aroaceacacia

[aroaceacacia]

happy april 13th!

[aroaceacacia]

I have to leave a toxic (in a literal sense) home

Hello everyone, I'm Elio, I'm 22 and I'm a trans guy living in a small province in the south of Italy, near Bari.

I have to leave a toxic and transphobic household but in order to do that I have to gather the money necessary by the end of June.

I'll explain:

For the last 6 years I've been receiving physical and verbal abuse from my mother and my sister (I have no contact with my father).

In addition to that, various elements in the house represent grave health risks for me: mold, cracks, humidity, exposed electrical wires and shaky piles of hoarded objects and clothes that make the house condemned and nigh impossible to navigate. Because of the wire issue, I've already almost got electricuted.

Because of the whole situation, I have developed issues such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, an attention span decrease and short-term memory loss that follow me at the workplace.

At work I have had a massive panic attack and I don't believe that I can continue working for the time being.

I can no longer suppress my dysphoria and I have to face my gender transition to face (not supported at all from my mom and sister), therapy and a scoliosis to keep an eye on (I'm also not assisted in that type of care either).

Not to mention, I have another year of uni to pay on top of that.

Luckily, I have a support system in the form of my friends but (very much understandably) they have their limits.

Thanks to their help though I was able to hatch a plan: save up three months worth of rent (2000 euros) to go live with two of my friends.

Here's the problem: they have to leave by the end of June and I just have 500 euros saved up. I need the remaining 1500 and I'm good to go.

I'll throw myself at any job as soon as soon as I move out: there's a wider job range AND anything is better than getting yelled at at my call center job in a small town...

Any donation, however small, helps.

I just ask that you share and spread the word in some way. I wish you all well.

https://gofund.me/1774ec84

[aroaceacacia]

Sharing this here cause it's really funny, basically for those who don't know Mike just finished his game design college and him and his group took the game to gaming festival, so Mine is there and apparently he saw a guy play the game for 20 minutes, talk to Mike and then after praising the game he just goes "pac mike wow wow" because apparently he was brazilian and a tazercraft fan

[aroaceacacia]

Hello! A friend has sent me in your direction to ask my bothersome research questions! (context being: I'm doing a project for school about how aro and ace characters are portrayed in formally published fiction verse in fandom, focusing on MCYT because-> my hyperfixation)

The questions:

How do you think the fandom's feelings on (romantic) shipping have changed over time

When and why do you think those changes happened?

How, if at all, do you think that history has affected how we deal with shipping today?

Something tells me that you might have some personal insight on the aroace parts of the fandom (why such a high proportion and/or writing characters as aroace) I would love to hear them! And if there's anything else you want to add I really appreciate it, thank you!!! (I have a list of people I will be sending this ask to, if you feel compelled to point me towards anyone I absolutely must ask that would also be appreciated. Thank you again!!)

omg hi I might be able to help! but i admit ive been fairly disconnected from mcyt for a while. All views expressed are my own and may not account for everyone elses perspectives or even statistical data

really when talking abt shipping I can only really start with 2019 at the earliest but mcyt has a longer history than that (i was a yogs fan in 2012-2014 or thereabouts but didnt participate in fandom and then didnt get back on the mc boat until 2019). also I think the youtuber shipping culture has had an influence on shipping as well.

anyway. mcyt fans even now are very skittish about shipping and a lot of it, as of 2019, was rooted in the anti-rpf culture we saw post-septiplier. i think. I never watched either of those guys. But it was this sense that RPF and shipping can Ruin Peoples Lives or friendships or whatever. (I think it's more nuanced than that.) And of course the infamous callmecarson serious stream in 2019 when he told off his stans for writing a danganronpa AU fanfic of him and his friends. I think that started a lot of negativity toward fans engaging in fairly normal fandom things, people extrapolating things out of what he said a bit. The nature of being a mcyt fan is that you're almost never a fan of just ONE thing within the genre so of course the sentiments branched out a lot into other fandoms.

Then with dream smp we saw the rise of the "boundaries" concept: fans asking creators what they are ok with and not ok with. And I dont hate that idea in concept but I personally dislike some of the execution. (I think fans should recognize on their own what a creator should and should not be privy to and take necessary precautions to keep potentially sensitive things hidden/separate from other fanwork. I dont think we should be asking them these things directly bc it just exposes them to it.) I dont think Dream was the first one to talk about boundaries, but he was the first one to provide a full detailed list of boundaries that I know of. In late 2020, he was also the first creator to suggest/introduce the bang path ! to denote the fictional characters being discussed on the Dream SMP, so that nobody thought he was actually abusing cc!Tommyinnit in exile.

But the fictionalization is important because over the past 2 years or so fans who disliked shipping said "these are real people", and the rise of clearly defined roleplay ("lore") in MCYT spaces allowed fans to say "these are characters". (In reality it's kind of both. It's like kayfabe I think. I'm not into wrestling but its kind of like that I think.) So then you have some fans shipping some creators whove said they're ok with it, some fans not doing it at all, arguments over whether less lore-heavy servers are RP or not. It becomes a minefield. Hermit fans create a boundaries list that says the only Hermits you can ship together are Rendoc and ONLY if you ship them with each other. The funniest development from this era was, of course, writing c!Tubbo and c!Ranboo (who were canonically married with a child) as "platonic husbands" simply because the actors were both 16-17 at the time. They were actually groundbreaking teen parent representation and we should respect that (silly!)

