The Void

The Void
Name	The Void
AKA	The Black Void, The Swarm
Description	The Void is a combination of The Swarm, a community dedicated to filling the entire canvas with black pixels, and the various random users who help them
Subreddit	theswarm, theblackvoid
Discord	https://discord.gg/circularswarm
Artwork	Great Void Entity, Smiling Void Face

The Void is behind the canvas and tries to break through every r/place event.

r/place 2022

The Great Void Entity

Main article: Great Void Entity

The Great Void Entity was a creepy face staring out from the canvas, as though looking directly at the viewer. It wore a golden crown topped with a blue diamond, had several sets of eyes, a golden teeth. It started as a depiction of the depressed Mr. Incredible meme with white and black tiles after the the second expansion.

Smiling Void Face

The smiling Void face was a smaller version of the Great Void Entity, with red eyes and a smiling red mouth drooling blood. Rather than wearing a crown, a shining blue star perched on its head.

History

Unlike streamer raids, the Void mostly stayed in a given spot once establishing its territory. Unlike the Void Mother, the Void created creepy and often disturbing art. Unlike The Purple Void, the Void mainly utilized black and white tiles, sometimes using red to depict blood dripping from its artwork.

r/place 2023

The Void made an appearance on r/place 2023, but was hampered by the sudden announcement of r/place that did not allow them enough time to sufficiently organize and gather enough people beforehand. Despite this, many people jumped in to contribute to the Void and it rapidly started growing from the very beginning of r/place.

History

Beginning

The Void started with two large voids right out of the gate, one in the upper half of the canvas and the other in the lower half. The upper void was quickly destroyed by the advancing Ukrainian flag, leaving only the lower void. It performed rather admirably at first, but soon ran into problems. Early on the Void was caught in a costly and ultimately unsuccessful war of attrition against the My Little Pony community, and was repeatedly attacked by rogue purple and white bots. The real killer, however, was the hivemind of "Fuck Spez" texts written by random users that quickly overtook much of the Void's space and split it in two. A small void creature emerging out of the Swiss flag to the right was abandoned as the Void decided to focus on the left half of the Void where there was - seemingly - plenty of space.

Squeezed from above by the rapidly expanding ducks, the Void tendrilled towards the bottom-left, eventually stopping at the Turkish flag. This tendril was soon completely destroyed by streamer Bratishkinoff who made a large art on top of it, covering much of the area in white. Boxed in on all sides and unable to expand, the whole void was soon overtaken by even more "Fuck Spez" texts. Morale of the Void was low, but after a rally the Void re-established itself and headed up and left. This effort proved futile still as the "Fuck Spez" texts would simply occupy the Void's space again and again.

And so, the Void rallied once again, this time to re-establish themselves by emerging from the middle of the ducks, which at this point had grown weak, stagnant, and infested with Amonguses. This void turned out to be a great success, finally escaping from the "Fuck Spez" texts and blacking out a significant amount of territory. At this point, the Void came into contact with Muse for Lina, a memorial for a fan of the band Muse, sparking internal debate on whether memorials should be targeted. Much of the community agreed that the void should not actively target memorials, but many randoms, users who were uncoordinated and didn't know about the rest of the community, eventually blacked it out anyways.

A notable conflict during this time was against the Red Rising community, whose "Lightbringer" art was positioned under the void. It is notable for both the stubborn bravery of Red Rising who kept fighting for their borders for several hours, and the interesting potential agreement that could have been made to avoid conflict - In exchange for Red Rising moving into the upper part of the void, which had been infested by various arts like Jake and Finn, ducks, and Amonguses, the Void would spare them. The desired result was that the Void would remove a significant obstacle in their way and have a barrier to the top to stop encroaching art and flags, while Red Rising would get a new, safe, easy-to-take spot, unbothered by the void. While this proposal was met with enthusiasm by general members of both communities and approved by the Void's leadership, Red Rising's leadership rejected the deal after a long period of deliberation. Any hope of further negotiations now broke down as many voiders believed Red Rising had simply taken advantage of the negotiations to stall and restore their borders. The Void hammered away at Red Rising's borders and after several more hours of desperate fighting, Red Rising finally stopped trying to retake their place.

