#Dorian era

[starlightmojito1988]

Julian plz get your dramatic ass out off the rain😤

[alpinechamomile]

new tale art really said *tilts head at you adorably* 💙💜💖 (all cgs by Gabriella Rossetti)

cgs were gathered and posted by @ask-count-lulu 🫶

[nabesthetics]

Looking at Dorian deadass dropping a "making Arcana bad, making on Dorian good" post on the Arcana IG page, and getting absolutely roasted in the comments

[rubinaitoart]

There’s a lot going on here that I frankly don’t have the energy to cover, but here’s some food for thought.

I’ve been thinking about the current state of the fandom, and the actions Dorian has been taking. It’s been putting me off because for the most part, there’s a gray area in which fandom operates in any piece of media; and Dorian is effectively meddling with that gray area in a way that is driving fans away. It’s been bothering me on a level I couldn’t really put my finger on.

And then I remembered, Dorian may be the copyright holders and owners of the game. But they aren’t the creators. This is where the disconnect is, and why they’re overstepping.

Legally they are within their right to do (most of) of what they are doing. It’s cruddy and violates a lot of the unspoken rules that exist between the fans and the creators, but they can do it. It’s very obvious that it’s targeted right now but that’s an entirely different topic that I don’t think I can comfortably discuss.

It’s interesting because there is another fandom I know of that is seeing (if it hasn’t concluded already) a slightly similar problem. The Undertale fandom has recently flocked around a fan game, Undertale Yellow—which used music from the original game. As far as I’m aware, the creator—Toby Fox—was fine with it. However, the copyright holders were not. Materium Music’s CEO did not want to allow the release of UTY’s album on YouTube and other streaming services even though Toby Fox approved of it. The soundtrack had many original elements but reused motifs and other fragments from Undertale’s soundtrack.

Sound familiar?

But while UTY had the original creator helping fight for their rights as fan creators, we do not. And so the copyright holders, Dorian, are doing what they can to protect the assets they own with very little thought for the creations outside of their own platform. The time and effort that goes into creating. The beautiful dedication to the game that, while they own, they did not create and as such they cannot appreciate it fully.

[artz-val]

Everyday I wake up and grief the loss of Nix Hydra and the original The Arcana team.

[arsenicxarcana]

frembly remembly dorian era "canon" is not canon regardless of intention

yes, even if they finally canonize your favorite blorbo headcanon

yes, even if by some miracle it's good

they are ultimately a fanfiction platform and therefore on the same level as us groundlings, take everything w a grain of salt

[spectralquartzstudios]

I had been really looking forward to your full review of Dorian. BUT I’m also happy if you’ve decided to take care of yourself by stepping away from the situation.

Incredibly sad that you deleted your blog again, though.

Thank you for being amazing, Spectral

The blog isn’t deleted. Just privated for a bit because I was tired.

I was going to post a review. I really was. Because I thought the concept was still useful. But Dorian’s been telling on themselves lately. Especially with that Instagram post. You know the one, where they try to use them being the shein of the gaming industry as a selling point and said (to paraphrase) “nix hydra bad, dorian good bc we release games FAST and CHEAP, unlike them.” I wanted do a page by page breakdown of how shitty they were with that post, but it really speaks for itself. They didn’t have to tear down the studio that gave them a huge moneymaker in order to advertise their own company.

After that, even the most minuscule redeeming quality they had in my mind is gone. It’s been a long time coming, I know. But at this point I think I’d rather just take the time to learn to code over what we dealt with.

They also went full MLM with their “bring in a new creator and get 100 hearts” thing. (That’s $5 btw)

At the end of the day, our experience was a nightmare we’re still recovering from. And they’re still showing everyone again and again they don’t actually care about anything other than money. Especially not the independent creators they want on their app so badly.

And they can call me a liar and a brat throwing a tantrum all they want, and send all the anonymous death threats they want (seemingly from dorian supporters), but that won’t change what happened, and that won’t magically make them a good company of good people.

I might un-private my other blog, might not. But it won’t be used anymore. This is the last time you’ll see me talking about dorian publicly, and the only time you’ll see a dorian post on this blog.

