#also im not gonna put this into any tags

[eggsplice]

whyd you have to do all that man

[mercurymacaroons]

arrives 15 min late with a latte

......sup

[feelo-fick]

miscellaneous au doodles + a VERY self indulgent song lyric comic :D

+ extra evil comic below the cut :

"chil!" "don't look at me like that..."

[kkoct-ik]

i dont remember why i drew this

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[<==PREV PAGES] [NEXT PAGE==>(not out yet.wait a year.or maybe more.imagine.]

saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.

[sparrowchute]

Fetch! (+ a little bonus doodle under the cut!)

[citrusinicake]

Vitalasubzam Week 2024 1st day: Flowers / Symbolism

since this day is about flowers and symbolism ofc i went with hanahaki

notes:

dandelions indicating zam is p obvious -- after all thats what the guy uses himself -- but the fact that they, or more specifically their seeds, are tied to wish-granting adds a neat layer to it i think considering zam's symbol of being a star (in my interpretation) also ties in to wish-granting

this whole thing is based on zam going "subz can fix me," and while i didnt know how to portray it without making an entire comic which i didnt really wanna do, he actually doesnt want the flowers gone he just wants subz to stitch not just his chest close but also his mouth

i was originally gonna make the thread purple but decided to go with green

the x's, while supposed to be tied to the whole stitching theme going on, are red instead of green because of zam

i had trouble picking the bg color cause on one hand i wanted to make it dark but on the other hand i wanted the focus on subz despite the composition which would need a lighter color, in the end i chose the same white as zam's shirt cause i like that it made him look cut off

zam has no nipples cause his species (skyformes) are homunculi in my Minecraft LoreTM (he should also have way more scars than just his neck but i havent decided where to put them yet)

this was actually drawn right when i changed zam's design to have red teeth but it made making the dandelion seeds visible a nightmare so i decided to just keep them white in this drawing

[todayisafridaynight]

journalists underestimate the magnitude of my addiction and how far i'll go for the bit

[pigeon-butch]

I certainly have my own concerns about the treatment of moo deng but um. well i think some of you may just be racist

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

Yes! The ways the mechs and mcyt handle narrative have always been so similar to me but I've never been able to put it onto words. Would Love to hear what you have to say on the topic (after you have had a good sleep)

HI, it's time for me to get insane. Thank you for sending this ask cause now I have an excuse to maintag the post, lol. Also, I'm going to be using the term MCYT interchangeably with MCRP (Minecraft roleplay) for my own sanity. You'll know what I mean from context clues, I think.

So, hi, anyone who doesn't know about The Mechanisms. This post is going to be about some meta analysis tools that popped up in the Mechs fandom when it exploded in popularity back in 2020-2021. Due to the nature of both the Mechs and MCYT (which I'll get into in a moment), these concepts are generally very helpful for meta analysis of MCYT as well, and I think you guys would love them.

First of all, what was The Mechanisms?

The Mechanisms, originally known as Dr. Carmilla and The Mechanisms, was a band that formed in the late 2000s. It had a rotating cast of members, though most of the stuff you can easily find from them (such as their albums) was made when they had 8-9 consistent members. The Mechanisms officially released seven albums and one single before the band broke up in early 2020. The reason this band is similar at all to MCYT comes from a few things- the characters the band played, the stories the band told, and the archival aspect/age.

Because the Mechs were not a regular band, it was also a storytelling experience. Each Mechs album tells it's own self contained story (except for the Tales to be Told albums, which feature songs with their own stories that don't tie into the album at large). But furthermore, each Mechanism is a character. All the members of the band had characters they played, acting as a band of immortal space pirates moving through the galaxy on their ship, The Aurora.

The similarity to MCYT here is, of course, the characters. It's not always as simple to tell the difference between MCYT characters and actors as it was with The Mechanisms, seeing as (a lot of) MCYT doesn't start with the acting/roleplaying intention that the Mechs started with. But nonetheless, they share the understanding that even though this isn't a play or a TV show or whatever scripted medium, and that even though these characters (sometimes) share similar/the same names as their creators, they are, ultimately, characters the creators are putting on in order to tell a story. Whether that story is something more connected to the base characters (less roleplay heavy servers, Mechs backstory beats) or a story where the characters themselves are filling a role to tell a new story (more roleplay heavy servers, Mechs filling in for characters on the albums to tell their stories), there is always a story to be told.

