Blog:Addressing My History of Myself and my Involvement in the Dark Witch Fandom

Ahh, The Legend of Dark Witch. A small yet interesting Indie Game developed by a small little indie company named INSIDE_SYSTEM, where the main developer in the studio is the infamous NAN-A. Known for creating Touhou doujin games in Japan that if you were to dig deep enough, some elements from those games would be shared within the first title that he released: The Legend of Dark Witch - Chronicle 2D ACT. But that’s now what I’m here for: To give the history of who I am. I’m talking about how this small but delicate series has shaped me on who I am: A retro video Game enthusiast with a passion for developing indie games and discovering underrated/overlooked games outclassed by better games primarily in the 6th and 7th generation of video games. I had a small liking for games prior to these generations, but I had a lot of time surfing around games that didn’t really get noticed by others.

But first! The Legend of the Dark Witch wasn’t the first game that shaped me into who I was. I had other franchises that shaped my mind prior to this one. So how about we just get started with... The games that I was obsessed with. Those actually determined the games that I would enjoy to this day.

NOTICE: Some of the information may not be 100% correct, like dates I know and such as I don’t really remember when I actually started, so take some dates I mention further with a grain of salt. Also, when I get into the part where I talk about the people, I am BY NO MEANS making fun of them in anyway. I'm pointing out the issues that they have to show them that they could be a better person in heart.

The Obsession Age
Around 2010, when I was just a little boy, I was getting into the habit of liking Video Games. but, as with the little young self that I am, I didn’t even understand half of the games I was playing, and I would do absolutely nothing to get me further into the games I’ve played. The first game I recall playing was Ducktales on the original GameBoy. I was wondering how the hell my brother can beat the game, as when I try to play it, the game was freakishly difficult, and I hated it so bad. After that, I’ve discovered that we had some other Gameboy/Gameboy Advance games we had. Some of them were pretty meh, like we had a Shrek game, some dancing game I forgot its name, a Gameboy Camera (I feared playing it for some reason as I think it was broken), Pokémon Yellow, Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion, and that’s all I could remember from the top of my mind. BUT, out of all the games, there was one that I absolutely hated: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the Gameboy Advance. Call me a weirdo, but trust me, this game terrified the living hell out of me. I don’t know why either. The sound effects, the music, and all the game felt kind of weird to play. I couldn’t even get past the first level because I was holding this unknown emotion that I couldn’t explain.

After I discovered my dad gave the family a DS Rom cartridge of games that we might enjoy, I immediately switched my brain over to that. It had most of the games that I knew and enjoy: Mario Kart DS, Sonic Rush (Adventure), Super Princess Peach, The Legendary Starfy, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and many other games that I couldn’t list them all. I loved the games that were on there. It gave me a sense of nostalgia for playing the games. I didn’t have time to finish them all, though. There were just too many games that I’ve gotten occupied with. However, there was one that stood out amongst out of all of them: Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero. I didn’t know about the Elebits series at that time, but there was something about the game that I really loved. The soundtrack was very calm; the artwork was charming, and the sprites were adorable. I would constantly play that game out of all the others for some reason.

However, once I got a phone that can actually work, I’ve noticed one game in 2014 that caught my attention: Freedom Planet. A game that was considered a “Sonic Clone” to other people when it hit its first trailer. And to be honest, I didn’t agree with them. When I looked at some footages of the game, the game seemed to feel like a completely different game in its entirety that could be placed in a different path than Sonic: IT felt more action packed, the stages felt longer so it can keep you playing longer than your average sonic game, the bosses were difficult, which also contributed to the game taking a long time to beat. I’ve loved the game so much that when I established my Google Account, I’ve wanted to name it after that game: MaliDragon2006. With the first part being a nickname of my real name, the second part being Dragon, which of course showed my obsession with the game, and the third part being 2006: the year when I was born. My accounts were set. Every time I would use a platform that required your Gmail, I would always use that one because it was going to be my main account forever. And it still is to this day!

The animations that I would see the main character Sash Lilac defeating Sonic and the other characters defeating other characters gave me a really stronger feeling of the game than Sonic. Sonic was (and still is) a fantastic franchise, but the amount of action that Freedom Planet offered truly outshined it, especially with the games that it had back then.

