#I just don't have the time to write the zombiecleo fic even if I do have a killer (ha) title for it

[furrysmp]

ok but I really don't have time to write/draw a zombie apocalypse au featuring main character zombiecleo can I delegate this one

[hermitcraftx]

I agree with your post about hermit fans in regard to things being very popular. I’ve seen more people being angry and annoyed about scarian in the last six months than people celebrating it. Not tagging shipping is shit but it’s better than harassing people. I don’t know what was put in the water but something changed drastically and I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s seen it.

IT'S FUCKING INSANE! This fandom used to be so positive and welcoming and overall way more pleasant than some... other MCYT fandoms, but now??? I can't log on without seeing untagged negative interpretations in the main tags, can't express an opinion without getting anons calling me heterosexual sympathizers and hoping that I die, everyone has turned their back on everything that used to make this fandom really... fun? Like, I don't tag ON MY BLOG, but usually I don't maintag my shipping posts, and if I do, I tag the ship name so people can filter it.... I don't maintag duo names. What the fuck happened to make everyone so- miserable. Anons are probably going to be permanently off for me, too many people comfortable with their opinions and not comfortable with mine and desperately needing to tell me that.

And like- look. I get not liking interpretations. Personally I'm not a fan of the Double Life cheating arc because of how abusive and out of character people made Grian be, and I had to avoid ao3 for a bit because of that and filter the fucking tags. Same thing with found family dynamics. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it "overrated and popular" and just because you don't like something doesn't make it immoral or unethical either!!! People have to make everything a moral standpoint nowadays and it's really exhausting-

But that's a tirade. All over all the confessions blogs there's "scarian is overrated" despite Grian having nearly 10mil subscribers and most of them being on YouTube and considering all the hermits friends or family truthing them. Yes, there is more shipping than before- that's because Hermitcraft season 8 made it very obvious that the people on the SMP and the people IRL are very different, and it's no longer considered RPF. None of the real hermits died via moon explosion, ZombieCleo often says she's doing "lore", they make different skins, even GRIAN acknowledges that he's acting and playing a part with the permit office. Despite all that, there's STILL wars on shipping and people insisting that we're shipping real people, I fought this war on the DSMP side of things and it's SO TIRING.

DND podcast listeners, do you ship the people playing the characters? NO!!!!! Unless you do, in which case, have fun with that. I don't really care about RPF and I filtered the tags for it a long time ago, so maybe they do do that.

Every other day I see "Third life is overrated" "Last life is overrated" (LAST LIFE IS OFTEN THE LEAST FAVORITE SEASON I SEE PEOPLE SAY!), "the life series is overrated" "the cactus ring is fucking stupid" "they left the desert but we didn't" "no, THIS interpretation of scarian is bad and wrong" and like... guys. Guys. Fandom is supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to be a full time job. It is not supposed to be moral or ethical and you shouldn't feel the need to police shit. Jesus Christ, every other month there's a new fad that tumblr users flock to and once it's over everyone goes "EWWW THAT WAS LAME AND OVERRATED AND I NEVER LIKED IT ANYWAY" like.... I promise you cannibalism as an allegory for love is not mainstream you are just on Tumblr.

Like Good God. If it's so bad here go to Twitter. I'm sick of all the complaining and misery and hatred and I miss when things were fun- people are so scared of being cliche that they don't want to write things that they enjoy. Where are the coffee shop aus???? Where are the fun silly things??? Where are the 100k grimdark fics with worldbuilding??? Wheres the 500k fics that aren't even about the same characters anymore but that we love just the same??? Where are the forums and people talking to each other in comments and meeting each other that way??? Where are the roleplay servers?????? What are you all doing??????

People are scared of being judged. They want to do what everyone else is doing. They don't want to be cringe or cliche and every day I see a "cringe culture is dead" post and then someone making fun of another part of fandom, an antithesis to their previous statement. They don't want to be late to things, either. Who cares if Last Life was a couple years ago? Draw the fanart anyway!

I'm scared. Maybe I'm just old, but every post I see I notice that I get maybe a 10th in reblogs of what I do in likes, and I don't even post my art or fics to this site. Every post is like that. More and more people only like posts and they die, unseen, by everyone. More and more people misuse archive of our own's functions, treating it like it has some algorithm, when it doesn't, and it never has and hopefully never will. I see fic reuploads to "gain traction" (not how it works) and people reaching out to find RP partners (breaking TOS) and all sorts of other shit on both sites and it fucking horrifies me. I'm not even that old- I'm eighteen, and I can already tell how fandom has changed for the worst for everyone. Fandom used to be a community. Not consumption.

It's just... sad. Old fandom had PLENTY of fucking problems, and we have problems here too, but at least the positives outweighed the negatives. It's so... mean here, now. Even the happy things are mean-spirited. People treat it as if certain people have invaded this fandom space, spreading horrible opinions and ruining it for everyone, but the truth is is that shipping is always going to be a thing. It's a foundation of fandom- fandom started with housewives in the 1950s writing Star Trek fanfiction. You can never get rid of shipping. You can just interact with what you want to interact with and leave others to mind their own business.

[antimony-medusa]

Looking for a Pinch Hit

Okay so, I have been enthusiastically participating in Fic in a Box (that 10k exchange I was posting about in September), and there is one pinch hit that's been lingering because it's a 3rd Life or Hermitcraft one, and well, most of the normal people who pick up pinch hits in multifandom exchanges don't follow MCYT! (There was a hilarious thing where someone was like "okay, if I wanted to pick up a SMP for pinch hits, where would I start", and like three of us came brakes squealing into the chat like OH BOY OKAY SO UH SO HAHAH— DSMP IS LOST MEDIA BUT MAYBE HERMITCRAFT? HOW MANY HOURS DO YOU HAVE TO DEVOTE TO PICKING UP THE CANON? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE GOOD TIMES WITH SCAR.)

