a lot of you as soon as I find you, like hunting shiny pokemon~

See you in Avernus, my darling Little Mice, may we all find joy in the Cambion's Embrace~

#baldurs gate 3 #raphael #bg3 raphael #villain fucker #personal reflection #analysis of the inner mind by a complete amateur #listen the thoughts get loud then I write them down darlings it happens all the time #love yourself please #you are worth more than you give yourself credit for #and keep loving those villains! it's good for you!#be kind to yourself #and be kind in the community #did this even make sense? well it's there now so tough #DMS are open for fellow fans with excellent taste~

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public-trans-it · 8 months

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i would love to hear your dark spore rant. i didnt even know spore had a sequel.

Oh anon. Poor sweet anon. I’m so sorry.

So, the thing about Darkspore is…

… it was a really REALLY… mediocre game.

Like, the moment to moment gameplay was… fine. Just fine. Not incredible. But not BAD! Really, it only had two major flaws:

The first, it was buggy as hell. One particularly nasty bug was present in the games launcher, and on certain systems the game would fail to install at all. They were unable to ever fix this bug, which I speculate was a major reason the game was abandoned by the devs so quickly and lead to it being taken down from every major digital distribution site. You could still install and play it if you already bought it though! If… it actually installed for you.

Which leads us to the second flaw. It’s right there on the box.

“Internet connection required”

The game has Always Online DRM. All the levels, enemies, loot, your entire account, was all stored server side. And servers are expensive. So, when the games bugs became unwieldy and not worth fixing, and they took it offline… it became a money sink. It was a game generating ZERO revenue, but had huge server maintenance costs. So eventually, they just shut down the servers.

It is now very difficult to obtain the game, requiring you to buy one of the few unopened physical copies remaining. And even once you do have it, it is IMPOSSIBLE to play. There is a project called Resurrection Capsule in the works, some fans trying to create a private server for it. But with so much info stored server side, they basically have to recreate entire subsystems from scratch. It’s… not going very fast, and to my knowledge hasn’t been touched in over a year.

Story

The story of the game is pretty basic. A progenitor race of alien super-scientists create a new, synthetic form of DNA, called Exponential-DNA, or E-DNA. This rapidly mutates to create new life, and can be guided to create specific, specialized organisms, condensing thousands of years of evolution to a few hours. It can also be injected into existing creatures to alter them and make them more powerful. However it also linked everything affected by it into a hivemind. So it was outlawed. The creator of it decided to respond by creating a E-DNA virus, called The Darkspore, infecting himself with it, and spreading it across the galaxy and conquering it, wiping out his own race.

You play as another member of that race, who has been in hibernation for 1000 years while that was going down. Your ship AI has woken you up because it has managed to stabilize E-DNA and also keep it disconnected from the hivemind, and needs you to go kill the guy who took over the galaxy. That is how the game starts.

…

And how the story ends. There is not really any more story past that part. You get a cutscene describing each of the games 6 planets the first time you visit it, and a final “Hey you won!” cutscene after killing the final boss which ends with the cliche “implication the villain isn’t really dead” trope, and… that’s it. That’s the entire story. Not really the selling point of this game. Its not even entirely clear if it takes place in the same universe as Spore! It’s just set dressing for “Run through these 24 levels and beat everything up”

Gameplay

Darkspore was created by Maxis. This alone was HUGE. This was a team of developers who only really made lifesims like The Sims and Sim City, taking a stab at making a diablolike game.

And I GENUINELY BELIEVE every single studio out there needs to do shit like this. Designing for something so outside your wheelhouse creates SOOOOO much innovation so quickly. You get fresh new ideas injected into the genre so quickly. The final product won’t be good! You don’t have any damn experience in the genre! But it will create something unique beautiful, and god damn I wish we lived in a world where that alone was enough and devs weren’t focused on chasing profits instead.

