#<- does it count. if I'm the mcyt

[autism-sprinkles]

I think there's genuinely something wrong with me

[inkieflame]

"I'd fail for you"

[fountainpenguin]

I've been trying to pick an animatic project to work on in November and... at the moment I'm leaning towards "Beautiful Ugly" with Zombiewood.

It has just the right "If you talk to me, I will pulverize you" / "I support that, queen" energy slkdjf... World's worst soulmates <3

"Take You to Hell" & "She Wants Me (to Be Loved)" would also be fun. I keep juggling different options, so we'll see if this one sticks!

[paradoxlemonade]

Hey for the jukebox nights, would writers also be able to take part? It seems currently like it’s mainly geared towards artists, but it sounds fun and I’d like to try it as a writer

This is a question I asked myself before even posting the interest check. I didn't have a concrete answer then, and I'm still not certain about my decision now.

As of right now, I'm leaning towards no, at least not exclusively. Jukebox nights have historically been an art-specific thing in the hermitcraft fandom, and it's that specific tradition that I'm trying to rekindle.

Making a fic based on a song (either just in inspiration or using the actual lyrics) is called a songfic, and it's already a staple of classic fan culture. If the idea speaks to you, then you should definitely try it out! But it wouldn't be a jukebox night and would not be eligible for this event.

With all that being said: the jukebox night event will be open to artists of all skill levels, including complete beginners. If you want, you can take a crack at making an illustration and then write a songfic based on your jukebox night. You'd also be allowed to promote your songfic in the discord server, since it'd be inspired by your jukebox night illustration. If that sounds like fun to you, then consider joining the event anyways!

[irrealisms]

i've seen a lot of people talk about mcyt as a constantly burning library of alexandria recently, and to some extent that's true. people are constantly deleting their blogs, going scorched earth with animatics, fanfics, etc., that they made. but i've also seen people (three in the last few days!) make this claim about VODs, when talking about large fandoms like DSMP and QSMP, and.... guys. that was true in 2020. that's not true anymore. archivists have been working tirelessly for years now to make sure that isn't true.

the dsmp VOD masterlist is here. in november 2020, it's missing 16 VODs, if i am counting correctly--which is still a fairly small minority, but it's a lot, and it sucks!--but in november of 2021, it's missing one, and that's because the cc of that VOD does copyright takedowns, not because the archivists didn't save it. no one in the archivist project is deleting VODs off youtube with no backups the way people are deleting fanfics. three months ago, one of my dsmp archivist friends finished coding a tool that let them reconstruct VODs out of twitch clips, and reconstructed six tubbo dsmp VODs from 2020. not only are we basically not losing VODs anymore, we are actively gaining VODs that have been lost for years, that were thought to be lost forever. the library isn't burning anymore; it's being rebuilt.

the qsmp VOD masterlist is here. it is usually a month or two behind the present day, to give creators time to archive their own VODs, but... look at it. in january of 2024, every single qsmp vod was archived. the same is true of december of 2023, and november, and the vast majority of months for the past year.

i'm not going to say that there isn't a problem. just a few days ago, i realized that a lifesteal VOD from last year was missing--that its youtube upload was messed up somehow, and no one noticed and it wasn't mirrored on the internet archive and the person who uploaded it deleted the original file. and now it's gone forever. this made me super sad! like i said: i'm not going to say that there isn't a problem.

but... look at the lifesteal VOD masterlist here. lifesteal's a smaller fandom than qsmp or dsmp. open the 2022 tab and you'll see months and months of lost VODs, of no one's VODs being saved, because there weren't any archivists saving them. then open the 2023 tab and see: they lost four VODs, over the course of a year. even in smaller fandoms, archivists are working. they're making progress. they're saving VODs. in 2024, lifesteal archivists screenrecorded five streams on tumblr live to make sure they would not become lost media. mcyt may be a constantly burning library of alexandria, but the people with fire extinguishers are dedicated. they're making incredible progress. i know people with petabytes of VODs saved, who have spent money on extra storage for this. i know people who are constantly running up against their storage limits as they download/upload to the internet archive/delete for space/rinse and repeat. a decent fraction of the time, my internet at home is slow because it's downloading VODs.

