#i've experienced at least is dsmp. in the way that there are things that are so fucking dumb and strange and things that are so gut

[infizero]

also having now actually seen the whole thing adventure time has skyrocketed into one of my favorite shows ever. like for real i liked it as a kid and have always had a fondness for it ever since but rewatching it now has made me realize Just how fucking good it is and how unlike anything else it is. its so good and appeals to ME specifically in so many ways please for the love of god if you haven't watched adventure time WATCH IT. WATCH IT RIGHT NOW

#ALSO. i think i may have mentioned this before but i really do think AT has one of the best senses of worldbuilding and continuity #i've seen in a cartoon. other than like steven universe maybe (gee i wonder how that happened) #but seriously like the fact that its able to be so goofy and weird a lot of the time while still constantly keeping in mind all these thing #and having them inform the story and world in realistic ways is so good it has really blown my mind #nothing is ever retconned nothing is ever forgotten about. even the seemingly most meaningless things will still be remembered #and referenced by the characters because thats how people are!! they dont just have stuff happen to and around them and then never #bring it up again!! but they also dont constantly go ''remember when we did xyz?'' stuff just comes up naturally if it makes sense #for it to do so. and i think thats so fucking incredible and admirable #AT's flavor of weirdness and comedy and raw emotion is something so wonderful and perfectly aligned with how i like my stories #and it really does have a vibe that is unlike anything else. i am going to cry thinking about it #like the closest thing i can think of. and lord forgive me but im being genuine in terms of vibes closest thing i can think of that #i've experienced at least is dsmp. in the way that there are things that are so fucking dumb and strange and things that are so gut #wrenchingly emotional and beautiful and simple and often those things are intertwined. its stupid and weird and funny and sad #its silly its dark its fun its tragic #something about both of them just feels like a representation of the human spirit in its purest form to me. they impact me the most #because they represent all sides and experiences of existing #idk. but ive always felt like this even before i got into AT again. i said a while ago if dsmp was made into a show it would HAVE to #be an adventure time style cartoon. and every time i see fanart drawn in the AT style or whatever it makes me so happy even now #ANYWAYS. sorry to derail but i really have missed the vibes of the dsmp and in a weird way AT felt a lot similar and i really love that #FUCKKKK not me getting emotional over the indominable human spirit. im gonna go saw my legs off BYE I LOVE ADVENTURE TIME #serena.txt

[etoilesbienne]

I think i saw you mention this on your twitter and i really hope this doesn’t come across as derailing or trying to make misogyny discussions about a male streamer but the way that bbh hate (especially twitter hate) is so weirdly misogynistic and women in streaming patterned that just really sticks out to me. like i don’t think I’ve seen many other non-woman/non-fem presenting(?) streamers get hate like that, at least to the degree that bad does.

like he gets shoved into the mother/care taker archetype and then they get mad when he isn’t the quite, helpful babysitter, who never complains and people don’t give thanks or recognition because that’s just what he’s supposed to do. viewers love him when he basically works as a plot device to help with other characters (mostly male characters) character development or to flesh out their backstory, but the second that he starts to have his own character traits and do things against their character they really hate him. and they get super hypocritical about it, crucifying him for things that their cubito did too and seem to be otherwise fine with. 

idk It reminds me a lot about the way that puffy, Nicki and Hannah got treated in the dsmp era and baghera more recently pre-purgatory.

nah its all good i do think its an issue, but tbh its the same basic premise of like him breaking narrow expectations and fans holding his character to incredibly high standards. and even if it isn't a direct misogynistic backlash to him, it's at the very least indicative of how genuinely misogynistic this fandom is that every single female streamer is held to those expectations and standards to such a severe extent, that one male streamer experiencing the same thing for once can be directly compared to all of them.

that being said, i do agree that i partially think this is happening to him because of his character having stereotypically "feminine" cultural traits like being a caretaker to children, refusing to curse, and generally a lot of his argumentative demeanors. its 4:30 am so forgive me, this whole thing is just such an odd scenario that i've never really seen before at this scale?

