#since I mentioned them by name

[visiblespiketrap]

You know, one of my favorite tidbits in ace attorney fanfiction is seeing all the ways people incorporate descriptions of the games' sprites into each character's movements in their own words.

Like Edgeworth gripping his arm, Phoenix scratching the back of his neck. Trucy putting her hands on her hips and so on.

I love seeing their ticks made apparent in the game being written and expanded upon. It seems obvious that they're a good reference and way to call back to the game and characters, but somehow I'm delighted each and every time.

[sunbeamah]

Pls tell me what hashira you think everyone would be!!!

[umblrspectrum]

hi heres art so you pay attention to me now go read the tags

[biblically-accurate-dca]

super disorganized sketch page because i do what i want

[sprinklethetangerine]

Hey, I just watched Dead Poets Society for the first time ever! Now, if you guys don't mind, I'm gonna go sit in the corner of my room and scream!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ask and you shall receive (a sneak peak of what's to come)

[doublemyheight]

I'm so fed up seeing videos about "the downfall of mcyt" or "mcyt history" and then the creator only mentions DSMP and maybe a few youtubers they watched. Like... there. are. so. many. creators. who. counted. or. count. as. mcyt. Here are my thoughts.

There are so, so many who counted, and still so many who count. And yeah, DSMP is an important part of MCYT history, but it's so recent in comparison. Like. Minecraft is a cockroach, it will go through so much shit and still be alive and active. Yes, there are the names who bring or brought down the name of MCYT, but in comparison they've always been such a small part of the community. They need to be remembered for their bad actions, or illegal in some cases, but defining the community by them is not good. Nor is just using one fucking smp.

I have watched, or attempted to watch, those types of videos on the history or the downfall etc., and I always complain internally about it. THERE ARE SO MANY PROMINENT MINECRAFT CONTENT CREATORS THAT FUCKING MADE CONTENT. Some don't make Mc (minecraft) content anymore or they rarely do but it doesn't mean they shouldn't be mentioned. (Yes I know, it's an impossible task to talk about all of them, but mentioning three or four as "the og mcyters" or "the old popular mcyters" just angers me)

DSMP I would say helped with the mc resurgence, but I can say similar to SMP live and SMP earth. I count SMP live as pretty important since I think people started watching the streams and videos from that smp and when DSMP happened people treated the content the same and watched it a lot. People started watching again, then with the boom of content in the covid lockdown people watched more. It wasn't just DSMP though.

Listen if you want to do a video about how DSMP affected you or the minecraft community, sure yeah that's a video to make. If you want to do a video on a specific few ytbers who you watched and how they affected the community yeah sure that's a video to make. To say "these are the three main" that's for you. To you they were the main three. To make the video of "all of mcyt history and mc as a whole" and mention 3 people......... and then DSMP.................... I don't understand you.

I've been a MCYT fan for years and years. As a child and as an adult. From E for everyone videos to watching videos that fucked with my innocence and just exposed me to shit I shouldn't have been watching at the time. Year after year watching different types of videos and different creators. Supporting people and finding out I shouldn't, and supporting people and them being good people. To challenge videos, parkour, adventure maps, droppers, role playing, role playing, let's plays, tutorials, modded content, horror content, hide and seek. So many different types of content exist for mc, and I've been a watcher for a lot of it.

DSMP should not define MCYT. There is too many people who have made content for me to just accept that.

Hold people accountable for their actions, do not define a large community by a few people, and if you want to talk about your favorites affect in the community go right ahead but please don't call them the most popular or most important. Some people might never of heard of them. (I am thinking of the do you know this mcyt blog)

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

Yes! The ways the mechs and mcyt handle narrative have always been so similar to me but I've never been able to put it onto words. Would Love to hear what you have to say on the topic (after you have had a good sleep)

HI, it's time for me to get insane. Thank you for sending this ask cause now I have an excuse to maintag the post, lol. Also, I'm going to be using the term MCYT interchangeably with MCRP (Minecraft roleplay) for my own sanity. You'll know what I mean from context clues, I think.

So, hi, anyone who doesn't know about The Mechanisms. This post is going to be about some meta analysis tools that popped up in the Mechs fandom when it exploded in popularity back in 2020-2021. Due to the nature of both the Mechs and MCYT (which I'll get into in a moment), these concepts are generally very helpful for meta analysis of MCYT as well, and I think you guys would love them.

First of all, what was The Mechanisms?