Anyways I digress. There is this one pinch hit that I can't fill, because I don't write 3rd life or Hermitcraft. Someone wants either

3rd life:

Solo: ZombieCleo (Life SMP Series)

ZombieCleo & EthosLab (Life SMP Series)

ZombieCleo & EthosLab & BdoubleO100 (Life SMP Series)

ZombieCleo & Smajor1995 (Life SMP Series)

Solo: The Clockers (Life SMP Series)

Or Hermitcraft:

Solo: ZombieCleo (Hermitcraft)

Solo: Ethoslab (Hermitcraft)

GeminiTay & ZombieCleo (Hermitcraft)

And I KNOW that some of you are zombie cleo mains. I am looking at you so pleadingly. You can see more information about the person's requests here. (they like time loops! betrayal! strong friendships! emotional hurt/comfort!)

The thing that is keeping this one from being picked up, aside from the fact that the main mcyt writers were pinch hitting other things and/or don't write clockers, is the fact that we need 6k to fully cover the pinch hit. So I think people have been scared away.

BUT. You can pick up a pinch it in 1k increments, so like, if someone picked up 1k, and someone else was like "okay I have the weekend" and picked up 2k, and someone ELSE pounded back two monsters and picked up 3k, we'd have this person covered.

If some of you want to save somebody's exchange and pinch hit this one, you can comment on the post here or email the mods at ficinaboxmod@gmail.com. Or just appear in my messages and I'll walk you through it. Potentially you can talk about extended timelines with the mods, even!

(I have been looking at this pinch hit and clawing at the walls for like three weeks because the fact that it's still 6k means this person wrote at least 6k and delivered it, cause they'll only put a pinch hit up based on what you delivered, but the fact that this person only requested two fandoms means they won't hold the exchange for them, so possibly they will give their gift and then they just won't get anything. So. If I have any Zombie Cleo fans in the audience, I am looking at you with the most pleading eyes. I'm pinch hitting another fandom tonight, come, join me in sitting down and going absolutely bonkers in a word document this evening.)

[pixelfun20]

for the trope grading thing: yes i'll bite grade hermit!tommy

Oh boy here we go. So many issues.

TL;DR, Hermit!Tommy is a solid grade F for me. I see why people like it, but as a Hermit main who's followed the DSMP since August 2020, I find it generally harmful to the Hermitcraft fandom and unfaithful to c!Tommy.

Disclaimer: While I was in the DSMP fandom for around half a year, I have not considered myself part of the fandom since June. I personally have never been a fan of c!Tommy, but I talked to people who are in writing this so hopefully the bias isn't too pronounced. I've been watching Hermitcraft since March 2020, right around the start of season 7. While this will be critical of the Hermit!Tommy trope, I don’t intend it to be negative. If you like it, good for you! Write what you love! These are just the reasons I don't.

For those of you who want my full breakdown of the trope, brave the read more below.

Initially, I was actually really open to the idea of the Hermit!Tommy trope. The first big fics to start this up began around the time of Exile, and as someone who personally really didn't like that arc, I was more than ready for something that wasn't angst-centered. I followed a few fics with this trope for a while, the longest for 2 months-ish before I dropped it and started avoiding it.

Why? Well for one, a lot of these fics seem to come from people who are DSMP mains and only know cursory information about Hermitcraft. Nothing wrong with that, have fun with it, but as someone who is a Hermit main, it rubbed me the wrong way. Hermitcraft would be portrayed as this utopia where everybody got along and had perfect coping techniques and would drop everything to help this random dude who dropped in their server.

Which, um, this would not happen. Hermitcraft is chaotic. They are certainly healthier than the DSMP, but that's a low bar. ZombieCleo held a game where people hunted for each other's heads. The Turf war and Mayor race were whole things. C!Docm77 would not trust a random teenager on his server as far as he could throw him. Above all, Hermitcraft is private. Getting in requires not only getting sponsored by an existing Hermit, but the unanimous consent of every member of the server. Random teenagers don't mix in well, traumatized or not. (Also, they would not tolerate swearing).

Secondly, the characters of the Hermits often are twisted to center almost entirely around Tommy. It got to the point where a friend and I made a parody of the Sexy Lamp Test, the Generic Father Figure Test. If a Hermit can be replaced with any other Generic Father Figure (Phil, Wilbur, Batman, etc), they fail the test. The Hermits would not all simultaneously adopt Tommy for reasons explained above. While I can very much see them worry and provide help where needed, it would not be the whole server and it would not be at the level of parent/child.

For my last point, we'll talk about Tommy. Like I said before, though, I'm biased against Tommy, so I found a friend who rather likes him, and got their opinion, so these are their points below:

1) Infantilization: "When I hit rock bottom, I need support, not someone to smother me or shove me onto a healing arc. A lot of fics treat Tommy's like he's incapable."

2) Stubbornness: "Tommy's so fucking stubborn he refuses to accept help. It results in a lot of fics having a constant cycle of tommy refusing to get healed and fleeing while the hermits try to force it."

3) Fanfic Therapy: "The one hermit tommy story I like was good bc it wasn't forced, he just came around bit by bit. Most fics don't do that."

Anyways, that's my rant grading of Hermit!Tommy. If you like it, I really don't begrudge you of it. I’m sure there are fics out there that are great and might not even fall into my criticisms listed here. At the end of the day, you can choose how you want to characterize the Hermits and Tommy, and for a lot of people, including me at one point, it was/is loved mostly for the angsty, hurt/comfort vibes. Which is valid. It's just... not for me. At all.