The Truth about Anonymous PT.3 - The Community
The “community” sucked but at least there was a community. Despite all the backlashes, the Anon experience was still overall fun and I liked that I was able to get closer to others and learn about who they are.
The Anon Community
The “community” talked about Anon as this, horrible ugly object. While on the server, all we did was make cards, ask each other how to block cards, and sometimes talk about life.
monsterland is an oddball but I enjoyed talking with them. They were a strong anarchist and I was thinking about how to incorporate that into Collective. Since people were so defensive about realm identities, I was thinking of making my own realm Anonymass and had made a few Microsoft Paint arts because my niece wanted a drawing contest. I wrote a lore but things never came to fruition as I was too unskilled and too busy IRL.
We talked about Collective and the typical: How Collective can be a better game. How I/we felt about the community reactions and whether they were valid or not. Sharing ideas on what cards to design next and whether cards were balanced or not. There were talks about making a Submitted for Anon’s Approval but with fake voices as ideas but they never came through since we were all too introverted to even speak in VC. Card-wise, usually whenever we had an idea, we just cook and submit it.
I will say that monsterland, I, and Magneter all had different ideas on what Anon should be. I just wanted to make cards in peace, anonymously with very few people. Monsterland had proposed the idea of a card that is flavored around exposing all of Anon people’s names multiple times, in essence, they wanted to get over with Collective I suppose, since they were losing passion for it, on the other hand, I wanted to keep it going forever and keep designing.
While Magneter’s own personal narrative was that she wanted to be Anon because she needs the attention and she wanted to communicate with the rest anonymously. She also liked talking about inviting more and more people anonymously to the server while I and monsterland were cautious about it. Eventually, that is how Pholidia/Spaceturtle joined.
I vibed more with monsterland, making cool (disastrous) cards and posting them. I really didn’t want Magneter to create a secret identity with… Her own art… I was MIA from Discord (mental health break) the week where Ouroboros acc went to the main server, otherwise I would have tried to stop her. I really didn’t want her to argue with the “community” because nothing good would come out of it. And nothing good came out, though she did have good intentions I suppose as she was sick of reading all the untrue comments about Anons.
I think that was the start of the tension between monsterland and Magneter since monsterland didn’t agree with that move. In the end, Magneter was found out in a quite humiliating fashion by the rest of the community, Magneter, did you enjoy that feeling?
I used to want to talk with people on Reddit about the design (and try to have a typing pattern closer to monsterland’s) but after all the insults directed toward Anon, I opted into just not talking at all. I think Wujek made some good-faith comments back in December 2022, I did read them but the damage was too much for me to say anything at that point.
However, back in July 2022, a Reddit user was giving us feedback without a condescending attitude, a horrifying rare breed that supported the Anons. They even fixed my “real” first card that I couldn’t figure out how to block properly out of pure kindness (Jack of All Trades). Later on, he doesn’t comment on Reddit anymore because he could just comment on our server instead.
Zinker
Under Anon’s cards, Zinker gave out his opinions and indirectly taught me concepts such as “Wording Standard” and the basic norms in card designs. I didn’t know him well but I felt that he was a cool dude. At that time, I knew him for trying to fix a lot of bugs, I thought he was the blocking expert. He was someone that seemed trustworthy.
Me and monsterland talked about inviting Zinker to the server multiple times and it happened on Aug.5th of 2022.
Previously, I barely knew his existence at all and he was completely unaware of me. He never played Multiplayer/tourneys and he wasn’t in SFYA.
After a while, I discovered that he is also sort of like us, an “outcast” figure that was controversial in the community. I don’t always agree with his opinions and he does stand strong on what he believes in. I think the people that don’t get along with Zinker are the ones that want others to believe in the same thing they believe in strongly. Zinker can be a hard one to convince and influence in those directions, and I guess that is why he is often disliked but I still find the hate comical.
The importance of wording standards though, was something I never noticed until he repeated this concept many times. Take Ozos, Eccentric Despot as an example, “after the card you surmised is played” was the old wording, and I had NO CLUE that the surmise was actually a “special surmise” that only belonged to Ozos’ surmise. That is why I posted the update changing it from “you surmised” to “this surmised” to clarify that it was Ozos that surmised rather than the player themselves. This one little wording confusion gave me the wrong idea of how to play against the card for 20+ games.
Yet, whenever Zinker brings up these conversations, he was treated like a clown. While everyone was dogging Zinker and saying that he was clueless, I was telling him that he was right and his points were valid on the Cult of Anon server. Zinker vs. the world battles were epic and Zinker won every single one of them in my heart.
