#quicksandblock

[pearleisuma]

In light of Iskall and Stress’s decisions to leave Hermitcraft, I ask all the fan-content creators to PLEASE NOT DELETE STUFF ASSOCIATED WITH THEM RIGHT AWAY. ESPECIALLY FICS. We don’t know the full context, and plus, it’s a part of Hermitblr History. At the very least, if you don’t want to be associated with their content, orphan the works or repost them anonymously. Heck, send them to me, just so we have an archive! Hermitblr has been so good about separating the ccs from the characters, so let’s not let interpersonal conflicts between the ccs majorly affect our enjoyment of the characters, especially with what little we know.

Edit 1: Everyone please take care.

Edit 2: Due to the way asks with Media work, if you send me fanart of Stress or Iskall, I will make it a separate post so as to not include or reveal your user. Alternatively, I can make a Google Form? Lmk.

Edit 3: WE OFFICIALLY HAVE A GOOGLE SHEETS MASTERDOC!! I’m working on formatting it so things are easier to find. Add images, links to both the original and your Wayback Machine Archives, credits, and more! I’ll get working on an anonymous google form.

[caparrucia]

I feel like this is the end point of a telephone chain of something that, as it often happens, was started with the best intentions.

Back in 2012 or thereabouts, during the height of the trucute vs transmed vitriol discourse that swept through this website like a hateful tide, TERFs started to Ship of Theseus their talking points and trying to get people who ostensibly disagreed with their dogshit takes to reblog them if they worded them just so.

Therefore you ended with people who were otherwise pretty chill/supportive of trans folk putting massive TERF dogwhistles on their blogs and spreading that insidious nonsense all around. It became polite etiquette to reach out to people you follow and let them know that the "women should be allowed to feel safe in bathrooms!" post they enthusiastically reblogged was penned by a raging TERF who did not think transwomen were women and that explicitly considered their presence in that bathroom an act of violence akin to sexual assault.

Like, the context that the OP of a specific post is a TERF or otherwise a known bigot, can and often does change the meaning of their words. And if you know that, you might find you no longer support their message, because their message is not what you initially thought it was.

However, as it often happens, a lot of people started to see this in action but did not understand how or why it worked: to them it was just a way to get content they disliked out of sight or, as it's very often the case with tumblr in particular, a fun new vector of harassment. So now you have a ton of people going into stranger DM's, pointing out that the person they reblogged from is EVIL KEYWORD OF THE DAY.

While I think the list of actions that @quicksandblock outlines is definitely helpful, I'd like to put forward another that's also important and easily highlights if you're dealing with good faith or bad faith anons:

Does OP being what they claim they are in any way change the meaning of their words?

Because that's the point of the OG "OP is a TERF" movement. Context on OP's beliefs and politics dramatically changing the meaning of their statements and transforming them into effectively hate speech. If that's not what's happening, you're way more likely to be dealing with a harassment campaign of some sort. Because then it's not "OP is spreading harmful speech and you shouldn't platform it so it doesn't spread further and hurt others" and it's more "OP did/said something I disagree with and I think they should be ostracized from society forever" which I think it's often very rare to justify as proportional and fair retribution for someone's actions, but an absolute favorite of a rabid hate mob harassing the designated acceptable target of the hour.

The number of times I’ve seen strangers on tumblr receive an ANONYMOUS message about someone they reblogged from, often to as vague a tune as “just so you know xyz on that last post is a bad person”

And the secretive whisper campaign recipient responds “omg thank you I’m sorry please don’t hurt me I don’t know anything about that person of course I’ve deleted it”

Is so wild to me

And frustrating

And also there’s this tiny, evil little voice in the back of my brain going “wow, this is so exploitable, you could exploit this, you could spam so many random messages about literally everyone until everything fell to chaos and maybe someone would even learn something”

Except obviously you can’t and shouldn’t fight abuse by replicating its tactics and that would inevitably do harm even if it is really tempting and also I wonder what would happen if someone made a bunch of bots for even more chaos

[blockgamepirate]

(quicksandblock) on the plus side this story is providing a fantastic example of why prisons are bad for the people with the power as well as for the prisoners, and how that specific kind of power corrupts even people with the best intentions. sam was always shady, but he wasn't... this.