There is also, as I said, the archival aspect. Archiving is massively important to both The Mechanisms and MCYT. It's definitely a lot harder with the Mechs than with most MCYT stuff, since the Mechs are a whole lot nicher, but that is not to say it's easy for either group. Archiving is vital to keeping both fanbases, and both sets of characters, alive, and there is only so much archiving you can rely on the creators of either to do. Those of you who take this task on are genuinely so awesome and I love you.

Alongside the archiving aspect (and as such, the lost media aspect), there's also the age of the Mechanisms, and (similarly to MCYT), the large number of people involved in the project, which results in lost and oftentimes conflicting canon beats. Mechs lore was not a strict, planned out thing. Large swaths of it were made up on the fly or forgotten down the line and rewritten or just made to work because the story needed it. As such, a lot of Mechanisms meta analysis had to reckon with the fact that the story was often telling you two or three or more things that could not be true at once nonetheless were, or was telling you something with the assumption that you knew something else, but that something else is now impossible to track down. So, sometimes, you just had to pick and choose, or try to reconstruct that lost knowledge. Similarly, varying POVs and gaps in time or gaps in story result in a similar concept for MCYT analysis- sometimes it doesn't really work if you take every piece of lore into account, so you just can't, even though every piece of lore is equally canon; or sometimes, a specific source is lost and you have to trust the memory of people who saw or were involved in the source instead.

Now, what is narratomancy? And how is it relevant to meta analysis of MCYT?

Narratomancy is the name for a few concepts of meta analysis that popped up when the Mechs fandom exploded in 2020-2021. The term was coined by @lucky-sevens (who, unlike anyone else I bring up in this post, I feel comfortable tagging because they're inactive, lol, so this won't clog their notifs), but the credit for various concepts under the umbrella of narratomancy can go to a ton of people. Personally, I'm going to be heavily referencing one post in particular by @/gunpowderedtim when it comes to the four main pillars of narratomancy, and how they are relevant here. (BTW I know OP of that post has shifted at least a bit to the MCYT fandom as well, so if you see this and would like me to tag you properly, please let me know!)

(EDIT: I was informed in the replies that lucky-sevens did not, in fact, coin this phrase, but they can't remember who specifically did. Alas another Mechs thing lost to time.)

Narratomancy refers to the general concept of the narrative as a thing within the Mechs universe. The narrative, a story that wants to be told, is an (at least semi) sentient creature that is bending the universe to its will in order to be told. This living narrative helps to explain and work through some of the problems or plot holes in the narrative, and understanding this helps a lot for meta analysis, or even just understanding the story. As stated above, I'm going to be breaking down four main pillars that the post above identified, and how they may be relevant to MCYT meta analysis. Not all of them are going to work- these were concepts made up for The Mechanisms, after all, and for all their similarities, it's not a perfect 1 to 1. Let's get into it!

Pillar 1: Universal Story

This is a pillar that has one really important and relevant concept, but I do have to bend a bit of it in order to make it work. Namely, what we're calling "the universe" here. But it's still quite important. You'll see.

As mentioned up top, The Mechanisms were originally called Dr. Carmilla and The Mechanisms. Dr. Carmilla (both the character and the creator) eventually left the Mechs to do her own thing, tell her own story, but the story of the universe at large is still hers. She's still got her name in the title, she's still the one who created the original lore, so to the universe, she's still the main character. She might not be the main character of any given story, even any given story she participates in, but it's all her universe in the end. As such, both her stories and the stories of The Mechanisms are canon, but they might not be strictly canon to each other. Because ultimately, The Mechanisms were the universe's vessel for telling stories, and sometimes the stories they told made for a weird concoction of conflicting canon, so you just had to accept that these conflicting canon beats were both canon, but which one was canon depended entirely on which story you were looking at, which one was trying to be told, who that story specifically was about (this is a concept that'll come up again later).

The reason this is a bit less relevant to MCYT in that, if a roleplay server is being well run, you (hopefully) won't have a main character in this way. And even if you do, that main character is not always going to be the creator of the server/universe, ala Carmilla. But again, it's not irrelevant, because I think this can be applied when you're looking at individual POVs of any given event or server.

Every character is the main character of their own POV, even if they might not be the main character of any given story beat or event. They have their own lore and story to tell in that POV, and when you sit down to watch their POV that is the story you'll get. It just so happens that said story might have things that are canon to it that are not canon to other POVs, that cannot be canon to other POVs, and you as the fan have to reckon with that. Sometimes these things might be small or not something that's gonna really throw you, like the conflicting Magic Mountain lore in this season of Hermitcraft. Other times, these might be really big things, like Martyn's Watcher lore in the Life Series.