When I just started working on designs, I struggled a lot mentally and Zinker standing up meant a lot to me, especially since he was not a part of Anonymous originally. Thank you.
Though when I asked Zinker if he would post anonymously with us together, he didn’t and wanted to post cards as himself. He went out there, alone, like a warrior.
monsterland
Without monsterland, I am not sure if I would be here talking about Collective.
The first person whose name became “real” to me in Collective is monsterland. Most of the games I played against in Multiplayer queue were monsterland. They were there in Alt Collective and my impression of them was that they were a generally nice person.
If I could describe monsterland in one word I would say they are very “whimsical”. Back in the early days, sometimes they created random game modes from time to time and would invite me to card creator to play. At first, I thought they wanted to test a deck out that they can’t afford against me and I used a meta deck. The next thing I knew, I was playing chess or random shizzle was happening on my screen. I can’t remember much except that me bursting out laughing because of the wild things I was seeing.
This sense of “oddness” appears everywhere for them. Their communication fluctuates between extreme simplicity or dedicated paragraphs of argument. Their card designs and sense of flavors are sometimes incomprehensible. I was barely scraping the surface of what is Collective like, while monsterland is exploring the “black magic” of changing art portraits, creating emblems, and “hacking”. I saw Collective as what Collective portrays itself to be, while monsterland saw it as the way it is.
In November 2022, I, monsterland, and Sevas were playing “Clash of Legions”, a Chinese knockoff of a classic game. As always, monsterland was somehow finding ways to break the game in the oddest way possible, “Oh if you just click here and there, you can get infinite coins.” Whenever monsterland talked with Sevas about Clash of Legions, Sevas’ eyes sparkled. His eyes don’t sparkle like that when he talks with me…
Anyways, I played countless games with monsterland and adventured into “Ariokan” with them together. When they left the main Discord server in July 2022, I felt somewhat sad but I was happy to reunite with them to create cards together, as Collective to me back then, wasn’t Collective without monsterland.
There were a lot of things that the community got angry at them for but a lot of them felt unjustified. Being unaware of the “flavor” associated with Talira / other realms or designing some weird cards is not supposed to be some sort of death sentence. On the card creator button, the “Realm” button is just an “optional fill the form” button, when we select “Carthyian” or any other realms in Collective, it just gave us a simple description of what the realm is and its requirement rather than “Please kindly talk to the realm owner first about what their realm is, otherwise FUCK OFF from Collective.”
Sometimes, I do wonder what is the real monsterland like. There were a few times when I asked them about their life and their past since they hold fairly extreme views on certain subjects (that was clear even before the “incident”), but they were not very expressive about it, unlike many other people I talked to online before, it is harder to understand them.
Some people have a very black-and-black view of monsterland and that makes it difficult to talk about monsterland in any positive ways at all because it would be an act of “supporting abuse”. I think overall for me, they were pleasant and safe to talk to and I liked them. However, I also acknowledge that I never express strong opinions on anything and conflicts naturally doesn’t occur between me and most people in general.
Leading up to the incident (for those unaware, one where they expressed their views where they believed all non-Vegans are nazis and should commit suicide), they were having extreme mental health issues and I believe their threats were partly a product of that. Nevertheless, the “suicide threat” incident happened, the damage was done and I believe a moderator should have at least taken responsibility and said that “monsterland was officially banned”.
Though I guess I can’t blame the Mods too much because I wasn’t able to say too much when the incident occurred on the Anon server. A part of it is because after all, monsterland was the Anon server owner, even though the server had a flat power structure as everyone is given mod rights. Another part of it was that I didn’t feel that monsterland was wrong on anything except the “solution”...
It was a spectacle, I watched, I thought, and then I forget because at the end of the day, I am the same as Magneter and everyone else. There is no moral high ground for me, just dirty apathy, and fake feelings of concern. Monsterland has talked about how the only thing keeping them alive was the possibility that the world could change for the better. But people desperate for escapism continued to pursue escapism. The strong words from monsterland were meaningless, nothing changed, sort of reminds me of Kazuho Yoshii from Texhnolyze.
After the incident, Magneter left the server, not just because of the suicide threats, but also because that monsterland expressed that they never want to see Magneter again. During the incident, I expressed to monsterland that if they act this way again, I will leave the Anon server. The agreement from monsterland wasn’t sincere, but I didn’t want to give up a server that was precious to me. The air, it was difficult to breathe in and things were awkward. Monsterland had posted a few card ideas a day later, no one wanted to respond.
