Hello, world! Here's a recollection of events during r/place 2023 from the lovely Swarm Council. Each one of them played a role in making it the success that it was. 
#place-compilation
hollow copper
vocal robin
Day 1 - July 20th
[<t:1689858000:t>] - Start
r/place starts and construction of the Neurofumo begins in the bottom-middle of the canvas, to the right of the Hololive logo. The initial placement was on the opposite side of the logo, to the left; but this was quickly changed after VTubers Place rearranged their template (which we were unofficially a part of). This singular event had a huge role in the Neurofumo’s survival.
The very first template that was created is called "The Cheese Fumo", created by TanderCaz31:
During the first minutes of the canvas, we started to realize that our initial template was not working for some people. It turned out that the service we were using for hosting the files (which is used by many r/place communities) decided to block some people due to sudden increase of traffic. This issue was promptly mitigated by migrating to our own infrastructure, which deemed itself very stable and provided a very fast turnaround on template updates.
[<t:1689859200:t>] - Yellow Spam
During the chaos when the swarm had no template, The Council ordered to place yellow pixels at (-157, 359).
Soon after, the fumo's placement nearly sparked a three way conflict with Genshin Impact and Deep Rock Galactic (DGR) + Sea Of Thieves (SOT).
The DGR and SOT communities will be listed together since they were closely allied, and they referred to themselves this way as well.
[<t:1689861900:t>] - Updated Colours
We noticed the colour white was actually hidden on the palette due to reddit’s terrible UI design, and recoloured the fumo soon after, leading to this deep-fried Neuro created by TanderCaz31:
[<t:1689862800:t>] - Stardew’s Pig
Soon after starting to build the face of the fumo, we noticed an overlapping purple animal was being made next to us, which later turned out to be a pig from the Stardew Valley community. Many hours later, after the fumo's body was fully built, a push was made to fully destroy the pig's face and claim the territory. Going forward, Stardew Valley decided to scale down their art, and only include their logo next to us.
[<t:1689909120:t>] - The Triple/Trinity Alliance
Diplomacy begins with DRG + SOT and Genshin Impact, It began with DRG building their logo directly on top of Genshin Impact art, which led to discussions between the two factions.
The main issue that occurred is that DRG was not a part of the P3ACE alliance whereas Genshin was. P3ACE is basically the "NATO" of r/place, with it being a gigantic alliance agreed by not only Country-related reddit communities but also all kinds of communities like r/osu, r/touhou, r/bluecorner, and even the Void (Nicknamed: Swarm); hence why being a part of this P3ACE alliance was important. The P3ACE alliance used a "main" template which showed where all the participating factions were located: Genshin can be seen near the bottom-middle.
However, DRG's and Neurocord's situation are similar in that we are not in P3ACE due to us just simply being late to signing the pact with them. This is significant as it seems like both DRG and Neurocord were invading a space that was already established before r/place started by the P3ACE alliance.
After Violezine talked with representatives from Genshin Impact and DRG & SOT's communities, a merged template of all three faction's arts was created:
[<t:1689873000:t>] - Pig Nuke
The template shown above is finalized and pushed out for the masses to use, so all members from Neurocord, Genshin Impact, and DRG+SOT come together to nuke the purple pig off the map, to make space for the fumo's ponytail and the game logos.
There was only one problem with our plan, that being the fact that the space below DRG's new logo was taken and heavily defended by the Gameindustri faction (who drew Nepgear), and therefore we never managed to put Sea Of Thieves' logo on the canvas next to us.
Still, the space where the old Sea Of Thieves logo was would eventually be overtaken by an uninvited guest: Factorio.
mental crown
[<t:1689876000:t>] - Anny’s Star
A member of Anny's community proposed we put an artwork next to the Neurofumo. It's a pixel representation of her signature glowing star. We oblige, ally with them and help with its construction and then its defence thereafter. A dedicated smaller division of Annys community kept in communication with us concerning her star artwork on the canvas.
Later on, this template would shift slightly to the left (around 3 pixels) to make room for Fumo's accessories, and also got a little Tutel at the top.
