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outofsticks2025-04-06 12:44 pm
sticksandbonesmods) wrote in outofsticks2025-04-06 12:44 pm
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ANNIVERSARY AMA!
Hello and welcome to the second anniversary of Sticks and Bones! It's been a wonderful two years and we can't wait to do more with you. For a celebration, we thought it would be fun to host a small AMA for the whole month with your mods! Here are some small guidelines:
Love, Amity, Wolfie and Lavvy.
- If you have a specific mod that you want to question, put their name in the header.
- Behind the scenes and outright spoilers are sort of intertwined, but we'll answer what we can.
- And joke about what we can't!
- Honestly we love and trust y'all so we know that's really all we need to say. Happy questioning!
Love, Amity, Wolfie and Lavvy.
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I'm not sure if it's funnier to say "I can't turn it off" or "it's the trauma" so I'm gonna go with the even funnier "well, it was 27 degrees yesterday"
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What expectations did you have going into Sticks, and how has your playerbase destroyed/suberverted those expectations and/or ruined your life?
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In terms of events, I adored the pain share, and honestly would love to reprise it in the future, alongside The Floor Is Lava (Horrible Edition).
Actual plotlines that have lasted more than just an event I enjoyed is Affogato's attack before he chose redemption, and the Suri fight was a LOT of fun- probably the most fun I had in a hot minute. I also really liked the dragon eggs- any time I get to put yall in a Situation and then run a fight like that has been absolutely delightful. Let me put yall in more situations. Let me have combat rounds.
(I'm also currently weaving in the library which SHOULD lead into something REALLY fun and exciting, so I'm hoping that it delivers.)
To be honest, I was expecting to lean more into horror than fantasy, but I think we have a really good balance. You guys really do help shape the world, even if you don't know it. The town's become so full of life in ways I hadn't expected and the IC community is so sweet. This wasn't unexpected it just makes me happy. Specific expectations subverting though...
This is way way back then, but when Rubie first joined, Mizuki empowered the building threat of the summer- supernaturally carnivorous flowers who retained what they fed off of... so imagine monstrous flowers with Mizuki's powerset. Whoopsies! That had me losing my mind... as did BB empowering Moder with the Holy Grail way back.
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- My favourite to run was probably the initial quest with Moder (which like, none of you were here for that was old playerbase shit, I think Rubie/Sheep/Lavvy are our last holdovers of Moder's initial plotline). That, or the one where Wolfwood died because Elsword got taken over by Suri, that one was really fun especially due to player reactions lmao.
- Log-wise I think my favourite one I've written is unironically this month's April Fools event, otherwise I had fun running last summer's beach + subnautica plotline simply because the mobster lobsters live rent free in my head. Side note, just tried to spell lobster as "lopster" so.
- I had no expectations going into Sticks (I was the side pickup mod). I have never modded a game until Stix, I am still learning things. I think my only expectation was "I should not act like [history's bad mod team here]" but that's a personal goal more than anything.
- I do have several playerbase subverting expectations examples, although I will say I take those in stride because I'm used to DMing tabletop which is just like... you can't plan for anything people are simply going to DO things. Off the top of my head:
--> You guys were not supposed to save Moder, Moder was supposed to die. I grabbed "the monster from The Ritual" fully intending for this to be a one-off borrowing/creature inspiration, and her ties to Zahliya's plotline was genuinely supposed to be left at "they want to kill each other". Then people saved her and I had to sit there and go okay fuck well let me just blur some history together boom done.
--> You guys were NOT SUPPOSED TO KEEP ZONARI i'm CRYING about this still, along the lines of Zahliya's canon lore she was supposed to be fucking MURDERED but then I sent you guys her concept art and you all went "oh so we have to have her now" and now she's here and partly domesticated. In retrospect, I should have expected this from a group of people who friendship beam my one-off NPCs.
--> I was, believe it or not, the mod who wanted less NPCs and kept trying to hard-limit things. You guys really like the NPCs, and I think at one point Kelly mentioned enjoying having them. and I was like. "well fuck, I guess we have a large cast of NPCs now". This really is a thinly-veiled D&D game.
--> I was honestly not expecting anyone to want to try to revive Tehro, or Aurora, or boost Sinann. I was also super under the impression players were largely uninterested in Zahliya until there were 8 signups for his plotline and I was like "oh god I have got to split the party".
--> Somehow, despite being canon-familiar with Els because (gestures), I was not expecting Add to make SUPER JAIL on the event log but I should have known, really, that introducing pseudo-jail would make one of y'all go off with mega jail.
