sticksandbonesmods

[There's only one line in the netbook. That's it. That's all. You'll probably recognize Verso's dumb, French handwriting. What is French handwriting? Whatever Verso has. Anyway.]

I WARNED YOU ABOUT THE DAMN CLOWNS.

a_shadow posting in

sticksandbones

[ There's really no reason for Tex to know offhand that writing in the notebook she has arrived with will transmit her notes to others. After her experience exploring the house she found herself in, though, she feels she needs to get her bearings. She doesn't need to do this, of course—as an AI she could remember all this easily on her own. But she's a visual person, and she likes checking things off of lists.

The post she makes opens with a crudely-drawn map, showing the place in the woods where she arrived and the path she took to get to the house she'd then explored. On the facing page, she writes the following notes: ]

inventory:
- UNSC BDE
- kukri knife

house:
- completely trashed
- claw marks on walls
- seems familiar in some way (?)
- portrait of Director's family on wall (?!)

clowns:
- flyers for Cyclamen circus
- easily escaped (transported away?)

voice samples used: Director, Carolina, York, North, myself

to do:
- get a compass
- find out current date
- distance to signs of civilization
- route back to house

from there:
- investigate who brought me here and how
- find out way to take notes electronically

sticksandbonesmods posting in

sticksandbones

a_shadow posting in

outofsticks

Hi! This is Data, coming in with a new character to the game, Agent Texas from Red vs. Blue. She's an AI (if you only saw the first 5 seasons of RvB that's a spoiler to you; whoops, sorry) who is closely tied to memories carried by other characters in the show. For this reason she struggles with issues about her identity and independence. She's going to arrive humanized in-game, rather than her canon appearance in a robot.

Tex is caring and fiercely loyal, but is the sort of person who shows it via sarcastic quips and her actions rather than through words. I thought she'd be a good addition to the cast here for this reason, and I look forward to having her interact with existing characters in the game!

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

lupusxylem posting in

sticksandbones

Who: Wolfwood, Ain, and Ezell
What: Wolfwood moves into the Bunnkery and is Sad and Wet
When: Late August/Early September
Where: The Bunnkery
Warnings: Weed will be consumed during this log
( My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating )

jesterlies posting in

sticksandbones

Who: Shadow Milk and YOU. All of you!! Get in here.
What: It's time to overthrow a Dream Patriarchy!
When: Towards the middle of the month probably.
Where: In the Dream
Warnings: A whole lot of arson and probably some regicide
( we're gonna burn this city, burn this city )

Top levels will be below!

sticksandbonesmods posting in

outofsticks

Hello everyone! Before we get into our standard setup, we wanted to make a small announcement: September and October’s events are going to be linked together heavily, and the October event will focus on a fake rescue from the forest and ‘safety’ within another city on the continent of Ostorn. We wanted to let you all know ahead of time, since that is! Sort of a huge deal, and will involve a lot of false hope. We’re very excited for the plot for these two months though, and we hope that you also enjoy them.

SETTING UPDATES

The giant flower has been taken down with the combined efforts of Thorns and Sam fucking around and Shadow Milk hosting a coup with some of the most destructive men alive. Hurray! Those who’d been trapped will find themselves feeling lethargic as they recover from the Dream, and will be dealing with injuries from the Fucking Around by player preference. This will mostly involve light burns, but it’s possible to be even more drained than the others as well.
White Lily Cookie will return from the garden safely as well.
Autumn chills are starting to set in and the trees are turning, welcoming the change of seasons with grace. Certain plantimals have to start preparing for winter, if you can remove them from your house or business with any success, and the only thing unaffected are the ever-blooming fruit trees and bushes blessed by the Guardians.
Sehul, our bone dragon friend, has skin now thanks to Livio’s efforts. They now no longer rattle when they walk.
Despite the start of Autumn making itself known, cyclamen can be seen sprouting and blooming in small patches around the Grove as early as the fall of the flower bulb.
Eventually the cyclamen will make a path into an offshoot of the woods- even from a distance within the Grove, one may see bright colorful lights through the trees as well.
Should you follow the path or investigate the lights, you’ll find yourselves treated to the Cyclamen Circus! The entire crew seems to be Slightly Off somehow, but are friendly and eager to perform, though the real show won’t be until the next… …. Full Moon-ish, time is so strange in this forest. And everyone is invited!
… Though, some of the crew members and performers may be… familiar, somehow. They look like friends. A shame they don’t seem to recognize you, though.
New arrivals may wake up within the Grove, or find themselves snapping awake sitting in the audience during a show.

