#we were in yogscast together ..

[sculkcensor]

overall, QSMP was a great concept and the admins and creators were wonderful. I've never been super active in MCYT fandom (I was an old yogscaster then a hermitcrafter only, so I've not really seen this type of stuff from a fandom perspective lol and I knew basically none of the creators beforehand) but it's been super fun.

ofc I wish things had panned out differently in meta, but the actual heart of QSMP was great and I've had a really great time with yall in the fandom. I'll be vaguely sticking around in the way that I do with all fandoms lol

I also hope the creators continue to do stuff together and maybe, hopefully in the future when things are better, maybe we can get another go at it :)

[duckprintspress]

Happy International Fanworks Day!

Duck Prints Press is a press with roots deep in fandom – for those who don’t know, we were founded to work with fancreators to publish their original work, and every single person involved in the press, owner and all, is a fandom member through and through. Thus, we thought it would be fun to celebrate International Fanworks Day (February 15th!) by sharing our favorite fanfics! We asked our blog rec crew to each pick one (1) favorite, and here’s the result – our 21 all-time favorites (it definitely betrays a little how many of us, myself included, have been in the Destiel trenches, lol). The contributors to this list are Nina Waters, Sanne, Neo Scarlett, Meera S., Shannon, Rascal Hartley, E. C., Sebastian Marie, boneturtle, Zel Howland, theirprofoundbond, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Shadaras, S. J. Ralston, Alessa Riel, Linnea Peterson, polls and 4 anonymous contributors.

4 Minute Window by Speranza (Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe)

a soul missing home by Aletea (Our Flag Means Death (TV))

Ordinary World by Kholran (沙海 | Tomb of the Sea (TV), 盗墓笔记重启 | The Lost Tomb Reboot (TV), 盗墓笔记 – 南派三叔 | The Grave Robbers’ Chronicles – Xu Lei)

The Children of Sodom by bacchantetriste (Historical RPF, French History RPF, French Revolution RPF, 18th Century CE RPF)

No Bangs Without Foreign Office Approval by reckonedrightly (Sherlock (TV))

every good intention (is interpolation) by TrashcanWithSprinkles (原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game))

The Widow, The Hawk, and The Horse by Kestrel18 (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Under The Midnight Sun by NorthernSparrow (Supernatural (TV 2005))

from pain, awakening by Rethira (Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Fire Emblem Series)

once more, with feeling by ghost_teeth (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic), Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys – My Chemical Romance (Album))

Digging for Orchids by betts (天官赐福 – 墨香铜臭 | Tiān Guān Cì Fú – Mòxiāng Tóngxiù)

Qualia by imogenbynight (Supernatural (TV 2005))

How To Groom Your Angel by allthebeautifulthings9828 (Supernatural (TV 2005))

The Devil Went Down to Georgia (And Then Went Down on Johnny) by notbecauseofvictories (Devil Went Down to Georgia (Song), Devil Went Down to Georgia – Charlie Daniels Band (Song))

Built To Fall Apart (and Back Together) by oneshinyapple (Spider-Man (Comicverse), Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel (Comics))

In the Land of Gods and Monsters by madmaenad (全职高手 – 蝴蝶蓝 | Quánzhí Gāoshǒu – Húdié Lán, 全职高手 | The King’s Avatar (Cartoon))

Divergence by Entomancy (The Yogscast, Yogscast)

Widdershins by beederiffic (The Eagle of the Ninth)

The Student Prince by FayJay (Merlin – Fandom)

That’s How the Light Gets In by sylviarachel (Sherlock (TV))

All Your Instruments by kalliel (Supernatural (TV 2005))

Go forth, and get your read on! And don’t forget to kudos and comment.

[spacemanxephos]

hellooo it's phosphor - i have already released the forbidden knowledge about my cringe musical tastes so im here with an even deeper cut - black friday (the musical) has two characters called tom and becky and they are SO xeph/lalna(ble) core like -

If the universe is infinite, then it’s definite There’s an alternate reality - where we're now a family

Take me back in time to love you, take me back when we were lost Lost in love and lost in feeling - without the cost

and

You don’t look the same at all as I remember The light has left your eyes, something is changed Then you were way more put together

and becky has this outstanding monologue with the lines "He chased me out of the house and into the woods. He was the one who brought the knife. It's funny, Stanley's the one that made me go to nursing school. That's why I knew where his femoral artery was."

I am ashamed to say I know exactly what musical you’re talking about- I too am a long time StarKid kid 😔 /lh

I do like this idea tho, especially when considering my own stories. You’ve got the Main Timeline- which for those who are unaware is basically how I refer to my personal ‘canon’ timeline of the Yogscast which 90% of my fics take place in- (all you really need to know is it has a good ending for Xephos and Lalna (WHICH THEY DESERVE BY THE WAY DONT TEST ME /lh))

But, looking at the Main Timeline from the outside, like from the alternate Xephnable’s POV, the Main Timeline then becomes the ‘alternate reality’ the lyrics are discussing. The alternate reality where a Xephos and a Lalna did succeed, did become a family.

And moving on to Becky’s monologue- OUGH just thinking about Lalnable saying that. I do headcanon all Lalna’s and Lalnable’s as having classical medical training pre-canon so it fits so well. Shivers up the spine /pos

[patchdotexe]

I take inspiration for my visual art from a variety of sources, though most are video games.

Despite my first fandom being Sonic The Hedgehog, my first fanart I can remember is of Puyo Puyo. I remember so vividly the desire to replicate that art style, that I just began drawing without a thought.

Then, Miitopia. Then, Animal Crossing. Then, Kirby—specifically, Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.

However, I take a notable amount of inspiration from my friends' art and fanart. Yours included, of course. Your art and art process is very inspiring.

aw, thank you...

i can trace back a lot of our art influence to not just sonic but also the general sonic fandom - there's a specific fanartist that blends sonic with general furry and they were a pretty big influence when we were younger and are why our own sonic art is usually a weird midpoint. actually no there's two specific fanartists and theyre both great and were huge inspirations to ica

after that we entered our lapfox era and that was a heavy influence on a Lot of things. so was lupisvulpes once we watched audience!, there's a specific frame in the 2017 version of come back down that we look at and go "oh, yeah, that's lupis vibes"

we generally stagnated on drawing humans for a long while until we started studying the art of a yogscast fanartist (who is also responsible for how we draw goggles). i remember specifically the way we drew noses for a while was based off of a zelda comic we saw on tumblr? also dunedeca's art, especially switchout

stellarmass was an influence on our alien designs, especially zuraki. also the way somebody we ran into on iscribble drew giegue ended up being the start point that mutated into the limoli. we also spent a lot of time in the deviantart arpg community, specifically dracostryx + world-of-reos + ketucari, and have a strong love of certain closed species like grem2s

i know for a while (2014) we drew fists like the chunky polygonal hands in sa2 because we liked how it looked. the way we draw noses and eyes in our more chibi mcyt fanart style is inspired by someone who i think doesnt draw mcyt stuff anymore?

oh, also, homestuck. just.. homestuck in general. and mlp. i think by now that's gotten mostly shaved off though. most of the time we're shaped by artists in the fandoms alongside us - taking note of what they do and what about their art catches our eye. the thing is, we bounce from fandom to fandom so much that it all kinda blurs together and i guess that's how our style formed - everything's a patchwork

