#fawnlings

So while being nostalgic and a bit sad, I ended up discovering the books that were created out of Fawnlings being wiped off the face of the internet. For context, Fawnlings was an open art roleplay game and after the owners return after a 6-7 year absence (it had been run by the abandoned mods) she decided to shut it down to use her “original concept in a novel.”

I was a roleplayer there for roughly two years before that happened, accumulating almost 10 characters, but the group had 1,6k members and many had been there from the start. It was very popular, friendly, active, and well maintained by the passionate mods who the owner had left behind. Tons of the game, lore, and changes to the species were created by them without any direction from the missing admin.

Back to the discovery… I couldn’t find the book by looking up anything that had been an aspect of Fawnlings, so I thought the damned novel just didn’t or hadn’t come out. I found it by her pen name (or real name?) which I will not divulge even though she’s technically publishing under that name, and has been writing articles under a different once since at least 2021. But the reason I could never find the book in connection to Fawnlings was… because there is none.

The main reason she claimed to want to separate herself from Fawnlings, which led to her refusal to give the group to the mods who had been caring for it, was because she intended to use the IP she made in a novel. When the mods didn’t bite they made their own group with a separate similar species and new but also similar world mechanics. Sadly, the new group has never been as active as the old one, I’d say there is activity (like art) made every 3-4 months. I’ve seen a lot of RPs die, and it is dying.

Now, I find out that Fawnlings was deleted for nothing. The novel is just… an ATLA AU, sharing little to nothing with the destroyed Fawnlings group. Fawnlings were deer, the book is humans. The ex-owner played characters in the Irish/Scottish inspired part of the game, but the book is based on Asia (specifically Japan). Fawnlings didn’t even have an Asia inspired location (ironically the new game does, which she didn’t even play a part in). The second book is about pirates, Fawnlings didn’t have those nor could they make boats. There’s a map in the first book and none of the locations are named after anything from Fawnlings, so the herd names she had originally requested be changed weren’t even used in the book.

The only similarity to Fawnlings is shared by both ATLA and (again ironically) the new game that she didn’t even play a part in. That magic and gods had disappeared but are now returning, and the main character turns out to have powers. Blessings and curses are also a thing. I can see some vague plot points that resemble Fawnlings plots, but they’d never make that connection if you didn’t know her involvement and are again generic (royal betrayal- generic- and stealing children for a cult- generic). Basically, she deleted Fawnlings because she wanted to use… magic tropes that already existed? While everything else unique to the group and it’s members wasn’t even used.

What makes it worse is two three things:

1. The article she published (again I won’t reveal her name) two months after the incident with the group about how you shouldn’t take negative comments personally and how it’s “something going on in the other persons life, not your fault.” Which is true advice but the context is shitty, she had been pretty heavily criticized at that time.

2. A Tumblr blog post months after (unless you get her Twitter which I won’t share you won’t find it, she didn’t use that blog much) the closure saying the story draft for the novel “started 9 years ago” and then a joke about “flushing” the evidence of the first draft.

3. (edited in) About a year or so after deletion, she got Wayback Machine to exclude or redirect the majority of captures. New captures and ones showing any criticism or discussion involving the shut down were excluded, and many older captures were turned into redirects that directed to captures from circa 2012-2016. Years 2020 and 2021 were completely wiped. Petty as Hell! This alone makes me feel like I would be in the right to give the name of her book series, just so you could avoid ever supporting it or her, but I still wouldn't feel good about doing that.

getting into RPs is hard for me as an adult and I’m still peeved that Ciel had only just turned 1 in game year old when the plug was pulled, and the new game is as good as dead so there’s really no community to keep playing with. Imagine playing one giant DND game for 8 years, then the DM (who had been napping through the majority of it) throws all of it into a garbage can, changes 95% of the plot everyone loved until it’s unrecognizable and tries to monetize it against the wishes of everyone who contributed to it. That’s what it’s like ☠️ and the new DND game just doesn’t have that same spark or comradery, so most of the players left. Or, like making a rudimentary toy for the public to play with. Then they build onto the toy so it’s more fun, then after years you come back, yoink it from everyone, strip it of everything they made it into, and started reselling it under a different package. And the new toy they tried to replace it with just doesn’t bring everyone the same joy, so it starts gathering dust.

Does the DM have the right to throw away their campaign and ignore the feelings of others? And does the toymaker have the right to take their toy away and sell it? Yes, but it doesn’t make it any less shitty, especially when thousands of players were in that DND game/playing with the toy. “Has the right” is not equal to kind, ethical, or selfless.