and these aren't the only mcyt fandoms with archiving projects! the outsiders smp VOD masterlist is here. origins smp VOD masterlist is here. smp earth VOD masterlist is here. rats smp VOD masterlist is here. there are so many others that i just don't happen to know about. the older and smaller a fandom is, the more likely it is to not have an attached archiving project, or for the archive to be missing a lot of VODs. but... guys, we've saved a lot. there are people out there, working tirelessly to save even more. yes, mourn what we have lost--the archivists i know are also the ones mourning the most for the VODs that are, in fact, forever lost media. but don't dismiss how much people have saved. we are making progress. we are losing less and less every month. the vast majority of the dsmp and qsmp still exist, i am not going to say they're the same experience as watching live because they're really not, but.. they're out there. people have put in a lot of work to save them.

if you have publicly available VOD masterlists or other mcyt archiving projects that aren't on this post, please add them in a reblog. i want this post to serve as a reference for how much archivists have saved in this community; unfortunately, i'm not super connected to every community. but i know that--for every person deleting things, there are people working, tirelessly & with little external reward, in so many different mcyt fandoms, to save things. and we should appreciate that more often.

[mcyt-longfic-database-project]

Welcome to the MCYT Longfic Database Project

Hello!! My name is Jim ( @rocketships07 , he/him), and I'm just a guy with a passion for data analysis and cubitos. I have been compiling, for a few months now, a small google sheets file of my favorite mcyt longfics, because I enjoy being able to see some stats and have everything in a place I can access. However! It ocurred to me that it would be very fun to develop a much larger database so that I could share it with friends!

So, the MCYT Longfic Database Project was born.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

MCYT Longfic Database SUBMISSIONS Form

Publishing site voting

FAQ

MCYT Longfic Database (march 1st)

Here's how it's going to work.

1. Interest Check (due: jan. 27)

I'm going to first compile information on what fandoms most people want me to compile fics of. This can be any MCYT fandom! As long as someone requests it, it'll have a place in the database. To do so, please send me asks through my tumblr page with your fandom(s)!!

CURRENT FANDOMS ADDED:

Hermitcraft

Traffic Life Series

Empires SMP

Dream SMP

QSMP

Scott's Life series (X life/Afterlife/New life)

POW Creations (Pirates SMP, Rats SMP 1&2)

The Realm

Fable SMP

Life Steal

Outsiders

Yogscast

2. Fanfic submission form is released (jan. 27 - feb. 28)

I will be releasing a form, where you can submit your favorite longfics! This form will include plenty of different sections for you to fill, such as title, fandom, word count, main character(s), ship (or ships), main tropes or au, amongst other categories with the purpose of data analysis! Mainly because the database will also have an analysis tab, where you can see some fun stats about the database!

During this period, the database will not be public. This is due to the fact that Google Forms does not format the information correctly, and I will be creating a much easier to read file for everyone to see!

After the end of this period, the forms will continue to be open! I will not be updating it constantly after that, but I'll try my best to keep it updated!

3. Database publishing (march 1)

After March 1st, the database will go live!!! I will continue to update it and add fics as long as people keep submitting them.

Feel free to share it with your friends and use it to find new fun fics to enjoy!

[lowkeyrobin]

hello!!

would you be willing to do a TMR minho fic?

basically just them at the little glade treehouse (i live for that treehouse lol) and maybe they stole some food from frypan and are just chatting and having a laugh together whilst cuddling or something bc they dont get to spend alot of time together as he is always in the maze??

(been loving your writing recently btw, literally one of the v few writers who write for MCYTS and respect their boundaries so tysm!!)

hope ur having a good day:)

oh hell yeah brother LMAO ; also thank you and you're welcome!! im all for respecting boundaries because ik how that feels when they're broken + I'm not a weirdo lol, and thank you for appreciating my work, it means sm to me 🫶🫶🫶 ; have a good day/night :) ; post writing me, sorry this is so short :( ; also I know I said I was in trouble but NEVER BACK DOWN NEVER WHAT??

MINHO ; tree house cuddles

summary ; sneaking food into the tree house and having late night convos with minho

warnings ; language

disclaimers ; reader is a track-hoe, Thomas has been in the maze for months and exists, but no Teresa/escaping the maze

word count ; 459

masterlist

You loved your beautiful boyfriend Minho. He was an angel sent from above, truly. Or... maybe below? The box and what existed out of the Glade was confusing, sadly. God, you wished you could remember anything outside of here.

Sadly, you hadn't seen him very much recently.

He'd been busy with his duties in the maze and the Map Room, and you've been busy working in the gardens damn near all day every day. Your rations were running low, the crops were growing slower than ever, and you couldn't figure out why. It's not like there were deer or raccoons feasting on them either. It was just you Gladers here, nothing else. You'd been stressing out over it and needed some time away from it for a while.

Thankfully, the beloved tree house existed, and rarely anyone used it.