After dealing with Red Rising, the tendril towards the bottom right curved left to corrupt the Stitch sitting on top of Bratishkinoff's banana and apple artwork. It was here that the first seeds of friendship with the One Piece community were planted, as talks were held in an attempt to stop One Piece from cutting off the tendril with their art. This failed because of randoms cutting it off anyways, but was the beginning of somewhat friendly relations with One Piece. After a while, the void abandoned the upper void which was overrun by small arts, and made a core with a devilish red face on the Stitch. This didn't last long as Bratishkinoff soon came online and drove out the void, causing the void to re-make itself in the former upper void. It lasted for a while before being bombarded with a flurry of blue pixels by a streamer, prompting the void to relocate to a better place.

The Void reappeared around the center right and above r/TransPlace, but found itself boxed in again by Bolivia, Puerto Rico, the "Fuck Spez" texts, and the Eighty Six art, whom the void was unable to break. The Void would try and fail again and again to break out of its little box, but couldn't. That was, until the first canvas expansion was made live...

First expansion

The first expansion to the right finally raised the morale of the Void, who had been struggling for hours to expand in the tightly packed canvas. After all, the Void always thrived during expansions, when there was plenty of space.

It was with high spirits that the Void boldly spread from the center of the new expansion, but misfortune struck. Streamer Rubius, who had been making red skull themed voids saw the newly created void as the perfect place to put down his new red skull core. After a mere 30 minutes, the new void was completely taken over by Rubius' red skull. Many voiders did not feel that the red skull was truly a part of the community-driven void, as it was made by a streamer, and they were obviously furious that Rubius had simply taken over the void and claimed it as his own. In addition, many newcomers believed that Rubius' red skull was the true Void, rather than the all-black community void which was smaller and less striking, causing them to join the red skull instead of the void as they believed that it was better than the Void's thus far weak showing. These issues led to a very cold relationship between the Void and the small community that formed around the red skull, both believing themselves to be the true Void and the other to be the impostor.

Red skull aside, the Void still had to go somewhere else, and this time it was decided to make a tendril from One Piece's newly forming "Joyboy... Has Returned!!!" art, which was being made in black. Relations with One Piece had significantly developed into a general friendship by this time, so it was agreed that the initial plan was to go right and split off rather than completely consuming their art, but a hilarious side effect of working from One Piece's art was that the art was temporarily corrupted into a terrifying running knife-wielding demon by void randoms. Eventually the split was complete and the art restored, with One Piece's white circle border merely formalizing both parties' original intentions.

After splitting off from One Piece, the Void found itself somewhat boxed in by a stubborn GME faction and the expanded Colombian flag, but it had a pretty good spot from which to build off. Everything looked like it was going well. Then, as if on cue, misfortune struck once again. Streamer porcays whited out the void and placed down their Beyblade-looking art smack dab in the middle, essentially destroying what took the Void hours to gain in a matter of minutes. The Void lived on in a small tendril going to the up and right, and furiously and stubbornly attempted to break porcays' beyblade, but couldn't because of his bots. Notably, the Void attempted to break the heart over 5 times, each time repelled by the bots. Eventually, porcays' viewers went offline as well as his bots, allowing the void to retake their place and destroy the hated beyblade, but it took over an hour and many voiders were exhausted and demoralized after fighting for hours against streamers and freak attacks that completely destroyed them within minutes.

The expansion of the Belgian black into the area was welcomed as good news as the Void could use it as a base to work off of, but right after the Beyblade was destroyed, Rubius, who had come online, caused a red skull tendril to burst through the Colombian flag and inadvertently, the randoms following Rubius poured red pixels all over the Void. At this point almost the whole Void community hated Rubius for screwing them over and over again. He took over the initial void made in the expansion with his red skull, his red skull pulled away people from the Void due to many believing it to be the true/better Void due to its size, and now the red skull poured red pixels all over the void. Nevertheless, the Void continued onwards, fending off a Belgian attempt to draw a separating line between the Void and the Belgian black and driving a tendril through GME using the Belgian black.