#asks #discourse

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

i NEED yr insight on cee loanshark PLEASE 🙏

Okay LISTEN UP Y'ALL

I'll set the scene. The date is sometime after LN5 first airs. I was in the middle of rewatching Foolish's six-hour building stream in which Quackity recounts his entire life story, when suddenly my third eye burst the fuck open.

And I guess there's no better time than now to drop my c!loanshark meta.

/dsmp /rp

I've always liked these characters, and I've picked up on a lot of really cool connections between them. c!Quackity is a former idealistic young politician turned jaded capitalist, building a legacy and clawing his way up with bloody fingers. c!Foolish is a physical god who once used violence to get his way but came to regret that way of life and now copes through creating beauty. Quackity explicitly manipulates Foolish into joining him by appealing to his newfound fear of mortality, a fear which Q shares. They're both trying to move away from past versions of themselves, but what they each see as "the problem" is very different.

What compels me about this dynamic is that Foolish simply existing as himself is a refutation of Quackity's worldview; building things up rather than tearing them down worked for him. That's how he got immortality! That's why he has so many friends! And while Quackity is trying to push Foolish back into the life he used to live because he desires and envies that strength, Foolish does not want to lose himself to that side of himself; when he does join Las Nevadas, he claims he's simply trying to find a "healthy balance."

But because of the kind of person Foolish is trying to be, combined with the perspective from centuries of existence, he's in a perfect position to reach Q. Quackity has a history of getting easily attached, both to powerful people and to people who show him compassion unprompted. Foolish is both of these.

And we see this! We see Quackity in that very same stream opening up and telling Foolish everything about himself, despite admitting that it makes no sense for Foolish to stay and listen. We see him trusting Foolish to run the country after Slime died. We see him enlisting Foolish's help to make canonical babies clone an army of slimes.

And... controversial take incoming, but this dynamic is easier than Quackcicle for me to read as potentially romantic. I think that generally, and especially post-Schlatt, Quackity prefers to be intimate with someone he sees as... an equal, at least in some sense. And as much as he cares about Slime, he does not view him as an equal; him simultaneously infantilizing and idealizing the guy is one of the big problems Slime rips into him for ("you found me, something malleable"). Meanwhile, he's still Foolish's boss, officially, but he also knows that Foolish is experienced, capable of extreme violence, and definitely capable of killing him if he wanted to. He's kind, he's nice, but he's not pure. There's a certain... safety in having someone like that on your side. Doesn't hurt your ego, either.

So for Quackity it's "you are one of the few people who can truly understand why I am the way I am" and "you could destroy me if you so chose, and you wouldn't be wrong for doing so" and perhaps later on, "knowing you better now, I want to do right by you; don't I wish someone had done that for me?" with a healthy dose of "you know, the fact that this guy could snap me in half and I'm only still alive out of mercy (or am I the one in control here? Nice.) is… kinda hot."

And for Foolish, it's "I still hate you for what you couldn't or wouldn't do" and "I feel sorrow for the parts of you I see myself in" and perhaps later on, "I came here for my own benefit but maybe you and this place deserve a second chance; didn't I want a second chance my own?" with a little dash of "… okay, I'll admit it, this mortal is kind of cute, and I could always kick him and bail later if I really wanted to."

The rub we find with a romantic relationship between these two, though, is getting it to go the other way. Despite having been very civil to Q, Foolish has no reason to trust Q. This guy let him die, came into his home, insulted him to his face, and probably doesn't pay him nearly what his work is worth. Foolish still has some self-respect left. He seriously considered betraying Q to Dream, for goodness' sake, and it's hard to blame the guy.

But after Quackity's second death, Foolish is... basically all that Q has to confide in. And again, maybe he's in the perfect position to understand and discern whether or not Q's change is genuine. Given his own history, he knows that people can change.

Picture this: Quackity now has hundreds of humanoid slimes to care for, right? Maybe he wants to do better by them than he did for Charlie, and is realizing just how badly he might have fucked up by raising them the way he did. Maybe he tries to encourage them to do things independently, too, and it isn't quite working. Maybe some of them gain enough agency to be angry and choose to leave Las Nevadas, and maybe part of Q's growing process is letting them go.

