Memes / Flight Rising

• Thanks, Arcanist. ^Explanation In the site's lore, the Arcanist (elemental deity of the Arcane Flight) has accidentally caused not one but two apocalypses (and counting). Everything bad that happens on the website, such as extended downtime or weird glitches, is blamed on one of the Arcanist's experiments going awry. Members of the Arcane flight embrace their deity's destructive nature and find it hilarious.
• The Festival of 1 is upon us! Time to grind for some s! ^Explanation The first Greenskeeper Gathering (Nature Flight's festival) got off to a rocky start, to say the least. The first day of gathering didn't drop any holiday currency, the site's banner displayed the image for the Starfall Celebration (the Arcane festival, which happens four months after the Nature festival), and finally, the Festive Favors shop displayed the message "I hope you're enjoying the 1! If you can bring me some s, we can trade!" People jokingly speculated about the 1 flight being the secret twelfth flight and the Festival of 1 being the leaked December festival. The official explanation is that it was all the Arcanist's fault.
• "Thenks mather" and "flambebe" ^Explanation A member of the Fire flight posted an image on the forums of a person from Russia with a tattoo reading "Thenks mather for my life." The rest of the flight latched onto it and now uses "Mather" as a nickname for their deity, the Flamecaller. "Flambebe" (as in "flame baby" but misspelled) is just the name of the blue-and-orange-colored Fire Tundra dragon subspecies, the player-determined mascot of the Fire flight.
• What's in the Arcane Sprite's book? ^Explanation The Arcane Sprite familiar is shown reading a book, with a hand on its mouth and an inscrutable expression on its face. This led to the creation of a 2013 forum thread where players speculated on just what exactly was in the book. Many people reached the consensus that it contained fanfiction of the deities (written by either the sprite itself or the Arcanist), with some going so far as to post their own short ship fics in the thread. As of the time of this writing (Oct 2023), it has reached 175 pages, with the latest reply posted in June 2023.
• Windsinger the Moocher ^Explanation In July 2014, the Wind and Arcane flights, then the two largest on the site, held an unofficial but site-approved contest, the Battle of the Bay, to see which flight could obtain dominance that week. After Arcane won, the Windsinger's broadcast message was changed to "Follow the breeze - Adventure time at The Observatory!"...and then never changed back, making people wonder just what the Windsinger had been doing at the Arcanist's residence for months on end. He didn't leave the Observatory until the Mistral Jamboree (Wind's festival) in March 2015—at which point he went to the Wyrmwound of all places, which caused even more speculation as to why he chose a disease-ridden wasteland for his new vacation spot. It wouldn't be until the Bounty of the Elements event in early 2018 that Windsinger finally returned to his own realm.
• Nature flight is average. ^Explanation Whenever someone on the forums asks which flight they should join, members of the Nature flight tend to give answers like "it's okay, I guess" instead of selling the poster on their flight.
• what if coatl had no leg? ^Explanation Started with a thread in the main forum wherein Coatl dragons were photoshopped with various... anatomical improvements. Then came the snowclones where Coatls were photoshopped into all kinds of things, which eventually grew so numerous that the moderators were forced to lock every thread except the original to keep the first page from being flooded with Coatls. This also led to the term "Phoatlshop."
  • Phoatlshop ^Explanation A portmanteau of Photoshop and Coatl, created in the aftermath of "what if coatl had no leg?" to refer to absurd image edits of dragons.
• The Sunshine Apocalypse ^Explanation Before officially announcing a big update to dragon colors, the artist Undel created a template thread that only consisted of a picture of an orange (sunshine-colored) Coatl labeled "Sunshine". Theories about its purpose quickly sprang up, and the thread derailed into a memefest that reached over 800 pages before the proper thread came up.
• plagueisweenies2k15 ^Explanation The Plague flight were called "weenies" for not participating in a dominance battle. They proceeded to take it and run with it.
• The Stormcatcher doesn't have subjects, he has employees. ^Explanation A case of Insistent Terminology regarding the Lightning flight.
• Naomi, queen of glitches. ^Explanation A bug caused certain npcs, such as the courier dragons who send mail related to the auction house, to be replaced by an account with a female fae avatar simply called Naomi. The name showed up frequently in random places, such as dragons being exalted to Naomi or Naomi replacing dragons in offspring lists, leading many to theorize that a sinister conspiracy was afoot...
• Making up increasingly ridiculous names for the Bogsneak dragon breed, usually a distorted version of the name. Bagsnips just can't catch a break from the players. Poor blorgsnarks.
