#anyways. lawn jarts fucking rule i got to play with some antique ones as a kid

[salemoleander]

Part of the joy of fandom is taking the same raw material a creator has and creating something new and different, finding new meaning and stories that were never intended! However.

If, as in the scitties example, what is intended one way by a CC (lightly suggestive, humorous, dramatic, serious, etc) is responded to very differently (as overtly sexual, of life-changing personal importance, extremely serious, adding gore that would make Hannibal Lector blush, etc) that gets SUPER uncomfortable!! Because it diverges wildly from both the information/plot/joke the creator was trying to convey, and the emotional tone they thought they were setting. (And, worse, makes them grapple with that conflict Live On Air In Front Of Thousands Of People.)

Lines of questioning I wish I could make madatory before @ing a cc or sending a 200 word TTS:

How would the creator summarize this event/ joke/ plot? Is it a joke, or actually supposed to have happened in-universe? Am I taking something as fact when it was intended as a joke, or vice versa?

Do the canonical events include or allude to sex, violence, or other 'serious' categories? Does my work/ interpretation/ comment move into a topic area the creator didn't originally include, or to a much larger degree. (Note that 'mature' topics are NOT interchangeable; if an erotica author were tagged on art of her main characters braining each other with lawn jarts, she's gonna rightfully be a bit disturbed! (Sidenote. Go look up lawn jarts. Marvel that humans have lasted this long.))

What tone did the creator set? Were they upbeat, laughing, joking? Were they taking it seriously? If someone dies 50x in Minecraft and is giggling the whole time, they will be confused and/or off-put by angsty art of them coughing up blood. If someone is trying to tell a dramatic emotional story and you keep making jokes about their fear of death, you are being an asshole.

Is your query the spiritual equivalent of this post:

Do not make random CCs opine on serious real-world issues*!!! Or about your deeply held beliefs/ mental health issues/ sexuality/ gender, etc. Even if they are a perfectly nice person with chill views, being put on the spot is anxiety-inducing and will not result in their best answer.

If they've never considered the topic before, their fumbling questions are NOT best answered by the collective wisdom of a Twitch chat while being recorded & trying to stay entertaining.

*Outside their normal conversational wheelhouse. Someone asking a bit of a deeper question to Scar about accessibility of public spaces is Much Different than asking iJevin for his thoughts on food deserts. (I picked this example bc it seems so implausible; if this has somehow actually happened I will send whoever has proof a pizza.)

One of the things that I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about what's appropriate in fandom spaces is the notion that things can be appropriate in one space, but not for another. And that doesn't mean that the thing that's inappropriate in that setting is wrong, it just means that it's rude in that space. I think people want a single set of rules that's appropriate everywhere, but the thing is, you have to be able to assess the situation, and adjust your behaviour accordingly.

So an example. I have a fairly popular text post that was me asking about c!phil and religion in all innocence, and someone said "the only thing I have to say about c!phil is that he worships on his knees, thank you and goodnight". And I reblogged it like "I can't believe I forgot about how this fandom does phil analysis", cause it was at the height of the dilfza memes.

Anyways that's obviously a phil-is-happily-married/oral sex joke, in an oblique innuendo way, and on this site, where Phil is not here, and his friends are not here, with it being clear I was talking about the block man character, and we make jokes about sex and profanity (a very popular url scheme for a long time was "[name]shugecock" (or smalldick, depending on the joke)— that's a fine joke to make. I'm an adult, I can make sex jokes about fictional characters on the sex joke fictional character social media site.

If I was to make that joke in Philza's twitch chat, a) in his face, b) with his wife modding, c) in an enviroment where people aren't prepped for sex jokes, d) with it being not clear if I was talking about the cubito or about the real guy, that would be wildly inappopriate. I would be banned in every chat Philza mods in and I would deserve it.

That doesn't mean that it's inappropriate to make the joke in the first place though, just because I wouldn't do it at a Phil meet and greet. It means you gotta learn to read the room. (And like, sometimes it's hard to learn to read the room, but you can do it by pure brute-force memorization. I did.)

This is the same theory that underlies the fact that you can call your friends a bitch in a friendly way, because you are friends and you know each other's boundaries, but if you call your boss a bitch, you will be fired. There are rules about workplace appropriateness, and there are rules about what's appropriate in front of kids (I teach teens, I do not swear in front of them, I swear a LOT in front of my roommate), and there are rules about what's appropriate in different fandom spaces. Participating in an exchange about pregnancy and babies with your favourite blorbo of the moment? Great. Showing the actor gift art you got of him pregnant? No. Bad. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

The thing that concerns me is that I think there are slight signs that as we get more comfortable with sexy jokes and offcolour remarks as a MCYT fandom (QSMP is the big banner example but it happens with other smps), we're taking what's appropriate in one space (tumblr, home of the brain worms, where I have seen the blog "philzaswetpussy" on my dash), and we're bringing it into places that it's not appropriate (sure, slimeariana is clearly canon, but maybe don't put the actual dicks-out fan art in the art tag on twitter that slime checks). Cause we can obviously tell that the rules twitter is going with are silly for here, so it's full speed ahead for roier/spreen etc, but the trick here is that it's full speed ahead HERE, or in fandom servers, and not necessarily in the streamer's faces.

We have a bunch of situations where creators have said that it's not their place to weigh in on shipping or nsfw etc, and people have taken that as a go ahead and that's fine, but thats still something where I'd like, caution people that just because they said "not gonna look at it not my deal", that doesn't mean that like, you should make it difficult for them to avoid looking at it. Talking about scitties is an honourable tradition, but telling scar that he makes you question your sexuality in his TTS— I made a horrified noise in real life and the cats came to look at me.

And I'm talking about the shipping, but this is also a thing with like— sometimes I see a streamer and I go "my friend you just vividly described neurodivergent symptoms" but it is ABSOLUTELY not my place to say that in their chat. It might not even be appropriate to make comments about it on my blog, with the amount of followers I have. I have to keep the "streamer just described the ADHD experience again :pensive:" comments for the group chat. And we all nod and go "yeah sounds like streamer", and we do not put it in his face, cause that's inappropriate.

We get to have fun with the fictional characters, including off-colour fun, but we still have to remember that there are real people who don't know us who are steering those fictional characters around, and it can be profoundly weird to see some of the (stuff that is appropriate in fandom spaces!) just up in your face in the regular fan art tag.

Just think about the space you're in, and who you're in front of, and if a CC notice is actually likely, and if a CC notice would be Very Bad actually with what you're doing, and keep the "world's sluttiest absent father" bracket (with associated slutty fan art) for here, not with the streamer tagged on twitter.