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Ta-da~ here's the finished product! Happy (early) Hanukkah to the Devoraks and Happy Holidays to everyone else!

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brain: do arcana characters w their patron arcana’s outfits

me: are we really gonna do julian like that

brain: yea he’d probably like it

#nice

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Arcana Fans,

Can we talk about the Tarot Decks? The Arcana Tarot Decks. I’m proud of them. It also ends in a painful memory. They are, all in all, the high and low of my time at Nix Hydra

In short: I’m one of the main people that made Arcana Tarot Decks a reality.

My job was answering emails, monitoring the Arcana social media tags, and generally having my finger on the pulse of the community. I knew that, by a wide margin, Tarot Decks were the biggest request. My coworker (who shall remain nameless for their privacy) was part of the team that made the Arcana and knew how much Tarot resonated with fans. This co-worker and I fought for about 1-1.5 years getting them greenlit.

In all honesty, they were a completely audacious idea. Nix Hydra didn’t make much money from merchandise. Maybe $100 a month. The cost of an *initial* run of Arcana Tarot Decks would take something like $25,000 to get going. This is because of creating the art, securing people to help package/ship them, actual costs of packaging/shipping itself, and more. Also, my partner on the project was very insistent that we work with a company that produced them at an extremely high quality with gold trim edges. Gold trim edges was important (they were right).

So, the Nix Hydra merch store made less than $200 a month, and my coworker and I were trying to pitch something that would COST $25,000~ to get started. If it made $25,000 back, that’s still a waste of time because it means we would have made the same money just skipping the whole thing.

This next part is fuzzy, but if I remember right, we tested the waters with stickers. We stocked Arcana stickers to see how quickly they sold. They sold fast. Like… fast. This was good. It was our test case to at least prove that “People want Arcana Merch”. It heated the iron, and my coworker and I struck. We got the approval!

So here’s the most nerve wracking moment of my career here. I’ve been in the game industry 12 years, but I’ve never run a merchandise store Nix Hydra. Even after that, I sent out a few sticker sheets every month. Forget about convincing a company to invest $25,000~ into my mad idea. And then… if they DID sell. What, then!? I always have a lot of anxiety, and I kept thinking of ways it could go wrong. What if I broke some international shipping law? What if I did the math wrong and operated at a loss? What if the site charged people the wrong amount? I KNEW the Tarot Decks would sell, but that was scary, too!

The day came that we flipped the switch. I was so excited. I was so excited! I was so… scared. At this point, all that was left was to see if we could make above the starting amount…

We made about $200,000 in the first 24 hours. Now, this was 3-4 years ago, so I may be SIGNIFICANTLY off. But my point is that we made six digits very quickly. By this same time tomorrow, this went from “Gunpowder and Coworker’s brassy, sassy idea” to “Merch is a hit! What’s next?”

Over the next few months and weeks, we had a joyful hectic hell of the best anxiety. Problems would come up. We’d knock them down. We’d run out of storage space in the office and it would look almost comical. We’d have truckloads of shipment issues. I soon found out that simply taking the packages to the post office was its own complicated project. All of this expanded into hiring people to help with merch. These people were extremely passionate about The Arcana and began to be advocates for what merch to add next. I could gush about how amazing they are for hours, but for privacy’s sake, I’m refraining from saying much about my coworkers.

So like that, we went from “Merch doesn’t sell” to “We need a merch department” in a few months. By the time I left the company, the CEO (you’ve seen his name around) projected the Merch alone to be a $1M a year revenue stream. I don’t know if we ever hit that goal. My point was that he felt it was possible, which made me happy.

… which brings me to how the story ends painfully. I have moderate ADHD. I personally think it’s severe, but my doctor says moderate, so hey. I tend to fall behind on assignments a lot. I also tend to get distracted super easily. It can ruffle feathers in a work environment. I did not realize how much. See, this project was in full swing, my work was going well, and I had also designed all the gameplay of Heart Hunter (that was me! I’ll write a post on that later). I felt good about all of this. I had a meeting with the CEO and was going to ask him for a raise.

“[Name], just so you know, I sometimes sit and my desk and go over the pros and cons of letting you go.” He said it conversationally. It was casual to him. My stomach fell out. I asked him why, and it turned out that he was being very, very literal.

See, he made a pros and cons list of every thing he likes about me and every thing that he doesn’t. I’ll spare you the whole list, but in the Cons side was “Doesn’t focus on work all 8 hours of the day”. I was flabbergasted and told him “But… I do a lot of projects. And YOU said the merch store is estimated at $1M a year!” At this point, it is extremely important to note that nothing about the merch store was in my job description besides “Ship stickers and answer emails”. Literally everything I mentioned above were things I did in my spare time without being asked. Out of love for the company.

“Yes, I agree that you’re very passionate and creative. See, I put that on the list!”

He points to the Pros and Cons list. “passionate and creative” is cancelled out by “doesn’t focus all 8 hours of the day”. It was a tie. The project I co-led started a whole new department and seven-digit (estimated) revenue… it wasn’t even the only one I did (Heart Hunter was also a side project, albeit one I was assigned). And all of that, in his mind, was cancelled out by “doesn’t work all 8 hours a day”.