Genesis

Genesis is just a fancy way of saying ‘Element’. There are 5 of them: Plasma (fire and lightning), Bio (plants and animals), Cyber (machines), Necro (death and fear), and Quantum (space and time) and the way they interact is… certainly a choice I guess. Each Darkspore you face has a genesis it falls into, and each of your heroes has one as well. If your Genesis matches that of the darkspore you are fighting at the moment, you take double damage and they take half damage. If they don’t match, all damage both ways is neutral.

The system itself is kinda mediocre. The biggest part of it, however, is the Variant Skills. Each Genesis has 4 unique skills tied to it that represent the common elements of that type.

Heroes

There are 25 heroes in the game, which each have one Genesis and one Class (Sentinel which are the tanks, Ravagers which are the DPS, and Tempest which are the Casters/Support)

Each hero has 4 total variants, with the first one you unlock being Alpha, and as you level up your account (heroes do not have their own levels) you eventually can purchase their Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants, with each variant having slightly different stats, and a different one of their Genesis’ 4 variant abilities.

Each hero has a unique basic attack, which USUALLY has a little extra to it. For example Sage shoots a bolt that hurts enemies it hits, but heals allies it hits. Zrin alternates between two different punches, one of which has a short duration DoT and the other of which has a 10% stun chance. Stuff like that.

They also have a passive effect that is always active while you are playing them. Collect a soul from each enemy killed for a 5% damage boost, 10% damage bonus when attacking from behind, a stacking defense buff every time you take damage, stuff like that.

Finally, a character has 2 unique abilities. One that is unique to them and can only be used while you are playing that hero, and a second ability that is everyone in the squad can use if that hero is present.

Squad Decks

Which brings me to the first rant and something I am SO AUTISTIC ABOUT (positive). SQUADS. The game had you craft Squad Decks, collections of 3 heroes that you can swap between during your missions, for a total of 883.2k squad combinations (I think my math might be off on that). Swapping between them is on a cooldown of about 10 seconds, but otherwise is don’t instantaneously and as often as you want without penalty. You always have 5 abilities active:

- The unique ability of your active hero

- The Genesis ability of your active heroes variant

- Hero 1’s Squad ability

- Hero 2’s Squad ability

- Hero 3’s squad ability

The first two abilities change out every time you swap heroes, but the last 3 are fixed. So you have 3 abilities that you always have access to, and 6 abilities that are paired up and you can swap between which pair of those abilities is active.

Your heroes do NOT share a health/energy pool, but DO share healing pickups. Any time you pick up a health or energy restoration pickup, it refills a chunk of the respective health pool of your currently active hero, and a smaller chunk of each of your inactive heroes in the squad.

So the core loop of moment to moment gameplay becomes swapping situationally between heroes both offensively and defensively, to get access to your other heroes skills and also to mitigate damage from enemies based on their genesis or control where your healing is directed.

Loot

Loot in Darkspore is fairly standard for your average Diablolike. Item drops have 4 tiers: Common (Item Level=Account Level-5), Uncommon (Item Level=Account Level), Rarified (Item Level=Account Level+5), and Purified (Item Level=Account Level+10)

Items of higher tiers have more chances to roll on a table to gain beneficial modifiers.

Each item fell into one of a few different categories: Weapon, Hands, Feet, Offensive, Defensive, or Utility.

Each hero has one of each slot, plus an additional slot based on their class. Ravagers have an extra Offense slot, Sentinels have an extra Defense slot, and Tempests have an extra Utility slot. Any hero can equip any item you gain, with the exception of Weapons that are hero specific. Some heroes also lack Hands or Feet, in which case their weapon has extra stats and can get the same modifiers as hands and feet can.

The items you equip can then be added onto the Hero in the Hero Editor. The Hero Editor is often equated to the Creature Editor in Spore, which is BULLSHIT and was a pet peeve of mine the ENTIRE DAMN TIME THE FAME WAS LIVE. This is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE. It uses the outfit editor from the Tribal/Civilization phases of Spore instead. Importantly: this means you cannot alter the overall silhouette of your hero. It will always maintain the same basic profile and animations. However you can freely place the extra parts you equip anywhere on its body, and can also place multiple copies of them.