The Obsession Age: Part 2
So far, my family noticed that I had built a relationship with the Nintendo DS and the Gameboy Advance. And somewhere in 2014, I got a Nintendo 3DS for one of my birthday gifts. I don’t know if it was a birthday gift, but my memory is foggy, anyway. Normally, I would play the games that I had on the ROM cartridge that my dad have, but after inserting it into the 3DS, it didn’t seem to work…. I had to pick something new. And that’s when my family got games for the 3ds that we can play: Super Mario 3D Land, Super Monkey Ball 3D, Bust a Move: Universe, and Mario Kart 7. There were some AR Cards I got, but i barely touched them because I wasn’t really into those type of stuff. And the target game was very difficult. So, I primarily focused on the 3ds games that we got. After exploring that there was a shop, I was searching for games that I wanted to play: Some like Mutant Mudds, Chain Blaster, And some DSIWare games from the DSI Shop like Mario Clock, Mario Calculator, MySims Camera, and 4 Swords: Anniversary Edition. After telling them what I wanted, I got them all with the little money I had. I even got Circle Entertainment’s Fairune and this sequel, and Drancia Saga. I saw my brother with the Demo of Witch and Hero, but I didn’t really like the style of the game. With all of this all set, I was having a wonderful time with my 3DS.

However, another game that I bought caught my attention that gave me another period of obsession: Shantae. I had the Gameboy Color one, and after looking that an upcoming game was coming out a few days before my birthday in the same year, I was extremely excited for the game. Sadly, to this day, I don’t have the game at all. But I still loved watching the gameplay of it and messing around with the original on my 3DS using cheat codes and such, despite me playing the game normally. Like with Freedom Planet, I was in love with this series for a while now. But 2015 is when I was hit with you guessed it, The Legend of Dark Witch. HOWEVER, I wasn’t TRULY exposed to the game until 2017. Here’s why.

The Programming Language: Scratch
Scratch. A visual coding website targeted for children but is used for all ages. 2015 is when my father told me and my brother about it. We watched the trailer, and it was AWESOME. The many things you can do with it, and that it was free, I was really excited about it. And so, on November 4th of the same year, I established my profile on there. After learning how to make a simple game of Pong and looking at projects of my favorite on there (Including the games I was obsessed with), I got into a habit of making multiple platformer and Pong projects on there. I wasn’t the best at it, but I was best enough to make a small community behind it. They liked my projects and all, but some questioned if I would work on something else. The thing is, I would try to, but I would end up losing interest in making it, so i just kept on doing the same thing.... It was disappointing until my brother established his account. He had a completely different interest than me, liking more stuff that was more appropriate to his age. He was one of the contributing factors to my small community and myself too, as he gave me some ideas of more stuff to add onto my account. And seeing that we mentioned our relationship online, our communities kinda merged into one medium-sized one. We met some good people on there, and we were just having a fun time on the platform.

The Part You've been waiting for: How I knew Dark Witch
After I was having fun with the 3DS and scratch, I was really having a blast during that age. It was until our family went on a trip to New York City that I’ve discovered The Legend of Dark Witch. And how? Through my brother. He found the first game it on the eShop and got the demo for the game. I’ve watched him play the game a lot. But being the first game in the series, it was way too difficult for him. He had a hard time fighting Klinsy, that he would Game Over multiple times. I’ve asked if I wanted to give it a go, and neither could I defeat her. We regardless had a fun time playing the game together, but we had to put it down to enjoy the rest of the scenery around us and go places without being constantly occupied with the systems. After that, I couldn’t even remember the games in the following years because Dark Witch wasn’t too appealing to me that time. Until 2017.

The Nintendo Switch has released. One-Two-Switch, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were the games that we really focused on getting. Of course, being the game that it was, One-Two-Switch wasn’t appealing to the whole family, but Zelda was. My sister played it a lot, and she’s now up to a point where she could just finish the game. The thing, though, is that we’ve waited until Tears of the Kingdom comes out and we have the game in our hands to actually finish the game and leap onto the sequel. But where is Dark Witch? Simple. We’ve found it through Rudymical.A game that basically is The Legend of Dark Witch 2: The Price for Desire on 3DS, but with a rhythm taste to it. I founded the game on YouTube via a recommendation, and I immediately got the demo for the game. Since I didn’t have that much rhythm experience outside of my sister’s Project Mirai DX on the 3DS, I had a bit of trouble adapting to the game. After showing the game to my brother, he didn’t know what the game was and so did I until I looked back at the New York trip. It was the same game made by the same developer. So, I looked at the game that Rudymical was based on, and I immediately got hooked on this game. If I were to blame something for it, it would have been YouTube. if it wasn’t for it, I wouldn’t have been a bureaucrat of the Dark Witch Wiki, one of the notable members of the Discord and Derpy Devil’s Amino, and a kid that just really loves this game within the deep roots. But why is this series so addicting? What's so great about it that made it the 2nd best game that I loved? (Terraria being the first. I would've explained it in this blog, but that's a story for another time) Surely, there must be a reason behind it, and I'm going to give it to y'all.