The Mechanisms, originally known as Dr. Carmilla and The Mechanisms, was a band that formed in the late 2000s. It had a rotating cast of members, though most of the stuff you can easily find from them (such as their albums) was made when they had 8-9 consistent members. The Mechanisms officially released seven albums and one single before the band broke up in early 2020. The reason this band is similar at all to MCYT comes from a few things- the characters the band played, the stories the band told, and the archival aspect/age.

Because the Mechs were not a regular band, it was also a storytelling experience. Each Mechs album tells it's own self contained story (except for the Tales to be Told albums, which feature songs with their own stories that don't tie into the album at large). But furthermore, each Mechanism is a character. All the members of the band had characters they played, acting as a band of immortal space pirates moving through the galaxy on their ship, The Aurora.

The similarity to MCYT here is, of course, the characters. It's not always as simple to tell the difference between MCYT characters and actors as it was with The Mechanisms, seeing as (a lot of) MCYT doesn't start with the acting/roleplaying intention that the Mechs started with. But nonetheless, they share the understanding that even though this isn't a play or a TV show or whatever scripted medium, and that even though these characters (sometimes) share similar/the same names as their creators, they are, ultimately, characters the creators are putting on in order to tell a story. Whether that story is something more connected to the base characters (less roleplay heavy servers, Mechs backstory beats) or a story where the characters themselves are filling a role to tell a new story (more roleplay heavy servers, Mechs filling in for characters on the albums to tell their stories), there is always a story to be told.

There is also, as I said, the archival aspect. Archiving is massively important to both The Mechanisms and MCYT. It's definitely a lot harder with the Mechs than with most MCYT stuff, since the Mechs are a whole lot nicher, but that is not to say it's easy for either group. Archiving is vital to keeping both fanbases, and both sets of characters, alive, and there is only so much archiving you can rely on the creators of either to do. Those of you who take this task on are genuinely so awesome and I love you.

Alongside the archiving aspect (and as such, the lost media aspect), there's also the age of the Mechanisms, and (similarly to MCYT), the large number of people involved in the project, which results in lost and oftentimes conflicting canon beats. Mechs lore was not a strict, planned out thing. Large swaths of it were made up on the fly or forgotten down the line and rewritten or just made to work because the story needed it. As such, a lot of Mechanisms meta analysis had to reckon with the fact that the story was often telling you two or three or more things that could not be true at once nonetheless were, or was telling you something with the assumption that you knew something else, but that something else is now impossible to track down. So, sometimes, you just had to pick and choose, or try to reconstruct that lost knowledge. Similarly, varying POVs and gaps in time or gaps in story result in a similar concept for MCYT analysis- sometimes it doesn't really work if you take every piece of lore into account, so you just can't, even though every piece of lore is equally canon; or sometimes, a specific source is lost and you have to trust the memory of people who saw or were involved in the source instead.

Now, what is narratomancy? And how is it relevant to meta analysis of MCYT?

Narratomancy is the name for a few concepts of meta analysis that popped up when the Mechs fandom exploded in 2020-2021. The term was coined by @lucky-sevens (who, unlike anyone else I bring up in this post, I feel comfortable tagging because they're inactive, lol, so this won't clog their notifs), but the credit for various concepts under the umbrella of narratomancy can go to a ton of people. Personally, I'm going to be heavily referencing one post in particular by @/gunpowderedtim when it comes to the four main pillars of narratomancy, and how they are relevant here. (BTW I know OP of that post has shifted at least a bit to the MCYT fandom as well, so if you see this and would like me to tag you properly, please let me know!)

(EDIT: I was informed in the replies that lucky-sevens did not, in fact, coin this phrase, but they can't remember who specifically did. Alas another Mechs thing lost to time.)

Narratomancy refers to the general concept of the narrative as a thing within the Mechs universe. The narrative, a story that wants to be told, is an (at least semi) sentient creature that is bending the universe to its will in order to be told. This living narrative helps to explain and work through some of the problems or plot holes in the narrative, and understanding this helps a lot for meta analysis, or even just understanding the story. As stated above, I'm going to be breaking down four main pillars that the post above identified, and how they may be relevant to MCYT meta analysis. Not all of them are going to work- these were concepts made up for The Mechanisms, after all, and for all their similarities, it's not a perfect 1 to 1. Let's get into it!

