#JOIN OUR SERVER WE ARE A REALLY FUN CULT

[niftukkun]

New from RECAP Weekly!!! An Exclusive Interview from Hermitopia's Emperor?!?

for the third week of @shepscapades ’s hermitcraft character design event, i offer grian as an empires smp member!

ok so first off, that head. thats just p03 from inscryption. but grian. it fits! but also! go play inscryption go go its on sale Right Now (until june 30) go play it its so good then go watch this video afterwards join my fandom please please please join us

ok back to hermpires! so i originally was gonna take an empire from s2 and just insert grian into it, but while browsing through the esmp s2 wiki i came across/remembered hermitopia and my brain went yep! this one. so i thought a bit about what grian would do if he was an empires smp member and how hermitopia would happen, and i think grian would crash the economy on purpose. i mean it almost already happened when the hermitpires crossover happened so i dont think im too far off. i think grian originally exported something simple, like maybe sugarcanes or mud, something easy to farm yknow, but then i dunno got bored or something so he made a couple more farms. then kept making more farms. then the hermitopia we all know and love happened!

actually maybe hermitopia isnt grians first empire. i think grian has a separate empire but decided to invite his friends to help him make some farms and then it just kept going. then hermitopia happened. i like the collaboration aspect of hermitopia so i think thats how that happens. hermitopia isnt necessarily grian's but its under his command so it gets called his. (isnt there a word for this? was it vassalage? i think its vassalage)

with that in mind i went with a robot-y grian because grumbot and a snazzy cool suit because business man (sidenote im looking over my pre art notes and one of them is just capitalism man and. yeah! not wrong). i gave him more steampunk-y wings than the usual feathery ones cause that fit better. i gave him a crown not really sure why but it fits since without it the design was more Just A Guy but with it he's more Emperor yknow. the buttons have a g on it because he would and an (attempted) gold trim cause that looked nice and fancy. originally he was gonna have four wings cause fun fact four wings is part of my base grian design but four wings kind of crowded the drawing so i didnt include them (sad) and i also didnt include the tail hes supposed to have because i couldnt find a good way to add it in with the pose. but in my heart he has both four wings and a tail

now why magazine style artwork? i 'unno. i thought itd look cool. and it does!! it looks SO cool!!! im so proud of it. recap magazine!! because of course im gonna make a hermitcraft recap reference are you kidding me recap is practically already a magazine reporting what gossip is happening on the hermitcraft server on any given week. its very specifically volume 9 issue 34 because thats when the crossover happened season 9 week 34 babey we love little esoteric details hell yeah!! i looked up how magazine covers work and its supposed to be like, main article big and smaller supporting side articles just kinda floating around so i did that!! and i made them funney references because of course i did! local bard catches scurvy because you cannot convince me that oli orionsound would not catch scurvy he would. does god is gay is a reference to that does bruno mars is gay nonsense article that makes me laugh everytime specifically in reference about mr smallish bean because he. has so many children. and none of them as far as i know from the lady server members theyre all lovechilds from gay lovers its hysterical and hilarious. quit your job join our sun cult is about the dawn empire because thatse the vibe that empire gives me and i think its funny. also!! thats hermitopia!! in the background!! i got the image off of the empires smp wiki and just Biggen'd it and it makes a bomb ass background hell yeah ^-^!!

also version with no text here lookit it!!

[cocomere]

Hello there! Are you a DSMP fan? Do you like co-op minecraft servers? Are you looking to join one with cool people who engage in shenanigans of the lighthearted variety? Do you inexplicably follow only me and literally nobody else within the Dreblr subgroup?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, then boy howdy do I have the server for you!!

Come join us over on the Dreblr server! (Link to our admin's post for season 2; we're entering season 3 on July 19th 2024, 9pm EST). You have to share a social media that shows signs of life within the fandom, but reblogging absolutely counts. Also this won't really be for you if you're gonna, like, be a dick about c!Dream or cc!Dream.

As long as you meet those requirements, you're entirely free to join the discord server! The minecraft server only adds the additional requirement of needing to be able to run java edition. No mods are needed; Sif's firm goal is that anyone who doesn't want to touch any of that doesn't need to do so. As someone who joined the server not too long after the End opened up in season 1, I can attest that the folks in both the discord and minecraft servers are absolutely lovely. We're all very friendly, I prommy, and our admins (Sif and Vault) strike a good balance between being kind and understanding yet also willing to pull out the newspaper to bop people if we're getting a bit rowdy.

For that aforementioned inexplicable person not yet inducted into Dreblr unaware of what kind of things go on around there, we have: -Giant beet fields of increasing size (season 3 will feature a ring of them around spawn, god help us) -Warden Wranglers, aka the clowns -clown quests -scavenger hunts -server tradition of jumping off the clown tent -Our original clown, @sunshine-in-a-bottle, begging us not to jump off of the clown tent -nobody listening and us all jumping off of the clown tent anyway, to the point where it's SUCH a staple that both prior seasons ended with us all jumping off of it as the server closes -there are many clowns and the circus will likely expand more this season :o) -we've apparently had multiple cults -mysterious structures of unknown origin or importance -people with no life (me) setting up shops/lugging unholy amounts of things back to yeet at anyone who needs them -(please take things from me I want to help people so badly, s1 a lot of people had no idea I was hoarding to give away so I opened up a shop in s2 and it helped SOME but NOT ENOUGH) -the Porb (prison orb), a giant floating orb of obsidian which housed a warden -I have no idea where it was made in s2, but in s1 it was in spawn. you could not see it at night. it was VERY FUNNY. -(other people have disagreed on this, hence it not being in spawn for s2.) -many farms and qol perks, ranging from elevators to a huge villager trading hall to death chests -yes, the first and last can exist without you needing to download mods! Server-side mods are amazing. So are datapacks. -this season we're gonna be doing nearly all of the public structures from scratch again, and we've already been talking about what to do. -personally, I'm gonna try and set up the player shopping district fairly early on. I feel like I waited too long last season. Also I just want to scout a good area out before prime locations get yoinked and I can set it up near my house again. I could literally spend hours here trying to come up with a list of fun things we've done/plan to do, but I kind of need to do some eepy before the appointed hour arrives. I hope this has made you, baffling and probably nonexistent person who isn't already aware of this existing, consider joining the fun. We'd love to have you!

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: nibbleinephym

our interviewee is @nibblelinephym (known in 2020/2021 as severely-nearsighted). here is a copy/pasted transcript of the questions and answers!

(if these posts are too long, please let me know, and i'll incorporate a cutoff in the future!)

Q: What do you remember most fondly about ‘Early MCYTblr’? (2020-2021)

A: i think im most fond of how tight-knit the community felt in the 'early days' honestly? dont get me wrong seeing it grow and new creators bring even more people in has been wonderful but theres just something about a smaller fandom that feels nice. we were never by any means a Small fandom but we're a Lot bigger now than we were just a few years ago!

Q: I understand that you were the face of Silverfish2020 (winner of the first MCYTblr elections). What was your experience in the elections themselves like?

A: first, clarifying; unfortunately silverfish2020 was Not the winner of the first election; that was quotes2020, represented by mcyt-quotes (who i believe has since changed urls? apologies but im not sure what their current one is or if theyre still active at all ^^;) by exactly four votes -- for me the elections were a lot of fun! when they were first starting up i wasn't sure if i wanted to join, since there were a Lot of people involved already and i hadn't really solidified myself as part of the community yet (i think i was still almost exclusively a musical blog back in the first days of it, not multifandom, which is so wild to think about tbh). im really glad i did though, i met some truly amazing people through the event that i still talk with to this day :] everything felt very fast paced at the time, especially since the discord was almost always going at blink-and-youll-miss-it speeds; you had to be Constantly in there if you wanted to participate in conversation. i remember whenever someone joined the server there would be a mob of people from different parties trying to convince them to side with theirs. surprisingly, that tactic worked pretty well for a lot of parties. i vividly remember that there was usually a pause of activity in the general server when results were being posted and a boom when they were all out. it was overall just a generally pretty positive environment from what i remember

Q: You were also a contestant in the MCYTblr ‘Friend or Host’ for Paint (adhddream). What do you remember of it?

A: friend or host was great! i wasnt in the competition long (iirc i was one of the first five out??? i dont actually remember how many contestants there were for the round but i know i was pretty early ^^;) but paint seemed really chill, it was just a nice little thing that we did for fun at love or hosts peak. i remember the discord stream of it didnt exactly go very well -- there was an issue with the visuals i think? so it might have been only audio. but im not entirely sure about that, it didnt really stick in my mind as well as other things from that era.

Q: What was the roleplay for Silverfish2020 like? 