The Gameplay
For The Legend of Dark Witch being a simple platformer mixing Gradius/Nemesis (a game that I also liked during this age), and Mega Man (I got Mega Man V on the 3DS as Virtual Console, and I've played 2-4 on the DS ROM Cartridge), that just set the cake down. The game's physics may not be the best compared to games similar to it like Mighty Switch Force, but it was meeting my expectations. Papelne's Shop is another awesome addon to the game that I really loved. The customization was top notch, and it added a whole bunch of replayability options to the game making the game almost as endless as Terraria. I wouldn't say much because somebody perfectly described the gameplay and the elements about the game in a blog, so I won't say much. I suggest you go read theirs! Most of what they've said is what I would have said on here too because a lot of their points are ones that I agree with. But for the sake of this blog, I'm going to give a bit of a small description for how the game works. (This is mainly for Dark Witch 2, so most of the things I will say will be based on that game)

The game has 4 Modes: Very x2 Easy, Casual, Expert, and Lunatic. Very x2 Easy is for those who want things to be easy (a bit too easy though) and making speedrunning lives easier. The mode even has special blocks in which you’re able to go on top of accessing Areas of Seyga that would usually require thinking, or to make some platforming sections easier. Casual is for the usual experience. I honestly found this mode to also be Very x2 Easy, but the special blocks aren’t present, and the amount of Tres you get decreases (it goes down even more in the other modes). However, Expert. E X P E R T. I have no words for this mode. This mode I believe this should be the best way to play the game. Seeing the game in this perspective isn’t much of a difference either than casual, but how this game plays with casual just makes the whole experience much more enjoyable. And then there’s Lunatic. Of course, it being the hardest mode in the whole game, this one isn’t really that bad at all. Unless you’re talking about Klinsy and Pelusa. Those two is what makes it really challenging. But the reward for getting it? A new song for both boss fights of Franzer and Zizou. I love it. I've played this mode on 3DS, and ofc I died a lot, but the result was worth it. I really wished I've didn't make the dumb decision to replace it with a Very Easy file though...

Now when it comes to the replayabillity, we have the Seyga Shop. Every time you Game Over, play some Poker, Rudymical, or even finish the game, you would collect some Seyga. with this, you can enhance the games to make the experience a bit easier or harder (We're talking about you, Dangerous Mode). Stuff like adding more lives, Tres, making your jumping higher, and making your attack stronger. And what's even better is that there's a way to get another shop with even harder effects at the cost for more Seyga collecting. To get it, you have to press L, R, L, R, L, L, R, R, X, and then doing this, you can even make the game more chaotic. 10+ speed, 99999 Tres to start the game, Capacity Zero, Infinite Items, and you can even collect Franzer's costume for Zizou, and a nice Chicken crossover costume for Sola. You can even have a Forbidden start to the game which gives you all of the abilities that Al gives you in the Forbidden Shop. But be aware! You can't receive achievements by doing that. So I don't recommend it.

So overall, after learning about Rudymical being a spinoff to Dark Witch 2, I really loved playing these games together. It wasn't until this year that I had to get the full version of Rudymical though... I'm still happy that I got the game though. Everyone can agree that Dark Witch 2 was the best one in the series. I mean, it has won the Popularity Polls of 2018, 2019, AND 2020! The game is known to be the best around both sides of the world! Eastern Side and the Western side! Dark Witch 2 will always be my #1 favorite game in the series even beating it's sequel. This game in particular would be the one that I would continually come back to play when I'm feeling bored, happy, depressed, anything. That game is that good.

The Characters
While Dark Witch 2's Gameplay was the big contributing factor into me loving that game and this series as a whole, the other side of the game, the characters just add more to the cake. First, we're going to talk about Zizou Olympia.

Zizou Olympia is the main protagonist inside of this series. For this game, NAN-A wanted to give her more of a steampunk-y aesthetic to the game, in which they nailed it perfectly. This game is also known for giving her a symbol for everyone to recognise: The small red and golden emblem on her shirt. The feather in the hat also counts as one, but that doesn't have much to do with her look as a whole. Unless you're talking about this game's design of course. This design of her has got to be the greatest one that they have ever came up with. Mad Props to HI-GO! For creating this design of Her's.

