a fluffy post canon coven thought for pride month, to cleanse the dash:
Shelby makes little pride badges for all her friends. They’re a little janky but in a very cute way. Drift wears hers constantly. Scott makes a comment about it clashing with his outfits, but he still wears his, cause Shelby made it so of course he loves it. They send some to Cleo and Pearl, who both adore them. And then she tracks down Abolish and hands him some. He thanks her and pockets them, because he will never admit to her face that he has *no idea* what they mean.
he spends that whole night researching, three little pins sitting on his desk in front of him.
After a series of searches like “pride flag purple grey” and “asexual meaning” and “romantic vs sexual attraction” and “can you not have a gender?” he ends up with a lot of answers to questions he never even realised he had.
he doesn’t wear the pins, because any kind of identifying element is a risk in his line of work. But he gets one of those little magnet displays for his desk.
he sends Shelby a photo of it and just says “thanks”. That’s the only text he’s ever sent her.
The really bewildering thing to me is that I remember when you needed to get up and pull a dictionary off the shelf, or visit a library to look up the facts you needed. Now people have all kinds of information literally at their fingertips and they can’t be bothered to use it.
Also, I love that, in the sign language one, it seems like the last image might’ve been a gif of “fuck you,” screenshot at the perfect time to let you know they were about to sign “fuck you”
I still remember the guy who got mad at me because I spoke about the cultural role of the Norse gods in my life and my culture and insisted that I should be “proud of my Christian heritage instead” and quite simply would not believe me when I told him I was from Scandinavia because “that doesn’t exist anymore.”
I don't want to talk about Avid and Marm, they're getting enough attention already. But can we just acknowledge how well the community is handling this situation? Like, this is probably the best and most mature reaction possible to what's been going on, and that's lowkey saved my faith in the mcyt community as a whole. (This got way longer than I intended, read more below)
On the CC's side, it seems like they all got together to figure out the truth and then handled everything privately before ever letting us know things were going down. Then when they did come out with statements and stories, they took the time to gather their thoughts and say everything the way it needed said. They've also been really good about getting permission to share screenshots and names before bringing things up as evidence. Despite all the distrust that's apparently been sown between them the last few months, they still had each others backs and presented a united front on the issue. That's a big deal actually. It's also nice to see how everyone has teamed up to raise support for their friends that lost their jobs from this whole mess. Every stream I was in today had people yelling not to sub to them, but support Musithical, Peeporp,and Box instead. Immediate action, no nonsense.
Everyone's also been very clear about how they want this situation handled going forward. Every statement I've heard/read has started with some variation of "Don't spread hate or harassment" and "I'll talk about this once and never again". The goal is to let people know what's happening, not start discourse. As Cleo said, "living without them is our reward". The problem has been handled, now it's best for everyone to put it behind and move on. They've also been extremely clear about how disrespecting people's identities is never an appropriate response and spreading hate isn't helpful to anyone. They could have turned the tables and started a smear campaign, kept digging this up for weeks to profit off the drama, but they aren't and I honestly respect that so much.
And not to give certain people too much (or any) credit, but at least they didn't double down and start trying to sway the viewers. I could speculate why, but whatever the reason, they totally could have turned this into an "I said, they said" back and forth drama to try and keep some of their fans, and I think we can at least appreciate that didn't happen. We've seen that before, especially in mcyt communities. Accusations are made, people get angry and defensive, lies and misinformation spread until no one knows which side is in the wrong. I'm just really glad we skipped that this time around.
I've also seen so many posts, both from fellow fans and CCs about not blaming ourselves for not knowing. There's been so much reassurance that none of us were bad people for liking and supporting past projects, or still caring about those stories. Everyone was lied to, that's not our fault. And everyone is making sure the blame is pointed at the right people. Not at fans for supporting them, not at friends who were lied to and manipulated, but at the people really at fault. Alternatively, something I haven't seen is people condemning other fans for not immediately deleting works or posts mentioning these people. Some people have been doing that, but i haven't seen many people saying that you should be doing that or you're a bad person, which I've seen before over far less. You're not a bad person for having loved something without knowing better. You're not doing anything wrong by still caring about something you've put time and effort into.