Pillar 1: Universal Story

This is a pillar that has one really important and relevant concept, but I do have to bend a bit of it in order to make it work. Namely, what we're calling "the universe" here. But it's still quite important. You'll see.

As mentioned up top, The Mechanisms were originally called Dr. Carmilla and The Mechanisms. Dr. Carmilla (both the character and the creator) eventually left the Mechs to do her own thing, tell her own story, but the story of the universe at large is still hers. She's still got her name in the title, she's still the one who created the original lore, so to the universe, she's still the main character. She might not be the main character of any given story, even any given story she participates in, but it's all her universe in the end. As such, both her stories and the stories of The Mechanisms are canon, but they might not be strictly canon to each other. Because ultimately, The Mechanisms were the universe's vessel for telling stories, and sometimes the stories they told made for a weird concoction of conflicting canon, so you just had to accept that these conflicting canon beats were both canon, but which one was canon depended entirely on which story you were looking at, which one was trying to be told, who that story specifically was about (this is a concept that'll come up again later).

The reason this is a bit less relevant to MCYT in that, if a roleplay server is being well run, you (hopefully) won't have a main character in this way. And even if you do, that main character is not always going to be the creator of the server/universe, ala Carmilla. But again, it's not irrelevant, because I think this can be applied when you're looking at individual POVs of any given event or server.

Every character is the main character of their own POV, even if they might not be the main character of any given story beat or event. They have their own lore and story to tell in that POV, and when you sit down to watch their POV that is the story you'll get. It just so happens that said story might have things that are canon to it that are not canon to other POVs, that cannot be canon to other POVs, and you as the fan have to reckon with that. Sometimes these things might be small or not something that's gonna really throw you, like the conflicting Magic Mountain lore in this season of Hermitcraft. Other times, these might be really big things, like Martyn's Watcher lore in the Life Series.

But either way, while the idea that there is a Universal Story that has a clear main character doesn't really apply to servers, it certainly ties in to the idea of POVs. And furthermore, the "all of these stories are canon, but not strictly canon to each other" idea that comes along with Universal Story is a really vital thing to keep in mind when it comes to MCYT.

Pillar 2: Casting Call (Narrative Role Filling)

There are two main parts to Casting Call. The first is that The Mechanisms have a role in the stories they tell, even the stories that are not their own, like the album ones. These roles are often trope heavy, or based on pre-existing characters that the Mechanisms themselves have similarities too. The second is that the Mechanisms slot into these roles not necessarily because they want to, but because they have to in order to make the story work. Because the narrative wants them to help the story along to the ending.

This is definitely more relevant in roleplay heavy servers, but it still comes up on just about every server out there. While for the Mechanisms, the divide is between "the character I am" vs. "the character I am playing so the story gets told", the divide for MCYT tends to be a bit more "the person I am" vs. "the character I am playing so the story gets told". This divide (and people's inability to understand it) is the reason why MCYTs so often have to give the "Remember, we're all friends in real life and anything that the others weren't comfortable with wouldn't be in the videos" disclaimer. Everyone involved in this story is playing a character to move the story along, and that character may be totally removed from their real life person (such as Scott playing Xornoth in ESMP s1) or pretty similar to their real life person, but dialed up so they can tell a story, get a reaction (I don't know any of these people in real life, so I can't confidently pin someone down for this, but you get what I'm talking about).

Regardless, there is a story to be told, even if that story isn't thought out in advance, and that requires people playing the villain or the damsel in distress or the knight in shining armor sometimes in order to get it done. And, tying back into Universal Story, who is playing which of these roles can change as the canon of each POV changes (such as in Third Life, where who is filling the "villain" role depends entirely on which POV you're watching).

Pillar 3: Story Echoes

Story Echoes are a very Mechanisms based concept, because unlike everything else here, they are explicitly canon. This concept refers to the fact that The Mechanisms' stories "echo" throughout the universe, or repeat over and over again. It's in different places and different times, but these stories are out there, over and over again.

This one can apply to MCYT, but I have to admit, it's a stretch and a half. Ultimately, the way this applies here is in the fact that there's no such thing as an original story. Every story borrows from or is inspired by or is similar to another story out there. It's the nature of story telling. The first example for MCYT that comes to mind is fan Life Series, stories that take the mechanics of the Life Series but put them somewhere else, somewhen else, with someone else. However, Story Echoes are explicitly the same story repeating over and over again, which isn't really the case with this example. As I said, it's a stretch, but I didn't want to skip over this pillar entirely.