Additionally, old parts can have their stats stripped, converting them into ‘Detail’ parts with no stats, of which you can equip 6 different parts, each of which you can include 10 copies of on your hero. So you could get some pretty cool looks from it!

However all this loot is garbage and you likely would not use most of it outside of appearance. Which brings me to…

Cash-out Loot

Usually if you mention the word ‘cash’ in any sentence involving a game published by EA, it would be a call for concern. Luckily this isn’t that! It’s just gambling! Everything is fine!

The main progression in Darkspore comes from gear, and the best gear comes from how good your ships engines are. These come from account upgrades as you level up your account, determining how many levels you can do in a row. Every time you complete a level, you are given an option: Keep going, or ‘cash out’ and get a guaranteed piece of Uncommon gear, with a 10% chance of it becoming Rarified, as well as all the gear you picked up in the level.

If you choose to keep going, you have to complete the next level. If you die, you lose ALL the gear you picked up, including that guaranteed piece. If you make it to the end, you are given another choice: Risk it all again and go on to the next level, or stop here and get your TWO pieces of guaranteed uncommon loot, which each now have a 20% chance of becoming rarified and a 5% chance of becoming purified.

You can only go another of levels equal to the number of Engine Upgrades you have earned by leveling up your account. So at first, after the second level you HAVE to cash out. As you progress you can start to do many more levels at a time, getting a dozen pieces of gear that are practically guaranteed to be the highest rank.

But of course you have to play these levels in order, and you don’t get a chance to upgrade your character with all the cool new loot you found on the way, so you can’t just jump straight into this. You have to slowly build up to being able to push yourself this much, and once you can, you have a readily available source of some of the best gear in the game.

And that ties into my absolute favorite system of Darkspore:

Catalysts

Many diablolikes have a mechanic called ‘Sockets’. The gear you equip has its own type of equipment slot, and you put gems in there that give you small bonuses. Every game does it a little differently, but it’s kind of a staple of the series.

Darkspore uses a similar system, but utilizes it VERY differently. While you are running levels, enemies will rarely drop Catalysts instead of loot. These come in 5 colors: Purple (boosts your base stats), Red (boosts offensive secondary stats like damage or attack speed), Blue (boosts defensive secondary stats like health regen or damage resistance), Green (boosts utility secondary stats like movement speed or lifesteal), and Rainbow (can contain any of the bonuses of the previous categories) They also come in two sizes: Big and Small. This determines how big the bonus from them is.

You have a 3x3 grid on your HUD that the catalysts you collect go into. You can rearrange them however you want, and if you create a line of 3 of the same color (Rainbow is a wildcard and matches with all of them), it will double the bonus of all Catalysts in that line. This stacks, meaning if you create multiple lines over a single catalyst it could get a x3, x4, or even x5 bonus if it’s the center piece of the grid and forms a line in every direction.

However, you can’t save Catalysts. You can equip it to the grid or drop it on the ground and move on. That’s it. You have to decide now. Do you keep that Big Purple you have for the big buff to your most important stat, or do you trade it for that Small Rainbow for a mediocre stat you just found that you can plug in the middle and double everything else in your grid?

“Surely that only matters early game, and once you have good catalysts you don’t swap them out that much, right?” I hear the diablolike veterans asking, because that is how socketing works in most of those games. And normally you would be right. Except for one major change: All your catalysts only last until the end of your run. When you get to the cash out screen, and choose to keep going? You keep them. But if you choose to cash out, or if you ever die, your catalysts all vanish. Every new run you have to go through and collect them again, which results in you playing your heroes in new ways and adopting new strategies based on what catalysts drop for you each run.

It’s an INCREDIBLE easy to learn system that adds SO MUCH depth and replayability to the game. I love it so incredibly much. Each mechanic flows elegantly into the the next. The catalysts help you do better runs which gets you better gear which upgrades your heroes which lets you do better runs, the entire spiral being locked into your account level to give a quantifiable metric of how far this spiral is gone. It was so good!

And now, it’s gone forever.

