#and I was friends with some semi popular creators

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hey there sex witch! This one might be a little bit out of your wheelhouse, but I don't really have anyone else to ask 😅 and this seems mostly relevant to what you talk about.

So recently I (a very shy person for a long time) have gotten pretty active in some fandom discord communities, and I've been making a ton of friends. Which is great because I used to have social anxiety to the point where I could barely talk to people, especially online. The problem is that my new friends are all VERY horny, all the time. Which, great for them, I don't really feel the same way. They're also very interested in ERP and other varieties of e-sex and often ask if I want to join. I really don't, but it's fine that they're into that. One guy in particular is really starting to freak me out though. He's a semi-popular creator and a mod on one of the servers. He's becoming a pretty good friend of mine and I play online games with him and others a bunch. He, like the rest of the crowd, is also very horny all the time. He often makes sexual comments about me, sometimes very graphic ones. Stuff like telling me to take my clothes off IRL while on call with him or saying stuff like "I want to fuck you until you cry" or just dming me asking if I want to have sex with him. Sometimes he notices that his comments make me uncomfortable and he did reach out to sincerely apologize for it once, but he hasn't changed his behavior a whole lot.

The big thing that worries me about him is the fact that he's 28. I'm 18, just graduated high school. He knows this about me. He does a very good job of keeping his server 18+ and would never make a sexual comment about a minor, but is still comfortable doing sexual things with people ten years younger than him. Another thing is that even though I've told him I already have a boyfriend, he assumes I'm in an open relationship even though I never told him I was. My boyfriend also says this guy kinda freaks him out and that he's a little worried about me.

I know that age gaps between older people can be perfectly healthy and problems arising from them vary pretty heavily from person to person, but I'm not entirely sure if this is ok or not. This guy doesn't want to hurt anyone. Have I probably just not properly expressed my boundaries with him? It's not like he's targeting me or anything, he acts this way with basically everyone. I'm torn on what to do, he's still my friend and I like him otherwise. Should I just keep laughing it off? I am uncomfortable but I guess it's not a huge deal to me. Should I stop talking to this guy?? Help??

🐟🐟 So I can find this quickly if/when you answer it

hi 🐟🐟,

this guy fucking sucks and needs to be banned from interacting with maybe anyone until he learns what "no" means. literally every individual thing you've described him doing would be alarming in it's own, but altogether this man is a walking collection of red flags. this is not your friend and this is not a guy who cares about your boundaries or well-being; this is a man using his fandom clout to sexually harass you (and likely others). him being ten years older than you isn't even really the biggest issue here; all of this would be shithead behavior even if you were exactly the same age.

get out of there, double fish.

[marvelmaniac715]

The Lords in Black and Webby as content creators (they’re still siblings and they perhaps all lived in one Content House):

Wiggly:

Wiggly is your standard Big YouTuber - think Pewdiepie or MrBeast without the philanthropy. He’s gotten into feuds with EVERYONE and is highly controversial, his fans are mostly Dude Bros who excuse his actions because “Wiggly’s based, dude”. Nobody can quite figure out how he got so popular but any attempts to get his accounts deleted were stopped in their tracks by his loyal fans. He plays a lot of video games.

Pokey:

He’s a cover artist who has a Rachel Berry sized ego. He thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread, and is actually better than that because bread can’t sing. He’s been booked as the opening act for a few bands so that inflated his god complex, but really he’s semi-average at best, the guy with a guitar at a party who’ll say “Anyway, here’s Wonder Wall”. He doesn’t have as many fans because although he’s proud of his voice he doesn’t like being seen, so he always has an avatar on screen to sing through (see what I did there?) alas, he is quite the elusive figure and he’s only ‘famous’ because of his family.

Tinky:

He’s the wacky, zany challenge guy who tries to break world records or play pranks on his siblings, he’s done at least twenty “Calling _blank_ at 3 am” videos and a lot of them are centred around FNAF. He also posts conspiracy theories and has been cancelled numerous times for stalking smaller YouTubers such as the Alpha Male influencer Ted Spankoffski. He’s rarely featured in his family’s videos for many reasons.

Blinky:

Blinky is a commentary YouTuber who reacts to various movies and tv shows. He’s famous in his own right because he picks up on small details in what he watches and is scarily good at figuring out where the plot is going - his viewers have an ongoing challenge amongst themselves to try and make him watch something that he can’t work out the ending of, but they haven’t been successful yet. Overall Blinky is pretty chill, he doesn’t get into controversies and he’s decent enough to anyone he interacts with - he’s genuinely nice to his fans and is a bit confused as to why his videos blew up.

Nibbly:

A Mukbang YouTuber as well as a chef and beauty influencer (on the side). He is just the sweetest ray of sunshine, with his signature bright smile and sign-off of “Remember, friends, spread kindness throughout the world, because we deserve more smiles!” He’s overlooked by his brothers when it comes to making content but he doesn’t mind; people are drawn to his enthusiasm and he’s one of the most popular brothers alongside Blinky because of the chill vibes he emanates - he’s the only one who’ll collaborate with Webby.

Webby:

Webby was kicked out of the Content House in disgrace when she spoke out against Wiggly’s cruel behaviour. She mostly dances but she also does song covers and fashion videos - a lot of her fans see her as an older sister because her videos are very informal, like you’re talking to your best friend over the phone. She also raises awareness for social issues and has launched several successful fundraising campaigns to help as many people as possible. Some people call her the Guardian Angel of YouTube.

[drdemonprince]

This is prompted by your most recent substack about fame, because my point is extremely tangential, I'm putting it here.

It's interesting to have seen the internet go through many stages. From the newsgroups/BBS era, to internet forums, to blogs, to social media, and how the respective environments shaped things.

In the early days, it's very much a group thing, some people became Big Name posters, pseudonymous, but still a group thing. The blog era was more personal, but still something made by someone who's just a person, even if not literally pseudonymous. Also, still text based, a lot of it even often. Social media changed that, with it's focus on follower counts on one hand and to snippets of text (twitter) or images (insta), and even though it's social media-ness is debatable, video (insta, youtube). The semi-anonymous nature however, was completely lost by now.

The doing it because you enjoyed it, or whatever, also recedes into the background because this is where monetization really takes off. The deleterious effects of the interaction between monetization and follower counts (notability) need no introduction, but painting with broad strokes, make something appeal as broad as possible deepens the flattening effect a medium like video already has, the visual aspects often being more important than the messages. It also has a much higher barrier to entry. Spinning up your own blog is cheap, text takes only a tiny amount data. Video is not. It's expensive to make (especially if you want slick videos), expensive to serve, so it's predisposed to big, single platforms that can leverage economies of scale.

