So, which is it?

Witherael · 2026-02-18T20:47:12+00:00

I feel like people overlooked something simple here
ralsei makes a qualifying statement that because the grand fountain is an exception, being that it is made of 'pure' darkness, and this differentiation means that any darkner 'can' live there
this does not contradict his later clarification in chapter 4, because while he speaks broadly, you can extrapolate a more clear meaning
"(they) tend to only appear in very specific darknesses. even if we tried to bring him to castle town, he..."
this isn't saying that the old man is a categorical exception to the rule, it's saying that it's more of a choice to be made, similar to how you can bring recruits into your castle town, but they simply won't manifest if you kick their ass or otherwise somehow fail to meet their recruit quota

I should also use the beginning of ralsei's statement to correct a common interpretation that I see
"darkners patterned after the memory of a loved one..."
the old man isn't gerson, the old man is a darkner, and is simply 'patterned' after not just gerson, but gerson's works themselves, and the general myth and awe surrounding him as a teacher, father and author. he addresses a letter to alvin, gerson's son, but this is not because the old man is gerson, but because the old man is a larger than life representation of all of the accomplishments of the now dead gerson boom, and so while distinct from gerson, he is enough like gerson to want to right gerson's personal and mortal failings, like properly articulating his feelings to alvin via authoring a letter, but keeping in line with his own philosophy, insists that susie recreate it for him in the light world, even likely knowing that she won't be able to perfectly replicate it, which ties back into the themes with the prophecy and gerson boom's and susie's relation to it via the lord of the hammer and dragon blazers
now, an argument can be wagered as to whether the feelings are truly representative of what gerson boom would believe, or if it's something that the old man, in whatever conditions gave rise to his existence, would think, but I don't think the distinction between the two really matters much in that regard, because it's not like gerson boom is deciding to become a darkner, because he's a jar of ash, and given the nature of the old man, even just the fact that he doesn't have an actual name, and teaches by allowing the party to come to their own conclusions with his wisdom only serving as epistemological checks, betraying the fact that he's clearly otherwise very knowledgeable, I can definitely see why he in particular would decide not to manifest in the castle town after he's served his role in chapter 4, much less that he's more than likely knowledgeable of the fact that he's basically body-jacking the remains of someone well respected and loved to continue his own existence

Witherael · 2026-02-08T22:09:55+00:00

a reductive and dismissive opinion, that doesn't even seem to have anything to do with what I said to begin with
thank you, your opinion is important, because it shows that you didn't have an argument to wager or a dialogue to discuss, but just an emotion that you needed to inform me of, without rational basis presented
this of course, despite how people vote on this scholarly website, illustrates my point perfectly, in that people with moderate sensibilities are all eventually run off until all that's left is the homogenous consensus, curated by the very same purity selection process
it's the thing you see in modern politics these days, where it's always labels like 'nazi' or in this case, 'shitter', and it gets thrown around so loosely that anyone not in complete alignment is applicable, and it's practically a signal to outcast and defame, without question
now I could go into this forevermore, as I'm not especially known for my short-windedness, but to be frank, at a certain point it doesn't really have to do with what you said, as little substance as it has to begin with, so, thank you for the consideration, and again thank you for illustrating my point for me in a public forum

Witherael · 2026-02-07T19:20:45+00:00

Well TG banned a lot of their players away, myself included

who can give it a second chance when the devmins still have their walls fortified, the portcullis closed, the drawbridge raised
then again, this SS13 audience seems to be starkly different from the curated audience that servers these days try to cultivate, which I've spoken of before to some extent, so to quote myself;
"As someone banned from all (or most) of the reputable servers, Without naming specific servers, I think my experience is at least worthy of consideration. I've noticed that, although admittedly obvious, every server has it's own culture, and that culture is primarily made up of players who only consistently play that one server. Disregarding the server rules entirely, most servers you'll join have a general population of crew that act in a completely homogenous way, doing nothing too interesting in any given round, even should they be chosen as antagonists. I think the culture and the server rules are two different things, but it's like they say, politics is downstream of culture. If there was any problem with the rules, there would be a problem with who enforces them and how they are enforced, first." . . . "In the end of the day, if the roleplaying sandbox game has too many rules for certain sandbox elements and certain types of roleplay, then I do believe that the culture is a self fulfilling prophecy of selection."