A few days later. It happened on the main server as well, monsterland quits all servers on Collective on their own as they know they can no longer be accepted. I felt it was best for monsterland to quit as they stopped enjoying Collective a long time ago and their personal life was not going great. Maybe, a part of me felt relieved.
When I think about monsterland, I think “monsterland, how can you be so different from others in every way?” It is not the “you are unique” kind of difference, but the “others would want you to be dead” kind of difference. Ticking one of the boxes might be okay, but monsterland ticks every single one of those boxes, how? I always thought that people who doesn’t conform are destined to die young so I wonder, how will you escape death every day, monsterland?
I wonder if they can find their “life” or be “dead” (both metaphorically and realistically) ten years from now on. I wonder if even someone like monsterland can find happiness in this world. My tribute card to them, “Lone Monster” expresses the idea that I believed monsterland is destined to be alone forever, living in a world that doesn’t exist where only inoffensive creatures that are weaker than them can survive.
In the end, no regret. If we went back in time, I will commit terrorism with monsterland again. Collective had infinite potential - Cards that create custom game modes, cards that are weird, cards that elevate Collective from just a typical TCG to a piece of art. But I was too incompetent at blocking, and am too incompetent at life, the world was too behind your pace, they only see your “genius” but ignore your genius, and I am too blind to see your tails.
Magneter
The last time I wrote about my experience with Magneter on one of my unpublished Anon blogs, Magneter wasn’t happy about the way she was written. As the only thing I had about her was how funny it is to lightheartedly “bully” her.
When I played against Magneter in Alt Collective, she was a “side character” and I wasn’t aware of her existence much until she joined Anon with us. I talked to her a lot more during Anon but at the same time, I also don’t think I have too much to write about her, since I think she is a very normal person by Collective standards.
I guess the most surprising thing was when I discovered that she was only 16 years old because the way she talks most of the time doesn’t sound like a very young high school student, as she is able to make fairly comprehensive points during discussions.
Magneter is a bit of a contrarian in a hilarious way. I remember reading a discussion between her and others on the main discord server, person 1 was saying point A is correct, and Magneter then was saying NOPE, point B is the correct one, person 2 followed up with Magneter and said, yeah point B is right and then Magneter went and said you know actually, point A is how things work all along.
The whole “Anon vs. Magneter DC” occurred because of how much a contrarian she is, she always talked in ways that made me feel “YO! Wanna fight?” For the times when I and monsterland were discussing implementing “Poetic Terrorism” into Collective, Magneter was like “Yes! Terrorism! Ouroboros Hack3r Time!!” and then one session of bullying from the VC gang later, she was like “Poetic Terrorism is just a pretty word for trolling.” Bruhhhhhh, are you team Anon or team VC Gang（草）?
I just used this funny kind of frustration as a way to see her making more designs since she wasn’t creating cards that much back in November 2022 and she wanted to get back to the Anon Discord server (left after the incident, and wanted to come back after monsterland left). As the new owner of the server (monsterland gave it to me when they left), I said “You need to earn your way back into Anon” under the made-up rule that she needs to get at least 1 card into the game with the DC to get back, though I was going to invite her regardless.
I think the Anon vs. Magneter DCs were the most fun I ever had with designing for the game. It was totally stolen from SFYACCCC since I felt a strong sense of joy when I looked at their spreadsheet of prompt + cards in the past. For the Anon vs. Magneter DCs though, partly I felt like I could use it as an excuse to get to know Magneter better and used some personal questions as a prompt.
My two favorite designs from those DCs were Sightless Librarian and Solitary Romanticism. The prompt for Sightless Librarian was “Make a card based on a card in Legacy” and it was really fun looking at all the cards in the past. The card that stood out to me is the “Endless Library”. I love the library and the idea of an endless one sparkles my imagination of what was possible. If I created a game on my own in the future, I would love to make reference to the “Endless Library”.
“Solitary Romanticism” was based on the prompt “Make a card based on the most embarrassing moment in your life.” I thought a lot about what was the most embarrassing moments in my life, but none of them stood out as the most embarrassing ones. What stood out was my reaction toward them, embarrassment leads to passiveness and my current state of life where I am pretty much a shut-in, spending all my free time on self-indulgence, seeing a better and kinder world that doesn’t exist.
I enjoyed seeing her designs too. Occult Cartmancer, Fracture the Timeline, and The Coward were all very nicely drawn cards. I love Hopeless Dreamer. The funniest prompt I gave to her was “Go outside for 15 minutes, and make a card based on the most beautiful thing you see” and apparently that doesn’t work for Magneter because one, she doesn’t go outside, two, there is nothing beautiful outside. Collective players touch grass challenge (impossible).
