saw someone's post talking about how v!avid's character gets reduced to very cruel, stereotyped and black/white interpretation and wanted to rant about it
because YES that's correct. people either turn them into Scott Goldsmith's Love Interest, the gay man that gets treated like The Girl in the gay relationship, even though avid is 1) not gay and 2) not a man or a woman, or people say "avid is the reason everything went wrong and everyone hated the vampires because of him and he deserved to die because he was Annoying"
BOTH OF THOSE INTERPRETATIONS ARE MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT PLUS GREATLY DISRESPECTING CC!AVID'S INCREDIBLE CHARACTER WORK
v!avid's story was in the beginning an allegory for saneism (thanks, legs and everyone who kept saying avid needed a fucking lobotomy) and internalised homophobia. when he was turned it became an allegory for queer joy, and in turn made shelby, drift and scott's stories have an allegorical aspect of queer grief when they died
no allegory is perfect!! there will always be flaws with every allegory! i genuinely love and appreciate what cc!avid did with their character, and i have my own opinions on him backtracking and calling it "yaoislop" (it's dismissive to their own really well-acted character and to the allegories of queer joy/grief in several characters' stories, and that whole thing kinda felt like avid was just repeating what they'd seen said online rather than having his own opinion, especially since they expressed being so proud of the way he played in vsmp beforehand, i understand why he said it and don't blame them at all, because figuring out you're trans while being constantly in the public eye and facing workplace harassment that very few are taking seriously because some people don't see mcyts as humans is a horrible experience)
a problem that this entire fandom has (i see it the most in pyro and apo's characters as well, them and avid are the worst with black-and-white mischaracterisation) is not looking at the nuance of these incredibly nuanced characters. i think part of the reason for it is that some people watched one pov of vampires and then thought they'd watched the entire story and knew everything, despite having entirely fallen for the unreliable narration
the people who demonise apo and woobify pyro and avid probably just watched scott's pov and didn't see the layers of nuance, or straight up refused to engage with the subtle but well-done characterisation from smajor towards the end of the series
YOU HAVE TO WATCH MORE THAN ONE POV. watch apo to understand them, because almost every other perspective demonises her. watch pyro's pov to understand him, because they're such a GOOD messed-up character. don't?? fall for owen's "i'm a victim :(( and i killed avid because i just didn't like the guy" unreliable narration?? it's so obvious but i've seen people adopting that view of avid because of that one single line from owen WHICH IT WAS A LIE ANYWAY, drift's pov reveals that with her fear of owen throughout the whole series and then the scene where she stands up to him and tells him the real reason he killed avid was because they were a mirror to his own story, v!drift the woman and criminally overlooked character that you are
YES! THANK YOU! THIS SUMS UP MY THOUGHTS INCREDIBLY WELL!
Vampires SMP is a story of nuanced and complicated characters, you just don’t get the whole picture if you watch only one POV, and yeah it was easier to do that while it was coming out but still. It’s why I started doing the Verdant rambles, because I was getting sick of generalization and seeing people dumb complex characters down
No allegory is perfect and for an improv Minecraft SMP we had some damn good ones
RESPECT THE CHARACTER PLEASE AVID DID SUCH GOOD WORK WITH V!AVID!!!
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