Pillar 4: Narrative Imperative

And the final pillar, Narrative Imperative, also referred to as Narrative Flow. Despite this one also being explicitly canon to The Mechanisms, it is also very relevant to MCYT, and in my opinion, the most important concept on this list for MCYT meta.

Narrative Imperative is explicitly canon in the Mechs universe when it comes to how The Mechanisms heal from injuries or death. As discussed in this post from the official Mechanisms tumblr, that healing factor functions at "whatever speed the story wants it to". This concept of "sometimes stuff just happens because it must for the story, even if it doesn't make sense or actively contradicts previously established canon" has been brought up before when we were discussing Universal Story, in respect to lore, to roleplay based story beats, for both groups. Here, it's more discussing a fact of the universe at large, a fact of how the Mechanisms function. And while the general concept of Narrative Imperative can be applied to literally any conflicting lore thing in any MCYT server or story (it's flexible in that way), I think it works best when talking about how game mechanics tie into the story.

What does death mean for this character? What does death mean for this character when on this specific server? What does death mean for this character on this specific server in this specific moment? What does logging off mean for this character, on this server, in this moment? What does voice mod or discord calls or chat mean to this character? What do skin changes mean? What does the Player Heads mod mean? What does sleep mean?

There are a million mechanics you can ask these questions about, and you can get a million different answers to each of them. Death can and does mean wildly different things on different servers (see: a Hardcore series like Naked and Afraid versus Hermitcraft). But it can also mean wildly different things on the same server to the same character at different points in time (see: the concept of "canon lives" on DSMP). Death, and numerous other game mechanics, mean whatever the hell the story (and the universe and creators involved) wants them to mean. You just have to take it in stride, the rules aren't clear because if they were, there wouldn't be enough freedom to tell a story.

Even on servers where it seems like the rules are clear, like the Life Series or other death games, death doesn't always mean what the rules say it does. Take glitch deaths, for example, like Loony's (almost) glitched death in season 1 of Deceit SMP. He glitched into a wall and should have died, but Legundo was allowed to cheat (use creative) to save him, or, had he died, been allowed to use cheats to bring him back, for fairness' sake. But this doesn't only apply to glitches- take one of Scar's off camera deaths in Third Life. I don't have the source for when Martyn talked about this on hand, but Martyn has mentioned that Scar technically died earlier in Third Life, when Martyn just snapped one day when Scar provoked him, killing Scar in a short, boring fight. There was nothing technically illegal or unfair about that kill, like with a glitched death, but when all was said and done, everyone agreed it just sort of... felt bad. That it didn't feel like a good story. So, the death was overturned, and the server went on as usual. The rules may have been clear here, but sometimes rules get in the way of a good story, so they're disregarded, simple as that.

MCYT stories are not being told in spite of their medium but in harmony with them. And as such, that means that sometimes, the narrative rules above all, and narrative imperative says that this mechanic is going to work like this, at least for now, at least for me. It might not ever work like that again, for me or for anyone else on the server, but it works like that in this moment, so you take it as is.

So, yeah, there's my essay! My final thoughts: Go listen to The Mechanisms. Go listen to Maki Yamazaki (Dr. Carmilla). I hope you enjoy these four concepts and keep them in mind when you are analyzing or playing the space of MCRP, because I think they are really helpful things to keep in mind. Have a good one.

[protectoratenova07]

Some fun Heartbroken trivia:

There is an older Nicholas and a younger Nicholas and they may have the same or similar powers

“He did.  Guillaume and Nicholas... Nicholas just wallops you with pants-shitting waves of terror...” ... “...I would’ve done it even if my big brothers weren’t coming for me, but I joined the Nine.”

Worm 11.g

...the younger Heartbroken in line.  Flor, Nicholas, Amias, Candy, and Darlene. ... ...the young ones, but Nicholas and Amias weren’t that into this particular game.

Ward 10.x

“You guys were busy helping Nathan after Nicholas got mad and terror-waved him.”

Ward 10.z

Older Nicholas and Guillaume aren't mentioned again after Cherie's interlude in Worm and Guillaume is only mentioned once in Ward

By the time he had her, he was bored enough with children that he didn’t pay her much mind.  You broke that ground, he got bored because he paid that attention to you.  You, Cherie, Jean-Paul, Valentina, Guillaume.  Trying to break you, trying to make you trigger.  Trying to make you soldiers.  Or just the days he was an asshole who wanted to hurt someone and you were the first person he saw after the impulse crossed his mind.