Over time, the red pixels coming from the red skull overwhelmed the Void's ability to clean them and took over the void, further solidifying the idea that Rubius had killed the Void multiple times and causing great distrust. In the midst of the chaos, a misunderstanding/insult from a voider towards the leader of the small community that formed around the red skull, who was open to working together and making an alliance, was the final nail in the coffin of any hope of a Void-Red Skull alliance.

With the void overrun, the Void tried to look around for a new place to re-establish itself (again) and decided to go for the area between the Indian flag and the red skull, starting with the "Echo" art. This attempt failed horribly as the small communities banded together to keep the void out of their neighborhood and many voiders by that time had either left in frustration of suffering defeat after defeat, or defected to the red skull.

Desperate for a new place, the Void tried to re-establish itself in the very top right corner on the Dutch flag, which looked weak and abandoned. This attempt only lasted about 15 minutes before the Dutch and their German allies noticed the growing void and curb-stomped it out of existence with barely a fight, and this despite the fact that it was around the time that many Europeans were starting to go to sleep.

The period that follows was perhaps the darkest and hardest times the Void has gone through. With the Void constantly getting screwed over by streamers and boxed in by stronger communities, their numbers started to dwindle even further, weakening them even more. Even worse, many voiders lost faith in their leadership for a perceived lack of responsiveness and rationality. Orders were outright being ignored as voiders started to go for targets of their own choosing. The Void's saving grace was that many voiders outside of the leadership spontaneously agreed upon Brazil's Christ the Redeemer statue as an impromptu target instead of ineffectually splintering into several different areas, as it seen as the perfect candidate for a new void demon/mother, and they hoped to corrupt the statue's face so that randoms would join in.

Seeing the general rally against the Christ statue, and after some deliberation, the Void leadership finally made the Christ statue an official target, regaining much of the lost faith in the leadership. In a surprising turn of events, the One Piece community learned of the Void's hardships and sent help to void the Christ statue. News of the reinforcements sent the Void's morale to new highs and was what truly forged the Void-One Piece friendship into a true alliance. The Void managed to hold on to the bottom part of the statue for several hours before being kicked out by the Brazilians, but the battle of the Christ statue was a badly needed morale victory after so many frustrations and disappointments. Before this, there was a very real possibility that people would simply lose faith in the Void and abandon the cause, but the attack on the Christ statue showed that the Void was still alive and kicking.

After the attack on the Christ statue, the Void decided to help a coalition of factions including Save3rdPartyApps, Foxhole, Babymetal, Templin Institute, Costa Rica, Peru, and more attack a streamer (Zeein) who had put a big cat with a black background over many communities, partly with the hope that the Void would be able to use the black background as a new void once the cat had been destroyed. Unfortunately, this never materialized as the cat was far too strongly defended by an active streamer, and in the middle of attacking the cat, the second expansion to the canvas unfurled...

Second expansion

The second expansion to the left was greeted with hope and enthusiasm by the Void, who immediately rallied as many people as possible to help with the newly growing void at the center of the expansion. This first void was quickly skewered by the expanding German, Austrian, and Hungarian flags, leading the Void to relocate upwards to a new void. Traumatized by the experience of Rubius' red skull taking over the void in the previous expansion, the Void decided to use purple instead of red to make their void monster. Over the next few hours, the Void slowly expanded into the area with few challenges other than a stray bouncing Dinosaur tail that was easily taken care of. All the while, the void mother slowly grew along with the void, sprouting a golden crown on its head and several eyes.

