#c vs cc

[mcytblrconfessions-but-badder]

i get extremely annoyed by people who make a very big thing in their tags and notes that "this is jot rpf!!!! thats nasty and horrible and if you do rpf get OUT of here i never want to see your face again" because like. i hate to break it to you bud but this separation exists primarily in your mind. the fact that you are characterizing these people does not inherently make them characters.

like yes the nature of content creation necessitates and forces a not insignificant aspect of performance and story creation that brings in inherently characterized and contrived elements but the line between "character" and "content creator" is not as nice in clean as you want it to be.

like yeah minecraft youtuber mumbo jumbo is doing storylines and bits but im pretty sure most of his videos are just him being the version of himself he records as; which is, crucially, still a form of an authentic version of himself. like when i go to work i act a different than with my close friends but i'm not a whole new person i'm just choosing different words bc i'm at work.

yall just gotta start being cool with the fact that the difference between rpf and your characterized versions of these people is not as strong as you want it to be and thats fine!!!! rpf is not the big great sin of life!!!!! understand yourself and your limits and do your best not to break other peoples and you'll be golden!!! and for the record. rpf is for You. don't forget that

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[leafatlaw]

It really is just- Lifesteal does the whole meta/out of character/cc vs c!, thing different than anyone else. What really shocked me initially when getting into ls was how often they talked about “content”. About doing stuff purely for the video, how “so and so ruined the ending of my video”. And I don’t say that as a bad thing, just coming from the streaming-based dsmp, lore based empires smp, short video series traffic, and prison escape/debunks, it was a complete shock.

Nobody talks about it, as much as them. Maybe post-dsmp people talk about bts more, and sure Scarlet Pearl from double life wouldn’t have happened if Pearl wasn’t forced to record at 5am her time, but noone else talks about it so openly.

It’s like- early on, I watched Vitalizys s4 stuff, and, he fully ends that one video with the conclusion being him irl talking to the viewer. No more c!Vitalizy trying to save the server, just Vitalizy being affected by the sever. And that was it, that was the conclusion to his lore-based Minecraft video ! Thats crazy ! And now we have the other half of purple duo doing things that can only be fully explained by ooc motivations. There’s no way to talk about the Warden arc without acknowledging that Subz wasn’t acting in character for like any of that.

I don’t have much of a conclusion to this, it’s just something that’s been rumbling around my head since I first started watching streams. You literally can’t talk about like Abyss without acknowledging it was about inactivy on the server that they’re all playing on, that they’re content creators playing on. You can’t talk about PB and J and Bfb without talking about server equitte which is also an ooc thing. Idk, even the exploits even the whole Youtube narrative vs what actually happened on stream. It’s impossible to talk about lifesteal in this rigid box of canon vs not. It’s all canon, or nothing is, or it just doesn’t matter.

[erstwhilesparrow]

hey does it ever make you kind of crazy that post-reunion, c!owen introduces himself to us as owen agarci? agarci as in the name of the demon he shot in the chest during his trial? we know that's not c!owen's real last name -- he tells us so right then and there -- but i think it matters that of the last names he could have chosen for his lie, he took this one. his last name might have been the only thing he still carried with him of his family, of his past before the attack, and he refuses to use it or admit to it.

because it is an introduction, y'know? his narration, after the reunion, is a way of remaking himself in our eyes -- he is not the person we thought he was, so he needs to introduce himself again. and here, the thing he claims as his originating point, as the moment from his past he wants to carry around with him in something so fundamental as his name, is the moment he first killed a demon. this is the most important piece of his past. this, he is telling us, is where he comes from.

i think a lot about how we never actually see owen's parents. i don't even think we get their names? we get their voices in flashbacks over shots of empty fields and unpopulated streets. there is a kind of blankness to owen's past, or to what owen will reveal to us of his past, that forces us to take on faith that he is telling the truth when he talks about his own history. there is no one who could say otherwise; all the people who might have known him before he was a soldier and then a general are almost certainly dead.

it grants owen a fascinating degree of control over his own history. of course he can remake himself in this way, of course he can tell any story he wants of himself in this way; there's no one left to dispute his claims. in a way, he is his own origin -- as he tells us the story of his life, he is also creating that story. he came out of those woods with nothing but a bow on his back, no history, no one still living who could call to him by name. whatever life he lived before that point doesn't matter -- the thing that fundamentally made him the person who walked into town and demanded to join the army wasn't the life he lived with his parents, it was the violence he'd been exposed to and the violence he'd discovered himself willing and able to engage in. or so his story goes.

do you think when he woke up at the bottom of that elevator, memories wiped, nothing left to him of his past, there was some strange sense that he had done this before? do you think he rose up toward the light of the clearing above, empty-handed and alive, his entire life before this point a history waiting for him to tell it, and wondered why it felt familiar?

or maybe it's that he's refusing us. because following his turn during reunion, there's almost a sense that he has tighter control of the camera now. he addresses his 'voices' nearly antagonistically, wishing we/they would go away, responding and talking to us/them in a way that feels harsher than how he's addressed chat in the past. he's frustrated with us/them: why are you still here, i thought i was done with you. he accuses us/them of only pretending to care, of lingering not so much out of concern or any desire to do something as out of some morbid curiosity. there's a degree of access to him that we seem to have lost. it's as if he's finally certain that there is an audience, and what he's willing to show us shifts.