Yep. C!Sam was an interesting character from the start, with a lot of conflicting loyalties. He was friends with Tubbo and Tommy but still sided with the Badlands, whose plan was to sow chaos between Pogtopia and Manburg, to keep the conflict going so they could benefit. And for all that he didn't want to hurt Tubbo and Tommy, I'm pretty sure he did actually still side with Dream together with the rest of the Badlands on Nov16th.

Honestly every part of his character is full of contradictions, but it feels kind of natural, actually. People are complicated and it's pretty normal to still care about people even if you're on opposite sides.

But yeah, like I said about Bad's character: he was always kind of a bad guy, but he wasn't "let's sacrifice people to an eldritch creature" bad. Just sort of power hungry. Similarly Sam was kind of a double-faced bastard but he wasn't anywhere near "time to torture and maim my boyfriend" level bastard.

And now that I think about it, all the characters who gain power on the server end up being tragic actually. Wilbur had a tragic end, Schlatt had a tragic end, Tubbo's story isn't over but his arc as the president was full of tragedy, Dream ended up alone and in prison, Bad lost so much for the Egg and I think he's still on the run now(?), and Sam has driven himself to ruin his own relationships and to a constant moral crisis and paranoia.

I mean obviously I don't mean that I feel worse for the wardens than the actual prisoners, definitely not. But yeah, power is bad for everyone on some level, actually, even the people with the power.

(Idk if this was coherent, I should actually be sleeping rn)

[habeascorpseus]

(quicksandblock) hey just wanted to let you know that my shadowban was fixed yesterday after I sent in a support ticket, so they seem to be fixing it pretty quickly! so you should be back up soon if you aren't already :P shadowban is a bizarre feature for a website to even have lol

thank you so much for telling me! yeah, I'll check later today to see if I'm not invisible to the world anymore

[cupidlakes]

hi i love ur blog!!!! im a little new to mcyt tumblr and i was wondering if u had an recommendations for who to follow??? thank u and i hope u have a nice day 💞

hi!! i’m a lil shy to recommend any ppl in a post specifically and like have them see aa but i’ll make my following public and you can go through and follow some people if you like? :) not everyone is a mcyt blog but p much the majority are you can kinda guess and they’ll usually state it in their bio

i wish you the best of luck and you have an awesome day too!! :D

[paradoxlemonade]

Three Ships: Spicynoodles, Glitra (mind games femslash is my weakness), and Dewdrop x Rain (do they have a ship name?). I'm also aro so romance is not a priority for me—hurting my faves is lmao

First ship: I'm pretty sure the first romantic relationship I cared about in media was either Mike x Zoey or dipcifica, but the first ship I actually sought out content for was soriel

Last Song: NO ONE LAUGH. Okay so it was "Give The People What They Want" from the Playmobil movie soundtrack. IN MY DEFENSE. That song was the one good thing to come out of the movie and I have an imaginary c!Quackity animatic in my mind for it

Last Movie: Belle! It's so fucking good oh my god. The animation alone makes it worth it, never mind the soundtrack or genuine characters

Currently reading: For fanfic, I'm reading "Switchblade" by Cacid. As for actual print literature, I just finished up "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers" by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English.

Currently Eating: nothing atm

Currently craving: I would kill for some good orange chicken right about now

Nine Tags: @macinthecaac @princessfaeron @that-tall-queer-bassist @ghastbutlikegay @blossomdogthekarmaqueen @cryptoidantagonist @starfai @quaranmine @quicksandblock

9 people you would like to get to know better

tysm for the tag @alexmey-does-an-arts!

1. 3 ships; bowuigi, metadede, heavy/medic(I forget the name lol)

2. first ever ship; alphyne

3. last song; Ghost Cowboys by Louie Zong

4. last movie; Midsommar. That was…something

5. currently reading; Dante and Aristotle discover the secrets of the universe. Pretty fire

6. currently watching; JCS criminal psychology

7. currently consuming; nothing

8. currently craving; Iced Cream. About to go get it. I know there’s mind chip in my freezer (:

9 people to tag; @littlegreenwyvy, @garf-official, @d1nosaurpower, @tractor-inside-joke-fucker, @junkydoodlez, @seacrown, @neldu-nak, @darkcanid19, @stormyykat

[dogin8]

It feels sort of ironic that a lot of the things that happen to L'manburg are done by outsiders...

