schneefink

My first time signing up for the MCYT Excursive Exchange and I'm very excited! All of these stories are great and I'd love to read some more in those worlds, I hope you have fun playing in them :D

( General likes and DNWs )

( Dead Hometowns and Undead Machines )

( a rare talent indeed )

( Untamed Beasts )

I almost forgot about May recs. So I looked at my to-rec list, found a QSMP fic in "MCYT – miscellaneous," wrote a rec, and then thought "huh, I wonder if there's more like that." (I found one more I really liked.) And then "I still have thoughts about the whole sad QSMP story." And "I wish there was a r/hobbydrama write-up I could link to." Buuut looks like I'll have to do it myself. Not an actual write-up, just a summary. (Please at least one person tell me they read it otherwise I'll be sad. You can lie.)

( A brief history and some thoughts on the QSMP, hopefully understandable for people who know nothing about Minecraft. )

On to the actual recs!

oblivious to what the trigger does by Odaigahara (QSMP)
4.3k, gen, Chayanne & Technoblade, Purgatory
Summary: “Take off your shirt and wrap it around your nose and mouth,” the shadow instructed, and that sounded like a great idea, yeah, Chayanne could do that. He wriggled out of his shirt, gasping in shallow little inhales as it caught on his wings, and tied it around his head. It bumped weird against his skull mask, so he had to take that off, but when he put the mask back on top it kept the cloth in place.
“Good,” the shadow said, and Chayanne couldn’t make out what it was, except a blurry figure with a deep voice who sounded very stressed, but he could tell it wasn’t anybody he knew. Couldn’t be a normal person, either, because there wasn’t space to stand on the tower he’d built. “Keep doing that. If you breathe real slow, most of the particles should get caught by the cloth.”
Chayanne nodded, eyes watering. He wiped them with the backs of his hands, fingers twinging, and managed to sign, “Are you real?”
Why I like it: Even just following QSMP by osmosis I caught a good amount of Chayanne feelings. Overprotective older sibling who puts a lot of pressure on himself in hard situations and who hero-worships Technoblade, no surprise. This is very good h/c and I love this take on Chayanne meeting Techno.

Foam on the Stony Shores by underoriginal
1.5k, gen, Chayanne & Technoblade
Summary: Chayanne hears a strange voice of his own while fighting his father for three days. Based on Phil saying that Chayanne didn't get injured because Techno was there to guide him.
Why I like it: Another "Techno supports Chayanne," this time while Chayanne fights possessed!Phil, again with very nice h/c too.

this barbie likes to fight codes by shblackwoodart
digital art, gen, Etoiles
Why I like it: Some cool art of Etoiles with his won and the spreading code corruption. (Minecraft lore is weird sometimes and Etoiles is canonically a cucumber, which in practice only means that artists give him green skin and it looks cool. The "barbie" comes from Etoiles changing his character outfits frequently, and "likes to fight code[monster]s" - well yeah, that's Etoiles.

This week I watched fewer videos of the Limited Life session, so I optimistically thought that I could get my write-up done much faster, but not so much.

( Limited Life session 6 )

I finally wrote something again:

Infinite Amethyst Sounds
Fandom: Young Royals
1.8k, background Simon/Wille, AU - MCYT, outsider PoV
Summary: Five scenes that might have happened in the AU where Simon is a Minecraft Youtuber.

Notes: I asked DD for a prompt for Young Royals fic, she said "secret identity," I said "what if Simon was a Minecraft Youtuber" and she said "YES WRITE IT" and she kept encouraging me when I came up with more ideas until I actually wrote it, so it's clearly at least half her fault for enabling me. I wrote this in one day after several weeks of brainstorming. Originally I planned for it to be crack but then some angst snuck in. It's technically not a crossover but it feels like one (in my head Simon and Quackity definitely at least know of each other and are probably friends.)

Dear gifter!

I very much look forward to whatever you come up with :)

( General Likes/Dislikes )

( #1: DSMP Emduo )

( #2: DSMP Lady Death and her angel )

( #3: DSMP Lady Death and her angel's son )

( #4: Steerswoman Rowan & Willam )

( #5: Origins SMP evil kingdom )

(Prompts will most likely be slightly expanded on in the next few days.)

There's a new Minecraft speedrunning world record (random seed glitchless) by Zylenox and it's 7:45. Under eight minutes. What the hell. I'm glad I've learned enough about MCSR by now to know what most of the tactics he's using even are, otherwise it'd look like magic. Okay it still basically looks like magic. (Here is a reaction vid by Couriway with some explanations of what Zylenox is doing.)