Man that sure was a long post. Friends have heard me go on this rant SO many times. Thank god I never got into a second mediocre game filled with novel innovations that are ultimately lost to time and can never be experienced again due to Always Online DRM making it unplayable. Can you imagine if I didn’t learn my lesson and did that a second time? Ha!

… I never did that again. Right?

… right?

…

HEX: Shards of Fate

Hex was a digital TCG legal battle with TCG elements created by Cryptozoic. It was originally put up on Kickstarter, advertised as a digital card game with both PvE and PvP modes, a unique focus on the design space opened up by being a digital game, and gameplay damn near identical to Magic: The Gathering.

The thinly veiled truth was that this game was never meant to succeed. They had hoped it would, and it would be great if it did, but I’m fairly certain that was always a secondary objective. The first objective was to get sued by Wizards of the Coast over the similarities to Magic: The Gathering.

Now, that might sound strange to an outsider, but to anyone in the industry, they are probably nodding along and going “Yeah that tracks actually.”

You see, Wizards of the Coast is… bad. Really bad. They do everything in their power to choke the life out of the industry and have resorted to a lot of questionable tactics to do so. One of these is against anyone who develops any form of trading card game. You see, WotC has a patent on booster packs, customizable decks of cards, and turning cards sideways.

Literally.

U.S. Patent No 5,662,332 (A)

It is not a coincidence that the second two biggest names in TCGs don’t involve turning your cards sideways. Konami contested that Yugioh was different enough to not violate the patent.

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Nintendo actually hired WotC to design the Pokémon TCG to NOT violate the patent in return for WotC getting to distribute the first few sets. WotC gladly accepted, distributed the game, got their cut of the sales, and as soon as that was over….

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Every single other game out there ended up paying royalties to WotC. Because the cut of the sales to WotC was cheaper than going to court even if you won. WotC had their fingers in every pie, but was smart enough to make sure not to piss people off so much that refusal was ever a viable option.

Cryptozoic was a company that, at the time, was making several licensed TCGs. The big one that jumps out was the World of Warcraft TCG, which they were in charge of (though it was originally made by Upper Deck). Cryptozoic was begrudgingly paying royalties because having the WoWTCG license was too good and they didn’t want to give that up. Then Hearthstone happened and Cryptozoic was going to lose the WoWTCG license as it got discontinued.

So Cryptozoic set up their new game, Hex, specifically to bait WotC into suing them, so they could get the patent overturned.

See, the patent isn’t actually valid. You cannot patent a game mechanic. There are certainly aspects of the patent that ARE valid and CAN be enforced, but the parts about mechanics can’t actually be enforced. WotC uses it because people can’t contest it, but if it actually was used in court it would get overturned VERY easily, and WotC would be declawed.

So Cryptozoic created a game that was a clone of MtG, used a Kickstarter to build up a large amount of legal funds, and got sued by WotC! Yes! Exactly what they wanted!

… and then they settled out of court.

Sigh.

I guess I’ll talk about the game now.

Lore

The lore of the game was solid. Pretty typical fantasy setting. Humans and elves and sort of racist orcs (better than most other orcs I’ve seen at least) and extremely racist tribal coyote people make up the good guys. Undead, spider-orcs, dwarves, and also pretty racist samurai rabbit people make up the bad guys.

There are two types of magic in the world: Blood magic and Wild magic. Elves are adept at wild magic. Shin’hare (the rabbit people) are adept at wild magic as well. The Shin’hare tried to take over the world, forcing the Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Cyotle to ally together to drive them underground into the underworld.

There the Shin’hare met and allied with the Vennen, an all male race descended from Orcs. They were adept blood mages, and they procreated by kidnapping orcs and using them as incubators for spiders. I fucking love the Vennen. I’ll focus on them a lot in this. The Vennen taught the Shin’hare how to sacrifice their young for more power.

The two then allied with the Dwarves, a genderless race of sentient stone statues who excel at creating machinery, and who believe the world itself is a giant machine. Specifically, a weapon of mass destruction, and they are trying to set it off. They believe blowing people the fuck up to be their natural calling.