Like you go to Tubbo and you ask him if he wants a monument, he says "No, I wanted a home" you go to Tommy you ask him if he wanted to end the corruption of governments, he says "No, I was just angry at my friend" You ask Fundy and Niki if they wanted the country they ran away from to turn into a crater, they say "No, we just wanted to be heard"

Why has so much of L'manburg's history been defined by what Other People Want, November 16th was beautiful in it's tragedy because for once, L'manburg was actually destroyed by Wilbur, somebody who lived in it, November 16th was satisfying because even if he did the wrong thing, Wilbur took control into his own hands, the decision he made affected him, but Doomsday? Did the doomsday trio have to scramble about the wreckage? did they have to live with the results of what they had done? no. they just left.

And now, with Puffy's glass platforms and Foolish's efforts to clean up, You'd be pretty unsurprised to think the citizens of Lmanburg want nothing to do with the preserved corpse of something they never had a say in

(inspired by this post from @/quicksandblock, because i wanted to write something punchy without presenting it as actual analysis or discourse)

[wasflypaw]

(quicksandblock) one kind of keystone similarity I've noticed between c!Dream apologists is that they either can't see, or refuse to see, how important Tommy is to Dream. which, like - I don't really understand how? not only is his obsession with Tommy the core motivation for almost everything he does at this point, it's also one of the most solidly established facts we know about Dream despite the limited perspective we have on his character. a lot of things we have to deduce with guesswork, but the fact that Tommy is basically the center of his universe has been confirmed time and again.

I legitimately don't understand how you can watch the same streams I did and not naturally come to the conclusion that, oh yeah, this dude is obsessed with this kid. but somehow they don't seem to see it. they'll even acknowledge all the horrible things that Dream did to Tommy, but they dont seem to get why he did them. and I don't know how they can make any sense out of his actions without that central piece! if you don't acknowledge that Tommy is now the only thing Dream really cares about anymore, then none of his actions in the past 6 months make sense. it's bewildering.

I mean, I understand how they got there, by building headcanons on headcanons until they end up 90° off from canon and accelerating. I just don't get how it's in any way a satisfying experience for them.

They're ALWAYS the "these ppl only watch Tommy's POV" "people only dislike X Character because they hurt c!Tommy" "c!Tommy fans think everything revolves around c!Tommy 🙄" types and its. It's so Funny. Because in your faves case it Literally Does Revolve Around c!Tommy

People HATE when c!Tommy is associated with other characters they will literally bend what happened in canon to remove any trace of it (e.g Phil being very obviously supposed to care about him before the family dynamic was decanonised, twisted into "this man never met this child in his Life")

I literally saw someone say that c!Dream doesnt do it specifically to hurt and play with c!Tommy / he doesnt see him as a plaything and everything to do with c!Tommy was all for his happy family goal with a condescending "not everything is about your fav" and it's like ,,,,, this is the one case it is please he blatantly admits to finding him fun

c!Dream being obsessed with c!Tommy is like. His MOST established character trait

[thespoonisvictory]

pssttt thanks for mentioning quicksandblock i joined this fandom like Late late and just decided to go through the meta tag there chronologically and holy shit this is fun

quicksandblock is my foundation for so much of how I write meta and view certain characters, they're so cool and well spoken

[tmmyhug]

tell philza minecraft i say hi when you meet him for bingo night

every time you reblog from me i feel like i've achieved the Ultimate Adult Approval Badge thanks grandparent

omg I am not that old this fandom is going to give me a complex

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

(quicksandblock) so it looks like we're getting the "no prison streams at all, we only get to know what the other characters know about what's going on in there" option. joy I am full of Fear 🙂

Quicksand I am in So Much Fear

Doomed are characters who interact with Dream to be inflicted with the No POV Curse, it seems :(

There are still a few days left so I’m holding out hope — at the very least, the stream where Tommy leaves the prison might still have a decent conversation to give at least SOME idea of what’s been going on (please for the love of god gimme a good conversation scene), but…

Well, Dream SMP’s a story about perspective. One of the people whose perspectives we see the most has been put in a room with the one person who we never see the perspective of at all, and now we don’t see Tommy’s perspective either. He could be undergoing the biggest character switch-up in there, he could go through three separate villain arcs or have some heroic revelation, or just be playing a game of Uno, and we wouldn’t have the slightest clue!

Just like Dream.

Because with Dream, it’s always the conversations we DON’T see that seem to be the most important.

We never see Enderboo and Dream. We only ever saw Punz and Dream in conversation once. 

