sorry, unlike you i don’t play the jelly belly beanboozled game for any sort of masochistic fantasy fulfilment, i play it to connect to my ancestors who would eat mysterious berries and hope they would wake up in the morning. (shoves a handful in my mouth) i tjink i got the. booger one
trying to pass off "i just blew 50 bucks" as a normal thing to say but i just left the boreal forest and my shirt and face and hair are sticky and soaked and. listen you can read the blog name you know what i did
During my time in mcyt fandom, I've watched as the fandom's perception of creator boundaries has grown and shifted into a cornerstone of our fandom, and yet we don't actually have any good data on how the fandom as a whole perceives them outside of discourse posts.
The goal of this unofficial study NOT to make a value judgement on whether creator boundaries should be respected - it is to understand how the fandom currently perceives and interacts with them.* Is respecting creator boundaries important to you? Has your favorite creator made a boundary list or spoken about it on stream? Do you find some boundaries acceptable and others not? Have you ever been the target of hate for engaging with boundary-breaking content? Whether you think boundaries should always be respected or you think they're being used as tools of censorship, I want to hear from you. What are boundaries, and why do they matter so much to us?
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This survey is a mix of multiple choice and optional long-response questions. It should take about 15 minutes if you’re only doing the required questions, and much longer if you choose to answer the optional questions.**
If you are able, please reblog and share this survey link around. Feel free to post it on any platform, as I am currently only on Tumblr, which is not representative of the fandom as a whole. In fact, I’d love it if it reached Twitter. The more responses, the more accurate the results will be for the whole of mcyt.*** Anyone in mcyt spaces, including creators, are welcome to take the survey to share their thoughts. However, I ask that for the comfort of content creators and the spirit of good fandom etiquete, please do not directly share the survey with any creator or post the link in any creators’ official communities. Thoughtful discussion is always valued over reactionary comments.
The survey is set to close at 11:59pm EST on August 1, 2026 - I may extend this date if there is still a high volume of responses coming in, or if there aren’t enough responses yet for meaningful data. I will aim to publish the results within a month of the survey’s close, and keep you updated on the timeline if that’s not feasible for any reason.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped beta this survey- you all gave such wonderful suggestions! I wish I could’ve kept every question, but in the end a lot needed to be cut to make this manageable. Please know that I appreciate every one of you, as this survey would not exist today without you.
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* Why I think this data is important to collect: The idea for this survey came to me almost a year ago, and I started developing it around February of this year. I’ve spoken with dozens of people about this topic with diverse opinions, read and catalogued hundreds of tumblr posts, rewatched streams and videos by creators and fans, and watched as opinions have shifted across fandoms in real time. I feel extremely confident in saying that every person on every side cares deeply about respecting others and creating safe, welcoming communities in all mcyt spaces. Where they differ is on how to show that respect, which kinds of expectations they think are reasonable in different spaces, and beliefs on how those in power should be using their influence. I don’t expect this survey’s results to fundamentally change anything - this debate has been going on longer than mcyt has existed. But I think it’s still important to analyze the actual arguments people are making and how they affect our communities, instead of focusing on expected behavior from others based on our own values, so we can see the varying expressions of humanity in each other and work towards a better future for our fandom. I don’t think we’re as different as the discourse may have us believe.
** This survey is designed to encourage all participants to think critically about their position and the effects it has. I am aware that I have my own personal biases, so I have taken steps to ensure that the survey is as bipartisan as possible and also gives participants the opportunity to explain their answers for every question if they feel the need. Because of this, there may be questions that make some participants uncomfortable. While I would appreciate knowing why a question has made someone uncomfortable, participants are always free to skip such long-response questions.
*** I’m well aware that any recent discourse on this topic may skew results if arguments on one side are more successful than another in convincing fans of a particular position. I still think the data will be valuable even with a potential skew.
The last minizine I participated in as part of @mcyt-crazine! I hosted this one, but we were unfortunately unable to finish the full version. Such is the way in such a busy event :3
Featuring Gem as a hexblade warlock with Impulse the totem barbarian as her partner who is totally not under her control! The second piece features Martyn as a harengon horizon-walker ranger escaping easily from jail.
Many thanks to @artofaphoenix for their mage Pearl and to @iheartfurrympreg for a beautiful druid Bdubs <3
Fandom sidelines her or pretends she doesn't exist so they can feel comfortable shipping the main guy with another guy. Demonizes her for being an imperfect trauma survivor. Blames the writer's decisions for her storyline (which are also rooted in misogyny) on her, a fictional woman, instead of the actual living man who wrote it.
Casca is amazing. She's smart, kind, brave, and flawed in very human ways. I believe she is the beating heart of the story despite the author's prioritizing the male characters. Many of the story's themes are embodied in her storyline and by her. She is one of a very few women of color, potentially a Black coded woman, who stars in a fantasy manga and later a show from that particular era. Not only that but she's the love interest. Neither her romance or her trauma are handled with care by the author IMO, but nevertheless many survivors including myself have related to her story and found her to be a powerful and moving character. She deserves to be cherished and loved much more. While she may be an imperfect character because of her author's prejudices I still adore her.
