#except you can lean on me

[whatididtomakeitbetter]

no lean on me,

i'm not reliable,

[polux-aka-hyakunana]

[WIP] Probably not gonna finish anytime soon since I'm making it between work and projects as rest time

[danielnelsen]

well that's just a lie

[the-somwthing]

Welcome to my little meta analysis essay called

Why do we misremember Flower Husbands as being “nicer” than it was?

Disclaimer: I’m not here to talk about whether or not FH is “toxic” or anything like that. It’s just a fact that many old fans rewatching FH POV and new fans who are watching it for the first time after seeing fan content tend to be surprised at how they actually behaved in the series compared to how everyone remembered them being back in the day. This will NOT go over whether or not I think FH is unhealthy or whatever and instead just discuss why I believe this phenomenon has happened.

So, if I try to make this a fancy well written essay, I’ll be here all day, so I’ll just get to the point. 3rd Life came out during the DSMP era of mcyt. MCRP has been around for ages, but the DSMP style of RP (which I’ll be calling “smp rp”) was pretty much popularized by DSMP, mostly towards the end of 2020. For reference, 3rd Life started early 2021, so there’s about a half a year between these two events, and DSMP kept going for years so 3rd Life was absolutely happening during the golden era of DSMP.

But what does DSMP have to do with this? Well, it sort of created this idea of “lore” and only specific things being “canon”. You can make fun of me for the way I worded that, but you know what I mean, DSMP was weird about that stuff. I don’t really blame them as it was kind of a new style of RP they accidentally spawned, but still, it was a confusing time for SMPs.

3rd Life was actually less like DSMP and more like the modern SMP RPs, where there’s no (known, lol) scripted events and the fandom itself deciphers what is or isn’t “canon” rather than it being told to them, with mostly everything being considered canon. HOWEVER, I do believe that DSMP’s style did still affect the fandom, specifically with the topic of this essay, Flower Husbands.

But why would it only really affect Flower Husbands? Now we get into a rough topic: shipping discourse. Back in those days, shipping in the mcyt fandom was heavily frowned upon. Moreso than it is today (I know it’s still around, but it was a lot worse the earlier we go lol). I’ve even seen old relics of ppl saying flower husbands should only be portrayed as platonic cuz it’s wrong to ship them, despite their team name literally being husbands. But more importantly, for A LOT of people, flower husbands was the One Ship people felt “allowed” to ship, BECAUSE it was canon. So they would allow FH and shun every other ship.

My point isn’t actually that, with it being the only “acceptable” ship everyone tried to make it more wholesome, though I suppose that could be a contributor. But my ACTUAL point is where all the things I laid out finally close in on each other:

Ships were a Dangerous territory in mcyt fandom, and ships being “canon” was something a lot of people weren’t prepared to deal with. People don’t want to get too close to RPF territory, but back in the day their ideas of c! vs cc! wasn’t as great, so they default to the DSMP Rule of “if it’s stated to be roleplay, then it’s canon to the characters, if not, it’s noncanon and just the CCs hanging out”.

You see where I’m going with this? When trying to follow this rule for a character relationship where they don’t explicitly state what is or isn’t RP, they hear “we’re married” and instantly mark that as canon to the characters since it clearly isn’t true to the CCs, and tend to block out anything else, otherwise you’re risking it not actually being true to the characters. Especially when it’s things like Scott saying something mean about Jimmy; that directly contradicts the “these characters are in love” thing, so it must not be canon, right?

But wouldn’t people still remember that these things happened, or did they actually straight up not process any of it? My answer to that is: of course everyone was paying attention, but with the context that it’s the CCs playing a video game, all of the teasing and other behavior seems WAY less serious. It just looks like average friends playing a hunger games smp together. And as I explained earlier, the fandom was ONLY processing this as a CC thing, so Scott’s treatment of Jimmy never stood out because that’s just how it is playing games.

Back to DSMP, I’m not active in that fandom anymore but I’ll see snippets sometimes, and I’ve seen the claim that beeduo was actually boring in canon and the fandom was the one that made it interesting. I feel like this is exactly what happened with FH. Nobody was actually expecting anyone to go hard into romantic roleplay, so the fans just take whichever pair says they’re getting married and fill in the blanks themselves. And that was normal back then, it wasn’t fans making stuff up for no reason, it was kind of expected of us.