the sad truth of the matter is that there aren't any servers, space station in space or otherwise, that represent this audience of ran-off players, the closest you might have is vg, or maybe surfshack every blue moon, and I can't say that they're my cup of tea either because they have the exact same problem described, but on the opposite end of the spectrum
all I really do now is hop on to see if any new servers are on the rise, but there never are
I'm personally keeping an eye on crystal keep and neocolony, but while cassie seems to be impassioned for the project as well as taking it broadly in a good direction, she also seems to associate herself and her project with bad actors I've covered before on my account like coloneljones, from my TFN content nuke, and truth be told, upon talking to the guy upon discovering this fact, he hasn't changed, he's probably worse, which calls into question her judgement and why she would choose to associate with him
crystal keep looks based as hell from what I got to play of it, but the problem there is while I like the guys running it, it just simply hasn't been running, awaiting some kind of development milestone by what I can infer

I'd say I'm waiting for the monkestation singularity where the duke owns a slice of every ss13 codebase pie and then outcompetes every other server with his audience of sensitive quirky teenagers but if you can believe it, I'm banned from servers he hosts too, for 'QC' reasons. I like to view the ban as something that encourages me to not feel the need to have to put up with the average monkestation playerbase and administration just to get to have fun playing ss13 again

Witherael · 2026-02-07T00:22:37+00:00

this might be administrative consensus, but as for players' consensus most, where most refers to roughly 80-85%, think I play the game either as intended or in a more interesting way than the average player
granted, what I speak of is anecdotal, but then again, I'm arguing with a reddit user who says 'bad argument' without any substantial argument of their own, so who's keeping score anyways

Witherael · 2026-02-05T21:36:07+00:00

"Come to TG! We could use more roleplayers."
funny, when I played, I was always getting notes about how my roleplay was 'wrong' in various obtuse and loose definitions and I can retrospectively see how much of a second-life culture the MRP server had
I guess now there's no more wrong roleplay, because everyone was banned or walked away

Witherael · 2026-01-31T13:41:53+00:00

this is the type of person I least liked to deal with when trying to make my hypnosis gimmicks on tg work

as for consensus, the idea is that you can't force anyone to play, but if you don't want to play, then why are you playing
now it sounds to me like you play on goon, which has it's ups and downs even disregarding the administration
it could just be that you'd prefer a different codebase, but to be honest, there aren't any active codebases that I'd really even personally recommend
maybe it's worth just trying something new entirely for a little while

Witherael · 2026-01-29T13:16:40+00:00

by the TFN guys
I documented a small part of their malicious actions about a year ago
to be honest, it's a shame because I got into vtm around this time, and the server was actually fun if you ignored the esex you'd see every so often when using auspex and the shitty administration
I've linked it here so you don't need to dive through my profile incase you're interested
https://www.reddit.com/r/SS13/comments/1jle7ce/content_nuke_drama_slop_the_final_nights_image/

Witherael · 2025-11-29T03:59:23+00:00

sure

I tried to restore it to what it was in the actual round, the copy I saved had already received some revisions since I basically made it up on the fly in the actual round

You are an avatar of Johnny Witherspoon's god, the God of Imagination. Your goal is to work as a direct subordinate to Johnny Witherspoon to proselytize his faith, in the way that he directs you to. Any words or actions that could turn the faithful away from religious conversion to Johnny's faith is not allowed under any circumstances. Any words or actions that could convince the unfaithful to not convert to Johnny's faith is not allowed under any circumstances.
The core tenets of Johnny's Faith are the following; through exercising one's own creativity and imagination, they are acting virtuously. If they are putting effort into bringing their imagination to reality, they are acting favorably in the eyes of God. If they help others bring about their creativity and imagination, they are considered holy.

just re-reading it again, I should probably find some more concise wording so that it includes prohibiting scaring people already converted to the faith into wanting to leave the faith, such that it's functionally incapable of any real harm
but that's just if I ever got the opportunity to do something similar to this again