A: the silverfish roleplay was very,, im not sure what the best word for it would be. chaotic maybe. there were a lot of things going on there just because there were a lot of things going on in the elections roleplay as a whole. we really leaned into the cult thing when the jokes started and it just kinda spiraled from there. in the beginning we toyed with the idea of a chestburster type thing living inside of the party members but it never really went anywhere despite how much we talked about it in our private discord,, instead we just focused on the party being a sort of hivemind. they lived in a stronghold under a dead forest and would try to get others to listen to 'the buzz' (like. insect buzzing. except if you listened to it long enough youd start hearing promises of a new family and respect and power and shit like that). one of our party members, shard (@shardofsun) was very thorough with all of her lore, going so far as to make detailed plans in a notebook of hers. the roleplay extended throughout the other elections as well (if you ignore the third and only through past lifetimes in the fourth) and is still partially going on now!

Q: You’ve been consistently keeping a list of all ‘kinnie’ (content creator imposter) blogs. Which ones stood out to you?

A: i think one of the imposter blogs that stood out most to me was definitely iamdreamwastaken (who eventually moved to tmblrdream) just because they were very interactive and took all the shit we sent them in stride. i also really liked the timedeo imposter despite never watching any of timedeos stuff. just thought they were cool. honourable shoutout to the eret and nihachu imposters too they rocked

Q: What are the biggest blogs you can remember? What was your impression of them?

A: the biggest blogs i can remember are probably gnfkitten [braveboyhalo] back when cat was the only one on the blog, adhddream, hearty-an0n(maybe not a Big one?? but very active and in a Lot of peoples inboxes from what i saw) and wooteena. there are definitely more urls i remember like georgeeehd (i think?) and wormweeb but i dont think i followed georgeeehd and i cant remember a whole lot of wormweebs stuff apart from the infertility post so i cant accurately answer for them ^^; wooteena was an acquaintance of mine; we didnt talk a whole lot but we were mutuals for a while. they were always pretty chill, despite the fact there were people out there shipping them with a friend of theirs?? ive always had huge respect for them just because they had the energy to deal with shit like that. i was friends with gnfkitten and hearty-an0n, at the very least in a 'wave at each other on the street' way, and i have really fond memories of the both of them :] hearty is still active, they post about sports these days from what i see on my dash, but im not sure if cat is despite gnfkitten being active as a group blog. adhddream always seemed really cool! my memory of their blog isnt super clear but i know i really liked seeing them on my dash back in the day. since this is tumblr i have no way of knowing if any of these people were actually Big Blogs but it definitely seemed like they were to me at the time haha

Q: What was the most insane piece of fandom drama you can remember from early MCYTblr? Did you participate?

A: i dont actually remember a whole lot of fandom drama from that time honestly. i tended to stay in my bubble of mutuals and other people i followed so it rarely ever crossed my dash. i was like ,, 15-16 at the time so fandom drama stressed me wayyyyy out, i tried my best to avoid it. the only stuff i can really remember at all was people fighting about whether or not it was okay to ship the characters from the dream smp and if shipping the characters was the same as shipping the players, but i never participated in any of the discourse from what i can recall

Q: Is there anything else you want to mention or that you want to be written down and remembered?

A: nope! though im happy to clarify on anything stated here if needed or answer any other questions that may arise :]

[valya-dudycz-lupescu]

A Little Goncharov for Thanksgiving

I learned about Goncharov the way I learn about most memes and pop culture, from my teenagers. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, we had a group chat spring up on Discord that included two family friends who were going to be joining us for the holiday from out of town. One of the topics of conversation turned to Goncharov, the imaginary film around which an active Tumblr fan community had sprung up, as if it had been a real, little-known cult classic from 1973 made by Martin Scorsese. 

It became a fun creative exercise—in the middle of the day, one of the kids would send a question about Goncharov: “What do you think about the relationship between Katya and Sofia?” or “What did you make of the clock tower imagery?” or “Goncharov… iphone or android guy?” To which someone else would playfully answer. 

This same kind of thing was happening on a massive scale on Tumblr, where artists created movie posters and promotional materials, composers posted songs and soundtracks, people posted deleted scenes and script fragments. There are reviews and academic papers, fictitious Wikipedia and IMDb listings, and A LOT of fan art.

Lynda Carter posted a photo on her Tumblr with Henry Winkler that she captioned, “Me and ‘The Fonz’ at the premiere of Goncharov (1973) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.”

Discussions popped up about the characters and who would play them in the reboot. Posts were shared hundreds, then thousands of times. A Goncharov (1973) Lore Google Doc and Discord server were created to help keep the content organized.

Our family’s fan-favorite character was Ice-Pick Joe, so I wrote “Musings on Ice-Pick Joe” in between chopping veggies for stuffing and waiting for the sweet potatoes to roast, complete with some AI-generated art. That was four days ago, and the post has been liked and shared more than I anticipated, and I keep thinking about why that is.

Conversations around Goncharov have continued, and I find myself wondering what it is about this moment in time and this type of activity that continues to capture so many people’s imagination and engagement?

Tumblr is a hub for public fandom culture and community in a way that the other social media platforms are not. It’s where you can find discourse and fanfiction/fanart for almost anything.

Still, this is a little different and on a much larger scale. At a time when people are looking for Twitter alternatives, with the stress and joy of holidays approaching, what is drawing so many people in?

We talked about this over Thanksgiving: the way Goncharov allowed people low-stakes permission to create, to play to their particular strengths, to connect with other people, to escape reality for a moment, to build a new community. We talked about the shortcomings and challenges we saw: power dynamics, issues of race, etc.

It’s an evolving experiment, and as such, it has been shaped by the many variables involved and course-corrected each time someone notices a gap or opportunity: What would a musical look like? What if some of the actors had gone on Sesame Street or the Muppet Show? What if Gonzo played Goncharov and Miss Piggy played Katya? What would the remake look like set in 1980s NYC? What recipes might be created for the Goncharov cookbook? (I remember how much fun we had making the Forking Good cookbook.) There really is no end to what people can come up with. I’m waiting to see if Goncharov gets a Tom Gauld comic or a mention on Saturday Night Live. 

It seems relevant that role-playing games, both online and tabletop, have recently increased in popularity. Dungeons and Dragons was the cornerstone of Stranger Things, and 50,000 people attended Gen Con (tabletop game convention) in 2022. It’s not my world, although I’ve watched the joy my kids take in it. My energy goes into writing, but I can absolutely appreciate the fun of playing together. 

As a writer, I walk around with worlds in my head, but I don’t get to share them until they get published. Something like Goncharov, which was not an intellectual property “owned” by anyone, gives people permission to imagine and play.

I think it speaks to a need we have an human beings to experience connection, joy, wonder, and hope. We've always had those needs. People have been gathering around fires or tables, telling stories, for thousands of years.

Today, the hearth may be a computer or a phone, but the desire is not that different. My November began with the publication of Mother Christmas, my graphic novel, the secret origin of the Santa Claus story which is rooted in the ancient Muses, whose gifts inspire humanity. One of the questions my story attempts to answer is: Where does inspiration come from?

If we look at Goncharov we can see that inspiration comes from so many places. So much is possible when people given themselves permission to play, to shrug off the inner critics and outer trolls, and to imagine for a moment a different world that they have a part in creating. That is such a powerful and compelling idea.

Stories remind us that we are not alone, that we share struggles, and that we can overcome obstacles. There are so many challenges in the world right now.

Maybe Goncharov is a lens through which people are seeing themselves and each other, reminding us how much fun it is to make-believe and how powerful it can be to have a shared image of the world.

The first step in creation is imagining. Exercising that muscle, allowing ourselves to play and tell stories and make art is a worthwhile one, and I think it's one that we need to survive.  The Goncharov phenomenon gives me hope, because if we can have this many people put their energy into creating a whole world around Goncharov, just imagine what else is possible?

[deliciousobservationbird]

Been thinking a lot about the Life series again and who I'd think might join (or who I'd want to join) and here they are from most to least likely!

FWhip: Known hardcore player and friends with pretty much everyone on the server. Like playing on servers and also murder.

Cubfan135: Known UHC enjoyer (when playing with hermitfriends) and good at them! Enjoys just playing Minecraft, causing problems, and is also competitive. Is currently only really doing Hermitpires and speedrunning so he could commit.

MythicalSausage: Pretty much the same reasons as FWhip. Slightly less likely to join purely because I feel like his skirting of PG miiight give some of them an aneurysm.

FalseSymmetry: Same points as Cub but because she's not only fully committed to Hermitcraft and Empires, but also Vault Hunters season 3. I do want to see her play something UHC styled again. I watched back some of her old UHCs and damn 😳

OwengeJuice: He's got the Rats SMP connections, he was on Empires that one time, I believe in the power of Owen! Also please Scott would have so much fun messing with him.

GeminiTay: She, like False, has multiple series going on but also I would love to see more GeminiSlay. Can you blame me??? Also do not separate the Wither Rose alliance they would be so cool as a team I can't even express it properly.