In this game, she still got the sarcastic sour personality that she is always known for. Except, they made it even more apparent and even better in this game. You can see it everywhere, from the pre-boss dialogue, the second part of the game, meeting Franzer, everywhere. They even added funny moments where she just shines. Like Mari's After talk. Her personality would suit more for an enemy as she always talks back to the people she comes across, and according to this page, "she constantly talks down to the people that she comes across and is not reluctant to use force to coerce anyone who refuses to give in to her demands."

Now how does she play like? She plays with this: She got her standard Linear shot from the first game, which is pretty much the same thing albeit slower, and the attack I think is stronger? I don't know. And she got her comet from the first game, too. Although this time, it isn't messy anymore, and it's actually pretty useful. It even got it's piercing through walls effects from the first time too. And something that was introduced into this game was one called "Punishment." This one is like Riva's attack in 1 but even better. it does start off small and then it gets bigger through the enhancement slot, and through Papelne's shop, but the difference is that you can replace Punishment with Linear shot or Comet. Usually, I would make the combo of Comet and Punishment because it doesn't take as much Capacity as Comet. And they both do a decent amount of damage together. And then she got her revenge attack: A first in the series: Hyper Dark Arm. Remember Mario's Final Smash in Super Smash Bros? It's pretty much here: A bunch of waves of Dark energy getting sent to your opponent. These types of attacks I would use a lot on the bosses as pairing it with Punishment makes the boss die as quick as possible.

So yeah! Zizou is one of the great characters that are coming up on the list. However, as much as I would love to talk about the characters and how they're all fantastic in their own ways, I want to just talk about 2 more. I want to start talking about why this series actually shaped the person who I am.

Now we go onto the secondary character we can play as in the game, and this is another character that we’ve seen so far in the adventure that we had: Sola. From watching the first game on YouTube prior to getting the game on Steam and then 3DS, she seemed to be a very mature person with little to no remorse on Zizou or Riva. Her fight was also very difficult for me when I first played it. Even harder than me and my brother’s attempts at fighting Klinsy. Of course, she isn’t a problem now, but now in this game? She’s a wholesome beast. That’s the best way to describe her. And why is that?

When you first get her, you'd immediately notice that she doesn't have some of her attacks in the first game. She has one called Drop, in which the throws an orb that has a small area of affect, and another ability which is Plasma, which is mainly a floor attack which increases in size with the help of Papelne's shop items. Within the shop too, you can unlock her main attack from the first game: Circlecon, in which it performs the same way in that game, too. She also got mix, which you can mix your two shots together at the cost at it taking a lot of capacity away, and then there's Rotate. I never used this one before, so I honestly don't know how it performs. But then... There's MASTER. Oh gosh. This is the highlight of Sola. With her being a prodigy, this slot perfectly makes her the best character in the series to play as. Even defeating Day. Listen to this: It INSTALLS EVERYTHING to maximum. It makes her like I said before, a wholesome beast.

Now to explain the wholesome aspect of her. Like I said before, she used to be much ruder and more serious in the first game. In the second game, she's much nicer, and her design is less sophisticated and more fitting for her personality change. I love it, and it fits her small pet, Churros, too. She still got some of the attitude from the first game too, like in the dialogue with Urken and Herbert. It isn't really much as harsh as it was in the first game, but it still goes to show that she's the same from there.

Out of all of the secondary characters you can play as, I would consider her to be the greatest out of all of them. The reason? She's easy to play as, she doesn't have a weak shot like Riva or Day, and she can literally become a powerhouse if you unlock Master. That with the fact that she's even cuter in this game just adds more to it.

You’ve probably expected me to speak about this character as when I’ve first entered the Dark Witch Amino and Discord, I’ve shown to everyone I was around with that I had a strong obsession with this character: Herbert. Also known as the Leader of the Ich, she’s placed as the 4th stage boss into the game. To be honest, my obsession with her quickly died as most of everyone’s reason for her being one of the least enjoyable characters applied to me the longer I’ve looked at this series down in its roots. And I’m not going to lie, I’m going to agree with them with this one. She starts out as being a character who prefers to research their place alone to Zizou, with her even going as far as to tell her to scram, and with her dialogue with Sola, it was also a harsh one, too. Telling her to leave Liana, and literally trying to prevent that poor thing from reaching out to their parents.

And don’t even get me started on the boss fight. The boss fight was extremely easy on both sides. She summons pillars you can simply dodge at the right time, and then she lunges at you. This attack depends on the difficulty, with the harder ones being shorter and almost time-based. Then, after some damage has been taken to her yellow health, she’ll fly into the air summoning bombs which are fairly easy to dodge. Just go under her and it’ll be a painless attack. And then her Revenge attack: Overhelm. All it is is just an easy to break shield.