You'd stolen a basket of fruit from Fry's kitchen, awaiting the arrival of Minho. Hopefully, Newt stuck to his word, or remembered to, to send Minho to the tree house to spend some time with you.

Thankfully, the beautiful Korean boy showed up, dressed casual and out of the heavy gear he had to wear in the maze. He greeted you with a tired yet warm smile, sitting down with you on the wooden floor.

"Hey, how's your day?" He asks, sitting next to you, shoulder to shoulder.

You hand him a little basket of strawberries. "Fine, I guess." You shrug, "Need a minute away from the gardens"

He nods, "I need a minute away from the shuckin' maze"

You dangle your feet off the side of the platform, soaking up each other's presence.

He pulls you into his lap, between his legs. He rests his chin on your shoulder while his arms rest around your waist. You feel your stomach swarm with butterflies, resting your hands over his.

"I love you" He whispers, placing a kiss on your temple.

"Love you too, dork," you reply with a smile, leaning your head back to rest yourself against him.

"What a romantic" He giggles, pulling you a little closer.

The night continues on in peace, smiles, giggles and kisses shared, hands intertwined. You share your body heat, cuddled up and comfy.

"No, no, no, he said something like he was gonna beat him back into the box! How does that even work? Gally acts like Thomas is some universal threat or something" You laugh as you speak.

"I have no idea, darling." He smiles and chuckles, listening to you ramble on and on about stories he'd missed during the day.

You look up at him and place a kiss on his jawline, a stupid smile on his face.

"Love you"

"Love you too"

"...Thanks for being mine"

"Okay, shut up, shank"

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

I've been drifting away from both Tumblr and MCYT for a while now. This was the nail in the coffin.

I have another blog for art, and a third for other fandoms, but I doubt I will use either as often as I used LNLU. There's never been a community I've connected with quite so deeply as this one. Your creativity, passion, and kindness carried me through awful times far more than any individual creator could. It was not all rainbows and unicorns. It ripped open some old wounds, and left some new ones as well. But I want to carry forward the good things. I'm in touch with most of my friends on other platforms. If I've missed you, feel free to message and ask for my Discord.

A few final words, though.

We can never fully know what these creators are like when they're off-screen. What we see is a carefully curated picture of who they are, with flaws either scrubbed away or humorously exaggerated to the point of dismissal. Being aware of this does not mean assuming the worst. It means being realistic. When the people who truly know them become vulnerable by sharing the truth, believe them.

Be cautious of stereotypes. Anyone can be a victim or a perpetrator. If abusers could all be easily recognized at a cursory glance, if the signs were only a simple checklist of traits and deeds, if they were all so obviously monstrous that only a fool could have ever admired them - then far fewer of these people would get away with doing what they do.

They might be charming, attractive, thoughtful, intelligent, or funny.

They might only commit "minor" abuses, the kind that by themselves seem not to count but when taken together will wear you down.

They might blame you for what they do, claiming that you gave them no choice, or using your own symptoms and mistakes against you.

They might not realize that their behavior is abusive, or they might attribute it to other issues they may deal with.

They might apologize profusely and promise to be the sweetest person in the world for you, never to genuinely change.

They might degrade themselves, saying it's "just the type of person they are," and expect you - the one they hurt - to relieve them of their guilt.

They might be victims of something or someone else, too. They might truly be suffering.

But none of that makes your suffering acceptable.

If someone belittles, insults, pressures, screams at, willfully crosses boundaries, lies to, guilt-trips, or mentally, physically, or sexually harms you or someone you care about, there is never any obligation to accept that treatment. No matter what real or imagined position over you they might have, no matter what's going on in their life or in their brain, no one has the right to abuse their power like that. They are wrong.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, too.

And to other survivors of abuse: it wasn't your fault, you deserve better, you are stronger than you know, your worth never depended on them, and you will heal with time.

Goodbye from LNLU. I love you all.

[mcyttitleswap]

Mod Applications

[view pinned post for details on the event!]

before I post the link, I'm going to go through some ground rules and what exactly you'll be expected to do.

firstly, as there were about ~200 people who wanted to participate, and let's say 175 of them participate: i'm looking for a team of 7-8 other people. this does mean that if you have a block in your schedule where you are unable to mod for a week or two and you want to mod, you should still apply! please just mention that conflict in the allotted section.

secondly, applications are open to both adults and minors. i ask that if you apply as a minor, that you are 16+. There are no exceptions to this rule, please be 16 or older by the time you submit your application. (if you are under 16, you are welcome to be a participant, however!). I will be asking if you are an adult or minor on the form, however, being a minor will not count you out of the decision. Please be honest on this form.