But maybe Foolish stays to help those who remain; after all, wasn't he their creator, too? Doesn't he have some responsibility? And while he's teaching them new skills like building, or helping them hone their individual styles, he's also there for Q to lean on, ask questions, confess things he hasn't told anyone else. Maybe Foolish tells Q a few stories from his own past, and Q isn't horrified to hear the gory details. Maybe they go from coworkers to tentative friends, and perhaps something a little more... flirtatious. Yeah, that's the word. Nothing too serious, just fun. Like when Quackity comes to Foolish in the middle of the night, shaky from a dream he's not remorseful enough to call a nightmare yet, and asks if he can sit with him. Or when Foolish asks for feedback on a blueprint that's giving him trouble, and Quackity spends half an hour praising and hyping him up (it's little... weird, but appreciated). Maybe one day, Quackity finally gives Foolish a true, heartfelt apology.

Foolish isn't going to hold Q's hand through his self-improvement journey; Q has to face his guilt and do the hard parts alone. But maybe at the end of it, Foolish will still be there, in this cold country that's starting to feel just a bit more like a family, and maybe that says everything it needs to.

On a completely different end of the spectrum, cAN YOU IMAGINE THE ANGST IF FOOLISH HAD ACTUALLY BETRAYED Q IN LN5. AFTER Q HAD FINALLY STARTED TO TRUST AGAIN HE GETS SMACKED WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS OWN ACTIONS. WE WERE FUCKING ROBBED OF THIS SCENE. ROBBED, I TELL YOU-

Sooo... yeah. Their dynamic doesn't need to be romantic, per se, but it's a ship I find very interesting and appealing. Hence the essay.

P.S. - tiny prettyboy twink + muscular literal god, do what you will with that

#dsmp #c!quackity #c!foolish #c!loansharkduo #do these two have a ship name? #quacklish? fookity? #ahhh loanshakr is a pun it's fine #analysis

[paused-waterfall]

Care to tell more about what you think of the plot and characters to the dsmp? Which ideas you enjoy and don't? It's super interesting since I was there during the hype and it sucks that the whole thing seemed to crash in and burn (at least in my eyes). At least a few CCS got to end their characters how they wanted too

Ah man, the plot and characters. First, a caveat: My thorough watch-through hasn't yet reached the conclusion of many of the characters, so I can't properly speak to that. I've encountered plenty of warning signs of controversial and stunted conclusions, so that has been my expectation from the start. With that hanging ominously over our heads, here are some of my thoughts on the rest:

Despite its overt absurdity, the plot of the dsmp feels more like a history book than a novel. In your prototypical novel, one author is really just trying to tell one story. They will cut scenes that don't add to that core story, and simplify their work if they're afraid their audience might get lost in the weeds. Background characters, in particular, get cut down to only existing as the minimally adorned cogs needed to complete the mechanisms of the plot.

In the dsmp, damn near every character is fleshed out by a whole human who is specifically invested in that character. A creator might only play a small part in a given storyline, and any individual viewer might have a complete blindspot for a given character. But there's still a whole person sitting behind every username, monitoring (and sometimes, experiencing) their motivations in real time.

And this lets them do weird shit with their characters. Authors need to keep their whole cast in their head and keep them on the rails well enough that there aren't any unexpected crashes. The creators on the server generally don't bother with this. I haven't gone out of my way to peel back the curtains of the server's writing process -- curtains can hide horrors, I don't touch curtains until I'm ready to flee -- but I have the impression that pivotal characters in pivotal scenes have beats to hit and maybe some scripted lines. Meanwhile, the rest of the players seem to be set loose to do whatever fits their concept of their character, with only minimal guardrails in place to prevent an accidental derailment of the core plot of the day. Nobody looks like a cardboard cutout who is just there to play Shocked Man #3. Even players who are not deeply invested in the roleplay have comprehensible motives, because they seem to mostly be there to just play some goddamn Minecraft. Hey, that's a game I've played! They want to build a nice house and maybe find some netherite -- I know what that feels like!

