Congradulations, and sorry for the rough appearance. In order to make this site truly hidden, I couldn't put it anywhere where the site theme could reach. If you're just hunting for an answer, you won't find any more info here. Instead, I hid this page to say thank you to all of the players I've gleefully led astray over my past three years as a trivia master.
As you may have guessed, this site is not something we stumbled across or collaborated with someone to create, but instead this site is the product of HM Cassidy, who will henceforth refer to herself in the first person, as she's the one writing this.
This was an idea I had all the way back in year one but never figured out how to quite get to it. We played with making a minecraft world last year but ended up deciding against it because some people may not own minecraft, and we couldn't find any free open world alternatives. If you noticed that the garrudas felt rushed last year, that was my fault, and I'm sorry for that.
It wasn't until later last winter when I came across the webhost neocities that I realized a website for this idea was the obvious choice. It was a massive undertaking, and actually as I'm writing this I don't quite know how hard this'll truly be, since I'm writing it about 25% through the process. In getting this far though, I've learned the basics of HMTL and Markdown code which I've been thoroughly enjoying, even if it is exhausting.
Admittedly, I'm leaning on this format as a crutch. I've never been a good question writer (If you remember FNAF 2 hour or Soup hour from triv 60, those shutouts were all me), and the past two garrudas I've written have been received poorly (part of the super for 60, 10m for 59). This site is a bit of a redemption arc for me to prove that I can still make trivia fun despite my lack ability to write consistently enjoyable and solveable questions. It's not gone unnoticed to my fellow TMs, but in this moment I also want to apologize candidly to you, the players, for the frustrating Qs you've had to deal with from me in the past two years. Hopefully this year was better, although I don't quite know how it's gone yet, since I'm writing this in May.
I also want to touch on why this format. I think this website is a bit of a parody of itself: a lot of what the character who is writing the website talks about is trivia masters losing the script and making the contest less and less about knowing things and more about finding things. I understand that webhunting isn't for everyone, but I also understand that for those who are already invested in this contest, a site like this is the exact kind of weird that I think people will really enjoy.
But saying all of that, I really did and continue to grapple with whether this was a good idea or not. It's easy to say it is because I enjoy stuff like this, but I spent a lot of time wondering if this is really what trivia needed: another thing that glues people to a seat on their computers. Additionally, after a series of years where garrudas are becoming more and more controvertial in their length and solveability, where does this compare? Are people going to see a website url in the Q box on stream and just tune out like they do with our previous questions? Also, as HM, shouldn't I be prioritizing writing a digestible garruda rather than changing or reinventing the format so the TMs that follow me can have a stronger blueprint of what their Qs should look like?
I'm not going to pretend that I know the answer to any of these questions, but what I do know is that I'm confident in my choice. I feel that, if I were to not do this, the idea would haunt me forever. Additionally, I feel that I can set responsible Q writing practices without setting a specific example of each Q. We already have those from previous years, which our contestants have generously reminded us of annually. Also, I think the issue with the garrudas has not necessarily been the solveability but the length reducing the incentive to try and solve it. Garrudas are so easy to over-write, especially since those are our moments to really show off what we can do.
But what it's finally come down to is that garrudas aren't fun for anyone if they're over-written, including us. The joy of garruda hour is the tension in the phone room right before we go running onto the stream to celebrate together. When we write questions where the twitch chat is just berating the length and not discussing how to solve it, all that tension is gone. There's no joy in hearing someone give a wrong guess since we can hear their dissapointment over the phone. I don't know if this'll continue to be an issue after I'm gone, but I hope I can try to do something about it while still creating this.
I hope, for the sake of future TMs, that this doesn't become a format. I've had a ton of fun creating this site because I'm insane and enjoy staring at my VSC window for hours at a time, but the workload is really intense, and I don't think I could wish this upon anyone unless they had a lighter workload than me, which would be difficult. Instead, I hope this opens some doors and ideas for what garrudas can be, since text-fatigue is real. A theme during my time as TM and now HM is exploring what the video medium can mean for trivia: that means picture questions which Lawrence introduced last year, playing with the whiteboards in the stream room (although I know this also happened pre-twitch), and a whole lot more that I won't dive into now. But that exploration is what led me here: since picture questions were recieved well by players, where else can we go?
For me, I don't know. Truthfully, I've never played in the contest: I was introduced to the contest in my first year while photographing lawrence traditions for a personal project and fell in love with the phone room, but my strength has never been in writing or finding answers. Mostly I've been enjoying the admin side of things: booking rooms, helping with meetings and playtesting, and setting up the stream. So I'm hesitant in my ability to be a quality player of the contest, and I think I may better serve as a hype-woman and snack supplier for whoever I end up teaming up with. I do want to play, as my life has been permanenetly altered by this contest, but I'm not quite sure what that'll look like.
Firstly, I would never have auditioned without encouragement from my fellow TMs Rebecca and Megan. I actually was planning on not going the night that we did auditions, but they were the ones who dragged me out there, so without them I wouldn't be here.
I also want to thank HME Nick, Maddie, and Lawrence, as well as all other TM and HM emerituses that reached out to me after last years contest on discord and in emails. Those weeks were especially hard for so many reasons, some of which I talked about publicly, but seeing that wave of support really made it all feel worth it. Nick especially has been an incredibly helpful voice to bounce off of over the past couple years while I've been trying to figure out how to actually write a question, so I want to extend a special thank you to them here. I have a feeling they'll find this page.
Obviously, thank you to neocities for being an awesome webhost. I also want to extend a thank you to Kate Bagenzo, who did the painful work of writing this template that I used to create the website. Their work can be found here.
And lastly, I want to thank all the players, especially to you folk who have made it to this page. Every step of the way, this community has made me feel so incredibly welcome and loved. I remember my first year as TM and how afraid I was of my questions being poorly received, and when I threw my first shutout, I nearly had a panic attack on stream. It was so reassuring in that moment to see folks still having a good time in twitch chat and on discord, and I owe a lot of my drive to stay every year to you all. So thank you.
If you're checking down here to see if I left any breadcrumbs, I didn't. I'll only remind you that there's a second hidden page like this one with a clue, but you should know that by now if you've found your way here.