[<t:1689881400:t>] - UGA Nuked
United Gacha Alliance (UGA)'s artwork was attacked by a russian streamer (bratishkinoff). UGA asked for backup via JackHadFriends. Jack forwarded their request to the council who was in the middle of coordinating the defence of the Neurofumo (who was under heavy attack at the time). A swift council vote concluded no forces could be committed to help UGA. After decisive defeat to them at the hands of the streamer, we offered to help them rebuild at a later time.
wicked ore
[<t:1689881700:t>] - ohnePixel Attack 1
Twitch streamer ohnePixel decides to warm up his chat by attacking some smaller artworks. Our fumo was a target of one of his attacks, where he ordered his viewers to replace the fumo's face with the colour yellow. The attack was not sustained at all since it was just a warm-up for his viewers, and we quickly recovered.
Twitch clip here.
cheesed fumo
vocal robin
[<t:1689883200:t>] - Stardew Logo
Stardew Valley's logo used a purple chequered background, which eventually got expanded by random people on the canvas, to the point where some people were starting to delete the fumo’s outline and hair to continue the purple pattern. We sprang into action and pushed them back many times over. This would not be the last time we had to fight a chequered background expanding into our fumo.
Stardew Valley's background pattern slowly expanding for 4 hours
An example of Stardew's background deleting our ahoge, screenshot taken at 02:38 UTC on July 21st
mighty turret
Day 2 - July 21st
[<t:1689927300:t>] - Poi Attack
People from the community notice that a group of people has been trying to add the word "Poi" under the fumo, and are constantly deleting the bottom of the skirt and feet to add a black background around the word.
At the time, we simply replaced the missing pixels once we noticed the situation had escalated, diplomatic talks and agreements would come later.
golden brook
[<t:1689930000:t>] - Factorio's New Background
Factorio decides to remove the decorations on top of their logo to make some space for Genshin Impact to expand their art downwards. Since Factorio didn't want to have a bland logo, they decided to change the old orange borders into a chequered yellow-orange background.
mighty turret
[<t:1689942600:t>] - Poi Agreement
The group of people trying to write "Poi" under the fumo reaches out to Violezine and discusses possible solutions. After some back-and-forth, it is decided that the dot on the "i" should change colour to make it stand out, without the need for an outline.
The pixel is first made red, but then the whole word's colours are updated to look golden once the palette expanded.
golden brook
[<t:1689948000:t>] - Factorio Expansion
Factorio finished building their new logo above us, which extended 5 pixels to the right, and 2 pixels below, to give our fumo's ahoge some breathing room.
Unfortunately, in a similar case to Stardew Valley's background, the repeating pattern would get expanded by random people, from Factorio's community and not. While the highest part of the fumo was still just its ahoge, this was not too large of a problem, but fighting against this hivemind would prove to be our greatest endurance challenge yet, as the chequered background slowly but surely expanded.
clever sun
[<t:1689955200:t>] - Canvas Expansion 1
The canvas expands to the right. This causes the currently ongoing Technoblade vs Turkey fight to be resolved, by having Technoblade's memorial be moved to the new empty space. This unfortunately meant that Turkey was very active and had nothing to do, so soon after something terrible happened.
mental crown
[<t:1689957600:t>] - Fumo Augmentation 1
Talks within the TTA begin for a collab artwork using the fumo as base, by adding to it accessories from our allies' games, such as Hu Tao's hat from Genshin Impact or the scouter from DRG; below is the first ever concept.
wicked ore
[<t:1689962400:t>] - Flag Expansion
A combined attack from Turkey and Azerbaijan commenced on VTuber place's territory. We jumped to the defence of VTuber place. There was hard fighting for a few hours but VShojo and Nijisanji were quickly taken over. Hololive made a last stand as the final bastion of VTuber place.
After a few hours, Hololive was almost completely swallowed by turkey, meaning the Neurofumo would be next. All hope seemed lost before BTMC and the whole osu! community came to rescue Hololive and kept Turkey away from the fumo.