Because, yeah, we’d rather focus on our own stories and art. I have a Transformers/Arcana crossover universe I’m building. Rosie is rewriting Age Of Extinction and The Last Knight. And we still want to write our Arcana stories. And write them the way WE want to. No unnecessary sex scenes. No “you should probably take out that nightmare scene because it’s too depressing.” None of that. Period. They’re not taking away our joy again.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

just wanted to pop in and thank you for all that you contribute to the arcana community! your posts always feel like they were written with love (not to mention closer to canon than whatever dorian's pumping out these days haha)

also in modern day, asra and portia would absolutely love gacha machines

asra going for the odd/funny ones mainly and portia aiming to collect all the cat figurines that look even a little like pepi

Thank you so much anon friend!! it means so much to me to know that you enjoy what I write, and that I get to share my love for these characters with so many other people :D

And you are so right about the gacha machines - especially when they're inevitably out of cash and need to resort to other forms of trickery to get the prize they need. Asra and Portia with the same goal in mind are a terrifying team xD

Under the cut, I do have a friendly neighborhood fanauthor reminder about what to keep in mind when you see Arcana content on Dorian (no hate to you anon, of course!)

It's been said before, but Dorian as a platform has stated that they are not going to change any of the canon content released by Nix Hydra and they're not going to add anything to the canon content. In fact, they as a company don't produce story content at all because they're a platform, not a producing studio. The few times the company itself has dropped new Arcana content, it's been commissioned sprite edits to add to outfit selections, which fell under alternative character designs (like the merch NH used to partner with artists for).

All the Arcana stories being released on Dorian by fan creators are just that - fan tales. It's easy - it's so, so very easy - to feel like fan tales on Dorian have an "edge" that fan content doesn't have anywhere else because they get to use official assets from the game and get promoted by the company that owns the IP. I also know it doesn't help when promotions for that content on the official socials consistently fail to specify that the content is fanfic and not official additions to canon. However, the fault for that lies with whoever is managing those socials, and not in any way with the creators who put their fanwork on Dorian.

I'm bringing this up because it's easy to attribute decisions made by creators in their fan tales on Dorian to decisions made by Dorian about the Arcana. It leaves those creators and their work open to critique and scrutiny on the level of officially-endorsed, professional content produced by a studio, when the stuff they've made in their free time is just a fan making a fanwork like any other creator in the fandom. If it's not the quality of the original or written differently than canon, that's because it's someone working with their interpretation and imagination, not Dorian as the IP owner adding to the story.

All that to say, you don't have to like what other fan authors and artists make! And you don't have to like how Dorian handles the Arcana! I'd just like to lovingly request that we don't conflate the two and saddle someone with a level of critique/scrutiny that they haven't earned.

[rasby]

I am so fucking tired of the arcana, of dorian, of the fandom, of everything

It doesn't feel worth it to stay in this fandom anymore. I'm more stressed every time i open my phone and see that dorian did a new thing. I can't do it anymore. I am in fandoms so i can feel joy and connect with people who enjoy the things i do, but it isn't enjoyable anymore even when I'm talking to the people who agree with me.

The arcana is more trouble then it's worth. I might still post art or other content around the arcana but I'll try my best to move on from it as much as i can. Fuck Dorian, fuck anyone who says that Dorian didn't ruin The Arcana, it did and I'm tired of pretending that it didn't, I'm tired of trying to see the bright side. I'm just tired.

[cursed-nyxan]

excuse me, mr dorian i know i deserve better, but that's not how many hearts i got i dont know which is worse: this or the fact that it took me 4 turns to notice

[starlightmojito1988]

Oh fuck,it's Dr.Vivisection 💀🔪

[nabesthetics]

Dorian really be making moves against outside-of-app fantales while not actually implementing updates to their own app that would make content made in it look and feel as good as many of us would like.

They're making all these aggressive moves to get more people to use their app, but they don't provide a better foundation for creators they claim to value. Several streaming updates last year, a whole new "trivia mode" that sure is great for engagement, but I still can't set a sprite to be displayed in the middle of the screen.

Creative people shouldn't be staying on your app because it's their only option for their project. They should want to stay because it's good. For some people it already is good enough. Want more people? Make it better.

[rubinaitoart]

Alright I’m joining the complaint bandwagon here.

I’ll be honest I was fine with the Community Tab and I could handle the pop-ups at the start. I get it, Dorian wants users to check out their app. There’s plenty of advertisement for it, I’m sure it works well.

So why are they adding two new links to NON-DAILY events to the Dailies screen? These could fit perfectly as a regular pop-up, or in the community tab.

I also want to touch on the change to the Tales button. They swapped it so that Tales is the smaller one and the larger one takes you to Dorian. It irks me, a lot.

They said they wouldn’t touch it. Now it’s being turned into an advertising platform and losing the charm and magic that it originally had when I first got it.

[bri-the-bi]

Remember when the official Fictif accounts were actually active? And the arcana accounts weren’t just ads for Dorian?

No?

Yeah, me neither.

[arsenicxarcana]

yall fuckin mama in there???

[crackbabybymitski420]

I hope last legacy like blows up on tiktok or smnth so more ppl play it cuz I feel like thatd make them give it a ending(I NEED IT NOW.)