The natural result is that you have a few people with big audiences, instead of many people with small audiences. If audiences is even the right word for that. If I'm talking about say, some TV show on my blog, and someone responds, it's a fairly equal conversation. More between peers, of sorts, just two people talking about something they share. As opposed to a Youtuber who makes a video about it with 100,000s of viewers. Because there are so many fewer voices, you lose the breadth of conversation too, narrowing to a small range of popular topics, and the distinction between You, and You as Your Brand gets eroded.

It's kinda notable in the autism sphere. Blogs where people talk about their experiences, how they dealt or didn't deal with things, have fallen off. Twitter came and went, and now there's Youtube and insta, where everything gets simplified down to a few slides or a 10 minute video about only the most basic aspects. Which is just... sad. I wouldn't have known that autistic burnout is a Thing many people struggle with if not for a blog post a friend came across and shared one day.

There was a comment from someone, a while ago, about how they used to have ASMR videos on, until they were able to get out into nature, and their desire for those videos completely disappeared. We're all very deprived. Of social contact, foremost. The pandemic poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire I feel. Latching onto someone 'famous' in a surrogate of social contact & context, like that person with their ASMR videos, feels like an understandable (though not good) outcome of that, which brings with it very regrettable excesses.

I think this is all pretty much a correct analysis, thank you! Though I would qualify that we have shifted away from the period of the Youtube mega content creator a social media ecosystem of intimate-seeming connections with smaller influencers, these days. Think of your Twitch streamers with a dedicated base of like 50-200 viewers per stream (and a Discord and a Patreon that supports them), the fitness Instagrams that sell meal plans online, the tarot witches and activist influencers offering one on one sessions, etc. Those communities can be more niche, but they still offer the illusion of a connection -- and if anything, that illusion is more strong because the creator is a "micro" famous person, and can take time to interact closely with fans here and there. We might already be heading out of that period of social media, though, especially with the disintegration of Twitter and the slow death of Meta's apps, too. I don't know what comes next but I hope we are due for a reappraisal of all of this, and the norms surrounding it.

[what-have-i-unleashed]

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT!

I want hmmm let me think... your most lukewarm thoughts about popular ships like cream, errorink, killermare, etc.

Do you think they would be popular if they were created nowadays?

yeah, i think they'd still be popular. i'm not super insular because i also lurked on twitter and especially asian fandoms (mostly east asia - they tend to use twitter a lot. i refuse to touch facebook or vk for other asian fandoms, but i know they're mostly active there).

cream, errink, and killermare are crazy popular in east asian fandoms you cannot fathom it lol. tbf asian fandoms tend to be... "traditional" (idk if that is the correct word to describe them). what i mean is that they're very loyal to old concepts, especially if creators are vocally supportive of a ship. errorink is supported by both creators (in a "they'd be friends" kinda way). cream also falls under that. and killermare... i'd say it's a popular dark ship of killer - same reason why kist is also semi-popular (though not as popular as dustard, which is supported by one of the dusttale creators).

as for my own opinions on the ships themselves, i'm pretty neutral about them tbh. afaik, none of the original creators of the characters personally condemned or asked people not to ship these characters together, so that's a good thing in my books for these ships.

cream is, at least to me, kinda overdone, though i'd say it's one of my top ships for cross honestly, though i'd personally prefer crink since their divorce arc is just too funny.

errorink is a classic. i don't actively seek out content for them, but i appreciate it. same with afterdeath honestly.

killermare... hmm yeah i'm neutral about it. the interpretations are wildly different depending on who's handling it. it's also not a ship i actively seek out, but there have been some good content i've come across sparingly that really changed my brain chemistry about them lol. personally, i'd prefer them to be "shippy" (homoerotic tension that is) rather than an established/endgame ship. it's the same for me with driller truly. idk, but i think dream and nightmare seem more interesting as concepts to me than characters? it's more interesting when they represent something in the story than when they're the focus themselves. just my two cents.

[deathbydarkelves]

I went to the bookstore yesterday and spent some time picking out semi-random fantasy books to read their first few lines or pages. And I was baffled by how few attempted to describe a place. Any specific place. So many started with characters talking in a blank white room, or characters musing about their own backstories in a similarly blank white room.

These weren’t your dime-a-dozen “romantasy” books, I was actually looking for something to seriously read. It’s been sad ages since I found a fantasy book that really truly sucked me in and teleported me someplace else.

No, these were books describing themselves as adventure stories. Or just a story which heavily involved its world. And yet maybe two of the dozen or more books I looked at actually tried to describe a place.

I described this experience to a friend and he said it may be a side effect of fantasy becoming a more popular genre recently. More books means there’ll be more shitty books. Fine, that makes sense. But I just… I can’t fathom approaching a fantasy story with the mindset that the world and place is secondary. Fantasy is about being someplace else. And these are pieces of original fiction. The authors had to come up with names and borders and landmarks. And then they don’t want to explore any of it? They don’t want to describe in loving prose how the river just paces from the town's stockade flows from the western mountains and glints gold under the rising autumn sun? I guess not, because they just open with dialogue and two characters existing… somewhere, in a blank room, and halfway through the first conversation the narrator gets distracted and starts explaining the last hundred years of history. Which have no direct relation to whatever is supposed to be happening.

The books I read and loved as a kid — Deltora Quest, The Inheritance Cycle, How to Train Your Dragon — those all took time to describe their worlds and place me and the characters within them. That’s what fantasy is. Hell that’s what WRITING is.

You don’t need a degree in geography and meteorology and archaeology and linguistics to build your world. You don’t even necessarily need to write the past hundred years of history. I respect the desire to write a character-centric story. But for fuck’s sake, put us somewhere.

Genuinely I cannot imagine caring so little about your characters and your readers that you can’t be bothered to put soft, rain-damp soil under their feet. Or hard-packed dirt in the market square marked with hoof prints. Or snow crusted over from yesterday’s warmth.

The Lord of the Rings wasn’t and isn’t such a big deal just because it was set in a fantasy land with elves and dwarves. It’s because there were incomprehensible amounts of love and care put into the world, and then into describing it. It's a story not just about its characters but about its world. Even just watching the movies you can see how much love was put into the world and how badly the creators wanted to show it to us. Earthsea and, stepping away from books, Critical Role are so good because there was love put into their worlds, and then the creators did everything in their power to show us those worlds. Have you listened to some of Mercer's environmental descriptions?

It’s not enough to come up with place names and list them off when relevant (or when they’re not). It’s the difference between reading about another country in a tourism book and actually going there.

Why bother writing someplace else if you don’t at least attempt to take us there?

It’s a goddamn shame. All this time I've been book-less, I thought my standards were just unnecessarily high and that I was misremembering how good the books of my childhood were. But no. No I think there actually is an issue where people think fantasy is just the presence of elves and wizards and maybe dwarves or dragons. From the fucking start fantasy has been about other worlds. You don’t have to try and write the next Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire but put some damn love into your work. Show your characters and your readers some damn love and put them somewhere.

