Move To The Beat

rythian:

historygamer:

We as a community love Rythian and his face a lot, so much that thousands of people donated the moment they announced he would do face-cam if they got to a certain goal, which is great because all the money is going to charity.

I think most of us know that others like Zoey and Nilesy are a bit camera-shy due to their own reasons (mainly anxiety), while others like the main channel, Kim, Martyn, etc. are more than happy to show their faces on camera. It probably helps that their Minecraft skins are basically them irl, so most people have a good idea on how they actually look like and are perfectly comfortable with who they are in-and-out of character/videos.

But in Rythian’s case, he virtually shares nothing with his Minecraft skin; he’s not the “tall, dark and handsome” person everyone portrays him as, with the electric-blue or purple eyes and blonde streak. He’s not the tall, intimidating figure with chiseled features and mysterious aura. He’s a regular dude with dark-blonde(brown?) hair and beard, glasses, and on the chubby side. Sure Duncan’s character gets interpreted similarly at times, but there’s always the non-suave, chubby-and-messy version if him alongside the other edgy fanart drawn of Lalna/Lalnable.

Can you imagine what that must feel like for Rythian, who whole-heartedly supports any and all forms of fan-made content (being in creative writing influencing his view on fanfics, fan art, etc. by welcoming it with open arms heck he even uses tumblr on a fairly regular basis, reblogging and commenting on posts he’s been tagged in), to have to live up to those expectations?

Sure a lot, if not all of us, loved him when and after he face-cammed and had the common sense to separate Rythian from Joakim, but what if we hadn’t? What if we had just been downright mean with him, people giving him a hard time for not living up to fan expectations (mainly those who have never seen his wiki profile pic). So many that would claim they thought he was the best, the dark-and-broody mage, suddenly turning on him because he didn’t look like “Rythian”.

I’m not only proud of the love and support everyone is giving Rythian and his face, but for his bravery of even doing what he did (I say the same for the other like Team Fizone, the Nilesynator, Strife, etc., but this one is about the rugged viking Enderbornmun).

I don’t know if we’ll suddenly get a whole load of videos uploaded of him in face-cam, as it’s very unlikely and i can respect that since I can hardly even stand to have a phone camera near my face as is. But all I wanna say is that whatever he wants to do, we’ll be right there with him and that we love him very much, both as Rythian Enderborn and Joakim Hellstrand.

Okay, realtalk? Realtalk. You are right on the money. I’m not particularly happy with the way I look. I’ve struggled with accepting myself for about ~15 years, and I still do. You guys have to understand that this isn’t really an issue of social anxiety or any sort of fear like that. I do very much like my privacy, but the reason I’ve been reluctant to show myself is not only because of that.

What I hear more than anything once people see a picture of me (one leaked very early on, someone found an old picture on my old Facebook) was “wow he does not look like I thought he would do.” And no matter how nice someone meant that, it comes across as someone being disappointed. “Oh, he’s not the badass mage guy. He’s just some guy.” And those are the nice/neutral comments. I also read stuff like “lol he pretends he’s this cool guy but in reality he’s a 500 pound fatass”.

First of all, I’m nowhere near 500 pounds, but second of all, you have to realize how that makes you feel. I felt that I had to hide myself. And I had to not show pictures of myself because I would be disappointing people. I started wondering if people ever found out what I looked like, it would reflect negatively on me. People would stop being interested in me, people would stop saying “omg rythian is so hot”. People would not want to watch me anymore, or care about what I think. So I just didn’t do those things.  It felt nice to hear people to talk about me as if I was attractive.

There’s a weird thing that happens when people start associating a character with you. A lot of fan-people talk to me as if I AM Rythian, the Enderborn, the moody dark mage. I see these people swooning over the dark sexy tortured soul, the tall lanky brooding guy with his glowing eyes, his unique hair, and all that. I never ever meant to somehow deceive people in anyway. I made a character, I didn’t make myself. I never said I looked like that in real life, and I never pretended that was me. People are attracted to that character, and part of that transfers over to me somehow. But I’m sorry. I’m just some guy.

For over half my life, I have never ever really truly believed that anyone really found me attractive. At all. Any girlfriends I’ve had, I never believed them when or if they said they thought I looked good. I always thought they were just being nice. They were with me DESPITE what I looked like. So if I had a choice, I would hide myself. I felt better just talking to people via voice or text.

It took a lot for me to get past that. And to “show myself”. A lot of it is because of my lovely girlfriend of three years (I love you), who’s slowly convincing me that I’m not disgusting, that I can actually be really, truly attractive to someone. And if she thinks I’m attractive, then why do I care about other people online? If Zoey can battle through her social anxiety to show herself on camera, then so can I. (I should note, I beat Nilesy to facecamming by like a couple of hours! Out of nowhere we both decided to do it on the same day, without talking to each other about it!)

So yeah. I’m really happy and thankful for the comments and support I’ve gotten since going on facecam for the charity stream. I still think pretty much everyone who’s calling me handsome or whatever is just being nice - because that’s what nice people do, especially when they talk directly at me. So no, there wont be tons and tons of facecam videos from now on. But I hope I’ll have the nerves to maybe be on camera for stuff like Hannah’s Advent videos, or stuff in the office. We’ll see.

Thank you all. Realtalk over, let’s go back to silly banter.

(via rythian)