Hell, we never saw what exactly made Eret switch sides, just that Dream offered him land and resources, and Eret saw it as a lost battle worth taking some advantage of.

(Who could forget the OG Room Where it Happens animatics? Some of the very first)

We never saw Schlatt make his offer, we just know now what that offer was.

We never see what Dream’s interactions with Sam are like, despite Sam being the person who Dream interacts with the most in prison. You just have to guess at their relationship from the crumbs they give.

And now, the way this story is being told, Tommy’s character is going through one of those moments where everything is locked behind a closed door and you can only guess at what’s going on inside.

So for now, these two characters are a mystery box. One can assume they’re probably undergoing some character development off-screen, we just don’t know in what direction they’re developing.

Hell, it’s like Wilbur and Schlatt in the afterlife right now. We can assume from Wilbur’s one conversation in the Finale that something’s changed, we just don’t know what, because all that development’s happened off-screen and away from the mortal world.

Literally anything could be happening. We just can’t see.

But, no matter what, there’s going to be some change. Any change. And like with Dream, we’re going to have to piece together what that change is through crumbs, little bits and pieces of a story that’s never going to be whole. We’re like the other characters who never see the POVs that the audience gets to see.

And isn’t that frightening?

[zeta-in-de-walls]

purpled?

purpled: who are your favourite smp blogs? (like actual people on tumblr)

Aaah probably too many to name. Just in general, if I've ever interacted with you, I probably think you're cool. And gotta love any Tommy-centric blog as well.

@mcmoth @daggryet @tmmyhug @businessbois @flypaw @whereisela @stellocchia @quicksandblock @saintofanything @wonda-cat @appleflavoredkitkats @snailsnfriends @squareupgod @khizuo @rnelodyy @sapphire-innit @the-redeemed-anon @condorclaw

There's some guys I like!! ❤

[daggryet]

can you give me some good people to follow? thank you for making this fandom a good experience :D

ofc! and thank you<3

here's some amazing blogs, just from memory, i can't recommend them all enough

@casinoarc @businessbois @shrugofgod @sleepypinkdiamond @thespoonisvictory @inniter @pavlovarat @lnniter @markets @sahara4k @ferverdream @firesnap @quicksandblock @egopocalypse and @logstedparty

[ilexdiapason]

Foolish: You know what all this egg cleaning kinda reminds me of?

Eret: What?

Foolish: It kinda reminds me of, you and me back in the day, cleaning up that wither cult.

Eret: ...What?

apparently Foolish remembers Eret from a long time ago :) but Eret doesn't remember him :)) Foolish said the sunglasses were a "new look" :))) what are the implications of this lore yall :))))

[blockgamepirate]

So what are your thoughts on the Syndicate? I'm personally psyched for Techno to do some anarchist things other than "blow shit up," though his goals still seem very destruction-based. I'm also nervous about the potential for Dream to somehow use this to his advantage. ( - quicksandblock)

I’m sure the plot will SOMEHOW end up ruining things no matter what. :p They need their conflict, after all. For the audience retention. Hopefully it’ll be an interesting kind of conflict, though. I feel like the betrayal thing is kind of overplayed at this point but there’s plenty of other stuff that could happen. Possibly with Dream, like you said. And this also allows Techno’s character to be more proactive rather than reactive.

But yeah I’m genuinely excited, this is actually starting to sound a lot more like the kind of anarchism that I’d recognise. I liked the retirement arc fine because it was nice and chill, but honestly this is much better because they’re actively doing shit. And not gonna lie, I wasn’t a huge fan of the pacifism thing, it was just jumping right to the other extreme from all-violence to... not even just non-violence but in fact not doing anything at all really? Like all he did was talk to Lannan and Vik for a bit and hang out with Phil. It really was just retirement. Fair enough for his character, even if it was a bit sudden, I mean everybody has burnouts and needs to take breaks or even to retire from the movement entirely and that’s 100% valid, but it’s not really any better for achieving liberation, you know.

I mean I liked that he was putting more thought into the ideology and demonstrating some of it by just chilling out with the villagers and whatnot, but that’s not the anarchist content I signed up for :p (I don’t even really mean violence necessarily but some action of some sort. My favourite bits were him sneaking into L’Manberg.)

