@cobblepottery Tell me about the nier church saga, I saw it in passing on Reddit but I don’t understand it

This gets its own post because it’s very long and very special.

Basically there’s a user on reddit named sadfutago who just started posting a month ago, and all of their posts were them writing like a clueless kid trying to ask for help on how you get to the church in the Copied City area of Nier Automata, because they somehow stumbled on the path to it, but their friend couldn’t find it. This confused the hell out of everyone who tried to help, because there isn’t a church in the Copied City, did they get lost trying to find Adam’s boss arena or something? And this back and forth went on for a bit, with them providing cellphone photos of the area they were talking about and a video of them running down the path to a hidden door in a wall before going silent.

Jump to earlier this week, when sadfutago returned with a new higher quality video of them opening the secret door and jumping down a hidden path, which made everyone lose their goddamn minds because that area doesn’t exist in the actual game. The wall with the secret door doesn’t have a door in it in any shipped copy, and multiple attempts of mucking around with debug mode and boundary breaking have confirmed there’s nothing behind that wall. So nobody knows how this kid found this door that should not exist leading to a ladder that should not exist leading to an eldritch hallway that should not exist. Importantly, pretty much all the modders in the scene have confirmed that nobody has the tools and ability needed to make a mod of this scale - the most that people can do is texture and model swaps, not the construction of entirely new areas.

And then the next day sadfutago returned again with a bombshell - video footage of what’s at the end of this Hallway That Shouldn’t Exist. There is indeed a church in whatever the hell sadfutago is playing, with a cutscene that plays on entrance, and it is filled to the brim with callbacks and references to Nier Gestalt/Replicant. There’s a dead body of a young girl with a lunar tear flower on an altar who is clearly supposed to be Yonah, a blocky entity (nicknamed “Bloby”) who appears to be a standin for the Shadowlord, props of Devola and Popola’s staffs on the ground on both sides of the altar, a birdbath from outside of the Shadowlord’s castle, and a treasure chest that requires 9S to hack into the mainframe to unlock. This made this entire community lose their minds, because this area doesn’t exist in the game and should be impossible to mod, so what the hell is this?

And then last night we got two new updates - the first one has sadfutago return to the area as 9S to hack into the chest. Unlocking the chest brought up Yonah’s medical records, which can also be found in the library of the Tower area. It also aggro’ed Bloby, kicking off a fight with an enemy that only shows up during 9S’s mental breakdown in Automata. Sadfutago ate shit and spent the next couple hours trying to beat the fight, with everybody on reddit and discord loudly cheering them on. This led into the latest update, where safutago successfully beat Bloby and started to investigate the birdbath. Investigating the birdbath brought up JP text that translates to the riddle you have to answer to get into the Shadowlord’s castle in Gestalt/Replicant, which safutago supposedly can’t read Japanese and got the answer wrong. If they come back with a new update, we’ll probably see what happens when they get the answer right.

And that’s the cliffhanger we’re stuck at right now. We’ve got a whole supposed secret area that doesn’t exist in any shipped copy of the game, and no idea who sadfutago actually is (since they’re probably not really a Canadian kid who got lost), so everyone is just theorizing and memeing and going bananas over just what the hell this could actually be. There are currently three theories for what’s going on:

Sadfutago is a real person who stumbled on an otherwise dummied-out easter egg. Speculation was that safutago had an extremely early unpatched copy of the game, perhaps even one meant for developers, and stumbled on content that was cut from later versions of the game. This one has grown increasingly unlikely over the past few days as people have poked and prodded and found nothing in Nier Automata proper, and most of the explanations for how this can be true basically revolve around the implausible conclusion of “sadfutago is the one person on the planet with the special copy that has this”. It lingers because it’s the premise of Whatever The Hell This Is and People Want To Believe, but it’s safe to say this is most likely debunked.

Sadfutago is a fake and this is all an elaborate hoax mod. You’d think this would be the case, but as I said earlier, all of the modders have confirmed that nobody has the tech needed to mod something of this scale. The bits of recycled content are a bit suspect, but everything else is far too intricate for Joe Schmoe on the internet to build in their garage, especially given that cutscene intro. If it is a mod, then this is the most advanced mod ever made for the game, and the release of whatever the hell the modder is using to build it would revolutionize the scene.

Sadfutago is a fake and this is all an elaborate marketing ARG built by the game devs for some reason. This is the current most common theory as to what the hell is going on, given that the devs over at Squeenix and Platinum and so on are the only people who have the tools to build something like this. All of sadfutago’s clips end on cliffhangers designed to get the audience to rush to the comments and beg sadfutago to take xyz action to proceed and find the church’s secrets, and it’s definitely got people talking. Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito have also been playing coy about the whole affair, with (paraphrased) tweets like “Check my profile if you want to know the answer to what this hallway is! (and my profile says I am not allowed to answer questions, go ask my publisher)” and “Eternal mystery...”, which lends some credence to “oh the creators are Up To Something”. The hope with this theory is that it’s going to lead up to some spicy new announcement, like a new Nier game or more Drakengard/Nier remakes, which would be extremely cool if true

Note that basically all endings here are happy endings - if it’s a real easter egg, then sadfutago just found something really really cool. If it’s a hoax mod, then this’ll open the floodgates for some truly bananas mods. And if it’s an ARG leading to something big, then well, that’s its own special treat. Nobody knows what the payoff will be, but by god, the journey to get there is buck wild and worth watching. I’ll make sure to holler once we do get to that payoff point.

The gang and I decided to do the Furry Telephone Game! We each sent an OC and then had them transformed into a Furry, back into a Person and then into a Furry again, to see where we would end up.

This is my OC: Slip's Journey

Art Credits:

OC: Me Furry #1: @raydelblau Human #2: @zhukzubast Furry Scalie #2: @cobblepottery

cobble(d)stories -> cobblepottery

Hi everyone, new Gotham blog here...

