mitch

22 yrs old , they/them

[itlastsforever]

o melhor dia de todos :) (drawing without extra shading beloww...)

[smiledog15578]

How it feels to like a character so much but there's no new art or photos of them so you're just checking the tags like a mad man thinking there's gonna be something

[mcytblrconfessions]

Not going to lie I'm actually kinda sad by how the idea of "boundaries" affected/fucked up the dsmp fandom and mcyt fandom as a whole (or at least the english side) People were so scared to ship anything that a lot of really cool dynamics ended up getting so so mischaracterized and reduced, there only like 3 ships you could ship without getting harassed for and even then it was like "if you shipped them in the Wrong Way then you are evil and actual hate ccs" like so so many interesting ships were never explored or were reduced to just "found family" (if there is a girl then she is the mother no matter what her character actually was, and depending on the age of the cc either he'd be the dad or the son) so much lost potential.

Also please please drop the "boundaries" shit, that came from a sex pest who got a kid harassed for making a danganronpa au. For the love of god free yourself and start drawing cube men kissing please.

[itlastsforever]

im still stuck here

(sketch/lineart of another drawing i might finish one day below cut)

[itlastsforever]

thank you for happening

hi if u clicked :) heres extra egg sketches i might decide to finish one day

[dykecubes]

Imo the whole boundary obsession shows some fairly unhealthy parasocial thought processes and behaviors in people, because it’s so easy to communicate with a content creator they’re a fan of directly on places like twitter a lot of people subconsciously view them more as friends than as the entertainers they are, so they see the boundaries between them and the cc as boundaries between friends, when in reality they are boundaries between strangers

I think this idea that fandom spaces are always fully open and welcoming of the content creators they are a fan of can be fairly dangerous, for example Colleen Ballinger or Dream being in fans’ group chats, there’s a reason why actual celebrities with PR teams don’t interact with their fans via DMs, yet online content creators DMing fans and joining private fandom spaces such as group chats is seen as normal and even something to be celebrated

The idea that you must constantly be on your best behavior in fandom spaces because anything you post online is free game for the content creator to interact with whether you want them to or not is pretty creepy, both content creators and fans should be entitled to their own privacy and yet the culture of boundary obsession violates both parties’ privacy, the content creators’ by demanding a public itemized list of all their squicks and triggers that I’m sure no one will abuse (sarcasm), the fans’ by exposing and publicly shaming people who step out of line, and both by showing fans’ private fan content to ccs who might be uncomfortable with it as a means of punishment

This isn’t even mentioning the fact that, often, boundaries are entirely made up, improperly defined, or unequally enforced, or the fact that behavior that is typically deemed inappropriate by common sense is completely up for grabs so long as it isn’t on a boundary list (I will never forget the person who made a meme out of purposefully misgendering a content creator trying to excuse their behavior by saying “I didn’t know it was against his boundaries”)

Overall the whole culture behind it is not only very puritanical but also beneficial to absolutely no one

[vitreousglassy]

What if there was ANOTHER update aquatic!!!

I had some ideas in a dream and wanted to share them #minecraft

[antimony-medusa]

Gonna be honest with you though if someone outright says “don’t ship my character with other people” or something to that extent regarding smut or whatever I don’t think there should be any ambiguity

I get your point about the nature of fanfic being inherently encroaching upon people’s images so that levity should be extended to otherwise uncommon avenues but I really believe hardline boundaries should be respected, end of, no discussion. If I see people violating creators’ boundaries for their characters Or themselves (and these can be intertwined, it’s not up to the audience to pick apart their boundaries, cuz I’ve seen people try to do that) I’m not going to judge them fairly and I feel like neither should you.

Lines can be crossed and intimacy (not even necessarily romantic!) is a very different monster than the other avenues of storytelling because of how it involves real life relationships seeping into character relationships. Its’s uncommon for people to be like “I wrote A’s character being tortured because I feel like A is tortured in real life” but they Can and Often do that with ship work. So I don’t know, I feel like you’re not affording this the right nuance.

Alright, so, this is another post I'm gonna slap with a discourse and long post warning right away, buckle in.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying, and this is not an uncommon opinion to have! It's still the opinion of twitter/x so far as I know, and I think it's probably the opinion of the bulk of dsmp fans here, as well. I know my posts get notes once they start circulating in hermitblr, but I don't kid myself that I have the majority view. I am posting to explain my views expressly because I know a lot of people don't agree with me!

