#ex-yogs recovery circle

[sparxwrites]

Sorry for the very wild comments i just left on some of the eldritch boatem hole fics, im a little sleep deprived and was very startled by your existence

sparx has received [ 36 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

hello! please don't apologise, they were delightful and very funny to wake up to. yes! it's me! i'm still here! i still exist! i'm back in blockman hell again (as a lot of us seem to be)! time is a flat circle, a weird soup, etc.

[sparxwrites]

Hellooo, just wanted to say i’ve been following you since yog days and have just recently gotten into hc and ll after being an ex-yog for many years now. very much appreciate your wonderful work, i’ve probably gone back now and read transference like 4 or 5 times bc i love it so much <3

sparx has received [ 35 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

omg............... someone who knows the Old sparx lore... glad you're still enjoying my fic, though, and welcome to new blockman hell with me i guess!!!

[sparxwrites]

I've been here since yogs too, and tbh I've don't watch hermitcraft but I have seen like little clips of them and I love these funny block men

It is weird to not know who the dude with martyn is tho

sparx has received [ 28 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

they are very funny! hermitcraft has been doing wonders for me as chill background noise, almost like a podcast. plus, the builds are phenomenal, and i appreciate their dedication to just breaking the game as entertainingly as possible.

the 'dude with martyn’ is probably rendog (and that’s third life, not hermitcraft, though there’s a lot of overlap in cast; ren is in both, martyn is just in third/last life). rendog is maybe a werewolf, definitely a drama queen, has watched too much game of thrones, cannot do... whatever accent he's trying to do (it's bad enough i'm genuinely unclear; scottish???) but is putting his heart and soul into it so we forgive him, and had some deeply homoerotic king-and-his-life-debt-servant thing going on with martyn in third life. has a worse bark than martyn, but way less of a bite - they have the extremely fun dynamic of ren going "okay i want to murder them- wait. wait martyn. wait where the fuck are you going. martyn come back you'll die. martyn stop stabbing them oh my god". and also of ren asking martyn to cut his head off as a test of loyalty, out of nowhere, on a server that wasn't even supposed to be rp. 10/10 i love this funky little dog guy.

[sparxwrites]

as someone who is also an "ex" yogs fan (i went from yogs straight to 3rd life so i wouldnt call myself an ex fan yet hjbggse) i am very intrigued as to what your takes on martyn are 👀 the people with the best martyn takes usually are ex yogs fans just sayin''

sparx has received [ 30 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

and oh man, martyn takes... honestly, i'd want to watch his last life first before jumping to conclusions (and i never watched martyn's yogs stuff, so that's no help lmao), but...

i get the feeling there's broader backstory i'm missing, too - i'm intrigued by the weird voices and rewind stuff going on. that's very fun, and gives me the vague impression he's a guy being yanked around by some kind of higher power(s) for their entertainment, which is a trope i absolutely love.

it's an interesting parallel to what ends up going on with him and ren, actually. except with ren, he chooses to set his loyalty and blade in ren's hands, and ren rewards that with care. at no point is there any sense that ren is watching martyn dance, or enjoys the power over him. he takes martyn's unwavering loyalty to him for what it is - a precious gift to be respected - and, in fact, at several points ren calls martyn back from chasing after people/doing the red king's will, because he's worried martyn will get hurt.

if my impressions about martyn being yanked around by mysterious voices are correct, that... kind of explains why martyn was so willing to hand himself over to ren - he's not used to having much agency, anyways, so he doesn't value handing his obedience over to someone particularly. it also explains why he ends up so aggressively loyal to ren - because ren doesn't treat his obedience as a given, but as a gift, and that's weird and novel and something deep and fundamental smouldering in martyn's chest, because he feels valued.

he's also just like. clearly a ten-ounce can of whoop-ass though, because he gets given a sword and the order to kill and just fucking goes for it like he's some kind of undersocialised chihuahua. which i love, like, good for him honestly. powerful bdubs energy.

there's probably some fun parallels to be drawn between martyn/ren and grian/scar - in terms of two red names who are not terribly murder-oriented (though ren is way less laissez-faire than scar, way more interested in asserting his authority), but have two green names on a leash who are just champing at the bit to kill for them. but also in terms of them both having kind of unusual lord/servant dyamics! with grian/scar, it's because despite grian "owing" scar, it's pretty clear grian is pulling the strings and pushing the action for most of this, and scar is just along for the ride; with ren and martyn, ren is still clearly the one in charge and martyn very clearly defers to him without resistance, but there's way more mutuality and care there than you'd usually find in that dynamic.

