Zisteau Primer
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystalllized posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mindcrackloveSo I made a primer to Zisteau. Needs some direct video links within the text, but I think it's looking pretty good. Please give me all your delicious feedback!
-------------
Real Life:
Very little is known about Zisteau's real-life identity. There is a single set of pictures of him, and on his multiplayer series with his friends entitled "Life on Bogota", they refer to him as 'Tyler'. All four of the members of the Bogota server refer to each other by names beginning with T, however, which may cause you some suspicion - or it may not! He isn't very open about information regarding his real life, but he has created a very well-known character for himself in the world of Minecraft Let's Plays.
Minecraft:
Zisteau began a play through of Survival Island in February of 2011, and was one of the most frequent posters to Vechs' Super Hostile thread on the Minecraft forums while he played through the first Sea of Flame (early March) and version 1.1H of Kaizo Caverns. (late March, with all his previous Let's Plays lost due to hard drive failure). Kaizo Caverns is where Zisteau's story truly begins, in Minecraft Beta 1.3.1.
His flair for the dramatic and for editing was made clear from the very first episode of Kaizo Caverns, as he 'fell' through a world into the starting area and presented his viewers with a short but sweet intro and unique texture pack. Finding himself trapped inside dark caves, he plucked a sign off the wall and a pair of chain leggings ('MAN PANCE') from a chest, and the rest is history. He made his way through the map, sometimes with care and style, sometimes with brute force and reckless laughter, but always amusing. He built an amusement park in a large cavern, created impressive structures from difficult materials, and conquered the best that Vechs had to throw at him.
Vechs watched his Let's Play and began to feature every episode on the Super Hostile thread, and became a frequent commenter on the videos. When Vechs went to make his next map, 'Legendary', he made the map even more difficult for Zisteau (and he knew it was more difficult for Zisteau, because he asked the pigman to beta test the map!), restricting access to iron (and thus lava, Zisteau's preferred lighting technique) until after the fourth intersection, very late in the map. After obtaining the iron, Zisteau went back and did what any reasonable zombie pigman would do - he covered the entire map with well-placed lava, and made an incredibly entertaining montage of the process to boot!
Zisteau's friendship with Vechs also brought him closer to some of the other most regarded Let's Players of Super Hostile maps, especially once Vechs released his first multiplayer/PVP Super Hostile Race For the Wool map, Hostilities Begin. Zisteau, Joe Hills, ZombieCleo, and PauseUnpause became the first to post footage of Hostilities Begin to YouTube, playing the map together after a night of hanging out on Vechs's home world. The four Super Hostile players called themselves 'Team Tunnel Rat' and faced other popular Let's Players on both of Vechs's Race for Wool maps that Autumn, many of whom would go on to join the Mindcrack server (run by Guude, a member of Team 420OOG) before Zisteau himself.
Mindcrack:
It seemed like an elaborate April Fool's Day prank when Zisteau posted his first Mindcrack video on April 1 2012, with a tour of the server by his old friend Pause. By his fifth episode, he had begun construction on the most elaborate 'temporary' house ever seen. His reputation for the dramatic and elaborate was only enhanced after he was pranked by Team Canada (Pause, VintageBeef, and Etho) and his revenge pranks were some of the most impressive things seen on the server. He deconstructed Pause's Nether tunnel and rebuilt it with rainbows and his face, he turned Beef's castle into a scale reproduction of the board game Candyland, and remodeled Etho's cave base for smooth walls and floors, lava walls, and beautiful symmetry. All Guude did to Zisteau was encase the landing of his 'Log-out-ivator' in obsidian, and, in retaliation, Zisteau covered Guude's house, both inside and out, with chests full of spider eyes - in the shape of a spider! Nobody has pranked Zisteau since.
In Ultra Hardcore, the Mindcrack group event that has become a battle to the death with no health regeneration, Zisteau is a bit of a loose cannon. He has participated in three seasons as of this writing - two Highlander style seasons, and one team season where he was paired with Kurtjmac. He died early in his first season, taking two hearts from a skeleton halfway through his first episode, and a heart of damage from falling in pursuit of Guude before being slain in close combat with the man himself. In season 6 he took a plethora of silly damage from lava, fire, and drunken carelessness (and still somehow managed to make it to the top four) before being shot and killed by Kurt just after returning from a bathroom break.
Season 7 may be one of the most important seasons to Zisteau's fanon development: teaming up with Kurtjmac, the Farlander. Their shared love of fine liquors, coffee, science, and Doctor Who gave them plenty to talk about, and they had an easy chemistry that made watching their videos great fun for their audiences. After the season, they developed an even closer friendship, constantly tweeting each other with the most random of things. Zisteau did an episode of 'Spawn Village or Bust', Kurt did an intro to a Mindcrack video styled after Zisteau's, and the two shared a few episodes of blowing up stone for Kurt's large-scale project.