--> I was not expecting a Grove-wide polycule to be a) accepted and b) positively regarded?? I guess when you put 20 really excited multishippers into a discord server...... anyway, I hope with my whole heart that energy continues every day, because the shipping chart is really funny and I love looking in the server and going "wait who did Vash kiss today what did I miss" etc.
Anyway, none of this ruined my life, but I definitely have some baseline "this is my read on things" perceptions that get subverted every day.
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like, the amount of things happening here make us rival GP at least in terms of snogging. it's hilarious, I love it.
sidebar, if elsword were still a PC i can confirm he would be INFINITELY worse than Ain is in terms of kissing everyone, he's Head Whorecho of his canon and I need this to be known.
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AND I'LL FUCKING DO IT AGAIN
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- I think this is slightly less public knowledge because the stix stats sheet only makes its way around sometimes, but: Zahliya speaks in what I would call a very slight Spanish accent. I don't know how else to describe it; there is no reason in either OCverse or Stixverse that he should be distinctly Spanish (from Spain) but he's always had that kind of R-rolly vocalization in my head. (In OCverse, I haven't actually named his home planet, so I have no word to describe the accent there either lmao) I would definitely compare it to the English voice acting done for Irene and Elysium Arknights so RIP the brainrot continues ig.
- Zahliya's touch-aversion comes from the fact that the only time he's ever been touched has largely been in battle, therefore he doesn't like random touches. I think the only person actively aware of it was Aspen because it came up in an old thread with him and Luca. Random touches will set off his alarm bells, do not touch the garg. (He is still learning what safety feels like)
- Zahliya's name is pronounced "Zah-LEE-yah" with the emphasis placed on the "li" syllable. I am saying this because I know Rubie pronounces it "ZAH-leeyah" with the emphasis on the "ah". The nickname is pronounced "Ah-lee" like "Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa" etc etc the song you know the song—
- Moder's favourite flower snack is daffodils. They taste :)
- Moder is extremely angry all the time that plant magic can't be shared with you guys because it gives Suri access to you. >:(
- Callan will eat anything as long as it has meat. If you give him a lone vegetable or fruit he will spit it out like a dog.
- Callan's favourite form to be in is Tiny Callan because he likes it when people come visit the fishtank and give him things. These days he thinks the lake is getting boring because everyone has to walk so far.
- Sinann having a person form was LONGGGG planned (because koi were thought to be dragons). In addition Sinann was always a pseudo god of life (rivers are the origin of life, as we all know), but it's hard not to cross that wire with Moder being a forest/earth deity. That said, this is why Sinann's water heals, and why the fish come back so easily. They are just cycling life for you :)
- Sinann, like any fish, really likes peas. Like. REALLY likes peas.
- Sinann is the one Guardian that Callan trusts implicitly.
- Aurora had a real name once. I do not remember what it was. At a certain point I was actually going to have her correct the playerbase and be like "my name is (X)" but I got attached to the name Aurora. And therefore she did too.
- Initially Aurora was based on a phoenix, but we have a fire-aspected guardian (zahliya) already so I changed her to be light-based and more of a resplendent quetzal/peacock/harpy eagle mix. In retrospect, this makes more sense since she's the sky.
- Beiwe makes all of the dishware in her realm in her kiln. Surprisingly despite how bulky she is, she has a very delicate hand when it comes to crafting.
- Beiwe is not very book smart; anything she says she recalls from memory, which is why she'll often say "I don't actually know" if someone asks something and she didn't experience it/didn't read about it. (This is also my mod explanation for being like: I can't spoon-feed you all the lore, go experiment :) )
- ZONARI WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE (no we know that) so have this instead that I think only a few people might know: Zonari is a "hot nerd" archetype. She loves women, science, and especially geology/rocks. She would do human experimentation if she found a victim. She is this meme.
- Zonari stores memories she takes in stones in her jewellery :) You guys may be able to get these back one day, if you can appeal to her.
- The Behemoth acts like an unruly Siberian Husky, meaning if you leave food out she will trundle onto the shore to steal it. Especially steaks.
- Ydalir's favourite scent is oranges, and her favourite decoration is rose petals preserved in bottles of water, or anything goldfish related.
- The only reason Ydalir would want to have a non-shadow form again is solely so that she can do her hair (shadowy tendrils in the nebulous shape of hair can't be done up all cute). She has yet to want to be a person because "bodies are so hard to deal with".
I might be forgetting someone. But there you go, laughs—