Happy Pride to everyone here on tumblr. it takes a lot of strength to be who you are. that is something to be proud of. you deserve to be proud of the fact that you have survived, whether in the darkness or out under the terrible light of day. never let anyone tell you otherwise. to the queer amongst you, for the rest of your lives, go out, touch gloves, and fight like you’re proud to be alive. to those of you i haven’t filtered yet, fix your hearts or die.
Gender in Minecraft, a frostbyte freeman essay, coming this June.
possible new solars Entire Essay soon: on (the death of the) death of the author, and mcyt as conditionally "entertainment medium" vs "artform" solely based on which is most convenient for public image
well apparently instructure got hacked so that's gonna be slightly inconvenient. remind us to work on this tomorrow anyway since we seem to be recovering from end of semester just fine
okay so this is gonna be an All Summer project at this rate. possibly even a "solar contacts its academic advisors to ask about this being an independent research project" angle, unclear on that as we straight up have NOTTTTT had time or energy to schedule classes yet.
we did start reading The Death of the Author though and. hm. it's definitely something. folks. is it capitalist/parasocial/[scareword here] to do literary critique?
it's so incredibly frustrating the way fanfiction gets treated vs other fanwork and art in general, especially in mcyt fandom. like it's genuinely fucking dire and while it partially has to do with the mechanical nuance of doing it, it's also frustrating as all hell
the main thing is like. recreational and recognitional crossover to us. like, if you're a fanartist, you have a pretty good chance of getting commissioned for official art. if you do fansongs, same thing applies, plus you'll often have fandom plausible deniability. skin artists, coders, merch design, et cetera, all of this stuff has a place in the broader ecosystem of recognition. a really good bit of fanart can straight up convince someone to watch a series. meta analysis at least has its place in academic function even if it's disliked or ignored by the general fandom audience.
and then there's fanfiction. which, despite (or because of) being so incredibly involved in shaping the way characters are viewed (and in mcyt, how plot develops), gets fuckall. someone will mention a cool piece of fanart inspiring them, but they won't cite a fic in the same way. like, yeah, part of that is legal issues, but also the fact remains that generally fic is not seen in the same light as other fanwork. good fanfiction is mostly circulated in-fandom.
there's no broader translation upward, either. it takes a different skillset, so prowess at fanfic is not particularly helpful for original fiction writing. and on the extremely EXTREMELY unlikely chance someone is seeking out writers for a project, well, at that point it kind of isn't fanfiction in the same way when it's part of the Actual Narrative.
(and also let's be real the hypothetical of "creator wants additional writers to assist with a specific project/plotline" rarely happens in general, much less the specific impossible addition of "and turns to fandom to find those writers". it'd be cool if it did! but that's not how it functions.)
out of curiosity: is there any centralized repository/wiki for unstable universe that contains episode transcripts? i have a very specific question i need to answer and the data i’ve already collected on the series was for something else entirely so i’d have to start from scratch. thanks in advance
message to all part-time MCYTers: if you ever find yourself thinking "wow, I'm really seeing a lot of good audience response, I could probably go full-time"? THAT IS THE DEVIL TALKING. DO NOT QUIT YOUR JOB. YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR ART TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON CAPTURING THE LARGEST POSSIBLE AUDIENCE OVER MAINTAINING ANY SORT OF ARTISTIC INTEGRITY. DO NOT GO FULL-TIME.
truly cannot stress enough how fucking impossible it is to make art when your living conditions depend on creating something with broad enough mass appeal. all you are doing is setting yourself up for heartbreak after heartbreak in having to abandon things just because they aren't performing well. iterating nonstop not because of a drive to improve your own craft but because not making the Next Big Thing could easily mean majorly destabilizing your own income source.
do not put yourself in a situation where you have to choose between compromising your own artistic vision and making something that will "perform well." where you are gambling on winning the lottery and being the one person people are willing to watch anything from. do not put yourself in the middle of an entertainment industry with zero structural protection -- no unions, no minimum wage, no insurance or benefits or oversight or assistance -- and no recourse other than word of mouth if you get hurt.
do not throw yourself into a system that currently displays a vested interest in sticking to a "safe" status quo, that reflects societal bias to the maximum and constantly prioritizes cis white men over literally anyone else. where you are constantly under scrutiny for anything and everything you do and one slightly annoying remark may become your reputation forever.
art cannot be sustained under those conditions. not when you have to choose between making that art or paying your bills. do not quit your fucking day job.
This bind was supposed to come right after the Etho Zine bind, but a combination of work pressures, Ramadan, post-Ramadan shenanigans, and me being burnt out from all the previous stuff delayed the completion of this zine. For weeks the unfinished text block sat below my cabinet workspace, calling me to clothe the pages.
About a week ago, I finally kicked myself to finish it!
This is the MCYT Metazine, made by the brilliant and talented people at @mcytmetazine, who made this to celebrate the meta analysis of the MCYT fandom. With such a large and diverse base of players and fans, there are a myriad of research studies that could be done; shipping, setting, storylines, interpretations, music, how creators present themselves to their audiences, and so on.