In this particular instance of the void, diagonal purple and eventually red lines made by randoms filled in much of the void's space. These lines and the first successful construction of a void mother in 2023 sparked the first internal debates on whether the void should be pure black, or be allowed to have lines and void mothers. A minority of void puritans argued that a pure black void was more authentic and true to the Void's roots back in r/place 2017, but the majority argued that the lines and void mothers help the void from becoming a target for streamers and communities who would have otherwise thought that the void was just empty space. It was also generally agreed upon that fighting the randoms who made these lines was a waste of pixels, but some efforts were made throughout the rest of the event to make sure the lines didn't go completely out of control.

The toughest roadblock to the Void's expansion was Oshi no Ko to the top right, who resisted every attack and managed to survive, rebuild, and even renovate their art in the middle of the attack, until the Void decided to call it quits. After taking the last weakly defended spaces to the top left, the void was once again boxed in by powerful flags and communities, and spent the next several hours maintaining the void and kicking out anyone who tried to build in the void.

This would not last, however, as streamer Destiny soon put a massive blue art right on top of the void, killing the void mother. Around this time, the French flag to the left was being rapidly destroyed by a streamer, so the Void seized on the opportunity to tendril straight into the French flag and make a red demon face on top of it. This void on France was soon destroyed by the expanding German flag from the north, so the Void tried to re-establish itself above Destiny where small arts had filled in, and moved both down and right into its former void and down and left into the still wrecked French flag. The left void got eaten up by the Germans, so the right void was all they had left, and that too was being eaten up by advancing mini-German flags. The Void struggled for a short time to black out the nearby arts, but they proved to be too strong to dislodge. Fortunately, the third expansion was right around the corner...

Third expansion

The third expansion upwards came just in time to rescue the Void from their undesirable situation. A void was created in the center-left of the new expansion, sprouting many tendrils outwards. A red Y formed, which eventually grew to be a new void mother when a head appeared in between the upper tendrils. A curious evolution of the void took place, with a black circle forming around the center of the void and several mini-voids spreading from different points of the circle. These mini-voids sprouted their own demon-like creatures, which would later be dubbed void children or voidlings. Void children, either spontaneously created by randoms or from the corruption of art, would from then on feature prominently in future voids and embraced as a part of the Void's identity.

XQC and his viewers made a huge nervous-looking emote to the right of the void, creating an interesting interaction where it is implied the emote is nervous of the void spreading around it. Meanwhile, the Void's One Piece allies created their own art to the left of the void, which was untouched due to the strong relationship between the two factions. Soon an interesting proposal was made: One Piece wanted to make a small Pusheen cat wearing a straw hat on the border between One Piece and the Void as a symbol of friendship. It was gladly accepted by both sides, and was soon recognized by the Void as the Void Cat.

The Void made impressive gains in the third expansion, managing to black out a Colombian flag to the top, a Bulgarian flag to the bottom left, and XQC's nervous emote after he logged off and his fans were nowhere to be seen. Fate finally caught up to the Void's good run however, as streamer Bratishkinoff stamped a huge art in the bottom half of the void, crushing their momentum. An attempt to make a Shrek art by streamer wuant was also started on the top half with green pixels spraying a part of the remaining void, but fortunately for the Void, wuant decided to relocate the Shrek art on top of the UK flag. In fury at Bratishkinoff who had screwed them over yet again, the Void completely blacked out a small part right above the art and wrote "FUCK OFF!" in purple, but this didn't seem to have any effect as Bratishkinoff and many of his viewers could not read English. The Void soon set about the task of retaking what was left of the old void from encroaching arts, but this was suddenly interrupted by the fourth expansion...

Fourth expansion

The fourth expansion to the bottom was just what the Void needed to revitalize itself. A first attempt at a void was destroyed by blue pixels from a streamer, but within minutes, the word "SEX" spontaneously emerged to the right and the void burst from the center of the X, leading many to call it the "Sex Void". The Indie Alliance's art, by an unfortunate coincidence, ended up on top of the Void, and the Indie Alliance quickly gave up the spot and moved when it became clear they wouldn't win this fight. A new void mother emerged from the center, complete with a crown. It was at this point that Rubius interfered with the void again, but this time he directed his viewers to help the Void expand the black downwards, gaining the gratitude of many voiders, though some at the time were still skeptical of his true intentions and worried of another takeover by Rubius, which didn't happen.