Put us in a low-ceilinged tavern where shadows cling to the corners as thick as cobwebs. Describe the bounty hunter not just by her outfit, but by the way the fog is still clinging to her fur mantle as dew as she walks inside.

If you want to get better at writing it’s best to read, but at LEAST watch The Fellowship of the Ring or play Skyrim or something. Take a walk in your closest nature reserve/park. Put yourself somewhere else. Take in the sunlight filtering dappled through the whispering leaves, feel the earth under your feet and the air in your throat and lungs. Look up and watch wispy clouds float across the sky through a gap in the trees, birds darting from branch to branch below them. Stay there until that sweetens into an ache in your chest as you realize you will never bring anyone else into this exact place and moment. And then go home, open your manuscript, and try your absolute damnedest to do it anyway.

[xdreamie]

socialblade doesn't lie, and while george has lost some followers across all his accounts, it's really not that many in the grand scheme of things. punz lost more, proportionally speaking, even hannah had a day where she dropped like 1.5k followers on twitch this week. those losses will hurt those two a LOT more than george's # drop since he still has millions more than them. the other ccs and companies dropping him would no doubt come running back if he makes content and still pulls numbers in the future - they can say this is about supporting victims, but $$ is ultimately what they all care about most. unfortunately i think the business side of this backlash is a side effect of the lack of regular content over the past year(s)... these agencies and other ccs (minus his actual friends) will not stick their neck out for a creator who isn't generating income for them, it sucks and is one of the more shitty an unethical aspects of this whole situation but i do think that's part of why gnf is getting dropped from things. it's much easier to drop a semi inactive cc than one who is regularly putting out content/collaborating with others/etc. but the good news there is that it means it's all very reversible, and across yt and twitch we've all seen other ccs come back from much worse. i hope george takes a good long break from everything (esp twitter, bc everyone is being very normal about all this literally everywhere else) for his mental health, and not the kind of break where he's just procrastinating work, but the kind where he disconnects entirely. and maybe spends some time with family (+ dream) and really takes some time to heal before having a jschlatt like comeback... maybe a controversial statement, but love him or hate him, he DID come back from being canceled and widely hated online, plus nearly having a mental breakdown/quitting being a cc entirely, to now having a successful podcast with his best friend and regularly showing up in videos with some of the biggest creators on youtube. i'd love that so much for george

^ yeah this. i do hope if he doesn’t choose to take a break that he starts grinding out content which hopefully dreams project will help with that! i honestly didn’t know schlatt ever left i thought he just stayed popular so like 😭

[crewfu]

Hi ! I'm new around here, do you or anyone else have a crewfu primer to get to know the main people a bit more? Thank you! Xo

this is a big ask but i will do my best:

So we will start with “Crewfu” itself. I think the more used/accepted name for the group is the Morning Lobby. They are a group of streamers/content creators that met through playing Among Us. I'm not 100% on the start date but it was some time in Oct/Nov 2020 - April/May 2021. They had a reunion in June 2022 and continue to play Among Us every Wednesday since. I'll write a short synopsis for each current regular but the otv and friends wiki has a great list of the people who played in the morning lobbies. I also included some links to clips of some of the streamers that I really like.

Crewfu vods/videos I would recommend:

Crewfu panel at twitchcon 2022 edited / full vod

Crewfu plays pico park edited: hafu Dumbdog / full vod (steve)

Hafu’s birthday stream full vod

Hafu: She is the crew’s Mom. She set up the original morning lobbies daily for months. She’s a legend in the gaming community and has been streaming/playing games competitively for over 10 years. Choose any competitive game over this time period and Hafu has probably mastered it. She is married to another streamer called dogdog and they live in Las Vegas with their dog Jubbs.

dakotaz (dk): One of the og members of the morning lobby. He helped set up the lobbies with Hafu at the start due to the frustration of trying to find and play in lobbies at the height of Among Us popularity. Currently streams Fortnite almost daily. He has an alt stream where he sometimes streams Among Us and Valorant and any other games he feels like. He hits those, he's in his 30s, and he's petty all the time. He briefly lived in Vegas but he is a true Florida man and moved back after a short time.

5up: His twitter bio says “rank 1 among us player” He was a rival to Hafu in the og lobbies and was known for his big brain Among Us plays. He also acted as the substitute teacher during the original lobby run and held things together after hafu stopped playing among us in 2021. He commissioned a team to create a custom Among Us map called the submarine map. He plays a lot of competitive games currently like League of Legends, Valorant, TFT as well as MCC. He also travels a lot and he has a lot of friends in many different streaming circles like OTV&F, the minecraft community, etc.

stevesuptic: He was “poached” from a ChilledChaos lobby where he met Hafu and Dumbdog for the first time. He impressed Hafu with not only how funny he was but also with how bad he was at the game. He makes and produces his own music under the artist name "SUGR?" He's been a part of too many youtube channels to list but is probably most well known for Sugar Pine 7. He currently streams valorant and variety content pretty much daily. In May of 2023 he announced that he is roommates with Janet/xChocoBars, another member of the Morning Lobby. In July 2023 he got his own kitten named Olympus or Oly for short.

DumbDog: Despite his name he is generally known for being good at most games. He met Hafu through NorthernLion on the NLSS. He was a semi-regular participant in the original morning lobbies but I think he’s the only person who has been in every single lobby since the reunion. He recently bought a house and adopted a cute husky puppy named Artemis or Artie for short. He is a frequent member of the variety lobbies and plays with Steve and their group almost daily. He is a furry and as part of a sub goal he commissioned a fursuit and it was finished this year. 

xChocoBars or Janet- She is a Canadian variety streamer and a regular in both current and original lobbies.  She plays lots of group games with friends and is often addicted to certain games like APEX and TFT and streams them a lot. She has 2 cats named Hazel and Baton and recently became roommates with Steve.

Angelskimi or Kimi (formerly known as plushys): She is an ASMR artist who was a regular in the og lobbies and plays almost weekly now. She is a pretty irregular streamer but does upload on her ASMR youtube channel weekly. Despite her claims of being “so angel” she is an innuendo queen. She lives in LA with her dog Pix and her cat Snowball.

Ellum: He is one half of daft and dafter with Koji being the other half. He is one of the regulars from the UK. He calls himself the smoothest brain on twitch which may or may not be true. He streams variety games on most weekdays. He lives in London with his girlfriend (CaptainPuffy) and they have a corgi named Pudding together.

koji: He is the other half of daft and dafter. He is known for being a very wholesome streamer. His content oscillates from really cozy games to horror with occasional group gaming streams with friends. He is vegan and lives with his longtime girlfriend Abby and their 2 dogs Miso and Bugs.