Gif timelapse of Turkey and Azerbajan's invasion of Hololive, along with the quick pushback from BTMC
warped skiff
[<t:1689975000:t>] - Palette Expansion 1
The palette is expanded to have 16 colours, double as much as before. Since we were still under threat of being attacked, a recolour of the fumo would happen much later.
wicked ore
[<t:1689976200:t>] - Imminent Death
After Turkey's flag slowly expanded over the course of 4 hours, we received the biggest attack we ever experienced. Turkey started placing red pixels on the fumo, and we also got attacked from above by a line of pink pixels made by Mizkif's viewers. Here is a snapshot of how close this fight got:
As shown and explained above, BTMC came to help us with the osu community, and we were able to push Turkey back.
mental crown
Day 3 - July 22nd
[<t:1689987900:t>] - TTA Fumo Finalized
The design for a collaboration piece between the members of The Trinity Alliance is finalized and every party gives their approval, but since the hat on the fumo would intrude on Factorio's territory, the implementation of the piece onto the actual canvas is delayed to when Factorio had moved their logo elsewhere.
[<t:1690011780:t>] - TTA Fumo Shown to Public
The first draft of the TTA fumo is shown to the public, which included "Hu tao's hat to represent Genshin, scout's scouter for DRG, and the pirate peg leg for SOT". The Council waited for some time to pass before using the template on the canvas, since most Swarm members were active during EU times, and it was too early then.
clever sun
[<t:1690012800:t>] - Canvas Expansion 2
The canvas expands to the left. Despite being able to defend Turkey's offense, Azerbaijan managed to keep their flag over Vshojo and Niji's logos, so Vtuber place decided to relocate in the top-left of the canvas, below the german flag.
Vtuber place did not completely abandon the hololive logo next to us however. It was still being protected, and it served as a very valuable shield from Turkey for us. Still, randoms kept expanding the Turkish flag to the right, constantly trying to claim more territory. This led to us having to push back against countless attacks by building "green donowalls", mostly built to the left of the two smiley faces above Hololive's logo.
Here you can see an attempt at a green donowall and a completed donowall.
calm grail
[<t:1690028700:t>] - New TTA Fumo
A new version of the alliance fumo is shown to the public. This version added a key to represent SOT again since their logo still wasn't on the canvas, and removed the scouter since most people deemed it too intrusive on the fumo's face, replacing it with a drill instead.
wicked ore
[<t:1690029600:t>] - ohnePixel Attack 2
ohnePixel tries to attack VTuber place again, sending his viewers to attack the Hololive logo and fumo, but is soon told that VTuber Place had changed locations, and the attacks on the fumo quickly stop.
golden brook
[<t:1690032300:t>] - Factorio Troubles
The template for the fumo shown above, which used both the updated palette and had the accessories of the TTA, is pushed and slowly put on the canvas. But there was a big problem. Over the course of the last day and a half, the background used by the Factorio logo was occupying more and more space, as random people were slowly expanding it:
Above is a timelapse spanning 23 hours of Factorio's hivemind slowly expanding Factorio's background pattern. (from <t:1689948000:f> to <t:1690030800:f>)
This inevitably became a huge problem once we had to build Hu Tao's hat on our fumo.
Below is a never-ending timelapse spanning 24 hours of us fighting for Hu Tao's hat on Factorio's background & logo. (from <t:1690041600:f> to <t:1690128000:f>)
[<t:1690045860:t>] - "Deal" With Factorio
To stop the constant fighting over Factorio's logo, we reached out to a representative from the community through one of our Genshin Impact friends. The Factorio rep allowed us to build into their logo as long as the yellow piece on Hu Tao's hat were to be shortened by 1 or 2 pixels. We obliged, and struck an "agreement" with Factorio which allowed us to build the hat. This agreement also requested our help to build a new drawing of a cog for Factorio over at (645, 72), to allow us to build over their logo.
This pact, as can be seen from the timelapse above, was not respected, and even after we helped build the cog, the factorio hivemind kept pushing back against our hat.