But either way, while the idea that there is a Universal Story that has a clear main character doesn't really apply to servers, it certainly ties in to the idea of POVs. And furthermore, the "all of these stories are canon, but not strictly canon to each other" idea that comes along with Universal Story is a really vital thing to keep in mind when it comes to MCYT.

Pillar 2: Casting Call (Narrative Role Filling)

There are two main parts to Casting Call. The first is that The Mechanisms have a role in the stories they tell, even the stories that are not their own, like the album ones. These roles are often trope heavy, or based on pre-existing characters that the Mechanisms themselves have similarities too. The second is that the Mechanisms slot into these roles not necessarily because they want to, but because they have to in order to make the story work. Because the narrative wants them to help the story along to the ending.

This is definitely more relevant in roleplay heavy servers, but it still comes up on just about every server out there. While for the Mechanisms, the divide is between "the character I am" vs. "the character I am playing so the story gets told", the divide for MCYT tends to be a bit more "the person I am" vs. "the character I am playing so the story gets told". This divide (and people's inability to understand it) is the reason why MCYTs so often have to give the "Remember, we're all friends in real life and anything that the others weren't comfortable with wouldn't be in the videos" disclaimer. Everyone involved in this story is playing a character to move the story along, and that character may be totally removed from their real life person (such as Scott playing Xornoth in ESMP s1) or pretty similar to their real life person, but dialed up so they can tell a story, get a reaction (I don't know any of these people in real life, so I can't confidently pin someone down for this, but you get what I'm talking about).

Regardless, there is a story to be told, even if that story isn't thought out in advance, and that requires people playing the villain or the damsel in distress or the knight in shining armor sometimes in order to get it done. And, tying back into Universal Story, who is playing which of these roles can change as the canon of each POV changes (such as in Third Life, where who is filling the "villain" role depends entirely on which POV you're watching).

Pillar 3: Story Echoes

Story Echoes are a very Mechanisms based concept, because unlike everything else here, they are explicitly canon. This concept refers to the fact that The Mechanisms' stories "echo" throughout the universe, or repeat over and over again. It's in different places and different times, but these stories are out there, over and over again.

This one can apply to MCYT, but I have to admit, it's a stretch and a half. Ultimately, the way this applies here is in the fact that there's no such thing as an original story. Every story borrows from or is inspired by or is similar to another story out there. It's the nature of story telling. The first example for MCYT that comes to mind is fan Life Series, stories that take the mechanics of the Life Series but put them somewhere else, somewhen else, with someone else. However, Story Echoes are explicitly the same story repeating over and over again, which isn't really the case with this example. As I said, it's a stretch, but I didn't want to skip over this pillar entirely.

Pillar 4: Narrative Imperative

And the final pillar, Narrative Imperative, also referred to as Narrative Flow. Despite this one also being explicitly canon to The Mechanisms, it is also very relevant to MCYT, and in my opinion, the most important concept on this list for MCYT meta.

Narrative Imperative is explicitly canon in the Mechs universe when it comes to how The Mechanisms heal from injuries or death. As discussed in this post from the official Mechanisms tumblr, that healing factor functions at "whatever speed the story wants it to". This concept of "sometimes stuff just happens because it must for the story, even if it doesn't make sense or actively contradicts previously established canon" has been brought up before when we were discussing Universal Story, in respect to lore, to roleplay based story beats, for both groups. Here, it's more discussing a fact of the universe at large, a fact of how the Mechanisms function. And while the general concept of Narrative Imperative can be applied to literally any conflicting lore thing in any MCYT server or story (it's flexible in that way), I think it works best when talking about how game mechanics tie into the story.

What does death mean for this character? What does death mean for this character when on this specific server? What does death mean for this character on this specific server in this specific moment? What does logging off mean for this character, on this server, in this moment? What does voice mod or discord calls or chat mean to this character? What do skin changes mean? What does the Player Heads mod mean? What does sleep mean?

There are a million mechanics you can ask these questions about, and you can get a million different answers to each of them. Death can and does mean wildly different things on different servers (see: a Hardcore series like Naked and Afraid versus Hermitcraft). But it can also mean wildly different things on the same server to the same character at different points in time (see: the concept of "canon lives" on DSMP). Death, and numerous other game mechanics, mean whatever the hell the story (and the universe and creators involved) wants them to mean. You just have to take it in stride, the rules aren't clear because if they were, there wouldn't be enough freedom to tell a story.

