What a state of the fandom to return to. I didn't even have time to set up a plan of dealing with Avid in the requests, before Pyro went and made a mess of things again. It makes me not want to touch the fandom that made me start posting my art in the first place.
Any requests with Pyro in them will probably be put on indefinite hold, until this passes and Pyro realises the damage they did to the community and takes a different route. (If they ever do, which I hope for). I understand where they were coming from in wanting to help his partner, but threthening fans if his "birdies" tell him of some shipping? Happening in fandom!? ON AO3 EVEN?!? And I know that there are some requests with Pyro not involving ships, but I don't feel welcome to make any fanart of Pyro because of the situation. Who knows If I wouldn't get harrased if someone mistakes it as being ship art. The community was made unsafe because of their decision.
Requests with Avid I was planning on asking each individual person who sent a request for votes, whether they would want to change their request, or have v!Avid remain, as, even though it is a character connected in some way with Avid themselves, he is just that. A character. I condem the actions of real Avid.
That is to say, for now I'll turn my focus on the wonderful requests not involving either of them.
Sadly, I have to say that Vampires SMP is not my priority now, and while I will complete requests for votes, ones made not with votes attached, I will not do. I just feel that with the votes, it is my responsibility to the people that voted to do them.
Also, sad to say, but Claiming Sireship will no longer be developed. If anyone wants to take the idea and do something with it, feel free to do so. I'd love to see this au be continued by someone who hadn't lost the connection with Pyro's character.
I know some people will be disappointed, or ever dissagree with me. To these people I ask you to remain civil.
To anyone who bothered to read all of that, Thank you.
You may look forward to some things unrelated to the requests (and maybe even VSMP???).
So I've had a while to think about it, and I don't want to disown this au. It may be underdeveloped and likely to not get continued, but in case I ever decide I want to continue or add something, I don't want to have locked myself out of that. I will post what I had planned for it tho (not much) in a later post.
I was looking through my old vampires smp art, and the love I felt for the series... It was strong even after all of the drama. That being said...
CS!Avid is my oc now. AvidMC? Who is that? Aren't they rebranding? Clearly that means it's free real estate! He's now fully human and had irreversibly killed his sister in everything but blood. He's a pathetic vampire hunter and does NOT want to become one.
This stupid green die has been infecting my brain and Tenna is a casualty. These are just some sketches I've done to get a better grasp on how to draw that pippins and let me tell you! It's not easy! The die head is a nightmare to draw, but I persevere. I also had fun using different brushes. It's always fun to mess around a bit with them
MCYT FANDOM BOOTCAMP (from a Dream SMP fandom survivor)
Seems y'all can use some tips on what to do when it comes to content creator actions and the fandom! (These are largely my opinion based off my own experiences in the mcyt fandom, if you disagree that's okay, my page may not be for you<3 I don't want to see any harassment of anyone anywhere near any of my shit.)
GOLDEN FUCKING RULE!!! HARASSMENT GETS YOU NOWHERE!!! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT OR DON'T AGREE THEN SCROLL OR USE THE BLOCK BUTTON!!! (as long as it isn't Illegal... Then maybe report that-)
#1 Content creators are actors/writers
Just like an actor in a movie, or the writer of a piece of media, they play and make characters. THAT ARE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES!!! After the piece of media is made just like any fandom those character are usually taken by the fandom into their grubby little palms to do whatever they want with! It's just the way of the internet, and honestly how fan creations have existed for years.
#2 If a creator has boundaries, do not tag them or use tags that have direct connection their content creation persona when posting about characters
If you're talking about the character, use the character tags not the tags of the creator themselves. Don't tag usernames, use the character tags such as the ones with the series name in from of it or the Series Initial!insert character here. Beyond that there is only so much separation you can do.
#3 Cancelled creator? Your character now!
Did the creator of your favorite character get cancelled? Welp that looks like the price of that character just went down to free 99 my friend! Normalize taking characters from people who don't deserve them! Take it as a chance to have complete freedom with your head canons or lore rewrites if you haven't already!