thirdly, i am DESPERATELY seeking spreadsheet help. this is an event that can only be matched through google forms and i will need as much spreadsheet help as i can get. if you are good at spreadsheets, i am on my hands and knees begging for your assistance, please grace me with your presence and help.

fourth, schedule expectations. though the event runs from may to august, i'll need your help from april onwards, though in april, you won't need to be very active. I will also be reaching out to you as soon as mod decisions are made to inform you of your acceptance.

fifth, fandoms: i need people from all corners of this fandom to help participants feel welcome! please mention any mcyt fandoms you're involved in in the allotted spots, no matter how obscure!

alright enough of me rambling. here's the form, and sorry for the delay!

[melodaffine]

i want to @ all these mcyt ccs, like someone being rude to you is not a valid reason to say their horrible people so they need to be "deplatformed". in a real life example, imagine i go to my professor and i tell them "you need to remove joe from my group and fail him from the class because he was rude to me :(". the professor would just be like "i'm sorry but in life you have to learn to work with people you clash with".

what i just don't understand is like, you will ALWAYS meet people you clash with, that's just how life works because we're all individual people. i can't count how many times i've had to work on a project or be around someone i didn't like or someone who was rude to me. but the difference is, every other person has to continue working with them because it's a commitment. these people are content creators - they don't ever have to work on a project with them if they don't want to. so what's the big deal??? you won't suffer because you don't wanna work with them, your job is to build your own brand.

all this "behind the scenes" talk has all just boiled down to miscommunication or personal grievances. like geez, genuinely broaden your perspective and get a life. i promise everyone has had drama with someone else, but most people move past the middle school drama phase except for these content creators who have main character syndrome apparently. as audiences who will never know them in real life, what makes them think i would care about their personal drama? like even if one of my FRIENDS came up to me and was like "your friend joe hit up my gf when we broke up, you need to drop them" i would be like uhh that sucks but what does that have to do with me??? and they expect us to care when we don't even know them???

it's like the equivalent of making a instagram post broadcasting your beef with someone. like that sounds ridiculous because IT IS.

[astronomodome]

Tumblr Poll Tournaments & MCYT

So a while ago I made a post expressing my frustration with the way a lot of tumblr poll tournaments seem to exclude mcyt characters- or if they are included, people in the notes are rude about it. The first situation of these- the poll organizer including rules against submitting characters from mcyt- is something I can easily quantify. I've crunched some numbers in order to find out two things:

How common is this phenomenon, really?

Why does this happen in the first place?

A note before I start: I'm not blaming the poll organizers for this, and I don't want anyone to get angry at them for excluding mcyt. At the end of the day, it's up to them to curate what they want their poll to be, and if they don't want to deal with the toxicity that often comes with letting mcyt characters run (or if they just don't like it for whatever reason), that's their decision. Trust me- poll organizers have to put up with a lot of shit already, and I don't want to add to it, regardless of their opinions on mcyt. If any poll organizers recognize their own words in the later part of this overview, they can contact me and I'll remove it. This is also why I have chosen not to identify the blogs from which I took the examples- I mean no harm to any poll organizer. They are a symptom of a much larger problem and they haven't done anything wrong except be a little misinformed at worst.

Excluding mcyt characters from poll tournaments really isn't that big of a deal on its own- though it is frustrating- but it does speak to the larger attitude of the general tumblr population towards mcyt. While not without its flaws, this can be used as a metric to measure the extent of this attitude and maybe get a hint of why it exists.

...Please note, also, that most of these polls date back to around March-June 2023, when poll tournaments were a big thing on Tumblr. Not super outdated, but I still should note that opinions might have changed since then.

Also also, be warned that there are examples below of some organizers being pretty toxic! It's not a whole lot, but if you don't want to expose yourself to that, maybe pass on this post!

With that out of the way, let's get started.

Part One: The Numbers

The first thing I decided to do was figure out a rough percentage of how many poll tournaments have a rule that excludes mcyt characters from being submitted. To get a sample batch of poll blogs, I used one of the blogs that pits the winners of tournaments against each other and checked each blog included in that. This ended up being a more tedious process than I had thought, since there's a lot of variation in the way poll organizers, well, organize. I ended up with 123 blogs sorted into three categories.

The first category included tournaments where a rule for or against mcyt characters wouldn't really make sense, for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, the tournament was between letters of the alphabet or animo acids or government agencies, not fictional characters, so I counted them out. There were also a handful of blogs where the contestants were determined by the organizer, not by nomination at all. Combined, blogs that did not fit my criteria made up 60/123 of my samples.