And in this case we do have a difference of opinion. There's two sort of points as I see it in your posts— we have hardline boundaries about shipping/nsfw from some people, and everyone in the fandom should be abiding by those no exceptions or be thrown out of the fandom; and we have shipping boundaries but not boundaries for other things because shipping is uniquely boundary-crossing and terrible and invasive, in contrast to anything else we can do in fandom.

Taking the second part first, I just don't think that's true. Let's not forget, boundaries discourse started with SMPLive and SMPronpa, and it was not the shipping that caused the discussion, it was the death games. The first real fandom reckoning we had with the notion of boundaries as mcyt fandom was over gore and murder and portraying people in violent ways. Shipping was barely a blip on the radar. The way the discourse has developed now, shipping is framed as the absolute worst thing anyone could ever do with your public image, and everything else is fine, but that is not the case for everyone. Recently the Pirates SMP creators were asked repeatedly for their boundaries (bothered on twitter, really) until they gave them and thus we saw people being fine with shipping but not wanting family dynamic, or being against both shipping and gore, or being fine with shipping but not wanting to be gender bent or trans headcanoned, etc. Not everyone feels the same way about the same things, despite the us-american cultural viewpoint that romance and sexualization is uniquely bad but gore and torture is fine, that everything else is fine.

Like, if we're looking at DSMP, I think there are a lot of creators who would feel just as strongly if not stronger about fics in which their character died of a terminal illness than they would about a fic in which they kiss someone, for understandable reasons. But I see those tropes in the tags regularly!

I think if we are honest with ourselves, if we are going to hardline boundaries about things that are uniquely invasive or bad to do to a creator's character with the view that we are putting all of this up for the creator's approval, we need to accept that this excludes us from writing anything where a character is abusive or is tortured or dies of a terminal illness or is psychologically broken or is age regressed or is neurodivergent or is queer if the cc is straight or trans if the cc is cis or cis if the cc is trans or straight if they're gay— the list of things that would be weird to do in the face of the real guy is really long. And it has most of our favourite tropes on it!

I love writing autistic philza. It would be really fuckin' weird to go up to Philza and tell him about how I write his character as whumped and autistic. Come on now. (But that's within boundaries, so that's— fine? I really don't think it's fine!)

Which is why my stance is that we should be thinking critically about these things, and keeping the fandom seperate from the creators. Some of these things are just not for the creators. They're fine but they shouldn't go on twitter. Y'know?

The idea that shipping draws uniquely on the real person and leads to invasive behaviour but nothing else does— that nobody does "I wrote A being tortured because I think A is tortured in real life"— Look. I have been in the fandom a long time. I remember how all the abused tommy narratives fed right into people assuming his family in real life were abusive— and talking about this on twitter! Where he and his family could see! People did this with WIlbur and Techno too!

I remember people reading about trans tommy and then truthing that the creator either was transmasc or was going to come out as transfemme any day now, publically, on twitter and in his chat. I have seen people she/her tubbo to his face on twitter, with fancams. I have been in chat when people who have clearly assigned Phil "dad" start asking WILDLY invasive things in TTS. If you think that shipping is the only fandom behaviour that can lead to people drawing directly from the streamers for their work and treating the creators weirdly about it, you simply have not been paying attention.

The way the fandom insists on treating benchtrio as children despite the fact that they're almost twenty and viciously attacking their friends for treating them as adults and chiding tommy and tubbo and ranboo for inappropriate behaviour. The list goes ON.

So. The recieved DSMP wisdom is that we should TTS the streamers to check if it's okay if we write a fic in which they die of cancer. We should DM them on instagram to ask if it's okay if we write them as a gender or sexual identity they don't share. We should show up in their twitter mentions to ask if it's okay if we write them as a physically abusive parent.

No????????

My view on that is that it is frankly bizzare it is that we have decided that "asking creators for detailed instructions regarding porn or gore" (especially in TTS! When they're fucking at WORK and can't step away! Stop doing this to the hermits!) is normal and fine and responsible but "post your shit in appropriate places and leave the creators out of it" will make you a monster.

Once again, the experience of someone coming up and saying "i think of you as age regressed" and someone saying "i found this fic where you're age regressed" and someone saying "can I write a fic where you're age regressed" is not that different. In all cases you know that the person has been thinking about it and putting it out there, and in all cases you didnt seek out this information, it was brought to you. In all cases it's weird. Just do not bring this information up to them!

