1st and 2nd images by u/the_ahegao_man
4th by @xlphen on Twitter

I would like to preface this by saying I do not expect everyone to share my sentiment, far from it in fact. Anyone who has been an avid fan of Calamity until the point of it’s downfall, I truly understand why you would be heartbroken. Calamity was something truly special, and I doubt anything can fill the hole the same way. It is a genuine tragedy the way things had worked out.

My Experience With Calamity:

With that out of the way, I’m going to get into my experience with the mod. My first exposure was from the OST on youtube without any context for the mod, or even Terraria for that matter. It was a truly magical experience wondering what this was attached to, or what kind of spectacle was accompanying this sound and the lore I’d gathered from the comments. About half a year later I’d pick up Terraria on an unrelated note, where I really learned to love the game. When I was done I finally realized I could experience the once unreachable experience that was Calamity, and I played it for the first time. It really was a wonderful experience, and I’ll never get that same surreal feeling of playing something I’d only seen glimses of.

I’ve been an avid fan since then, though I’ve been past my obsession for it for around 2 years now. Terraria is a faded era in my life, but something I still hold very dear, Calamity included. I eventually stopped being able to care about it as much though, I remember seeing people constantly slander the mod for it’s lack of originality, and I honestly couldn’t refute it. I’ve played many other mods in the time, and there were undoubtedly things that deserved more attention than Calamity. But it was still special to me, so I never let go of it still.

Recently I played through the entirety of Calamity again with a friend, around a month before everything went to shit now. It was definitely a very very fun time, but it really wasn’t that interesting all things considered. After a certain point it really does just become a boss rush with sparce spacinv inbetween. After seeing how interesting exploration could be in other mods, it definitely was a bitter feeling.

I did notice some updates in that playthrough, the new developments were definitely interesting, but a lot of them felt a bit strange to me. Hog wild update definitely confused me more than anything, but hey, I appreciate the effort to make something more fun and zany. But even when I looked at updates in the future, I couldn’t help but get a weird feeling about it all. It was probably just the spriting, but I just could never get behind it fully. The push for quality was insane, yeah, but it honestly felt a but too jarring for the game. The only thing I could truly 100% get behind was the Desert Scourge rework, and I still do mourn that a bit. Regardless of how reasonable my gripes with progress was, it was definitively how I felt, and because of it my care of the mod lessened as it became something more alienated from what I cared about in my head.

Now to today, everything has gone to complete shit. Everyone knows what happened, and the mod is irreparably dead. When I learned what had happened I coped really hard, but I was ready for it all to hit how bad it was once the information settled… I mean, kinda? I felt shitty for about half a day. Half a day, and then I learned about my new beloved, my savior, the treasure I had been waiting for my whole life-

THE PART WHERE I GLAZE FABLES NONSTOP:

I remember learning about Fables when it came out. I’ll be real, I barely cared about it and never planned to play it. I had this weird mental barrier in my head that always stopped me from touching it. Just knowing how much it diverged from the base mods lore felt wrong, and I couldn’t get myself to care for it. But the base mods was dead now, so there was really nothing left to lose. In my desperation to find a future to hope for, I decided to peek into the Discord server.

That was the exact day they posted the redesigns for the big 3 and HOLY SHIT was it incredible. I immediately understood Fables was for me, the mod was made for me, to appeal to ME. I could recognize it wasn’t going to be fully accepted by the community, it was way too different in parts, I get that, I understand. But the absolute joy and giddy I felt when I was imagining what those characters would be like with the polish of Fables, with their new personalities and looks, it was unbridled. The characters I liked as a guilty pleasure, knowing their writing was iffy at best, had been reworked into something I could truly, unabashadly love with all my heart. Characters with depth and soul that oozed from the design alone, it was a real miracle for me. From this moment onwards, I had become more invested in Terraria than i had ever been since I left. My love for the game had been completely restored by the potential I saw alone.

Ok, addressing some elephants. Calamitas’ redesign for Fables has been controversial at best. For as much praise as it’s gotten, it’s also gotten as many people be extremely reluctant. They’re incredibly different, so I don’t expect everyone to like the new look. Most people do acknowledge however that the Fables design is undoubtedly more fitting with her origins in many ways. Though I have seen some defend the old design as having a certain elegance to its simplicity, I mostly disagree form a design standpoint as it simply does not convey enough about the character. Ideally, if Calamitas’ old personality were to stay, her ideal look in my opinion would inherent a lot of similar aspects to the Fables design. Though Calamitas’ personality isn’t the same, at least from what we can tell. They made her a lot more overtly evil. Once again, I’ve seen people thinking it makes her character less interesting, which once again, fair, it’s basically a different character to a degree. But at the same time I think it opens a lot more intrigue as to why she did what she did, and why she’s still choosing to serve Yharim. It’s that kind of intrigue for these bew interpretations that I really love when thinking about this mod.

