tragedy

[id: a drawing of c!wilbur, c!charlie, and c!quackity. quackity is staring down, horrified, at a liquefied charlie inside a frying pan he’s holding. charlie is smiling cheerfully. wilbur is talking nervously; inside his speech bubble is a text post by millenianthemums, saying “hey i was caramelizing your boyfriend and he uh. he stuck to the pan. yeah i didn’t deglaze it enough and he’s really burnt on there. i mean we can soak him for a while and see if we can scrape him up but i’m not optimistic. sorry.” end id]

Okay so, one of my problems with creator boundaries as an event runner is that it's impossible to keep up with them all, because they're being updated, and because so much of the time you learn them when they're reported to you, you weren't in stream yourself. So it's a game of telephone, and there's a constant issue that the message gets garbled in translation.

So the stance that I've taken as an event runner is that I will not be enforcing boundaries, and everyone can decide for themselves what relationships they're comfortable with. This seemed like the best stance for me to deal with the beeduo /p /r wars, and then I have continued to see many other smaller or larger instances where I've gone "yeah, enforcing creators boundaries as an event mod is a nonstarter, I'm sticking with that".

And I've been mostly concerned about issues like— I am not an avid watcher of Gem streams! I might miss things that happen in Gem streams, I don't know what the creator's exact boundaries are for what's okay to do in her vision. But meanwhile I've been over here in Phil streams, and I've assumed that I have known Phil's boundaries, because they get repeated SO MUCH. Everybody knows— no nsfw, and then we argue about if the only shipping allowed is with Mumza (the dsmp stance) or if his continued gay flirting with men on QSMP means he's okay with shipping with them (he kissed a man on camera on QSMP, for example). That is the received wisdom about Phil's boundaries, we all know where we stand and how we're interpreting things.

And I have been like okay, Phil doesn't want to see NSFW, I don't think he's reading my Ao3 history, maybe I will read the occasional pissa fic for fun. There are some good fics in the tag, you know. I will just keep it out of his sight, and the streamer doesn't have to know, right?

Cut to today, where I'm being kicked out of a discord server for bookmarking one (1) Phil NSFW fic. They sent me a clip to prove that NSFW was against the rules and why I was getting kicked. So I watched the clip in the interest of completeness.

And guys, when I tell you my jaw fucking dropped, because I do NOT agree that anyone should have asked the streamer this, but someone got him to talk about NSFW fan work, "weirdchamp shit", and he explicitly with his mouth says that he "could not give a shit" and "everybody lets out their creativity in different ways", and "ultimately it isn't hurting anybody", and as long as he doesn't see it, he's fine with it. As long as it's kept out of his stream he's fine.

So uh, guys? I know it's not like we haven't been cautiously creeping this way ourselves, just keeping it out of the streamer's sight, but explicitly, word of god from the streamer, I think Phil NSFW has been legal this whole time.

ctinarose in gay love. reblog if you agree

Things may or may not have happened in Pogtopia (x)

also:

By demand of my friends

please, please

trying smth new lol

kiss kiss kiss

based on @tntduoers post because God it’s them. U Hit the nail on the Damn head

can i request c!bee….

this is my roman empire

live las nevadas reaction

[id: sketches on a white background of dream smp characters. in one, quackity is crossing his arms and saying “so, wilbur and i have some news-” and wilbur, his arms wrapped around quackity’s neck, cheerfully says “we’re together!” in the next drawing, tubbo is staring, shocked, awesamdude is staring judgementally, purpled is playing on his switch in the background, charlie is giving a thumbs-up gesture and saying “congratulations, quackity from las nevadas!”, foolish is clasping his hands and saying “that’s great but can i still get a raise,” and fundy looks like the “tails gets trolled” image. another black-and-white sketch has fundy placing his hands on quackity’s shoulders and saying “did you fuck my dad, quackity?” with a desperate expression. end id]

Okay this is 100% discourse, so maybe avert your eyes if you don't want to see me wail at the heavens, but for a fandom so anxious about boundaries, we haven't actually been very good in practice at respecting the actual stated boundaries the streamers put down, and I think it shows what we're actually policing, which is not things to make the streamers comfortable, it's stuff to make us comfortable.