As such, I believe such a publication is deserving of the hardcover treatment. I decided to go on a semi-split boards bind, the same as with the Etho zine. The process is easier now due to familiarity, although I may have made the yellow paper strip overlapping the bookcloth spine and the title paper too large. Mea culpa.
Besides that, I also added a bonus!
I also included an appendix! More specifically, I included the essay '[Meta] Keeping Things Platonic: in Conversation with DSMP Authors' by @antimony-medusa. Not only does her work became one of the analysis pieces in the zine, but she also conducted interviews with 13 other fans whose answers inform her final piece in the zine. Given the valuable context of these interviews, I decided to include them into this bind proper.
All in all, it took me 3 months to finally finish this. I wish I could have completed this bind earlier, but at least now I can put this on my shelf! Special thanks to the amazing team at @mcytmetazine and @antimony-medusa for making this zine bind possible!
hello i am frostbyte freeman, maker of minecraft video essay type-things and rudimentary literary analyses. you may recognize me from my work on Wifies and the King in Yellow, IvoryCello's Whitepine, Scripted Minecraft Content and its Problems, or other such stuff
i'm putting this out in the open on tumblr since i figured that reading comprehension might be higher on here than it is elsewhere— not my next video, but the video after is slated to be about Women in Minecraft (that is the working title but obviously the broader critique is going to be much more intersectional by necessity). on the one hand i wonder if i've even got anything sufficiently novel to add to the discourse, if i should even weigh in.
on the other hand i am someone who benefits from the privilege of outwardly presenting like a man. one time, during an argument about mcat analysis, one of my friends looped me in just to echo their talking points with the rationale that "whatever a woman says first, a man just says louder" (but people listen) and that always stuck with me in a way that made me feel unrelentingly awful. but if people only care about that sort of signal boost, maybe something good can come of hijacking their preconceived notions and heuristics
so here's where I get to the big ask— what do you all think would be most relevant to give the uninitiated viewer a conceptual framework for this sort of stuff? have you read any insightful scholarly analyses on the subject of sexism in gaming? i think covering the pewdiepipeline is necessary at the very least due to its proximity with the game's resurgence in prominence, but do i have to walk this all the way out to the broader ongoing conditions of gamergate?? do any of you have your own experiences or insights on the front of structural misogyny to share (especially those that predate me formally joining the community)?
again, this is a big ask. i do get that. it is not your job to educate me (or rather help me educate others since that's really what i'm asking here, i'm grown i can do my own research). but if any of you have novice-oriented resources you find helpful to make this topic more accessible to a lay audience, or experiences you feel comfortable enough to share, it'd be greatly appreciated.
Wifies STILL doesn't understand the King in Yellow. But does understanding the King in Yellow even matter? Was I right? Was I wrong? What even is an adaptation, anyways?
New video about Destroying a World That Doesn't Exist out now.
wato will never take us alive. WAIT WHAT'S THIS IT'S FROSTBYTE FREEMAN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR-!?
in all seriousness, though: we appreciate the sentiment behind us being nominated to this tournament, but we're not an mcyter. frostbyte freeman, on the other hand, absolutely is -- or at least is sometimes, which is even better.
frost generally rides the line between mcyt and variety video essayist. if you have ever wanted to know about something fiddly like an academic paper on the technical function and implementation of slurs, or the difference between metatext and paratext or semantics vs pragmatics you'd be in the right place. if you have ever wanted machinima recommendations or more grounded analysis of notable mcyters and their contributions, you'd also be in the right place. and if you want a video out of left field every once in a while -- about the muppets, or wes anderson, or the nature of art -- frost is definitely, once again, the right place to look.
are we personally biased because frost is a friend of ours? oh, absolutely. but we also just genuinely consistently enjoy every frostbyte freefilm that we get to see, and we think it's a damn shame that those videos keep consistently only catching on larger audiences who are incredibly obstinate, stubborn, and unwilling to engage with any form of literary analysis put forth. which is especially frustrating when this is one of the few people we've seen who consistently puts this much thought and care into articulating and conveying things.
so. yeah, go check out frostbyte freeman. genuinely unlike anyone else in mcyt fields that we know of at this point in time, with consistent bangers and wonderfully inconsistent subject matter. we're not gonna rec a specific video here, they're really all worth the watch. just choose something you'd be interested in and go for it.
(also, as for what it'll cost you. well let's just say you can get a frostbyte 4 free.)
look all we're saying is this is what happens when you put a non-mcyter in the bracket for mcyts. universe gets cosmically upset and corrupts multiple folks's data, especially those closest to the breach :V
SCAR IS WORKING ON THE MINECRAFT WORLD THEME PARK AND LIVING HIS DREAM AS A REAL IMAGINER!! THIS IS ACTUALLY SO AWESOME I AM SO HAPPY FOR HIM!!!
Also to add onto this: He said he is making sure its wheelchair accessible!!! There are many things he is making sure this park has so everyone can enjoy it!!
not only did this actually happen, we have evidence of it. we have always been this. the same artistic impulses, the same abstract yearning to be anything but ourselves. we have never not been this.