ἀλήθεια

I move to keep things whole.

[barrierblocks]

aria/lethe. adult. it/its for all + (s)he for friends

theme creds to @ringtiledlemurder (icon) @trippedintoa-volcano (header)

about me:

mcyt sideblog. passionate about mcrp/yt as an artform wrt narrativisation, building, and its possible intersections with & explorations of trauma, but returning to the medium after a multi-year hiatus. also deeply invested in the spectral presence of rene girard. interested in game studies but poorly read. you'll find the life series, hermitcraft, lifesteal, and @divorcesteal on here. I'm also playing on community life! you can find my other lifers under the tag #communitycraft on tumblr :D

my DMs are off because this sideblog is backed up across multiple tumblr accounts. you can send me an ask for my main if we know each other. if you want your ask answered privately, please put ** at the beginning!

expectations:

I don't respond to bait and don't do internet arguments. this is a boundary I set instead of eschewing all discourse because I believe in facilitating productive discourse that is expansive and inclusive as opposed to reductive and exclusionary. be civil on my posts and in my inbox, and approach people in good faith as best you can.

disclaimer:

I don't tend to follow people back unless we know each other, but I follow tags and am interested in connecting! please approach with caution as you would a stray and skittish cat (because i am one). it may take me some time to respond, and often I may not respond at all. this doesn't mean I don't want to talk! I am physically and psychiatrically disabled as well as autistic, and this affects how I socialise online.

thanks for reading!

[mawofthemagnetar]

That loud POP you just heard was the sound of xBcrafted shooting a champagne cork off his back deck, by the way,

[neo4rchive65]

micrograyghost

[taiey]

vitalasy gets a heart AND woogie warned katie (oh and derap) before they went through the portal https://www.twitch.tv/spongs_/clip/PolishedTriumphantGoshawkPogChamp-L3wd_C_qG5gffrbn

...oh Vitalasy's finished his challenge! He can hear now! He's about to talk! he asked spongs for advice so his first word was 'yungwill'. First time talking to Katie! Mostly made up with Woogie?

(Spongs tried to pretend he was uninvolved... not well enough to fool Derapchu.)

[draculism]

bdubs gets used and abused

[jamtamart]

the massive cliffs :: episode 13

first episode || previous episode

[mochachailattecafe]

does anyone remember bdoubleo100

[barrierblocks]

i cannot post it because it contains very personal content but what you all should know is that my personal thread in a groupchat has been me begging bdubs to upload for a week while basically every illness under the sun attacks me in the midst of my cross-country move

[reddbug27]

that cool as photographer

[flyingrowan]

Grian’s observatory

[shadexxxx]

Jamal moves me so much guys… so much. Not to be the person recommending people for hermitcraft, but if jamal joined hermitcraft i would skip in happy circles. He is so funny and wuick and silly and OOOOH I LOVE MY BOY

[shadexxxx]

So like. I have thoughts about this in general. Im totally gonna derail this entire conversation but fuck it.

In case it isn’t clear im black lol. And yeah, I agree, a lot of people on hermitcraft and just in this space in general are white. BUT I have two main points.

A. Just because the server is mainly “white” doesn’t mean it isn’t diverse!!

B. Just because the server is mainly white doesn’t mean we should start adding people of color as diversity hires.

Oh before I continue I AM NOT HATING ON YOU OR ANYONE i agree with your opinion, it is starting to look like a pattern, and i know you TOTALLY BY ANY MEANS ARENT SAYING that he should be added BECAUSE HES a man of color lol, you expressed yourself very well! This just reminded me of opinions I have that I haven’t really talked about yet, lol.