[sparxwrites]

Came from the archive (your quackbur fic to be exact) to say hello and welcome back to the world of minecraft youtube fandom. Your Lying and Kirin fics were my favorites back in the day. Though you seem more focused on Last Life right now, I thought I'd ask what POV of Dream Smp you watched? I'm assuming Quackity or Wilbur because of how well you capture their voices

hello! thank you for the compliments, and for the warm welcome. another one for the "ex-yogsfans who've come crawling out the woodwork" list; the higher the number grows, the more amused i become.

hilariously, i think at the point i'd wrote the quackbur, i'd watched like... techno's pov of the execution, a bunch of tommy's exile arc, and then the uhh. the one where wilbur goes to last nevadas for the first time, and then the "unhealthy competition" set of streams live (i.e. everyone was raiding everyone consecutively, so i watched like wilbur then quackity then tubbo and/or ranboo).

so i had watched some of them, but not really tonnes and tonnes. i think a) they're both like... very strong character archetypes, in terms of behaviour and motivation, and b) they have reasonably distinct speech patterns. and, without sounding like a conceited asshole, i'm pretty good at picking up on speech patterns with, say, a few hours of constant exposure - it's a problem irl where i often have to stop myself from copying people unconsciously, but very useful for fic.

you'd also be surprised how easy it is to make characters "sound like themselves", once you've got the trick of it; it generally only takes maybe two or three distinct "quirks" for each character that you sprinkle in to their speech to provide enough triggers for the reader's brain to start kind of... filling in the gaps wrt intonation and accent etc.

for example:

wilbur, especially when he wants something, has a habit of saying people's names twice, with a particular sort of wheedling intonation on the second one ("quackity. quackity."). he repeats himself a lot, actually; generally not verbatim, but he says the same thing in a different phrasing (or at a different point in the stream of speech) as though to hammer the point home: "my friend, my old comrade! there's no need for that, there's really no need to be so stand-offish, i'm just here for a chat. a little parlay, if you will". he's also got a very smooth sort of patter when he's speaking, and he often picks slightly formal or fancy/dramatic words, usually for one half of a repetition pair - again, especially when he wants something or he's in Speech Mode (but even when he's stressed or angry!). so there's very few 'hard cuts' or full stops, and a lot of commas and run-on sentences: "quackity. quackity. come on, there's no need to be like that, really, i'm just here for a chat. just a pleasant chat, between old friends, old buddies, you know how it is! come on. for old time's sake.".

quackity, on the other hand, is a lot twitchier. he's prone to breaking off mid sentence and stuttering (which you can do with hyphens, and commas between a repeat of the same word, or even with mid-sentence full stops if you're sparing about it), and interjecting with nervous laughter (though again, use sparingly), even if he's not really nervous: "it's- wilbur, you- haha, you can't, you can't expect me to, to just-". he often says quite a lot of words without actually saying anything, partially because of the stuttering but also because he often refuses to pin himself down and instead leaves things open to interpretation by the other person: "it's just that- well, you know how it is, when you've got a country! it's just- there's. you know. there's a lot to do. lot of things to see, people to do, you know how it is." he doesn't use long sentences, generally. when he's angry, especially; then, he drops the stuttering and becomes a lot more fluent (and swears a lot), and the sentence/clause length drops significantly (which you can do either with lots of full stops/other "hard break" punctuation, or with lots of commas but putting "and" or something else between them that makes it clear these are multiple sentences strung together): "look. wilbur. i tried playing nice with you. i tried! i really did. but you forced my hand. you forced my hand, wilbur. so i'll give you one last chance - get the fuck out of las nevadas. or i will put this fucking arrow through your goddamn eye socket, and then i'll lock you away, and it'll be fucking deep and so fucking dark that no one will ever fucking find you. do you understand me, wilbur? do you fucking understand?"

(my watching habits go under the cut, since i got carried away and the ask is now Too Long)

i've now done all of exile arc (plus doomsday and... whatever the tubbo tommy and dream fight one is called, from tommy's pov), all of wilbur's vods, a few techno vods for a fic i really need to just finish writing, and i'm currently working my way through quackity's plot-relevant/lore vods and the lore vods of some of the other las nevadans (the lovely @thequackcity put together a playlist for me). next on the list is ranboo lore vods, and then probably post-exile (i.e. prison and resurrection and beyond) & early disc war tommy vods. maybe some awesamdude and eggpire lore stuff too, we'll see. i'm accepting suggestions!