To be honest, I’m starting to even question why I was obsessed with this character, reflecting on her personality and interactions with Zizou and Sola. Maybe that she was the first ever species to derive from just being a human, Fae, or a Beastmen? I don’t know and I don’t even remember. Knowing this though, I did have fun roelpalying as her in The Dark Witch Discord when it Introduced Tupperbox into the server. I tried making her a bit less rude and a bit more halarious, but not too different from who she originally was. When I usually roleplay Dark Witch characters (or any being that’s not created by me), I would try to keep it as close to the original material as possible.

Herbert wasn’t the greatest character that I could be obsessed with, but for some strange reason I was, and I can’t go back to liking her again. I’ve found other characters that I like that’s better than her. Her boss fight is also pretty easy in the harder difficulties making her more of a charactsr that’s just there… And her stage is pretty straightforward too. Big whoop.

To sum it all up, all of the characters in this game have to be one of the greatest cast of characters in this series even beating Dark Witch 3's. That game had characters that I like, but none of the characters had the emotion and the hilarious moments that this game has had. But now I have to start focusing this blog on the main important aspect of it: Why did this game shape who I was a person? For this, I'm going to start with how I first got into the Dark Witch Community.

The Fandom
I have a lot of words to say about the community of Dark Witch. Both negative and positive. But first, let's start off with the good things. To even realize that there were more games other than Dark Witch, I have to give it to them because like I said, I found this game again from Rudymical, and to think that this was a spinoff, it enticed me to learn more. I've also noticed that upon first impressions, this place is nothing compared to the fandoms of popular Anime, Five Nights at Freddys, and other communities that normally get laughed at. This community seems calm, gentle, and sweet sometimes. The communities that I've gotten heavily involved with is the Amino, the Discord, and the Wiki. I'll first start off with the Amino, and then go to the Discord, and then to the wiki.

The Amino
Created by Derpy Devil, the 2nd owner of the Dark Witch Fandom Wiki, the Dark Witch Amino was born in July 2016; A year after Dark Witch 2’s release. This was my first glance to the Dark Witch Fandom not counting the wiki. I didn’t know about the Amino until, of course, when I finally found the series again.

When I’ve joined in 2019, the first game’s remake was coming around the corner, and that was almost the perfect time to come in.: I don't remember how many members exactly were inside of there at the time I came inside of it, but the last time I've checked, the place had around 170 members. The place was fairly active, and everybody was chilling! Making outstanding Fan Art and making wonderful OCs. People also made some small Dark Witch Trivia so they can have a boost in points thanks to the Amino's leveling system in each community they're in. A feature that would make sure that everyone is active and doing stuff.

As for the negatives, I couldn’t really find anything. There used to be a problem with the community with some members before I came in, but when I came inside there and from this day, I couldn't remember any bad events happening. This made me think that this community doesn't have many issues at all, but I'm sure that for every positive community, there's always the negative side to it. And I give that introduction to...

The Legend of Dark Witch Discord
Believe it or not, this was the main issue I had when it comes to this community, and I still discuss about it to this day because it needs to be pointed out that this side of the community needs to be fixed in order to hopefully make the overall reputation for this series even better. I don't know for sure, but it'll look good on the developer's reputation, and other members who get exposed to this content.

Created by a user named Klinsy (Not to be confused with the character of the same name) on August 25th, 2018, the place was in its humble beginnings. It served as another place to spread The Legend of Dark Witch to other people. All it used to be just them, and another user named Flora. And as it grew, it became to be the go-to for talking about Dark Witch. I came to the Discord one day before Dark Witch Renovation’s release (October 23rd, 2019) just to check the place out. If I recall correctly, my first impressions were wild judging by some old messages of me speaking inside of there. I also believe that I was the first person under age 13 to Join the discord because everyone in there were in their 20s and 30s. Most of them were Male, too. I wonder why...But anyways, not many people were on the server, but as more came into the server, the server was kicking more activity than ever. Everyone was interacting with everyone else, people were having a fun time, and even the people from the Amino have come on over to join the party to just add more to the exceptional experience.

Overall, the Dark Witch Discord is a chill place, and really, the go-to- for all of the entertainment and info for Dark Witch. I've been in it since 2019, and I've now gotten a glimpse of what the western community is like for Dark Witch. But, compared to the Amino, there are some issues that I'd like to talk about, and oh my gosh, these are ones that I really dislike about the community.

