oh sweet 70%, those are bedroom eyes

sometimes it’s okay, and even cute, to hit your minecraft husband

the physical abuse aspect of fh is, imo, a complicated situation to parse because Of Course nuance is imperative. I’ve often seen people arguing that scott wasn’t actually physically abusive because sometimes punching someone in minecraft is analogous to shaking hands or giving a friendly pat on the shoulder. the reason I don’t buy this argument is bifid:

jimmy’s reaction when scott hits him in third life is to start saying “ow,” “stop,” and/or “no” (things people don’t normally do when shaking hands etc.), and also there’s that scene where he told martyn, “if [scott] starts hitting me, what can I do?”

there are examples of scott and jimmy hitting each other in a way that I would say is analogous to shaking hands or the like, and they don’t look like that.

one such example is from limited life: when they made their deal for scott to give jimmy time, they both hit each other once (scott described this as a “love tap” which is endlessly funny to me for reasons that we Really don’t need to get into but which you can probably guess); jimmy’s reaction was neutral to positive. body language in minecraft is highly contextual: if the person being minecraft-punched is treating it like it’s a friendly nudge, that’s probably what it is; if the person being minecraft-punched is treating it like they’re being (to borrow martyn’s phrasing) “slapped around,” that’s probably what it is.

the caveats I’d put here are that 1) this is a death game and consequently everyone’s behaviour is going to be a little bit fucked up by default (as you said: scar/grian and martyn/ren are not exactly shining examples of healthy relationship dynamics), and 2) I think the canon dynamic scott and jimmy had in third life is fun and awesome. but you do have to acknowledge the reality of the situation. guys, he hit him. multiple times. in front of other people. and jimmy excused this behaviour by implying he deserved it for allegedly being bad at building. if we don’t start with this as a baseline, we’re not going to make any progress in analytically deconstructing the relationship.

optional coda to the former point I guess

look, obviously we have to extrapolate, based on the limited vignette of their relationship shown onscreen, what things are like for them when the cameras shut off (so to speak). you can choose to believe, as I myself do, that there were probably times during third life—maybe when they were in private—when scott was genuinely very nice and affectionate to jimmy; even in real-world abusive relationships, this tends to happen. but the important detail to remember is that we barely see any of that onscreen.

one thing that always gets me is that scott doesn’t actually say he loves jimmy until limited life. not even after jimmy’s dead in third life can he say it. joel (of all people) says he loves jimmy before scott does. of course, being affectionate in public or saying you love your partner is not the be-all end-all of a healthy relationship. the main reason I mention these examples is because jimmy does like those things, and in fact has on multiple occasions specifically asked for scott to be nicer to him (“no, say something good about me!” is a classic).

jimmy overall responds extremely positively when given compliments or gifts or attention from pretty much anyone—including scott. as much as people, myself included, talk about how irl jimmy enjoys the teasing and humiliation and indeed will often specifically ask for it, that is an ooc trait and not actually something he ever said or even really implied during third life.

anyway. I don’t think I need to rewrite all my favourite examples of scott being emotionally abusive to jimmy in third life. you guys already know all that stuff. just look at it innit.

it’s the children who are wrong

I genuinely think that a lot of people just take things at face value and don’t bother to interrogate them further. they hear “we’re married now” and mentally associate the relationship with “marriage,” and the “marriage” box is connected to the “love and romance” box in most people’s minds so they don’t question it. obviously jimmy and scott love each other, because they’re married, and they wouldn’t be married if they didn’t love each other. therefore, everything they do to each other is fine. it’s circular logic. it’s surface-level analysis. zero critical thinking skills being displayed here.

scott did not actually do anything particularly romantic during third life. (anything he might have done after jimmy’s death does not count for these purposes, as jimmy was not there to appreciate or approve of it. to be fair, however, jimmy didn’t do anything particularly romantic during third life either.) if anyone tries to argue that scott is good at romance because of scott’s esmp season 1 episode 20, I will start killing. I’m being so serious. the empires date (WHICH IS ALSO NOT IN JIMMY’S POV, MIGHT I ADD) does not count towards third life characterisation. nor does anything scott has said outside of the series, unless we’re talking about cross-smp analysis of their relationship. but if we’re doing that, then we really need to talk about the trick with jimmy.