Even on servers where it seems like the rules are clear, like the Life Series or other death games, death doesn't always mean what the rules say it does. Take glitch deaths, for example, like Loony's (almost) glitched death in season 1 of Deceit SMP. He glitched into a wall and should have died, but Legundo was allowed to cheat (use creative) to save him, or, had he died, been allowed to use cheats to bring him back, for fairness' sake. But this doesn't only apply to glitches- take one of Scar's off camera deaths in Third Life. I don't have the source for when Martyn talked about this on hand, but Martyn has mentioned that Scar technically died earlier in Third Life, when Martyn just snapped one day when Scar provoked him, killing Scar in a short, boring fight. There was nothing technically illegal or unfair about that kill, like with a glitched death, but when all was said and done, everyone agreed it just sort of... felt bad. That it didn't feel like a good story. So, the death was overturned, and the server went on as usual. The rules may have been clear here, but sometimes rules get in the way of a good story, so they're disregarded, simple as that.

MCYT stories are not being told in spite of their medium but in harmony with them. And as such, that means that sometimes, the narrative rules above all, and narrative imperative says that this mechanic is going to work like this, at least for now, at least for me. It might not ever work like that again, for me or for anyone else on the server, but it works like that in this moment, so you take it as is.

So, yeah, there's my essay! My final thoughts: Go listen to The Mechanisms. Go listen to Maki Yamazaki (Dr. Carmilla). I hope you enjoy these four concepts and keep them in mind when you are analyzing or playing the space of MCRP, because I think they are really helpful things to keep in mind. Have a good one.

[figofswords]

i know ive made myself the #1 izutsumi stan in the eyes of all of my friends and probably some of you online people but what if i became a mithrun stan. there is something about him that compels me. i just want to *clenches fist* put him on the drying rack. lovingly stick him into a tupperware for later. make him into. a broth of some sort. do you understand

[skitskatdacat63]

For @sansebastinae and @boisinnot, my fellow saint seb truthers :)

+ the usual

Yayyyy finished a drawing! Haha only took me...2 weeks. I kept going back and forth on whether I could finish it tonight, and I really wasn't going to. But then I looked at the unfinished version on a different screen and was like oh? Not too bad actually?? So I finished it :) First of all, ofc, here is the process. Kinda weird seeing it for smth like this, it makes me feel like I'm the painter in rennaisance au, not Mark dhjfkf

Ah I was gonna draw a silly renaissance au comic to accompany this(read: lighten the mood), but it's 5 am and I've still not really drafted it well, so! I'd like to finish it at some point bcs I wanna draw more chibi comics, but when I finish smth, I can't help but immediately want to post it, so part 2 will have to wait. I'll show you the outline though so you can at least imagine 😭

^ So many renaissance and beyond paintings of Saint Sebastian are always the most horny thing ever. Like pre/early rennaisance, yeah he was naked and all that, but they were pretty chaste, and uhhhhh suffering?? Well the newer paintings are suffering, but in a different way, if you know what I mean.

So I feel like Mark's the type to be overly pedantic about it, and refuses to make borderline porn of a saint, I mean, god forbid, Seb!!! But then he just. Does anyways. Because he can't control his lust for Seb even when drawing him half dead. I just imagine him holding the paintbrush in a death grip like "must not be horny. Must not draw him sexy. Must make him chaste." And then he ends up with the one seen above. Seb is all smug about it. "Wow you'd wanna fuck me even while I'm all bloody and dying? 🥺"

Mark: "oh I'll make you bloody, alright."

But god so funny to imagine Seb doing all these different slutty poses, like arching his back as much as possible, the cloth nearly falling off at all times, etc etc. And Mark finally lands on this pose bcs he hopes the suffering will outweigh the horny. It doesn't. Also Seb is genuinely serious once he actually gets into the pose, focus mode on. And honestly that's even worse for Mark, bcs it's so much more arousing to see Seb in his element, focused. Tbf I think Seb could be drinking water, and Mark would still find some way to sexualize it. Don't look at his sketches!! They're just filled with Seb doing all kinds of random activities.

Also! Here is the painting I referenced this off of, must give credit where credit is due ofc

The Dying St. Sebastian by François Fabre

Also this isn't really relevant in the context of this drawing specifically. But I looked thru a bunch of Saint Sebastian paintings while trying to find one I could reference, and I came across this middle ages one that actually looks so much like boy king seb 😭 I guess it really is meant to be!

St Sebastian between St Roch and St Peter by Pietro Perugino

Lmao but do you see the difference between early rennaisance and later work???