The second and third categories were the blogs that either had a rule against mcyt characters, or didn't. Most of the blogs I looked through had rules I could find, and some were more thorough about it than others. For my purposes, I counted the blog as a no only if they explicitly had a rule against mcyt characters, or clarified later that they weren't allowed. Most poll blogs didn't mention mcyt at all. (This will become relevant later.)

Of the 63 blogs that fit my criteria, 11 (17.5%) of them had a rule against mcyt characters, while the remaining 52 (82.5%) did not.

To me, this seems like pretty good news! I had honestly expected the percentage of blogs that excluded mcyt to be much higher. This is definitely a good sign! But I wouldn't really jump to assuming that mcyt characters would actually be accepted in all of these blogs. I will explain this in the next part of my research.

Part Two: The Examples

The second thing I wanted to find out with this research was why organizers end up having rules against mcyt in the first place. Is it just the bad reputation the mcyt space has (largely a result of one green man in particular)? Let's look at a few examples of poll rules against mcyt characters. Some of them are from my sample blogs and some of them aren't.

Type 1: Not understanding the difference between real people and characters in mcyt

The majority of the rules against mcyt I saw were of this type, and honestly, it's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty major debate in the mcyt community over whether mcyts' characters are separate enough from their content creators to count as fictional. However, there are a considerable number of mcyt characters who are explicitly stated to be different from their cc in the same way as a character in a movie played by an actor is different from the actor playing them. Excluding all mcyt characters for being 'real people' is just incorrect, though I can kinda understand where the organizers were coming from with this one.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of poll blogs had a rule against submitting real people. There's a possibility that some poll organizers might have lumped mcyt characters as real people even if they didn't specify it explicitly. Therefore, an attempt to actually submit an mcyt character into one of these tournaments might be against the rules based on what the organizer thinks. I have no way to quantify this, which is why I said earlier that the results of my initial test might not be accurate.

Type 2: 'Problematic fandom' (toxicity warning for some of these)

This type of rule is usually broader than just mcyt, but lumps it in with other fandoms known for being associated with bigotry (often hp, which is... yeah i'm definitely not going to argue in favor of harry potter but yikes. really? we're as bad as terfy potter? really.) At least one of them let dsmp characters in with the exception of dream, which is a lot fairer than... some of the others.

If we want to give the organizers benefit of the doubt here, we can say that these rules are made to keep the poll less toxic than it would be otherwise... but to be perfectly honest, some of these might be more about that phenomenon of purity culture that has had a habit of popping up in fandom spaces since forever. That's a whole other conversation I'm not ready to have now, but it comes as no surprise to me that mcyt has become a little taboo in some places (likely to a large extent because of dream and all the drama he's generated). There's also no telling whether the poll organizers in these cases even know that there are other smps besides dsmp... but that's besides the point, since there are other dsmp characters that aren't associated with dream at all. Excluding them reveals a misconception about the mcyt genre anyway. And of course, I think we can all agree that some of these are just pretty rude.

Which brings us to our conclusion.

I feel like a lot of the toxicity towards mcyt as a genre and mcyt characters boils down to people either not really understanding what mcyt is (i.e. mcyt -> minecraft youtubers -> real people) or hearing stuff about dream and assuming the entire mcyt space is reflective of that. Of course, it's a frustrating issue that some people think this way. I think it's nice to be reminded, though, that this sort of thing isn't very widespread. Alongside the bad examples, I saw a lot of organizers confronting their preconceived notions: one organizer let in an mcyt character after admitting their 'unfamiliarity with the source material', another allowed mcyt characters 'on the condition that you can explain how they are a separate character' and a few others fiercely defended mcyt characters against toxicity in their polls. Every day we grow as a community and we can't let a few people with misguided notions of what we are keep us down. Keep watching, keep creating, and as Zedaph once said, It's okay to be silly!

[starry-907]

hi starry!!! <3 i've been seeing so many stick men on my dash, and i've gotten super curious. the fandom wiki page answered none of my questions, so i thought i'll turn to the resident expert <3 <3 <3 whomst may be these characters and where do they come from?