when I’ve discussed this before, I said that I suspect one of the primary reasons there’s so much pushback against the idea of talking about fh in its canonical form—aka an abusive (or “toxic” if you prefer a lighter term) relationship—compared to other arguably comparable dynamics such as grian and scar or ren and martyn is because fh was THE gateway ship for so many people in mcyt spaces. it was one of the first ships that was “allowed” (because the ccs made it explicitly romantic by deeming it a marriage, et cetera). there’s a certain degree of nostalgia attached to it, even if it’s nowhere near as popular nowadays.**

and the thing is, I haven’t actually seen a lot of people talking about evidence? I mean, one time I did see someone trying to argue that the scene where scott told jimmy it was his fault for getting killed because of what he was wearing was actually a “cute homoerotic moment” but then I think I blacked out and started exploding things with my mind or whatever. (funniest thing about that situation, btw, is that I know that person has liked at least one of my fh fics, which are—to put it mildly—dubiously consensual. but I digress.) the primary evidence for the relationship being cute and wholesome is usually stuff like the imaginary afterlife (which again is not real. it is the equivalent of a nice dream scott had), or post-third life stuff (which doesn’t count), or like... that one time scott baked a cake for jimmy. or the pufferish of peace. or some other example that is as much an example of scott making fun of jimmy as it is him being nice.

offscreen, of course, these people are very good friends; for the characters, however, there isn’t an “offscreen” to go to. irl jimmy can log off like “well that was fun, thankfully I have other things going on in my life!” but jimmy in third life was stuck with scott the whole time. there’s no reason to think that the way scott treated him during the parts of their life we-the-audience weren’t privy to was any different from the way scott treated him in the actual episodes.***

a lot of it reads as wishful thinking, to me. people want their cute gay ship to be cute and gay or something. and when you combine this with 1) scott’s involvement in, and promotion of, fandom in the early days, 2) the fact that fh really was THE groundbreaking ship for a lot of mcyt fandom, especially life series fandom, and 3) how people looove a good “playfully antagonistic” dynamic and are willing to overlook the more sinister overtones of fh in order to make it conform to expected fandom stereotypes, well... I understand how we got here, is what I’m saying. also the fact that scott is gay irl plus third life-era babyface jimmy facecam led to a lot of fandom buoyancy imo.

you people would fall for fae magic without question if it looked cute. stop believing scott when he says things.

the funny thing is, it’s not like scott’s pov is that different, really; obviously the conversation jimmy has with martyn (“I’ve just seen you get slapped around ... are you happy with scott?”) isn’t there, but “if he starts hitting me, what can I do?” is absolutely in scott’s pov, and that’s maybe THE fh moment for me. scott is not exactly very nice to jimmy in his own pov either! “I don’t trust jimmy” and “we got to have the hierarchy system, just so he knows” are also cornerstone fh moments to me, and those are in scott’s pov.

on the topic of scott’s pov versus other people’s povs, though, I do kind of want to round up the healthy fh people and sit them down and make them watch that scene in pearl’s double life where scott says “jimmy takes a while to break down ... but once you whittle him down to nothing, it works” and also that scene in tango’s double life where scott says being teamed with jimmy is a “curse” and also that scene in past life where jimmy tells scott “you will never be forgiven [for killing me]” and also the hierarchy system clip (and also that clip from new life where scott describes lovebombing in the most textbook manner) and then I want to ask them some reading comprehension questions, such as the following:

jimmy said “you will never be forgiven,” whereupon scott decided that actually jimmy had forgiven him (“me and jim just made up, it’s fine”). do you think this is fair of scott to decide on jimmy’s behalf? what kinds of things might be implied about their relationship by scott’s decision to ignore jimmy telling him “no”?