In other MCYT news, I'm really invested in the currently ongoing MCYT Tumblr Sexyman Tournament over at mcytblrsexymen, currently in round three of seven: current bracket. It features 96 characters - or, well, sort of characters: it's explicitly about characters and not creators, but they also combined all of each creators' characters under one name so it's kind of a borderline case (as so often with MCYT.) There's a lot of campaign art and other fanworks already, aand unsurprisingly MCYT creators have discovered it and many are now actively campaigning for themselves, including attempted bribery and trash-talking their opponents. It's very silly but also very exciting, it's very well run, and it also worked to promote some less popular creators that made it into early rounds. (By now I think the only one still in the running who's not from either Hermitcraft, DSMP, or Empires is CaptainSparklez.)

It's a seeded competition, to make it as fair as possible, but it does mean that there were some very difficult match-ups already. GTWScar is the big favorite after nominations, but he does go up against Techno next round (I assume - CaptainSparklez probably could have made it much farther from a different corner.) Nobody seems to be able to agree on criteria anyway so it's a popularity contest to a significant degree, but I don't care, I'm having fun :D

Snowflake challenge #13:
In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.

This challenge came right after I decided to make more recs. Conveniently, "a random mix of whatever you're in the mood for" got a lot of votes in the poll I made, so I'm reccing two DSMP/MCYT fanworks I've been thinking about reccing for ages but never really found the words and a third one I also love, each in a different medium. I think I added enough info that they can all be enjoyed without knowing canon, but let me know if it worked for you if you decide to check out any of them :)

The Plagues, by WolfyTheWitch
Fandom: Dream SMP
Medium: Animatic
Song: The Plagues, from Prince of Egypt
Finally an opportunity to gush about Plagues! (I just watched the original movie for the first time yesterday and this song was one of the two best songs/parts of it, just so well done.)
Amazingly, this song fits Doomsday Bedrock Bros so well here.
Plot background: Tommy was exiled from the nation/city of L'Manberg, and after having a terrible time he eventually comes to live with the feared warrior Technoblade. Technoblade recently survived being executed by L'Manberg (long story) and is out for revenge, and eventually Tommy agrees to help him. But when it comes to an actual confrontation Tommy remembers how much he still loves his friends and L'Manberg, and he turns away from Technoblade to rejoin them. Technoblade comes to destroy L'Manberg the very next day. Tommy is the first one to confront him.
I love how this vid switches the sides of the original. Tommy sings Moses' part and Technoblade Rameses', but the choir is with Technoblade, and of course lines like "never mind how high the cost may grow" are very different in this context. Even the lines that don't fit perfectly somehow just emphasize those that do. I love the flashback to when Techno and Tommy were laughing together and clearly close. I love how the "plagues" are used, the actual Doomsday events are not in order but how they best fit cinematically. I love the ending with Tommy on his knees and Techno's hand on his head. So many feelings.

Mangoball
Fandom: MCYT
Medium: a fic told in Tweets (so I have no idea how long it is), college AU
Pairing: DNF (DreamNotFound), hints of some others
Months ago I saw iirc a Tumblr post talking about three MCYT fic "classics:" Heat Waves (DNF RPF, the most popular fic on AO3 for a while, which has since been deleted), passerine (a great SBI fantasy AU), and Mangoball. I hadn't heard of Mangoball before because it's not on AO3 but on Twitter; fortunately someone collected it to make it easier to read here.
Actually the fic is called "Cheater, Cheater," but it's usually called Mangoball after the name of the twitter account (which is technically mangobaii.)
It's glorious crack. A college AU in which Sapnap cheats on his boyfriend George with Dream, and then Dream starts flirting with George, and then… things happen. Dream is living with Corpse Husband and Wilbur breaks into their flat to steal their appliances. Tommy hates Dream so much he gets sponsored by Taco Bell. The mysterious BadBoyHalo keeps leaving supportive replies to Quackity's tweets and seems to be suspiciously well informed. Every time I forget how completely OTT ridiculous it is but somehow it works. I didn't think anything could top the McShep ketchup/pea fic but in a different way Mangoball is up there. "It's crack on crack but somehow has depth," as DD said after I made her read it, and she kept laughing out loud even though she was suspicious of the medium and didn't get most references to actual fandom events (mostly along the lines of "imagine if someone did [actual thing the actual people did in RL], that would be crazy.")
There is also Christmas special.