there's something really lovely and horrifying about a lot of the more scripted sections of owen's pov after the reunion. how it shows us things only he knows (the knife in his hotbar for much of his dinner conversation with guts, the beat where he grabs his backpack and reaches for a weapon when it seems like ayngel is about to recognize him, the interaction with puddy in the second clearing when he visits with krow), but we are nevertheless shut out of his interiority as he starts talking less to others, starts favouring third-person camera shots and narration where he gets to step out of the moment and talk to us directly. you can even think about the 'scripted by owengejuicetv' segments after each kill as signalling this: he has such visible direct control of the story we get to know now. he is the one who gets to tell this story, who gets to move the pieces on the board. here's what happened, he says to us. this is how it went. this is what i do and who i am and here are the parts that mattered. do you ever think about how rasbi's ending wasn't streamed from her pov? do you ever think about how the only witnesses to rasbi's death were rasbi herself, and owen?

[cdroloisms]

not to be salty abt the fandom again (but always to be salty abt the fandom again) -- it never fails to make me laugh abt how popular the concept of corrupt heroes c!dteam versus misunderstood "actually the good guys" villain c!sbi is as a premise in this fandom. like. c!dteam. you mean the group that is textually in the damn lore considered "the bad guys" according to the prevailing narratives in AND OUT of universe. what

[thecoolerliauditore]

i think it finally all clicked with me recently. ive known for awhile that some of us are playing uno and some of us are playing yugioh when it comes to life series interpretation. and that's okay whatever play whatever card game you want to play. sometimes it IS just a block game if that's what's fun. unfortunately at some point the uno players have decided they need to announce on loudspeaker that yugioh is stupid and how could you ever play a game as bad as yugioh and when you try to explain what you find fun about yugioh they go "what but that's not uno?"

[sing-me-under]

…. I can’t believe I’m saying this but the Arcane fandom is even worse at AO3 tagging than DSMP was in the first year… and the DSMP fandom was so bad at it that a whole guide to tagging was one of the top results for a whole.

I mean, Arcane does tag its fics at least but GOOD GOD YALL KEEP USING THE WRONG TAGS.

It’s not canon divergence if it’s a modern AU even if the plot is the same. It’s fucking dimension travel if they’re transporting to the S2E7 universes, not time travel. Time travel implies it’s the same timeline. It would be time travel if they’re going backwards or forwards, not parallel. Maybe the apocalypse universe is time travel depending on your interpretation of it. Dimension travel is the relevant tag if it’s an Arcane/LOL crossover where one or more characters is actively traveling from one dimension to another. It is NOT time travel unless they share the same timeline.

PLEASE ISTG WHAT PART OF CANON DIVERGENCE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. IF ITS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SETTING. ITS NOT CANON DIVERGENCE. THATS JUST AN AU. IF I COME ACROSS ONE MORE MODERN AU LABELLED CANON DIVERGENCE I WILL SCREAM. ITS ALSO NOT CANON DIVERGENCE IF THE CHARACTERS’ BACKGROUNDS ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. CANON DIVERGENCE IS A DIVERGENCE FROM THE CANON TIMELINE. VIKTOR NEVER GOING TO PILTOVER IS ITS OWN AU. ITS NOT A DIVERGENCE BECAUSE AT THE ESTABLISHED BEGINNING OF CANON HE IS ALREADY HEIMERDINGER’S ASSISTANT. PLEASE. PLEASE I SWEAR TO GOD.

[these-godforsaken-halls]

i feel like one big difference in how mumbo engages with hermitcraft vs how other big successful hermits engage with it is that a lot of the hermits have settled into mcyt as a day job, whereas mumbo makes consistent efforts to grow from it. tango with his 15 years experience as a game dev, cubfan the published astrophysicist, etc., for many if not most of the hermits, being a cc full-time was a deliberate choice they made that involved leaving behind a previous job. in skizz or joe's case, it's smth they worked a long time to achieve. cc!mumbo is a lot younger and has all these other ambitions he hasn't explored yet. and at that age with those artistic skills, who wouldn't want to try and leverage their platform for other things, right?

there's a very different vibe watching mumbo vs. watching hermits who clearly plan to be full-time hermits as long as they're able

the in-character result is a very absent c!mumbo and a lot of really fucking sad grumbo interactions. kill me now forget the cactus ring, the desert i'm stuck in is sahara

[mcytblrconfessions-but-badder]

this mainly applies to dsmp but it’s been 4 years, I think we can start making c!characters have different skin tones/races from their original cc. like we’re trying to separate the cc from the character anyway why can’t we start making characters be a different race

.