I never got a raise. I never got a bonus. I never even got job security. None of it mattered to him.

I started looking for a job the next day.

—-

There’s more to the story, but I think this is the main point. This is the best and worst of Nix Hydra. It was a place where people like my coworker and I would make extra time to work on new things simply because we believed in our work that much. Where players joyfully supported our work because it resonated with them. Where new employees would be so passionate about their work that they would keep an entire department afloat on their own fantastic ideas. It was also a place where none of this could even amount to job security or recognition. It was frustrating, and it was joyful.

I meant every single smile at a public event. So did every member of the team that was there. It was never “just PR”; it was people who were over the moon to get to help create these stories and worlds and moments. We loved it. But management never loved us back. And that stung.

-

Thank you, every single person who posted their tarot decks. Who put them into your cosplays. Who did readings.

Thank you everyone who posted your Heart Hunter moments. Who shared the postcards I fought tooth and nail to see in the game (It was SO difficult to convince some people that “postcards would be the type of reward players want”).

My entire life, I’ve had joyful moments in games and game communities. My lifelong dream was to help make those moments come alive for others. When you all celebrated this game and those aspects of it, that was very genuinely a lifelong dream come true.

Thank you for reading this. And also The Arcana.

#to this day i adore my copy of the arcana tarot deck #but god #nix hydra fucking jfc

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Someone wants to play hide and seek with you, can you find Portia?

#only arcana post i care abt anymore

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Hey so any POCs in the fandom just know that Muriel wasn't a slave lmao he was just working for Lucio against his will.

Your ancestors weren't slaves they were just working against their will 🥰

Anyway Lucio did nothing wrong byyeeeee

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I stand by everything I’ve ever said about Nix Hydra and the people who work for them—they are not your friends, they are not good people, and they enable all of the -isms and -phobias that you see in this fandom.

#theres a reason i ollied out like a year and a half ago

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Hey if you’re into TTRPGs at all, or really wanna help trans youth in Texas, I highly recommend checking out this bundle on itchio! You can get nearly 500 games, tools, and supplements, a nearly $3000 value, for FIVE DOLLARS! Please consider donating to a great cause and getting a ridiculous amount of games!!!!!

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i dont know which white person needs to hear this but you can like things with people of color in it without projecting your whiteness onto us and stripping away everything about us that make us people of color. i know it’s hard to relate to something without literally making things about yourself and that’s why you need to make a character of color who already has an established personality, friend group, family, hobbies, and so on some generic cardboard cutout who you then “headcanon” as an anxious zoomer elle gee bee tea with blue hair and pronouns even though that is the opposite of who that character is, but i prommy you’re just whitewashing the character and not actually “diversifying your interests” or “adding representation” or whatever.

i dont care if you have anxiety and are gay and saw yourself in that character, the second you start projecting these things onto a character of color to the detriment of their established character you’re doing a disservice to not only the source material but also yourself. not everything is about you, not everything is for you, and not everything has to be relatable to you for you to find meaning in it. suck it up.

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pepi likes it, pasha

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Hey! It’s that time again! Time to ebeg!

We have a $450 prescription deductible this year, and my spouse’s maintenance inhaler is $300. We have $8 in our account at the moment. My spouse cannot breathe without this inhaler.

I’m sick of asking, but if you can help, even if it’s just a reblog, I would appreciate it.

PayPal is [email protected]

I hate our healthcare system so much.

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I'm pretty sure it's canon Nadia's never been around snow, so I love the idea of Portia inviting her to Nevivion in the winter to teach her the art of snow angels and freezing your hands off

#nadia #portia

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This morning I offer… some Nadias.

#nadia

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Wanna spend some holiday money or get some ship art before Valentine’s Day?? Now’s your chance…👀

Form for Slots: https://forms.gle/eLkSzKbkHPsCMaw8A

TOS: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GDCMpvdavyRVlMceO4NCg4Ug9FzDx638RA9z3M_bts/edit

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“House rules, Ilyushka - Pepi is a legitimate course hazard!”

And on the eighth day of Chanukah, we see Portia absolutely demolishing her brother at dreidel and taking all his gelt, while MC and Mazelinka are probably busily preparing more latkes, because honestly you can never have enough latkes.

(Of course, I personally imagine that Jinana or Asra knitted this festive little kippah for Julian… and that Pasha splits the gelt with Julian anyway, if only after winning away his very last one. It’s the principle of the thing.)

[Full Size]

#julian #portian #this is INCREDIBLE

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yes, the Devoraks are fictional characters and therefore just a bunch of pixels; no, that doesn’t make putting Julian (or Portia!) in Christmas sweaters, celebrating an xtian holiday, on Chanukah at that better. even if it wasn’t Chanukah, just don’t put the Devoraks in Christmas clothing or sweaters, since Christmas is not a secular, neutral holiday, but a christian holiday and the Devoraks are jewish.

Christianity has not stopped being a religion, btw, jic you all purposefully forgot

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When Arcana fan artists give Muriel a powerlifter's gut instead of washboard abs it's just 😍👌🏼🤤🙌🏼🥰

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I didn’t like how my hand slipped last time so i tried to fix it

#julian