RESIDENT EXPERT SJDLFJSKDJ THANK YOU I GUESS?? i'm just very autistic abt these silly sticks, i don't think i'm much of an expert

the stickfigures are from Alan Becker's Animation Vs series/franchise (calling it a franchise seems wrong but there's multiple series under the umbrella so idk how else to describe it) on youtube! i'm gonna go into more detail on that but i'm putting it under a cut because i don't know how long this'll get to be completely honest

also sorry if this takes a while to get answered i wanted to collect screenshots and visuals

So i'm not gonna get into a full play-by-play, mainly to avoid spoiling you, but the series can be kinda split up into a few different categories (the first two being the "primary" series of the overarching series)

ALSO the creator refers to all the sticks with he/him but a lot of people tend to headcanon differently (it's me i'm people) so i might use my own hc pronouns for characters. honestly part of the series' appeal is the fact that there's wiggle room for headcanons to emerge.

anyway! starting off with the og:

Animator vs Animation

animator vs animation starts off with the simple question of, "hey what if my drawings came to life and fought me", which is somewhat of the overarching question through the first 3 installments

the fourth one winds up turning that question on it's head by the end because of this silly li'l guy, The Second Coming (usually called second or orange by the fandom)

by the end of ava 4, second (and the friends they found on a website) have reached an understanding with the animator (who's also alan, it's a bit confusing but i try to think of it like mcyt rules where there's the creator and then the character), and are now friends with him. ava 1-4 were recently bundled into being animator vs animation season 1, i'd recommend you start with these four if you want to watch the other series.

ava seasons 2 and 3 (season 3 is currently ongoing) take a bit of a different turn, delving into the previously left up to question fates of the past three sticks that alan had made in ava 1-3, along with also dropping some bombshells of lore here and there. semi related side note i'm taking the chosen one and shaking them in a tupperware violently.

Animation vs Minecraft

this one is the longest of the different series, with 35 episodes (36 counting the original). it also pulls off the "mainly filler eps until everything suddenly spurs into motion" thing very well. it's also funny because the series started out named as "animation vs minecraft shorts" when episodes in season 3 would get up into at least 20 minute runtimes.

this series is where we start to get personalities developed for the four sticks that second befriended in ava 4, through the lens of different minecraft niches, from animal care to potions to redstone to noteblocks.

avm seasons 1 and 2 focus more on exploring the different aspects of minecraft (such as build battles), though season 1 does have a very brief arc involving this other stick, purple

(purple shows up in later episodes as well)

speaking of purple, if you're watching animation vs minecraft as a whole, make sure to watch animation vs leauge before you get to season 3 otherwise there could be a brief moment of confusion.

"but starry idk anything about minecraft-" THAT'S OK!! sorry for yelling i got excited. the series does a pretty good job of laying down the basics of the more complex mechanics before the stickfigures proceed to take it to heights that are probably not achievable in vanilla.

"starry what about season 3-" I'M GLAD YOU ASKED sorry got excited again. season 3 takes a hard pivot from "semi-unconnected episodes with maybe a few overarching elements" to "fully episodic adventures that will genuinely make you a bit emotional at times near the end". it also starts with blue going to find netherwart before the escalation escalates and trust me once you know how the season ends that seems so much funnier.

season 4 goes back to the less sequential episodes, just with a few status quo updates from the end of season 3 added in, namely the occasional addition of two characters from season 3 that people go feral over seeing included.

I'LL ALSO USE THIS SPACE TO TALK ABOUT THE ACTUAL SHORTS, which, as stated, are shorts that don't have a runtime over a minute or a minute and a half. they're somewhat of a mix between minecraft themed and being themed around other aspects of the series (there's one where the sticks and alan try to max out a clicker game, for example).

animation vs education

these ones are a bit less "plot" and a little more "hey look at this cool thing". the only character we're familiar with to be in this is second, and we essentially follow them going through these various black spaces exploring different educational concepts. right now we have avmath, avphysics, and avgeometry.

they all manage to be engaging and interesting even when the concept being explored reaches the point where you might not understand what the heck is going on (a big example for me being when avphysics started getting into more theoretical stuff, the sequence was cool enough that i didn't even care that half of it was going over my head).

i also feel like these are the ones that people unfamiliar with the series are likely to find? at least when i mention the series usually if someone's heard of it it's cuz they've watched avmath or avphysics.

even though these don't seem to have any connection to the main series (though a lot of people hc that they're second's dreams), i still recommend giving these a watch if for no other reason that they're really cool!

influencer arc

this one's the newest bit added to the umbrella! it's a 3-episode arc about one of the sticks, green, making a youtube channel with his friends and also exploring adobe products. we only have one episode of this so far, and it was funny because everyone was literally going feral over it when it released.

this one's also fun because there's an actual youtube channel for green, so you can see the full version of the videos they make in the episodes! the channel was leaked before the episode release so everyone went feral over that then too. the videos on the channel are very much "kids messing around with a camera" vibes.