[rosfrandomness]

oh god haha, let's see

so a couple years ago, me and some friends had a pixelmon server, and in the last few days we were permitted to have creative mode

one of us was looking for a shiny mareanie. to up spawn rates, we all went together in a pack, into one of the parallel dimensions

so we sat there for hours! mostly talking, running around, there was even a shiny wingull I think. and at some point, me and someone else got really bored and started throwing bread at each other

this escalated, because I'm a pretty good troubleshooter in general. we had a backpacks mod with inventory slots then a 3x3 crafting table grid that would keep the items you put there. and we had managed to find out you can a) put shulkers in those nine slots and b) put these backpacks into shulker boxes

so naturally. I did what I love to do, and started packing backpacks full of stacks of bread + 9 shulkers full of bread, and then I would take that backpack and duplicate it into a new shulker. then I would take that shulker and dupe it into a new backpack's crafting grid, filling the rest of the bag with bread! and I think the other person involved helped by supplying me with more stacks of bread! and this continued for at least six backpacks probably, so you can imagine how much bread there was

and see. while we were doing this, the others were still looking for shiny mareanie. and right as they got one and threw the pokeball, I crashed the server with the bread inception.

so like. I became a bomb. the second I logged on, the world would crash, because I just had too much data on me in the form of bread! I had to have my inventory cleared

LUCKILY THOUGH. they did manage to secure the shiny mareanie catch. if I had done another dupe one second earlier, I would have been mostly at fault for throwing hours of patience and the final moment of success out the window. but I didn't! which is really lucky

this incident was also dubbed the bread matter bomb, named after something from the yogscast I think. at least three of em watched it, but I never did so I forget what the reference was </3

How much bread is too much bread?

 10^86 loaves of bread is too much bread. (There may be lower figures that are also too much bread but that's not what you asked.)

[orangeocelotmartyn]

Ren and Martyn bits from the stream!

Transcript under the cut:

Ren: Martyn, Hand of the King, with us here, also, from Yogscast and of course from all the Life series. You love to see. A very special guest on the HermitCraft server, look at that that! Martyn, the man himself! InTheLittleWood, baby, nice!

-----

Martyn: --but it's going to be good dude, it's going to be really, really good. Really, really good. Look at Ren Diggity Dog, there's my man.

-----

Ren: Hey everybody, can I say a massive welcome to Martyn-- Martyn: Hi. Ren: --to the HermitCraft server. A very special guest on the HermitCraft server, we're so glad you're here Martyn, thanks for coming, dude. (Impulse hits Martyn off of his 'chair') Martyn: Wow, Impulse, okay, alright. Impulse: Sorry, I thought you were stronger than that. Martyn: I like everyone except for him (zooms in on Impulse). Ren: We're so glad to have you here, my friend. Thank you for-for coming, and helping us out with this. As you can see--I told you Martyn, didn't I tell you that this was going to be insane? Did I not tell you. Martyn: (laughs) Genuinely--

-----

Ren: I think we're in the wrong team, Martyn. Martyn: No, we're exactly where we need to be. Just you and me, together forever, that's all we need. Ren: Forever! Martyn: (laughs) Forever. Ren: Wait—

-----

Martyn: Where's some actual combat going on. Oh, there we go, Ren, head to head with Scar and Bdubs at the same time. I'm not sure this is one that Rendog's going to win, this is gonna be like Dogwarts all over again--what an incredible shot from Ren! He whacked Scar and made him fall through the gap on the bridge, all the way down, the fall damage leaving nothing but a head, an arrow, and broken dreams...

-----

Ren: Really, really special thanks to Martyn, for coming through. Martyn's a good friend of mine, and we've had some really great times together, in the Life Serieses. And, um, y'know Martyn's really, he's a special guy. He's--he's a very good human being. And, um, I've met Martyn in real life before, and he's one of those people that when you meet--he's--you know, you know, when you meet Martyn you just know he's a good apple, you know what I mean? Like, some humans you meet, you're just like, yeah, this is--this is a good human being, and Martyn's one of those. And, um. I only, y'know--very short notice for this, and Martyn's got a lot of stuff going on in his own life and he took, uh, he took time off to come do this with us. And, um, y'know, what a good guy. Really, really good guy.

[creatorofchaos]

Last Life Theory:

Season 2 actually happens before Season 1, all of which happen before Season 6 of Hermitcraft, but after the events of Evo.

⚠️ warning: moving ahead are spoilers for Last Life, Third Life, Hermitcraft, and Evo.

Implications:

I think that the implications here are pretty horrifying in themselves. For one, similar to if the season progressed in normal numerical order, every participant would have to experience the terrifying reality of permadying once again.

However, the second reason is much more scarring. There are players in season 2 who did not appear in season one, namely, Mumbo, Lizzie, and Pearl.

We can see the effects of season 2 play out in the dynamics that reappear in season 1.

Game Mechanics:

Starting out is the change in game mechanics. There is no BoogieMan in season 1. Instead, everyone started at 3 lives and then progressively died or were killed. But the paranoia remained so much so, that Grian inadvertently kills Scar with a creeper. Fan theory proposition was that it was to test whether they finally escaped the world’s mechanics, only for everyone to be sorely disappointed that they had not.

People:

Mumbo:

Next are the people. The obvious one being Mumbo. His relationship with Grian doesn’t start in earnest like you would expect two close friends to be. Instead, they pull together as the Southlanders unite. Lore-wise, an argument could be made that this is where the Grian/Mumbo friendship begins moving towards Hermitcraft. Adding fuel to this flame, Grian in Season 1 mentions to Scar in seemingly out of context form, “Do you think Mumbo would be proud?” If season 1 truly took place before season 2, this extremely dramatic line makes no sense. After all, who is Mumbo? He had not appeared in season 1 so there is no point to pushing this line unless Mumbo and Grian had some kind of relationship (friendship, we will use) before the events of season 1.

Lizzie:

Next is Lizzie (LDShadowLady). She is one of the older Minecraft players who never dabbled with the Hermits much before the events of Last Life and had her most active following during the times of DanTDM, CaptainSparklez, SkyDoesMinecraft, and Stampy. However, there is also one other old Minecraft player on the server - Martyn, aka InTheLittleWood. Martyn was a member of the Yogscast and made cameos in the music parodies “Screw the Nether” and “How Do I Craft This Again?”

Now what do these two older MCYTers have in common? They have in common a single individual - Rendog. In season 2, Ren is Lizzie’s knight, or at least the fandom put them in these roles. However, upon entering Season 1, Lizzie is nowhere to be found. Who better to take the new mantle of royalty than the knight appointed by the queen herself before? Thereby, Dogwarts is born. But for Ren to thrive, he too needs a knight of his own. Sniffing out the only other old soul on the server, he comes to Martyn, who is left without the allies he had in Season 2. After all, in a boogie-filled rage, he stabs Grian in the back, attempting to kill him, only for his kill to be stolen by Joel. Martyn is more than happy to join Ren - a new ally and friend - in his quest to win. This alliance is only further solidified with Grian’s constant antagonization of Dogwarts.

Pearl:

Lastly, we have Pearl. To be honest, I haven’t had the time to watch Pearl’s Last Life perspective, but I vaguely remember her being in Evo with Grian when I used to watch that series. This leads in to the timeline placement outside of the last life series.

Series Placement:

Evo:

Lining this up with the Hermitcraft series, especially before season 6, allows for a number of interesting implications surrounding the connection of the two series. For one, Evo, from Grian’s perspective, ended with the ender dragon fight, in which the Watchers had him join them after everyone fought in the End themselves instead of together (not 100% sure on this ending, so correct me if I’m wrong). However, there are a number of people besides Grian from Evo that appear in Last Life, including Pearl, Martyn, Jimmy (Solidarity), and Bigb.

If we take the presumption that Last Life Season 1 is the season before Hermitcraft season 6 and Last life season 2 is before Season 1, we see that, when Evo ended these 5 players entered Last Life with a number of the Hermits, alongside a couple non-Hermits.