[ettle]

I love how in DSMP everyone was so careful to specify cc vs. c, while in Life Series everyone is like "use your head"

[freakinator]

continuing to fandom post but shaking my head the whole time to let ppl know i think its intrusive as hell

[fagbearentertainment]

*This poll is for how much trans swag a character has, canonical transness isn’t relevant to this particular poll

*Eret, both the cc and the character, and genderqueer and use all pronouns. Misgendering them (example: saying “don’t let the cisgender mcyt boy win”) will be an instant block

[wettbewerberrr]

can't sleep, so c!dream pre-dsmp lore it is (btw his backstory is somewhat based on some other minecraft stuff the cc! has been doing, which I will refer to throughout the explanation)

c!dream is a man with the face of a god, a former gladiator (dream vs technoblade duel), who hides his features under a mask, because wearing the face of a new god in territories ruled by the messengers of the old gods is equivalent to a death sentence. at some point, he probably tried to seize control over some territory, using his resemblance to one of the gods in order to gain supporters, after which a hunt was declared on him (minecraft manhunt series). after a couple of years on the run, c!dream fakes his own death and flees to essempie, which is quite far from the main server territories, where people are either atheists or worship exdee, and are unaware of his attempt to overthrow a state, so they view him as a legitimate admin, since he clearly has admin powers

I'm including an attempt to seize power in the backstory to explain c!dream's experience in politics, and, most importantly, his determination to prevent the establishment of state power on essempie, because he experienced its injustice first hand (persecution for resembling a god) and what the struggle for power leads to. I'm also refering to manhunt to give him some more trauma to explain certain conflicts (conflict with c!tommy being the main one) and to justify his "nomadic" lifestyle

[transgenbur]

people are saying this about c!quackity now and it's the same vibe that they were saying about c!wilbur after his finale (for the "utah = death" believers. Which im not. but its in that perspective).

the idea that a character wanting to die and feeling like it's their only outcome (whether because they feel it's deserved or because they want their suffering to stop. or both) does not. does not actually mean it is. you guys know that right. you understand. we don't need to go over the whole Watsonian vs Doylist thing do we. do we.

this isn't even me discussing whether the ending was an appropriate choice on cc!quackity's end (thats another post and one i have neither the interest nor energy to make), its about people using c!quackity's POV as a suicidal character to justify the Narrative Choice of making him kill himself. him FEELING it's his only outcome DOESN'T MEAN IT IS. do these people understand the implications of their words when they say these things and imply that a suicidal character feeling this means it's an accurate assessment.

and its Exactly what utah death believers would say about c!wilbur after his finale. Shit about how it was the only good outcome because he's hurt people and there's nowhere else for him to go. its like when people say "c!wilbur is a bad person..." -> mildly justifiable statement despite the very restrictive/binary view on morality "...because he said so" -> WHAT! WHAT!

Like these takes genuinely baffle me because most people i encounter on a daily basis on here, despite their sometimes abysmal takes, have an understanding of mental illness that is at least MARGINALLY better than this. "mentally ill guy hates himself so what he says about himself must be correct."

i dont understand what goes wrong that makes people say these things. Because this is truly not revolutionary stuff i'm saying here. like im pretty sure "if you have issues your brain will lie to you sometimes about who you are as a person" is like. General Understanding Of The World 101. so like. whatever. im gonna go play the sims 4

[aureumms]

Would love to hear your case on why goldenduo should be changed to neutral/negative on the DSMP wiki

thank you anon for the ask, i can now go apeshit since i have been freed from the “nobody asked for that” anxiety

so here we go (p.s., i am talking STRICTLY about c!, not cc!—they are separated here)

I’m gonna clarify two things:

First, this is literally just me yapping in a very unorganized manner, I am NOT demanding a change of the wiki, just giving my thoughts. I’m doing this just for fun, and am in no way shape or form criticizing the work of people who have spent hours upon hours making such a detailed wiki. It’s great.

Second, I am looking in between the lines for something invisible to the naked eye when there probably isn’t anything, but that’s the point. I’m like the guy you see on street corners holding up signs and spewing nonsense—I get it if you think this post will just be a huge nothing-burger of goldenboys yapping where I point at clips where they’re in the same frame and fall into a rant about the unconscious mind and its wants .

I’m gonna be honest when I say I don’t think c!Purpled technically disliked c!Tommy, even when they had their spats or whatever. Even in the earlier days when Tommy expressed disliking Purpled to his face, Purpled stated he did like Tommy. While this could be taken as sarcasm because Purpled was very sarcastic in the stream he and Tommy had a “group” for about an hour or two, I think it’s still worth nothing because Purpled is still serious at some points.

There are also some points where I believe Purpled wanted Tommy’s trust, or he didn’t want a stupid feud anymore. The first instance of this could be when Purpled was the only one who saw Tommy and Wilbur spying on the Manberg Festival, Oct. 16th 2020. Purpled saw Tommy and Wilbur, made direct eye contact with Tommy—but he didn’t snitch. He said nothing, and pretended like he saw nothing. (I so badly wished Purpled was streaming so we could have gotten his thoughts on that.) I’m also gonna make a point here that almost every instance where Purpled and Tommy fought, Purpled was almost never the initial instigator, he was merely fighting back since he felt threatened. I’m referring to when Tommy threw the first stab during the Manberg festival, and then Purpled eventually got a kill on him.

I’m gonna pick up with the Manberg vs. Pogtopia war + the Chaos War, where the info about their relationship on the wiki leaves Off. Like it states, Tommy did in fact mock Purpled for a few second because he defected to their side. And yeah, that happens—Tommy hits him a couple of times and mocks, repeating “i changed my mind” two or three times. But this doesn’t seem to really Affect Purpled. Sure, he defends himself, but he doesn’t seem too swayed since he isn’t kicked off of Pogtopia’s side. Points for that?