Zisteau has continued to collaborate with other members of the Mindcrack server since then - an ABBA rules caving expedition with VinatageBeef, testing out his lava arena with GenerikB, Mhykol, and MC Gamer, and participating in large server events like the Wither boss fight and the Team B Trial. He always makes sure to come home to work on the Lens, his huge-scale home, and also has a few side projects he works on so that he doesn't burn out on the Lens. His next project has been described as equally large, so we shall see.
Fanon:
Zisteau has the skin of a zombie pigman, making him one of the few Mindcrack members with a blatantly non-human appearance. What this means in terms of shipping, fiction, and art has so far been up for discussion. Some imagine Zisteau as a human with a variety of reasons why he may look (and sometimes act) like a pigman, from clothing to scientific research to being raised by them. Others are determined that Zisteau is a true pigman, just civilized and with the ability to speak English. How fearsome a zombie pigman actually looks is also the topic of much fan art - Minecraft being a low-res game as it is, drawings of Zisteau range from giant pigs with fearsome tusks and animalistic features to humanistic pig-men with buckets of lava and signs.
Zisteau is pretty likable and a good friend to many on the server, but when it comes to shipping, only two other people in the Minecraft community stand out as having a close enough relationship to be actively and frequently shipped with Z.
The most common Zisteau ship, right now, is Team Single Malt Scotch - Zisteau/Kurt. They have a lot in common and have been in quite a few videos together, especially recently. The easy chemistry seen in their Ultra Hardcore videos makes it seem like they have no difficulties together despite Kurt's difficulty with other people. Kurt is quieter and less intense than Zisteau, but Zisteau is also a very clever builder and very proficient at redstone, something not common to the more intense Let's Players - Zisteau bridges the intensity gap at just the right place where Kurt could be comfortable, yet challenged.
The less common pairing for Zisteau, to this author's chagrin, is Vexsteau - Zisteau/Vechs (the ship name comes from Vechs himself, in response to a less clever portmanteau in his YouTube comments). Vechs has been watching Zisteau basically since the pigman first started making YouTube videos, and they are clearly very close friends. The first piece of equipment put into his maps to honor Let's Players was the Zistonian Battle Sign - an enchanted sign named after Zisteau - and that sign has been a staple in every map since. When Zisteau made his first PVP map, called Kill the Runner, he had Vechs test it out with him for the Internet. In Vechs's developer play through of his most recent map, Waking Up, he refers to Zisteau constantly, calling him 'Zistykins' and creating zombie pigman spawners called 'Zistykins Spawners'. Zisteau's next video to be released after the one about the spawners was called 'Zistykins's Lava Arena'. Though Vechs is constantly coming up with new ways to kill Zisteau (and other Let's Players, but mostly Zisteau) and Z is constantly raging at Vechs, they are both intense, wild, and determined, both sadistic and silly, full of Minecraft OCD and easily distracted from the task at hand.
Links:
YouTube
Twitter
TVTropes page
----------
Edit: Added a sentence about beta-testing Legendary.
Edit: Put the entry under a cut, because damn can I type a lot of words.
Edit: Begun adding links within the primer.
-------------
Real Life:
Very little is known about Zisteau's real-life identity. There is a single set of pictures of him, and on his multiplayer series with his friends entitled "Life on Bogota", they refer to him as 'Tyler'. All four of the members of the Bogota server refer to each other by names beginning with T, however, which may cause you some suspicion - or it may not! He isn't very open about information regarding his real life, but he has created a very well-known character for himself in the world of Minecraft Let's Plays.
Minecraft:
Zisteau began a play through of Survival Island in February of 2011, and was one of the most frequent posters to Vechs' Super Hostile thread on the Minecraft forums while he played through the first Sea of Flame (early March) and version 1.1H of Kaizo Caverns. (late March, with all his previous Let's Plays lost due to hard drive failure). Kaizo Caverns is where Zisteau's story truly begins, in Minecraft Beta 1.3.1.
His flair for the dramatic and for editing was made clear from the very first episode of Kaizo Caverns, as he 'fell' through a world into the starting area and presented his viewers with a short but sweet intro and unique texture pack. Finding himself trapped inside dark caves, he plucked a sign off the wall and a pair of chain leggings ('MAN PANCE') from a chest, and the rest is history. He made his way through the map, sometimes with care and style, sometimes with brute force and reckless laughter, but always amusing. He built an amusement park in a large cavern, created impressive structures from difficult materials, and conquered the best that Vechs had to throw at him.