I think the biggest turning point for Hermit/hermit-adjacent fans was actually Third Life, and I'll say it loud and proud: Flower Husbands walked so everyone else can run and I'm soooooo serious. I remember when people tried to "/p" (platonic) flower husbands. Having Jimmy and Scott, two adult men, roleplaying a married couple in a series where every person was storytelling to some extent was hugely important. FH and Third Life in early 2021 gave fans permission to engage with the story as a story, with these characters as characters. Treebark cropped up a little later (we were simmering toward the end of 3L's run and then had such a great summer that it really began to crystallize in Aug/Sept of that year. Shoutout to Redacted) but was really only able to do so because of FH, and because of the way Ren and Martyn RPed so much.

Hoo boy this is getting long SORRY. I think by 2022 and 2023 Tumblr audiences specifically were getting tired of self-policing all the time and really started to just say "fuck it we ball block tags if you have to" and embraced a "what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament" type of attitude. Specific catch-all tags for shipping started to emerge. On the other hand, twitter audiences stayed fairly conservative with shipping - they did Not like it one bit. This is still a problem in some corners of the MCYT fandom over there, afaik. Personally I think this is in part due to lack of a real tagging system; this is also why I think "duo names" exist as a kind of alternative to ship names (also because of standom crossover). The other aspect here is proximity to creators: everyone and their mother has a Twitter account, but Tumblr is our house, and if they want to play with us, they need to understand our culture. Twitter is more interested in keeping things clean in case the creator sees it because in all likelihood they will.

Quick sidebar to mention QSMP, which had several on-screen, developing roleplayed romances, including dates and a wedding, and all of them were gay and involved people from different cultural backgrounds. I just think that's neat. 2023 was a wild time.

All of that being said...... I actually dont feel like shipping (or the lack thereof) and its history has a very significant connection with aroaceness. I can see how the bunch of terminally online young people who gravitate toward MCYT content are more likely to be aroace than the average person just because it's a very queer fandom overall (I genuinely dont think a single friend I've made in this space is cishet). I can also see how MCYT content overall is kind of "safe" if you're averse to sexual or romantic stories in the media you watch, because most of the time, MCYT creators arent super comfortable roleplaying their cubitos making out with their friends on screen for an audience to watch (MythicalSausage and most members of QSMP nonwithstanding).

I feel like, from my experience with the fandom, rather than engage with these characters as asexual or as aromantic, it's sort of a de-sexing: either they are off limits, or they are Schrodinger's Sexuality, because they're a Real Person and it's weird to headcanon Real People. If they're a real person then they should be married to the person they're married to IRL, and we don't know them, so instead it's like sexuality does not exist. But the creators are still making dick jokes anyway. And that's because sex is a joke and isn't real 😁

Again, QSMP is a bit of an exception I think - I recall Cellbit's character being canonically gay and asexual (the creator would later come out himself as asexual). <- Some fans kind of ignored this/didnt touch on it, other fans deliberately included it as an aspect of characterizing q!Cellbit and his relationship with his husband. Mikethelink also said once that his character was off limits for shipping, I think?(because Mike is IRL married and his partner was an occasional guest and presence, shoutout Barb), so fans often interpreted this as q!Mike being an aromantic character. You see a lot of interpretations of q!Mike and q!Pactw where they're in some kind of queerplatonic relationship, sort of as a result of that. I cant talk about QSMP without mentioning jaiden jaidenanimations. I love u queen xoxox

Oh my god wait how could I forget the queerplatonic emerald duo era. Wasnt there discourse about that (people trying to ship queerplatonically because it was seen as less egregious than shipping romantically)

Anyways I think double life is a deeply aromantic series and I love the divorce quartet. Shoutout messy relationships and choosing who you want to be with under the terms you decide with yourself and the people you love.

EDIT TO ADD: i think tumblr culture has been more accepting of RPF as of late i think the next big development will be a rise in genuine mcyt RPF shipping. we saw some of that in the dsmp era (just bc that fandom was huge at its peak) but ever since it's been fairly fringe. I dont think itll ever be mainstream but i feel like we'll be seeing more RPF in the next couple years to come

[aroaceacacia]

The trio is real

[aroaceacacia]

Martyn: --Right? So, this is a lo--(faux offended) what are you pointing at--why he's pointing at me?! What are you pointing at me for, bro? You point at yourself! Point at yourself! (normal tone) This guy. I'm stuck next to this guy all weekend, can you believe it? Can you believe it? (almost smug) We had-we had breakfast this morning. We had breakfast. He was like, (imitating Ren) "dude. I've been wanting to go to breakfast with you, like, forever." (normal tone) Had pancakes, syrup. Spot on.

[aroaceacacia]

you know what fuck it . I made this two months ago and have waited for it to become relevant and it still hasn't. Also the skin is outdated now anyway. so I'm posting this to rub salt in the wound after what he just said

[aroaceacacia]

mcyt fans if you could choose one dropped plot thread/character arc to get a proper conclusion which would you choose

[aroaceacacia]

mcyt fans if you could choose one dropped plot thread/character arc to get a proper conclusion which would you choose

[aroaceacacia]

[aroaceacacia]

Rest in peace Technoblade, you would have hated the minecraft movie but you would have loved the free promo they gave you.

[aroaceacacia]

Straight guys who use tumblr are the funniest people ever literally how did you end up here

[aroaceacacia]

Pour one out for #mysticat.

[aroaceacacia]

i can’t say what i want to say because my tumblr blog is important to me.

[aroaceacacia]

lmao i don't go here but this is awesome

[aroaceacacia]

they should let tom simons on taskmaster

What do you mean Ranboo is going to be on game changer

[aroaceacacia]

happy eclipse federation breakup anniversary everyone 🥳