Here’s the thing that I’m not sure a lot of people noticed during the war though; Purpled basically made almost subconscious attempts to protect Tommy throughout. (Almost none of the clips I am going to talk about are linked in the wiki, so at the END of this post I will have a master video posted so you can look at every clip I am talking about.) The Manberg vs Pogtopia war is a TREASURE trove for these clips. First, (making a stretch here,) when everyone is surrounding Dream to get info out of him, Purpled jumps to Tommy’s side and has a bow out, pointed at Dream. He also says “thanks” when Tommy calls the rest of them cool looking, which made me cheer !

Purpled also at one point expresses he’s worried about if he made the right decision, and if he made the right decision too late, RIGHT before looking at Tommy. To me this says that he’s worried he isn’t gonna be taken seriously by Pogtopia’s side since he is a Manberg defector, and he still wants a positive relationship with Tommy. What a yearner /j

Before L’Manberg is blown to literal bits, while everyone is expressing their confusion—mostly about Philza joining and Wilbur being M.I.A—Tommy is attempting to fight Technoblade on the roof and nobody notices it. Except Purpled. He literally zooms in on Tommy on the roof, runs closer to the building he’s on, and throws two enderpearls, saying “Are we just all going to ignore that?” Before you say that he could be referring to Phil joining, that likely is not the case considering MULTIPLE people referenced Philza joining in the previous moments. Purpled is focused on Tommy and Technoblade. Focused on helping TOMMY. When Purpled eventually does teleport up and sees Tommy is no longer up on the roof and therefore no longer in immediate danger, Purpled backs off from Technoblade.

Later, when Techno has a crossbow to Tommy and Tubbo after L’Manberg has been blown up, Purpled pulls out an AXE and slowly but very surely makes his way over to Tommy’s side, like he is ready to attack Techno if he decides to shoot Tommy or Tubbo. (Neighborsduo AND Clingyduo mention) Unconscious mind folks UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

Okay, timeskip time ! I want to make a point by saying I think there was like. a flip in their perspectives. Purpled becomes the one who wants nothing to do with the possibility of a friendship, Tommy seems indifferent to the idea and/or pities Purpled + still teases him.

Post-Wilbur Revival, Tommy and Wilbur are strolling the main path when Wilbur points out Purpled’s destroyed UFO. Tommy is immediately confused and expresses that the UFO being destroyed “isn’t very right.” While Wilbur goes on about “someone’s been a copycat,” Tommy is still showing remorse and pity over the fact Purpled’s UFO has been destroyed. In fact, he says nothing negative about Purpled, and even says that the UFO was one of the staple builds of the DSMP—saying it’s “shit” that it’s been destroyed.

Now to the stream where Tommy visits Las Nevadas, WITHOUT Wilbur (for clarification.) Who knows how long it’s been since Tommy and Purpled have even spotted each other by this point. It has to have been a while, because Tommy seems delighted at the fact he’s seen Purpled again, saying “I haven’t seen this man in a fuckin���…” (he trails off.) Now while Tommy does steal two ender pearls, and Purpled punches him, Purpled doesn’t make a point to persist after Tommy throws a pearl. I think that this could add to the Neutral/Negative aspect, since while there is teasing/slight conflict, there is no ill feelings. At least on Tommy’s end, since we don’t have Purpled’s POV.

That’s all I have. Now: The clips! Thank you for reading this.

[Video time: 2:22]

[thecoolerliauditore]

Pls tell me about Scott's views on women in general pls I'm begging you

o7 and I'm sorry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

fyi, the post itself isn't NSFW, but I'll be getting all gender theory in this bitch so I'll be referencing a lot of things and putting in pictures of naked ppl sometimes. maybe skip this one if you don't like that

(long post)

Disclaimers

An explanation for the tweet up there

I usually don't write these because I assume the people on my blog have enough sense to realise when I'm talking about the characters vs the CCs or are comfortable enough being a little confused, but I feel the need to extra-clarify here and expand on how I specifically view C vs CC because I think it differs a little from the average person.

To me, C and CC are two separate entities but not entirely disconnected. What differs (e.g. the exclusion of irl relationships -- their wives, kids, etc.) is poignant enough to severely detach them from the people they originated from, at least in my eyes, but there's also the fact that these are not scripted characters, just creators being themselves with a hint of behind the scenes drama-adding and improv thrown in.

For example, CC Pearl is a car nerd. So I assume her character is too.

This is where I state very clearly that yes, a lot of these thoughts come from things I've seen on Scott's twitter, which is undoubtedly the CC and not the C. However I, to me, am still talking about the C because any observations/judgments I could make on actual irl youtuber CC guy Scott Major would be tabloid at best and slightly invasive at worst. I'm seeing these statements within the context of "the death game guy would say this too and I'm writing this based on that", not "this is the inner psychological workings of the youtuber because I, as a fan, can totally tell".

TLDR I don't consider this post RPF but you might. This is a little more RPF-y than my usual stuff. If you don't rock with it we cool.