The void mother very narrowly avoided losing her crown to the rapidly expanding German flag to the top, but EU Place's map of Europe was built right on top of her, definitively killing her. The Void quickly formed a new center around a nascent void child safely out of the EU's reach and over time it grew to become the new void mother. The next few hours were spent expanding downwards and crushing the outlines of the Chilean and Costa Rican flags before they became too powerful. At one point, the Void was interrupted by one of Rubius' tendrils made by Foolish Gaming, one of his friends, that came from his new red demon from the top left, but he stopped short of attacking the void on purpose and redirected his viewers somewhere else. To thank Rubius for his help and not attacking the void, the Void community decided to make a red heart with "R+V" written on it where the red tendril used to be, short for "Rubius + Void". While Rubius saw this heart, he didn't understand what it was supposed to mean and simply shrugged it off.

The bottom part of the void was cut off by the expanding Windows Taskbar from the left, but the rest of the fourth expansion was rather uneventful and went well for the Void with no significant threats. The next several hours were spent cleaning the void from confetti, developing the void mother and her children, and slowly expanding to the right, as the void was boxed in by powerful factions like the EU, the Wanderer painting by Papaplatte, France, and the Windows taskbar on most sides. Some even remarked that the Void looked awfully square during this time. Even this expansion was soon slowed to a crawl as the Void was occupied dealing with an intrusion by My Little Pony, who tried to build an art of a robot pony on the void. Any more expansion was effectively blocked by the sudden appearance of Kirby smoking a fat joint of weed, which was made by Quackity and his army of 50k viewers. An attempt to tendril into the Ratio/Rosins conflict was underway when the fifth expansion revealed itself...

Fifth expansion

The Void immediately seized the opportunity to create a new void in the fifth expansion to the left, creating a red demon face in the middle as is tradition. A rapidly expanding green blob below the void created initial fears that streamer Cellbit, who was behind this green blob and planned to build a massive artwork from his game, would go over and destroy the void. However, Cellbit noticed that the Void was inside of his planned art, and downscaled his art in good faith so as to not destroy the Void. This gained Cellbit huge amounts of respect from the Void, and for the rest of this expansion, although the Void was right above his art, they never targeted Cellbit's art. There was a small attempt to make a second void in the upper part of the expansion, but it was never seriously prioritized and was soon destroyed by the One Piece x Cellbit x Papaplatte art, which the Void didn't really mind.

The void mother evolved from a face into a face and a body, and gained a sizeable golden crown on top of her head as well as arms, legs, and even a six-pack of muscles, which were unfortunately lost when she suffered a small attack of gray pixels from a streamer. Meanwhile, a small offshoot of creeping eye-vines created by randoms took root in the right side of the void and continued growing, even though the Void tried to get rid of them. In the end, they were not worth the effort to destroy and were accepted as a part of the void instead.

XQC's gigantic Charizard Pokemon card cut off the very top of the void mother's crown and blocked the Void's expansion upwards, but it didn't pose much of a threat beyond that and the Void still had plenty of room to grow. The Void blacked out a respectable amount of space over time, even taking out a Colombian flag that had formed around the head of Cellbit's art, and didn't suffer any major attacks on this void, but was obviously reaching the limits of their expansion. A lengthy campaign striking into the Latin American flags of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Venezuela did significant damage, but was ultimately driven back as the flags banded together to stop the Void from blacking them out. There was also growing stiff resistance from small arts with sizeable and stubborn communities, slowing down expansion and sometimes halting it altogether. The Void was in the middle of attacking Clash Royale when the sixth and final expansion was unfolded...

