On Justdefy

[placeblocks]

My mind is still whirling over the whole GenerikB Saw prank on Pause, but I'd love to know your thoughts on Justdefy's departure. Although there are some posts about it on the Reddit, he seems to be disappearing without much fanfare. It probably helps that he was never a hugely popular guy, and that he hasn't posted a video since June. But I know some people shipped Nebris/Justdefy (especially after that old UHC spoiler art), and he had some pretty nice moments on and off when he was active. Any thoughts on his departure? How would you guys explain his disappearance within the context of a fic? Does he just go Bermuda Triangle missing? Dies? Never existed? Moved away?

Comments

[isi]

Gosh, I feel kinda bad, but with everything that happened today, I kind of forgot about that. I'm not sure how I felt about it, really. Yeah, it's unfortunate. I never had much chance to get to know him, though, which I suppose is part of the reason he's gone. But I'll always remember him for winning UHC alongside Nebris. They were the team I wanted to win that season, and they made a great team.

And apparently his YouTube page location was changed to Zimbabwe? So yeah, moved to Zimbabwe. Though I do like the Bermuda Triangle idea, for no particular reason than it's the Bermuda Triangle.

[placeblocks]

I feel similarly. I liked him fine as a person, but he never did stuff, so it was hard to get much of a personality out of him or to really warm up to him. I wanted to, but he didn't provide much. It didn't help that his mic wasn't the best and his commentary could sometimes be lacking. Sad, though. When he was "on", like in UHC with Nebris, he was really enjoyable.

I like the idea of the Minecraftia world having some sort of mysterious Bermuda Triangle. Maybe he went to the Farlands [kurtjmac voice]-- NEVER TO BE SEEN OR HEARD FROM AGAIN!!

[isi]

You know the Minecraft Bermuda Triangle would be fueled by some kind of glitch. Maybe that's how you get sucked off.

Oh, and then there's the Mindcrack mod. He's still in there, maybe for a while, since as far as I know, it hasn't even been updated to include Genny, or work with 1.3. Now I feel like I need to do something special with the JDs I found in my game.

[placeblocks]

Justdefy heard you could get sucked off, and went in search of The Glitch....


And now I have a sad thinking about that mod and the now irrelevant JDs. :(

[isi]

I gotta do something with them. There's a whole forest in my world just overrun with them. I could make some kind of proper send off and set them free into the Bermuda Triangle Glitch to find their own way.

[placeblocks]

Perhaps, somehow, they will have a magical rebirth into a hermit...

[isi]

I wonder if some of them wouldn't mind being reborn as a Pyrao or Anderz as well. I have yet to see a single Pyrao, and the one Anderz I found died in a wall. :(

[placeblocks]

awwwww, hahahahaha. What a weird mod.

[mindcrack_love]

I never really got to know him - and as has been said, that's probably why. I did think he had potential in UHC, though, especially in a team affair. (I find that a lot of the harder-to-get-into LPers are much better in co-op than solo.)

As for what happened to him? "Moved away", possibly, or in "To Hear the Words", maybe slowly begin reverting to a generic Steve. Not sure! I think it partially depends on what happens to his stuff and land, to be honest...

The part that really scares me is that he stopped playing due to Minecraft burnout. I'm honestly surprised more people haven't gotten burned out with the game itself with how much they "have" to play it - and I worry it'll only get worse as Mojang focuses on random funtimes instead of fixing bugs and frustrations. What would happen if more Mindcrackers just stopped being inspired by the game?

[placeblocks]

Oh my god, him reverting to a mindless Steve is the scariest thing EVER, don't have that happen! How terrifying to be a person, and then just to start losing your personality, turning into a mindless nothing. D: (I guess he could turn into Herobrine, hahaha.) Maybe in your story he finds a way to "go home" or something, or leaves some crytic message that makes Jason/Guude think he Found the Way, ahahaha. PLOT!

I worry a lot about them burning out myself. It's happened to Pyro, and I know even Kurt. I'm sure it will come to pass, but hopefully not for a long time. Being on the server is great because it provides so many different avenues for keeping the game interesting. You can build or cave or explore, or go from a CTM to an adventure map to something like The Dropper, or UHC, or weird "storyline" things like the trial. So I think they'll have more chance to keep from burning out than the average solo LPer, but obviously it can still happen.

For JD, I get the feeling that he was never really embraced as "one of the guys." It's got to be hard to be on that server, seeing everyone having fun, but not really being part of it. Obviously he was in a couple UHCs, but rarely in other group things. You never got the impression he was really buddies with the other guys. I don't know him well enough to know if he tried and didn't succeed, or if there was badblood somewhere, or what, but whatever it is that "Guude's got" JD didn't. So I wonder if it wasn't only "burnout" but just... feeling like he didn't belong?

[isi]

Okay, so morphing into Steve is kind of creepy, but what does that mean when the skins don't load and everyone looks like Steve sometimes? They're still themselves, right?

Aw, that last bit's pretty sad. It kind of makes me worry about some of the other guys who aren't really integrated with the group. Everyone jokes about The Jims being left out, but apparently he's playing a role in the upcoming trial, so maybe that'll be good. But I do wonder about the less popular guys sometimes.