(that's actually why i'm more last life atm - i'm on early quackity pov, and as much as i love the character, the streamer is... a little bit "let's go gamers!!!" for me to stomach in large amounts, especially when i've got irl stress going on lmao. so i'm supplementing my diet with something that has better audio balancing and less constant howling hysteria. i am not dunking on quackity with this, btw, it's just not the kind of streamer persona i'd usually watch if it didn't have a cool character attached to it! i also don't know why tommy is so different, despite them having oddly similar streaming personas; maybe something to do with the mic balance, or maybe the britishness helps temper the yelling?? my brain is mysterious.)

[sparxwrites]

DUDE i just realized you were the one who wrote that fic about Nano domming Will? god fucking bless.

add me to the list of ex yogs fans in ur asks lmao

haha, yep, that was me! you're welcome lmao :3c

sparx has received [ 34 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

[sparxwrites]

add another to the ex-sparx-writes-yogs crowd! i love the way the write minecraft mechanics. the imagery of dirty white creative mode light will stay with me forever; i can't imagine it any other way now. your writing is so tastefully grotesque sometimes, i adore it.

i live for the minecraft sparx revival

sighs. sighs heavily.

sparx has received [ 33 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

obligatory Bit aside, i'm honestly incredibly flattered by this!! i'm still deeply fond of my creative mode headcanons (and have recycled them for hc/dsmp lol) and it's really delightful to know they've stuck with other people as well. as for "tastefully grotesque", well... what higher praise could an author hope for really? <3

[sparxwrites]

I just wanted to say that I used to read all your yogscast stuff back when you wrote it, tho I didn't have an account back then. I stopped keeping up with your stuff for a few years but I saw that one of the people I follow had reblogged a hermit post of yours and I'm just so excited to see that you've found and like dsmp, hermitcraft, and last life because I've always loved your writing and I can't wait to read all that you do in those fandoms.

i hope you don't mind me posting this publicly, but we do have a blog tradition at this point:

sparx has received [ 32 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

but, more seriously, thank you for the kind words and the warm welcome!! i'm always incredibly flattered when people remember me from previous fandoms/previous things i've written; i've said it before, but it continues to be kind of wild that i and the stuff i create exist inside other people's heads

and yeah! took a brief detour into critical role, but i'm back in the mcyt pit babey!! i'm in last life/hermitcraft hell currently, though i've still got a few dsmp things i want to start and/or finish. i've got plenty of fics up for all three of those fandoms currently, though, and more in the works, so... enjoy your new stay...? :p

[sparxwrites]

just curious, with your current interest in dsmp and previous with yogs, have you watched 3rd Life/Last Life yet? the general vibe of the story seems right up your alley of content you’d enjoy and I’d love to see some of your takes on it in writing if you do get into it!! (specifically the canonical blood lust and red/green duos heh)

anon you will absolutely not believe what i'm currently watching

anyways i a) feel extremely called out, b) am unclear on whether to be delighted or disappointed that i'm so damn predictable, and c) love grian and want both wonderful (sex) and terrible (whump) things to happpen to him

if you've got pov recommendations (bc i am not watching thru like. twelve people's playlists or however tf many there are) hmu bc i'd love to hear them. since you clearly know me better than i know myself.

[sparxwrites]

@kkulecru replied to your post:

same as op lol i think i sent a great submission exposing myself too oops

you did, and i am so sorry for not responding to that! idk how to reply to submissions privately, and i didn’t know if you wanted me to post it, and also i was so touched i just like... kept coming back and kind of staring at it a bit and trying to work out how the hell to respond. and then i got a fucking deluge of asks, and it got buried underneath those OTL

(i’m not kidding, i got like 40 asks in five days. i love yall, but you’re insane)

but yes- i got your submission, and it was extremely lovely, and i was very very touched by it. thank you so much for taking the time to write it all out!! also, congrats on your major, and good luck- and i’m extremely honoured to be able to take any kind of credit for what someone chooses to do with such a huge bit of their life.

if i’m allowed to get a bit sappy and introspective here: it does continue to genuinely overwhelm me like... how many people know i exist? how many people view me as someone that should be admired, or looked up to, or is cool?? the fact that i exist in people’s heads rent free? the fact i’ve influenced people, or that people i’ve never met have a concept of me as a person, or that people talk about me whilst i’m not there? it’s just so wild to me! it just... it kind of boggles my mind.