PLOT UPDATES

The night of the grand performance, guests are invited to watch and play. Outside of the main tent are stalls and carnival games, after all. Side show tents will eventually lead to the main tent, so you really have to try if you want to avoid the show… though, this does seem to anger the staff.
The circus will start as any ordinary show might, but through the night the audience will gradually find themselves in more and more danger- props being flung at people with the intent to hurt, circus animals mundane and magical lashing out and trying to get at the nearest person to maul, clowns and dancers weaving into the stands as they go, uncaring who they hit or stomp on- and you aren’t the only ones at risk, as soon enough the performers no longer care about their own fellow circus folks!
Eventually you notice that the doors are gone, the flaps of the tent nonexistent, and the Ringmaster is grinning menacingly. The circus performers may strike now, or you may try and escape, but the only way is down a set of stairs that should not be there.
The further you go, the deeper into a set of maze-like ruins you’ll find yourself, and waiting within the shadows are monsters some might find familiar: monsters made up of your worst fears, waiting to sink their claws and teeth into you. (As a note: while they can certainly coincide, we do mean fears! We’ll get into the traumas next month. ;) )
Your goal? Survive and escape the Cyclamen Circus!
For those who don’t wish to go to the circus that night, they might have a lovely night at home. … Or, maybe something from the Circus will go to them, instead.
Towards the end of the worst circus show ever, however, something will happen: a truck will break through the fog and into the grove, with several researchers and armed guards stepping out, completely shocked that there’s still life here at all.

OOC UPDATES

If you need help coming up with a monster for your characters’ greatest fears, drop a comment on the relevant toplevel below. Amity will make up something evil for you. :) Since this is a TDM, a relevant toplevel will also be included on the event log proper. Amity does ask you give a general rundown on what your character fears though!
Some of you may have noticed this, but for dropped characters we’ve started to offer a “they don’t die, they get stolen by the goddesses” option for the deathless 100% speedrun. This option is only available to characters who have been in game long-term; if you app Bob and then drop Bob the next month, Bob is unfortunately going to die in the woods. Not every drop can live with the Goddesses, they don’t have infinite bedrooms.
- In addition to this, we allow players who have been here long term who drop with tons of unspent BAC to influence the setting if they’d like (the stars coming back, Sehul having skin, beefing up the fog wall, etc etc etc). We ask that you approach the mod team in DMs to hash out details.
- With that being said, we prefer if you change the setting via your own efforts ingame; please don’t app for a year and drop with 70 threads each time to “cheat” the system.
As usual, we don’t do TDMs in November and December, which will also be check-in months. Our last TDM of the year will be in October as it was last year, so double-TDMs and therefore double TDM AC (if applicable to you). This year has been rough, so we’d like to round it out by making your lives a little easier for these next four months.

Please use the following form for plotting:

Character:
Canon:
CR: Who is your character? Any special powers or things they have going on? Any specific CR you want to kickstart?
Plans: What’s on the agenda for this month? Any interactions with the monthly event? Other things you want to do?
Not Seeking: Anything you'd like to avoid.
Anything Else: A permissions post, opt-in for a character-specific power or whatever else.
Recent Posts or Toplevels: For things you posted that you want additional tag-ins on or that might’ve gone missed.
Past Life Plotting Toplevel: From ye olde post.
Meme: Make us laugh.

sticks and bones.

Reading

005 | No Such Thing As Humility

accidental netbook post

EVENT & TDM 028

New player and character

Code deploy happening shortly

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me [CLOSED]

The fire is out of control

OOC PLOTTING: we briefly forgot we were a horror game for a few months, sorry!

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