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.

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, 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 and hatred. 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.