So, point A. Yeah, skin color wise, most people on hermitcraft are white. BUT, I think in the past few… centuries? Certainly the past hundred years, there has been a lot of (for lack of a better term) “whitewashing” of white people. Hear me out: during the industrial revolution and beyond, (or before- im not a historian im not educated dont quote me etc) people were largely seperated by nationality. Irish versus German versus Polish versus Dutch- you get it. This, in some cases, defined your class, living situation, jobs. Recently (the past century but really even just the past few decades) we’ve become very black and white about race (haha get it). As in quite literally, you’re either black, or white, or brown, or whatever. This isn’t even MENTIONING asian or native or any of the others. So like, bringing it back to hermitcraft: we have people from almost every continent! We have people from diverse backgrounds, culturally, language wise, class wise, in terms of their previous jobs- hermitcraft, as a server, is SO DIVERSE!! Racially? Perhaps not. But it makes me frusterated when people jump straight to “its all white men!” When that completely bulldozes over all the other things that MAKE the server diverse- skin color? Sure, they’re white. But they’re from so many different parts of the world, different classes, different CULTURES-

And this might be controversial and Im realalllly not trying to pick a fight T-T These are just things I’ve noticed 🤗 But also like yes, there aren’t really any hermits from asian countries, nor impoverished or underserved countries (none that I can think of idk correct me if I’m wrong im not really up to date with the political state of the world) so I totally see where people are COMING from with all of this, of course! And I agree, having a few people of color on the server would be great… which leads me to my second point:

WE DONT NEED DIVERSITY HIRES!!! (Restating here: im totally not saying YOU, prev, were saying that he was a diversity hire- not at ALL because you specifically stated before and after you even mentioned race that you just like him because HES LITERALLY AWESOME and he WOULD work so well with hermitcraft, hes a builder, hes funny- etc. This is just me responding to other opinions ive seen!) This doesnt even really apply in the case of Jamal, because he works so well with hermitcraft’s whole thing, as I just said. But we DONT NEED TO HAVE PEOPLE ON THE SERVER just because they’re black/asian/trans/queer/hispanic/woman/underpriveleged/dei ET CETERA. If the hermits find someone who matches their vibe, who everyone wants on the server, they should bring them on REGARDLESS if its another white man, or black woman, or uses it/its pronouns and is a system. It shouldn’t matter. If the person fits with the server, the hermits should bring them on. If not? THEY SHOULDN’T. Its as simple as that!! Would it be cool, as a black kid who grew up watching MCYT, if some more of them looked like me? I mean… yeah, sure. But that really wasn’t a thought in 6, 8, 12, 14 year old me’s mind. I loved the people I watched because they were steady, hilarious, sane, rational people who were sources of comfort in my life. The fact that most of them were white didn’t really occur to me (because I didn’t care, to be fair) because they were from so many different places, places that felt so far away, places that showed so many diverse perspectives.

So yeah, its starting to look like a pattern because the majority of people in at least the english speaking side of MCYT are racially similar (why do I sound like I’ve been publicity-trained lmfao. They’re white.) Its less about the hermits choosing white people to join their server (whcih you never said was true, btw, im just saying in general! <3) and more that these are the options they’re getting, and race doesnt even come into the CONVERSATION. And sure, there are great options that are people of color, but I just feel like… if it isnt something the hermits are bringing into the consideration process, *we* don’t need to bring it into the consideration process. Again, just re-restating, this isn’t an attack on anyone saying anything, these are just thoughts i’ve had in my head that this reminded me of!

[barrierblocks]

i totally get where you are coming from. for full disclosure, i am southeast asian living in the united states! 100% agree that we ought not to think about people as diversity hires because this is itself racist and insidious even if well-intentioned, and much like you I grew up watching youtubers without paying much attention to their race. i do think it is an unambiguous positive that hermitcraft is so multicultrual! however, I feel the general criticism of hermitcraft as a particularly white space does stand—it isn't so much about hermits refusing to interact with creators of colour or anyone from the global south point blank but the kind of culture this circle possesses and cultivates that alienates those creators. and i think that their generally centre-leaning politics are reflected in this, and these politics come out in the kind of content they create and the kind of humour they employ. compared to lifesteal, for example—which has its own racism problems, don't get me wrong—it is an extraordinarily white space, and I think this is often papered over by its presentation as a server with universal longstanding appeal and good vibes. the vibes can be quite good! but they can also be very insidiously toxic (see: etho's current base, scar's recurring praise of various racist caricatures in star wars, grian's misogyny, &c) and i am often left feeling alienated and upset when they speak about my home country (as etho did on a recent scar stream) as tourists from the white global north, just to give an example. thank you very much for this post though, because I have 100% been frustrated by fandom's tokenisation of creators! those are real people, and so are we!