If you just think about it for a while, you see that there is an entire host of things that would be weird to force into the view of a creator, especially when you consider that half the time we got these clips from TTS information when we have no idea if the person answering knew the context of what they were being asked, if they were specifically aware of the creator/cc divide that the fandom works with, or if they felt pressured into it. Oh yeah, let's take a TTS clip from Tubbo when it was 2 in the morning for him and he was deep in a minecraft mod when someone asked him about alters and delusions and he was like "oh you mean like— when they can't help it? I guess that's fine." That definately counts as freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific consent to show him anything we want at all times forever. That's never going to make him uncomfortable.

Think a little here.

So I think there's a lot of the fandom that we should not be putting up for the approval of the creators, and if we don't have a firm answer on if they would like potential edge cases, we should probably be thinking about it and keeping it away from them (and I would err on the side of caution), we should NOT be showing up in the TTS to ask them about narratives in which they're institutionalized, or making them a GOP conservative in fiction, or if Wilbur was canon about seeing them as a bottom, or whatever bizzare thing someone is cooking up now. Honestly if you think to yourself "I don't know if the creator would like seeing this", I would be much more comfortable if the two choices we were picking between there were "simply don't write it" or "write it but keep it away from them", and "harass the creator for an answer on this subject and only write it if they say yes" never entered the equation at all.

And to return to your first point, if we already have a class of fiction that we are keeping away from the creators because basic intellectual curiosity would show that it would be weird to show someone, I don't think it's the end of the world to go "okay, creator doesn't like NSFW, so we also keep the NSFW away from them, keep this shit off twitter, block them if you create it, don't show it to them" and then we archive lock it and continue on our little weirdo on the internet ways.

Now, I don't expect to convince you of this, the phrasing of your post does not indicate that you're open to discussion on this topic. That's fine. Nobody has to agree with me. But I grew up conservative christian, and I have already had people try and get me to throw people out of the community for their perceived sins where I was like "well, I really don't think this is that bad", and I'm really resistant to being forced to do that again. I don't think it's a healthy way to run a fandom, to be shunning people for what they're doing in fiction. Harassing creators in chat? Sure, I will block them from my events as untrustworthy. That's hurting someone in the real world. Writing something that I don't vibe with privately on the archive for an audience of 50 people? That is not doing harm to real people. As long as they're not showing it to the creators, I don't count that as offensive.

How's that for nuance.

[deepcoraldragon]

Honestly, thank you for putting this into words. I've been having similar thoughts, but didn't quite know from where to approach it.

Getting into mcyt fandom from previous fandoms was a bit of a culture shock, in how differently it views sexual/romantic content. Every single other fandom I've been in before accepted that smut was inevitable, and mostly just kept it to AO3, but in mcyt it felt like a cardinal sin. (At the time I assumed that it came from the ccs themselves and left it at that, but I feel like their boundaries are mostly for twitter, or anywhere they're likely to see, and the fandom is enforcing it much beyond that.)

It also took me a while to realize the disconnect. This fandom loves angst and whump. I've read characters depicted as emotional and physical abusers, and some of the most intense gore I'll likely ever read. And I loved it! They're great fics.

But recently, someone came under fire for writing about two characters being very physically close, cuddling, and wanting each other to smell like them. It was written as a cute brotherly thing, and twitter lost its shit.

Apparently (despite the abundance of hybrids fics where this is a common trope) this cannot possibly be platonic, and is therefore unacceptable. That's what made it obvious for me. Writing about this person being a mafia boss who brutally tortures / murders people and kidnaps children (directly in twitter threads! Using their real name!), is good and normal, but you draw the line at excessive cuddling?? What makes one of these things obviously fictional and disconnected from the real world but the other not?

This fandom drew a very weird line in the sand with sexual/romantic stuff on one side and absolutely everything else on the other, and is enforcing it without much nuance

[antimony-medusa]

Notes from @deepcoraldragon

I think the "What makes one of these things obviously fictional and disconnected from the real world but the other not?" is extremely on point there. The fandom has decided nearly every type of physical harm is completely acceptable to write about characters experiencing or committing, but as soon as anything becomes sexual, you have committed the unforgiveable sin, and then they're enforcing this viewpoint as absolute moral truth.

I understand that this started in a place of not wanting creators to be uncomfortable, and that's a good thing, but the things we choose to ask about, and then the things that we seize on and remember and enforce as a community, are so wildly culturally impacted with North American cultural views. Anything sexual is beyond the pale, but torture and gore is fine to show to kids. Looking at my streamer and the way twitter still treats Phil, people will seize on bopping people in chat or historic incidences of "don't be weirdchamp" to say that shipping for phil is entirely off limits to even hint at ever (despite him posting shipping jokes on instagram) and will cancel you for it, but he will openly call for the abolition of the monarchy and the police force on stream and no one will see a problem with writing him as an american conservative regurgitating GOP talking points. Like, you see how there might be some issue there?