The underworld and overworld forces go back and forth a bit, with the Elves doing a large chunk of the work as the only overworld race that can use magic.

Then Hex happened. Hex is a massive meteor made up of Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire. Hex punched clean through the world, scattering gems all across it, before stabilizing in orbit on the other side, becoming the worlds moon.

These gems were incredibly magical, allowing every race to now use magic. Diamonds were restorative, bringing life to things. Rubies were extremely destructive and burned bright and hot and quickly. Sapphire allowed finesse manipulation and control over water. These

Yes this is just the MtG color pie.

Eventually, humanity stumbled into one of their old crypts that was very close to the impact site of Hex, and found it CRAWLING with undead. They were taking the Diamonds from Hex and putting them into the eye sockets of human corpses, causing those corpses to reanimate. These were NOT actually undead, but an alien consciousness that existed within the gems that were using human corpses as a host.

The Necrotic sought a peaceful and symbiotic relationship with humanity as thanks for the use of the bodies. Humanity responded by getting really pissed off that the Necrotic were grave robbing, and went to war over it. Eventually the Necrotic retreated deep into the underworld and allied with the other races instead, eventually helping the Shin’hare with a second attack on the surface.

The lore has a lot more depth than that, but that’s the basic. I liked it a lot. The Orcs being good guys who just really liked tests of strength was a refreshing take on orcs. I liked them a lot. The extremely racist caricature that made up the Cyotle and the Shin’hare? Less so.

Digital Design Space

As for the actual gameplay… it was MtG. Like, almost 1:1.

Like…

Seriously.

Shards work similarly to Lands, with there being 5 basic shards, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Wild, and Blood. You can only play one Shard per turn and when you do you get 1/1 Resource. 1 resource to spend on this turn, and 1 permanent resource. You spend that resource to play a card that costs 1, and you go down to 0/1 resources. Start of your turn, you would go back up to 1/1 resource.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Resources are a card type like in MtG, but once it’s played it acts as a perpetual resource like the Mana in Hearthstone, with no need to care about where the resource is coming from.

… wait a second though, this is a MtG clone. It uses the color pie. Caring where those resources come from is KIND OF a big deal in MtG.

Which is the first really cool difference between Hex and MtG! THRESHOLD! Each time you play a shard you gain 1 threshold in that color. To play a card, you have to have at least as many threshold as are displayed below its cost. See that purple dot below Murder? That means you need 1 blood threshold to play it.

Threshold is NOT consumed when you play a card, which DRASTICALLY alters deckbuilding and how feasible multi-color decks are.

For example, in MtG, if you had 4 swamps and 1 mountain in play, and 5 cards in hand that all cost R…. You can play 1 whole card this turn.

In Hex, if you have 4 Blood and 1 Ruby, and have 5 cards that all cost 1 and have a single Ruby threshold, you can play your entire hand that turn. This made it incredibly viable to splash colors in relatively smaller amounts. It also opened up cool new design space, like cards that cost 1 but still required 3 threshold in a color. Or cards that require 1 threshold of every type to activate a bonus effect (very common among Necrotic) or… for sockets!

HEY WE ARE COMING FULL CIRCLE!

Remember how I mentioned Diablolike games having sockets, but how Darkspore didn’t use it? Well Hex DOES. There was a pair of keywords called Socketable Major and Socketable Minor. Each set, there would be 10 gems (two of each color) that rotated out for Socketable cards. Cards with Major sockets could equip any gem, while minor sockets could only equip half of them. So for example the current rotation might have the Sapphire gems be “While you have at least 1 Sapphire Threshold, this card has Flying” for its Minor gem, and “When you play this card, if you have at least 3 Sapphire Threshold, target player draws 3 cards”

You chose which gem was in each Socketable card during deckbuilding. Different copies of the same card could have different gems equipped, or you could have the same gem equipped across multiple different cards. It was basically a way to go “This card was designed to be splashed in other color decks. You pick what that other color is.”

It opened up a lot of design space! This was something Hex did VERY well. They knew they were making a MtG clone, but they weren’t beholden to the same restrictions a physical card game did, and they THRIVED in those areas.

