DEVASTATED
i should have realized this since long ago from michael the distortion's statement, but mag 167 just made it clearer.
michael shelley never knew anything for all his life.
not when he was working in the archives. not when he was going on excursions with dear old precious gertrude. not when he was led to a door and tasked to enter it, given only a map. not when he was devoured.
oh michael, you have been such an easy, gullible experiment. a fool to care for a vile and hardened old woman. an ignorant assistant. a tool to stop an avatar's transcendence.
nothing more.
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Welcome to my little meta analysis essay called
Why do we misremember Flower Husbands as being “nicer” than it was?
Disclaimer: I’m not here to talk about whether or not FH is “toxic” or anything like that. It’s just a fact that many old fans rewatching FH POV and new fans who are watching it for the first time after seeing fan content tend to be surprised at how they actually behaved in the series compared to how everyone remembered them being back in the day. This will NOT go over whether or not I think FH is unhealthy or whatever and instead just discuss why I believe this phenomenon has happened.
So, if I try to make this a fancy well written essay, I’ll be here all day, so I’ll just get to the point. 3rd Life came out during the DSMP era of mcyt. MCRP has been around for ages, but the DSMP style of RP (which I’ll be calling “smp rp”) was pretty much popularized by DSMP, mostly towards the end of 2020. For reference, 3rd Life started early 2021, so there’s about a half a year between these two events, and DSMP kept going for years so 3rd Life was absolutely happening during the golden era of DSMP.
But what does DSMP have to do with this? Well, it sort of created this idea of “lore” and only specific things being “canon”. You can make fun of me for the way I worded that, but you know what I mean, DSMP was weird about that stuff. I don’t really blame them as it was kind of a new style of RP they accidentally spawned, but still, it was a confusing time for SMPs.
3rd Life was actually less like DSMP and more like the modern SMP RPs, where there’s no (known, lol) scripted events and the fandom itself deciphers what is or isn’t “canon” rather than it being told to them, with mostly everything being considered canon. HOWEVER, I do believe that DSMP’s style did still affect the fandom, specifically with the topic of this essay, Flower Husbands.
But why would it only really affect Flower Husbands? Now we get into a rough topic: shipping discourse. Back in those days, shipping in the mcyt fandom was heavily frowned upon. Moreso than it is today (I know it’s still around, but it was a lot worse the earlier we go lol). I’ve even seen old relics of ppl saying flower husbands should only be portrayed as platonic cuz it’s wrong to ship them, despite their team name literally being husbands. But more importantly, for A LOT of people, flower husbands was the One Ship people felt “allowed” to ship, BECAUSE it was canon. So they would allow FH and shun every other ship.
My point isn’t actually that, with it being the only “acceptable” ship everyone tried to make it more wholesome, though I suppose that could be a contributor. But my ACTUAL point is where all the things I laid out finally close in on each other:
Ships were a Dangerous territory in mcyt fandom, and ships being “canon” was something a lot of people weren’t prepared to deal with. People don’t want to get too close to RPF territory, but back in the day their ideas of c! vs cc! wasn’t as great, so they default to the DSMP Rule of “if it’s stated to be roleplay, then it’s canon to the characters, if not, it’s noncanon and just the CCs hanging out”.
You see where I’m going with this? When trying to follow this rule for a character relationship where they don’t explicitly state what is or isn’t RP, they hear “we’re married” and instantly mark that as canon to the characters since it clearly isn’t true to the CCs, and tend to block out anything else, otherwise you’re risking it not actually being true to the characters. Especially when it’s things like Scott saying something mean about Jimmy; that directly contradicts the “these characters are in love” thing, so it must not be canon, right?
But wouldn’t people still remember that these things happened, or did they actually straight up not process any of it? My answer to that is: of course everyone was paying attention, but with the context that it’s the CCs playing a video game, all of the teasing and other behavior seems WAY less serious. It just looks like average friends playing a hunger games smp together. And as I explained earlier, the fandom was ONLY processing this as a CC thing, so Scott’s treatment of Jimmy never stood out because that’s just how it is playing games.
Back to DSMP, I’m not active in that fandom anymore but I’ll see snippets sometimes, and I’ve seen the claim that beeduo was actually boring in canon and the fandom was the one that made it interesting. I feel like this is exactly what happened with FH. Nobody was actually expecting anyone to go hard into romantic roleplay, so the fans just take whichever pair says they’re getting married and fill in the blanks themselves. And that was normal back then, it wasn’t fans making stuff up for no reason, it was kind of expected of us.