The old void

The fifth expansion also marked the first time that the Void had two voids relatively intact at once. The previous void from the 4th expansion was assigned a small group of maintainers, but this was obviously just delaying the inevitable because they couldn't hope to defend the old void from the myriad of confetti and arts coming in, and they quickly refocused their efforts on the new void. They did manage to clear a small space at the bottom, which was used by One Piece to recreate the Void Cat from the 3rd expansion that was destroyed by Bratishkinoff. The return of the Void Cat was hailed by both the Void and One Piece as a further strengthening of their alliance.

As the old void looked like it was going to go gently into the night and slowly get taken over by small communities, suddenly the hated streamer Bratishkinoff went to the old void and started building an art right on top of the old void, destroying it completely with a barrage of white pixels. This greatly distressed many members of the Void and One Piece, who were outraged that he was going to kill the Void Cat. Even though defending the Void Cat was never an official Void order, numerous voiders fought anyways to defend the Void Cat alongside their One Piece allies.

The Void Cat was very nearly destroyed, but the angry defenders never gave up hope and were eventually saved by the sixth and final expansion, which prompted Bratishkinoff to make his art in the new expansion where there was more room. By then, the old void had effectively been destroyed as Bratishkinoff had already put a white background there where he planned to put his art, but the Void Cat survived. The valiant joint efforts of the Void and One Piece to defend the Void Cat were what truly sealed the Void-One Piece alliance in the annals of history. The Void Cat would go on to survive until the very end of r/place, with a black heart nearby to the top right symbolizing the alliance with the Void and even picking up a new green Amogus plant friend to the left.

Sixth and final expansion

Knowing that r/place 2023 had gone on longer than r/place 2022, and that the event could end at any moment, the Void wasted no time creating a new void in the sixth and final expansion to the right. The first void attempt turned out to be right in the middle of the huge community "Fuck Spez" text, so the Void moved the void below the "Fuck Spez" text, starting in the top left corner of Honkai Impact 3rd and expanding outwards from there.

This void was notable for the fact that this was the first time the Mothervoid Core Militia, the division of the Void responsible for creating and expanding the void mother and children to look aesthetically pleasing, used a foundation template to make the new void mother to the left of the first void center. The plan was to create a small part of the void mother using the foundation template and allow randoms to expand off of it in new and interesting ways, but this move caused some controversy within the Void as a small minority believed that using templates was against the spirit of the Void, which was to let void mothers and children grow organically. Nevertheless, the Militia used their foundation template to great effect, creating one of, if not the most, striking void mothers of r/place 2023, complete with squirmy tentacles that spread across the whole Void.

News of streamer Felps building his own face below the Void, which was planned to start at the bottom and go upwards, put the Void in a difficult situation. Many thought r/place would end soon due to the Reddit app on the app store saying that the r/place event would end in several hours, and many voiders were horrified at the idea of being taken over by some streamer's face right at the end of r/place. In a gutsy and daring move, the Void rallied as many people as it could and almost unanimously voted to launch a pre-emptive attack against Felps' face and hold it off until the end of r/place, thinking that at least if they would lose, they would go out in a blaze of glory.

A black tendril tore across the canvas at lightning speed, hitting Felps' face right in the chin. The Void launched attack after attack every 5 minutes, determined to drive back Felps' face, but the face was slowly gaining. It simply had too much manpower. At 11:00 GMT, many believed that r/place would end and prepared to place their very last pixels and say their goodbyes to their comrades in arms... but it didn't end. Another hour passed and still r/place continued on. It quickly became clear that the event was not going to end anytime soon. In the hours following, Felps gained the upper hand in the conflict and completed his face, even as the Void was stubbornly trying to remove his left eyebrow.

It was fortunate for the Void that Felps never planned to hold his face and had no intention of making any counter attack against the Void. He just wanted to put his face in r/place for the final canvas, but now that it was clear the final canvas wasn't coming soon, the Void begrudgingly stopped attacking Felps' face to move on to other tasks. Felps eventually stopped defending his face and even conveyed a message to the Void that it would be nice if they could corrupt his face so it looks cool and creepy, but it took a few more hours for enough of Felps' fans to abandon the face so that it would be weak enough to be corrupted by the Void.