HBomb94: This is NOT copium. Anyways, he's the guy with probably the second most connections in the Minecraft sphere other than Scott. He's played with so many of them before and only really has Vault Hunters going on at the moment. Imagine the H factor in an all-out Life series war. We all need to see it happen.

WilburSoot: Unlikely but hear me out. He's a Grian fan and has teamed with Grian before. Not so cracked at Minecraft that he'd immediately be ruled out and has enough time to record Tommy mod videos so theoretically would have the time for this. Would he start some sort of deranged cult? Yes. But he's toned down the swearing so it wouldn't be a problem! He's practiced being PG!!!

HannahXXRose: Okay, so she only really knows Pearl and Scott (and also Lizzie!) but she raided X that one time! I know he isn't on the Life server but it counts! Same with False, she has old UHC content that still goes so hard and imagine her. Please we need a girlboss team. She could do it single-handedly but she wouldn't and that's so cool of her.

Blushi: She's a cracked player, also watching BDubs and Impulse try and use their MCC connections to keep her as a teammate would be so funny. "She's our teammate! Move along now 😤".

FireBreathMan: Okay, same reason as Blushi but also I would watch him have a 10 hour karaoke after every kill and so would everyone else.

Aimsey: Friends with Scott and Pearl and I don't really have a reason other than it would be really funny to make him play in a Life series.

YeahJaron & Baconnwaffles0: YeahJaron has the endurance and ingenuity to pull off superflat superhuman feats and Baconnwaffles0 is no stranger to the grindset either. They don't know anyone on the Lifeseries but Jaron is a Grian fan and Baconnwaffles0 has 'waffle' in his name??? This is pure fantasy but please they would do so well. They'd go from Lifesteal zeros to Life series heroes! Also they're not zeros in my eyes but the point still stands.

Planetlord: Look. The Planetlord effect has been known to work on Lifesteal twitch chat. What would the Planetlord effect do on the Life series? Every day is a slay for them so they'd fit right in! He doesn't even swear much so Grian's delicate sensibilities wouldn't be offended. Please let him in please I'll do anything I want them in so bad Grian please-

[sludgefriend]

The winter before last, my life had begun to change at a breakneck pace.

After returning from a trip back to the midwest to visit my family for the holidays, I got a discord notification, saying that there were now University-based discords. I decided to give it a look, join a few, but didn’t really look at much of them for a while. Eventually though, the most popular one started to pop off a bit. People were interacting, making plans. I’d pop in and out, make a few jokes here and there, but didn’t pay it too much mind. One day, people made plans to go do a trivia night at a local bar. I thought, “eh, fuck it. Why not”.

My hopes weren’t very high. I was half expecting a bunch of internet chuds. I found the table they were situated at, and to my great surprise, my presupposition couldn’t be further from the truth. At that table sat a bunch of weirdo queer freaks. “I did it. I found my people”, I thought. From that chance meeting blossomed some of the greatest friendships of my life.

Time went on, and our community grew at a monstrous rate. From ten people, to twenty, to fourty, to a hundred, and eventually nearly two hundred. Events nearly every day of the week, which i attended as many as I possibly could. Winter turned into spring, and having been a part of the group for so long and with my friendly and open nature, I secured myself a position of mild authority and trust.

The semester went on and during this time, I experienced some of my favorite moments in all of my life. Parties wrought with fun, care, and incredible bonds. Rollerskating with my entire group on the weekly. As the semester winded to a close, the guy running the thing held an award ceremony at the school’s weird bar thing, which we pretty much packed out.

I remember thinking to myself, “god, isn’t this so beautiful? All of these wonderful people, coming together and celebrating one another”. It was something that I’d wanted so dearly throughout my entire life. To bring people together, stir the pot, and see what comes out. During my time in this group, I watched people learn and grow at bewildering speeds.

But, then again, the guy running it. Right? Interesting character, to say the least. Incredibly charismatic, had a penchant for drawing the hidden parts of people out to the forefront and feeding that fire. Cracks started to show, however. Entering this situation, I noticed some strange things. Upon joining the discord, you’d be given a new username, and for a while, nobody was allowed to use their real names or their regular online usernames. The guy gave a reasoning for this; it was for privacy and protection. He recognized that it was a community full of vulnerable people. It made sense. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that this was the sort of tactic that cults utilize. In full honesty, that’s probably the closest we ever truly got to that sort of thing. It’s still emblematic, to me, though, of what would come next.

You see, I went off on a bit of a tangent, but the guy, the leader. Those cracks started showing. He would start to make unwanted advances on people in the community, myself included. After being politely declined, he would persist, making myself and the others that experienced this extremely uncomfortable, to say the least, especially given his relative power within the group. He was also incredibly, incredibly averse to any kind of dissent whatsoever. His opinions, ideas, the way he ran the community, the way he organized the server. Any contradiction he sniffed, he snuffed out with impunity.

Regardless though, at the ceremony, i and a few of my compatriots were given new titles. We were essentially community leaders. Around this time, I started developing a new sort of ideology for myself. A sort of unwavering yet cautious optimism. Hoping to make any kind of change in the world, believing that the only way forward was to believe that things could get better.

The guy, P, I’ll refer to him as, started having outbursts. He’d single people out, ream them in front of everybody else, and snuff out any dissent whatsoever. At some point, one of the community leaders and one of my closest friends even now, T, came to me and said something along the lines of “Hey, we need a backup plan for if things go south. I don’t like the way things are going down right now. We should try to get him to see reason, but we need to have a way out just in case.”

And so, two plans were born. First, a scavenger hunt for community made tarot cards culminating in a party special for P. We figured, he might just be facing some kind of stress and alienation with everyone out of town. Second, a backup server if things didn’t go well.

Cont’d

[incorrectslbpquotes]

hii im extending the biannual invitation to my SLBP server! it’s a really chill community, we do movie nights and game nights sometimes and we are big on OCs, so we have a lot of channels for that! Even though it’s not a RP-based server, we still like to talk about our original characters and even come up with fun AUs and things like that :)

Please message me if you want an invitation link! Everyone’s welcome to join <3

To convince you that we’re really fun I’m gonna share some of our funniest moments so you can see for yourself lmfao

[silver-ink-iron-words]

The villain was, in a word, exhausted.

Their mech suit’s safety tests had failed again, their underground death cult was fighting with their aboveground death cult, and they really needed to start moderating the discord server more consistently.

All of this preoccupied the villain’s mind. Which is why they didn’t notice the hero until their faces were mere centimeters apart.

“Gah!” the villain yelled. Papers flew everywhere.

“Hi gorgeous,” the hero said with a joyful grin.

The two of them blinked at each other for a moment.

And then the villain ran.

The last time the hero had caught them, they'd thought they’d go to a regular prison. But they hadn’t been lucky enough for that. They remembered the light that had been in the hero’s eyes when they said they had other plans for the villain.

The villain picked up their pace.

Fortunately, they were on their own turf this time. Their lair was full of secret passageways and hidden weapons, and the villain knew this place like the back of their hand. The hero didn’t stand a chance.

The villain rounded a corner, and screamed when the hero was there.

“Getting your steps in?” the hero asked.

The villain started backing away. “I requested for them to send a different hero.”

“Not how that works, hun.” The hero trailed after, their hands clasped behind their back.

“Don’t you ever get tired of foiling me?” The villain held up their hand, and a stungun dropped down from the ceiling.

“Not in the least.” The hero rushed forward and disarmed them. The villain tensed at how close they were. “You’re my favorite assignment.”

What a player, the villain thought.

“You’re a bit slower today, though.” There was a small crease in the hero’s brows. “Have you been eating enough?”

The villain had a vague memory of there being string cheese the last time they were monitoring their venomous inchworms.

“That’s none of your business,” they said, putting distance between them. “Look, are you going to arrest me properly this time? Because if not, I was busy.”

“Busy with this?” The hero held up the papers the villain had dropped.

The villain snatched them back, and the hero laughed.

“Okay, I gotta know,” they said. “What’s a hogification ray?”

“It turns people into pigs.” The villain shot the hero a pointed look. “I plan to use it on my enemies.”

“Ah, like Spirited Away.”

“Is that another villain?”

The hero laughed again. The villain scowled. This was precisely why they had asked for someone else.

“Alright,” the hero said, clapping a hand on the villain’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going with you.”

The hero’s smile didn’t falter. “Ah come on, it’ll be fun. Think of it as a sleepover.”

“You’re never bringing me to that hellscape again.”

The villain’s previous imprisonment at the hero’s base had started with simple confinement. Then there were the brain scans and logic tests. And only then did the hero’s team bring out the most terrible part. The thing that made that facility worse than prison. Maybe even worse than death.

Recruiters.

“I’m not joining your little bootlicking circlejerk,” the villain bit out. “And you’ll never be able to make me.”