Everyone is weird about women, and that's okay

One short-hand I've used in the past to talk about Scott and women is just by saying that he's "weird about women" which I'm sure isn't exclusive to him.

(shitpost I made awhile back)

I see a lot of people now who love "villains" and "evil" but when it comes to any traits resembling real life evil (e.g. misogyny in this case) they suddenly become insecure. Just a couple of days back a saw a post on twitter essentially asking for permission to continue liking CC Scott in spite of the "bad things" he did.

And I think, in order to present an analysis like this, I must address that mindset first.

This is not a judgment on Scott's morality, nor is it trying to dissuade you from liking him. This is not saying that he is any more misogynistic than any other player in the series. This is just me pointing out Scott's attitude towards women and what I read it as, nothing less or more.

The feelings that me pointing these things out - be they apathy, disgust, anger or, what I would hope to see most, interest - are your own. I'm not here to tell anyone how to feel and never will try to police that on my blog.

Scott's Relationships with Women

aka. oh yeah this is about minecraft.

Scott and Cleo || "Yeah, you can kill me."

Scott and Cleo's alliance is arguably the strongest in the entire series, spanning through all five seasons and remaining unbroken with no (serious) drama attached. You'd expect from this that they two have a very settled and stable understanding of eachother, yet this isn't a case.

Their power dynamic shifts dramatically from one season to the next.

3L's initial Widows Alliance began on fairly equal footing, built on the mutual agreement that they were waiting for their respective partners to die. Both understood they were eachothers' "plan B" and felt comfortable in that arrangement.

Come LL, Cleo does what she couldn't in 3L, and initiates that plan, going to Scott after her last alliance, the fairy fort, fell apart. Scott requests nothing from her in return.

DL is the longest the two spent as eachothers main ally. Cleo is the one who initially proposes teaming up to spite their "cheating" soulmates and Scott agrees. Cleo admits to Martyn in private that she's aware she's taking advantage of Scott (which I've always interpreted as her talking about all seasons, not just DL). Due to the time they spend together, it's here where it becomes apparent that their initial assumptions during 3L were not entirely accurate, as Scott shows a level of gameplay competency much higher than Cleo's (e.g. teaching her how to axe-crit) but despite this Scott never berates her or thinks any less of her value as his ally.

LimL is probably this pairing at their most unhinged, as Scott, despite once again asking for nothing (or very little -- I'll be honest I'm a bit fuzzy on this) in return from Cleo, allows them and their allies to butcher him repeatedly for time. He gives more time to the Clockers than he does to Martyn, his closest ally that season. Despite this, Scott is never ever considered as a "family member" by the Clockers, despite them giving that title to even temporary allies (like the Bad Boys being their cousins) -- even Martyn gets a title with Scott completely unattached.

SL is relatively more chill, but shows that the two inevitably end up teaming together even despite their oath to avoid eachother that season.

The point being -- again and again, we see Scott literally and metaphorically making sacrifices for Cleo, with the only real transaction he requires from her being that she continues having his back when times get rough. This is despite that he's aware she isn't any more capable than he is and the fact that so far it has only been Cleo in rough times (LL, LimL and SL) and never Scott.

Speaking from a purely transactional perspective, Scott is not getting a bargain here -- and even Cleo seems acutely aware of it, judging by her comment during DL as well as the way she tends to speak of her survival capabilities very lowly in general ("rubbish pvp skills and spiffy one-liners"). I'm speaking in this sense because I've seen discussions in the past about the transactional way Scott views relationships but rarely does Cleo get brought up.

This is at stark contrast to how he treats Jimmy, whose predicted death was what spurred on Scott and Cleo's alliance in the first place.

Scott assumes Jimmy is "incompetent", where he assumes Cleo is capable. When Jimmy messes up, he reprimands him, when Cleo struggles to crit him, he patiently teaches her. When LL begins, Scott's first instinct was to look at Jimmy's lives and note that he was "useless to (him)", but holds no objections to Cleo joining his alliance despite her already having enemies being a potential liability. In SL, he jokes about how Cleo and him being allied is a given and pretty much expected of them, whereas in LimL he explicitly requests from Jimmy a recognition that he still cares ("say love you back!") before he will help him.

Scott and Gem || "You HAVE TO kill me, Gem,"

In SL, Gem settles in very easily in a leadership position within Gem and the Scotts due to her trying to live up to her reputation but also due to Scott and Impulse's more laid back, passive playstyles.

Both Scott and Impulse let Gem kill them for extra health this season, although Scott is arguably much more subservient than Impulse is, with him not only insisting that she kill him in the final episode but also not fighting back (and only yelling for her to stop) when she starts hitting him with a sword during the episode where her task was to literally kill everyone on the server.

Once again comparing her to Jimmy, Scott in 3L had a tendency to brush aside Jimmy's concerns over alliances (e.g. Jimmy questioning if they could trust Cleo) while in SL Scott runs his plans by Gem (and Pearl and Impulse) in terms of who he wanted to team up with (specifically excluding Joel from the potential mounders alliance) implying he held her opinion in some form of regard.

