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[coffeegnomee]

Just realized I mentally blocked out Mapicc dying in the finale from elytra fall damage.

[coffeegnomee]

issue 5 : i am completely alone

[coffeegnomee]

finally started binging lifesteal season 4 this shit kinda funny im watching the first official mer recommended zam stream and he has made several interesting statements such as i could never betray team awesome and i dont want to betray anyone. i may not know all the details but boy does he have some stuff coming

[coffeegnomee]

The two sides of season 5.

The absolute vibe difference from looking at Minute’s lore by stitching together all the lore moments together VS taking out ALL the lore is sending me. 

And both are immaculate.

Like in the first, you would find Minute, Jumper, and Pentar in the cave, lost, silent, overwhelmed that they just lost the presidency and were betrayed by Leo and Clown.

Minute slides down the wall, buries his head in his hands. He was just a DM away, why didn’t they talk to him. They were so close to peace.

Burnt out, despondent. Weary from weeks of trying to save bases from PrinceZam, from weeks of resisting the urge to kill him. Emotionally drained from realizing there was a new threat on top of Zam; Mapicc and Ro were going to revert spawn to the way it was before they got there.

He had bet the presidency. And lost. Was betrayed by the whole server for some money.

What should he do now?

As they wait in that cave, the sounds of the server turning to hardcore echoes through the dripstone. Screams of frustration at the idiocy of Ro as Bacon is annihilated by an arrow cannon. Planet’s cry cut short as Zam’s sword stabs through his back.

They’re lost. Broken.

And then Zam’s sing-song voice comes to their ears. What are you going to do now, Minute? I just killed Planet, Minute? Do you care? Do you even care? 

What if I blew up the Vitalasy hole, Minute? Would you stop me?

The Vitalasy hole. Threatened over and over. Not this time. If Zam wanted to die, he could die.

The team exchanges a look, nodding. They equip their elytras and fly over. 

Zam is jumping up and down waving his hands. Insane grin spread wide. His arms thrown out in welcome as the team plummets from the sky like rocks, landing in full gear.

Zam says something stupid. Who cares what this cretin is saying. He’s the reason for everything bad that’s happened to them. “Let’s just cut to the chase”, Minute splashes the potions and in seconds the thorn in his side lies dead at his feet.

Mapicc and wemmbu destroy the Vitalasy hole. They would be next.

They plot the perfect ambush and in two swift strokes, both enemies are gone. The bloodlust keeps growing, it feels good, going back to his PMC roots. Just neutralize the threat in front of him. He never needed Clown to do the PMC’s good work.

Rumors fly that his enemies are possessing other server members’ bodies. It doesn’t matter. He could take them down again just as easily as before.

He takes a fight, and Clownpierce joins. He’s better than Clown. They have the gear advantage. 

But he slipped up. And all it takes is one slip up. He thought he knew what true bloodlust was. He thought he knew what cold, calculated indifference was. 

But Clown was far more relentless. Far more ruthless, targeting Minute and ignoring his teammates. 

Before he even knew what was happening, he was out of gear. On the run. Scrabbling over rock and river in a desperate attempt to flee. 

Maybe this is how Zam felt when he was dying. 

In one final attempt to swim away, he felt the cold steel of Clown’s sword pierce his armor and break it, plunging into his heart. It was all over. 

And then the other option is like:

(Every time I read this back I get the singsong “happy happy haPPY!” meme song stuck in my head. A silly goofy jingle. Or Zam doing the “I like purple, and I like green, but my favorite color, do you know my favorite color? My favorite color yellow!”. It makes me giggle so much. It’s so unserious.)

Minute is betrayed and it really freaking hurts. But time wins all wars, they would come up with the perfect attack eventually.

Completely unworried, they realize their names spell out Peanut Butter And Jelly! They’re the best part of a balanced breakfast!

They show up at spawn to see what the almighty and powerful wemmbu /neg has to say for himself. It’s a whole lot of nothing.

As they laugh together and leave for the carnival, Bacon just explodes, pops like a grape. It’s the funniest shit ever. They were going to win this war easy peasy. No worries.