This ranges from inventing new boundaries for people (you can't use neopronouns for ranboo, their pronouns are he/they; there's no boundaries on dark content for streamers so obviously we have to invent and enforce dark sbi rules ourselves) and then harassing people based on those boundaries that we just made up, to ignoring the actual things that the streamers said if we don't agree with them (cc!dream said he was uncomfortable with gore art back during the revolutionary war/exile but he's a villain, right, so we can just do whatever we want with the character, right?) and just doing whatever we want.

This is a recurring problem, with people violently policing boundaries that the fandom has all agreed on, to the point of doxxing and harassment and death threats, and ignoring boundaries that they have decided "don't make sense".

Like here's the example I put in the tags earlier, which is Technoblade related. Everyone knows that family dynamic is great and shipping is a no-go, right? But if you actually go looking for the clips, (or listen to streams in the background recursively while you're doing other things), you'll find that what Technoblade said about shipping was that it was "kinda cringe" (I think the list of things he said was cringe included reading percy jackson books and talking like you're better at video games than you actually are), and he was MUCH stronger in saying that he didn't like family dynamic in canon, saying that he didn't like it, that it was non-canon, and he'd never betray his family like that.

But if you look at the entire "found family" tag on Ao3, 19,860 stories, Technoblade is tagged into 29% of them. That's 5,760 fics just blowing right past what Technoblade said. Boom. Taking that character from his political anarchist setting and setting him right down in a royalty au w. younger siblings.

Because obviously a family dynamic isn't actually going to hurt someone's feelings or make them feel weird, the fandom has agreed, so what he must mean was that saying that family dynamic was actual literal canon is the only bad thing (I have been clotheslined by family dynamic written into stuff tagged as "canon compliant" multiple times as well,) and we can continue with the fun family stuff, right? Because someone saying they don't like family dynamic doesn't make Sense, in the way that I like it, the fandom has agreed, so we can just ignore that clip. Honestly I think that a ton of people have no idea that Technoblade ever said anything negative about family dynamic, because that clip is never brought out or talked about. I literally only know about it because I've watched that stream.

Meanwhile, the much less firmly stated boundary when it comes to shipping is absolutely doubled down on and brought out to justify mobbing people off the internet, because everyone already knows that shipping is bad and terrible and tainted and horrible to do and we don't like it, so even the slightest indication that it's out has to be grabbed and used to police people. So that everyone can be very to sure themselves that what they're doing is not weird, and the streamers are okay with it, and if I showed them my fic they'd say they liked it.

They're not going to give the Ok to your fic, because the fic isn't FOR them, and it shouldn't be. It's for the other weird fans who can't stop thinking about the block men characters, it's not for the actors. The actors have their own lives, leave them alone.

To be clear, I am not saying that we should stop writing family dynamic to respect Technoblade's feelings. Among other things, I don't think he's checking his character tag on Ao3 right now. But like, I've talked before about the way that boundaries culture ends up working in practice, and how constantly bringing problems up to streamers just ends up showing them all the things that are the most weird to the streamer. You only have to look at what most of Benchtrio has done in terms of boundaries, which has been transitioning from very explict boundaries with details on everything to just saying "just use your manners," stopping answering questions, and telling people to actually think about what they're showing the streamer instead of expecting someone to weigh in on it for them.

But even when it comes to the boundaries that we do have, that we know about, the way people enforce them seems to be less about actually respecting what the creators like, and more about making sure we're morally pure and never have to see something that we personally don't like, and we don't happen to have any of that nasty boys kissing content in our work, because we all know that's terrible. (And as someone who's seen crackdowns on LGBTQIA content several times, that certainly has unfortunate overtones.)

As long as it's all kept away from the creators, I really think that fluffy cuddly family dynamic and kissing fic and hardcore whump all falls into the category of "not for the creators, they might find that one weird, but you do you". Like keep it away from the streamers, use your brain, but like, it's all a bit weird and for fun. Let it be weird and for fun in a secluded part of the internet, keep it away from the streamers, tag your shit for people who don't want to see it, and go to town.

So just like, I really think that "creator boundaries" should be more about using your brain as to what you show the streamer, and less about harassing someone off the internet cause they drew kissing art.

My Streamer confused necking with wringing someone’s neck so now you get an extra silly doodle

I saw so much tntduo here today. thank you. I come to ask, is there a little more Yuri tntduo in you? for the thirsting people.

Pandoras vault personified

Kat has asked me to post this (Design based on this amazing art!)