Next elephant to address is arguably a more grevous one. For this, I’d like to adress the tragic passing of out beloved Jungle Dragon, Yharon. It’s a very bold decision of them to remove such a beloved AND important character. I’ve already seen many deciding to not give this mod a chance because of this, and if they proceed I will not blame them. It’s the most devastating loss taken in the transfer from Calamity to Fables. Having him replaced instead by something else which is all… announced in the weirdest statement ever???
“There won’t be Yharon, but there’ll be a dragon with wings”
Why be so vague? It’s almost like they’re hiding something. Something in plane sight-

Yharim Theory [Yharim + Yharon]:

I think a lot of people keeping up with fables have probably caught onto this by now. The more you look into it, the more likely it seems (some real weird Yharim concepts you got there Iban). Anyways, this theory is not actually that Yharim and Yharon merged in lore, I just wanted to make the (Yhar + im) joke. The core is that Yharim is a dragon, and that they conceptually merged both Yharim and Yharon into the same entity. (This is my explanation for the weird phrasing and why they didn’t outright put Yharon in the removed catagory.) There isn’t too much of a point to this section honestly, I just really wanted to talk about this aspect because if it’s true it opens up SO many avenues for what could happen, especially for a boss fight. This concept is one of the things that I’ve really been wondering about a lot for the future.

Wrapping Up with More Fables Glazing:

A lot of people are dreading how long the mod will take, but I honestly cannot be bothered. I’ll wait as long as it takes, not like the updates won’t be chock full of content anyways. The upcoming Sunless Sea update planned to hit in a couple of months seems INSANELY cool with tons of content to explore. I was originally fooled by the seeming lack of bosses, but with the amount of npcs I can kind of assume a larger focus will be on exploration and questlines, which I’m all the way for. Speaking of npcs, these designs are SO GOOD!!! It’s genuinely so insane to me that these are getting in a Terraria mod of all things, these feel like they belong in their own polished indie game instead. Once again, the personality in Fable’s designs just cannot be understated to me.

Actual Verdict:

Ok the verdict is I like Fables, and that I wouldn’t have found and loved it if it wasn’t for base Calamity dying. Technically Calamity didn’t need to die for this to happen, but for the course of MY life it did. Don’t take this as a serious claim on how you should feel for anything, this is just my own very personal feelings and ramblings. I just really wanted to gush about Fables, and how much it’s restored my love and wonder for the Calamity mod and the world it had to offer.

1st and 2nd images by u/the_ahegao_man
4th by @xlphen on Twitter

I would like to preface this by saying I do not expect everyone to share my sentiment, far from it in fact. Anyone who has been an avid fan of Calamity until the point of it’s downfall, I truly understand why you would be heartbroken. Calamity was something truly special, and I doubt anything can fill the hole the same way. It is a genuine tragedy the way things had worked out.

My Experience With Calamity:

With that out of the way, I’m going to get into my experience with the mod. My first exposure was from the OST on youtube without any context for the mod, or even Terraria for that matter. It was a truly magical experience wondering what this was attached to, or what kind of spectacle was accompanying this sound and the lore I’d gathered from the comments. About half a year later I’d pick up Terraria on an unrelated note, where I really learned to love the game. When I was done I finally realized I could experience the once unreachable experience that was Calamity, and I played it for the first time. It really was a wonderful experience, and I’ll never get that same surreal feeling of playing something I’d only seen glimses of.

I’ve been an avid fan since then, though I’ve been past my obsession for it for around 2 years now. Terraria is a faded era in my life, but something I still hold very dear, Calamity included. I eventually stopped being able to care about it as much though, I remember seeing people constantly slander the mod for it’s lack of originality, and I honestly couldn’t refute it. I’ve played many other mods in the time, and there were undoubtedly things that deserved more attention than Calamity. But it was still special to me, so I never let go of it still.

Recently I played through the entirety of Calamity again with a friend, around a month before everything went to shit now. It was definitely a very very fun time, but it really wasn’t that interesting all things considered. After a certain point it really does just become a boss rush with sparce spacinv inbetween. After seeing how interesting exploration could be in other mods, it definitely was a bitter feeling.

I did notice some updates in that playthrough, the new developments were definitely interesting, but a lot of them felt a bit strange to me. Hog wild update definitely confused me more than anything, but hey, I appreciate the effort to make something more fun and zany. But even when I looked at updates in the future, I couldn’t help but get a weird feeling about it all. It was probably just the spriting, but I just could never get behind it fully. The push for quality was insane, yeah, but it honestly felt a but too jarring for the game. The only thing I could truly 100% get behind was the Desert Scourge rework, and I still do mourn that a bit. Regardless of how reasonable my gripes with progress was, it was definitively how I felt, and because of it my care of the mod lessened as it became something more alienated from what I cared about in my head.

Now to today, everything has gone to complete shit. Everyone knows what happened, and the mod is irreparably dead. When I learned what had happened I coped really hard, but I was ready for it all to hit how bad it was once the information settled… I mean, kinda? I felt shitty for about half a day. Half a day, and then I learned about my new beloved, my savior, the treasure I had been waiting for my whole life-

THE PART WHERE I GLAZE FABLES NONSTOP:

I remember learning about Fables when it came out. I’ll be real, I barely cared about it and never planned to play it. I had this weird mental barrier in my head that always stopped me from touching it. Just knowing how much it diverged from the base mods lore felt wrong, and I couldn’t get myself to care for it. But the base mods was dead now, so there was really nothing left to lose. In my desperation to find a future to hope for, I decided to peek into the Discord server.

