#plus&minus of having firebrand

[ghoste-catte]

A H I E for fandom asks!

A - Your current OTP(s)/OT3(s)/OTX(s)  

So, obviously my #1 all time OTP is GaaLee, and has been off and on for ... close to fifteen years. I think this is self-evident. Probably my second and third favorite ships for Naruto are KakaGai and SakuIno, though I don’t write either of them that often (and honestly don’t read a ton of SakuIno, but if anyone has recs I’m all ears!) For a lot of other fandoms I enjoy, I don’t really actively ship anything? I just sort of enjoy the material and then like looking at pretty fanart, but I don’t have, like, a burning need for More Content of These Characters Specifically. There’s some where I’m like “Oh, this has cute potential”, but I’m not, like, passionate about it like I am with GaaLee. My 2nd biggest fandom right now is ~probably~ BNHA, in that I keep up with the manga, and I think there’s plenty of relationships that are, like, cute--and I do have drafts of fic that I probably will never get around to finishing for that fandom--but I don’t actively seek out content for them at the moment. Likewise with MP100 or One Punch Man--I like SeriRei and SaiGenos conceptually, but I don’t go out of my way to find or make content for them. Umm, I like Daisira from The Magnus Archives. I was reallllly into Cecilos from Welcome to Nightvale for a while. Pynch from The Raven Cycle. Rosemary and any combo of Davekat+/-John from Homestuck, though I haven’t really read Homestuck stuff actively in a long-ass time (because of the, y’know, post-canon shitshow). I watched The Dragon Prince recently and I really liked Janaya as a ship but there’s not tons of content for them? I’ve been slowly making my way through SPOP and the canon ships are good, but my main ship there is Huntara/me (joking, but seriously I loved her). Most other fandoms I straight up just don’t have any particular ships for. 

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what?  

I’ve written a couple ... not quite crack but crack-adjacent fics? I wouldn’t call them “hilarious”, but they are meant to give you a chuckle. Like the one where Lee and Gaara get stuck in a donut case together, or the one where Gaara tries to ask Lee on a date while Team Gai is trapped in a three-man, six-armed Maito Suit, or the one where Kankuro causes a small housefire by fucking around with a robot on Zoom. 

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., tv shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?  

When I look at my “big” fandoms they seem to mostly be shonen anime/manga. Normally I will watch an anime, and the way I know if it’s something I really like is if I run out of anime episodes and go looking for the manga. But other than that my fandoms are a pretty mixed bag. The one thing I would say I don’t particularly like is live-action dramas? I don’t mind live-action comedy (I looooved What We Do in the Shadows, for example), but anything that’s got real human people + Very Serious Subject Matter just doesn’t really do it for me. I get really distracted and just find it boring. I think that’s partially because I’m not particularly good at reading irl human facial expressions--animation has a very standard set of expressions that everyone shares, so it’s much easier for me to understand what the character’s face is saying--and partially because the types of narratives that consume TV For Adults (tm) don’t especially interest me. I do not, for example, care very much at all about marital drama or will-they-won’t-they romances or grittily realistic fight scenes. I have a hard time following plot threads in televised/movie drama ... and I also feel like the actors often look so similar that I struggle to visually distinguish them, lol. If there’s more than one blonde woman, my mind just slots them into place as the same person. I had the hardest time following The Great Destiel Kerfuffle of 2020 because I literally could not tell the 3 actors apart. 

I - Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?  

Hahaha, this question is great. Honestly, not really. I very actively curate the people I engage with and I follow and unfollow liberally (I have hit the 5k blog follow limit several times), so my dashboard is both very active and it’s very easy for me to just peace out if someone posts content I’m not interested in. I kind of low-key enjoy watching fandom drama from the sidelines (because it is so frequently absolutely absurdist), but I don’t ever put my fingers in it if I can help it. I also spent literal decades as a very, very passive consumer of fandom/a “lurker”, so it doesn’t feel like it costs me anything to just ... shut up and not engage with firebrands. If something really pisses me off I usually shriek about it to my wife and then I’m done. I will say, though, that I did start watching Voltron and was pretty annoyed that I could hardly find any content for the characters I actually liked (Hunk and Pidge), because everyone was so obsessed with shipping wars, but really what soured me on the show was that the color palette and animation was grating and the plot quickly got very boring for me. Steven Universe was kind of like that too, minus the color scheme issue. It was a pretty show but I just got bored of it, and it became increasingly hard to find the content I wanted (pretty fanart) because of all the discourse. Plus the episode schedule was ... frankly stupid, and made it really hard to keep up with the show. 