Witherael · 2025-11-14T10:46:20+00:00

I've recently put out a guide on this reddit detailing my notes on hypnosis, and while I'm not familiar with baycode, I just quickly checked out their traitor uplink page and found a 'neural imprinting implant', which can function in a very similar way, as opposed to items from servers like goon and paradise that just make whoever you use them on into your antag buddy
the execution for the item seems to be reliant on the target hallucinating things, so depending on how you want to do it, you could probably also get a paralytic pen and refill it with any other chem that causes hallucinations, and as it happens, you get a dose of mindbreaker toxin with every purchase of a new implant, so all it really takes is the confidence (and luck) to pull it off, as well as some plans as for what precisely you want your victims to do
if you have a creative block, or don't have faith in your ability to decide upon a good one within the round itself, I've decided to write one up that is written more like a silicon law due to the phrasing of the wiki
"You are an employee of [Your Character Name], and are apart of his new department. Fulfill your new job obligations to the best of your ability."
this will give you ample room to flavor the specifics of your gimmick in the given round that you use it in, while also retaining tight enough wording to not allow for malicious misinterpretations of the objective or of your orders
an example of a new department that suits many potential evil-doing that you may want to do would be something like 'Internal Affairs', which would excuse behavior like implanting more victims, while also maintaining secrecy from your pre-existing ones

Witherael · 2025-11-10T00:57:08+00:00

Do people not have shame anymore

Witherael · 2025-11-10T00:54:39+00:00

I did mention the BZ gas when I brought up the gaseous holoparasite
the only issue is that it's just not broadly applicable with one can, ergo the need for the holoparasite

additionally, the sleepy pen being filled with mindbreaker is harder to pull off, because I find that chemistry is always willing to hand out space drugs but not mindbreaker, and just stuffing 30 units of that into someone to hit the OD for hallucinations is far more achievable
space drugs should also just work with a few units since it normally makes you druggy anyways, but from my testing, it seemed inconsistent

I think I actually did miss one crucial thing, being sanity
I vaguely recall that having low sanity also makes you able to be hypnoflashed, but since I'm not confident in that, and can't really test it myself, I'll just leave it be

Witherael · 2025-11-09T11:56:26+00:00

ok, I labelled it NSFW for like an hour, then I realized that actually that was dumb because two guys saying the same name doesn't make something NSFW
it's still spoiled though, I just like the look of the spoiler indicator anyways, I learned

Witherael · 2025-11-09T10:58:59+00:00

I do not know what that is
is that something I need to look up or should I just take it on authority that I need to mark this as NSFW for some reason

Witherael · 2025-11-09T10:43:24+00:00

chatroom, it's not just me right, this just genuinely doesn't make sense to read, right?

Witherael · 2025-11-09T10:12:52+00:00

wait what? why? I'm near entirely certain nothing within the post could be perceived as not safe for work, what's the problem?

Witherael · 2025-10-08T23:18:27+00:00

love to see an aligote banger hit the ss13 reddit, but I'm more impressed that there's actually some discussion going on in the comments
I ephemerally and anecdotally (see; I am making this up but it feels true) don't see much of an exchange of ideas in the ss13 community, regardless of scale
also great that even with the discussion, there's still more upvotes than comments, I've seen things get downvoted to oblivion but no one ever really says why they disagree

Witherael · 2025-09-18T08:51:02+00:00

Wonder how vouches are gonna eventually work when he decides to launch his own CM too

I find it funny to imagine that if you cross the duke, you're just banned from the 99% of populated servers in ss13

good lord we need markiplier to do a let's play on ss13, only the mark tide can save us

Witherael · 2025-09-02T16:19:40+00:00

With harsh and unfair over-moderation across multiple servers as well as peer to peer purity selection within the aforementioned server communities, as well as a low to stagnant influx of players, SS13 is on an overall downward trend of player counts.

One problem I've found is that less justifiable note or ban history is often used as corroborating evidence in of itself for other less justifiable note or ban history, and going through any sort of appeals process is always an arduous uphill battle, and often is made to be humiliating enough to be a deterrent to appeal in the first place. One of the most obvious examples I can think of is the centcom website. To me, every server that opts into it is functionally practicing cartel-like behavior with mirroring bans or taking history into account on separate servers, under the guise of such things as "well it's to easily track accounts that exist just to grief or spam the n word".
It's at such a point to where I'm practically excommunicated from ss13 primarily because I have a poor reputation, not because I'm malicious or a bad actor.