the one-off eps

there's quite a number of these that explore different things, like animation vs youtube, where second and green manage to tick off a video player, or the team trees and team seas videos where blue gets the ability to grow trees and remove trash with money (at least in second's dreams). like i said, for understanding one aspect of avm season 3 (namely why everyone's fairly chill with purple when meeting them), i recommend watching animation vs leauge before reaching season 3, purple shows up there.

if you want me to go more in depth about the characters themselves (with some of my headcanons bleeding through a li'l), let me know and i can make a part two! i recommend giving the series a watch if you want to understand better but you'll likely want to break it up into more managable chunks

i also wrote most of this while on the bus to work

[qprsmackdown]

Impulse, Grian, Mumbo, Pearl, and Scar (Hermitcraft Season 8) vs Lincoln Li-Wilson, Taylor Swift (no not that one), Scary Marlowe, and Normal Swallows-Oak-Garcia (Dungeons and Daddies (Dndads))

Negative comments about either qpr in the notes will be blocked. This includes saying that either party is not a qpr. We are here to have fun. It does not matter whether a qpr is "canonically" platonic, romantic, or otherwise. I do not want to hear about why you think a relationship isn't a qpr.

Negativity/hatred towards MCYT will be ignored and blocked.

Boatem propaganda: I think they have dogpile sleepovers every night and take turns on which house they go to for them, there’s a whole schedule for it They built an area together and came up with the dumbest meeting ideas. They went moon mad together, they took a spaceship into the void together, turned the end of the world into a fun sleepover with no sleeping. I love them. More Boatem propaganda

Lincoln, Taylor, Scary, and Normal propaganda: -canonically got married for tax benefits, if you count surviving space a tax benefit. -Lincoln proceeds to start giving everyone pet names after getting married even though he feels the strongest about the marriage being platonic. -might solely be my opinion but them convincing scary to stay in the group by hugging her while inside of a burning building that they caused -whatever Taylor and Lincoln have/hj Ohhh boy Starting with 1. They all literally got married. In space. Out of necessity. But they got married!! 2. They are all so dumb and crushing on each other like. just get together already 3. Jsst. Imagine them all. holding hands. (@slightlyhopefulromantic hey. please don't overwork yourself for this poll. i know i'm a stranger but i hope you're taking care of yourself -🦊)

[boatemlag]

was gonna add this in the tags of a post but it got really long and i was like ok lemme just make a separate post to be pretentious on. but i think the urge to separate character action from cc action in mcyt fanwork is the kneejerk reaction to "what if this is rpf"... its a taboo to talk about rpf or write rpf (in general but especially in mcyt fan space) so we in fandom tend to be very stringent about, like, fuck, i dunno. the platonic ideal of OOC vs IC. im not going to make broad claims about the historic relationship of mcyt fanwork to rpf because well its really late at night and thats the sort of conjecture reserved for annoying my friends in dms. but it seems apparent to me that the birth of even the terms c! and cc! were due to wanting to distinguish ethical fanwork from non-ethical fanwork.

theres a few layers and axises to consider the ethicality of fanwork (of which i will consider fanfic in this post because i am foremost a fanfic writer). a good example to start, when we discard the c! vs cc! labels, and start to look objectively at work, is the level at which a fanwork becomes unethical. we look at the surroundings of the fic --

are they in minecraft? does the work make reference to them doing minecraft things? how is, say, movement or inventory or block shape and placement described how realistic is the minecraft world when compared to our real world? does it seem like a general fantasy setting?

is it acceptable to put the subjects into a fantasy setting? a high sci fi setting? a superhero au? what about an au which elaborates on existing political structures alluded to in canon?

what about a modern au, no powers? does, for example, the description of mumbo having a mustache or tango having hair suffice as distinction enough? what about modern aus where they live in real life cities? what about historic aus? is 1800s london more acceptable than 2020s london?

what about names? generally it is agreed that grian should not be called charles in a fic for it to be considered referring to the character, and not the CC. is that distinction meaningful when we are interacting with the simulacra of grian? what about jimmy? is it enough of a distinction to call him jimmy solidarity? what about calling philza phil? is that acceptable?

what should be considered canon to that setting? does "off camera" count as in character? (this is where i think the lines start to blur a bit for people) what if characteristics that are exclusive to the "real person" are given to the subject of fiction (ie. scar's wheelchair or other aids) (this is the point where i'm lamenting the lack of ability to add footnotes to a tumblr post)

what is the breaking point for all of these ethical considerations? this is something that must be present when considering fanwork from the model of c/cc divide. if one were to question the necessity of the existence of that divide, what changes (negative or positive) does that bring to the community? in art, fic, meta, crit, etc.? do we value the artist's opinion, their intent, over the art itself? i said i wasnt gonna bring up barthes in a tumblr post but the invention of the author as supreme truth maker can only hurt the growth of art. i think that's double edged here. the artist both has the autonomy to decide what is ethical to create but the audience also has the freedom to decide what is ethical in.... fandom. i just had to stop myself writing society, and write fandom. but yeah. food for thought. i dont really have a good way to end this uh heres a picture of my cats

