The statements that need addressing
This isn’t a smear campaign, but a collection of problems people are trying to genuinely communicate to you all in one post.
Boundaries are supposed to protect your space, but the internet is a public space, so while you can set rules for your twitch chat and discord, you can’t ban shipping as a whole on both public and private spaces. It’s unreasonable and encroaches on other artists' ability to create art for themselves.
Because boundaries aren’t rules, and you cannot weaponize them as such.
You can’t make rules which apply to everyone that even without your watchful eye would make you feel uncomfortable, and it’s incredibly controlling to nitpick how you want characters you made for a story to be interpreted.
And it’s not being attached to ships that’s the issue here, but how you want to control how everyone else views character relationships for your sake, in a space where people want to share their creations to each other and not you.
Not every piece of fanart is a “gift” to you, not every piece of fanfiction wants to be read by you and demands your attention. You can perfectly avoid all these works with tags, both on ao3 or like so many people have suggested, a dni tag on tumblr as many other cc’s have used.
There’s a reason why so many cc’s have normalized dni tags, it’s because like any other person on the internet, you should filter what will trigger you and not expect every other person to just never post about your one trigger.
Cc’s such as Martyn, Cleo, Abolish, Legs and Graecie to name a few understand this concept well enough.
Yes these are the characters you created, but the moment you monetized them and grew a large following from a story being shown like any other, you lost the right to how everyone will view your character and grow attached to them. How they interpret your characters outside of you, shouldn’t be your business because they aren’t talking about you, once again character and content creator should remain separate.
No you aren’t a content machine, you can choose how you want to roleplay and act, you can choose if you want characters to share your name or not, but you can’t get mad at everyone else for then taking those characters as characters, whether their interpretation is what you want or not, accurate or not, it shouldn’t be an issue to you or your partner.
Especially when a lot of people within these communities are minors and or significantly younger than you.
You have so many artists who have drawn works genuinely directed for you while also making their own fan pieces for the fandom they upheld, that's what got vsmp so popular to begin with. Yet you only seem to want the pieces directed to you for your approving eye.
That’s why I don’t understand how you continue to deny the use of a dni tag, as if you’re purposefully trying to run into works not made for you.
Or how you will continue to “flirt as a joke” as you and Maddy said on stream, queerbait, but ban anyone for even writing fanfiction that has been properly tagged.
How you choose your words deliberately, with your “birds” basically policing a fandom, or how to not harass past shippers, not extending that to how you shouldn’t harass anyone to begin with. All while having your mods clarify how the “birds” was a joke that no one understood, or how a clip of you clearly only stating “past shippers” actually included any shippers in general in a post where your mod defends you.
All these clarifications don’t even have courtesy of even coming out of you directly, so how are we supposed to know the true intent of the words or what you meant, in an important stream which you wanted many to view, you didn’t make this information clear or accessible to anyone not watching the stream.
Evidence if anything is edited or removed:
And there are already cases of harassment coming out because of the very words you said. link These were examples I could find from others
You get hundreds of people on your streams now, and it clearly shows you weren’t ready for the influx of viewers you got after vsmp and the flight smp. Going from a few chatters in your previous streams on even cowboys smp, to now a constant stream of messages in your chat at all times.
I hope you realize by now that your community very much does idolize you, we are all human and we all make mistakes, however it is up to everyone, especially someone with a large following as you, to know when they overstepped and know that they can take back previous statements after making an informed decision.
If your defense tactic is to ban people from your twitch and discord because they posted something far too “ship like” with their “repeat offenses” after you looked for it and didn’t make a safe space for them to post it without your viewing or community’s harassment, then yes it’s immature.
And I implore you to take time off to think about these things offline, defend yourself and make clear boundaries for your community, but not rules to the fandom as a whole, and have a conversation with your partner if the idea of knowing people like making two minecraft fictional block characters kiss is so distressing.
Because at one point, it isn’t simply about boundaries but control.
Also please don’t make someone as young as 16 mod for your chat when you clearly state how minors shouldn’t even share their age in your communities. Minors will of course jump at the opportunity, but it is you as an adult almost a decade older than those 16 year olds to know it isn’t safe for them.
-- from someone who once called themselves a fan and found your streams entertaining
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