No viewer can follow all of the uncurated knot of plotlines that make up the dsmp. But I find it so satisfying that any thread I choose to pull on is likely to reveal an earnest line of character motivation. When I complete a novel and want to know more about a character, the best I can hope for is that the author happened to have the same thought and is willing to act on it. When I finished watching the Blueberry TV cut of Doomsday and wondered what the fuck Ranboo's deal was, I was able to dig up VODs and see it all first hand. Plenty of plotlines are cut short and plenty of perspectives have been deleted, but on some level these flaws in basic storytelling are a rarely explored reflection of the real world. Because history is not a streamlined novel. No history book can fully encapsulate the events it portrays, but we know that every character contained within it has their own perspective, and that every thread in the knot can be pulled on further if we're just lucky enough to have not lost the information to time.

There are, of course, a ridiculous number of downsides to this approach to storytelling. But, since this is my first time encountering this specific type of narrative, to me they are new and interesting downsides. Flaws that haven't yet dug grooves into my patience. I'm quite eager to see artists build on this example, wrestle with those flaws, and either find solutions or find some other approach that's even better.

I've somehow rambled for 6 paragraphs and barely touched on any specific character and story beats, but I better cut myself off here for now. If you want more of a rundown of notable design choices, I could certainly be baited into more of that lol.

#dsmp

[omokers]

first lines meme :3

tagged by @whetstonefires

Rules:  Share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able to, and see if there are any patterns

Going through my AO3. Unfortunately, I'm not a very prolific writer (yet!) and most of my writing has been focused on two works; the translated works I can't count, and anything before 2021 I don't want to look at. I'm going to be looking at the first line of each chapter instead. I'm also going to be including the first lines of the newest chapters I'm working on.

1. cathexis; CoD körangi priests AU. A priest returns to the church he was raised in, only to discover a sinister plot at large involving ritualistic murders and mysterious baby disappearances. He joins forces with a man who introduces himself as a Vatican exorcist to solve these mysteries.

“Horangi hyeong.” A small hand tugged at the edge of Horangi’s cassock. “Hyeong-aaaaa.” 

“—margin of between 8 and 10%. Despite this, Bell Motors has experienced a rise of 1.8%, while unprecedented losses of 9.6% have been recorded overnight for competitor K&W Mobility—”

“Okay, this is going to be the last one!” Horangi exclaimed, out of breath.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

(WIP) “We can’t always choose what’s best,” Father Jerome mused. “Sometimes it’s enough to choose the better option.”

2. rays crepuscular (as the sun makes its grave); DSMP vampires/hunters AU. A young vampire hunter deserts his ranks for his best friend, who has been turned into a vampire; they must now escape a city full of powers they can't fight before they are caught up in plots far beyond them.

His best friend lies dying in his arms.

Each tick of the shitty, off-time hotel clock lies in the space between them, every moment stretching and snapping like a rubber band pulled between the thumbs of a bored child in class.

The alleyway that leads to the small abandoned square where its dry, cracked fountain greets him.

I want to tell you a story. It’s about how, a very long time ago, the first vampire came to be.

And a cheer for absolutely fucked up sleep schedules, Tommy thinks distantly, as the incessant ringing of the twin bell alarm clock they’d been provided with in the hotel room reaches through the arms of sweet, sweet slumber and so rudely rattles him.

(WIP) From this day onwards, to the best of my knowledge and abilities, I swear to fulfill this covenant until my last dying breath:

To be honest, I don't think I've been writing enough to be able to derive any kind of meaningful rule from how I open these things. I think I've adopted different styles for each of my more recent works, if only because most of the second one listed here was written before the first.

It may be an unconscious choice on my end, beginning with the tense of each work and including several stylistic differences between the two. But, also, it could just be that my writing style has been evolving over the months I've spent "seriously writing" (or, at the very least, trying to write consistently instead of once a year when inspiration strikes).

Super clearly, with the more recent work I've been writing I've been beginning every single chapter with a line of dialogue. It puts the reader right into the middle of a scene without explaining where this is or what's going on. It does, however, serve to establish or foreshadow some things.