[placeblocks]

Yeah, I'd say they're still themselves. Unless you really wanted a huge plot point about it, I'd just ignore the whole "skins don't load" thing. Maybe it makes Guude think he's dreaming/in a coma, hahaha...

I don't know what you can do about the less popular guys, though. Someone like Mhykol has obviously been around and done stuff, and just doesn't have whatever it is that makes a YTer popular. It's sad, but it's not for lack of trying on his part or the other guy's parts of trying to get him to be more popular. I think he would have gotten more subs if he joined today vs. when he did, just through mob-mentality, but I'm not sure he'd be BETTER at LPing. I've watch his stuff, and for the most part there's just something lacking. I can't say why Guude's videos are interesting and Mhykol's aren't, but it's true, somehow. Though I don't get the weird vibe that the other guys don't really LIKE him the way I sort of did with JD...

[mindcrack_love]

After our Group Rewatch stint, I have to say that I enjoy Mhykol in multiplayer WAY more than single player. His other best moments are random silliness on his fan server (oh yeah: he has a public fan server and it's great, go explore it sometime!) I think that if Mhykol started, say, Amlup's map with someone it could be really excellent.

But yeah, I get what you mean. I don't know why I'm more fascinated with Doc's redstone over Shree's, or Beef's building over Adlington's - but I *am*. I guess in every creative endeavor there's both the work involved and the talent involved, and some people just have more talent than others? But that sounds so terrible to say. :(

[placeblocks]

Yeah, I can definitely see how some people are more enjoyable with others. There's an energy that comes about from playing with that. I have signed on to Mhykol's fanserver before but it was huge and daunting and no one said hi to me even though like 20 people were on so I just slunk away...

It does sound terrible to say, so I don't know if it's talent, but there's just something. Some of it is just being able to comentate, or having an interesting life to commentate ABOUT. Some of it is practice, I think, and improving with time. I guess that is talent... I dunno. It's like someone who can't act wanting to become an actor. They can take lessons and learn and improve, but it may never be as natural as someone who can just naturally do it, and I think some people can just naturally do it better. I wouldn't say Mhykol is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but there's that "Spark" missing for some of them.

[mindcrack_love]

Once I said "hello" to the chat, everyone responded. The mods were also pretty kind to me when I derped something up not far from spawn, so that was nice. It is a huge and intimidating server though, especially as I come from one that's more Mindcrack in scale though sadly not Mindcrack in professionally administrated and hosted ugh, so I understand your frustration. :(

[placeblocks]

Ah, noted. I'll have to say hi next time. I'm on a couple servers and ironically the one run by a 16 year old is better managed than the one ran by an adult. Ah, Minecraft.

[mindcrack_love]

I'm not entirely surprised.

...I was initially going to write a long rant about my love/hate relationship with my server, but let me sum it up: it's small and mostly vanilla and has potential, it has some young kids I adore who I think could be awesome people in the future, and I'm a moderator, so I don't want to leave; but the administrators have no idea what they're doing in regard to Bukkit and whitelists and don't communicate with me despite me being a moderator - oh, and lied about not restarting the map for 1.3. Uuuugh I want to leave but I don't want to abandon some of the folks on the server and auuuuuuugh.

...that felt good to get out of my system. *coughs* Anyway.

[placeblocks]

:/ That sucks, but I know the feeling. One of my servers is having a lot drama about the 1.3 map reset. I figure no server is without its drama. Even Mindcrack has it, I just think we're shielded from a lot of it since we're not on it to experience it. I don't have any advice, just I hope that the fun is worth the bullshit, basically.

[mindcrack_love]

...the swap happened to JD and he chose the permadeath option. Oh wait, that's even more tragic. :/ Turning into Herobrine would be fascinating and very frightening.

Ooh, maybe he makes an easier path to the stronghold? I hadn't realized it when I started planning "To Hear the Words", but "Baj's temple" is actually under an ocean, so I'm probably going to have to move it for plot purposes or have them go to Nebris' stronghold. Moving it to the now semi-abandoned JD land would be interesting. We'll see!

Nebris was briefly burnt out as well (he mentioned "builder's block" a few episodes ago). The thing with co-op is that you have to be able to schedule it; Doc was talking about that recently, really wanting to interact with the other Mindcrackers but always being forever alone because he's in Germany and just can't be on when the others are on. (Doc makes up for it with seriously boundless creativity and love for the game, though.) Maybe JD was never able to interact with the others enough to start setting stuff like that up, and thus there was no difference between multiplayer and single player for him? I don't know.

I do know (though I haven't watched it) that in the very end of pre-1.8/very beginning of post-1.8 JD had more interaction and more time; I believe he was part of that old Colorwheel Challenge back in the day, which was co-op. So I don't know if it's entirely that "oh, no one really wanted to play with JD" as much as possibly "JD didn't have the time to invest in co-op". But really, the only one that can know is him...

[placeblocks]

well, lots of food for thought. Permadeath option is horrific, but it's impact on Jason could be interesting. Really, anything could be interesting for Jason's reaction...

Sad to think he might've just not had time, or what. Who knows. He could be having home life issues, or money or job, or maybe he just burned out. I'm all FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL about Minecraft right now, but he's been doing it for a lot longer, so it's entirely possible. Still, I feel like if he was starting to have, say, MC's level of success (still low-end, but much better than JD), he might've had more... inclination?