[shadexxxx]

No Bdubs video in 3 weeks ☹️

Lets die

[applestruda]

quick season 11 pearl drawing!

[magmablock]

Etho complaining for apparently 5+ minutes about 1 plant rebuilding Pearl's base during the move

[jamtamart]

mess to masterpiece :: episode 8

first episode || previous episode - next episode

[thornysort]

moon thief (print)

[cherrywoodstixz]

One of the most common reasons given for boundaries (and subsequent boundary policing) is the idea that cc's see themselves as their characters and it makes them uncomfortable in some way. Sometimes this is made explicit (such as luanne + kyleff) and other times it's the clear background implication (pyro). There's a term in broader rp space for this concept called "character bleed" (<- blog post describing it w/ some academic articles) and its usage in the context of boundaries is complete bs

I think graecie (in her discussion on stream and on tumblr) unpacks the idea that managing bleed is on the audience really well! I also think it's a shame that, despite this, she's never used as a "good example" when talking about boundaries. So, I'm talking about her and why other people should too

Here are some quotes from when graecie clarified about her post further on stream:

"When I bring up character bleed or how our brains differentiate- or-or. Our brains are unable to differentiate fake emotions from roleplay to real emotions in real life and how, like, your brain treats those emotions that you feel the same way. I don't ever want that to be misconstrued as I'm putting that responsibility on the community to prevent us from getting character bleed, or prevent us from struggling with those things. That's not it." (22:40)

(Small note that the use of "us" is super notable here! This is something that (should) apply to all creators, not just graecie)

"When I brought [character bleed] up in the past I think it might've been misconstrued as me blaming the community or, not blaming the community but expecting the community to be responsible for preventing that and that's never what I mean. Whenever I bring it up it it just, I think it's something creators in the mcr space— in the mcrp space are unaware of, um, because it is so new. Safety tools, uh, self-care in roleplay, all of that is relatively new to the mcrp space, uh, and I don't think a lot of creators understand the impact that playing a character live non-stop can have on their mental. And like, how they— how they view that character as more of themselves." (23:45)

"It-it can be stressful to navigate but that's also, it's on me to navigate, which is what I've been doing. Um, it's not on anyone who engages with my media to navigate for me." (25:10)

This is already (somehow) leagues above every other creator who thinks it's on their (mostly underage) fanbase to regulate their own emotions! What's most interesting to me in this stream + graecie's subsequent posts is that she's clearly interested in spreading this idea outside herself. In a recent(ish) tumblr post she detailed some of the consent/safety tools she introduced on the flight and on stream she mentioned:

"I've been slowly trying to introduce more dnd safety tools into the mcrp space. I did a character, uh, like safety and consent checklist form for the flight for everyone to fill out... it's absolutely, it's on the other people you play with and the gamemasters but it's not, I-I would say it's not on the community who is consuming the content you create to be aware of and prevent [character bleed]." (25:30)

"And, I'm there for my friends if they're going through it, I've got resources for that." (27:09)

You'll notice that it didn't take some huge controversy for graecie to change her opinion, just some self-reflecting and actually listening to the community. Here's her establishing a dni tag and talking about it on stream

That other people (the ones ppl usually point to as good examples) had such a public turn-around and have done nothing to actually change the culture which encourages boundaries brings their motives into question. It's an issue that "changed" creators get to respond to their co-workers insane boundaries by saying "I do respect other creators boundaries cause its their preference" and get uncritical praise. The only reason we see boundary discourse come up so often is bc ppl who are "okay about boundaries" aren't willing to challenge the overall culture in mcyt that endorses that behavior. An unwillingness to challenge even basic ideas such as "the rules that inspire harassment are good" and "my emotional regulation is the job of the audience" makes me wonder if opinions have actually changed or if creators are just searching for fandom brownie points. If creators who "figured it out" were interested in more than just themselves I don't think this discourse would be happening every other month

I mainly just think there are better examples of "boundaries done right" than the names ppl usually throw around. Especially when graecie's a marginalized creator who (lbr) probably deals w/ a lot more fandom weirdness than the (mostly cis and het) men that ppl talk about :). That she didn't require some explosive discourse also proves this is a topic of discussion because these mindsets are so normalized