• he purble ^Explanation A user bought an entirely purple dragon, covered it in purple apparel, and put "he purble" in the bio. Another user who had been saving to buy the dragon made a melodramatically furious Tumblr post directed at Purble's owner, accusing them of ruining the dragon just to spite people who would have wanted it. Nobody who read it was particularly sympathetic.
• Glimmer & Gloom ^Explanation The most profitable game on the Fairgrounds has reached infamy for being difficult to some people, to the point where there are training hubs to help people out.
• Imperial Scrolls ^Explanation The rarest item on the site, which is used to change a dragon's breed into an imperial. People have joked about possible scenarios with them, such as an user getting one, using it, and exalting the dragon.
• Galore used Eliminate on the Eliminate economy. ^Explanation The Eliminate battlestone is very powerful and very sought-after as the keystone to most of the most popular Coliseum builds, since it does massive amounts of damage and - this is key - refunds Breath to the dragon who used it if it kills the enemy. A combination of these qualities and the stone not being in the drop pool of the most popular Coliseum venue had its price in the player-to-player marketplace climb higher and higher over time, putting it well out of the reach of casual or new players. Well, Galore decided to give every clan two Eliminates in May of 2019, and combined with the stone later being added to that venue means that while the stone is still valuable, it's not going for anywhere near its prices from the peak of its inflation.
• Thomas^Explanation During the Dustcarve Dig event, some new ancient ruins were discovered to not be made by dragons, leaving the possibility that it was made by either Beastclans or the humanoid people from the Second Age, prompting the community to joke that humans will be added to the game. The meme quickly took off when people starting posting stock images of a white-collar office worker and named him "Thomas", both for Rule of Funny and also to lampshade how immersion-breaking it would be to add modern humans to a fantasy world full of dragons. Of course, the hype (and discontent) for humans died down once the developers confirmed that there won't be humans, though the meme itself still lives on through occasional mentions on the forums. When free G1 Obelisks were handed out at the end of the event, hundreds were named Thomas in honor of the meme.
• tundra_v3 ^Explanation The first glimpse players had of the Obelisk breed was a low-resolution image of them as statues. Due to their mane and stocky shape, a lot of players mistook them for tundra dragons, and joked that staff was re-doing tundras once again (the second time being the Gaoler breed, who are the canonical ancestors of tundra dragons). This was even picked up by staff as the official announcement of the breed contained an image of the new dragons named "tundra_v3.png".
• soup ^Explanation All exalted dragons leave their clan to go serve the deity of the player's flight. Since The Plaguebringer's home is the Wyrmwound, a place most dragons avoid since it's a large cauldron-like pit that she brews viruses in, players like to joke that dragons that get exalted in the Plague flight are probably thrown into the Wyrmwound like it's soup. Ended up becoming a bit of an Ascended Meme as all jokes and theories about plague dragons casually swimming in the Mutagenic Goo or the mysterious plague ancient breed hiding in it have become canon, as Aberration dragons were indeed hiding around the Wyrmwound and can swim in it to make themselves stronger. However, it's made clear that it's still deadly enough to most dragons, even Aberrations, if they soak in it too often.
• They yassified Baldwin ^Explanation  Baldwin's 2022 art update has the Bogsneak in a pose that includes him placing a hand on his hips, in addition to looking thinner. The userbase quickly made jokes about the update making Baldwin look more attractive than before.
  • THE GILF GOT A GLOWUP YA'LL ^Explanation  A since-deleted comment reacting to the Baldwin art update referring to him with a slang term equating him to a Silver Fox. Since an admin quoted the comment before deleting the original post, the statement has been preserved but not the identity of the poster. Cue people cracking up at the statement and wondering who had the audacity to refer to Baldwin in that manner
• Schrodinger's limb^Explanation Due to the way the artwork for male Tundras is drawn, it's unclear if the one visible appendage on the Tundra's far side is an arm or a leg. This isn't helped by various sets of gloves and footwear apparel taking different stances on the matter. It eventually reached the point where Undel, the person who drew the dragon art in the first place, had to clarify that the limb is supposed to be a leg.
• Hi everyone, was wondering if you could please take turns using the server, thank you^Explanation Flight Rising is no stranger to Demand Overload, with the site often slowing to a crawl after major updates as thousands of people try to use it at the same time. Following the addition of ancient breeds, developer Mutron posted the above phrase on the forums asking people to stagger their usage of the site; screenshots of said message have been reposted during periods of high site traffic ever since.

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