And then he kinda jumped right back to all-violence with the revenge arc. Not entirely, I mean there were the posters, there were attempts to recruit Tommy which involved some actually reasonable arguments in my opinion, there was some effort put into maintaining the anarchist thing at least nominally, but overall the goal was just to destroy L’Manberg and cause massive amounts of destruction. Which is honestly just not the best tactic for overthrowing the government, it’s really not. I mean it WORKED but I still think it was mostly incidental, since the country was already falling apart from the inside. Obviously it helped that the whole thing blew up, but without the internal conflicts, it would have just been rebuilt again and all he would have accomplished would have been revenge and cementing his own reputation as a violent monster. I realise that the revenge part was intentional and probably wouldn’t have been as satisfying if it didn’t involve all that destruction, but ideologically and tactically? Not great. Which Techno’s character himself seems to be conscious of to be fair!

I’m hoping the Syndicate is going to be more of a reasonable midpoint? It sounds like it so far. It’s a revolutionary secret society so clearly they’re committed to getting results and it’s very likely that there will be some violence or at least hostility involved, because usually governments don’t just go away by asking nicely, it’s just not a goal that you should expect to achieve through peaceful means. But at the same time there seems to be more of a focus on the ideals and recruitment, actually convincing people. And just the fact that they’re creating an actual anarchist group is just very nice. I like it, it’s actual anarchist organising! And honestly, the underground resistance thing is one of my favourite tropes, that’s what really sold me on Dream SMP in the first place; the Pogtopia arc. It wasn’t perfect but I was hooked anyway. And Phil and Techno’s friendship just makes it so much better already, as does the fact that the Syndicate is actually open and clear about its own goals and aiming to recruit people who agree with those goals. And the fact that it’s actually anarchist makes it automatically better, obviously.

Also, as much as I’m amused by Techno’s awkward attempt at recruiting Niki, that’s just so relatable. These things never really go smoothly. And I’ve been there, trying to get something started with very little personal experience and massive social anxiety issues lol. (I mean I haven’t tried starting an actual revolutionary society, overthrowing an actual government is a bit too stressful for me and it’s not really an opportune moment for it right now where I live, but I may or may not have been involved in some direct action kind of stuff. Definitely nothing illegal, of course...) But like, the thing you really need to have a handle on is proper security culture so you don’t get everybody in trouble, other than that it’s okay to fuck up some things or just be awkward. And I’d say Techno is probably paranoid enough for the security culture bit, I think we can check that one off.

And I mean the talk with Niki didn’t even go that badly, probably. I still need to go check her side, I was watching her up until Techno went live but I didn’t get her reaction afterwards.

I feel like Techno is still a bit hazy on the theory but he has the spirit? I guess? And I mean to me that counts more than being super well read but only using it to whine about other people doing anarchism wrong. Not that there aren’t some warranted criticisms re: Techno’s character... Mostly I’m hoping he’ll chill with the torture and kidnapping and stabbing random bystanders? Might be too much to ask, he really seems to like buillying people, but I’m hoping. He could bully Eret, they’re a king after all. Eret’s schedule is just kind of unfortunate I guess. Doesn’t line up well with Techno’s streams. Or if Techno figures out that Sam is the prison warden, that’s also a valid target. Prison guards are definitely enemies of freedom, it’s literally in their job description. Plus Sam stole his horses and tried to kill him that one time.

Then again landlords are definitely enemies of anarchists too and apparently Techno is a landlord to Ranboo now so hmmmmm...

TL;DR: I really like the direction Techno’s new arc is going, I think aside from the random encounters with gods and mystical portals it’s a much more realistic representation of anarchists and anarchism (not that anarchism is mutually exclusive with mystical portals or anything but... ykwim), and it’s a promising start for a new storyline plotwise too.

[sleepypuffpastry]

do you have any blogs you'd recommend? i just remade my acc and im at a bit of a loss at ppl to follow lol

i gotchu

da best compilation maker in existence: @businessbois

de analyses homies: @daggryet @snailsnfriends @tobi-smp @b-e-e-e-s @flypaw @lucemferto @farfran @zeta-in-de-walls @brave-little-antt @quicksandblock @chekhxvsgun

le meme’rs: @sajdd @terrible-leviathan @scrumptiousblazevillain

artists: @wolfythewitch @sweetsodaeuphoriia @wrigglebrains @birdiebrunch @robotic-poet @appaeve @itsnotdessa @chewwypepsicola @rozugold @nastiiuu @navy-leader @zirorum @poorlydrawnmcyt