Things are happening I suppose

Good question, also no that won’t help.

shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the “bottom” edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesn’t slide out of your hand that easily, you’re wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from it’s resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.

torture getting reliable information out of people

knocking someone out to harmlessly incapacitate them for like an hour

jumping into water from staggering heights and surviving the fall completely intact

calling the police to deescalate a situation

rafting your way off a desert island

correctly profiling total strangers based on vibes

effectively operating every computer by typing and nothing else

ripping an IV out of your arm without consequences

Just a silly Pokemon AU where Scar and Grian are pokemon coordinators (AKA especialize in pokemon contests, not battles). Oh yeah and the watchers are a vaguely cultish evil organization don't worry about it

I'll pop the full teams under the cut for anyone curious :J

to be clear, I believe younger artists and minors can write good fics (not to say “fanfic must always be good” either because it is a hobby and I still believe that as long as it’s done with love and the artist’s joy, it is good) and I believe it’s good when younger artists and minors start making art at young ages.

that said, a lot of fanfics out there that you read and love are done by adults with kids, jobs and responsibilities. adults who have years, decades of practice under their belts. adults who don’t let life and responsibilities take away their joy in creating.

SURVEY LINK

During my time in mcyt fandom, I've watched as the fandom's perception of creator boundaries has grown and shifted into a cornerstone of our fandom, and yet we don't actually have any good data on how the fandom as a whole perceives them outside of discourse posts.

The goal of this unofficial study NOT to make a value judgement on whether creator boundaries should be respected - it is to understand how the fandom currently perceives and interacts with them.* Is respecting creator boundaries important to you? Has your favorite creator made a boundary list or spoken about it on stream? Do you find some boundaries acceptable and others not? Have you ever been the target of hate for engaging with boundary-breaking content? Whether you think boundaries should always be respected or you think they're being used as tools of censorship, I want to hear from you. What are boundaries, and why do they matter so much to us?

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This survey is a mix of multiple choice and optional long-response questions. It should take about 15 minutes if you’re only doing the required questions, and much longer if you choose to answer the optional questions.**

If you are able, please reblog and share this survey link around. Feel free to post it on any platform, as I am currently only on Tumblr, which is not representative of the fandom as a whole. In fact, I’d love it if it reached Twitter. The more responses, the more accurate the results will be for the whole of mcyt.*** Anyone in mcyt spaces, including creators, are welcome to take the survey to share their thoughts. However, I ask that for the comfort of content creators and the spirit of good fandom etiquete, please do not directly share the survey with any creator or post the link in any creators’ official communities. Thoughtful discussion is always valued over reactionary comments.

The survey is set to close at 11:59pm EST on August 1, 2026 - I may extend this date if there is still a high volume of responses coming in, or if there aren’t enough responses yet for meaningful data. I will aim to publish the results within a month of the survey’s close, and keep you updated on the timeline if that’s not feasible for any reason.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped beta this survey- you all gave such wonderful suggestions! I wish I could’ve kept every question, but in the end a lot needed to be cut to make this manageable. Please know that I appreciate every one of you, as this survey would not exist today without you.

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* Why I think this data is important to collect: The idea for this survey came to me almost a year ago, and I started developing it around February of this year. I’ve spoken with dozens of people about this topic with diverse opinions, read and catalogued hundreds of tumblr posts, rewatched streams and videos by creators and fans, and watched as opinions have shifted across fandoms in real time. I feel extremely confident in saying that every person on every side cares deeply about respecting others and creating safe, welcoming communities in all mcyt spaces. Where they differ is on how to show that respect, which kinds of expectations they think are reasonable in different spaces, and beliefs on how those in power should be using their influence. I don’t expect this survey’s results to fundamentally change anything - this debate has been going on longer than mcyt has existed. But I think it’s still important to analyze the actual arguments people are making and how they affect our communities, instead of focusing on expected behavior from others based on our own values, so we can see the varying expressions of humanity in each other and work towards a better future for our fandom. I don’t think we’re as different as the discourse may have us believe.

** This survey is designed to encourage all participants to think critically about their position and the effects it has. I am aware that I have my own personal biases, so I have taken steps to ensure that the survey is as bipartisan as possible and also gives participants the opportunity to explain their answers for every question if they feel the need. Because of this, there may be questions that make some participants uncomfortable. While I would appreciate knowing why a question has made someone uncomfortable, participants are always free to skip such long-response questions.

Death of the Author is a term coined by Roland Barthes for his essay of the same name in 1967.

In brief: death of the author is the concept that analysis of a work of art should not be focused on the artist's intent; the artist's intended reading of their own work is just A reading and no more valid than anyone else's.

A good straightforward example of this in practice is the response to Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary. Weir is adamant that his work contains no politics but I would say that PHM is pretty clearly a story about climate change.