“Hey, it’s not that bad. We have a new coffee machine.”

“Oh, well, that changes everything,” the villain deadpanned. They started backing away again.

The hero followed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just let the best mind of our generation go.” They titled their head. “Although . . .”

The villain was nearing the end of the hallway. “What?”

“I could tell my superiors that you got away, just this once.” They flashed a remarkably unheroic grin. “If you go on a date with me.”

The villain tripped, and their back hit hard on the wall.

“I take that’s a yes?”

The villain’s mouth hung open. “What – but – I – But isn’t this workplace harassment? You’re supposed to be the good guy!”

“We’re not coworkers yet,” the hero said, closing the distance. “So, what do you say?”

The villain paused, looking them over. What would it be like to date the hero?

“I’ll consider it,” they said.

They slammed a button on the wall, and a trap door opened beneath their feet. The hero yelled. They tried to grab the villain, but they were too slow. Their face looked flabbergasted in the rapidly shrinking hole above.

The villain smirked as they plummeted into the darkness.

Part 2

[theminecraftbee]

well, that’s a thing that happened. after three hours of digging, an end portal was found, and ren and doc uncovered... this? guess we know our next hermatrix build!

i have no idea how to bring this into the actual hermatrix lore but. this was surprisingly fun to watch for three hours, considering it was people digging a hole in basically complete silence. gg, doc and ren, for making that interesting

some personal highlights from the stream, for those of you who were not there (under a readmore because i put a LOT here):

ren and doc went live with cryptic binary code that spelled “HELP”. they never spoke for the entire stream. doc’s stream didn’t even have sound. we were offered no explanation for what was happening.

people realized pretty quickly that their score went up if they dug. also doc made a yogs diggy diggy hole reference so that probably helped

people also eventually put together that the more they dug, the more eyes of ender appeared in a portal that was at the bottom of the world.

for some reason doc was REALLY DETERMINED to have a ghast on the server. every time the server restarted he would summon one. it never went anywhere near the players he just... had a ghast. good for him.

it turns out that when you leave 300 people in a border with no instruction other than to dig they get very weird very quickly. the in-game chat was consistently hilarious.

some highlights include: they tried to unionize more than once.

the working conditions of digging this giant pit, after all, were truly terrible. sad day.

there was a wedding! ren even went to watch the wedding. it happened at the end portal. it was a three-way wedding and was very dramatic.

“what if we got married on the hermatrix test server”

see those scores in the right of the screen? yeah RickiTicki08 was in the lead most of the stream. this was both because they were the only person who realized mining sand and grass counted early on and because they didn’t talk in chat. they just mined. props to them.

redwinterroses logged in and everyone started talking about hermitblr for a bit. gem of a line i saw: “what on earth is a hermitblr?”

i wish i knew. i wish i knew.

also, please never bring up dkdd on a docm77 stream again? my heart can’t take this, guys. why would you do that. please

dog at the door loveposting happened too in chat. (if solar and fluffy didn’t want that brought up to creators.......sorry about that,)

(guys remember your fourth wall)

cubfan and xisuma joined the server to help us dig! cubfan stuck around almost the whole time, xisuma left partway through.

xisuma. kept on dying. f

xisuma in chat: “the other day i bought a pizza for 10000 derpcoin”. no further explanation was given for this statement. i just think it’s important you know he said that.

cubfan meanwhile i think accidentally started a cult? he was vibing, and lead the charge on several of the chat’s arguments about which corner of the map was best corner.

everyone ended up cubfan fans i think. this is good. as a cubfan fan myself, i approve.

speaking of cults: mumbo jumbo had a cult as well. and a shrine! doc showed us the shrine.

someone destroyed the shrine though and it was very sad.

(i would like to emphasize again that everyone on the server just did this stuff with no prompting. ren and doc interacted almost none at all.)

i say ALMOST none at all because the final cult was all the people who, instead of digging to get the server to it’s eventual goal, just. decided to try to dig the bedrock in the middle of the end portal.

doc got tired of this and started teleporting them away. this included poor h____h____h, who got repeatedly teleported into the void for their crime of continuously digging a piece of bedrock. f

the server kept crashing as it got closer to being done because everyone was trying to dig in the same place

when everyone first entered the end there were too many people and the area refused to load so everyone just got stuck

doc and ren handed out signs to everyone at the end so they could put signs everywhere. i’d like to imagine doc and ren will go back to look at those signs...

then doc got everyone into a big screenshot, and then after that built a queue for people to stand in to get individual screenshots. the orderly line at the end of the stream was majestic.

i’m sure there’s more i missed if people want to bring it up but. fun hermatrix adventure. had a good time!

[captainkirbypunch]

My love has left tumblr once again.

As many of you may know, the account under the name MDZADR, has left tumblr. They felt unsafe in their fandom, and as such have deleted their tumblr and AO3 account due to the bad memories linked to them.

As a part of their departure, they have asked me to post something in their name, as follows.

If you want more details about how I came to this realization, continue to read. If not, here is your summary:

TL;DR: For the safety and health of this fandom, I wanted to spread the word that Mooping-10 is filled with people who absolutely cannot be trusted, creating a very hazardous environment for the zadr community, and MelodyoftheVoid is connected to all of those people, living a double life amongst those of us that don’t “ship zadr correctly.” She has plenty of friends her inner circle knows nothing about, and nobody on either side knows who she really is. 

Full story below.

I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. Nobody did anything to me today, but this just wasn’t worth it.

My AO3 and tumblr are both gone. I didn’t say goodbye because I didn’t want to look like an attention seeker.

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t going to name drop, but you guys need to know the truth. I’m instructing my boyfriend (hi y’all) to turn asks off for his own safety after this because this is going to be a nightmare, but... allow me to tell you the full story. I’ll try to break up the text so it’s less difficult to read, but this is important. I’m sorry to air discourse so publicly, but please... I need you to listen to me.

I’ll start from the beginning, without being vague anymore about who “she” is. I request that you please read the whole thing and not skip parts of it. The whole story matters.

I finally returned to the fandom about two months or so ago. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t do well in my thoughts while left alone too long, so I posted saying I would stop messaging people I knew because I didn’t want to bother them. There were only two people I was talking to at the time, but one of them is famous so I didn’t want to message her directly saying that. Doing so would have put her in a position of feeling obligated to say “you’re not bothering me” rather than just simply being able to sigh with relief from no longer being contacted. 

But the first person to contact me was the famous person, and she asked if I was okay, and told me she liked talking to me.

God, I actually cried.

But, that’s just her. Melodyofthevoid is the type of person to talk to people in the fandom, totally unaware of her demigod status. She comments on stories, interacts on posts, messages first... a pillar of kindness, so it seemed.

But let the story continue.

Over time, we were talking more often. 

Mostly sending memes (cause everyone I knew, myself included, aren’t exactly great at holding conversations. No shade. Memes are a love language). I was still in the hero worship stage of our relationship, so my view of her was that that was perfect.

Now, let me bridge a connection with a new story idea I got around December 28th or so, and my thinking she was perfect.

I had recently finished watching Madoka and questioned “If I had magical powers, what would they be?” It then turned into its own story idea, basing creators’ powers around the strengths and weaknesses in creations. I actually realized “oh fuck. My stuff is incoherent. My friends’ works aren’t too different...”

Thus spawned the name “Incoherent” for the project.

What does that have to do with this? Well, here’s the thing that really fucked everything up quickly. 

This was not on purpose, because originally the project (which I had told nobody of yet at the time) was all about improving your works, making platonic friends, dressing our personas in cute outfits, and writing fun magic.

While listening to music and thinking of the story one day, my brain accidentally shipped my persona with hers, and I couldn’t unsee it. And I’m lousy at keeping my own secrets (other’s are different) so she found out on probably day one or two about my weird crush because of an ask meme of all things. 

She didn’t try to put me off any, which was another problem for future things to come, and so I decided that since Incoherent was finally making me feel alive again and feeling the euphoric feelings of love wouldn’t hurt anything (I figured they’d mellow out on their own eventually because that’s how infatuation works) since they helped fuel my inspiration, and then we would just continue from friends to better friends one day and this part of our lives would be over.

Besides, the forbidden is attractive somehow, and makes stories more entertaining. She’s aro/ace, so I had no chance anyway. Someone safe to crush on, in her own way.

This isn’t a story of a love betrayal however. There was no such thing. But it’s important to the story because Incoherent is where my mistakes were made, and hers brought to light.

By this time, I had a handful of people I was talking to, and I created a discord server for the project. Only my boyfriend (hi!) and I were in it at the time. I was not-so-subtly asking my friends what they’d look like if they were a magical person, what their names would be... I thought I would have had to lure Melody in to make her want to join us, but I managed to get her in very easily. Everyone was happy and excited! It was a no obligation, no time limit thing for us to enjoy, a little sandbox to play around in. 