Meanwhile, with the older work. I've begun each chapter with some kind of explanation in most cases? It's a description in the three cases that isn't just someone talking. In the last (unpublished) chapter, the first line after the mantra that the character is chanting is another descriptive line about what the narrative character is doing.

I think I could stand to make the first lines of each chapter shorter and less convoluted in some cases. But then again, the first sentence of a full work as opposed to a chapter within it benefits the work when it's more effective in whatever way you want it to be effective in. Short and concise to be a hook, long and rambling if that serves another purpose. There's so much for me to learn still about writing, but I stand by the belief that anything, if used skillfully enough in writing, can serve a purpose.

Tagging @redactedcrow, @scifimagpie, and... stopping there because I don't have any more writing-prolific mutuals on tumblr. Don't feel pressured to do this. At all.

#mewriting #meposting

[heyitsduff]

it's been a week, now, and i think i've probably got my thoughts together well enough to make this post.

i didn't start watching techno or any dsmp member until around early 2021, when the first episode of the great potato war popped up in my recommended box. i watched it. and then i watched the next 2 parts. and soon enough i was neck deep in skywars commentaries and watching a man beat minecraft with a steering wheel.

needless to say i was completely hooked, and i continued watching techno's videos frequently throughout the year. c!techno was my favorite character on the dsmp by far, his was the only pov i even watched most of the time. something about him and his content was just so captivating, it could make something as fickle as my horrible adhd brain settle down and focus for a while, just to watch his vods.

when he told us he had cancer, i was worried, but i convinced myself everything would be fine. after all, he didn't seem too concerned about it, so i shouldn't be either, right?

and that feeling was only strengthened by the next update. they got the tumor out, and he got to keep his arm! of course it'll take a while to recover, but he's in the clear now, right?

i was in the shower when that last video dropped. i went in feeling good, i'd had a pretty nice day and was getting ready to relax and veg out in front of my computer until i decided to go to bed.

instead i, a whole 17 year old male (almost a grown ass man, as my dentist would say) spent the next two hours hunched over sobbing in the bathroom over a minecraft youtuber.

now, i've been lucky enough to not have experienced a death in the family, at least not someone i actually knew, since my great grandmother died when i was in first grade. but that also meant that i hadn't really experienced grief like this before, and i didn't know what to do with myself.

i ended up texting my mom. she was just downstairs, but i don't really like being seen when i'm vulnerable, and i was honestly afraid she'd judge me for getting this emotional over someone i didn't know personally.

but she didn't, thankfully. she said i might not have known him personally, but i knew part of him, and that part was important to me, and its okay to grieve for that. which is the way i've tried to think about this whole thing from then on.

after i was sure i was done crying, i went back to my room and didn't talk to anyone in person for the rest of the night. i needed the time to process, now that the shock was over and i'd gotten the immediate feelings out.

i ended up having a short text conversation on discord with a friend of mine who was also a fan of techno. he said he'd managed to avoid crying, but only because he knew if he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. i think that's the most genuine emotion i've ever seen from him. that's how much our minecraft pig man affected people.

i delivered the news myself to my other friend. that was rough.

i think i've let a few more tears flow, a sniffle here and there, since then, but i've been able to return to functioning like normal.

i'm gonna really miss techno. he was someone i looked up to, who i could always count on to cheer me up when i was having a rough day. but i know he wouldn't want me to just sit here in a puddle of my own tears, no matter how much i want to sometimes. hell, he'd probably call me a nerd for getting all choked up again writing this post.

good game, pig man.

gg.

#technoblade #technoblade never dies #long post #mcyt #sorry if this is kinda messy #its 5:30am and i need to go to sleep

[rosysugarr]

alright getting more into depth about my feelings right now here we go, yall can feel free to skip this, I just wanna think out loud and organize my thoughts

So, basically... the past two, almost three years of my life have been really, really fucking hard for me. Like. "I spent a month crying literally at least once a day" tier hard. And I'm still struggling with it. Adding to that has been the incredible fucking loneliness I've been experiencing.