Pearlescentmoon:
oh my god where do i even fucking start. in canon she's ostracized from her best friend in the whole world AND SOULMATE because he decides on a whim she betrayed him because she didn't immediately seek him out and throw herself at his feet. he then proceeds to spread rumors about her being his crazy ex to the whole server. he says she's the reason why he's gay. someone else on the server calls her "scarlet pearl" and the name sticks. at the end of the series (it's a death game) they're the only two left alive. he kills himself, making her the winner of the game, and frames it as an act of kindness/an apology that she is in essence forced to accept. even though it narratively removes her agency
and in fanon everyone just kind of agreed with her soulmate and said, yeah she is his crazy ex! wow! he's so nice for killing himself for her! or worse she gets girlbossed
she's literally my goat she's my everything she's my poor little meow meow she's my fun time gal she has suffered more than jesus
So basically in double life (think hunger games with soulmates) she was rejected by her soulmate, who proceeded to tell anyone who'd listen that he did it because she was "unhinged" "crazy" "psychotic" etc. She tried to play into it (because she was lonely and miserable) and neither the other characters or the fandom ever really realized that "Scarlet Pearl", as her bloodthirsty alter ego was known, was a result of trauma and ostracization and not something that came at all naturally. To this day people still portray her as an unhinged girl boss, and refuse to acknowledge that her soulmate did anything wrong in isolating her. They torture you to insanity and then torture you for being insane.
Also, people never appreciate how competent she is in general.
She didn't even do anything! She was making an effort to be thoughtful for her soulmate, and when that failed, she just wanted to be with her dog (who later died). And after it was all over, she went and forgave her soulmate, which makes her a better person than me. She's really good at all the parts of the game except the social, and people are constantly taking advantage of it.
Her storyline in vampires smp was cut short for pacing :(
She deserved better! She deserved to get to go "oh God what am I" more!
oh god where do i start. it's been a while since i've watched the life series, so i may have things out of order or slightly inaccurate, but i believe i have the broad strokes of everything. so in double life, players are assigned soulmates, to which they share a health bar. pearl, upon starting in this world, goes to the nether w martyn, yadda yadda, and comes back to find her soulmate scott has denounced her for "taking too much damage" (she didn't) and is choosing his own soulmate in cleo. okay whatever. this isnt too bad. he then starts going around to tell people she's crazy and a witch and trying sooo hard to get him back. okay what the hell. she builds a tower to get away from people and decides well fuck this if everyone thinks i'm crazy i might as well be!! she starts purposefully taking damage to piss off scott. she ends up a server-wide villain. she wins the game because scott has the audacity to kill himself despite her yelling at him not to. she literally just wanted to talk to him man. the thing the fandom did??? completely ran with scott's version of the story. pearl became a crazy ex, a witch, a villain, in the eyes of the fandom. she was lonely. she was trying to survive alone when she was in a world where everyone had a built-in, universe-assigned partner. she was REDUCED TO SCOTT'S CRAZY EX. SHE LITERALLY DIDN'T DO ANYTHING UNTIL SHE REALIZED THERE WAS NOTHING THAT WOULD CHANGE PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF HER.
she had the most justified character arc of all time and yet she is reduced to scott's crazy ex. if i was her i would've done worse actually
She gets slotted into the role of ~crazy~ bitch in the fandom.
I love the way she is ostracised in Double Life, and the way that haunts her in future series. I love the 'I am up at 5am and DOING MY BEST' energy she brings to everything. I love the way all her choices make perfect sense from her perspective and she keeps being judged harshly for them. I love the passive aggressive standing in snow to get back at her soulmate. I love Tilly (her dog, her only friend in Double Life) so so much.
Fandom overexaggerates bad things she did, complains she was selfish in times where she either wasn't or had no other option, and keeps making her "the mum friend" she is not the mum friend!!!!!
She is so silly and so kind and also a little fucked up. She loves her dogs and loves her friends and isn't afraid of mischief and/or tomfoolery. She is one of the best terrain builders I've ever seen and is absolutely amazing at rolling with the bit.
People love to portray Pearl in Double Life as someone who went crazy after being rejected. Pearl's DL perspective is the story of a woman unfairly shunned and isolated, and characterized as unstable by those around her. This is lost on the general fandom, who wants to paint her conflicts with Scott and various others as being on even footing, or even portray others as her victims when she was routinely victimized by almost everyone else on the server.
Pearl is the most loyal and effective ally to be made in the Life Series and is often taken advantage of because of her tendency for genuine kindness even in a death game. That's not to say she isn't also a capable killer when necessary, but she approaches most situations with fairness even when fairness isn't expected.