#4 A03 is an archive for a reason
Even if you choose to not personally write for that character/ship/fandom anymore, please don't delete works. This is more of a personal gripe but orphaning a work is so much better than deleting them. It just sucks to have so much lost media</3
#5 Fan works are what keeps fandoms alive
The moment we stop creating fan works is the moment this community dies. And the more we try to police what others do or don't do the more we tear it apart. Keep the creativity flowing<3
I know that there is a lot of young people in the mcyt fandom, who have not developed and learned how to pick apart texts and notice specific things in them yet. So, because of recent stuff and the words "boundaries", "rules" and "censorship" being thrown around like candy, here's someone who has these skills (me) going through Millkberrys and Pyroscythes statements.
(TW for death, rape and sa threats, mention of sh and harassment, use of the r-slur)
First off, the actual official definitions of the words:
(The first one is from wikipedia, the other two from the Cambridge dictionary, you can look them up if you'd like full confirmation on the sources.)
(notable, fan works such as fanart, fanfiction and headcanons or shitposts are considered a work of art and/or kind of communication with other fans.)
(notable #2, the ideas people are allowed to express and the certain ideas that are included or supported in this case is the shipping of the creators characters.)
(notable #3, content creators / mcyts are minor celebrities and with that have authority over their fan communitys. If you disagree, feel free to block me, I will not be arguing over this.)
And now, me marking/highligthing things in the statements that fit those definitions/descriptions:
What's a boundary or implies one is marked with green.
What's not a boundary is marked with yellow.
What's a rule or implies a rule is marked with blue.
What's censorship is marked red.
I want it to be noted that the only times boundaries are implied or mentioned by either of them, is the word, regarding that this is for Millkberrys mental health or when the actual act of setting boundaries is dismissed (as a past action or entirely).
This is not to mention Pyroscythes literal thread of harassment and policing people, which has already taken action through other fans putting death and rape threads in peoples ask boxes:
(If any of the victims of the threats want me to take them out of this, feel free to tell me and I will do so!)
Apparently one of Pyroscythes mods claimed on Twitter that it was meant as a joke. However, considering the very serious nature of both the stream segment and his expression as well as the fact that it came from a mod and Pyroscythe has yet to actually say anything on this themself, I'm inclined to not believe it.
Lastly, my opinion on this:
Harassment is never okay and no matter how many times these creators have said in the past that they don't endorse it, reality is looking different right now. You cannot tell your large audience what Pyroscythe has told his and expect it not to listen to you, no matter if it was meant as a joke or not.
This is not a boundary, it is a rule at minimum and censorship at worse. Censorship is rampant right now and fandom spaces are some of the few spaces that allow free expression, trying to take that away is not okay. If you cannot handle seeing ship content of your characters, then you should block people who do make art of it, block the shipping tags and not go out of your way to look for it. You can ask people not to show that art to you, and that is completely valid. It is also completely valid to ban people from Stream chats and discords if they do show it to you. It is not valid to tell people what kind of art they can and cannot create however. And if you can't handle the idea of ship content of your characters existing at all, then maybe you should rethink your career choice as a content creator who focuses on roleplay and character creation.
Incredibly long post incoming, here's my full two cents on the Maddy/Pyro situation:
Pyroscythe and Millkberry do not have any right to control what people make and produce for themselves and others on the internet. The content is not for them. What they have a right to, as the ccs behind their characters, is controlling what content gets shown to them. In their streams, in their servers, in their dms, and in tags relavent to their cc titles. That is where they should have control. Pyro should not "have his little birds everywhere". His mods and community should not come after others for their fan content. It is simply not their business.
It is understandable, when you have put so much of yourself into a character, and your partner has done the same, that you may feel uncomfortable when people choose to pair up those characters with people who are not your partner. The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can choose not to see or acknowledge it. You can ban it in your personal spaces. You can block relevant tags and keywords. You can have a trusted person filter out the fan content they think you'll enjoy and send it to you. There are ways to reach an equilibrium where fans can have fun playing with digital barbie dolls, and creators can comfortably appreciate the sides of their fandom that put out creations they enjoy. It isn't as hard as ccs like to make it seem.