Before this becomes less of an analysis of Scott's treatment of men vs women and more of Scott's treatment of Jimmy vs everyone else, I think it's notable enough to mention that he and Martyn also lacked this sort of communication in LimL. He would inform Martyn of his plans, but rarely was it ever framed as a request.

SL almost feels as if Scott has slid Gem into the slot he had previously designated for Cleo in 3L (his girlboss ally) as he provides her and pretty much forces onto her by the end the acts of service he'd become accustomed to performing for Cleo.

Scott and Lizzie || "You killed her! I don't.. I don't know what to even say!"

Relatively shorter section because this is the one woman he hasn't teamed with, but there's still some interesting stuff I wanted to touch on.

In LL, one of the first thing Scott does is yell at Pearl to revenge-kill Joel for boogey-killing him. Pearl does as she's told and Joel's wet miserable pathetic LL life gets worse from there.

Several episodes later, the roles are reversed -- Lizzie lies to both of them and manages to isolate and boogey-kill Pearl. Scott, instead of reacting with the anger he had for Joel, is almost in a state of shock as he asks Lizzie to let him down so he could collect Pearl's belongings. He doesn't act aggressively towards Lizzie at all, with his most antagonizing act against her being to lie about his intentions when giving her a wither skull.

In SL, he's the only one aware of her early permadeath, but keeps quiet about it almost as if he's in a state of shock akin to when he saw Lizzie kill Pearl in LL. It's not until the others have noticed when he finally brings it up.

Scott and Pearl || "Tilly death do us 'part"

I wrote a whole post just for their relationship alone so for the sake of my sanity I'll be leaving this here.

So now I get to dedicate this section to the meat of this post -- how the way Scott treats women in general impacts his relationship with Pearl and how I view his heel-turn on her as seeping with relevance to Pearl's perceived gender.

In all three of the previous sections, the running theme is that Scott is 1. kinder and more patient with women, regardless of their competency and 2. someone who likes to be in a supporting role to women, occasionally aiding them more than he aids himself and his closer male allies (e.g. Jimmy and Martyn). As shown with Cleo, he assumes that girls have it together, but even if they don't it's not a big deal. When a girl's actions are truly disastrous, such as with Lizzie's, he goes into a state of shock and doesn't really react, preferring to swallow it down and not acknowledge it.

With the amount of times he sacrifices himself, I don't think it's a reach to say that Scott values his own life less than he values the lives of his (female) allies. This specific point actually does extend to his male allies too, shown when he's happy when Martyn literally backstabs him in LimL, but just as with the Martyn post where I point out his victim status-ing doesn't end at only women but includes all the women, Scott has pedastal-ed all the women he's teamed with.

Lizzie is, once again, the exception here due to his limited interactions with her. However that's actually somewhat patched over if you look at adjacent series (such as x-life) where he definitely shows her a level of admiration and respect.

Back to Scott and Pearl.

Their relationship during LL is very standard of how Scott treats women. While the power dynamic between them is obviously more caused by the initial life trade agreement, I don't think it's a far reach to say that Scott is somewhat comfortable in the arrangement.

However, this is also the first thing that sets their relationship apart from Scott with Cleo or Gem -- Pearl is the one making sacrifices, not Scott. She is the one "sacrificing" her lives to him, just in a more non-violent way as allowed by the season's mechanics.

When viewed through this lens, Scott trying to make it up to her and wanting his effort acknowledged makes even more sense. This is suddenly uncharted waters for him. His assuming that Pearl doesn't value him as a person goes hand in hand with him valuing himself less than her.

What Scott has with Cleo or Gem, situations where the other party is clearly uncomfortable with how he treats himself (Gem) or actively aware they are taking advantage of him (Cleo), is equalized to him because he is inherently worth less. What he has with Pearl, on the other hand, looks more equal to most people (lives vs labour) but is wildly imbalanced to him.

It's one of the many factors I see going into Scott's weird decision to abandon her in DL.

An Interlude, Before We Get to DL

La Pieta, Michelangelo

So this has been a lot of words so far and some of you might be wondering at this point: why say Scott is "weird" about women when so far this has been describing how he values women more, is kinder to them, is more patient with them, etc.? How is any of this behaviour remotely misogynistic?

And I would feel horrible if I forced you to read through all of my DL thoughts before I clarified this -- Scott is not your classic wifebeater "women are lesser" misogynist, Scott is someone who subscribes to misogynistic schools of thought and probably considers himself an ally to women, when in reality his beliefs are still rooted in dehumanizing them and these beliefs end up harming the women around him as well as himself.

After all, seeing women are your superiors is still not seeing them as your equals.

I know it's a bit of a meme on this blog at this point. But. Sigmund Freud identified what we know refer to as the "madonna/whore complex", which he described as a pattern of behaviour in men who separated women into being madonnas (pure, holy and admirable) and whores (debased, sexual, deviant). We'll be focusing on the former, the madonna, as it is more relevant to Scott's character.

Freud proposed that the madonna figure was something men projected onto women as a replacement for maternal love. These women are sacred and untouchable, literally as the projection of the maternal role onto them also makes it so that the sufferer cannot feel any sexual attraction towards her (keep this in mind for later).