So yeah, I personally believe that this whole confusion about FH is a result of its time. Whether you want to finally look at the actual substance of the relationship rather than following weird rules about what is or isn’t “canon”, or you believe that since FH was from a time where romantic RP was confusing and weird it would make the most sense to take into account the time period it came from and ignore the less appealing bits in favor of the fanon, I don’t really care honestly. But man isn’t this an interesting situation.

[nexus-nebulae]

yknow i think im starting to feel like im not entirely comfortable with endo neutrals following us bc like. ok let's say im trans. and i have an also queer friend who is not trans. but then they start talking about how they have transphobic friends and still like hanging out with them? yeah, that's not someone i would ever feel safe around again.

i believe people's word on their lived experiences. if you are totally okay with a community that weaponizes ableism and sanism and death threats against a group of people who are just trying to exist as themselves, then i do not feel safe around you whatsoever. if you interact with anti endos I'm going to assume you support them. and i do not fucking know or care what my own origin is and am never going to reveal that honestly PRIVATE information- but if any one of you (general) is ok with other people harassing my endo friends, then you are not a safe person for me to be around.

[karnalesbian]

Ok as long as I'm also begging God to shape games in my favorite series [plural] in a specific way. Please for the love of fuck let the next fire emblem game (not counting the genealogy remake if that is indeed happening. the next original one whenever that is) PLEASE take notes from Engage's gameplay and not 3H's

please I'm fucking begging Engage had the best gameplay the series has seen in forever I don't care what they do with the story and supports and everything but if they choose to make the gameplay more like 3H than engage just because 3H sold well I WILL find out who made that decision, break into their house and decapitate myself in front of them while their family tries to eat breakfast

[teenagefeeling]

people are so unfair to vegans i've said it before and i'll say it again

[garciapimienta]

not a single person asked for my opinion but I have decided i'm going to trust iñaki again, I think he can be the goalkeeper he always seemed he was going to be and that last year's performance was more of a mental thing than an actual reflection of his abilities

[camellia-thea]

initially this post had some commentary about interests right now. and then it turned into a ramble about personal healing in the tags. so the interest post is going separately.

[todayisafridaynight]

fathers day is this month how am i going to inflict psychic damage on myself

[darabeatha]

/ I think that you could ask me about lit any of my f.go muses' character designs and i'm pretty sure that I would have an explanation about why I think some elements fit and why I find their designs to be cool

[glimblshanks]

Do you think I could force Maransomler into a JCS style love triangle?

[darkhalo4321]

just rambling self discovery thoughts

I was at work mulling over things like i do.

And i was thinking back on like my relationships with people. How girls growing up were just so cruel to me and bullied me, how i was friends with guys but like dating was such a hassle.

Honestly, i know i am asexual. Its very obvious in hindsight. I do think i am demi romantic. And i might be pan? The reason i say that and why yhe demiromantic is important is that it definitely has to have some meaningful build up and trust. I did have a slight crush on a same sex friend. And i had and have a bunch of reasons why i could have entertained the idea of a relationship i knew it wouldnt work out. It was really more a daydream idea, but now 3 years later i still think about it and realize that it existed and that i am probably just stuffing these things down because well... im not in a living situation where i could ever explore it without lifelong backlash. I'm not in danger or anything, just that its not a need or drive to explore thats worth the potential backlash. Anyway, i guess i might be pan? But its definitely demiromantic asexual because no one clicks my trigger and really you gotta like earn the right for me to even develop the thought of living with someone or being in a relationship with them. Its so hard being ace. 😭 we really gotta work harder at figuring things out with partners.

[redhotarsenic]

You’re eating a lollipop and Valantinez is there staring off into the distance seemingly contemplating and after a while they casually reach over and pull it out of your mouth and stick it in their own and they pull away and you’re FLABBERGASTED and they’re just. Casually acting like nothing happened except they have the HUGEST shit eating smirk on their face.

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

how to show you have no clue what grunge is: make a high fashion grunge design for a fashion show

[lakemichigans]

okay season 12 actually rocks idk why i hated it so much the first time i saw it