I think a lot of people are being harsher than they need or intend to be. Whether it is because of all of the mcyt situations happening recently, or because fear leads people to slam face-first into the worst possible assumptions, people are being incredibly unforgiving of either the ccs or other fans depending on the "side" they're taking. Please take this moment to remember that everyone involved in and witnessing this situation is human. Humans make mistakes. Humans can learn from those mistakes if they are given the chance. Please give the other people in this space a chance.
The reason why most people, like myself, are upset, is not because of the loss of a favorite ship or two. That is obviously still saddening for some, but there is a bigger issue. Trying to ban any specific thing is a pipeline into censorship. The moment you start censoring something, people will begin asking the question of "what else deserves to be censored?" First it's just the shipping of a couple characters, but it spreads from there.
This is especially a problem when the content that is being censored is predominantly queer. Most of the ships involving Pyro and Maddy's characters are queer in nature. Most of the people shipping them with other characters are queer themselves. It is outright dangerous to ban marginalized content in any regard and expect the censorship to end there.
Before someone refutes that by saying that that isn't Pyroscythe and Millkberry's intentions, you cannot claim to be banning something to one effect and therefore all other effects don't exist. If you ban all foods with sugar, natural or otherwise, then you thereby ban all fruits. You cannot claim that you did not ban fruits, because banning sugar had that additional affect, whether you intended it to or not.
Fan spaces are not made for the content creators. They can browse as a guest, but the things we make are not meant to be for them unless the creators are directly tagged. Creators are not and never have been entitled to the fanworks based on their characters or content.
Some additional things that I want to note but don't have the energy to work into the rest of this post properly:
1: I actually am really glad that Pyro and Maddy were reasonable enough to mention not deleting old fan content. That is a very basic thing, but I've seen many times in this fandom and others where fans immediately moved to get rid of everything they've ever made in hopes of not upsetting creators. I am a firm believer in archival, and I'm happy that everything that's already been made isn't gone.
2: I know in this post, I didn't mention a whole lot about the difference between boundaries and rules/control which Maddy and Pyro have seemed to mistake. This specific issue has been covered a bajillion times by others who have made amazing points which I would just be plagiarizing at that point.
3: I really dislike how most of the people talking about this situation are addressing Pyro but not Maddy. I have a lot of thoughts about how it's misogynistic and completely ignoring half of the problem, but that isn't what this post is about and I don't have the words to go in depth on that right now.
If anyone has anything to add to this, please do add!! I think community discussion is one of the most important things right now and I know there's probably things I've forgotten or things that others have the words for which I don't.
I really appreciate how, as far as I'm aware, all of hermitcraft has responded to fandom. They've let us know they're aware, sometimes they even joke about it, some people call it weird, some people play into it, but overall, I believe most of them have never set boundaries about it. It's not their space they don't step in. Scar will get donations asking about boundaries and he'll play dumb and talk about package shipping. They don't attempt to police people's creativity or treat their audience like hired fanwork creators.
Anyway friendly reminder that creators have no authority to police your creativity. They are weird for trying. Their fandom space is NOT for them. The only time boundaries are relevant to me is when fans start harassing creators in the creators own spaces, which is weird.
Regarding the recent discourse, I just wanted to say that I have been in fandom for a long time, been in multiple fandoms, and MCYT has the weirdest relationship to content creators that I have ever seen.
It is strange to me, that fans so easily accept being told what they can and can’t create in fan spaces.
The right to create fanfic was something that fans had to fight hard for. The right to create works that wasn’t Brand Approved. If the creators of any other fandom tried to police what fan works were created, they would either be flat out ignored or there would be riots.
Fandom is our house. We have been living here for much longer than these CCs have been online. Fandom etiquette, the rules of fandom, have existed longer than their fandoms have.
If they want to be here, that’s unusual, but that’s okay. Fandom is welcome to anyone. But they don’t seem to want to be here, just like anyone else. They act like the rules don’t apply to them, or worse, that they make the rules like it’s their house.