scott justified killing jimmy by saying “you also took off your chestplate and just stood there shirtless, I don’t know what you wanted from me.” do you think this has any parallels to real-world victim blaming? why or why not?

when scott said pearl would have to “whittle [jimmy] down to nothing,” and then described himself as a “master” of such behaviour, what kinds of things do you think he was describing? why do you think scott might have chosen not to include this clip in his own pov?

when talking to tango, scott said, “see, you’re reasonable, it’s just a shame you got paired with jimmy.” what do you think this implies scott thinks about jimmy’s role in a relationship? what might scott’s decision to edit this conversation out of his own pov tell you about how scott feels about tango, and specifically about tango’s relationship with jimmy?

in response to grian’s commenting on how scott had built his own house higher than jimmy’s, scott said, “of course. we got to have the hierarchy system, just so he knows.” what do you think scott was implying was important that jimmy “know”? do you think having a “hierarchy system” in a relationship is a positive sign? how might this hierarchy be visible in their relationship elsewhere in third life?

the scene where they got married is not in scott’s pov and their happily-ever-after scene is not in jimmy’s pov. what do you think these omissions reveal about 1) these two characters, and 2) their respective motivations and perspectives on their relationship, during third life?

if you told someone no or stop or go away, and they ignored you, how might that make you feel?

^this test is open-book (you can rewatch the clips as many times as you like) and I WILL be awarding extra credit if you manage to work in a mention of the stupid fucking quartz couch (my absolute favourite detail in the fh afterlife).

at this point the impression I get is that people primarily believe what scott says because he keeps fucking saying it. he will not shut up about it, in fact. he keeps turning to the camera and saying “this is what is happening, and this is how I feel about it, and this is how jimmy feels about it” and people don’t question it because 1) minecraft roleplay is not serious business and these are not serious people or 2) omg cute fluffy yaoi ship or something?? I guess???? side note but does anyone else lowkey hate the westernised definition of the word yaoi and the commodification of gay relationships into marketable content. but also that’s kinda the whole problem with fanon fh, isn’t it.

anyway, this is also why people believe scott is the most moral life series player. he keeps saying he’s honourable and fair and reasonable, so surely that means he must be telling the truth, right? it’s like subliminal messaging. sorry, domtopliminal messaging. tell don’t show. really drive the point home by repeating it until everyone has no choice but to believe you. just whittle them down.

in... conclusion...?

man I don’t fucking know. I recently rewatched jimmy’s third life ep 1, and it’s honestly shocking how much there is from the get-go. there’s not even a honeymoon period (ha, ha) where scott is nice, he just jumps straight into treating jimmy like a deuteragonist in his own pov. the “are you happy with scott?” scene is in episode 1. the scene where scott changes jimmy’s house without permission is in episode 1. the “go back and get the sugarcane” scene is in episode 1. it’s all laid out right there from the very beginning.

a couple of posts on this and relevant topics:

why do people misremember fh as being ‘nicer’ than it was?

comparing fh to other third life dynamics misses the point

interpretation vs intention

also my own post that was kinda about the homophobia thing.

—

*personally I dislike the label “toxic fh” for two reasons: 1) it implies that the relationship being seen as “toxic” is somehow antagonistic to the “canon” relationship (their canon relationship is not great actually!) and people who see it as an abuse narrative are somehow reading into it something that is not textual, and 2) I think describing the relationship as “toxic” kinda cheapens the fact that it is abuse. obviously I’m not here to police anyone’s language though, and I do understand why people are reluctant to say “abusive” instead of the perhaps more prevaricating term “toxic.”

**this is kind of a shame but also extremely not. on one hand, I would love to see more people talking about the relationship and especially how their dynamic has changed from third life to now—I do not think scott is ever going to be normal about jimmy Ever and that’s very fun to explore—but on the other hand, hoo boy oh thank fucking god am I right.