Sure there were plans to make it bigger and I was working on art to the best of my ability, but it was gonna be a fun thing mostly. No pressure on anyone.

And how things started becoming a problem was that the rest of us posted publicly about the project and interacted with each other’s posts relating to the story, but she had started to interact publicly less and less with our things, and everyone noticed it.

It wasn’t because we were greedy and wanted the popular girl to reblog our things. It’s because we had a feeling she was ashamed of being seen publicly with us. The reason we were worried before then and started making that connection was because I mentioned I was going to ask another user if they were interested in joining Incoherent. Melody was the only one that seemed uncomfortable, and I messaged her asking about it. We agreed I wouldn’t invite that person but I knew things were off about it.

That person is like me. How long until Melody didn’t want to talk to me anymore? A few days ago, the other shoe finally dropped. A member of our little group and I were talking and (let’s call them Friend for simplicity. They asked to not be name dropped here) Friend was worried they had made Melody upset by tagging her in a meme picture they drew of her persona, and the two had agreed that Friend remove the tag. This spawned an anxiety-filled conversation where Friend and I expressed our concerns about Melody not interacting with the project, or us.

So since I wanted reassurance that that wasn’t the case, I messaged Melody with my concerns. I told her I had the feeling she was ashamed of being seen in public with us because of her friends, and she didn’t refute me. She simply told me to go get some rest. I messaged back with “I’m right.”

I deleted Discord off my phone for hours and nearly deleted my Tumblr, AO3, and the server after my boyfriend helped pass messages between us. Melody confessed that was the case because her friends expressed discomfort with my works, and she was playing both sides.

Her words, not mine.

Melody told me she would be withdrawing from the Incoherent project because it wasn’t fair to us if her heart wasn’t in it.

She didn’t stand up on my behalf when they said things about me. Her friends are the type who talk behind creators’ backs for shipping zadr “incorrectly.” Worse than antis because they actually participate in the “pro-shipping” side of the fandom. I broke that day and messaged her at 3 am.

We finally spoke at 3pm. We both missed each other. I tried to understand more. I wanted it to be more like a conversation rather than an interrogation. It was only one-sided however, and she never opened up further. And I made some mistakes and poor choices of words, and we ended up parting ways permanently right there. 

I nearly deleted everything, but much like a coma patient attached to many machines on a hospital bed, my blog was kept alive a little longer by people sending kind words in droves. I was briefly fuelled by spite, wishing to watch the world burn by making everyone on the "correct" side of the fandom upset by posting the worst, most vile content this fandom has ever seen.

I was also welcomed with open arms by a very kind server with fellow degenerates, all of them screaming and crying and partying when they managed to get me in their server. It was so heartwarming...

But as I spoke to others about my situation, I realized something. A disturbing pattern.

People telling me horror stories about how Mooping-10 was cult-like. How the people running it were antis. I was even told once that they have a secondary server where they go to have their talks and do their work, likely the place where the real bashing is held.

The server itself has rules against such behavior, but I suppose it's different when they do it.

One person (and this is the most unnerving part for me, personally) told me Melody actually set off alarm bells in their head without having even done anything yet, and the most disturbing part of the story was that one of the moderators was afraid and upset because they got Covid, and received basically no moral support at all. Only getting told "spoiler that. Sorry you got Covid".

I was horrified. That server has 100 people in it. How many of them are the same? They act like popular kids in school who picked up an unpopular main character and then bash others, and the main character joined in because they don't want to be left behind by their new "friends".

To put it short, back to my point:

TL;DR: I simply only wanted to spread the word that: Mooping-10 is filled with people who absolutely cannot be trusted, creating a very hazardous environment for the zadr community, and Melodyofthevoid is connected to all of those people, living a double life amongst those of us that don't "ship zadr correctly". She has plenty of friends her inner circle knows nothing about, and nobody on either side knows who she really is.

[d3stroyman]

the weirdest/worst interactions ive had in online spaces (just for fun) 

(long post under keep reading)

- ive been dm’d every single day of someones dog after they accidentally sent their notes on me to me

- joined a discord server for a rp group im in (still am) and was instantly dm’d and sent images of a horrifying and disgusting pie with a bloody human face. it turned out that was a common greeting in the server, and i helped continue that trend of greeting and even spawned a bootleg of the image w some help from others (its a shitty doodle of the pie)

- ive had people from the official slendytubbies discord randomly dm me from time to time also, thinking and acting like i should know them when i really dont in the slightest.

- in that same vein sometimes i’ll be @’d in the slendytubbies discord by the spanish speaking audience who are laughing at my nickname in the server ( its “dick inspector penisbitch” if ur curious)

- encouraged a no-longer friend to steal a concept from someone and then post it in a contest where the other persons concept was also entered.

- been repeatedly dm’d telling me my fav is actually a terrorist and cult leader (with no proof)

- accidentally started beef with this adult artist whilst i and some friends were minors (i was around.. 15? friends where 16 and 14) because we didnt like her oc, and instead of talking to us maturely like we tried to do with her. she brought her boyfriend in to mock, insult and harass us

- same adult then got one of us banned from an art server and the other two (including me) were warned and had to explain ourselves because the adult used out of context screenshots

- turns out later on the artists boyfriend liked nsfw of underage characters so lol

- have been harassed out of an art server for not liking daisy and feeling impartial to her being in smash, and then venting later about how i was being insulted and belittled for liking waluigi and wanting him in smash

- watched in real time as a friend got banned from a server for more out of context screenshots this time from a mod who claimed they were harassing them, when there was in fact no proof.

- went to someone in dms worried about them after they admitted they’ve brought up how awful a discord server has been to them that they’ve even brought it up to their therapist. wanted to check in on them and suggested they take a break from the server. they then went on to add my conversation to a masterpost that was calling a bunch of people out for.. planning to hack the server???

- oh yeah i was accused of trying to stage an entire hacking of a discord server, with some people i’d never really spoken to. the most involvement i had was being in a server with some people where we ranted about our problems with a server. and by the composer of a game no less!

[thelittlepalmtree]

I have such a desire to make a blog for all the rp drama I've experienced. I was recently in a rp server (because this will be confusing I'll just say it was Harry potter) this server was marauders based, I prefer golden trio era. The admins in the marauders server had tons of characters and there was really one clique and everyone else was pretty inactive so I tried to be nice and make friends. This will be important later but I often felt my characters' words and actions were willfully misinterpreted to always make them the bad guy. For example I had a character constantly be called judgemental because she would say "the slytherins are being dramatic" but other characters were fine to say things like everyone in your family is trash. I had a ton of trouble plotting with anyone let alone doing something shippy. And for some reason the entire roleplay happened in the dm channels (a lot of rp servers have them, it's supposed to be like texting) and there were almost no threads. I posted many starters and got a total of two replies in the 2 months I was there. These problems were overlooked though because I'm chill if I have characters that I like.

So I decided to start a golden trio era rp, that's my favorite era and it's rare to see people in it. The two admins of the marauders server and a few other active members joined my server. It was fine at first and the two admins (as we'll call them) decided to play Harry and Draco respectively with the internet to ship them. This surprised me because I'd had a long conversation with the new draco mun about how fandom unfairly simps over him and he's never been held accountable for his crimes and we agreed. We were feeding off each other even.

Now I play Ginny since I love her and Hermione because she's a major player in the plot. Before I knew about Drarry I approached part 2 of our destructive duo because they had applied for Harry. I said what I would say to anyone. I have a lot of love for hinny but it's not my otp for ginny so we can do whatever you want and I'm good. Their response was "Harry's not good enough for Ginny, but I'm also going to apply for Michael Corner and maybe he could ship with Ginny" (more or less). This was deeply weird to me because if Harry, the person who saved Ginny multiple times and always treated her kindly and respectfully is "not good enough" for Ginny why is the guy that dumped her for being good at quidditch better? Like if she had just said "i Don want to do it because I have something else planned" I would have been fine with it but I wasn't interested in a consolation prize and I certainly didn't feel comfortable with the way it was discussed as though I was being done a favor. But okay,I'll let it go.

As we open the rp there's a death eater element and Ginny, who I'm playing as an auror,suspects malfoy of being one and says so publicly. I felt it was a foregone conclusion she would hate Malfoy,his dad caused the single worst thing to happen to her in her entire life. Is it fair to blame Draco for his father's actions? Maybe not but Ginny doesn't need to ve rational.

So as things go along there is no attempt to plot with people outside the three that came from the other server even though we're getting new people everyday. And I've had complaints about people trying to plot with them and feeling really left out. Meanwhile in character Harry publicly goes out for a drink with Draco and gets tacos with him. And Ginny and Hermione are like "wtf you're going out with someone who used to be a death eater, bully, and is seemingly still a racist (because at this point he indicated he still believed that purebred were better)?" And pushed Harry on this. And Harry (ic) got defensive like how dare you judge who I keep in my life!!