Revived, by Derivakat
Fandom: DSMP
Medium: song (with art by Qaramello)
I don't think I've ever been in a fandom where songs were such a popular fanwork as in Dream SMP and it's pretty cool, so I'm including a song here. (I'd love to know how that happened, and how much of it was maybe even because of Derivakat herself.)
Wilbur Soot: passionate, silver-tongued, volatile. He founded the nation of L'Manberg and fought a war for its independence, he lost the election he'd planned to rig to give himself more power and was exiled instead, he led the revolution to win back L'Manberg, and when they succeeded he abdicated, blew up the nation, and goaded his own father into killing him. His ghost remained. Then, after several months, Wilbur was revived and revealed that he'd been stuck in a train-station-shaped limbo for thirteen years. Nobody knew what to expect: he didn't seem angry or vengeful, but it was Wilbur Soot, you never knew.
I'm pretty sure this song was written soon afterwards. Later it became more obvious that Wilbur's behavior wasn't a front, but for a while it was a real possibility, so in a way this song is a fascinating look at what could have been. The lyrics are great, I love how, hm, unhinged Wilbur seems (and tbh understandably so), the train in the background fits perfectly, and while the song absolutely works on its own, the accompanying art in the video make it even better.

I happened to stumble across a few videos on Minecraft Speedrunning via Tumblr (for example) and thought it was really impressive, with some bonus fun storylines. (Some very impressive detective work to catch cheaters, too.) Then two weeks ago via fruitberries I stumbled upon the Speedrun Showdown II event, a charity tournament with an unusual format: 2v2 speedrun to kill the ender dragon in the same world with PVP enabled. I checked it out on a whim (probably also because I recently felt a bit nostalgic about the Hermes Cup, the Hades speedrunning tournament) and immediately had a lot of fun. The players and teams are really good, the commentators do a good job, and all the matches were very exciting. Spectator mode is very convenient especially when teams are lost or chasing each other – the PVP added so much to the tactics and gameplay! (They were allowed to keep their armor and tools if they died, but still lost the rest of their inventory.)

Last weekend were the finals (Twitch VOD – no idea how long it will be up, sadly, my least favorite part about Twitch), and the grand finale was a best of three. I got so excited about the first of these that I even managed to convince DD to watch the next two with me. ( It was very dramatic. )

Not sure how many previous matches I will manage to go back and watch until they disappear especially considering it is almost Christmas, but hopefully a few, and hopefully there will be a part three of this tournament one day.
In the meantime, while MCC is on break, I might also check out Blockwars... maybe. If I happen to find a time turner.

In my head for a while I have been idly drafting a post about "fandom spaces" in fandoms like MCYT where interactions with the content creators are in some ways completely normal but also platform-dependent and how that clearly influenced some parts of these fandoms having "rules" that seemed completely alien to me. What do you mean I'm not supposed to create fanworks a content creator said they don't want to see, as long as everything is appropriately tagged, they're adults who are responsible for their own internet experience. Also, do not link content creators to fic especially not someone else's, WTF.

And then today as one of the results of *gestures at Twitter*, TommyInnit joined Tumblr and I'm still laughing. His username is "tubbosfriend," his first (and so far only) post is a terrible selfie tagged "ranboo mcyt", and his first liked post is a screenshot of tumblr RTing a DSMP joke xDD This could either be hilarious or terrible and I can hardly wait to find out.
(Yes other MCYT streamers have been on Tumblr for a while but, uh, Tommy is a different potential level of chaos. Plus, if more fans come to Tumblr from Twitter and are unfamiliar with how fandom there "works" then conflicts seems likely. But I'm hoping for the best.)

I wanted to make another post but most things on my brain currently - well, the ones I want to talk about - are in some way Minecraft-related, either playing myself or watching other people play it. Well, Minecraft and pending-exam-anxiety, but I took the next week off for studying so I should be fine, fingers crossed. Minecraft is helpful for anxiety, but I'll need to be very disciplined so it doesn't distract me too much. Fortunately I can usually never play longer than an hour at a time before I need a break, idk why.

DD tried out a Minecraft demo and loved it :D (Quote DD: "I feel like "loved it" doesn't fully encompass my emotional reaction.") I'm very happy and proud of my success rate at getting her into things, it's fantastic. (DD: "You're an evil enabler and I hate you." Me: "I'm so good at this." DD: "You know what's the worst thing, you're getting better at it." This might be a good place to mention that we are also currently watching SMP Earth together, and while she's not watching herself, she admitted to enjoying the exposure to MCC and DSMP through me.)
She's on her second world (she got frustrated because there was so much ocean in the first one), and she's already built herself a house with a farm and she has a ton of resources because she's exploring so many caves. DD has been playing different versions of Civ and the Sims for over two decades, and in the past year I got her into playing Hades and Phoenotopia, and yet yesterday she told me that playing Minecraft is the first thing that makes her feel like a "gamer," which tbh I find hilarious.
Maybe we'll play together on a multiplayer world eventually :)

Teams were announced for the next MCC and I'm very excited about it already. I'm still watching older MCCs, I'm up to MCC 9, but my pace has slowed down a lot because the more players I'm familiar with the more different perspectives I want to watch.

I've also been watching more DSMP, some old ones and some more recent ones. Yesterday was the big end of Las Nevadas and it was fun. ( Spoilers )