The last card I will mention from the DC is the “Jotunn’s Trial”. The prompt I gave her was that “she needs to collaborate with someone else”, similar to the prompt in the first volume of Anon vs. Magneter DC where I wrote that she needs to make a card based on a prompt that is given by someone on the main server (San Klaus’ Big Helper). This time, she told me that she will collaborate with me and she would make the mechanic while I make the flavor.
The mechanic was “Two mana Mind. Feed: Frenzy 2 and Overrun.” My first reaction was the same as Wujek’s, “this card is not playable.” But I also don’t think DC is a place to give out critiques, the most enjoyable aspect is to simply make things rather than trying to be perfect. As I looked things up, the only card with Frenzy and Overrun in Mind was the Jotunn Siegebreaker and Aevihregg had the wildest lore. It seems that a few people on the server found the card to be funny and I will call that a success. That was how Jotunn’s trial came to be.
Magneter is a nice and easy person to talk to. I will also formally thank you for all the time you helped me with Blocking cards as I can be very hopeless in regards to that often. I wouldn’t be able to finish my Anime Cube and make it in a playable state without you. I hope Magneter keeps walking the path of self-discovery, eventually, finds her real self. Also wish her happiness in her art projects.
Sevas
Sevas, I will thank you one last time for all the fantastic tools you created. Drafting was the most impressive part of Collective to me and the tools of Parrot Drafting were very good. The Collective card set database was very helpful all around for building a deck, looking for the past wording standards and sometimes just taking a sip of a drink and looking at what was designed before I came into this game. Even my non-card gamer friend had a very good impression of your website.
When I wrote about the “design difficulty curve”, I was reminded of your deckbuilding tool yet again, the easy-to-search database made my life so much easier.
You were also one of the few readers and supporters of the blog I am writing. I am glad that you resonated with it even a little bit. I hope I can play other games with Sevas in the future.
Sevas is a clean and zero-controversy guy. God gamer, God coder, God “Evading dramas by rarely ever design a card… -er”. Andras, Karma, Lumbering, and countless cards in the game, are all sons and daughters of Sevas. Simple guy with countless secrets and bodies under his bed, VERY good.
Pholidia/Spaceturtle
In total, there were four Anonymous designers, and Pholidia was the fourth one. They were sort of a lurker and weren’t super active, nevertheless, their Anon designs were quite iconic. Similar to how I kept on designing out of spite, Pholidia made Sittia out of spite due to the way the main server reacted to the Chair cards.
Looking back, I feel that they were able to vibe with and convey the “Anon-ness” of Anon designs and I appreciate that. I was the most dedicated Anon designer but I was not able to be very Anon compared to Pholidia.
One thing I would point out is how every time someone (mostly Wujek) insults Anon, we started using that as a point of inspiration for the cards. “Fucking Anons are 14 years old”, then I asked the server: “How could we design cards around the concept of R/IAm14AndThisIsDeep?” this was when Pholidia created the greatest designs of all time: Slave to Their Phone and The “Weird” One. Nothing I created could match those masterpieces. Yes! We can’t let ot[he]rs [di]ctat[e] our lives! Being different makes you beautiful!!
There was also that time when Anon was locked out of submission due to Grief asking Sevas to restrict the Parrot. I felt a lot of anxiety due to the situation with Reddit. I tried getting upvotes from r/animeIRL but all my methods failed. Then, Social Media master Pholidia made two posts: One on Custom Hearthstone and one on TwoSentenceHorrors, instantly 700+ upvotes. We were able to continue to make and submit cards thanks to the help of Pholidia.
I don’t know Pholidia well but they were a very good part of Anon, as Anon needed more designers to be truly anonymous and Pholidia was very good for that. Chairs might look “troll”, but it is very hard to make good designs out of 0 ATK units. Every time I even think about making a Chair, I just couldn’t while Pholidia was able to get the job done. Collective was about to die but Chairs gave the game a few more months to live. Their contribution to the game was literally life-saving and cannot be forgotten.
Everyone Else
Shoutout to Sayomi, Gokun, and recently Sidewalk + Deadz0n for being a part of the Anon community. I hope I can still hang out with Sayomi and play Custom Card Games with them. Sayomi makes awesome stuff too and I want everyone to try out their cube because it takes a lot of effort and love to make these cards. I wish I was able to meet and talk to Sidewalk earlier as he seems to be a very friendly person. Gokun’s re-art of my two Howdier cards was amazing, I never asked for it but he just gets the job done, thank you. Deadz0n.