The Problems with the Discord
So let’s start with the small stuff. After establishing myself in the Discord Server, I’ve started to notice a few things that really irritates me. One thing being that there would be people who start to doubt everything I say that is usually an opinion. For instance, when I would say something like, “Simeone is probably the worst villain in the series due to her appearance being vague and only coming to get Zizou after ruining her plans,” people would usually agree or disagree with this opinion, which is completely fine. But when people go to far to talk about how my opnion is the worst thing you can say about Simeone or The Legend of Dark WItch 3 altogether is kinda rough. i just said my own opinion, and they have to show why my opnion is wrong in long texts and whatnot.

Another issue that I have is that the channels are really inconsistent. Like, people would speak about random stuff inside of the General channel in which it’s designed for people talking about Dark Witch, people would speak about that in Off topic, and then people would have a mix in between in Spam. People would even rather speaking off topic in spam more than the regular channel. How bizarre is that? Back then, memes were posted in this channel, and it took them 4 years to bring a designated meme channel to the server despite most servers bring that in day one of building the server. And for the bot channel, instead of it being a channel designed for the usage of bots, it’s used for that and roleplaying instead of roleplaying being its own category of channels (or it being a Forum channel). And the overall server layout is pretty okay, but compared to most servers, it feels really clunky to move around.

Oh, and another big issue that this server has: The people on the moderation team. Klinsy and Flora are the only admins there. With Klinsy being the owner. And seeing how there could be big situations (BanniiTea, The NFT Debacle, HYDE, and the entire situation with me and another user), they don’t bother adding more moderators just in case something like that happens. And when stuff like that happens, they would rather take a while to respond instead of responding to it immediately, or they would be there and they would kindly ask to bring it into personal DMs. A far cry from just being strict and kicking them altogether. Now this may just be me, but when there’s people like the friend that was bullying me, they’re going against the rules of the server to try to me messed up, and instead of doing the right decision of kicking them out, they told me to bring it into DMs where instead of it being a pacifist conclusion, the other one gotten mad and straight up blocked me and never said sorry. To this day, I don’t even think about her but if she were to come back and say sorry, then I would be glad.

Now speaking about friends, a LOT of the members from The Legend of Dark Witch Discord, have a tendency to show their selves as good people, but when I actually friend them, they become horrible people. The person I’ve mentioned above? Was one of them. Although they were a few years younger than me, me and them had a lot in common. With them Liking Dark Witch and some of the obscure games I like. But throughout the days of me speaking to them, they showed they are the usual type of person who likes modern day stuff, and they had the right to complain at me when I’ve brought them to a now deleted Roleplaying server and they were going against the rules. Although tiny, I had to block seven people that were speaking in the server a lot primarily because of one of them sending death threats to reviewers, taking bad about me publicly in the server, and just saying bad stuff against me overall. And coming from a server that advertises itself as a server that has little to no problems, it shows its problems a lot.

And like I’ve mentioned before, the members don’t really cohere to the rules of the server. Yeah people don’t post NSFW and stuff like that, but there has been a bunch of times where people would menton it, and they would be warned constantly that there are minors in the server who could get interested in the mess that is too inappropriate for them. They’re also quick to mention politics: Another rule that’s not allowed in the server. I’ve always seen huge debates on how the United States is and while I can agree to most of their points in the world, it’s still against the rules to discuss this, and it can lead to arguments which can lead to activity. Wait, what?

Yes. You heard me right. Activity is another thing that I don’t like in the server. Or really how it’s ran. In a server with around 150 members, it’s a little active every day. There could be some days where people won’t speak, but there’s never a day where it’s not active for 3 days, a week, or even a month. But wanna know what will get people kicking activity like it’s striving big. You’ll be surprised: When there are huge controversial arguments inside of the place. This deserves an entire category on its own.

The BanniiTea Situation
BanniiTea is a user in the community who is notorious for spreading false Dark Witch Information to the community of Dark Witch Stuff like The Legend of Dark Witch 4, characters recurring in Brave Dungeon 2 after the game was even mentioned and has claimed to work on several of NAN-A’s works. She’s also known for posting a bunch of bad stuff onto the Wiki and harassing Derpy Devil on YouTube, Amino, and the Fandom Wiki. Personality-wise, they were very juvenile for almost a young adult, which can concern to others, but that’s not the issue I have. What she has done was wrong, but she has admitted to her mistakes, and she became a better person saying that everything that happened was from her sister. (This was originally proven to be false, but after multiple people trying to friend her, her speech was different, and Tea has a style that differs from the one that blocked the ones from trying to friend her). The issue that I had was the people’s reactions to the whole thing.