Smajor / Smajor1995 / dangthatsalongname / Scott: He currently plays quite frequently in the morning lobby but his specialty outside of that is minecraft content. He is on the Empires server, organizes MCC, the life series, etc. I personally watch more of his youtube content than his streams. He lives in England but he is from Scotland.

Junkyard129: He is a new regular to the morning lobbies and has been playing every week for the last several months. He is the oldest person in the lobby and is often the butt of a lot of jokes because of it. He has probably been creating content longer than anyone else in the lobby as youtube says his first video was uploaded 16 years ago!! Currently streams variety gaming solo and with the Chilled group quite often. He also has regular streams from his woodworking shop where he makes cutting boards, coasters, etc to sell. He has a special dance that he performs when he gets raided.

vGumiho: She is a variety v-tuber who currently plays both in the morning lobby and with the Steve variety game group. She started becoming a more frequent regular when the crew started playing Valorant but plays most weeks for the Among Us lobbies currently. She has a dog named Kazu. She organizes ppsat lobbies which used to be weekly but are less frequent now.

Ovilee: She is an esports commentator who currently plays with the morning lobby most weeks. She also streams and she presented the morning lobby panel at twitch con.

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: warpedfungusonastick

today's interviewee is warpedfungusonastick, who's been in MCYTblr since the summer of 2020 and is a member of dreamlying! below is a transcript of their account of early MCYTblr.

Digging back into what I have of my online history, I started the tumblr blog warpedfungusonastick in late July 2020. Beforehand I had a very small <20 follower dttwt account and saw that the Tumblr community was more my vibe. I was 18 when I got into being a dteam ~fan and my personal views on fandom and stan culture and parasocial relationships were, while still evolving, kind of against a lot of the culture that was growing up around especially the twitter fan community.

(This being said, this was the depths of COVID lockdown and I rarely left my house because I was a senior in high school in the U.S. and living with someone who absolutely could not get sick. So I was terminally online and can definitely say in retrospect deeply invested in the fan culture and even the creators/their online personas while being semi-ironically self aware of this relationship.)

I first saw a dteam video in later 2019. Funny enough (and not funny at all, because I think about these Patterns quite a lot), I had then just left the Cryaotic fandom. If you don't know, he was an old friend of pewdiepie who split with him around the time of or before the multiple pewdiepie scandals and pewdiepie whistling off several alt-right dog whistles and that whole thing. But back to the point, like a month after i became a regular Cryaotic Twitch viewer, a long expose came out about him being abusive to his ex-girlfriend and a groomer of underaged fans. Cryaotic was a faceless streamer whose iconography was this little blob thing and I will not abandon the theory that the origins of Dreamwastaken fanart are the direct successor to humanized fanart of this Cryaotic persona.

Through the whole Cryaotic thing I first found out about kiwifarms/lolcow. What stuck to me, beyond the abhorrent stuff said on those sites, was that they had a pretty clear system of archiving things using sites such as archive.is and were completely unafraid to post "doxxed" materials anonymously.

Commentary on DL interviews: - I fully second what georgesoot said about "No it's not odd, I at least partially strove for infamy. Any attention gratifies the ego after all, not just positive attention. Then there was the absurdity of it all". I tried to be a lot less controversial than some other DL members, but I did run with them and did say some things that weren't within the typical conventions of more mainstream and popular blogs of the time. It was a dopamine hit for people to interact with my blog--like any social media--but I/we did it in a kind of absurdist way at a point with the things we said and the ways we kind of transgressed whatever the normal way of being a fan blog was. - Re: Wormweeb--I was also kind of mentally ill and depressed and really only interacted with both friends online (even if they were friends from school). And as a result I took it all a bit more seriously than it was at the time. This is is less related but I used to get these--visceral? reactions to when Drama would happen because I was personally invested more so because I didn't want my online friend group who (although seen as a united front on the outside sometimes, I think) each had our Faves in the mcyt space and had had petty infighting over the morals of that (both seriously and unseriously, but everything starts to bleed, in my opinion).

More about my previous exposure to Minecraft fandom: I used to follow mianite back in the day and watched a lot of captiansparklez & aureylian. Since I joined the dteam fandom before any blog presence I was there for their very first streams (which got like…5k views 10k?) and the birth of the dsmp as essentially a server for friends (which led to minor discourse later when the line between roleplay and people on a MC server blurred.)

So my points of reference for these types of fandoms were a fandom that was very much for younger children (Mianite) and therefore the creators were treated with more distance and the recently up-in-flames Cryaotic fandom.

Back to doxxing/archiving/odd relation between: I used to joke about the tension between the right to privacy and to be forgotten on the internet and the right for nosy teenagers with too much time on their hands (and literally obsession brainworms) to dig up your past. Two things I think that were interesting about the most (in my opinion) morally dubious element of mcytblr and most people formed their negative opinions of critblr on was the having/knowing "forbidden" information. Most of this we were either told by randos or knew through other people online. A lot of it also ended up on Dream's kiwifarms, but that was a bit of a two-way street.

And the second part of this whole thing is the way that this information would come up among The Discourse. Because knowing some of the things we/I knew, you could call out creator's lies/misrepresentations of their histories/online pasts in ways that people who didn't know couldn't. Which was kind of where some of the in-jokes came from. I also took the habit of archiving things (old accounts, posts, whatever) to archive.is and such at the time because I fell on the 'I don't want this digital history to be erased if only for my own sanity.'

I think this has been rehashed before, but at every corner, the mcyt/dteam fandom was a fandom like any other, complicated by the fact that it was a real person fandom. And especially on tumblr where the Culture was a little different because no creators (few creators) were on Tumblr, people kind of just said and did whatever. I struggle to think of any of this as important in the grand scheme of anything, but there was a massive outpour of content because of the sheer size of the fandom across all platforms. There was 24/7 content, big fomo, and so I think blogs acted like pundits--like a forum on the newist in DSMP or Love or Host or MCC or whatever. My memory of that time has atrophied a lot but I think that DL and co. cropped up as the pundit subclass (however some of us had actual talent like wormweeb and made fanworks) and the fandom overall was sustained by a sprawling form of Conversation on the Latest Content.

Q: right-- and while other blogs caught people up on streams, dream lying was more interested in meta on the creators themselves?

I think that was a part of it. We were all united in this semi-ironic cynicism about fandom culture as a whole while being fans ourselves, and we socially shared this Vision of a number of variably worded critiques about - stan culture - cancel culture - the dangers/pitfalls/intricacies of these.

I think a lot of it was just shits and giggles, but at least I at one point had this idea that I was a tiny little measured response to the excess of fandom culture. I looked down on uncritical fandom and thought that especially because some of these creators cultivated deeply parasocial relationships with their young fans (I was not much older, but all 18 year olds are Like That) it was some sort of imperative to talk about that at least a little bit.