Would you mind reblogging this to boost us a little? We’ll follow back on our personals! 

Love, Riddle & Ivy

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Space Ace Stickers! (+ other stickers!)

EDIT: I can’t get the links to work on this post for whatever reason, but I made a new post specifically with only the links to everything in here, so if you search the tag links on my blog, it should pop up! I’ll leave this in the comments as well, so people can see this even if it’s been reblogged~ Thank you! So if you're wondering why you were tagged here, you probably reblogged ---> this  And I felt obligated to gather all of you together to update everyone on how you can now officially get these, since so many of you/your followers liked them and left such sweet comments 💜  SO, getting right into it! 

 • Yeah, these are stickers and not buttons. YET! The (short) post explaining why is ---> here

 • Once I have another $265 to buy a button maker for 1" buttons, I promise, they'll be buttons~! In fact, once they're buttons, they probably won't be available as stickers anymore. I just decided to make the Space Ace into stickers because they got so popular, and the rest as fill-ins until I design more, better, stickers • Most of these are Space Ace buttons, but the other buttons (Steven Universe, Over the Garden Wall, Wander over Yonder, and Black Butler)  available can be seen ---> here and here

 • I'm gonna be honest, the edges on this first batch (excluding the Black Butler stickers) are horrible, and I'm so sorry about that 🙃  I need to do some very simple and quick edits to the PS file before I print out any more, but this is my first time making stickers, so forgive the Learning-By-Trial-And-Error stage just starting out. As I space them better, and save up to buy a circle Matt cutter, the quality will improve~! 

 • They will probably be available through most, if not all, of the summer months, and the remaining spring months, as that'll be the time I finish up my animation class, and make more things to sell over summer break~ 

 • S+H will be added to the price after they're sent, because I'm still learning how the heck you figure out adding that stuff into the charge before sending them, but unless you live outside the US, that should be under $10 (also if anyone that does this all the time wants to teach me how to figure that out, you’d be such a blessing, cause I’m horrible at math, and don’t even know what to look for/where to start looking for it to learn :’ ) ) 

 • I do plan to make more stickers/buttons for the LGBT+ community like the Ace ones I made (even if they don't match the theme), but I have to be very careful, as I'm closeted to the family I live with currently, and still a little ways away from moving out (tho hopefully getting closer to doing that~), so it may be quite a while before I make more, sorry about that :' ) If you're not a big fan of the original art I do/fan art I draw for (Yurio on Ice, Wander Over Yonder, Steven Universe, Star vs, Black Butler, Hamilton, Heathers, Revolutionary Girl Utena, etc.), but you want me to tag you whenever I do, at last, make more of those, leave me a CHAT message and I'll be more than happy to~! 

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Happy birthday!!!!!!!! Hope it’s a good one!!

Thank you very much!!!!!!!!

@cobblepottery said:  Doujin-style monetization straight-up won’t work with Western media, it’s only possible due to Japan’s copyright laws. Plus, once an anime is licensed in the US, distributors can enforce copyright on any US fanwork of that anime.                            

Wait, hold on, I thought it was US copyright that’s got way more leeway than JP copyright law, and the JP doujin scene only gets away with it because it’s so entrenched in fandom culture over there? Like, i remember the first episode of Osomatsu-san apparently ended up in banned media territory because Japan doesn’t have parody protection laws that would’ve saved it. I know doujin-style monetization wouldn’t work here because on the Western side it’s so untested and the culture just never got built, but sure it’s still worth at least poking around to see what’ll stick.

@cobblepottery said: Don’t worry I’ve yet to see anyone who wants an Akio redemption arc                            

Oh thank christ almighty that’s apparently the case. It’s admittedly a bar so low that it’s six feet under the ground, since again, this is Akio we’re talking about but like. thank god. I think if I did watch the show and saw someone try to say that I would face god and walk backwards into hell, but like. at least we’ve apparently got the bare minimum.

@cobblepottery said:   I don’t think it’s really that silly when really what’s being presented is a child’s understanding of fairytales– in middle school I certainly had no exposure to fairytales beyond the Disney princess movies.

cobblepottery said: After all, what the show is actually deconstructing is sexism in gender roles, which is exactly why ‘fairytales’ exist in modern consciousness only as 'prince saves princess’                            

The problem is though is while gender roles is the point of the show, it’s still using fairy tales to do it, and the way it uses said fairy tales is still really shallow in a way that hurts its own arguments, when if it actually Knew Things about fairy tales the show’s themes would be way stronger. Even in the context of “stories that people would commonly know” there’s still stuff like Hansel and Gretel where the ending is Gretel defeating the witch herself to show that it’s not all “princes save princesses”. And the way the show talks about the Witch(TM) archetype falls flat because what the show is actually talking about is a bizarre blend of multiple different lady villain archetypes that all have their own contradictory roles and themes that trying to hold Anthy up as the archetypal example of does not work. Trying to talk about literal fairy tale witches while ignoring that said characters are old ladies and MILFs who represent evil moms or competition between old and young for power just completely misses the actual point of the problem with that archetype.

And the point I’m trying to make with all of this is that, if the show actually did talk about actual fairy tales, it wouldn’t shoot down or refute the show’s themes in any way, it would actually give the show more content to talk about and use to explore its themes. It would massively enhance the themes of the series if, going back to the witches example, it talked about women get tossed out as they age in favor of new young ladies, and how rather than the princess and evil queen/witch fighting each other for societal power they should both beat the shit out of the mirror dude for making them compete in the first place. “It’s a child’s understanding of fairy tales” might work on an in-universe level, but it doesn’t do much when the show itself doesn’t seem to realize that fairy tales other than Cinderella exist.