I've honestly just been so impressed by how well this has been handled. When I first heard about yet another scandal where a notable streamer gets kicked from a server, my gut reaction was to leave the community altogether, or at least avoid it entirely for a few months while the drama died down. (I can handle disappointment when a streamer turns out to be less than ideal, but there's only so many times I can trust someone to mean well only for them to turn around and be an utterly horrible person). I stuck around for the day just to hear the story and make my own judgement of the situation, and the conclusion? I think I actually love the community more. Legundo said on stream something like "this is the good ending to an awful situation" and... well I think he's right actually. The fallout could have been terrible and destroyed the community everyone's worked so hard to build. Instead, it looks like everyone's come together to try and heal, to grow stronger together moving forward. It sucks, but after everything the future looks optimistic, and that's the best possible outcome we could've gotten here.
happy pride to the lame queers. to the queer people who going to clubs isnt for them. to the ones who cant or dont engage with typical culture. to the ones who are scared. to the queer people who cant be proud becuase they are in households that are unsafe. To queers not even sure if they want to come out. To queers who wish they could engage in typical community things, but none of their friends want to. Happy pride to extremely introverted queers, socially anxious queers, or frequently, even in our own community, socially outcast queers. I see you, you are still queer.
i'm going to be completely honest, i don't think completely erasing avid characters from fanworks (and even canon) is the right way to separate yourself from the creator.
yeah, they were an awful person who did more than horrible things, but the character and creator are completely separate now, especially with avid quitting content creation. these characters no longer belong to them, they belong to the fandom.
i've seen talk of replacing v!avid with a collective oc, and i really dont think this is something we can or should force on people. if someone wants to participate in this, i can't and won't stop them, but we should'nt act like this is the correct course of actions.
i've also seen many people try to remove avid from all their fanworks. now, if people are uncomfortable writing them, that's obviously perfectly fine, but i don't want to see ANYONE claiming that anyone else with an avid character in their fanfiction or comics or drawings or whatever supports them. it is a character, not the creator.
The more I think about it, the more I think that giving up our art because AvidMC is a sociopath (and I don't use that word lightly) is letting him win.
The end of Vampires SMP gave me inspiration to write that I hadn't felt in FIFTEEN YEARS. I don't owe it to anyone to give that up. And the story is still good. Your story is still good. All AvidMC provided was some inspiration. He doesn't own what any of us created.
v!Avid is ownerless. He's ours.
i have the same thoughts. in light of statements from zombiecleo regarding avidmc's actual reason for joining powcreations just being to take it down, i can safely assume that avidmc never cared for the stories they created. all they said after vsmp ended about v!avid's story can be disregarded. it was never yaoislop. it was never a poor ending. it was never queerbaiting.
they're our stories now. v!avid and tf!avid and every c!avid are going to be valued and appreciated far more in the hands of the fandoms that liked their stories. i hope this becomes a wider mindset; the fictional characters would absolutely despise their creator.
They are called sundown towns and there are a LOT of them in the US.
https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php
This website has a clickable map where you can see suspected and confirmed sundown towns by state, as well as information about whether these attitudes are historical or current.
The homepage of Dr. James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, and Sundown Towns.
My obligatory addition to this every time it crosses my dash, because I know the link is definitely missing ones in my own (northern) state and there are some in this thread not on the above link either - thread by LeVar Burton with a LOT of replies from people naming the sundown towns near them:
The link on sundown towns by James Loewen is a historical database, a list of towns that ever had a history of being a sundown town. Some of those have cooled off somewhat since then (which isn’t to say they aren’t racist, as that is pretty ubiquitous).
But Vidor is still pretty active. And if you follow that map north to the yellow road and then north to the next grey road, you come to Jasper, TX, where white supremacists dragged to death a Black man, James Byrd, Jr., in 1998.
Harrison, AR looks to be pretty active, too.
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