As I read through my old posts--these was a lot of self important a lot of rambling a lot of nonsense. And I don't really think that these fandom culture can be changed by one little microblogger with a couple hundred followers, but I stand by a lot of my initial criticisms of the ecosystem as a whole and mainly the creators themselves and their (heh) lying, their harm, their overall misconduct and above all the systems that created and enable their whacky ass bullshit to this day. .

But the doubled edged sword of (I return to the forbidden info thruline) I never really shared info that was private because I wanted to be somewhat ethical, so it always felt a bit like we/I was going crazy with things I knew to be true but obviously wouldn't share because that's nor super moral.

Another note about The Rumors and DreamLying--in my memory we kind of thought were Something. And I guess we've been nudged along in that perception but I think the most vocal and controversial of us just said wild shit that stuck in people's brains and for the longest time I didn't associate myself with dream lying at all on Warpedfungus because I wanted to be Somewhat Normal, if measuredly critical and just…vibing. But I think at circles back to a lot of this being wank amongst a handful of terminally online people who at the time didn't get out enough and, like, fixated on this Thing because it was community (or a facsimile of) and at the end of the way we're all just archives or archived pages or gone forever.

(Which reminds me that for the longest time I had you and Roxytonic blocked because I thought archiving was corny but I now think it's kind of cool. It's a nostalgia trip, if anything else. I'm now in another fandom that would've really benefited from some hardcore archiving because so much of the old internet (and fan spaces amongst them--ie ff.net, livejournal, even more underground spaces) are completely lost to the sands of time and the deletion of those hosting sites, etc)

Q: i am very interested in your thoughts on, as you mentioned before in reference to cryaotic, the way that creators cultivate and manipulate fanbases, and the effects you think it had on how the mcytblr fandom

Dream, along with "learning/studying the algorithm" and getting insanely lucky, did many specific things to cultivate a fandom of immensely parasocial fans. And regardless of my cynical vision of what his motives were, his actions of wanting to be seen as a 'friend', sharing many personal details, being accessible to fans, DMing young stan accounts, following fan accounts, OKaying a lot of fanworks about him/his personal and the whole…gaybaiting (you know what i"m referring to) thing had the result of a very large very dedicated fanbase.

As far as cryaotic, it's my theory that dream knew the effect on having a very…intimate…relationship with his conventionally not ugly young white man friend, and used that. And as far as the other element that I associate between dteam/cryaotic--these were men who had very boring lives and probably saw themselves as undesirable to women Until they had this massive following and this kind of situation happens time and time again where people get Influence that didn't used to have and do messed up things with it. And I don't know what's to be done, but it's quite bad and completely goes against the "wholesome" image they try to cultivate. If not some of the stuff being actually crimes.

I think the common perception is sometimes that these cases are "bad apples" when there are so many bad apples And not even in the man aint shit way, but unlike more conventional routes to Fame, mcyts have no oversight unless they join and esports org and still then…the org may just side iwth them if it's worth it. And that's not to say that this stuff doesn't happen with conventional celebrity and even on college campuses and in everyday life and whatnot but I think people in such a public eye should be held to standards of conduct that may prevent some of this.

[imsorryimlate]

On and off, I’ve been lurking in the main tag rather than the weekly one, because this book has truly inserted itself into my brain. And a while ago I saw something which made me Think™, and now I’ve finally gathered my thoughts enough to share them (and I was also stuck on a train for three hours today so I had time to write them down hehe).

The question was regarding how Adam, the creature, was to be understood in relation to Victor, his creator. Or well, what he was supposed to be.

Now, the most common way of talking about Adam that I’ve seen is to call him Victor’s son. The jokes about Victor being an absent father are plentiful (and I think they’re hilarious, but I know many others are tired of them). It’s quite natural that this is the interpretation that would be popular, especially since Adam straight up calls Victor his father. Victor, when he’s starting to build Adam, has a similar idea:

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their's.

(Vol. I, chapter 3)

He has a streak of a god complex here, he wants not just one creature but many, and want to be exalted as their creator, and their father. Much to be said, but let’s move on.

So, that’s interpretation number one: the son route. I respect that.

Now, I encountered another popular interpretation, which is that the creation of Adam is an expression of Victor’s (repressed) homosexuality. That’s interpretation number two, and I also respect that.

The second interpretation aligns a bit more with my own reading. I’ve made jokes about it, of course, about Victor being a size-queen and (a bit crass) that he’s building a “corpse sex doll”, as I told my friend.

But beyond that, there is something in the way that Victor decides to build a creature of ideal, exaggerated masculinity. 8ft tall, broad and strong, with a carefully constructed, beautiful face (and apparently with a fully functional penis, since he worries about Adam’s potential offspring). I’ve pondered it as a gender thing – Victor constructing the masculinity that he perceives himself to lack – and as “motherly concerns” for beauty (here), and as an expression of his attraction towards men.

I think both of these interpretations (Adam as son and Adam as an expression of underlying desire) are valid – separately and combined.

It’s the combination of the two that I wanted to examine.

And just for reference, I’ve written about incestuous anxieties in the novel before (here & here + whatever this was) and I’ll try to keep this brief, so I might skip over some stuff I’ve mentioned before.

Obviously, I’m painting with broad strokes here, and recognise that many things which a modern reader might balk at (such as cousin marriage) were quite common – they still are, in certain places, but there are some nuances I will deliberately “pass over” in order to have this post be somewhat coherent.

The Frankenstein family is a very closed unit. Alphonse was a good friend of Caroline’s dad, which isn’t an incestuous relation in itself, but still, there’s an imbalance there (both with regards to age and economic status), and because of the age difference one might assume that Alphonse was an “unofficial uncle” (one doesn’t have to interpret it this way, but to fit with the ~theme~ I’m going there). Therefore, the household is started with/headed by a semi-pseudoincestuous relationship.

Elizabeth and her relationship with the rest of the Frankenstein family is the most transgressive one; she’s a cousin, but raised as a sister, and later on takes the role as stepmother/wife, becoming Alphonse’s companion, while still being expected to marry Victor. She is Victor’s intended romantic partner, despite their relation and her increasingly conflicting role within the family.

Then there are the two “members of the family” who aren’t actually related to them – Justine and Clerval, who could be potential romantic partners for Victor. However, though Justine is mentioned as Victor’s favourite, she’s described as resembling Caroline a lot, which also positions her as a mother substitute. The one least attached is Clerval, but even he is folded into the Frankenstein family, with him, Victor and Elizabeth being like three siblings in Victor’s recollection of his childhood. Besides, Clerval’s father is a close friend of Alphonse’s, and one might understand him to be a similar “unofficial uncle” to Clerval as he was to Caroline. Therefore, even he could be “tainted” by family ties.