Vechs watched his Let's Play and began to feature every episode on the Super Hostile thread, and became a frequent commenter on the videos. When Vechs went to make his next map, 'Legendary', he made the map even more difficult for Zisteau (and he knew it was more difficult for Zisteau, because he asked the pigman to beta test the map!), restricting access to iron (and thus lava, Zisteau's preferred lighting technique) until after the fourth intersection, very late in the map. After obtaining the iron, Zisteau went back and did what any reasonable zombie pigman would do - he covered the entire map with well-placed lava, and made an incredibly entertaining montage of the process to boot!
Zisteau's friendship with Vechs also brought him closer to some of the other most regarded Let's Players of Super Hostile maps, especially once Vechs released his first multiplayer/PVP Super Hostile Race For the Wool map, Hostilities Begin. Zisteau, Joe Hills, ZombieCleo, and PauseUnpause became the first to post footage of Hostilities Begin to YouTube, playing the map together after a night of hanging out on Vechs's home world. The four Super Hostile players called themselves 'Team Tunnel Rat' and faced other popular Let's Players on both of Vechs's Race for Wool maps that Autumn, many of whom would go on to join the Mindcrack server (run by Guude, a member of Team 420OOG) before Zisteau himself.
Mindcrack:
It seemed like an elaborate April Fool's Day prank when Zisteau posted his first Mindcrack video on April 1 2012, with a tour of the server by his old friend Pause. By his fifth episode, he had begun construction on the most elaborate 'temporary' house ever seen. His reputation for the dramatic and elaborate was only enhanced after he was pranked by Team Canada (Pause, VintageBeef, and Etho) and his revenge pranks were some of the most impressive things seen on the server. He deconstructed Pause's Nether tunnel and rebuilt it with rainbows and his face, he turned Beef's castle into a scale reproduction of the board game Candyland, and remodeled Etho's cave base for smooth walls and floors, lava walls, and beautiful symmetry. All Guude did to Zisteau was encase the landing of his 'Log-out-ivator' in obsidian, and, in retaliation, Zisteau covered Guude's house, both inside and out, with chests full of spider eyes - in the shape of a spider! Nobody has pranked Zisteau since.
In Ultra Hardcore, the Mindcrack group event that has become a battle to the death with no health regeneration, Zisteau is a bit of a loose cannon. He has participated in three seasons as of this writing - two Highlander style seasons, and one team season where he was paired with Kurtjmac. He died early in his first season, taking two hearts from a skeleton halfway through his first episode, and a heart of damage from falling in pursuit of Guude before being slain in close combat with the man himself. In season 6 he took a plethora of silly damage from lava, fire, and drunken carelessness (and still somehow managed to make it to the top four) before being shot and killed by Kurt just after returning from a bathroom break.
Season 7 may be one of the most important seasons to Zisteau's fanon development: teaming up with Kurtjmac, the Farlander. Their shared love of fine liquors, coffee, science, and Doctor Who gave them plenty to talk about, and they had an easy chemistry that made watching their videos great fun for their audiences. After the season, they developed an even closer friendship, constantly tweeting each other with the most random of things. Zisteau did an episode of 'Spawn Village or Bust', Kurt did an intro to a Mindcrack video styled after Zisteau's, and the two shared a few episodes of blowing up stone for Kurt's large-scale project.
Zisteau has continued to collaborate with other members of the Mindcrack server since then - an ABBA rules caving expedition with VinatageBeef, testing out his lava arena with GenerikB, Mhykol, and MC Gamer, and participating in large server events like the Wither boss fight and the Team B Trial. He always makes sure to come home to work on the Lens, his huge-scale home, and also has a few side projects he works on so that he doesn't burn out on the Lens. His next project has been described as equally large, so we shall see.
Fanon:
Zisteau has the skin of a zombie pigman, making him one of the few Mindcrack members with a blatantly non-human appearance. What this means in terms of shipping, fiction, and art has so far been up for discussion. Some imagine Zisteau as a human with a variety of reasons why he may look (and sometimes act) like a pigman, from clothing to scientific research to being raised by them. Others are determined that Zisteau is a true pigman, just civilized and with the ability to speak English. How fearsome a zombie pigman actually looks is also the topic of much fan art - Minecraft being a low-res game as it is, drawings of Zisteau range from giant pigs with fearsome tusks and animalistic features to humanistic pig-men with buckets of lava and signs.