They pose for a screenie to commemorate the new team name. Planet dies to Zam. Oh no! Anyway. 

Zam gets into call and it’s the perfect moment to mention that they’re the best part of a balanced breakfast! But this kid, man, he just wants to YAP. Yawn!

He starts threatening the Vitalasy hole or something. He’s done this so many times I literally could not care less. But he seems to be over there so I guess we’ll check it out. 

Laughing like drunken frat boys, high on their friendship, they fly over, and this ant is just standing at the top.

Let’s just wipe the grin off his face and screw this popsicle stand.

He drops. Really easily? Was that really his whole plan? If this is him winning, I hope he never stops winning. 

That was weird. Well. Anyways!

There’s this thing added where the dead can grant blessings and curses. That insane person, Zam, blesses Minute because of something called “made sense for my character”? Whatever that means. 

But man, Pentar got cursed twice and now he’s actually chubby. It’s like, kind of funny. But we have to fix him. 

Rek and Terry would die for them so Pentar can run. Quick fix. Everything is fair again. 

They move their base and prepare the Secret Plan™. The power of friendship was going to win this war. Together, they are an unstoppable force. Peace and justice would rule this land once and for all!

Jumper lures Mapicc over with some lie, Minute looks down the barrel of the arrow gun and giggles as he lines up the shot. It’s too easy. Jumper is safe on the camel and he pulls the trigger. Mappic pops like a grape, it’s a great sight to see. Enemy #2 is gone!

Maybe they could end this war today. Ash messages wemmbu, and wemmbu gets on. Omg the plan can happen today! They were going to win this war.

Wemmbu bans LifestealLord and it’s like, kind of concerning, but they have an ambush. With Ash’s signal they descend upon the president and kill him, it’s pitifully easy. Can you imagine his face when he saw his heart start dropping for the first time in weeks? Hilarious.

Are we the bad guys? No. no. 

Well, we may not loooook that peaceful right now, but you just gotta trust the process. 

Minute feels the first little doubt that they are as good as they think they are, he accepts the possibility. But like. They’re about to get the presidency back and unban everyone who was killed. The end result will fix everything. And everyone would be friends because who doesn’t love the power of friendship??

Ash, Jumper and Pentar EXPLODE in front of Minute. 

But that’s just not fair™. Kill us unceremoniously? We are not taking that.

They get brought back and there’s a slight issue. Their enemies start possessing bodies. But it’s nothing too important because they have a base to decorate!

And then their enemies stop playing fair. Why won’t they come to the AntiTrap Box™? Just come and sit down in front of us Oh My Gawd. We aren’t going to kill you, this is a friendly meeting because we are a little concerned that you might think you can win, but friendship is going to win. 

Fine. Observe from a distance.

We want a revive beacon of life. We can fight all week, and if any of you HAPPEN to last until Saturday we can do a big battle and then last team standing wins. Sound good?

What do you mean no? You want it to just play out? This is a human story? But I want to win. Somebody has to win.

The friendship gets strained as the tension grows. Their enemies still are a team of 4 despite the fact that they banned 3 people. They’re out numbered without Ash.

Over the next few days they get a little more paranoid. They know Clown has been logging on all day every day. They suspect a trap in their base, but they have to check it out together, so that none of them die. And preferably when nobody else is online so they’ll be safe.

But then they get goaded into a fight. But it was going to be fine. 15 stacks of xp each and secret netherite armor. They easily outmatched anyone who would come at them. 

At some point they had to fight, mighteswell be tonight. Mapicc is using harming arrows, the silly goober. 

Then Clown joins. And he’s also using harming. Maybe they missed something. 

Ro and Clown target Minute and Mapicc has a knock back sword that is really starting to get annoying. 

Things are not looking good. 

And the power of friendship is not strong enough in the face of an evil murderous clown. Minute dies, Pentar dies.

Jumper survives and rallies the And JellyS. One final stand to ban everyone. Because if nobody is alive, Lifesteal will be at peace. 

They fail. 

It’s sad. 

Oh Well! Let’s go back to the carnival!!! 