In season 2, Grian allies himself with two of his former Evo members, Jimmy and Martyn. Both of these people come to betray him at some point in the series, in which neither were red names. This is an important distinction to Mumbo - whom Grian holds in high regard during the events of season 1, and then reconnects with once on the Hermitcraft server. Comparatively, Grian, in last life season 1, is antagonistic to his former allies in season 2. Grian has had mixed relations with Joel and has yet to interact with Pear in Last Life for any long length of time. All in all, of the Evo members, Grian is the only survivor who makes it to Hermitcraft season 6.

Going into season 1, Grian only allies himself with Scar. Compared to season 2 where Grian has more allies than he knows what to do with, only targeting Scar, Etho, and Scott for much of the season. Season 2 tears apart Grian’s ability to trust his friends. From Boogie kills to red life backstabbings, he goes from a solid alliance to putting together a fragmented and outnumbered red-name team. Ironically, the only individuals in Session 7 of season 2 who does not in some way hinder his plans are Scar and Pearl, both of whom were absent for at least a large chunk of the session. Pearl does not appear in Season 1 and Grian is eventually pigeonholed into another contract aligning himself with Scar.

Connection to Hermitcraft:

Etho, BDubs, and the nHo:

The Hermits in season 5 that are in Last Life are Scar, Etho, Ren, Tango, Impulse, BDubs, Cleo, and Mumbo. Two of these individuals - Bdubs and Etho - are notorious for having been part of the nHo in season 5, of which disbanded due to external conflicts that lead to Etho, Beef, and BDubs retreating from Hermitcraft for a short time (until the events of season 7). Etho returned to playing only single player Minecraft, BDubs took a hiatus for family matters, eventually also return to YouTube largely outside of Minecraft, before turning to single player as well, and Beef, who drifted away from Vanilla Minecraft and at times, the game altogether. All three individuals returned by Season 7 but didn’t do anywhere near the level of collaboration that was present in season 5.

The events of session 7 last life season 2 can begin to shed light though on this fan-made timeline. Bdubs once again dies and becomes a red life, staying loyal to Etho before being finished off by Grian (the eventual three of four way split to appear in last life season 1). Even after the Last Life events end and Hermitcraft begins again, BDubs and Etho are nowhere near as close as they were in last life season 2 or Hermitcraft season 5. This can be obviously explained away by breaking the fourth wall to avoid stale interactions, but for the sake of our timeline, is important.

The Grian Paradox:

Now, why is it that Grian, in this fan-made timeline, gets to survive and live on in Hermitcraft, but his fellow Evo members do not? Well, the simple answer is that Grian wins Last life season 1.

If we assume that the individuals from season 2 return in season 1, less a few members, we can make an even more interesting proposition: Grian is the only individual to remember external events, and by extension, the events of Last Life. For purposes of continuity, let’s say it is because Grian was chosen by the Watchers and this became another world of his he gets the misfortune of watching played out like a puppet show.

Grian is the only individual in last life season 1 to mention someone outside of the game that eventually enters, Scar not even giving Grian’s concern much thought. He ends up winning in the end of last life season 1, allowing him to enter Hermitcraft.

Placement Before Hermitcraft Season 6:

But why put last life before season 6 of Hermitcraft? Why not season 8, when Pearl joins? I place it here because it is the last season break we have in which this last life event could occur, where Grian then joins the Hermits (or rejoins if a later season), but is still before the events of Demise in Season 6.

Demise shares many of the traits of the Last Life Universe, but instead of three lives, a player had one life. Upon dying, the player then had to kill as many of the still alive players as possible. The one hindrance, direct pvp kills we’re not allowed; only traps and natural deaths were allowed.

In our fanmade timeline, Grian had to test the waters one final time, just to make sure his friends in Hermitcraft wouldn’t befell the same fate the rest all forgot from their experiences in Last life.

Please add what else you can think of for this theory below, or correct me if I’m wrong!

Note: if I happened to use anyone’s art in the pictures above, let me know so that I can give them proper credit.

Further note: I do not give permission to MatPat, The Game Theorists, or any channel related to the prior two mentioned individuals permission to use the forgoing information for any content they wish to produce without my explicit permission, of which I have not rendered.

[yogpetshame]

Now, while I see the part of this where Zoey said, “If you... are even someone who... had found out somehow, and you for some reason want to share details or even brag about this, I ask that you please just keep that to yourself, as that would not be useful to me right now”... there’s some shit we do need to talk about, anyway. Sorry, but there is, and nobody else is ever going to talk about it until I give you the go-ahead.

First, I did know, I’ve known since... God, 2015? Because former Ridgedog moderators came to me and said, somewhat imprudently: “did you know Ridgedog has been blackmailing his moderators by threatening to leak something about a member of the Yogscast?” 

And I was like, “Oh No, how did you find out about ‘that’?” 

And they said, “You already heard that Zoey is trans?”

“What? I mean, yeah!”

I mean, in a cosmic sense I’m sorry for prompting them to out Zoey by bluffing, I was just expecting to hear that Ridgedog had Sjin dead to rights, or something like that. It turned out that Ridgedog was a major leaker of private information to his community and this was just one of many things being shared, and god knows how he found out in the first place.

His moderators were in a terrible position and I can’t really speak for them, but if you think that’s the first time Zoey’s been kicked around by the Yogscast and its community in the last five years, no, not in the least.

I think most people who were looking for it received a screenshot from one of Sjin’s victims which contained a statement like this

You probably recall, at the time I said it didn’t make sense because Zoey and Sjin were making content together until very close to his final days. I don’t really have an explanation for why that doesn’t align with the statement.

But yeah. Zoey was one of Sjin’s victims, also. I guess I don’t really know what to do with that information, because you have someone who never intended for anyone to know about their trans identity, in a position to speak out about being a victim, having to hide that they were victimized because it would mean coming out. That’s rough and hard to navigate.

[grimaussiewitch]

Both excited and disappointed in the teams but I might be biased because the event time changed from 5am to 3am for me. Take it with a grain of salt.

The teams themselves are really cool! Never did I think DanTDM would return. But I do agree with the reddit that advertising the event with the top 40 minecraft streamers was a bit misleading. No offence to Sykunno but he’s not the first person to come to mind, even if him and some of his friends played in underdogs. Also the only yogscast rep we have is a sub in so a little sad there.

However, even if an og that reddit wanted isn’t in, we don’t know if Scott did ask them nor do we know how much control minecraft themselves had over the teams. It was invite only as confirmed by CPK. Scott might of asked for people who declined because they were busy or weren’t interested and that’s valid. And sadly the invite only system means that it’s for the popular kids only.

At the end of the day, for a non-canon event the teams are good. I have Hbomb and False on a team together and that’s all I need.

So, mcc folks, what are your thoughts on teams? Reddit seems disappointed with it since not many ogs or like ‘big names’ of Minecraft AND has led to some of the ccs seeing and getting hurt, so I’m curious y’all’s pov

[therainbowminersguild]

Vintage minecraft memories

- Playing the demo version in-browser because you were just a kid with no money and afraid of downloading games from “random sites”

- Visiting servers on the in-browser demo

- When anyone could download the full game for free but could pay $15 to get a username and play online with friends

- having a friend beg their parent to buy you an account so you could play together or vice versa

- getting that email with your activation code

- when ALL mobs would despawn (except for squids) and you couldn’t breed animals

- running around open, lit up spaces for hours waiting for sheep to spawn just so you could dye and then punch them to death for one (1) piece of wool each because shears didn’t exist yet.

- That one client side glitch were sometimes bits of land wouldn’t visually load so you could see all the ores and caves on all four sides of the missing chunk straight down into the void; exploiting it by having one friend who had the glitch verbally guide another who could see the dangers and what they were doing toward the Good Stuff

- UOGH! OUH!

- When the sky limit was only 127

- Roses

- When we all watched yogscast in 2010-11 and thought “Diggy Diggy Hole” slapped.