Scott projects the madonna figure onto his female compatriots -- they are to be protected, served and supported. They are goddesses, queens, but they are never human. The madonna role in of itself is not inherently harmful to the woman, as seen with Cleo who takes control and advantage of it. However, it is enforced, as seen with Gem who at first revels in the superiority but almost breaks down when Scott offers him up as her sacrificial lamb one last time.

I linked this Utena AMV awhile back when vaguely talking about Scott and women, and this was the point I was alluding to.

Girls are beautiful and pure. They don't spit on the street, they don't piss on the street, they don't build hierarchies -- they subvert all the expectations of masculinity that I hate having to deal with. They are my escape.

But what about the girls who do spit on the street? The girls who piss on seats? Who build social hierarchies, who size up their competition?

The girls Scott interacts with are all painfully human. Cleo weaponizes his beliefs and take advantage of him. Scott is smart enough to know and accept this. Gem's playing into a role she has been assigned into by not only Scott but everyone around her. Scott supports the character she plays. Lizzie reflects traits he hates in Joel and Jimmy, but for her, he looks the other way.

Are they "demons", as the song says, or are they no longer girls at all?

(demons, gods, but never humans)

Weaponized Femininity and Women In Total Control of Themselves ;)

Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse

Historically, weaponized femininity I'd argue is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. Whether it's nymphs or sirens or witches or succubi or even more roundabout cases like Helen of Troy, there's countless stories of men's sexual attraction to women leading them to disaster.

One way to view these stories is to see them as warnings, don't let womens allure be the end of you.

There's a lot of good writing done on the femme fatale trope both in the context of weaponizing femininity and as a sexist way to argue against victims of sexual assault, as these stories often say that men who experience attraction to these "evil" women no longer have agency over their own actions.

Look at the painting above, for example - is it the nymphs who are responsible for drowning Hylas, or is Hylas climbing into the lake of his own accord?

Despite the fact we all know sirens, nymphs and succubi aren't real, the belief that men will simply lose control of themselves when encountering a particularly alluring woman persists to the modern consciousness. That there's something inherently dangerous about women and attraction to them.

(this is not 100% applicable to Ninja saying he won't stream with women, but it's the real life example I felt most comfortable putting in here)

Now, let's combine this with what's been said so far -- let's say you don't hate women. You love women, in fact, and you hate the way men treat women. You hate men, in fact.

Yet, you still believe in this inherent power women hold by being female and the loss of agency that men experience when attracted to them -- how disgusting.

It quickly becomes easily to not only demonize men for sullying the holiness of women, but also men, masculinity and attraction to women as a whole.

(apologies for using twt discourse in the meta post but this flew by my TL and i had to grab the irl example of mens non-violent attraction to women being used to frame them as misogynistic before the stupid app refreshed and i lose everything forever)

"To Venner" is a student film exploring a world set within this belief, where all the women have vanished and the men have become monstrous figures as a result of their pent up sexual frustration. fyi this is one of my favourite student films (and ive watched a bunch), but I do think its messaging is worth breaking down (especially its juxtaposition of dirty horrible monstrous sexuality vs pure and beautiful romantic love)

NOTE: this film is super graphic, lots of violence and nudity. have fun. or not

I admit this section is a bit hard to gauge as everyone in the series is gay as fuck. The closest in-series example I can think of is Scott reacting to Martyn's antics in DL with a sort of indigence but otherwise I can't really think of an example of a man expressing attraction to a woman at all, let alone one Scott reacted to. However, I do think it's still worth talking about because it opens up some interesting trains of thought in regard to Scott and Pearl.

For Scott, he himself has never been part of the picture. He's gay, after all, which gives him an edge over the bad straight men who objectify and assault women. Likewise, there's little evidence to suggest he finds the expectations of masculinity frustrating, but I don't think it's too far a reach considering how common of an experience that is for gay men and his adapting of more feminine mannerisms.

Double Life and Corruption

As mentioned in my previously linked post about Scott and Pearl's relationship, I do think Scott experiences what he would name as attraction towards Pearl, so my writing will reflect that.

Pearl is. ahem. not like other girls.

Not actually. But to Scott, she probably isn't like other girls.

She remains unaware of his different standards for her (how could she when she had nothing to compare them to), she acts out, sometimes violently, against Scott's urging (such as when she stole from Scar's wagon). She maintains their already irregular dynamic, and while she appreciates his care for her, she never quite falls into seeing him as a source of subservience the way Cleo or Gem do.

At the end of LL, right before the 1v1v1v1, she monologues to herself that she no longer has to feel bad for killing Scott. Which, in turn, implies she expected Scott to give it his all against her as well.

She entirely fails to embody the madonna with her immature naivete and her questionable morals. She is unpredictable, she doesn't take what she is owed, she is a monster in a lot of ways.

Scott, too, is a monster, to himself, for how he feels about her.

The very foundations of your understanding of yourself being ripped apart aside, let's rewind to the madonna/whore complex. To sexualise the madonna is to corrupt her and make a monster of yourself. Suddenly, you are no better than the men around you, the ones you've grown to hate. Suddenly, you are the grotesque figures in films like To Venner. You are Hylas and she is the nymph. And you are so stupid. Your worldview crumbles around its flawed foundations.