Zisteau is pretty likable and a good friend to many on the server, but when it comes to shipping, only two other people in the Minecraft community stand out as having a close enough relationship to be actively and frequently shipped with Z.
The most common Zisteau ship, right now, is Team Single Malt Scotch - Zisteau/Kurt. They have a lot in common and have been in quite a few videos together, especially recently. The easy chemistry seen in their Ultra Hardcore videos makes it seem like they have no difficulties together despite Kurt's difficulty with other people. Kurt is quieter and less intense than Zisteau, but Zisteau is also a very clever builder and very proficient at redstone, something not common to the more intense Let's Players - Zisteau bridges the intensity gap at just the right place where Kurt could be comfortable, yet challenged.
The less common pairing for Zisteau, to this author's chagrin, is Vexsteau - Zisteau/Vechs (the ship name comes from Vechs himself, in response to a less clever portmanteau in his YouTube comments). Vechs has been watching Zisteau basically since the pigman first started making YouTube videos, and they are clearly very close friends. The first piece of equipment put into his maps to honor Let's Players was the Zistonian Battle Sign - an enchanted sign named after Zisteau - and that sign has been a staple in every map since. When Zisteau made his first PVP map, called Kill the Runner, he had Vechs test it out with him for the Internet. In Vechs's developer play through of his most recent map, Waking Up, he refers to Zisteau constantly, calling him 'Zistykins' and creating zombie pigman spawners called 'Zistykins Spawners'. Zisteau's next video to be released after the one about the spawners was called 'Zistykins's Lava Arena'. Though Vechs is constantly coming up with new ways to kill Zisteau (and other Let's Players, but mostly Zisteau) and Z is constantly raging at Vechs, they are both intense, wild, and determined, both sadistic and silly, full of Minecraft OCD and easily distracted from the task at hand.
Links:
YouTube
TVTropes page
----------
Edit: Added a sentence about beta-testing Legendary.
Edit: Put the entry under a cut, because damn can I type a lot of words.
Edit: Begun adding links within the primer.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:37 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked!
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:11 am (UTC)Edit: What did you learn? I'm curious to see what things are in here that people might not have been aware of.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:21 am (UTC)But I do know that there are more pictures of him out there than that one.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:35 am (UTC)Just typed in "Zisteau picture" to Reddit and the thread came up. Here's the forum: http://tfarchive.com/community/showthread.php?t=31528
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 03:23 am (UTC)Now if only there were more of these for other Mindcrackers, because while I'd love to write some fanfiction, I feel like I have no grasp on how to write anybody and it's really holding me back. :(
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 03:30 am (UTC)I don't think you need to watch everything an LPer makes to get a grasp of their character, as much as it helps - you just need enough to get an insight into their character and their lives. It's probably a lot harder for those with lots of stories, those who are really open and honest - I don't know if I could ever do Guude justice, for instance - but it's not impossible, that's for sure.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 03:30 am (UTC)As for how to write them, just watch some videos from each of the people you're trying to write. Look at them in group and in solo contexts, and see if you can get a feel for them. The first time I wrote Guude, I tried to do it while listening to him talking in the background to try to get his speech patterns right. Find something that inspires you, and then just write it. Watch more videos - once you get them into your brain, they kind of get stuck there.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 04:53 am (UTC)I'd love to see Nebris and Etho done because an idea I'd like to write revolves around them getting into a relationship. Maybe I'll just go balls to the wall and try my hand at writing it anyway just to get the feel of it.
Also, on another note, do you guys have somewhere where you chat on a regular basis besides here? I was thinking it'd be cool to have a Tinychat where we could all chat in real time in text (you don't need an account). It's also possible to play YouTube videos through Tinychat, although I can't say how well that'd work with a group of people.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 04:56 am (UTC)We seem to all live in different time zones, but due to insomnia sometimes end up at the same place at the same time, so there is no centralized chat room. I once vaguely considered Group Rewatch as a set of "meet up in Tinychat and watch things together" things, but people shot it down, and I think it's best this way.
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 05:11 am (UTC)I've read that fic and I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure if what I write will go to NSFW territory, but most of the things I've been writing recently have, so who knows.
Never enough NSFW, right? >o>
no subject
Date: Thursday, April 11th, 2013 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, April 11th, 2013 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 05:47 am (UTC)(One small note: Team Canada did prank Z a second time after his epic retaliation pranks, so technically I don't think "Nobody has pranked Zisteau since." is true. His Mindcrack#49 was the paintings prank, and his #47 was his spider eyes prank. But this is just picky details because the real point of everything is how awesome he is at pranks.)
no subject
Date: Thursday, October 11th, 2012 12:21 pm (UTC)