- accidentally going just a little too fast when arriving at shore and having your boat smash to planks and sticks; not being able to recover your boat at all

- When wheat didn’t grow so infuriatingly slow and you only needed to use one bonemeal to get full grown crops.

- Slimes only spawning in certain chunks underground; being lucky enough to find one and set up a slime farm, becoming the sole provider of slimeballs to the whole server

- The excitement and hoopla you shared with other players for Beta 1.8 the start of “The Adventure Update” and how it changed everything, the subsequent hours you spent both hunting and inside the new mineshafts

- when endermen had green eyes, used zombie noises, and could pick up ANY block and place it wherever they wanted; players hating them, and other players demanding Justice for Enderfriends after their abilities were restricted to just holding dirt

- the foreboding feeling from the diminishing field of vision the closer you got to bedrock and the particles the floating up out of the void

- 1.0.0, the Official Release of Minecraft, Mushroom Islands, Nether Fortresses; The End. The joy of seeing the game we loved leave beta and the moment of uncertainty we felt for the future.

- TESTIFICATEs

- Racing to be the first one on the server’s fresh map to find the newly added jungle biomes and raid the pyramids, everyone going crazy for cats

- a lot more but this is already getting really long and my head is starting to hurt

- god it’s been 10 years

[turtle-ier]

Hey this is a secret link so don’t click ‘read more’ unless you care about really boring rambling about a fanfiction you haven’t read.

Now that they’re gone, hi all.

If you’re here then you’ve clicked on the super-secret hidden link at the end of this series. This text here isn't a piece of fanfiction, which is why it isn't tagged with any characters/relationships/categories, etc (or even on AO3, I might put this on my Tumblr), so if you aren't interested in hearing more about the inspiration behind my fanfiction series “Something Else is Out There”, and some of my thoughts as a writer behind the process, then don't be afraid to click away.

I have plenty of other fics in this fandom that are worth a look. Personally, I would consider ‘Bring Back Pluto’ to be one of the best pieces of fanfic I have ever made, so I’d encourage you to check that out instead.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to anyone who clicked on this series, even if you didn't read it all or only came to have a look, it still means a lot that you spent any time at all on this series.

I wanted to go into some details about the things I included or removed from these works because I, personally, didn't really know I was making these references until I looked back and went ‘oh damn’ so I thought it would be fun to take a glance and look at it through the 20/20 vision of hindsight.

To start with, I'll talk about things that I included in ‘Two Worlds’ that allowed this series to blossom, then about some of the difficulties linking the first piece with the other two. I’ll talk about a couple of specific inspirations, one throughout the whole series and one in a scene I really like, and I’ll go into details I added last minute that really changed the themes and tone in the stories.

All links, stories, Wikipedia pages etc I mention will be put in the notes at the bottom of this in order mentioned.

The tree-people were not supposed to be in it

It’s crazy to think, looking back, that I originally intended the big bad guy in ‘Two Worlds’ to be the darkness, the grue, and nothing more. The idea of the other-George was added in the middle of writing Chapter three: the slow burning fuse, as I didn't know what was chasing George; a personification of the night, a monster, or his imagination? I think originally I was intending for it to just be the darkness eating away at the torch George was holding, or perhaps Dream following him, but then I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Basically, ‘Two Worlds’ was boring. I had to fix it.

I’m actually writing about doppelgangers for my dissertation, and with other uni work I have done in the past I often re-adapt my fan work themes and settings to make them into original stories, and so I guess since I had been doing research into books like ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ and ‘The Silent Companions’ over the summer, it was planted in my mind. I tend to think of my more modern fanfics as a trial for my “”real fiction”” (fanfic is real fiction too, don't let anyone tell you otherwise), and I guess ‘Two Worlds’ took my dissertation and multiplied it by ten.

The idea of Dream changing with the seasons originally came from a pair of works, the first called “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by SilverShadowBeliever, and “he turns orange in the fall,” which has been orphaned by the author. These are both fics I read when I was first joining fandoms, and they're both for the Yogscast.

I also mentioned that this fic was inspired in part by 'You lit a fire in my soul' by Yikes (CoralFlower) before, but I’ll just say it again, their fic is really cool.

‘Two Worlds’, ‘Archipelago’, the chapter title for the introduction in T.W, ‘A Cold Open’, and the chapter titles in ‘Archipelago’ for chapters 8 and 9, ‘Darkness’ and ‘A Very Long Game,’ were all yoinked from Don’t Starve and it’s adventure mode, but the last in that list comes from a fanfiction series by Asidian, again to do with Don’t Starve. The work in that series, ‘Out of Darkness’ was also a major inspiration, although I fear you may not understand the concept behind it if you are not someone who has played the game. Either way, their works are brilliant too.

Things that became difficult the longer the series went on

This is essentially a ‘if I had a time machine’ section.

I would mention George’s relations to the other characters sooner. Bad, Ant and Skeppy in ‘Ice Bridge’ feel shoved in at the end and rushed, with little character development outside of dialogue and Dream’s observations about them. Not to mention, at points in time I mention things like “Phil was like that  –  caring” or, “Techno was always one to protect others” which is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but when characters like Niki or Tubbo had two or no lines each in the second part of the series it was difficult to suddenly try and flesh them out.

If I could change ‘Two Worlds’ now, I’d have a scene, possibly in chapter 2, where George and Dream discuss people they knew. It would be a good way to imply about George knowing more than just Sapnap, and for Dream to perhaps hint that he doesn't know or remember anyone. It would also make his statement to Sapnap in chapter 3 of Archipelago false  –  a hint of Dream withholding information, of him being perhaps jealous of Sapnap and George’s relationship, and perhaps of selective hearing.

This kind of brings up my thoughts on Dream too  –  while I like some of what I did with him, often I felt like he was just the naive, new guy and nothing more. I feel like there should have been a scene in Ice Bridge where he gets into a fight or something. It gets a little tiring reading back because he just doesn’t know anything, even though he is sort of the ‘key’ in understanding all of it (there’s a term for that sort of thing  –  like the Ring in ‘Lord of the Rings’ or the Heart of the Mountain in the Hobbit  –  but I can't for the life of me remember it).

There were also some issues with connectedness. At one point there was Ant on Dream’s shoulder, and when he returned to Bad and Skeppy, Bad also had Ant on his shoulder. Dream had his knife and George also had the same knife in ‘Two Worlds’. Techno’s wound on his side suddenly moved to his leg in Archipelago. Things like that.

Inspirations that I didn't realise were inspirations at first

As (I think) I have mentioned a few times, I’m at university. One of the books I had to read in my second year was ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ which got me all kinds of fucked up.

Gawain and the Green Knight is possibly the single greatest piece of fiction I have ever read.

It’s over 500 years old, with the original poet unknown, and had been passed down for generations prior to the smug original poet writing it down. It could easily be one of the oldest pieces of fantasy fiction EVER, and it is definitely the oldest piece of written fantasy to have come out of England.

Did I mention that I love this book/poem?

I’ll link a free version that I found and referenced in the notes/at the end, as with everything else, but if you have the patience to get through the first three parts the fourth will knock you off your feet.

Essentially, the inspiration that Gawain and the Green Knight put upon me came in many forms. The most obvious ones being things like the idea of decay  –  worlds existing before the characters great, great, great grandparents even existed, abandoned homes, remnants of ancient religions which had been forgotten in time.

I know most of my readers are probably American, but listen up UK peeps  –  we live on graves. Our country is founded in ruin. In Lincoln, the nice grassy parks at the top of the hill can't be built on because they are PLAGUE PITS! In Cambridge, farmers have to be wary of where they plough their fields in case they come across these unmarked grave sites. And in London, they regularly have to stop building works and underground digging for the same reason  –  and this poem was written down between two plagues. The themes of Gawain and the Green Knight are intentional  –  death surrounded them then, and it surrounds us now. We are a country of decay. Unless your house was new when you bought it there’s a high chance someone died in it, too.