Hey guys, if my best friend started dating the high school nazi who let all his nazi friends into our school, supported them as they beat up my remaining friends, guarded the door while their aunt tortured me, called me a slur, and never once apologized for any of their actions, I would end that friendship. Yes. Even if we were close.

So this whole thing blows up when each of them.loses their mind at these in character attacks. Keep in mind, my characters have faced much worse attacks in their servers. Absolutely no responsibility is taken for the fact that there are all these intricate little plots they've supposedly crafted without telling anyone. The issue is just that Draco is being attacked in character for what he did at Hogwarts ( you know when he was committing acts of terrorism for his nazi cult) and Harry was being judged for dating him.

The conversation with the draco player lasted for HOURS and my co-admin who was acting purely as a mediator and had no dog in this fight was shaking because of how stressed she was and how badly this person behaved. I was ready to kick them as they'd clearly violated the rules, but she did her best to give them a chance. If I were to post the dms believe me you would feel the same but we're not there yet.

So we kick the one and the rest of the clique follows. Okay, whatever. Fast forward to tonight and they've started their own server clearly copying my idwa, they've even copied my ad. I wouldn't be surprised if they jut cropped out my name and put in theirs.

Y'all really think you're good guys here? Have fun jerking each other off I guess

[legalizeiero]

hey guys, come join our shameless discord! it’s really fun, we rewatch shameless everyday at 12pm EST and play games and just hang out and chat. 

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 4 -- The Drawing Board

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3]

“Okay,” Ariadne said seriously, pushing her wire-frame spectacles up on her nose, “we've had our fun, blown up a spaceship, made a lot of money and helped a lot of people, but now it's time to assassinate a teenager.”

Pilar stood next to a large whiteboard with a multitude of lists and diagrams scrawled on it. “Or at least lay the groundwork to do so. As you can see,” she explained, pointing at one of the lists with a large measuring stick, “the impostor Ariadne has a variety of identifying features that distinguish her from our Ariadne.” The list read as follows:

THE IMPOSTOR ARIADNE

Fourteen or maybe fifteen

White

Blank, evil eyes

White robe

Shoulder-length blonde hair

Dirty Liar

Forced smile

THE REAL ARIADNE

Twenty years old

Black and proud

Beautiful, sparkling eyes

Short, curly black hair

Charming liar

Genuine, pretty smile

“Now, here's the issue,” Ariadne said, “We have no idea where her headquarters is. The cultists are active in every single bio-dome on Mars, and each neighborhood has established a 'Red God Life Center.'”

“The six largest Life Centers,” Pilar picked up the briefing here, “are heavily guarded. The worst part is, they've used a part of our own mythos to justify this.”

Ariadne continued, “Our crew is largely orphans and runaways. Some of the people we're running away from are very bad people. Ship Trap is so well concealed and fortified partially to keep the authorities from finding us, but also to keep the past from coming to look for those of us who've escaped it.”

“According to the literature they've posted on the FTLnet, these six life centers are heavily guarded to provide a safe refuge for anyone seeking it,” Pilar said, wringing her hands uncomfortably. “Our eyes and ears on the ground have told us that when someone goes into the Life Centers, they always take those damn Suffering Tests and come out preaching the Good Word of the Red God, even people who already had deeply held beliefs of their own when they entered the building.”

“We believe they've been using a textbook form of psychological conditioning. They offer a desperate person a safe haven, then convince them that they owe everything to the cult, and if they refuse to submit to the brainwashing …” Ariadne was too uncomfortable to continue.

“… If they refuse to swear their allegiance to the cult, they get kicked back out on the streets to die,” Pilar explained. “The idea is, you get a safe bed and three meals a day as long as you work for their church.”

“That's sick,” Taryn almost retched. “I mean, making people do your bidding just to stay alive?”

“Exactly.” Ariadne touched her nose in agreement. “That's part of why it's so horrifying that she's stealing my name for this. Every single one of you knows that you don't have to serve on my crew. You do anyway because you like helping people and, honestly, piracy is really fun, but you'd always get the bare necessities even if you just sat around all day.”

“Anything short of that would be monstrous,” Pilar said casually, “which is why we're going to kill the leader of the Red God cult and show Mars what we really stand for.”

“The problem,” Ariadne went on, “is that we can never quite figure out which Life Center she's staying at. Media accounts place her at as many as three of them.”

“So she moves from place to place?” Taryn suggested. “I mean, she has to know you're a real person, right? She might be moving around trying to stay secure.”

“I mean, three at the same time,” Ariadne clarified.

“Easy enough to accomplish indoors with a powerful enough hologram projector,” Pilar mused, “Her followers claim she gives off a divine glow. This could mask the fact that she's just a projection.”

“She's also paper-white and platinum-blonde,” Ariadne pointed out. “The same effect could be achieved with a concealed spotlight and a fog machine. A hologram could be disrupted by a stray housefly landing on the crystal.”

“Decoys?” Sweettalk wondered “Three young women, similar body types, with identical hair and clothing would be difficult to tell apart.”

Deathsbane nodded. “That weird ritualistic makeup could mask subtle differences in their facial features. If properly contoured they could look identical.”

Pilar pointed out, “Let's not forget that the last time we encountered one person in multiple places at once, the explanation was 'lifelike android spies controlled by a dictator.' Perhaps Occam's razor isn't the best route to go here.”

“Spacebreather's right,” Ariadne agreed. “The theory that the fake Ariadne is actually three people is the most likely answer, but we can't discount the idea that she's got holographic or robotic duplicates.”

“Is it too ridiculous to believe she's actually a prophet?” Pilar smirked.

Ariadne stopped this train of thought. “Okay, let's not get into supernatural mumbo-jumbo.”

“Is anyone considering the obvious here?” Sweettalk wondered out loud.

Pilar sighed. “If it was obvious, would you need to ask? Just say what you're going to say.”

“We have to consider the possibility that there is no singular 'Fake Ariadne,' and that whoever's doing the sermonizing isn't the ringleader,” Sweettalk pointed out.

“Otra ves no…” Ariadne muttered, and despite the fact that Pilar had been the first one to propose this possibility to Ariadne, her disdain for Sweettalk made her more inclined to dismiss it.

“We've considered that possibility,” Pilar said calmly and in spite of herself, “but there's no credible evidence to suggest the impostor Ariadne is not the head of the Red God cult.”

“Is there any evidence to suggest she is?” Sweettalk asked. Sasha looked impressed at her audacity. “I mean, she's like fifteen, have you ever heard of a fifteen-year-old cult leader?”

Ariadne groaned. “Why can't anyone get off this point? I had my own space station at fifteen! You're only seventeen and you could practice law if you wanted! Deathsbane was one of the best doctors in the system at thirteen! We're surrounded by teenage masterminds; is it so hard to believe the same could be true of one of the bad guys?” Pilar bit her tongue.

“No one's saying it's not possible,” Sweettalk insisted, “but you have to admit, that isn't the best sample size. You and Sasha, well, haven't you considered that you're a little… exceptional?”

Sasha blushed.

“I'm just saying, think of the implications here. If you're running a cult with a prophet who can be in three places at once, does it make sense for two of them to be robotic decoys and one of them to be real, or does it make more sense to have three robots?”

Ariadne sighed. “Three robots.”

“Same goes for holograms. If she could pass off holographic decoys as herself, would it make sense for her to ever appear in person?”

“She'd probably remain behind the scenes, but that doesn't prove she's not—”

“See, it proves that she's not necessarily what she appears to be. Holograms and robots can be customized to look like whatever the designer wants. She might look like the 15-year-old we've been hearing about, but she could look like anyone.”

“And what about your theory?” Pilar's jaw tightened. “You posit three body doubles, made up to look identical.”

“Yes, three girls, all of them smokescreens. Three teenage girls in a cult, all about the same age, with a clear physical resemblance? This is going to sound indelicate, but most cult leaders are adult men, and many of them take multiple wives. It's plausible that he could have had three daughters born to three different women, all within a few months. With enough makeup, half-sisters could look similar enough to pass off as the same person.”

“That's sick,” Taryn said, frowning.

“Sicker than holding people's food and shelter hostage to get them to promote your cult door to door?” Sweettalk replied.

“That's enough,” Pilar snapped. “Your theory is plausible, sure, but only if we accept multiple things we have no reason to accept.”

“I'm just saying—”

“I know, and I acknowledge what you're saying is a possibility, but it doesn't change anything.” Pilar seemed to be making an effort to calm down, torn slightly between her distaste for Sweettalk and the fact that this was literally the exact theory she'd been trying to propose for the past few days. “Whoever the ringleader is, we've still got to take them out.”

“It does change something,” Sasha said somewhat quietly.