Scott is, however, immune to this corruption. This is a theme that appears in Empires as well, but throughout the traffic series he's prided himself on being loyal and kind and good. His monologue leading up to LL's 1v1v1v1 summarizes it quite well.

He can't let himself or anyone else see this side of him, but the energy needs to go somewhere. To defy fate, abandon your soulmate, is to admit you had a fate in the first place, is to acknowledge that she was your soulmate in the first place.

I've previously talked about how fate and romance are very ingrained in Scott's belief system, if it was anyone else it would've been amazing. He could've been like Bdubs and Impulse or Ren and Bigb, diving into domestic life and performative romance with a stranger. Or the world could've made his happy ending from 3L real, as he got to be Jimmy's husband all over again. I think it says something that he accepts Cleo as a "soulmate" before Pearl.

So what do you do with all that energy and tension, clearly apparent to yourself and everyone else, when you can't let them observe your feelings?

You project them.

Shout-outs to @/legally-allowed-to-slime for pointing out Pearl's comment early on in DL that she "feels like (she's) been broken up with" confirms she never saw Scott in a romantic sense. The "crazy ex-girlfriend" and "this is why I'm gay" comments really did come out of thin air, or perhaps insecurity.

Pearl is the crazy one. She's insane, because she wants me. She wants to be with me, so she does all this crazy stuff. She's lost control of herself because she wants me. She's disgusting.

I mentioned before that Scott is not your classic misogynist, but this is where the gears start turning. Scott's views of Pearl echo that of other players, most prominently Ren and Martyn, that Pearl has been overcome with some sort of corruption. She has become the witch, the demoness, the whore, in their eyes. Scott does not want to be the same as these men and I think his overcorrecting his behaviour in SL makes sense when you view it from this angle, but for now he has to rely on more traditional misogyny in order to navigate this new obstacle.

"Corruption" also implies that she had to have been pure (or at least pure-er) beforehand, something Scott personally knows is not true, but it falls in line with defaulting women to being "madonnas".

This is a Scott post but. shout outs to Ren for being all of this about Pearl but without the complexity of Scott like he literally accuses Pearl of seducing Bigb what the fuck man.

Pearl is, of course, none of that. But she plays into the role of being the witch much better than she fared playing into the role of the madonna.

Sidenote: I know I'm looking at this from a Scott/Pearl POV but I do feel like you can omit Scott's attraction if you look at it from a purely "pearl not performing to standards of femininity I expect and she makes me realise I don't view women as a whole as human which makes me feel weird so now we have to do this" POV. Like idk I think the exact reason he abandoned Pearl is going to be lost on everyone forever so any analysis I could perform is going to suffer at least a little bit of making-shit-up-itis.

I do also think there's something to be said about Pearl being pushed until she performed a role, any role and generally failing at Being A Girl tm but that's another post i think. yknow shes um. a bit. 🏳️‍⚧️ (but also very much not at the same time idk that's gonna need its own post)

anyway yeah uh the minecraft movie looks crazy huh

[qprsmackdown]

propaganda (under the readmore):

BENCHTRIO PROPAGANDA:

My friend wrote a fanfiction detailing their platonic relationship from childhood friends to spouses. It is over 1 million words long. Pls he needs this

my good friend sunny wrote over 1million words of fanfiction about them that was so good it permanently altered my brain chemistry. also i think the feat of over 1mil words is worth the win (:

Ranboo and Tubbo are canonically married, semi-canonically platonically so. Tubbo and Tommy have known each other for years, and have an understanding of each other that no one else does. Tommy and Ranboo went through a very awkward and begrudging beginning of their friendship, but Ranboo would go on to make Tommy's grave when he died.

I want to start off by stressing that these 3 are characters and are not at all connected to the real world creators that portrayed them aside from having the same name.

c!Ranboo and c!Tubbo were canonically married, with the nature of their marriage being largely ambiguous and up for interpretation! They live together in a mansion with their adopted child, Michael, a tiny baby piglin! c!Tommy was never an official part of their marriage, but the three spent so much time together(before the series' writing took a very unfortunate turn due to behind the scenes stuff) that they might as well have been a qpr polycule! It is confirmed that c!Ranboo(an 8'5 foot tall enderman hybrid) can only look 2 people directly in the eyes with it being STRONGLY implied those 2 people were c!Tommy and c!Tubbo! Their relationship didn't get as much time as it needed due to the series's unfortunate downturn near the end, but while it was there, it was a very comforting, very tender relationship between 3 traumatized young queer teens who were their for one another through their journeys in healing from their various traumas. Also one time c!Tommy and c!Ranboo got high together in a tiny smoke box they made(they also met when Ranboo hit him on the head with a giant flower. An allium, to be specific!).

MAJORWOOD PROPAGANDA:

i went so insane about them they spawned inside my brain, guys ever

They are the Mean Gills and they are canonically qpr!! They would also canonically die for each other

Canon QPR! Confirmed by cc!Martyn :D (he confirmed it on stream after the series ended)

They're canonically a QPR guys!!!! Both the CC's who play the characters have said that they see them as being in a QPR!!!!!! literally the first time ever i've seen any media ever portray a qpr of some sort

someone in Martyn's chat explained what a QPR was and he said "oh that sounds like me and Scott"