[<t:1690056000:t>] - Factorio Loses Their Cog
Factorio loses the cog that they were building over at (645, 72) to a huge dog drawn by Russian streamer bratishkinoff. This causes the ongoing back-and-forth between our hat and Factorio's logo to continue, as their logo cannot be removed since they could not reposition to the new location.
[<t:1690059060:t>] - r/factoro
The representative for r/factorio is added to the TTA discord server. After many hours of fighting, hopefully, with the representative in discord, with whom we could talk directly, we could settle the ongoing problems between our factions.
warped skiff
[<t:1690060800:t>] - Attack on DRG
Deep Rock Galactic's area is attacked and overtaken by twitch streamer "forever", who builds two heart/love emotes over the space in which "GALACTIC ROCK AND STONE" and Sea Of Thieves' logo was supposed to be. This meant that the key next to our fumo was the only symbol representing Sea Of Thieves on the whole canvas for a while.
clever sun
[<t:1690066800:t>] - Canvas Expansion 3
The canvas expands upwards. Usually when the canvas had expanded in the past, we never had any plans to build new art into the newly-available space, so a canvas expansion mostly translated to less attention, and therefore less attacks, directed towards the Neurofumo. However, since Vedal had a dev stream planned for today, he would eventually send his viewers to create a new drawing in this empty space.
ionic badger
[<t:1690067340:t>] - Vedal's neuroCatErm
Vedal opens r/place on his stream, and starts demanding from The Swarm Council a pixelated version of the neuroCatErm emote to put on the canvas, with his viewers from the dev stream.
Council Chat screenshot:
(Ruthless tyrant bossing around his subordinates)
Day 4 - July 23rd
[<t:1690074000:t>] - Vedal Stream Ends
Vedal ends his stream, in which he built with his viewers a neuroCatErm emote in the recently expanded canvas space above.
The emote was only meant as a temporary addition to the canvas, and the territory it occupied was given to the One Piece community right after.
plain remnant
[<t:1690114200:t>] - Bad Apple Ends
After an hour of constantly helping the Bad Apple animation with its Yin Yang orb spin, the animation is finally finished. Neuro-sama's Swarm is thanked out loud in the r/osuplace Discord's stage, and included in the credits of the official Reddit post:
calm grail
[<t:1690126500:t>] - Fumo Updated
The knife that some people randomly added to the fumo's hand on the canvas is added to the fumo's official design and template, along with having some updated face colours.
[<t:1690128000:t>] - Raiden Fumo Concept
An artist from Genshin's community and Redston work on a different hair accessory to add to the fumo, since Hu Tao's hat kept getting deleted by Factorio. The community accepts this change and the template is released to the public, allowing us to start construction on this new design.
[<t:1690133400:t>] - Raiden Fumo Complete
The construction of the Raiden Shogun head accessory on the canvas is finished.
clever sun
[<t:1690135200:t>] - Canvas Expansion 4
The canvas expands downwards. This expansion, unlike the others, was really important to us. A large group of Indie Games came together to ally and create an "Indie Alliance", which was going to use its combined forces to draw all of their games' logos in the expansion. Below is their plan, which was very vertical.
The letter L written with various indie game logos
The biggest news to come from this is that, as you can see from the center, the Factorio logo would finally be moved to another part of the canvas. This hopefully meant that the logo next to our fumo could be deleted, and we finally would’ve had the space to both put Hu Tao's hat on the fumo, and continue Genshin Impact's original art downwards. So, we started helping Factorio to build their new logo in the empty part of the canvas.
golden brook
[<t:1690142700:t>] - mabe
However things weren't quite clear, as r/placeEU had planned to build their map of Europe right over the Factorio logo and some others. So our main representative Violezine went to ask the representative from Factorio, who had spelled the faction's name wrong in their name, for clarification on what to do, suggesting a possible alternative place for Factorio's logo. Their response would constitute the final word on whether the conflict that had raged on between our factions for days would finally be placated. So, Violezine asked the question, and their answer was:
warped skiff
[<t:1690144200:t>] - Palette Expansion 3
The colour palette is updated for the second time, adding 8 more colours for a total of 24.
golden brook
[<t:1690152600:t>] - Average Strategic Decision in Ohio
Another factorio representative tells us that before we can delete their logo to finally complete our Hu Tao hat, we would need to help them build one last thing. This time, it was a cog, only problem is that its planned location was right above Ohio (to the right)
We promised Factorio to help with the cog, as tired as we were of their demands, but wouldn't guarantee we would help to keep the cog alive versus Ohio.