The hill at the end of ‘Two Worlds’, the one Dream climbs and they all spawn near, and same the one the ‘mysterious people’ reference, is a reference to the Celtic burial mounds that is also referenced in Gawain and the Green Knight  –  it’s become the chapel that the Green Knight calls his home, a grave. I think I subconsciously linked the two together. It would be ironic that the thing Dream climbed to try and save them was a memorial of failure for the world that had existed before them.

In addition to this, winter is another big idea surrounding this for obvious reasons. Winter means cold, it means famine and disease, less sunlight and lower mood. It means hard times, and for many, tragedy. In Gawain it’s mostly used as an excuse to link the role of the Green Knight to the new year  –  the death of an old year and the cycle to begin anew. Again, we live on graves. The old die, and we forget them, and we begin again.

The nature symbolism is another big thing in Gawain, as it’s a symbol of the wild vs civilisation, of evil vs good, and of the temporary and the permanent. In Gawain, the Green Knight intentionally carries around an axe (another symbol of evil, similar to the weapon of choice for executioners and woodsmen), and I thought that would be a neat little symbol for George. Not only is it a threat against Dream (I think it’s mentioned somewhere that George feels bad for felling trees), but it’s a sign that George is not as out of his depth in the wild as he may seem. He believes himself to be out of his depth, but Dream asking George for help to make his own axe could be a similar idea  –  Dream doesn't belong where he has been placed.

One thing I only noticed upon reflection is the similarities between Gawain and George. For starters, since this is a tale about King Arthur’s knights, it’s expected that anyone who sits around the round table is a courageous, forward thinking individual, but Gawain is a coward. He is told to seek the Green Knight and at first refuses to, intentionally biding a year at Camelot to avoid humiliation and death at the hands of the Knight. While George is not necessarily cowardly, he is a bit of a wimp sometimes. Similarly, at the end of Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain has the back of his neck cut by the Knight in a so called ‘beheading game’, but he is called a coward for it since he relies on an enchanted item rather than his own guts and intuition to pull him through. George isn't given the option of a magical artifact, but he does get scarred in a similar way, although, it could just be because of the way other-George died.

You could also compare Dream to the Green knight for obvious reasons. Nature symbolism, changing with the approach of winter, immortality, a representation of a lost world, someone who doesn't fit in with modern society, the last of his kind (for a little bit), the list goes on.

But one comparison I really wanted to make was between Phil and King Arthur. King Arthur hardly makes an appearance in Gawain and the Green Knight. He’s at the beginning, boasting about how he won't eat until something spectacular happens at his feast, and at the end where he refuses Gawain’s warnings about Camelot one day falling. As I’m sure you remember, Phil is crowned by Techno in ‘The Long Goodbye’, and he mentions Phil’s legacy living forever. I guess in some ways it translates across. While Phil is no king, he accepts the defeat against Techno and lets him go. He understands that the life he wants, the one where he and his friends last forever, won't happen. While in the legend of King Arthur he goes into slumber on the isle of Avalon to be woken up when England next goes to war, Phil doesn't have the same pop-out-the-grave party trick, and it’s kind of like Phil is more the embodiment of what Camelot stands for than Arthur. Phil is flawed, even if the others insist that he isn't, and he will one day fall. The legend that Techno alludes to is when Phil’s story will become like Arthur’s. A hope in darkness, and a reminder that he will always be remembered even if he is really gone.

ONE THING I didn't notice myself, but my friend noticed when I was describing the texts, was the links between Fundy, Techno and the deer/elk in the other-world. In the Green Knight, specifically the third act, there’s a scene where the green knight and his court go on a hunt. They kill a white ‘hart’ (aka a stag), which represents what the human world wants from the forest  –  an easy meal, a dumb animal to chase, and to not spend much time out in the woods. They chase and kill a boar too, which is a representation of power, of a bridge of sorts between their worlds as the humans would want it for its excessive meat but would not want the fight, while the Green Knight’s court would want it for the challenge of taking down a great foe. Similarly, hunting a fox is useless to humans as it doesn't hold much meat, but to the Green Knight’s court it’s a symbol of intelligence and wit, of a great prize they didn't need to seek but did anyway, and it’s a clear difference between their ideologies.

I didn't intend for the link to be there, and I only used the idea of a ‘white, three-eyed deer-thing’ because of the mythos surrounding a white hart in England, which is just a symbol of magic or goodwill (or bad luck, depending on who you ask). Many people don't realise it’s Celtic origins (again, the Green Knight is a symbol of these lost Celtic religions and lifestyles in medieval England) and so while I didn't intend for the symbol to be there at first, I think it fits in quite well that it appears at first in the other-world, and then in the over-world when the darkness is trying to untangle the two worlds, as it’s a kind of nod to the magic/evil properties of the ‘others’.

Also, a final note, often the fae in Arthurian myth (evil beings of mischief and chaos in medieval texts) operate near water. Think of the Lady of the Lake, Mermaids, Sirens, etc. I thought that was neat and made other-Sapnap mention it at some point. I just like water. It’s an adaptive metaphor.

That’s enough about general themes and me ripping off a story that may or may not be a thousand years old.

Please let me talk about a painting called ‘Allegory of Fortune’ by Salvator Rosa.

‘Whispers’ was a challenging chapter to write in ‘Ice Bridge’ purely for the section at the end where Techno is in his house.

You see, Techno in his videos is a pretty smart guy. He presents himself well. He studied Greek tragedies in university (he references Helen of Troy in a video of him, Schlatt and Travis disassembling a KFC) and talks regularly of Sun Tzu, not to mention some casual Shakespeare references sprinkled around like he’s Salt Bae. He’s a smart cookie. He seems like one of the smartest cookies on the Dream SMP. He seems like someone who plans things, thinks them out, and only takes chances when he has to.

And the goal he has in this was a risk, all right.

This is the whole thing behind that totally unnecessary reference I made. First of all, it references the painting, which depicts the roman god of fortune, Fortuna, as she is bestowing her gifts of fortune upon the undeserving ‘animals’. Animals is quoted because Rosa is heavily implying in the painting that the animals are important Italian figures, including a donkey with the royal red cloak of the pope on it (yikes), a pig with the king’s crown(YIKES) and multiple animals standing on books representing education and law (Y.I.K.E.S.). The animals are also standing on roses  –  a reference to the artist himself (and btw that was like the only reason why he didn't get beheaded or something because of it).

The line Techno thinks something along the lines of ‘mules are not nobles’ etc is an actual adaptation of what Rosa said about his piece when he was questioned on its meaning.

I thought it would be fun for Techno to make reference to the work in a kind of satirical way, especially since in the painting the pig is shown to be undeserving of the crown, and Techno believes he is worthy, when later he gives it to Phil after he realises that he is indeed unworthy of it.

What changed in the edits?

Everything changed in the edits. Also hardly anything did.

The first big edit I did was in chapter 10 of ‘Archipelago’ where Sapnap and George are talking. Multiple lovely, wonderful, incredible commenters pointed out how they didn't really understand what the other-Techno was on about, and while I intended to fix that in ‘Ice Bridge’, I panicked and changed it to happen then because otherwise it might have been an unsatisfying end. Techno was supposed to figure out that it was like a brain transplant to become immortal, but it saved me time later so it didn't really matter.

Originally, I was planning for Sapnap to die in the other-world, like permanently. It was going to be a reason for George to doubt Dream, and for Dream to leave the settlement and all the others behind, but instead I decided to let him live for the sake of tension within the group later. I didn't want Sapnap to die, but if I were to go back I don't know if I would make the same decision. It could have gone either way.