For example, REPLICATORS GAMBIT, a one cost card that creates six copies of a troop (read: creature) that just… could not exist in MtG.

Another example of this was in my favorite archetype in Hex: Mill. Now, I’m not normally a blue player. I’m not a big fan of the ‘you don’t get to play the game’ archetype. Even mill isn’t really my thing. But the way it worked in HexTCG? God I loved it. I wish I could see my opponents faces as they reached a trembling hand out to their bloated, grotesque deck, a cruel mockery of what it once was. They had started the match with only 60 cards, but now it held twice that number. Knowing every draw was more likely to bring their own skittering death out.

…

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Vennen are, in MtG terms, tribal Blue/Black with a focus on control. Specifically an aggressive form of control. Your wincon is still ‘beat your opponent to death’, but the means by which you do it is… spiders.

Lots of Vennen cards work by still allowing your opponent to do the thing that you blocked, but it now creates Spider Eggs in their deck. Lock down a creature as it enters play with ‘Everytime this creature becomes tapped, shuffle 3 spider eggs into your deck’ or ‘Whenever an opponent draws a third card this turn add a spider egg to their deck’ or ‘When this creature is destroyed add a spider egg to your opponent’s deck’ and when they DRAW a spider egg… well… the effect of a spider egg is more or less ‘When this card enters your hand or graveyard, draw/discard another card into that zone and destroy this one. Your opponent creates a Spiderling and puts it in play. “

Spiderlings are 1/1 Unblockable creatures.

The Vennen win con is to just fill your opponent with spiders and then shred them apart once the spiders start hatching. It was a DELIGHTFUL playstyle.

PvE

Hex also features a fairly robust PvE mode with a point crawl encounter map that was quite delightful. There were cards unique to PvE, but all PvP cards were also legal in PvE. In general, all your staples came from PvP and were the same core staples everyone uses to win (they were very generous with handing out common/uncommon PvP cards in the single player mode, which in turn also made Pauper a very popular format), however you also had PvE cards which made up your win cons. PvE cards weren’t balanced as tightly, and allowed to just be dumb overpowered bullshit just because it’s fun to use dumb overpowered bullshit sometimes!

There were also equipment slots that would modify the cards in your deck, turning PvP cards into PvE cards. For example, Replicators Gambit made it so that EVERY copy of that card gained that text.

PvE started with character creation. You would create a character that was one of the 8 races, and one of 6 3 different classes. Warrior, Cleric, or Ranger. I think there was a late update that added Mage but I don’t recall too clearly, and it isn’t document online anymore as far as I can tell!

Each class had a unique talent tree that you could customize and change how you played. Your race determined what colors you could play, and your level determined how many of each rarity you could play.

I played a Vennen Cleric. Cleric’s whole thing was that you would gain Blessings, 0 cost cards that would rise in your deck each turn, and could be played to draw a card as well as additional effects based on your build. My blessings put more eggs in the enemy deck, to the surprise of no one.

As you went from encounter to encounter you would earn new cards to modify your deck, swapping decks between fights. Then there were dungeons, long laborious streaks of a dozen or so encounters, with branching paths and decisions to be made, earning you tons of new packs and equipment and experience to boost your character. One especially fun encounter was crossing a desert with a pack of… I think it was gnomes? There were 20 of them that needed rescuing. The way you rescued them was putting them in your deck, and then leaving the desert through a single combat encounter. Except they were AWFUL. Like 3 cost vanilla 1/1’s level of awful. The more you had in your deck, the harder the encounter became. It was a really nice way to portray the logistical challenge of trying to fight while protecting all these useless tagalongs.

There were plans to even introduce Raids, 3v1 PvE encounters, but they fizzled out as the game got sunset.

The game was good. REALLY good. It relished in the digital design space in a way I haven’t quite seen since then. A few games, like Legends of Runeterra, have come close, but always fall short, and that’s so sad! I DESPERATELY want to play a TCG with this level of customization again!