And then I found dsmp fandom and just... dove headlong into it because of all of the above, and made it my Whole World, and I ended up getting into the place of it being just. everything I did. Which was fine back when things were lighthearted and fun! But over time, starting with the exile arc and getting worse and worse as things went on, the fandom became a more and more hostile and divided place to be, and because early on I'd let it become so much of my daily life and identity, I ended up in a place where any amount of negativity in the fandom, even if it was a point I agreed with, made me feel incredibly sick to my stomach. I ended up spending all day every day feeling anxious constantly and couldn't even enjoy talking about the content anymore because I felt this overwhelming amount of guilt and anxiety about doing so.

Which is why I left for a while. I realized I'd let this thing that should be something I enjoy for fun take up way too much of me, and looking back, it was REALLY UNHEALTHY. I haven't been taking care of my body or my mind, I haven't been a functional HUMAN in years. I totally forgot I had a body to even take care of in the first place half the time.

SO. I forced myself to avoid it for a while, to create distance. And it sucked for the first little while because I was constantly worrying that I was missing something... but I just reminded myself that even if I were, it would probably just make me feel worse if I hadn't missed it.

I'm finally in a more healthy space now, where I can enjoy the content without feeling intense anxiety and shame, and I'm gonna be working hard to maintain that-- keeping myself out of discourse or heated debates over the content or creators, using my blocked tags liberally or whatever, y'know. Doing what I need to do to care for myself, because I've realized that I cannot currently engage the way I was with this fandom previously because it's just... really unhealthy and damaged me really badly.

Hyperfixation can be a dangerous fucking thing. I know it's scary to even think about forcing yourself to step back from something you're fixated on, but believe me when I say that it is so important for you to assess your relationship with whatever you're fixated on and, if it isn't making you happy, if it's causing damage to your mind and body, you NEED to force yourself to take a step back if at all possible. Even if it's just for a couple of days.

Take care of yourselves, yall.

#rosychatter

[criticalrolo]

Tbh this is prompted by seeing the ask about Possibly growing away from CritRole immediately after the ask about Minecraft, but honestly? If you ever want a New Thing With Ridiculous Amounts Of Content to get into, then I Highly recommend Dream SMP. I also never thought I'd be into a ~Minecraft Roleplay~, or Minecraft anything, until my friend infodumped about it to me (and we ended up watching animatics and episodes until 3am). But tbh it's pretty Good?

Like I'm still Very into CR, and I'm especially happy with the last 2 episodes, but my particular flavor of ADHD likes to have at least 2 or 3 different hyperfixations to parkour between at all times. So while I'm still very into CR, I've also gotten way into dsmp recently, and it strikes me as the kind of thing you'd probably enjoy as well.

As a whole, imo, Dream SMP kinda has a similar Vibe to TAZ Balance, in that it starts out super casual and 98% goofs, and has turned into a Sweeping Dramatic Story which uses previous goofs to Develop Characters/Story and Cause Angst. Think the tonal shift of "YOU'RE NAMING YOUR WIZARD TACO??" to Arms Outstretched or The Count Down Scene, or how different the first Umbrastaff scene felt between the first and second times you experienced it.

It's also got a lot of queer rep, in that a lot of the Character Creators and/or characters themselves just... Are Queer. And it's never really made into a big deal? A lot more emphasis is placed on friendship and family dynamics, both in canon and in the fandom, which is weirdly refreshing? There's not a lot of emphasis on shipping. Like some of the characters are in relationships, and it's not really treated like The Most Important Thing they're involved with. It's very casual, and it's kinda nice.

There's a Lot of content and a lot of characters, but the nice thing is that you can just kinda Pick a character and stick to their POV.

I'd recommend trying Wilbur Soot's POV if you're at all curious but don't wanna commit a lot of time to trying it out. It's only 12 episodes long, none of which are over 35 minutes, and he plays a large part in the first Major Arc, The L'Manberg Revolution, where it becomes less goofs and more story.

ah yes the Dream simp I’ve been hearing about from all over the place

Thanks for the recommendation! Atm I don’t think I’m gonna be getting into a new huge piece of media because I’ve got a lot of real life stuff going on, but I appreciate the rec and it sounds like a good ... show? Story? Theater? Thing 😌