Chapter 5 in ‘Ice Bridge’ was originally two separate ones, splitting in half when Dream realised he couldn't remember anything from before he met George, but it got too muddled to be kept separate. A similar thing happened with chapter 14 in the same story, where it was supposed to be separated when there was another knock at the door, but that time the resulting chapter afterwards, which was going to be chapter 16 or something, was too short to be justified.

In ‘Ice Bridge’, two chapters swapped titles, ‘The Long Goodbye’ and ‘Standoff’. Chapter 14, ‘snowfall’ and chapter 15, ‘ice bridge’ swapped locations too since I felt that the piece finishing  with Dream and crew was more fitting as an ending than the one with Techno, Niki and Phil leaving the other tower.

The porcelain mask was another big one. I didn't know whether to include it at first and only added it after I had posted chapter 5 or so of ‘Ice Bridge’. I figured that it would be a big symbol of closure, of Dream getting what he was looking for on his adventure and being able to return home guilt free. I understand that it may feel a bit like an unnecessary emotional kick to add, but I did feel like it was the finale of Dream’s character arc.

The final last-minute addition was the fight between Phil, Techno and Niki. It was supposed to be a breakdown, a sign that Techno had pushed too far and that Phil wasn't the man that they had all expected him to be, but I believed that a more dramatic end was necessary.

To be honest, I remembered Lindsay Ellis’ videos on Game of Thrones. I haven't watched the series nor read the books, but I remembered her reaction to a fight breaking out between a mentor character and his apprentice, two morally good characters with differing goals. Phil may be Techno’s father figure, but there is only so far you can lean before you break, and this was supposed to be Phil’s breaking point.

See, Phil would know Techno was stronger than him, a better fighter, someone more willing to take a calculated risk, but he was desperate, deluded, and pushed to the edge. When words are not enough there are only so many ways that someone can act, and Phil decided to speak Techno’s language.

I also let Niki fight in the scene because I didn't think she had done much up to that point, and having her established to own weapons earlier and then not use them later seemed dumb. I wish there were more female characters that I could have included, but no one seemed right. If I were to change something, maybe I’d have her go into the ‘Other-World’ with Sapnap or something. It might be interesting to see how the other-Techno would react to someone he hasn’t seen before.

Final thoughts

I really like this fic. I put so little thought into it at the beginning and now it’s a huge thing that contains two of the longest fics I have ever done (I keep mentioning it, but I’m still in awe. I struggled a lot with things over 5,000 not so long ago) and some of my most intergrained references. There’s a few hiccups, I will admit, but I don't think there’s anything so big that it ruins the whole experience.

I really liked how I figured out Techno and Phil’s relationship in the third part, and while I like the Dream/George stuff, I will admit that shipping isn't my ideal reading (even if I can write it) and it did feel like I was cheating you all out of DNF content a bit until the end there.

If I could start again, idk what I’d change. It’s like 2 am rn. I just wanted to talk about Gawain and the Green Knight. Please do check the story out again because I think things will make more sense with a second reading. I’ll put a link to everything I mentioned below.

I also just want to thank you for being here on this journey. I’ve also mentioned before that I had a new year’s resolution both this year and last year to write 100,000 words, and while I completed it last year with 115,000, I doubled my writing amount this year and the end of this fic brings me to 215,000, which is insane. My total wordcount on AO3 is only slightly less than double that, which means these past two years on the platform has produced 80% of my total fanfiction to date. Again, it’s insane.

Thank you again for reading. I hope you enjoyed my rambling if you read this whole thing, but please don't be afraid to say you didn't lol. I get that literary references and introspection isn't for everyone, and it honestly isn't for me either. I write fiction better than essays and it shows in my grades, but either way I hope that this was comprehensive.

Thank you all again. Drive safe and message me when you get home. Happy end of 2020!

Links:

“Wake Me Up When September Ends” by SilverShadowBeliever : https://archiveofourown.org/works/852143

“he turns orange in the fall,”, Orphaned Work : https://archiveofourown.org/works/966375

“Out of Darkness” by Asidian : https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071196/chapters/13915320

“Gawain and the Green Knight” Free copy online :  https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/GawainAndTheGreenKnight.php#anchor_Toc178583491

Sparknotes reading of “Gawain and the Green Knight” (easier to understand than the free copy) : https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gawain/

‘Allegory of Fortune’ by Salvator Rosa : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_Fortune

Lindsay Ellis’ Game of Thrones video part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hys_m3BPTS8&ab_channel=LindsayEllis

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGr0NRx3TKU&ab_channel=LindsayEllis

Also, bonus! I did a lot of painting (forgive me, I’m not great at it and didn't paint before 2020) to help block scenes and stuff when I was writing Archipelago so please enjoy my not very good but also I’m-quite-proud-of-these paintings. I’m mores posting them here as a neat little bonus, but also to do something with them other than have them in my desk draw lol. 

[teamdoesminecraft]

I've noticed you really like your lore for MC/TC. Can I ask then, what's the timeline of events? I know when they were created, but like a short timeline, starting when how the world was made to present day, if that makes sense. Thanks!

Ohhh I haven’t thought about @crystalfloe ‘s and my Canon Minecraft Lore in a while, it’s been touched up quite a bit since my last lore post.... I’ll be basically rewriting it as I go !!TL;DR: Sage makes Steve who turns into Herobrine, Sage and his Devs make True/SSundee/Lox/Seto, Herobrine makes Bajan/Husky, Sage makes Jerome to kill Bajan, and Steve/Sage simoultaneously fuck up and make Sky as an overpowered child and nerf him together.-Long ago, the world was a seething mass of untamed code. Some of this code pulled itself together into sentience: an entity named Sage.-Sage began manipulating the code for the first time. He was the first Player to access creative mode. He created:A dimension (grass, stone)Simple mobs (pigs, cows)

-Sage wanted to share his creative-mode capabilities, and so made slightly more advanced mobs. Endermen were simple creatures, capable of basic neutrality and hostility, and could interact with the world by moving one block at a time.-Sage realized that these were not the Players he was trying to make, so he set out to make an actual Creative Mode Player.-Sage made Steve, who lived in the single dimension and was capable of building great things.-Steve wanted to create new mobs, much like Sage did. He created:Creeper (aw man)SpidersThe Ender Dragon-The Ender Dragon destroyed the single-dimension world, leaving it barren, broken into pieces, and yellowed out (the End).-Sage managed to trap the Dragon on a single island. Sage then banished Steve to a second dimension (the Overworld, which had a bedrock layer below it, separating it from the End), and made a new gamemode for him: Survival Mode.-Steve wanted to right his wrongs, and so began searching for a way to get back to the End.-Sage didn’t want Steve back, so continued implementing coding changes:Monsters (creepers, spiders) would appear at night to hunt Steve and hinder his progressZombies and Skeletons, that were only just Steve’s former bodies, to continue to push his progress farther back-Sage attempted to remove Steve’s coding from the game entirely when he got too close-Eventually, Steve was “deleted,” more or less-No he wasn’t. He was a “ghost” of code, able to still grasp some of his prior Creative Mode abilities; to prevent Sage from finding him, he made the third dimension, the Nether (between the Overworld and the End, covered on both sides by bedrock), where Sage would be unable to find him-Sage tried to make two Creative-Mode Players again: the Devs. He created Jeb and Dinnerbone.-The three of them began populating the Overworld, realizing the End was almost unsalvagable. (This is the point where our canons and AUs start splintering, so it might get a little messy)-Sage made TrueMU first. This was the start of most Players being Survival-Mode only: he had no Creative-Mode abilities. -True was more or less on Sage’s side for a while, until, after a series of deaths/respawns, he realized how little Sage cared. True left at this point to escape to the Farlands (an area of the Overworld the Devs hadn’t yet tamed).-A long period of time passed, during which many other Players were created. (for those Yogs fans, Xephos was made very early, and was a pseudo-dev, until he also ran away from Sage to go do strange experiments on his own).-Jeb made SSundee during this time (traumatic backstory tbd)-Dinnerbone started creating more hostile mobs to provide extra challenge to the Players. Jeb started creating more passive mobs to populate the world and make it more interesting for the Players.-Signs of Steve started appearing again, as a half-glitched ghost. To prevent people from siding with Steve, Sage created Villagers. Villagers firmly believe Sage is true and correct all the time, and spread this ‘doctrine.’ They also tell the tale of a murderous entity known only as Herobrine (a name Steve would later whole-heartedly adopt).-Villagers have no hands, so they can’t build or create and potentially turn against Sage. Instead, their arms are conjoined in front of them.