Ward 20.e2

There may have been a fifth sibling with powers who, by the time Cherie escapes, are (most likely) dead and Alec doesn't know

“...I was his fourth kid to show powers...”

Worm 7.1

Alec knows that Nicholas and Cherie have powers, so it goes: Unknown, Cherie, Nicholas, and then Alec. In Cherie's interlude...

“But it didn’t happen.  Time passed, he never made a push for it.  Guillaume got his power, you know.  Ten or so of us kids, and three of us could control people one way or another.  Four if we count you...”

Cherie mentions Guillaume having a power like it's news to Alec. Taking both Alec and Cherish's words together the order should be: Unknown, Cherie, Nicholas (these three can be shuffled around), then Alec, and lastly Guillaume.

Cherie doesn't seem to count Unknown among the active kids, keeping the count to four same as Alec, implying that Unknown died in between Alec running away and his encounter with Cherish in Brockton Bay.

Also, just for fun, the ages of the five seem to be: Nicholas and Guillaume as the oldest (20+ in 2011), Cherie as the next (20 in 2011), and then Alec (15 in 2011). Unknown is unknown so throw them anywhere. Maybe between Alec and Cherie to explain the five year gap between them.

[lunarharp]

Very important conferences.

[imjustaf444keriguess]

like there has got to be at least one doctor out there that says endogenics are fake right??

there's ones that argue DID isn't even a real thing there's some out there that argue against endogenics openly and actively?? right??

[character-obsessed-fem]

i think meeks should be allowed to have three sisters and a single mum... as a treat. bonus points if all of the sisters' names also begin with 'st' - i know thats like the most cliche thing ever but i think her mom would be silly like that alright

i imagine her having a twin sister, named stephanie, (who is older by like, an hour) and two older sisters, named stacy and stella (four years older and seven years older respectively)

"what about her dad??" i am choosing to pretend that her father simply does not Exist™ because i think it's funny if all of the dead poets had some form of daddy issues

[evil-gadgeteer]

ChellDOS, Chelley, WheatDOS and all of them together 😇

HOOOOOO BOY

i don't really think much about Chelley or WheatDOS, but i think they've got potential, whether it be comedy or angst, i see the vision. I never considered all 3 of them together as world's shittiest polycule (affectionate) before, but it's actually a HIGHLY entertaining idea.

As for ChellDOS.... omg i have thoughts. their relationship is SUPER interesting. like, yeah it's toxic as hell, these 2 people would be horrible for each other, but their SOOOO interesting together. i think you truly understand GLaDOS better once you understand just how obsessed with Chell is and how much she denies it to the very last second. how they bond whilst taking down Wheatley and the fact GLaDOS doesn't just kill Chell when she very easily could but rather sets her free. this woman was like "get out of my fucking sight, on your way out here's an opera song that mentions you by name and where you are referred to with affectionate terms, and also here's a box with a heart on it". 10/10, i can't believe valve invented lesbian divorce in 2011.

people have written WAY better essays on the topic and i'm kinda rambling here but you asked for thoughts.

i love toxic yuri and also need to replay portal 2

[anti-ao3]

I remember hearing someone say that bullying and racism - and hate crimes in general - are not the same, and I could not disagree more.

While I don't recall explicit racism at my school, I distinctly remember the fact that the majority of bullying victims were POC. This also has to do with the school being a private, conservative christian environment, and there were very little black students and black teachers. This also applies to disabled/neurodivergent kids, and I suppose LGBTQ+ kids though I don't remember anyone openly coming out at the time (not that it would be a safe space to do so, honestly).

And bullying can be fatal, actually - and I don't mean only suicide (which is still unfortunately common, and should be taken seriously). Misogyny kills. Racism kills. LGBTphobia kills - which is what happened to Nex Benedict, for instance.

I'm really sick of people assuming that bullying is just a dumb little thing that happens at school. No, it isn't. It ruins lives. It already ruined my life even if my experience wasn't as severe as other cases. But kids of all marginalized groups die because of bullying.

[pmatga]

so here's my latest pmatga idea

bitter exes: old man edition™

[nopanamaman]

hi there! idk if it was told about anywhere before, but I can't find an answer to how and where Yura got a gun. like seriously, I can't think of a single situation in which he can acquire it. care to tell a secret??