Everyone was obviously mad at her for spreading false rumors. That’s what life is like. But people have gotten as far as to curse her out for doing it. When it was a high topic in the server, everyone was active when she returned to the server. She returned to it once and after somebody realized that she was the one that spread false information; the place went wild. The activity in the server was very high full of people being rude to her for what she’s done. There were people defending her, too, and that what she’s done wasn’t that bad to get mad over. And sorry to say this, but with her trolling others, I’m with the defending side. What she’s done to Derpy though, wasn’t cool. Everyone didn’t need to be so offensive to her, to actually make her disappear off the surface of the internet for a little. I don’t know if it’s because of that, but I was in it the whole time, and what she had to go through was too much. Hopefully, the break was worth it.

My Roleplaying Server
Now you may wonder, “How can my roleplaying server be a major situation in the community?” Well, this is the reason. You see, when I was friends with Rune, me and him had the idea of making a community for those who are into storytelling, roleplaying, and into Dark Witch and anything else. At first, it wasn’t a bad idea, but once it gotten taken into effect, things started becoming good, but then worse and worse. Remember that I’ve mentioned that I had issues with a curtain member that were younger than me? They and their friend tagged along in the server, when I was still friends with them. And they were happy about the community that me and Rune were growing. But when he had to take a hiatus because stuff wasn’t working out for him, I was the only one in charge of the place (well, along with my family and such), and that’s when things started to quickly boil.

Everything was fine until I was roleplaying with the friend and their friend. It started off fine until they started roleplaying by their selves while I’m trying to roleplay with them together. This might seem normal, but I wanted for them to help me and such, but they’ve been trying their best to roleplay with each other, leaving me out. They also started doing stuff that’s against the rules, and I had no other choice but to kick them out.

When I kicked them out, my friend came into the main Discord, hating herself for the actions that she had caused. I tried reasoning with her it isn’t the best idea to quickly jump into a different server because of a different reason, all of my points has done nothing on her which left her thinking (and I’m not joking about this) that if she would have died, that would of made everyone happy. This was the trigger. Their friend raided my server because of the harm that I caused to them. I had no other choice but to delete the Dark Witch Roleplaying server because it was a horrible idea to begin with.

People were wondering what the hell happened, which sparked some activity in the Discord, and people were just telling me to let it go, essentially making me lose the argument while it wasn’t my fault. They were breaking the rules, and they weren’t roleplaying with me, yet I was the one to blame with and I had to stop arguing with them and call it a day.

The NFT Debacle
One user posted in the Discord server that they’ve noticed that NAN-A, the developer of INSIDE_SYSTEM, was working with a couple of other people to make some NFTs for Anime and Manga. One of theirs was Dark Witch. And of course, being that NFTs are just images you can freely screenshot (NAN-A’s NFTs were just sprites of the Dark Witch characters that you can easily rip from the game’s files) everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was mad. People were leaving the server, activity was at its highest, and heck, even Klinsy and Flora almost wanted to delete the server in its entirety because why would they want to support a creator who supports NFTs?

Not all of them left, though. Most of the ones who actually have a brain have stayed in there and have asked NAN-A about it. People asked if they can take it down, but to this day, i still see them on OpenSea untouched. I don’t know when it’s going to actually get off of there, but I hope it gets off of there soon. but AFTER the whole thing ended and things calmed down...

HYDE
A user by the name HYDE decided to give his own opinion about the whole thing. And when people started stating their other side of their opinion, he exploded onto the people. Causing more activity to appear. He was a monster. Talking about how the hell they are not agreeing with his opinion to the point that he even had a small battle between JayTheWheat. He got himself quickly banned/kicked after calling him something that I couldn't say, and that was pretty much the end of the Whole NFT thing.

Comparing the Amino to the Discord
This isn’t necessary, but I want to compare the differences between both the Dark Witch Discord and the Amino. Why? Because in all honesty, I can say that the Amino had more personality and more fun than the Discord. And here’s why:

When I came into the Amino, Derpy and her admins have tried their best making the place feel special for the users by showing posts that were kinda like Fun Facts and such while also showing announcements about a new game coming out, and then while they do that, they kinda express their happiness doing so to get everyone feel excited for the game’s release. I’ve looked back during the old ages of the Amino and found old posts about everyone literally going NUTS over Dark Witch 3’s release, Brave Dungeon releasing on Switch with new features, and Rudymical getting a better treatment than its mobile version. While they did that, they (and the people) would make small quizzes to test other people’s knowledge on Dark Witch with showing the Games’s characters and they have to find the corresponding answer to it, and some members would make roleplaying channels and voice chat with other people. It was fun. But the Discord? The admins aren’t really active in the server (they got personal business yeah but look at Terraria and Stardew Valley’s developers Re-Logic and Concerned Ape), and they don’t really interact with the community a lot to make things interesting. The News feel like straightforward news, there isn’t any random news posts about fun facts (the people can do it, but there isn’t a designated channel for posting fun facts), the roleplaying channel is once again, one unclarified channel, and although people can make Threads, Forums is really the only way to make things look organized and such especially considering that only mods can unopen past Threads, and the admins didn’t really have a sense of energy when just really talking in general to the people.