So, it’s not strange that Victor would seek a partner outside of the household… except he came from the Incest Family™, which means he decided to create his partner. His ideal partner, perhaps. Isn’t it ironic then, that his created, ideal (sexual) partner would turn around and call him ‘father’?

And that’s the thing: his family is rotting from the inside, and he can’t escape because the rot has spread to him too. And he has spread it on to his “son” – Adam expresses an attraction towards Caroline, his “grandmother”, and asks Victor to create a partner for him, which would make his partner his “sister”.

And when all these thoughts were rolling around in my head, I came across this post about how, in the show Succession, a tragedy always occurs when there’s a wedding, as if the universe is pushing back against another person entering the family. And it made me think that, in this reading, Victor’s doom isn’t just his attempt to play God or his inability to claim his creation as his own – it’s that he’s trying to escape his incestuous family, and he is completely and utterly punished for it. His actual, physical attempt at a partner separate from his family is what’s killing them. Victor’s gravest sin is that he was born into a family that’s devouring itself, and in an almost Oedipus-like tragedy, it was by trying to escape this devouring that Victor doomed them all.

[mrs-mquve-cc]

Sims Tag  

I was tagged by @esotheria-sims!

1. What’s your favourite sims death?

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever let a sim die 😆 Not only do I not actually play the game very often, I’m just too attached to my sims. But if I had to choose it’d be death by cowplant.

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match?

Alpha/semi-realistic till the day I die!

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight?

Nah, that’s unnecessary.

4. Do you use move objects?

ALWAYS.

5. Favorite mod?

@lamare-sims‘ Shiftable Everything! I love to decorate, and this was a TOTAL game-changer for me.

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got?

I bought The Sims 2 Deluxe in 2007. I still get confused with what came with the base game and what came with Nightlife because I’ve always had NL 😅

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing?

Like LIVing. I seem to be in the minority on this but whatever.

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made?

Laegrinna, of course! I’m sure everyone who follows me knows already but she’s the sim pictured in this post and in my avatar. She’s the protagonist of a game called Deception IV: Blood Ties.

9. Have you made a simself?

Yep, I do have one, you can see her in my 40th birthday post from last year. I gave her graying hair then to be more accurate. I did play as her a few times but it felt kind of weird so she just roams around my hood.

10. What sim traits do you give yourself?

I don’t use the traits mod but if I did, it’d probably be Absent-Minded, Perfectionist, Cat Person, Eccentric, and Socially Awkward.

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color?

I don’t use EA colors or textures, obviously, but I hate them all, especially the pee yellow blonde 😂

12. Favorite EA hair?

I don’t use EA hairs, but the only one I even remotely like is the Mansion & Garden dreads band hair. I might try to do something texture-wise with it at some point.

(Editing to say HOW THE SHIT DID I FORGET LAEGRINNA’S HAIR *facepalm* yeah it’s the Modern Bob from the EA store. As for hairs shipped with the game see above)

13. Favorite life stage?

I only play adults because I’m boring lol

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

I dunno, I spend way more time creating and taking pics than I do playing. I’m awful at building but I do enjoy it and like I said I love decorating.

15. Are you a CC creator?

Yep, have been for almost 8 years now! I’ve made a ridiculous amount of CC, mostly hairs but I think I enjoy retexturing clothing and objects a bit more. I’ve just started learning meshing and it’s opened up so many new possibilities for me. I have an endless list of future projects!

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad?

I have a few. I’m not popular in the community or anything and my social skills are lacking but I do like interacting with other simmers.

17. What’s your favorite game? (1, 2, 3, or 4)

Sims 2 forever!

18. Do you have any sims merch?

Nope.

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims?

No and I don’t think I’d be good at making videos in general.

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing?

It’s gotten much more eccentric and I’ve leaned harder into semi-realism despite most people playing Maxis Match the past 10+ years. I love goth/alternative CC and incorporated a lot more into my game when I created the Deception IV sims. It’s funny because it seems like people’s tastes get more mainstream as they age, but it’s exactly the opposite for me. I look at my old CC and the way I used to dress and make up my sims and think “wow was I boring back then.” The current aesthetic of my game more accurately reflects my personality.

21. What’s your Origin ID?

Bold of you to assume I use Origin 😂

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator?

Too many to list here! I’m a CC hoarder.

23. How long have you had a simblr?

7 years, almost as long as I’ve been creating.

24. How do you edit your pictures?

I do minimal editing, partially because I’m not very good at it and also because with CC previews I want people to see exactly what they’re getting. I use Pooklet’s game lighting actions, I’m careful with how much light I use when taking the pics in-game because it’s easier to brighten a screenshot than fix an overexposed one (Laegrinna’s white hair is particularly prone to overexposure). I brighten the subjects of the picture a bit more and darken the background a little so they stand out. But that’s really it.

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next?

Well, we’re not getting anything else for TS2 anyway, and I don’t even know what else I’d want because there’s so many fun mods out there that add to the game.

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far?

That’s a tough one - I love playing witches (Laegrinna and her sister Velguirie are both evil witches) so Apartment Life is up there, but I also love playing businesses and having my sims go out on the town so I couldn’t imagine playing without OFB or Nightlife.

I’m going to tag @furbyq, @focalor-sims, @equinoxts2, @pooklet, @skulldilocks, @letomills, and @phoebe-twiddle!

[virtualpeople]

Get to know you: Sims Style

tagged by @goatskickin, thank you this was strangely relaxing :D

What's your favourite sims death? It's got to be the flight simulator in TS1. You ever been so sleepy you just drift right off into space? What about physically this time?

Alpha CC or Maxis Match? i guess semi-real? I've lost track of where the realism levels are at tbh. I love me some texture and shiny eyes is all I can specifically say, generally I just download whatever takes my fancy and hope for the best lmao

(now I'm just gonna derail this slightly to do my best grouchy old fucker impression and protest bitterly at the way the word alpha has come to be used to describe realistic CC, like arggghghghghg anything can have an alpha should you wish, why is this a thing >:( , ok grouch over)

Do you cheat your sims weight? Implying I ever play this game in a normal manner enough to have sims actually change weight from what they were originally created with in the first place

Do you move objects? Imagine playing sims 2 and not being able to move objects, truly a hellscape

Favourite mod? It's not exciting, but it's the SimBlender. Couldn't live (mode) without you, lil plant* fella.