That was the exact day they posted the redesigns for the big 3 and HOLY SHIT was it incredible. I immediately understood Fables was for me, the mod was made for me, to appeal to ME. I could recognize it wasn’t going to be fully accepted by the community, it was way too different in parts, I get that, I understand. But the absolute joy and giddy I felt when I was imagining what those characters would be like with the polish of Fables, with their new personalities and looks, it was unbridled. The characters I liked as a guilty pleasure, knowing their writing was iffy at best, had been reworked into something I could truly, unabashadly love with all my heart. Characters with depth and soul that oozed from the design alone, it was a real miracle for me. From this moment onwards, I had become more invested in Terraria than i had ever been since I left. My love for the game had been completely restored by the potential I saw alone.

Ok, addressing some elephants. Calamitas’ redesign for Fables has been controversial at best. For as much praise as it’s gotten, it’s also gotten as many people be extremely reluctant. They’re incredibly different, so I don’t expect everyone to like the new look. Most people do acknowledge however that the Fables design is undoubtedly more fitting with her origins in many ways. Though I have seen some defend the old design as having a certain elegance to its simplicity, I mostly disagree form a design standpoint as it simply does not convey enough about the character. Ideally, if Calamitas’ old personality were to stay, her ideal look in my opinion would inherent a lot of similar aspects to the Fables design. Though Calamitas’ personality isn’t the same, at least from what we can tell. They made her a lot more overtly evil. Once again, I’ve seen people thinking it makes her character less interesting, which once again, fair, it’s basically a different character to a degree. But at the same time I think it opens a lot more intrigue as to why she did what she did, and why she’s still choosing to serve Yharim. It’s that kind of intrigue for these bew interpretations that I really love when thinking about this mod.

Next elephant to address is arguably a more grevous one. For this, I’d like to adress the tragic passing of out beloved Jungle Dragon, Yharon. It’s a very bold decision of them to remove such a beloved AND important character. I’ve already seen many deciding to not give this mod a chance because of this, and if they proceed I will not blame them. It’s the most devastating loss taken in the transfer from Calamity to Fables. Having him replaced instead by something else which is all… announced in the weirdest statement ever???
“There won’t be Yharon, but there’ll be a dragon with wings”
Why be so vague? It’s almost like they’re hiding something. Something in plane sight-

Yharim Theory [Yharim + Yharon]:
I think a lot of people keeping up with fables have probably caught onto this by now. The more you look into it, the more likely it seems (some real weird Yharim concepts you got there Iban). Anyways, this theory is not actually that Yharim and Yharon merged in lore, I just wanted to make the (Yhar + im) joke. The core is that Yharim is a dragon, and that they conceptually merged both Yharim and Yharon into the same entity. (This is my explanation for the weird phrasing and why they didn’t outright put Yharon in the removed catagory.) There isn’t too much of a point to this section honestly, I just really wanted to talk about this aspect because if it’s true it opens up SO many avenues for what could happen, especially for a boss fight. This concept is one of the things that I’ve really been wondering about a lot for the future.

Wrapping Up with More Fables Glazing:

A lot of people are dreading how long the mod will take, but I honestly cannot be bothered. I’ll wait as long as it takes, not like the updates won’t be chock full of content anyways. The upcoming Sunless Sea update planned to hit in a couple of months seems INSANELY cool with tons of content to explore. I was originally fooled by the seeming lack of bosses, but with the amount of npcs I can kind of assume a larger focus will be on exploration and questlines, which I’m all the way for. Speaking of npcs, these designs are SO GOOD!!! It’s genuinely so insane to me that these are getting in a Terraria mod of all things, these feel like they belong in their own polished indie game instead. Once again, the personality in Fable’s designs just cannot be understated to me.

Actual Verdict

Ok the verdict is I like Fables, and that I wouldn’t have found and loved it if it wasn’t for base Calamity dying. Technically Calamity didn’t need to die for this to happen, but for the course of MY life it did. Don’t take this as a serious claim on how you should feel for anything, this is just my own very personal feelings and ramblings. I just really wanted to gush about Fables, and how much it’s restored my love and wonder for the Calamity mod and the world it had to offer.

If I was a Nobi I’d find a way to escape just so I could get manhandled and tied up by Hong Lu.
If I was imprisoned, I’d escape over and over again just so I could experience Hong Lu giggling at my pathetic attempts at escape before he drags me away.
When Hong Lu has me trussed, I will thrash merely to make him pull harder.

Donovan of the South Branch here, heard I’ve apperantly been layin’ so low that new recruits aint even heard of me! So let me keep this short n’ sweet: Great Brother of our family. Been around here longer than most, even my fellow Greats are calling me unc! Would kill me if that slowed me down though, don’t ever think I’m out of the party life for that stupid reason! Well anyhow, I’ve got things to tend to, a guy like me is busy by my own doing or not. Love y’all fam! Oh and in case anybody wanted to pay me a visit, I got plenty to treat y’all to!