[triglycercule]

it must get boring as hell doing continuous repetitive genos like dust does. he probably constantly questions how his human can keep on going and like not get bored (me too tho ngl because what type of person is out there that's trying to minmax every single undertale geno route interaction???) so i say he changes things up during his own process for a variety of reasons

sometimes when he's feeling REALLY apathetic he might just view everyone as stats and precoded scripts and lines and he just goes about the geno as if he was a player playing a video game (this is incredibly hypocritical because he's acting like the player but also this is dust sans we're talking about. pinnacle of hypocrisy. he'd deny any sort of human like actions because he's not the human and what he's doing is for the greater good). also its kinda fucked because it just means that there's been so many resets that he doesn't view his friends and family as simply people that he's taking the lives of but more as just npcs and numbers. but yk of course he moves on from that episode (and refuses to acknowledge the fact that he was acting very much so like the human. nope nope nope)

or maybe whenever he feels really really really shitty about himself he just lets the human kill him sometimes. he purposely interacts with other monsters before he kills them so he has to hear them beg for mercy. he just lets himself wallow in as much guilt and pain and misery as possible because its really really addicting to be sad and upset and feel bad. and dust is never like "hey i should stop doing this because its getting in the way of be killing the human" because he knows damn well it ISNT. he's still gonna be on that him vs. human grind no matter what even if he spends a few resets fucking around and being miserable and the humans always gonna reset anyways. ALWAYS

even if he's not at lvl 20 or something but still above the human in lv then maybe he'd kill them. but then that also means that there'd still be some monsters left because he nor the human maxed out their stats. so then that's just more suffering for dust (because i really think he'd like to make himself suffer because he feels so much guilt for what he did. his suffering is self inflicted and he knows that and still does it. good for him) because he has to walk around the underground knowing that there are some people hiding in corner or something watching him and scared that he's gonna kill them because thats what he did to everyone else. some nicer monsters might go up to him and try to talk to him but dust doesn't have the chill welcoming friendly vibe sans does anymore so it's just creepy and awkward. angrier monsters might try and yell or fight him and dust just sits there and takes it because theyr totally right. to them it might just look like he killed monsters just for shits and giggles one day and theres no way for him to explain the resets without people just forgetting it in the first place so theres not much he can do except accept the suffering. what in the mental masochism

[shadeofazmeinya]

I’ve been much too busy with real life stuff to really comment about RT closing down. But I do just want to take a moment to seriously thank the fandom over the years, especially the AH fandom that was so kind to me and my writing in the past. To everyone who ever left a nice comment on a fic or a nice note in the reblogs, thank you. To everyone who ever shared their work, thank you. I will forever miss the joy and creativity of the fandom coming up with aus and whole worlds, working together on creative projects, cheering each other on when creative works got noticed. I met so many amazing people and made so many friends through RT and for that I am very grateful. I wish the best for every RT employee in finding a way forward and up from here. And to finding friends in the fandom again along the way

[theswordwizard]

I don't think matt being a priest is hot

[oceanwithouthermoon]

i think its weird that i have to make this disclaimer but the internet is crazy so wtvr,, anyway,,

if i say i dont like something, that doesnt mean "that thing is bad and nobody should post it.."

i swear literally every time i even mention that i dislike something, people will go "wow does that mean u fucking hate me cuz i post that thing? ur a fucking stupid bitch and all ur opinions r wrong" LIKE ?? er.. no. just because i say i dont like certain characterizations of certain characters (the saiki k fandom is CRAZY about this cuz i can state an opinion on literally any character and a group of people will still go 'well only we're allowed to post our opinions about them because we're always right!1!1!'), or certain ship tropes (mentioned my hatred of toxic yaoi maybe once or twice on here months ago and people STILL get mad at me as if i said toxic yaoi lovers r evil or something), or certain ships, or WHATEVER, does not mean that i HATE the people who are posting them or that i think they shouldnt post them at all, NO, im just posting about my personal tastes on my personal blog and it would be extremely weird and hypocritical if i decided that i was the ONLY person that was allowed to do that,,

i think the only reason people assume that is because there are a lot of other people on here who ARE like that, and a lot of people toe the line between posting that they dont like something and posting that they think everyone who likes that thing is stupid, annoying, and wrong,, so i guess all i can say is, sorry for whatever made you make these assumptions but they arent true about me so plz leave me alone ʘ‿ʘ ur doing the same thing to me that ur accusing me of but i didnt do it in the first place so ur just actively being a dick for no reason