Fandom Asks! Send me some letters!

[pocketwatchgames]

Tooth and Tail Patch Notes – Pre-Alpha 27

Pre-Alpha 27

Patch 27 features Arena, a brand new way to play Tooth and Tail online! Everyone has been asking us for a ranked competitive mode for Tooth and Tail, and we're super excited to finally be bringing this to the feasting table! We're asking all testers (even those in retirement) to help stress test this new system all day today, as Arena works best when many people are playing simultaneously!

This latest patch is now live to all Alpha testers. If you want to participate in the Tooth and Tail Alpha, please jump into our Discord chatroom and talk directly with us HERE.

Arena

1. Tiers

Arena is a win-streak based matchmaking system for 1v1 online games. After winning your first match, you will earn a star at your current tier. Your current tier is represented by a propaganda poster depicting your heroic efforts to feed the people! The title of each tier, along with the number of wins required to reach that tier are listed below:

Malcontent

Win Streak Required: 0

Wins to Advance: 1

Agitator

Win Streak Required: 1

Wins to Advance: 1

Rabble Rouser

Win Streak Required: 2

Wins to Advance: 1

Militant

Win Streak Required: 3

Wins to Advance: 2

Firebrand

Win Streak Required: 5

Wins to Advance: 2

Hero of the Hungry

Win Streak Required: 7

Wins to Advance: 3

The Great Provider

Win Streak Required: 10

Wins to Advance: 5

Fury of the Feast

Win Streak Required: 15

The first three tiers (Malcontent, Agitator, and Rabble Rouser) all require only one win to advance to the next tier. Your progress towards ranking up is represented by stars on your poster. When you've earned all your stars by winning enough games in a row, you'll move up to the next tier.

Tiers act as streak savers, or checkpoints, in the event of a loss. At any tier, if you lose one match you will lose all of your stars. If you have no stars and lose, you will fall back to the previous tier. Here's an example:

I have a win streak of 6, which makes me a Firebrand with one star. If I lose a match, I will lose that star and fall back to a streak of 5. If a lose again, my streak will drop to 3, and I'll be demoted to Militant.

2. Matchmaking

We try really hard to match you with players who are near your tier. Every few seconds we will expand your search to include players who may be in a higher or lower tier than you. You will only be matched with players whose current tier is within your tier plus or minus your search tolerance. Your search tolerance increases every few seconds, and can be seen in the status window beneath your current poster.

3. The Arena Lobby

The interface we are all accustomed to from custom lobbies is back in Arena, with only a few minor tweaks:

You have 15 seconds to choose a commander

You have 45 seconds to choose a deck

If you run out of time while choosing a commander, the commander you are highlighting will be auto-locked. If there is a conflict, the lobby will decide for you. There is no time to lose! The timer in deck selection works similarly. If your deck is incomplete at the end of the 45 second period, the empty slots in your deck are randomly filled.

The following features are also disabled in Arena:

Adding local players and bots

Switch to Observer (additionally, Arena matches are not observable from the lobby list)

Match Options (e.g. custom seeds, map type, etc.)

4. Leaderboards

The following leaderboards are now available:

Hourly Standings: see who currently has the highest win streak, resets every hour

Weekly Best: see who had the best win streak this week

All Time: see who had the greatest music video of all time

Gameplay

Balance

Balance changes this patch are mainly a response to the Focus-Fire mechanic introduced in Pre-Alpha 26, as well as feedback gained from the most recent Clash of Comrades tournament, April Assault.

Falcons are now 15 DEF, down from 16

Badger now has 50 DEF, down from 60

Boar now has 4 ATK, up from 3

Boar now has 120 HP, up from 100

Landmine damage reduced to 12 ATK, down from 16

Skunks now fire once per second, up from once every 2 seconds

Ferret shots will no longer be capped at 2 maximum targets

UI

All-new animations for ranking up/down in Arena!

Replays screen is a lot wider now.

Many UI animations are much smoother now as a result of fixing a bug.

Squashed a bug that could leave the community buttons floating around on the splash screen.

-Dex