-Some Villagers don’t believe Sage is the best, and break away from society to either form patrols or live in large, communal mansions. These Illagers practice things normally Villagers aren’t supposed to; many of them break their arms into two separate pieces. They hold weapons, build mansions/monuments, and practice magic.-A Player named Seto, originally made by Jeb, somehow found himself subsumed into Illager culture. He was raised in a Woodland Mansion and learned various magic from an Evoker.-Herobrine saw all these players being created. He knew he couldn’t enter the Overworld without being hunted, so he decided to make a Player of his own: Bajan.*Note: Herobrine has made other Players besides Bajan (notably Hypixel and Honeydew)*Double Note: in almost every other set of Lore we have, Bajan was either made or adopted by Xephos (I have no idea why)-Bajan was designed to master combat and, ultimately, defeat the Ender Dragon. His dogtags read HB002, marking him as Herobrine’s second creation. -However, Sage discovered Bajan, and wiped his memories/mission statement to prevent him from reaching the End.-Sage created a “monstrous” Player to hunt Bajan down and prevent him from respawning: Jerome-Naturally, this failed spectacularly, and though they were designed to destroy one another, they’re now best friends. Due to their combatative natures, they enter tournaments like the Survival Games often.-Realizing this approach was flawed, Herobrine took a different approach. The Stronghold he had been building, with a half-finished portal to the End, was underwater. So HB created a Player who could guide people to the Stronghold: Husky. He wasn’t extraordinarily combatative, but it was his job to find Players who could be and bring them to the Stronghold.-Sage did not like this, so had Dinnerbone create the Guardians to deter players from deep-sea exploration.-Herobrine wanted to try something new: he wanted to make his own Dev.*Note: it’s been discussed (but not solidified) that “bad end” Yogscast members, like Israphel/Lalna, are HB’s Devs, created later.-Sage was also developing a new Dev at this time.-Herobrine waited until Sage wasn’t paying attention (all players must be created at the Overworld Spawn to prevent complications), and began interfering with the code.-Sage and Herobrine fought for a while over this new Dev. However, when fully-formed, this Dev went on an uncontrollable creative-mode rampage.-Sage and HB teamed up for the first and only time to stop this Dev. They gave him an amulet (made of endstone and blaze rod) to suppress his powers, and created the Hardcore gamemode just for him. They wiped his memory (they knew what happened if you tried to delete a Dev, as evidenced by Herobrine) and dumped the newly-named Sky in a village.*Note: in at least one AU, Sage made Alex, who was then “used” by HB. After a series of corruptions, Alex’s code was repurposed and turned into Sky ala reincarnation.*fun fact: Sky is the only Player who cannot access his inventory. he’s gotta carry everything with him. always-Around this time, Dinnerbone created Lox (traumatic backstory TBD).-The “Plot” begins when Sky’s amulet becomes separated from his body, and he inadvertently teleports himself and Lox out to the Farlands. They are immediately interrogated by True.-True, knowing how Sky works, decides to initiate the Quest (which he won’t tell them too much about). This Quest has them meeting the various other members of the Team, becoming closer, and just bein real good pals.-No we don’t know how it goes or how it ends-sometimes they kill the Ender Dragon and Sky just resets the entire world with his Dev powers because Sage has gone nuts? -we really genuinely have no idea and we wrote it

[artofhaileyd]

Any of you guys watch Yogscast when you were younger? (I swear this is relevant, stay with me) I loved them as a kid, and I loved seeing how the fandom would take their Minecraft skins and turn them into complex characters with developed backstories with sprinkles of the original person, even if the skin was a copyrighted character. My friend @daisyzest and I have been doing the same for our characters on her server. While my skin is Catra, my name is Una Nomercy (which, oddly enough, I didn’t pick myself. I just noticed it changed one day, no clue how or why) and we decided on Una’s backstory together - it’s pretty much a mix of Catra, Adora and a little Kovu from The Lion King 2. Una is the daughter of a cult leader for cat people, and was raised to be the next heir. After she allowed someone to escape, however, her mother branded her with a scar and sentenced her to exile, thinking she’d inevitably die rejected by others. Little did she know a goat woman and her friends would offer their home to her.

[strifesolution]

yogscast 2014-2015 minecraft fandom shit

aka that time where the fandom had accepted tekkit had died off and this was a new era of the yogscast complete pack

- moonquest vs. sipsco space program stuff and being sad it wasn’t as engaging as the tekkit feuds

- cheat police being the last thing sips and sjin did together

- that episode of flux buddies where kim actually got lewis to turn around to get his tag lock, unscripted

- feeling like hatfilms were actually part of the yogscast now

- what’s yours is ours

- the remake of diggy diggy hole and moonquest being AMAZING

- where’s rythian

- still hoping blackrock was coming back but happy we saw more zoey and fiona

- literally the only existence of rythian in minecraft being undesirable number one

- magic police vs. flux buddies

- the hatfilms-flux buddies war: “dear Duncan, i did something amazing today.”

- the episode where this ultimatum was issued being released the same day all rise for datlof was (I think?)

- FLUX BUDDIES 2.0 ACTUALLY HAVING PLOT

- like, the first lalnable introduction

- clone labs :(((((

- clone labs just?? not having an effect on any other episodes?????

- like actually hoping the plots were coming together and we’d get more on SOI and being let down

- chaosville getting screwed over because no one from the original group was on the server

- people like davechaos, fryeuk, bebopvox, etc, being official yogs but never recognized as ones

- people being encouraged to give love to the underyogs but then not doing so

- lyinginbedmon and kirindave getting more attention than them

- william strife, just like, in general

- strife and parvis’ tumblr shipping cult following

- wereross and xephos&strife alien headcanons

- the church of strife vs. whatever rythian’s following was. there was a name for it too.

- boaillustration, sassytail, mindfulwrath, sparxflame, ceranovis, goldspil and a bunch of artists and writers that eventually just ducked out

- fucking urban magic yogs

- resonant rise pack being a chance for the yogs to re-hype their fandom and then people weren’t allowed on the server and everything but flux buddies died off

feel free to add on. keep anything overly negative off please

[felidae-charr]

A Reflective Anniversary

As many of us know, GW2 is coming up on its seventh birthday.

It’s made me do a lot of thinking about what GW2 as a game means to me. This game isn’t what it used to be. It’s seen a lot of changes, both in the staffing at ArenaNet that direct the game, and the game itself. Some of those changes have been pretty fantastic. Others seem to have been pretty catastrophic.

All in all, it’s gotten me thinking. Thinking about how I even came to play GW2. How I came to run a Tumblr blog with over eight hundred followers - which is still a huge number for me! All the people I met by doing those two things and all of the events I’ve attended in-game. (I still so fondly remember TREU meetups, I think is what they were.)

I remember picking up GW2 at the behest of a friend on Perfect World International. He and I were good friends and spent a lot of time on PWI together, doing the dumb shit that terrible free game had to offer, but he had been a big fan of GW1 and was very excited for GW2 to come out. Curious, I took a look at it. I think some of the first videos I ever saw of it were... gosh, I don’t remember. Part of me wants to say it might have been a Yogscast video.