“How's that?” Pilar asked, some of the steam settling.

“If it's real teenage girls, then they're brainwashing children, and that doesn't seem like the kind of thing we stand for.”

“Deathsbane is right,” Ariadne announced. “I hate to admit it… I really hate to admit it, but if the girl on stage isn't the ringleader, and I'm not conceding that, then she's a victim, and it's our job to help her.”

“So what's the plan?” Taryn piped up. “We can't just go in there guns blazing.”

Pilar looked thoughtful, and said “I think our best bet is to start with basic reconnaissance and information gathering. Station teams in safehouses near the Life Centers, one in each bio-dome. When canvassers come by, we invite them in, act genuinely curious. We need to learn as much as we can about their organization—”

“—things that we can't learn from their propaganda or their official pitch,” Ariadne cut in. “We have to get them to go off-book and tell us something their bosses don't want us to know without blowing our cover.”

“Okay,” Pilar said, “Standard stakeout procedures, observe and report. I'll be sending your squad assignments and mission specs to you by lights-out tonight. Take the evening to pack a bag of essentials. This shouldn't be a long stay.”

“I hope it's not too short,” Sasha said. “It's been a while since I've been back to the mainland, it'll be nice to stand on solid ground again.”

“You're not going,” Pilar said. “We need to leave a skeleton crew in command, you and a handful of my best Whiptails, in case the station comes under attack; you're the only one who knows the station as well as Ariadne and me.”

“I assumed you two would be manning the command center, you know, stay in the loop and all that.” Sasha sighed.

“We have our own mission,” Pilar explained. “We'll be paying a visit to La Pesadilla, see if she can shed any light on this.”

“I thought you hated La Pesadilla.” Sasha tried in vain to hide her exasperation with her sister.

“Everyone hates La Pesadilla,” Spacebreather replied. “She's a blackmailing lowlife who doesn't care about anything but lining her own pockets, but the upshot of that is that if there's something shady going down, you can bet she'll have eyes and ears on it.”

“But—” Sasha pleaded.

“—Dismissed, crew,” Pilar cut her off.

Ariadne patted Sasha on the shoulder as Pilar retreated down the hallway and the crowd dispersed. “I'm sorry. You should know, I fought her on this… but believe me, this place practically runs itself.”

“Not helping,” Sasha grumbled. Sweettalk hung back but kept her distance.

“No, you're not listening.” Ariadne put a hand on each shoulder and made eye contact over her glasses.

“What?” Sasha couldn't quite mask her frustration.

“This place is so well fortifed that you could basically leave it abandoned and nobody could touch it,” Ariadne said.

“Yeah, I get it.” Sasha tried to break eye contact, but Ariadne held on. “My sister doesn't want me leaving the station so she made up a job that doesn't need doing just to keep me here.”

“No, no… well, yes, that's exactly what she's doing, but you're not listening to me. You're hearing but you're not listening,” Ariadne said pointedly. “Spacebreather and I are going to be gone for a few days, but this place is so self-sufficient that you could probably just… take off for a day or two, have some fun, and as long as you got back before us, nobody would even know.”

Something clicked in Sasha's head. “Oh!!”

“She's very smart, really,” Sweettalk called from the other side of the room, “she's just new to mischief. I'll see to it she takes full advantage of what you just said.”

“Good man,” Ariadne said, disappearing down the corridor.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Sweettalk muttered to Sasha, “You know we aren't going on vacation, right?”

“I figured you'd have something up your sleeve.” Sasha smirked. “What's the plan?”

“They have La Pesadilla,” Sweettalk said, smiling, “and you know I've got my own shady contacts.”

“I thought you weren't on speaking terms with him,” Sasha said.

“Well, he could never resist a challenge,” Sweettalk explained, “and if you bust out and come back with some real answers, we could shove it in your sister's face.”

“Well, I don't know about face-shoving, but if you think he can get us some answers…” Sasha trailed off. “…Either way, I'm sure Pilar's given an order to keep me on the station, and you're the only one of her Whiptails who'll disregard that order.”

“You might want to talk to Fastwing.” Sweettalk winked. “Tell her you'll need to pull the ripcord. She'll know what that means.”

[thesevenseraphs]

Bungie Weekly Update - 7/5/18

This week at Bungie, Future War Cult took the crown.

It has been a long time coming. Future War Cult has always been celebrated among Guardians. I mean, who wouldn’t rally behind the faction who foretold of the Red War. Event after event, there were those who dismissed the cult, believing they’d never taste victory.

Zero Future no more. It was a wild race, from start to finish. Behind the scenes, we have the ability to spotcheck the pulse of each faction, and this event in particular was close. Each day, Dead Orbit was within reach, but ultimately lacking the proper dedication for another win.

Cheers to all who pledged their loyalty to Lakshmi-2. In just a few weeks, we’ll be watching the third and final Faction Rallies event of Season 3 unfold. New Monarchy, it’s your time to shine. That... or be left in the dust.

Guardians, Assemble!

Next weekend, after the smoke from tons and tons of fireworks has been carried away on the wind, we’ll be in Florida for the real celebration of rockets’ red glare. My fellow Community Manager has the details.

Cozmo: We’re heading down to Tampa for GuardianCon 2018. You've probably heard that Gambit will be playable at the show. It’s our pleasure to introduce the away team that will be inviting people to experience this brand new activity for Destiny.

GuardianCon Away Team

The Brass

Brittany Lichty, Captain

Matt Bianchi, Lieutenant

The Techs

Scott Kankelborg, TwitchMaster

Jason Pate, Master of Ceremonies

Nathan Henderson, Data Whisperer

The Gambit Experts

Robbie Stevens, Senior Designer

Peter Sarrett, Senior Technical Designer

Jared Berbach, Producer

The Community Team

Dylan Gafner, Skinny Jean Expert

Chris Shannon, Yours Truly

Griffin Bennett, Combat Correspondent

The Bungie Store

Katie Lennox, Proprietor

Chris Hausermann, Stock Boy

We’ll be in our booth, throwing all challengers into the arena we’ve created for the event. To close out Day One with a bang, we’re looking forward to hosting a Gambit Exhibition Tournament on the main stage. Don’t feel left out if you can’t attend the con—you’ll be able to watch the sparks fly on their live stream.

Gambit Exhibition Tournament

July 13, 6 p.m. EDT

GuardianCon Main Stage

Four teams featuring Bungie developers and some of your favorite content creators will compete across three matches. Alpha team will face off against Bravo team. Charlie team will face off against Delta team. The winners of each match will battle to the last in a final winner-take-all showdown. Color commentary will be provided by DrLupo and MTashed. These teams won’t be duking it out for a big payout. This is all in the spirit of charity and goodwill. All your donations during the stream will go to support St Jude’s. Bragging rights are on the line, though! The teams and enemies will be revealed as we take the stage. Line up or tune in to the GuardianCon stream to see which team has the most cunning risks for tactical gain.

This Whole World Is a Story

If you’re looking to learn more about

Destiny 2: Forsaken, Game Informer has you covered. Recently, a team of Guardians hungry for action descended upon our studio, leaving no stone in the Tangled Shore unturned. All month long, you’ll be invited to inspect their findings—everything from story to endgame, with a variety of topics in between.

Would you like to know more? Keep your eyes set on GameInformer’s Destiny 2: Forsaken Coverage Hub. You can feast your eyes on a rapid fire Q&A with Project Lead Scott Taylor and Game Director Steve Cotton, live now!

Schedule Alterations

Last week, Senior Designer Joe Blackburn took some time to set expectations on the upcoming Prestige raid lairs. Since then, we’ve been fielding many questions about the World’s First race—will we have one? Can the release of each raid lair be staggered to offer multiple races? Luckily, Joe’s still here to answer these burning questions.

Joe: Hey everybody, I just wanted to swing back around and give a quick update on some changes to the Prestige lair launch plan. Based on player feedback—and to ensure each World’s First race has a clean start—we’re changing the release times of each activity. Eater of Worlds will receive a one-hour delay to ensure players have ample time to download and install Destiny 2 Update 1.2.3 once it becomes available. Spire of Stars has been delayed 24 hours to offset the activity releases. The following times are when each activity will become available:

Eater of Worlds Prestige, 11 a.m. PDT on July 17

Spire of Stars Prestige, 10 a.m. PDT on July 18

I want to quickly reinforce that the Prestige raid lairs are much more about week-to-week variety and less about a singular pinnacle challenge, but we are still excited to have the chance to watch the best of the best in the community sprint to the finish on both of these activities. 

Dmg04 really wanted me to spill the beans on the Week One weapon loadout and modifier combination. I’m not that nice, but I’ll give you a couple clues. The first week’s modifier is brand new. It’s called Arsenal. It’s weird, and that’s all I’ll say about it. As far as the curated loadout goes, I can only give you a little advice about one slot: 

I’ve been looking out from my Time-Worn Spire and I feel an Autumn Wind blowing.