*Other models are available

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack? Here's a vague answer for you all: The first sims game I got was the TS1 complete collection, so technically it was all the sims 1 EPs. And then when I got TS2 I got about 8 EPs/SPs in one go off ebay, can't exactly remember which ones other than it didn't include Apartment Life or Seasons, so what came first was really a good 50% of the whole game

Slightly off topic but the only sims I've ever bought new was the IKEA stuff pack when it was on clearance. Enjoy your £3 for this entire series, EA ;)

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing? LIVing, it's the mode where all the little computer people live :)

Who’s your favourite sim that you’ve made? Don't make me choose it could be so many of them ;-; Ok, maybe this guy. Or maybe this guy. Or maybe…

Have you made a simself? i tried a long long time ago but with very little resemblance. I have a very strange face that's hard to reproduce in <1000 polygons apparently.

Which is your favourite EA hair color? I'm quite fond of that slightly desaturated basegame brown shade, it's nice. Shame it's not really common in any of the more popular hair colour actions

Favourite EA hair? haircaesar, that short one that came with seasons. It's so… basic. So versatile. My beloved.

Favourite life stage? Adult. Elders second. I barely play any of the others tbh

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? I'd say technically for building, although it's more building characters and the world they live in. Gameplay does come into it, but more for letting sims play out storylines and interact with their world like in a soap opera way than the usual motives way of playing, if that makes sense - I'm constantly dishing out maxmotives because I had an idea of what I wanted to happen next but the sims would've otherwise been too grumpy lol

Are you a CC creator? As long as the title of CC creator doesn't expire after a couple of years of doing absolutely nothing (but definitely not retiring either) then yes

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad? I have been here for so many years and yet I've never said much beyond a couple of sentences to anyone, let alone having an entire squad lmao. Not deliberately, I've just got a habit of sitting here and collecting dust vibing

Do you have any sims merch? no, I don't think I've even seen any sims merch irl actually

Do you have a YouTube for sims? no.

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing? Many eons ago, back in the distant mists of time, I used to be able to churn out sims and buildings at a rapid rate all day long. Now I… can't. Am I getting more picky? Am I paying more attention to detail? Am I just getting old? Who knows

Who’s your favourite CC creator? Over all these years?? It wouldn't be fair to pick just one even if I could, there's so many people propping up my game and making it look nice :O

How long have you had Simblr? 4293 days apparently, that's a lot of days.

How do you edit your pictures? do I look like I know what editing is? These days I don't even crop my pictures, I just dump screenshots into a presized photoshop document and shunt them around a bit until the composition looks ok. At a push I'll boost the contrast/saturation a tiny bit, particularly if I've left low blue light mode on again and the colours look a bit odd

What expansion/gamepack is your favorite? TS1 - you know I think it might be superstar. I love how silly studio town is with all those fun things like the fashion runway and the film sets. The celebrity system is amusing too, and is a convenient way of making sims of famous people a bit less weird to have around as opposed to just having them as playables (imo anyway). Shoutout to makin' magic too though, still my favourite implementation of magic in the entire sims series

TS2 - Apartment life. The ability to build functional flats and having magic back (if in a slightly disappointing way compared to TS1)? Height-shiftable things? Nice.

I tag: YOU. (totally not a copout I mean it i love reading these things)

[renardtrickster]

hey!! due to possible embarassment im going anonymous so i dont out myself as the most borderline obsessive ruby/nan quest fan out there

but have you ever had a phase where youve tried to coax your friends/mutuals in an attempt to fill up the empty community while also commissioning related content in some desire to experience something new cause not a lot of people make new stuff for rq and nq anymore graah

Sorry for letting this one sit for a few weeks, my laptop still isn't fixed yet. Also this is THE place to be extremely borderline obsessive about stuff, even though claiming to be "the biggest RQ fan" means you now have to fistfight me for rights to the title.

I've definitely "coaxed", but in more of the passive "hey look at this cool thing" and talking about it semi-frequently in "talk about media you like" spaces and stuff. Which has been semi-successful, everyone I chat with at least knows about those quests and has prolly read them. And I don't think I've ever tried to commission anything unfortunately.

Also yeah, I know what you mean in terms of not a lot of stuff happening. Which I imagine is for a couple of reasons.

RQ ended roughly 15 years ago, and NQ 9 years ago, so we're a bit (fashionably) late to when it was active.

Speaking of activity, being heavily interactive and mystery-themed, the blood would be pumping most when people were still asking questions, finding answers, and Doing Stuff. Some questions are still open to ask about, and things to talk about, and excitement for Really Good Media never dies, but still.

Adding onto THAT, the majority of the activity for both were on 4chan and questden, neither of them traditional or very well known forms of social media (except the former, but it's not "popular"), and neither very conducive to long-term content or "fandom".

And finally, "quests" have always been niche to my understanding, so a specific quest would be twice-over.

It's a lot of numbers but the math still adds up to "not that much activity". Or at the very least it's occasional. Still cool as hell when it pops up. Regardless, my preferred coping mechanism is in Adjacency. Weaver's done other quests, and Dive Quest is still ongoing (it's being updated right now as I type). He's also done other non-quest work, like Boxdog or Pack Street or whathaveyou (all really good). And there's also a lot of other good quests on questden made by other creators. Re-reading DiveQuest, I suddenly remembered Knight Blades was meant to be an official story running in parallel, and while I somehow did not yet read Knight Blades specifically yet (super Getting Distracted powers GO), I did go through Reaver's other catalogue of works, which has been an interesting and somewhat tumultous experience.

And regardless of anything, we still have some of the OG shooters running around. fyeahrubyandnanquest was active as late as 2021 (and still has stuff I haven't seen or reblogged yet), and I don't know if you've ever heard of them (;D) but someone called rubysvn has a fansite up with all sorts of goodies like an old RQ remake, information on lost media, and so on. So it's definitely a low energy sort of fandom, but nowhere near a dead one.

[sapphire-weapon]

I used to draw for other small/rare ships (apparently I'm drawn to those kind of ships lol), only one of them got huge enough after they were given some time alone in the manga which got the ship more talented and known creators and amazing fan art.

Unfortunately it also got more hate on since it was a ship that "got in the way" of other huge popular ships and going through the tag got annoying bc the haters tagged every post shitting on the previously rare pairing, plus if you reblogged or made content for it they would harass you. I just blocked everyone sending me hate lmao.

Lots of people now hate Leon/Ashley but I think this increased hatred also shows how the haters can see that it is a thing now unlike before. They see it as a real threat. You can see the insecurity in some of those antis, it's too obvious and also just sad imo. I don't get why antis take shipping too seriously like they're not even having fun anymore and that's supposed to be the point, no?

Truth is I've seen so many Leon/Ashley fans online and even irl, Reddit for example loves it and Remake Ashley is a fan favorite now. A lot of them are more casual fans that maybe don't engage that deeply with fanon (which tbh is the smart thing to do).