I fell in love with Charr. I adored them. They were, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the selling point of GW2 for me. A beast race done properly. And I remember making Felidae Soulshield on the very first open beta, and having no idea what class to play. I had always normally played rangers, or archers, or other ranged classes. For Felidae though, I wanted something different. She was definitely a melee character. A supportive one, maybe? So a guardian.

And Felidae Soulshield has existed ever since. A big stronk lioncat who I have always loved the design of and have never even though of giving a makeover kit to. With the beta of GW2 came other things - specifically, this Tumblr blog! I posted about all kinds of things, from dabbling in PvP to looking at the cost of cultural armours and how they looked. Hell if I can really remember precisely what it was I posted about. Slowly but surely, I found other GW2 bloggers and the community was very small, especially the Charr portion of it, but everybody was friendly and we had nothing but love for the game to share.

As time went by, I made two very specific Sylvari characters: Aindryas, and Rasiel. Aindryas was, I think, my most well-known and I tried to dabble in roleplay with him. From what I heard in years following, a lot of people thought he looked incredibly nice and admired him at a distance. A few people came and roleplayed though, and we hung out. There was the usual roleplay drama because isn’t that always how roleplay winds up going, but it was fun. Aindryas and Rasiel also made me appreciate the Sylvari as a race a lot more, and Rasiel would also re-introduce me (albeit temporarily) to the world of PvP once I got him to level 80 and worked out a pretty bomb-ass Condi Thief build, back before Runes of Perplexity got hit with the nerfbat and buried in the grave. (Fuck, I miss that build.)

Some of the closest friends I’ve ever had were made in this game. Had is an operative word there, as none of us speak any more at all and it seems like we’re all on god-awful terms. But regardless of how things seem to have turned out, for many years, these people were a big and important part of my life and I would never try to claim they weren’t. I cared about them and I loved them, and I would never have met these people if I hadn’t picked up GW2 one day because somebody told me to go look at it.

Perhaps that’s why the state of GW2 today hurts me so much to see. Of any MMORPG I have ever played, it is this one that lead me to my closest of friends. It’s this one where I tried new things. It was this one where I felt a part of a community, and where I felt like that community was worth being part of. Full of friendly faces, and people who had amazingly good discussions, and generally free of snobbery. GW2 used to have an identity. And these days, I think it doesn’t have that any more.

It doesn’t have the identity of being the open-ended and flexible MMORPG with a fairly tight community. Now it has gained the reputation for being a top trending MMORPG that almost never updates with real content, and where all of those in-game rewards you used to be able to earn got either shoehorned behind raid content or otherwise put into the gem store. Now it’s known as the game where only “filthy casuals” play it, because all the “hardcore elite” got told to leave if they weren’t happy with the state of the game and so leave is precisely what they did. Now it’s just a husk and a shadow of what it used to be, where there are still plenty of players, but there’s also no shortage of people who will admit that half the playing of GW2 involves making your own games in GW2, because the game certainly isn’t giving you content any more.

Now GW2 is the game that added the ability to sit in a chair... and then sold chairs to its players, because anything that makes a quick buck, right?

I’m not even angry. I’m just tired. I’m sad. I keep logging into GW2 and I’m still playing the game - now and then. I finally finished Save the Queen just last week! A pre-cursor! But it feels hollow. Pre-cursors used to give me such excitement. Shit, I finished Bolt this year after years of staring at it and telling myself I’d get around to it, and... well I mean, it’s just Bolt. I’m slowly, tiny bit by tiny bit, working my way towards Astralia for my Viper Renegade, who I also finally have in full ascended accessories (my second ever character, out of 60, to be full ascended in accessories.) These things should be achievements to me. And I am happy and proud of myself! But... what does it matter, anyway? It’s not the achievement it used to be. Finding new builds feels worthless in a world where metas have become so predominately important (and look, I’m not saying that raids were bad for GW2, but they brought with them a more intense scrutiny towards “meta builds” than we had ever had previously) and where PvP and WvW are such poor jokes even ArenaNet forgets to turn on content for them.

It’s an anniversary, yes. It’s a birthday of the game. But I just don’t know I could call it happy, because when I reflect on what I remember this game for being and how fond it was to me back then, the game seems so shallow by comparison. The particular focus on gem store conveniences and chairs and rewards you can’t earn in game ever even when there’s no good reason not to be able to... GW2 lost its spirit somewhere along the way, I think. It was never a perfect game, and it was never going to be a perfect game, but the truth is if you put a big red button in front of me that said “GW2 (and community) pre-HoT” I’d probably smash it in a heartbeat.

Or, maybe I’m just a nostalgic idiot. 

[heroxephos]

it's been 9 years!

and that's crazy! most of my followers' accounts have the "-blog" suffix now and my dash is filled near-exclusively with content from me from around 2015. i have a heavy doubt anyone has looked at these blogs in a long time, but on the off-chance any of my old friends see this:

hello! i am lewis (yes, you can imagine where the name came from). i'm 24 now! i was barely 15 when i first made this blog, and i think that shows when you read more than three posts. i made this account sometime around the 9th of april 2013, on a whim, and i never really expected it to garner any kind of attention from there.

obviously, my place in this community is long-gone now -- i still hold the yogscast in such high regards (they're still ever-so-important to me) but every now and then i reminisce on what happened here in this little corner of somethings and what-have-yous.

the people of TBoTS were very, very wonderful people, and i will forever be grateful to all of the many tremendously talented people who didn't bat an eye when some idiot like me came bumbling into their lives. i've grown a lot, now, in so many positive ways, and even though i still have minor contact with people, part of me still wishes that we were all active someplace together so you could look at the person i've become, with a smile on your face, going, "yeah, i've seen all the changes he's made over time, he's really done his best and i'm proud". not that i was a bad person, mind you, or anything like that. it's just that kind of yearning to be remembered fondly. i've gotten better at roleplaying and character development and worldbuilding and art and this and that and -- well, you know. this blog was kind of a mess, to be honest.

TBoTS was my life in the final years of me being in school. it absolutely fucked with my grades, and there's no doubt about that, but that's whatever. i cared so much about the people around me, and i still do. getting to college the sands shifted, but i still kept this muse. i used him for several more years; a new group, new friends, a new place to call home. and that's all i could have ever really asked for, between TBoTS to the next to now. i've always had a group i could go to at the end of the day to confide in, and it's TBoTS that gave me that chance in the first place.

i am happy. and i've been happy for a very long time. i know who i am. i have a job. i have money. last month was mine and my boyfriend's fourth anniversary, and he's visited me several times. in a couple years i'm planning engagement. i'm surrounded by people who i love who love me. people confide in me and trust me to help them. i love to put my time aside for people who love me because i love them and there's nothing in the world that would stop me from loving them.

i am so, so thankful for the existence of this blog. it's embarrassing, sure, fine, who cares, it's a testament of it's time and it's a special piece of my history. i am thankful to the people who have come and gone. kieran - spy - who i still have contact with and talk to every other week, after these 9 years. holly, em, raven, though i'm missing a few - we don't talk, but i appreciate the warmth i felt when we managed to reconnect a few years ago (i'm sorry i've gone MIA; you guys grew so close over the years, our interests have shifted and i'm very out-of-place). arrows - lom - we don't talk anymore but i still follow you, and i see the work you're doing, and the people who love you, and it makes me so happy to see where your career has gone. madi - lalna - i read your tweets, every day, i share your photos of your cat, hamilton, to my friends every time i see him and they love him -- i love seeing where you are now. i don't know where everyone went, but that's okay.

being here shaped my future & it's a future i never thought i would see. i hope the rest of you guys are loving life. i will always, always be here, if i'm ever needed. i'm good at advice, now, i promise!

lewis ✩