now that it is not the middle of the night, to reiterate and elaborate on some things.
i say this not to cast blame on anyone, but to point out a phenomenon i find concerning. i've seen some people talk about downpour in ways that are unnecessarily cruel to the people who made downpour, or about downpour in general. obviously you're not obligated to like downpour; i have major gripes with some of it myself. but at the end of the day, downpour is an official DLC that was approved by videocult, and lots and lots of effort was put into making it.
i think it's valuable to air things you're dissatisfied with in any media you're invested in, but the way some people speak about downpour just... feels like they're ragging on downpour for the sake of ragging on downpour. and that's just mean. it's especially unpleasant when people main tag these sorts of posts, because rarely is it any sort of meaningful, discussion-provoking criticism on how downpour handles the lore or its writing or some other aspect. it's just plain hatred. not to say you can't hate downpour, and that's a valid stance to take, but to put these posts in a space where people who enjoy the media you're ragging on is, in my eyes, cruel. this goes double when some of the MSC team are on tumblr, and can see what you're saying about their work. you are publicly tearing down their work in a place where they can see it.
whether you like it or not, downpour's creation took years of work. it wasn't a slapdashed creation that they threw a price tag on*. and frankly, i doubt some of the things i've seen people say about downpour would ever be applied to fan made media of a similar scale, because people understand that it's rude. so i don't see why people should be allowed to do this about downpour.
on the flip side... despite downpour being an official DLC approved by videocult, i think a lot of people newer to the community are unaware of its history. it began as More Slugcats, an expansion mod that added five new slugcats into the game. its first iteration existed in 2017. that's 6 years ago; what are your fanfics from 5 years ago like? it was written to be fanwork, and it wasn't started with the intention of it becoming a DLC. and, really, how much of the community can say that they only ever stick to vanilla's lore, without ever deviating from it or changing some aspects to make their story work?
besides that, the MSC team themselves have said multiple times that if anything, downpour is more like an AU that was given an official acknowledgement, so like a fanfic that most people in a fandom have read that the original writers have acknowledged. if you want to use its lore, that's your prerogative, and it is a DLC after all. but to assume canonicity, especially on certain things that are exclusive to downpour, and to apply it broadly is, imo, a dangerous practice. this community existed long before downpour did, and people have been working entirely in vanilla's lore for literal years. not everyone uses downpour's lore for their work, and that is and should be completely fine. i think there needs to be more acknowledgement of this in the community, especially since downpour brought in a lot of new people.
so, really, downpour is only as canon as you want it to be, and you really cannot assume anything about someone else. this is a choice you and everyone else can make, and it's a choice that deserves to be talked about more. you don't have to use downpour in your work. you can deviate from downpour as much as you want. i think that's the ethos that led to downpour's existence in the first place anyway. don't let canon stop you, whatever canon means to you, but if you want to adhere to canon, go for it.
above all else, i think everyone needs to give the writers for downpour more grace. this is fan made. this was a story fans made for fun, because they loved rain world and because they wanted to contribute their own ideas to it. MSC just happened to get official recognition. it wasn't written with this degree of scrutiny in mind, and while i can't say it shouldn't get this degree of scrutiny, i just ask for people to be a little gentler with other people's work. downpour's history is already messy enough.
*when downpour became a DLC, its story was already finished. it was a finished product before andrewfm proposed the idea of it being a DLC. a finished product as a mod, which then got only a year to become a DLC. can you polish 5 years of work to a professional standard in 1 year when you are not a professional? there's a lot more i could say about akupara and what i've heard of the MSC team's experience working on downpour, but it's not my place to say this and frankly, i don't know enough of the details. my point is that they tried their best. in better circumstances, we might have got a better outcome, but blaming the MSC team for it is not conducive.