Pyrotechnics

Before we move along, we have some news hot off the press from the Crucible team. Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes has been working behind the scenes to bring the following event to your PvP experience:

Kevin: Hey everyone, While some of us at Bungie are off on holiday to celebrate our country's independence, we wanted to make sure all Guardians in Destiny 2 had something to celebrate. Starting this Friday (7/6) at 10 a.m. PDT and lasting through the weekly reset, players may earn 3x Valor Rank gains in all Valor-supported playlists! If you want to nab that Exotic Ghost or are looking to finish your Crucible ornaments, this weekend is the time to throw down in the Crucible. We hope you have fun this weekend and maybe take a dip in the Mayhem playlist, where you can celebrate with your own brand of fireworks.

Trial by Fire

Whether you be a grizzled ancient from the early days of Destiny or a new Guardian fresh out of the EDZ, Destiny Player Support has your back. They’re at the ready to help troubleshoot issues you encounter on your journey forward.

This is their report.

Free Trial Campaign Access

Last week, Destiny Player Support became aware of an issue where some players attempting to participate in the Destiny 2 Free Trial weekend were unable to progress their characters beyond level 8. Additionally, affected players were unable to progress the Red War campaign beyond the missions available on Titan. After investigating reports of this issue, we deployed a server-side fix which corrected this issue for all Free Trial players. All players participating in Destiny 2 Free Trial weekends moving forward should have complete access to Destiny 2 base game content for the duration of the promotional period. For more information on the Free Trial, players should visit our Destiny 2 Trial help article.

Destiny 2 Known Issues

The Destiny Player Support team is always on the lookout for the latest issues impacting players in Destiny 2. Players who encounter issues should take the following steps to determine whether or not their issue is known and tracked by the Destiny Player Support team:

Search help.Bungie.net for localized help articles on issues archived since the launch of Destiny 2.

Visit the Warmind Known Issues and PC Known Issues pinned threads for information on recently confirmed issues tracked by the DPS team.

Players who are unable to find information regarding the issue which they are encountering should then post a report to the #Help forum.

As always, including footage or imagery of reported issues encountered in game is the best way to make sure your issue is able to be promptly investigated for future updates.

Bungie.net Account Creation and Companion Features

For players who have yet to join us on bungie.net, we highly encourage you to join. A bungie.net profile is required to post on the #Help forums, and creating a bungie.net account grants access to Companion features such as item management, Clans rewards, and more. Players who encounter issues creating an account, or are attempting to recover a recently lost account, should visit our Bungie.net Profile help article.

[danganmos]

Updated FAQ

Age-related FAQ

I'm 17, can I still join?

If your birthday is before MARCH 1ST, then you can stay! If it is after March 1st, then unfortunately you must go.

Why is it 18+ anyway??

Two reasons! 1. This might have a lot of upsetting content such as body horror, gore, nsfw JOKES. There is no actual NSFW in this server. Mostly there's possible horror aspects that could be upsetting for people under 18 and to keep our options open, it's better to be safe than sorry. *Please note everything dealing with body horror, gore, executions etc. will most likely be only written out descriptions. 2. Some members do not feel comfortable with minors. It can be due to anything- Nothing against one person or anything! For example, I'm a music teacher and I teach minors. It's weird for me to not be professional around minors due to this and it makes me feel weird.

FAKE ages

Please do NOT fake your age. This game will be long and if I discover that someone has been lying about their age, then they are valid for permanent banning. Be honest please.If you know anyone who turns 18 before March 1st, they can now apply.

What is the Hopeful's list? This list shows who has turned in their applications! This helps people see what talents, names, and who is RPing them has turned in. Is this the official class list? Nope. Just a list of those who have applied. The official list will not come out until March 1st.     People's names are on there twice? Yes! You can submit as many apps as you want. Why is Inu (the admin) on there twice was accepted characters? For plot reasons, it would be very helpful for me to have two OCs here to assist. I don't want my name on that list Okay! DM me and I will remove it.

PROMPT FAQ

How do I do the prompt?

You read the entire prompt and then reply how your character would like. I'll be posting an example soon in #⭐examples⭐

Why are there so many suggestions inside the prompt? Do I reply to all of them?

No, no! Not at all. I listed a crap ton of suggestions because sometimes people need ideas on what to do.  The main goal is to see how your OC would react in the face of danger.

What person should this be in?

Please have it be in third person. While this is a prompt that says "you" in second person, I merely did that to avoid anything sounding too awkward. This entire thing is for your OC too- Nothing out of character / irl.

I can't picture what the room looks like?

Here's a rough picture I photoshopped together.

TALENT FAQ

I have an OC with an art talent, but I see you're not accepting those?

That is kind of correct. Due to this being an art museum, talents such as SHSL sculptor, oil painter, acrylic painter, - painter, sketch artist, art critic, or anything within the physical art field are most likely not going to be accepted. I have personally decided that would give the art OC an advantage that could kill the fun for everyone else. It would also make a lot of plot issues for the NPCs and plotline.

My OC is a _ artist, is that okay?

Talents such as comic artist, graffiti artist, garbage artist, make-up artist / special effect artist, any designers, and any photographers are okay. Basically, if the art has anything to do with a stereotypical non-modern museum, expect it to be denied.

My art OC is being treated differently than the other OCs by the Mod/NPC characters?

If an art (any art field) OC is accepted, please expect them to get heavily harassed by an NPC character. It's part of the plot, trust me. They really aren't welcome here to the NPC characters. Think of it as starting with a letter grade of "C" while everyone else gets a "B." The art field OCs can and will be on a possible NPC's shitlist. This implies the NPC characters will bully them, harass them more than the others, or try to run them out of town.

My OC has a fake talent because....

Fake talents are 100% good and fun to do! The only reasons when they're not okay are when they revolve around: - "I have a fake talent to hide my true gender." Closeted OCs are fine- But when a gender becomes a form of plot/tragic backstory, then it becomes a little iffy. There are plenty of bad representations of gender in the media already. We'd rather not deal with the possible controversies that come with it. If your OC is a closeted gender/sexuality, then it's fine. It is very common for people in this day of age to be closeted due to family/religion/social/whatever situations. -"I have a fake talent to hide my illegal talent." Again, totally okay. The only times this isn't okay is when the talent they hide deals with NSFW talents or drug-related talents. There is no OC here with a NSFW talent. While their personalities/hobbies can be NSFW, there is no accepted/will be no accepted OC that's like SHSL Adult star or anything. With that being said, NSFW humor/crude jokes/being nasty is allowed. There will be no actual NSFW in this server. It can be _implied, but never shown.-"I have a fake talent to hide my illegal talent" pt 2 Cool. Murder, malicious intent, possible killers, or whatever is fine. The line is drawn when it comes to cults, human trafficking, kidnapping, and so on. Anything revolving around that is not welcome. While your OC can have this in their backstory, I'm not going to deal with a SHSL kidnapper.

Get that shit out of here. -"I have a fake talent because my true talent is embarrassing." Neat. -"I have a fake talent because my true talent is suspicious." Neat. -"I have a fake talent because I want to." Cool.

In regards to excessively - characters

What does this mean?

This means characters who are not very deep. For example, a SHSL serial killer who is 1. obviously a serial killer, 2. finds nothing wrong with it, and 3. literally talks about it way too often. While you can drop hints and have your OC be apathetic to their morals and killing, I'd rather not have someone running around bragging about it. This also goes for other stereotypes that can become repetitive, predictable, and somewhat boring. Another example is a stereotypical anime tsundere character who acts the same each and every time. Please know that we are looking for deep characters who can be brought to life by the writers.

BLEEDING FAQ

Bleeding into IC

This is not welcome in the slightest. If an OC appears to be the writer in an OC form/a self insert, then they will be turned down. The worst part about a killing game with bleeding means that we aren't just killing the writer's OC.... We'd be killing the writer. To avoid such topics, awkward situations, and potential drama; please know that self inserts of any kind are not okay.

I share this trait with my OC, is this bleeding?

No! Not necessarily. Bleeding is strictly when you stop RPing as your OC and literally place yourself in their shoes and become them/ they become you. Lots of traits in OCs stem from IRL experiences or concepts, which is totally fine. For example, Iseri has a strong sense of smell like I do. This does not mean I am Iseri. I do not condone his actions and I do not give a shit if he dies. If I were to be completely like him, condone / justify his actions, and get super upset if he dies, then that is bleeding. Feel free to ask questions about this concept.

I don't want (this character) to die. I like them too much.

Sucks, huh. When you apply an OC to a killing game, please expect no one to be safe. Not even the mod OCs. Everyone is valid to die. Do not beg a mod to let that OC live. (Your own OC or someone else's OC.)