Finally I have to say your blog and the amazing fic writers have inspired me to go back to drawing fan art and just creating content for Ashley/Leon or EagleOne. :)

Since this is my new otp and the only thing I love shipping rn I'm also just creating a new blog for that purpose. I'm not an amazing artist I'm just an amateur but I'll try to do something soon when I'm less busy. I'll absolutely tag it as EagleOne. Hopefully I can motivate others to do the same.

anon what the fuCK i got all emotional reading this wyd 😭

i know that the antis are coming from a place of insecurity, which is why their arguments are so disingenuous (i finally found the "the devs went out of their way to make sure that leon and ashley weren't seen as romantic" tweet and hoo boy the desperation is stinky) -- and that's also why i don't engage with them. as easy and perhaps fun as it would be to just QRT it and be like "oh it makes sense now, you're all using text to speech because you don't actually know how to read" there's no point in doing that.

i said it a while ago, but i want to say it again for good measure -- i don't want us to become them. my humble goal for eagleone fandom is to be a haven for ppl. we've been the black sheep of this fandom for so long, and aeons are still accusing us of being predators or someshit (idk i'm only semi-fluent in delusional) that i feel like we all have an obligation to stay humble now that capcom's given us a fairy tale version of RE4 where our ship is the front-and-center romance and people are finally actually being drawn to the ship. no one knows how bad this fandom can get better than eagleone folk, so it's on us to not do unto others what has been done unto us.

idk maybe that's just my whole jewish "because you were slaves in egypt..." mindset coming out but

i want us to be a place where people can just come and hang out and make friends over our shared love for resident evil. i know that i have serennedy and cleon and chreon and metaltango people all following me, and i love all of them dearly and i'm happy that we've all found each other. i feel like that's what fandom should be.

that's why i don't fight with aeons out in the open. i don't want to become them. i'll swing back if they ever come here (though i hope valuable lessons were learned the last time someone tried to come in here swinging and i took them out in exactly two responses LMAO), but i don't want to go out picking fights and i don't want any of y'all to do it either.

so it makes me feel really warm and fuzzy and happy to hear that i've inspired you in some way. i know that our little corner of the fandom over here on tumblr is small, and i know that i don't exactly have the kind of welcoming personality that will give me any sort of real platform in this fandom (at least, not like the one i had back in the day when i was a fake ass bitch LMAO), but to know that i've made at least a little difference is everything for me.

[megafaunatic]

idk if ur like open to randos in ur asks giving u media recommendations, but i would give anything in the world for u to try and give the k-novel 'return of the blossoming blade' by BIGA a chance... UR MY FAVE CONTENT CREATOR SINCE THE YE OLDEN TGCFMDZS DAYS SO I WANTED TO AT LEAST TRY LOLLL its like my favourite novel of all time and ive been trying to force it upon everyone with little avail, which i dont understand WHYY cuz its SOO GOOOD like it definitely deserves to have the same level of popularity w international fans as MDZS and TGCF had, but for now it remains a hidden gem.......... it's an insanely long novel i will nawt lie (1.5k+ chapters and updating everyday but only like 500smth have been tl'd into english on the fantl site Sky Demon Order[who also post semi-daily]) but its sosososo worth it i prommy..trust me..:smiles: it's a classic 'hero from the past who died a tragic and preventable(?) death reincarnates a hundred years into the future hiding his identity to teach the youth in order to keep the future generation from following in his footsteps and making the same mistakes he did' but without all the stale, predictable, boringness u'd typically expect from that specific genre... it's an incredibly comedic action novel that takes place in ancient china wuxia setting & focuses primarily on found family and those close familial bonds between the main cast behind all the sword fighty action (dont know how to fit this in anywhere else, but its important to me that u know the mc, chung myung, is the main casts grandpa.. hes their peepaw.. he shows affection by beating them on their heads). theres no romance at all, but i would argue that is a SELLING POINT for this novel like i swear it is so refreshing, the found family of it all means soo much to me, so much so i am now going to force it to mean so much to you too(this is a threat).... if u do gaf abt ships tho then maybe the doomed, tragic, best-friends-to-almost lovers tangchung yaoi and the love at first sight iseolsoso yuri might catch ur eye *LOOKS AT YOU* i genuinely really really feel like it would be straight up ur alley, like its definitely smth i feel would at least peak ur interest imo (chung myung, the mc, is probably my fave mc of all time..at eighty two years young, he IS the next peoples princess and i want to hit him with my car and then nurse him back to health just to hit him again.. i feel like u'd enjoy him like that as well).. im so desperate for more eng fans of this novel u cant see me rn but i am biting into a leather belt trying not to sob and cry out loud as im typing this this is so long im so embarrawsed so ill leave u here.. i hope my pleas have touched ur heart in some way and if the novel chapter count is too intimidating, ROTBB also has a webcomic on webtoons by the same name (season two of the webcomic just started ^__^ ) and the art is so good and funny and its a good way to get into the novel without being overwhelmed by the chp count methinks BUT i would definitely consider reading the novel mandatory cuz the webcomic only fills u in on so much.... ok. i hope u managed to get thru this insane wall of text, my bad.. until we meet again...*salutes* *revs up my motorcycle and disappears behind a cloud of smoke but when the dust settles i am laying dead on the floor*

ok so first of all i respect this so much 🫡 thank you for spreading your passion in the final moments before your motorcycle dirt death 🫡🫡🫡

second of all this does sound really fun !!! i have found it on sky demon order and i'll give it a try... BUT i gotta be real over a thousand chapters and only two hundred of them translated AND no romance is unfortunately killing me... i just dont know if i have the stamina for that... im a horrible little fujo if its THAT long theres gotta be some kissing!!!!! sorry 😭😭

for u i will give it a try but i can make no promises 🫡 i will consider chung myung my blorbo in law tho

[maddy011901]

been trying to get more of my irl friends into redacted and in doing so I've been giving out advice and i'd thought i'd share it here too in case anyone is new here and needs to hear it

i recommend starting with the "Everything" playlist, but if that is too daunting, start with either Vincent, David, or Freelancer Season One and explore from there.

it's okay if you don't care about the "lore" or storylines and are only interested in the characters (and/or the "fluff")

if you're not familiar with asmr roleplay, Redacted is genuinely a great place to start and it's easy to explore other creators from here! i recommend watching/listening to anything that you find interesting or are drawn to!

if you don't want to listen to imperium or inversion that is okay. they've very heavy and, in my opinion, not "required reading". just know that inversion is referenced a fair amount in other videos

its okay if you don't "enjoy" a popular character or story. don't force yourself to be interested in something that you don't find interesting

ALWAYS read the description (erik tends to add semi-important notes there) but be aware that the comment section is filled to the brim with spoilers (especially on older videos)

the listeners are meant to be self-inserts. (some of yall don't understand this tbh)

erik knows what he's doing. trust him to do right by his stories and characters!!!

please feel free to add on if there's anything i missed :)