If there were more people and more Admins and such to get permission to change channels and other stuff, that would make things possibly even better not only for the mods themselves, but for the members in the server as well. One of my short-term goals is to be one of the main people to help bring other members’ suggestions and stuff to reality to make the Dark Witch Discord more of a reliable place for everyone, and so far, it’s slowly taking its time, but everyone basically said that once there’s more people in the server, then they can start adding more mods. Speaking of this, one of my main short-term goals for my life an Indie Dev is to fix the flaws of the Dark Witch Discord and make it a place where it would look more appealing, people would have to abide by the rules (the rules could be clarified a bit more), and to make it a place where it feels similar to how Klinsy and Flora have done it, but make it a bit more refreshing.

If there were more people and more Admins and such to get permission to change channels and other stuff, that would make things possibly even better not only for the mods themselves, but for the members in the server as well. One of my short-term goals is to be one of the main people to help bring other members’ suggestions and stuff to reality to make the Dark Witch Discord more of a reliable place for everyone, and so far, it’s slowly taking its time, but everyone basically said that once there’s more people in the server, then they can start adding more mods. Speaking of this, one of my main short-term goals for my life an Indie Dev is to fix the flaws of the Dark Witch Discord and make it a place where it would look more appealing, people would have to abide by the rules (the rules could be clarified a bit more), and to make it a place where it feels similar to how Klinsy and Flora have done it, but make it a bit more refreshing.

The Hiatus
Now with all of these reasons that I gave about the servers' issues, it had got me thinking about taking a small hiatus because I couldn't stand the struggle of meeting people like that and being inside of a server like this. The fact that I literally made a community, only for it to get raided by some child that couldn't control her emotions is already showing that the Fandom is not perfect as they say. I like the place and all, but in order for me to actually like the place and actually give it some love, all of the people that harassed me have to leave, there has to be more mods, the place's overal look needs to be cleaner, and the rules needs to be a bit clearer.

...
Fast Forwarding to Q2 2022, I’ve come back. I was going to bring myself back to the community that I had issues with. To see if anything really changed. When I came back, most of the people that I had problems with suddenly left. And that was because of the whole NFT thing. A lot of the people I had issues with actually left the place! This had me astonished, as some of the requirements for me to the enjoy the place are taking effect. There's still two mods though, and the place is still cluttered, and people were still posting memes in spam instead of a designated channel. I've asked that, and it gotten quickly added in. And somebody asked for a suggestions channel, and it got in. Most of my plans are taking into action!

But a few months in, and I still didn't feel safe. Although most of the bad people left, there were still some that were there that I still didn't like. And they were more active in there than ever, and it's coming to a point where if they say something, and I disagree with it, they'll try to hide away from everyone because the one thing I said was horrible enough to scare them for a bit. This happened not only with me, too so the person isn't just the right person. And the mods? They didn't give him a warning about it! They're doing it more often, and it's annoying some of the users, but he's still happily one of the users in the server. And they still have political debates, and they still mention NSFW in the main chats.

At this point, As of October 18th, 2022, I'm saying that I'm not going to be an active member of the Discord Anymore. I started feeling that the place was realizing that their place was getting its criticism, but they don't bother fixing it and I couldn't take the issues anymore. I almost want to say if Blad were to become the owner of the Main Discord Sevrer, I would come back into the place because I know that for me and him being good friends and him being fantastic in leadership (even better than me), he'll make sure that everyone is treated equally in the Discord server.

Conclusion
And now for the final blow. This series has got to be one of my most favorite series' I've ever had been with. The games weren't terrible (Except for Break Block Seyga Crystal), but not all of them were equally outstanding, the community has identified to have positives and negatives, and I wouldn't have been the person I am if it wasn't for this, and for Scratch. if The Legend of Dark Witch Discord has Blad as the owner, and he gives me the permission to become admin (and Klinsy and Flora and others), I'm going back in. Or if they actually take my criticism into consideration. But for now, I cannot.