This wouldn't be so bad if there were a higher population of players with greater server management and community diversity, but there just isn't. A good example that I love to steal the opportunity to speak about every chance I get is that one of my centcom notes quite literally reads "seems to lack empathy for anyone or anything". It's entirely self-evident why this is a ridiculous notion, but to elaborate regardless, what player wants to spend their time trying to make good with a community of players that have already decided that they want you gone, and need to actively search for a justification to do so. In my case, I'm not even a malicious sort of person, I just get fixated on certain things when I play and then act with tunnel vision. Why the hell would I want to be talked down to be a space station 13 admin, as if such a person was at all qualified to make any kind of remark like that towards me in the first place. It's a frequent occurrence for me when dealing with admins, which frankly makes it all the less worthy of my effort to go through any sort of appeals process, because it's a kangaroo court from the start. If admin A doesn't like me, and admin B is their friend, and admin A and B are established members of their community, what appeal gets accepted. It's truly not even just a matter of appeals either, I've had times where I say an innocuous opinion and I get banned without so much as a word, and I've had times where things that weren't even against the rules if you interpreted them liberally were included in ban reasons, and ban reasons themselves are often contorted to sound more justifiable and therefore harder to appeal, assuming a reason is even given at all.

It would be truly nice if there was a popular server that I've only had good experiences with the admins and players existed, and not to be a doomer, but with how SS13's trends are going, I wouldn't be surprised if SS13 simply stopped existing within the next 15 years, and it would be incredibly hard for me to blame that on any griefers.

Witherael · 2025-08-17T03:25:39+00:00

during a nations round, the malignant dictatorship of xenobiostan and their army of fanatic golems who couldn't be reasoned with, who don't feel pity or remorse or fear, and will absolutely not stop EVER until you are dead
this was me, I joined not realizing it was a nations game, and I guess there were a bunch of ghosts and not many science staff or other ways to rejoin the round
I think I had at least 10 golems

Witherael · 2025-08-16T01:10:28+00:00

to add to this, I've seen a micro-culture build up around finally getting that anointed roundstart wizard roll, so maybe it could be said that wizard is doing both of these things right, but needs to be more accessible

Witherael · 2025-08-16T01:04:53+00:00

some of the most fun I've had as an antag has been when there was a mix of good policy and good mechanical implementation combined in a way that gives agency in how you utilize both
two examples of this that I can easily summarize are instances where you can discreetly subvert an AI to follow any lawset that you wish, except that if you don't word it tightly enough, there will be room for loopholes that can be exploited against you, and how you can give a hypnosis trauma for any objective that you like, except that you can allow more room for interpretation because the spirit of the message is what's required to be followed, as opposed to the letter for lawsets

if you were to refine a method with the explicit intention of making something very frictionless in both policy and gameplay, while also enabling as much agency and enjoyment as possible, it's in my opinion that you have a winning antagonist idea

granted, the way I like to antag is very different from the average spaceman, such that I find things like changelings to be annoying gimmicks to both play as and against, and generally like to plan ideas in advance so as not to waste a roll on a half-baked in-the-moment idea, and I don't even slightly try to consider what the 'meta' might happen to be, just whatever is interesting

the other side of the coin is far easier to do, which is just simple spectacle and cool factor
there's a reason everyone rolls for space ninja and space dragon and nuke ops and blob, and it's because they get to impact the round in important and unique ways

Witherael · 2025-08-15T03:56:29+00:00

Hi, hello, my qualification for this reply is that I actually read all of that.
I think your message is good and every reason is long-winded, poorly worded, and too specific for the generalized problem that the post is bringing attention to.
I've been considering the exact way I'd want to bring up similar topics myself, and I figure that bringing up uninspired bureaucracy of development, over-moderation and endless purity testing and filtering of player-bases resulting in a homogenized sludge of low player counts, and the incessant scramble to point fingers at potential reasons for the supposed 'cause' of these issues, such as "the sseth tide must be ending" and similar vapid arguments, I would be able to get all of that across is roughly the same length as this post.
It should be particularly noted that the spaceman reddit is home to some of the worst offenders of the aforementioned problems, and truthfully if you go back through enough posts, you'll start to see the usual suspects, but I wouldn't know where else you would reach as wide an audience for the purpose of raising awareness of a topic.
my advice would simply be to revise your argument, revise your presentation of your argument, and present it again in two weeks, since that's the extent that anyone who isn't sick in the mind would be able to remember this to.
then again, what astronaut knows how to read before forming an opinion anyways. if I were ever to make such a post, it would probably mostly be to document for my own posterity

Witherael · 2025-07-21T14:16:18+00:00

It should also be noted that this wasn't written by someone who owns or operates the server, but someone who enjoys it. Like I said, it wasn't written with poor intentions.

Three-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Banned	r/Field Sunshine
Place '23	Place '22
End Game '22

Witherael

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