In the end, the cog could not overtake Ohio and got replaced by other art.
Day 5 - July 24th
[<t:1690158600:t>] - Factorio’s Death
We "help" Factorio to "move" their logo from above us to a different location in the newly-added canvas space below. Allowing us to finally have the Genshin Impact-obsessed cosplaying fumo we had been fighting for, for days.
clever sun
[<t:1690164000:t>] - Canvas Expansion 5
The canvas expands to the left again.
calm grail
[<t:1690165800:t>] - TTA Boat Trip
The Swarm Council reveals to the public a collab pixel art between the TTA, made by Genshin Impact. A Boat Trip featuring a ship from Sea Of Thieves, and characters from the other 3 members of the TTA. Below is one of the first drafts.
[<t:1690201800:t>] - Finished Boat Trip Art
After many revisions over the night, the art is finished with help from Redston, and added to the template along with some art from UGA and Touhou, which would help us build
plain remnant
[<t:1690217700:t>] - neuroBell by VTPlace
People in the VTubers Place were obsessed with the neuroBell emote, especially one of the main organizers, so they decided to add a neuroBell in the next canvas expansion, all on their own. Below is the pixel art they made for the occasion.
clever sun
[<t:1690220100:t>] - Canvas Expansion 6 & Palette Expansion 3
The canvas expands to the right again, for the last time. We immediately start building the planned Boat Trip collab art. However, when we started building the black background in the top-left of the image, we accidentally created the Void, which we had to fight off by spamming pink pixels to build yet another donowall.
Along with this, the palette was expanded to include 32 colours, with the palette now being identical to the one used in the final day of r/place 2022.
plain remnant
[<t:1690223280:t>] - neuroBell Finished
The neuroBell emote is fully built by VTPlace. It will go on to be maintained by them and only them.
charred nimbus
[<t:1690230000:t>] - Boat Complete
The Boat Trip art is complete, but the constant back-and-forth with The Void in the top-left corner of our art would not end.
[<t:1690237200:t>] - Fumo Complete
With all palette expansions finally unlocked, the Neurofumo's colours are updated, along with the accessories being given new colours as well. The final version of the fumo is finally put on the canvas.
warped skiff
Day 6 - July 25th
[<t:1690296000:t>] - Huge Genshin Attack
Genshin Impact had been dealing with the streamer bratishkinoff attacking and whiting out their main artwork for the whole length of the canvas, surviving up to 42 attacks from him accounting to some records, but this attack was much larger. Since the Factorio logo between the Neurofumo and Genshin's art was removed, the threat of the attack extending over to our fumo was very real. The attack lasted for several hours, with attacks only stopping after 3 and a half hours later, at <t:1690308600:t>.
charred nimbus
[<t:1690314300:t>] - Grayscale
The palette of the canvas is updated to only use black, white, and 3 shades of gray. The placing cooldown is also reduced from 4 minutes to 3 minutes.
Instead of immediately whiting out the fumo, the council members in the War Room decided to order the swarm to recolour the fumo in black & white, since we were given a grayscale gradient. This was done for a couple minutes arbitrarily, but soon after, Redston made a grayscale version of the fumo art for CJ to add and use on the template.
[<t:1690317000:t>] - Whiteout Begins
The palette is updated to only have the colour white available. The whiteout begins. Below is an image of the fumo right after the whiteout started. The placing cooldown is reduced to 1 minute, and then to 30 seconds shortly after.
[<t:1690319100:t>] - Neurocord Event Ends
The Swarm Council and Neurocord staff team declare the event as officially ended.
Five minutes later, # place-plaza is locked.