So yeah, I personally believe that this whole confusion about FH is a result of its time. Whether you want to finally look at the actual substance of the relationship rather than following weird rules about what is or isn’t “canon”, or you believe that since FH was from a time where romantic RP was confusing and weird it would make the most sense to take into account the time period it came from and ignore the less appealing bits in favor of the fanon, I don’t really care honestly. But man isn’t this an interesting situation.
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Hank, Sanford and Deimos with a Reader who does Handcrafts
Gonna post my old MadCom stuff since people seem interested in it! I didn't write too much back then, but I'll post it anyway and hope for some MadCom requests as well! What the title says! Reader knits, crochets and embroiders in this! The format is different from how I usually write, but that's because I wrote this months ago, if not in 2022! I don't remember when, but it's been a while since I wrote this!
Hank
If you get his attention while doing one of your crafts, expect him to just stare at you for a while. He knows what knitting is, since you can use those needles to stab someone with enough force, but he never really cared much for any of it. So, seeing you do those small, but precise movements has him somewhat curious. If you beckon him closer to check out what you’re doing, he will approach you, taking your piece from your hands and gently examining it, before returning it to you.
While he won’t join you that often due to his occupation, Hank will lie down next to you from time to time, watching you work until he falls asleep eventually. Doing so next to you, especially when you’re knitting or doing embroidery, takes a lot of trust on his behalf, so it’s a rather rare occurrence, but it might happen. Still, sometimes even Nevada’s most wanted can’t resist getting some sleep in.
If you give him a scarf or anything of the likes it might seem like he doesn’t like it at first. As he only grunts in acknowledgement and doesn’t wear it, it might seem disheartening at first glance. But rest assured, he’s well aware that him wearing it would only get it covered in blood, and he wouldn’t want your creation, that you put so much love into, to get sullied like that. Hank does keep it somewhere hidden where only he can find it so that it won’t get stolen as well, he truly does treasure anything you give him.
Sanford
He has helped his mother crocheting every once in a while when he was young by holding her wool for her. Sanford always thought it to be really cool how you can make something so beautiful out of something as simple as wool and yarn. Much like he did when he was younger, he’ll hold your yarn for you, making it more comfortable to knit or crochet for you. Unlike Hank and Deimos, he will try to learn it as well. It seems relaxing, so why not? But by no means is he a master. Due to his strength, he will likely rip the yarn and wool apart from time to time and come to you for help.
In order to relax and unwind a bit, he’ll likely come to you and ask if you would like to practise your craft for and with him. Having you around in and of itself already makes Sanford happy, but just getting to spend time with you without having to worry about being killed by the enemy makes it all the better. If you let him, he will hold you close, lean into you, put you on his lap, anything you’re comfortable with.
Please give him a sweater. Because he’s never wearing a shirt he gets cold fairly easily. He’ll cherish it dearly and wear it whenever he can, and whenever he knows it won’t get ripped. Another thing he’d be very happy with would be a piece of embroidery. It reminds him of better times and gives him hope, especially when your piece of art is something pleasant and sweet to look at. Because of that, he will put it up somewhere in his room where he can always see it. Even if Deimos makes fun of him for it, he will simply lightly jab at the smoker, all the while smiling at it.
Deimos
He’ll lovingly call you a grandma for having hobbies like these. Even while doing embroidery, where you stab things thousands of times, he will snicker at you whenever he catches you doing any of these things. Though, he doesn’t mind that sort of thing at all since that means you’ll be sitting still for a while, meaning you’ll give him a chance to unwind with him. Deimos will wrap his arms around you, leaning onto you or just cuddle into you in general. No fighting, no getting hurt, just watching you do the same movements over and over again.
Despite possibly calling you boring, he does have great respect for your craft, since he can’t do any of it. It’s too tedious and he can’t sit around for long enough doing something like this. It’s simply not exciting enough. But the moment you give him his first sweater, he will think it’s the most awesome thing to ever exist. Proud as a peacock, he will flaunt and taunt his new piece of clothing, especially to Sanford and Hank, declaring just what a great lover he has.
Present him with a plushie and his mind will be blown. He always thought knitting and crocheting are just for woolly hats and sweaters and scarves and all. If he sees you made him a tiny grunt, he will simply lose it, run around the Status Quo base and show everyone what you’re capable of. It doesn’t even matter to him whether or not it looks good. Your hands are magical to him and absolutely everyone has to know just how cool and epic you are.
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