And I don't think anyone should be cancelled for gore or writing characters as bigoted! Freedom of expression, write your bad dad phil fics, write your e-rated gore, write your sbi-grapples-with-techno's-death story, write your age regression + caretaker fluff, write your benchtrio-is-all-trans-and-queer modern au. I think the fandom is big enough for all of us, and I know how to simply not read the stuff I don't want to see (filters are marvellous). As long as the creators don't have to see it and you are tagging your shit, follow your bliss.

But I've had people expect us to evict people from events because they were writing emduo queerplatonic with both the & and the / tags used because the relationship was blurry (nothing explicit happened in the fic, the person who found it offensive just objected to the tag), in an event where we also had kidnapping, torture, murder, gaslighting/unhealthy relationships, lgbtq headcanons, body horror, cannibalism, and dehumanization, just to name a few. I don't think the way boundaries are enforced in this fandom is healthy for the fandom and I don't think it's actually respectful of the creators' experiences.

[antimony-medusa]

Some comments in the notes!

Yeah @the-astral-library, I wasn't around for exile, but that is my understanding of where the c! and cc! divide started as well. Which was also part of why the whole fandom pivoted so hard into creature and mob designs, wanting to make it clear that they weren't talking about the real guys. Just, y'know, that was somehow never enough when it came to anything romantic? Just graphic torture and abuse? We couldn't use the cc divide for consentual romance between adults, just murder and domestic abuse and non-consentual touching and drugging and bigotry, which are fine.

And MCYT is fascinating in that it takes issues I had only ever seen with romantic-focused fandoms, and it does it with platonic relationships. I have a whole post stewing in the back of my brain about family dynamics reducing people down to narrow archetypes and not paying attention to character, the favoured "why do shippers do this" complaint of fandoms everywhere, but it's happening in a platonic way here. And yes, exactly, people getting so strident about what they want out of friendships that it ends up being like shipping, because the issue was only ever partially the romance, the bigger issue was being treated like an interchangable part of someone else's story, there to fix them and not seen for yourself, and that can happen with or without romance if you're fixated and rude enough.

Yeah @thiefnessman, it can get really demoralizing sometime when you look at how the streamers get treated, and how the fandom will either ignore it or turn around and blame every cubito shipper ever. Ignoring both that thinking cubitos are married does not necessarily mean that you're going to harass a streamer in real life, you'll find most people can keep fiction and reality seperate, and ignoring the wild boundary-breaking behaviour that takes place all the time from people who are being perfectly platonic, they're just doing shit like showing up in Phil's TTS to ask how he's been grieving Techno. To mention something that made me have to go take a brisk walk I was so mad.

People act as though the only objectionable behaviour comes from people who ship, and that is simply not true. This fandom is just so big that while most people can tell fiction from reality, when you consider a fandom so large that it has 80k fics on the archive, the people who are out to lunch and treating streamers like dolls for their amusement will do that whether theyre pulling from romantic ships or platonic headcanons for whatever they're using to be inappropriate with. Bootwt by and large does not approve of shipping— that doesn't stop them from using pronouns Ranboo has not asked to be used for them all the TIME, or from harassing his friends for percieved slights. Some of the most virulent anti-shipping attitudes I have ever seen in my life happened when Tommy was 17, and that was also peak time for people truthing him as trans and or abused in real life, to his face.

Like I want the streamers to be treated with respect ! I want that so much! And that is why I am thinking that we should be showing up and asking them about SO MUCH LESS than we do nowdays. This means that we should not be bringing up romantic or sexual shipping unless they brought it up first, but we should also be bringing that same energy to making sure they never have to see or think about SO MANY MORE THINGS that we should keep to ourselves, for us. Shipping is not the end of the world, but boy if some of the ship people show up in TTS to talk about isn't quite a big closer to the edge of that cliff.

[psi-spectacular]

"I hate (insert media here) because of the fando-"

[ponydoodles]

humans forever will love funny little horses. love and peace and ponies runs in our blood

[beewineline-deactivated20250305]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR RED MAN!!!!!

[cannibalchicken]

[itlastsforever]

she is not her fathers daughter (i just wanted to draw her)

[piercingclowns]

transmasc dev and transfem kier send tweet

[luminousslime]

FAITH

[royalnaym]

Cow Crash :(

[piercingclowns]

Missing kier and dev :(