idk if it makes me look like a self-congratulatory dick, writing that out, but it’s with the context that like... idk, i’ve changed a lot as a person irl since my days in the yogs fandom. i’ve grown up a lot! and i look back on the person i was then with great fondness and affection and empathy, but also as - in a lot of ways - a total idiot and a mess. and it’s just insane to me that like... there’s people who thought she was smart, or cool, or inspirational. not in a bad way! not at all in a bad way, it’s deeply touching and i feel genuinely honoured by it, but like...

wow. wow, dude!

every time i get one of those kinds of asks/submissions, it’s like realising that that stone you chucked in a pond without a second thought, like five years ago? the ripples are still going out! and i know it’s a tiny tiny pond by comparison to the audience some people have on the internet, but still... given that this blog is just A Thing i do, for fun, in my spare time... wow. it’s just the absolute weirdest sensation, in the best possible way.

also, since i’ve just made myself look like a total self-absorbed asshole, have the obligatory:

sparx has received [ 23 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

[sparxwrites]

i was a huge fan of your work in the yogs fandom and i gotta say seeing you post last life knocked me on my ass it feels like walking into your favorite bookstore by chance after thinking they moved locations

sparx has received [ 25 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

it continues to be genuinely overwhelming to realise how many people i apparently made enough of an impact on in that fandom for them to still remember me like... five years later? like. idk. it just blows my mind a little bit, that i Exist In Other People's Heads.

still! extremely flattered, anon, very glad you liked my stuff and hope that i continue to provide tasty tasty content for you! re: the "favourite bookstore" thing... i mean, this blog is very literally called The Bookshop, so in a very real sense, that's exactly what happened! new fandom; same Bookshop. come on in! :)

[sparxwrites]

@mothomancy replied to your post:

Just never left tbh

see. people who say this are the craziest ones to me. like either you got real lucky with your fandoms, or you have been following me thru fandoms you’re not into, which is just. so so wild to me lmao. what the hell!! crazy.

sparx has received [ 20 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

[sparxwrites]

@kr1g​ replied to your post:

Hi, make that 13! (And I may not have a yogs related url but my pfp sure is)

YOU

i remember you

sparx has received [ 13 ] asks replies from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

[sparxwrites]

As another secret yog fan I think a lot of us loved your works so much we kept following in hopes our fandoms might cross again

ok that's it, i'm starting a fucking tally:

sparx has received [ 10 ] asks from ex-yogs fans welcoming her back to hell

anyway!! ignoring my ongoing and profound hysteria over how many of these messages i've recieved (which is not a complaint, just an acknowledgement that my laughter gets slightly higher in pitch and more unhinged with every one i get), that's actually a phenomenally sweet thing to say and i'm genuinelly really touched. especially since i look back on a lot of my yogs stuff as like... not bad writing, but certainly not up to scratch with my current stuff. it's still just so wild to me that people liked it so much, and it kind of warms my heart every time someone reminds me that people do...

but anyway, congratulations to everyone who hung around! here i am! back in the mcyt pit with you all once more. i'd like to thank everyone who helped put me here, but really it's mostly just @thequackcity that's responsible, and then a dozen other people who kept kicking me back to the bottom every time i nearly managed to crawl out. which- many thanks, beeserv. i appreciate the repeated boots to the face :)

[sparxwrites]

Seeing you talk about last life/third life is Wild tbh because I've been here since yogs too, and while I haven't gotten to those series yet I do follow hermitcraft and man. if you'd been there in season 6 with the civil war, that would have been a whole thing

another fucking yogs fan how many of you are there holy shit

also: good news! hermitcraft is on my to-watch list, because last life isn't giving me my required grian and scar fixes (i’ve already watched scar’s s8 stuff, am working on grian’s, and doc is next. and then maybe etho. or bdubs. or shadowlady. or-), so... maybe at some point i will get to... whatever the civil war is. you've gotten me intrigued now, though, as to why you think i'd like that in particular.

would for sure rec third/last life; they're pretty short, i think grian's third life playlist is about four hours total. very fun!

[sparxwrites]

sparx im begging you make the self help discord. everyone in the block men fandoms are toddlers, at least ex yogs fans are mostly adults by now. i want to talk about weird block men porn without getting swarmed by angry children

if you want to come off anon and drop me a dm, i may be able to help with that! no promises, but i've got my sources...