And we shouldn’t let them. Please, please, listen to me. This is not just about shipping. This is about not allowing this to become the accepted new normal.
Because if we accept that it’s okay a creator can ban all fanworks of their character being in romantic relationships, what else will we accept? Think about what other kinds of content have been and still are being banned in certain libraries around the world.
Creators can control their own spaces. Their streams, their official discord servers. But not what we do in our own home.
1) Make sure shipping fics are appropriately labelled.
2) Ignore things with those labels
3) If you have problems with 1 or 2 which are things you can control, do not post a diatribe on the main tag telling people that they are gross and disgusting and they should leave the main tag, because that is gross and disgusting.
It’s sickening to come into this place and seeing people hating others because they do something harmless you don’t like. I am embarrassed that this is representing Hermitcraft fandom. I have no control here, I cannot stop you but the shaming has to stop.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Vampires SMP
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Background Lovebitten, Background qpr Bloodserum
Characters: Scott Major | Smajor1995, Mayor Louis (Vampires SMP), Legundo (Video Blogging RPF), Owen | OwengeJuiceTV (Video Blogging RPF)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Scott Major | Smajor1995 Has cybernetic enhancements, POV Scott Major | Smajor1995, Evil corpo man is evil, Flashbacks, just thinking of the past, Dehumanisation of Owen, by Scott, Manipulation, Character Death, Inaccurate Technology Descriptions, i guess, Beta Read, Bloodless AU, Lux is Louis, Nox is Legundo
Series: Part 3 of Bloodless AU
Summary:
Scott Goldsmith, a successful owner of the Oakhurst company thinks back to when he first met the man who should have made his dream of immortality a reality. As well as what became of him.
So I wrote a little something for the Bloodless au a while back, and here are the sketches I made for it back then (with the exception of Scott's outfit. That thing took me a while to figure out).
Part of Scott's room
The HQ for the Bloodless branch of the Oakhurst company
Scott's design with clothes
Scott's design showing off the cybernetics (bodysuit for your viewing purposes)
Scott Goldsmith would of course want to show off his cubernetic enhancements, so his outfit had to be suitably elegant, futuristic and with little coverage of the mechanical limbs. I struggled to find the balance with them for a while, but I think I managed to pull it off.
The cape is usually worn just over the shoulders, but in the 'facing away' example he is wearing it properly for the purposes of showing what it might look like.
What a state of the fandom to return to. I didn't even have time to set up a plan of dealing with Avid in the requests, before Pyro went and made a mess of things again. It makes me not want to touch the fandom that made me start posting my art in the first place.
Any requests with Pyro in them will probably be put on indefinite hold, until this passes and Pyro realises the damage they did to the community and takes a different route. (If they ever do, which I hope for). I understand where they were coming from in wanting to help his partner, but threthening fans if his "birdies" tell him of some shipping? Happening in fandom!? ON AO3 EVEN?!? And I know that there are some requests with Pyro not involving ships, but I don't feel welcome to make any fanart of Pyro because of the situation. Who knows If I wouldn't get harrased if someone mistakes it as being ship art. The community was made unsafe because of their decision.
Requests with Avid I was planning on asking each individual person who sent a request for votes, whether they would want to change their request, or have v!Avid remain, as, even though it is a character connected in some way with Avid themselves, he is just that. A character. I condem the actions of real Avid.
That is to say, for now I'll turn my focus on the wonderful requests not involving either of them.
Sadly, I have to say that Vampires SMP is not my priority now, and while I will complete requests for votes, ones made not with votes attached, I will not do. I just feel that with the votes, it is my responsibility to the people that voted to do them.
Also, sad to say, but Claiming Sireship will no longer be developed. If anyone wants to take the idea and do something with it, feel free to do so. I'd love to see this au be continued by someone who hadn't lost the connection with Pyro's character.
I know some people will be disappointed, or ever dissagree with me. To these people I ask you to remain civil.
To anyone who bothered to read all of that, Thank you.
You may look forward to some things unrelated to the requests (and maybe even VSMP???).
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
2087
yousharknotpass
titsay