Luckily that was the end of it. I finally learned the error of my ways, never touched anything ‘always online’ again, and now can live a life without regrets! … except Legends of Runeterra a little bit like I mentioned above but THATS IT! There are no other always online games I have regrets about!

…

ToonTown Online

Okay no, not seriously. I’ve never played toontown. But honestly it looked kinda silly and like a shitpost in video game form. I think it would have been fun to try at some point with a few friends. Not seriously, just to screw around in for a bit.

Never going to get that chance. Just like nearly everyone reading this will never get to play two of my biggest influences that shaped how I think about game design.

Always Online DRM is an insidious beast. It doesn’t just kill games, it kills *archival*. All we have left of these games is a relatively small number of gameplay videos. I was planning on having a lot more pictures in this post of all the interface elements I was talking about as I talked about them, but there just… aren’t any good pictures of them. Even these details are based on my own memory cross referenced with a couple of wikis, and even those were sparse.

Some games can’t feasibly avoid Always Online. MMO’s are a big example. But by adding it into a game that has a single player experience involved, and not making that single player experience a standalone thing on its own, you are destroying any hope that your game will be remembered. It will fade into obscurity. There will never be a cult revival. Your work will be discarded and forgotten and it’s… so incredibly sad to see.

I jokingly titled this section being about ToonTown, but really this section is about Kingdom Hearts: Union X. It was a mediocre and disgustingly predatory gacha. It was horribly managed with horrible issues around localization and it was just… a mess. But it was part of the world of Kingdom Hearts, and it’s story was important and mattered.

The game is no longer playable, but it’s also not entirely lost. The devs created a new version of it, as a gallery to view the cutscenes. The single-player side mode, Dark Road, is also included. The devs didn’t have to do this. They could have gone the same route as Darkspore and HexTCG, and had their work be forgotten. They chose to save it. Not in full, but at least the parts the deemed important.

It also makes me wonder how much this happens in other mediums. Ludology is a pretty new field, and it rarely goes into specific games and their impact on the medium, mostly just focusing on the impacts they have on humanity, rather than the mechanics themselves as these beautiful pieces of art. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with say… film critics. Are there any indie film makers who are deep in the paint of indie films and critique of not just the films themselves, but the very techniques being used, just sitting there going “It’s so upsetting that this big studio managed to do something this beautiful and all of us in the scene recognize it’s beauty, but no one else seems to, and now it’s gone?”

… as I’m writing this I actually realize that this does happen there. It’s how I found out about what became my favorite film of all time, The Man From Earth. It’s a small film that flopped horribly in theaters, and only gained any attention by being pirated by a lot by indies who wanted to talk about it. It’s a good movie, highly recommend. Not for everyone though.

I don’t know. I’m sure I had a point with all this but… seeing it happen again and again and now with streaming services taking stuff down it’s just… I can’t help but seeing not just more and more games, but more and more of EVERY artistic medium ending up in this area. How many digital artists entire portfolios have vanished off the face of the earth because their tumblr got deactivated? How many movies are going to be gone forever when Netflix eventually goes out of business? We can’t even rely on piracy! Many old pieces of media is just lost forever. Just ask the Doctor Who fandom. They probably know more about that than anyone else at this point.

But mostly I just really wish more developers would consider what parts of their games are important, and what kind of legacy they want to leave, instead of just what will generate a short burst of profit, with no care for what happens after.

… I should start doing video essays with how long this got. It’s like some kind of text based video essay. A text essay. Those are a new thing I just invented.

#Darkspore #Spore #Those are the only two tags on this post because those are the only games I talk about don’t worry about it. it’s fine. don’t read further.#HexTCG #Hex: Shards of Fate #Kingdom Hearts: Union X #Always Online DRM #The Man From Earth #I swear to god if anyone tells me I should just play Temo on LoR I will scream #YES I KNOW AND I DO #but also LoR sucks #and also that is missing THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RANT #the SAME THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO LEGENDS OF RUNETERRA #maybe not soon #but it WILL die someday #and be gone forever #because it isn’t being preserved #Text Essay

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