[koreanbibliophilegirl]

You didn’t hear it from me, but Seapeekarl may or may not be in the crackships bracket again

TwT Yeah I know, I resubmitted them...lol

Also they're losing to Pixlriffs and Scar😭😭😭😭

Everyone please vote seapeekarl, please, I'm out here getting fudging anon asks about them, I am THAT well-known as the #1 seapeekarler... please....OTL

(@the-mcyt-crackships-brackets does this count as propaganda?)

[emojifarm]

while i don't think you should feel obligated to share or reblog any emojis you don't want to, i think rethinking how you feel about MCYTbrs is important, since there's so many people on minecraft youtube.

minecraft is an endlessly popular game, and there's thousands or maybe even near millions of minecraft youtubers out there.

it's not MCYT in itself that's a problem, its the popular ones that get called out that are, but since minecraft (and minecraft youtube) is so popular, it seems like everyone in minecraft youtube is bad.

but i think you shouldn't say you "do not support those people in any sense.", since that continues the stigma against liking MCYT in general.

minecraft youtubers are just popular because minecraft is popular, there are so many minecraft youtubers that do so much good (ex, technoblade, who's helped raise so much money for sarcoma, even after his passing, and who's inspired and motivated many)

then again, people use MCYT to mean "the dream team and the abusive people they enable" instead of encompassing the many others who aren't even related to the dream team / dream SMP.

this is quite a rambly ask, but as someone who loves certain MCYTbrs, it's tiring to see people say they don't support any mcytbrs, when like... there's such a diverse population. there's some people who might count as minecraft youtubers who are minorities and who try to fight against bigotry and stuff and who don't do weird shit and to say MCYT in general includes them, even if you don't mean to.

although, again, you don't have to reblog any emojis you don't want to, especially since MCYT is a very large label and that CAN include people who are bad, and it's hard to know who's good and who's not, especially with youtubers in general since we only know the persona they put on, and how many there are that you probably know nothing about, let alone if they're an abuser or w/e, but... yeah.

i guess to me it's important since its like saying all actors are bad, when there's many actors who aren't bad people but there's a popular amount that are bad, n such. also mcyt just stands for minecraft youtube, or minecraft youtuber(s), so its like saying roblox youtubers or reaction youtubers, they're a category that has so, so many people that count under that. you can't say you don't support any of them.

unless you literally just dont like minecraft and dont support the game as a whole, or youtube itself as a whole, in which case i'd have more questions but it'd be more correct lmao. also sorry for the ramble i have opinions u dont have to answer this

I knew I'd get someone like this in my ask box when I put my opinion out there 🤦

1. There are literally clips out there of Technoblade saying slurs (including the N word) and him encouraging Dream to do things that have ultimately made others on the team uncomfortable and upset. You definitely need a better example than that. Someone being dead and/or giving to charity does not automatically make them a good person. I'm sure Shane Dawson also gives to charities. We all know JK Rowling does too. Doesn't make them good people.

2. I don't have the time, care, or interest to do research on every single MCYT and it's really only the popular ones that do get emojis of them (with some exceptions, obviously). I only know what I do about the Dream Team and those adjacent because of things I've seen on Tumblr, via friends talking on discord, and some of the YouTubers I watch breaking down the situations. (Also, this low-key comes off the same as "not all men". Like. Yeah, that's true, but that's not who I was referring to. Some of the MCYT I'm referring to aren't a part of the Dream Team either, so I feel comfortable using the broad term)

3. Also, the mansplaining wasn't necessary. I'm not an idiot that lives under a rock. I know what MCYT stands for. As I previously said, I'm not making a broad assumption. I'm just using that term to refer to the people that people think of with that term. To me that's a specific subset of Minecraft creators. I don't consider people that just so happen to do Minecraft videos or streams to fall under that. To me MCYT is just the big ones. It's a title. That's typically what people are referring to when they use that title

4. Also, I've literally played Minecraft and watched others play it on YouTube since it came out when I was like 10 years old. Again. I don't live under a rock. I've just put some distance between me and the creators because I keep hearing bad things. It's not that deep.