——

The second one also reads like a horror movie where it’s super happy but then every once in a while the screen goes blurry and the character starts breathing heavy when they realize maybe killing people should affect me, and then brightens up and the happy music starts playing again and it’s like the most unnerving shit ever. And then they all die brutally at the end.

But reading them back and remembering how both were actually happening at the same time is just so funny to me.

Maybe pb&j was a fun plot? nah. Unless? 

Also, I feel like it could be easy to read the second option as me being mean to pb&j and like /neg-ing their comments, but those out of pocket things makes this interpretation so much better, without it, it’s not nearly as absurd. And it genuinely brings me so much joy. Lifesteal used to not have any lore, and laughter at the other team and petulance at the things that go wrong for your team are time honored traditions. You can see Mapicc and Ro and Zam and Bacon and so many others doing it in earlier seasons. It comes out of them because it’s literally Minecraft and that always lends a certain level of absurdity at all times. Part of the charm. 

Also, I feel like if you missed Jumper’s pov of Minute’s and Pentar’s death you miss a lot of the character moments in either interpretation. She put it in her discord. 

[coffeegnomee]

Yo! (Another pile of autistic dust appears) (part one, part two)

[coffeegnomee]

An analysis of having a rigid character in mcrp vs being swept up into playing a character in mcrp.

I was reflecting on dreamsmp and qsmp the other day and realized they both lost me when the lore shifted to a rigid character of the streamer.

Quackity approached the late-game lore as a cold, calm, businessman, completely devoid of the goofy, unserious charm that is Quackity. And in qsmp he was the alcoholic father. 

I didn’t watch much of qsmp, but I got similar vibes from Celbit and… heck I forget his name. The one who became president. 

Like they approached every stream from a very serious point of view, getting into character before the serious moment happened, not chatting with chat in the lulls between yapping as they journey from one destination to another. 

And they lost me. 

That’s not what the medium of streamed Minecraft rp is about.

What it is about is logging on, bantering with chat, walking around the server, and then other members approach, they take the lore seriously, and subtly change it from a normal interaction with another streamer into something that is moving the plot forward.

There’s two examples from the dsmp era.

Tommy is the obvious one, and doesn’t need much explanation. Especially in the exile arc he would be fine and happy and bantering with chat until Dream showed up. Then the tone shifted. He always had moments where he was his annoying happy self before being drawn into the serious character he was developing. All of it was an act, but he planned to let his character be moved from one emotion to another through the conversations that happened.

But the same happened with Foolish, which I find fascinating since it was widely acclaimed that Foolish doesn’t really lore. Not on purpose at least. He’ll never be the one to overtly plan something, but he’s one of my favorites to follow because he will always get swept up into it.

I followed the Foolish/Leo lore through clips and tiktok, and it was the only aspect of qsmp lore that could draw me in. 

And in the dsmp, the L’sandburg arc and everything that happened at the summer home never had server-wide implications, and yet it captured the charm of the early months of the dreamsmp.

There was a day when Sam joined vc but shifted into the SamNook character and stopped actually talking in vc, just playing the animal crossing noises while writing in chat.

Foolish played along for a bit, and then they both returned to building in the hanging gardens, Sam making a tree while Foolish was doing like material collection I think, talking to chat.

Sam continued only communicating in chat until one moment when it was more helpful if he began actually speaking about the tree instead of being in character.

And I, and Foolish, literally jumped, forgetting that Sam was there and we weren’t talking to SamNook as a real npc.

It was so bizarre. 

We were swept up into the lore of the moment, and kept there through the efforts of the other streamer. 

And again, this happened one day when Bad and Foolish were arguing and Dream showed up in vc as Dreamxd, talking just to Foolish as if he was in his head and Bad couldn’t hear him. The conversation that followed was so hilarious as Foolish had to manage two streamers who refused to acknowledge that they could hear each other.

Without realizing it he was swept up into the lore. And he took us along with him. 

The reason this matters to me is the Lifesteal smp.

In Lifesteal, Zam takes this concept of casual banter with chat and moves it, when the moment arises, into something that is suddenly extremely RP.

In an instant it can go from random conversation into something that is moving his character forward and changing the fabric of the server.

I think we saw it best with the Joker arc. 

Every Joker day began with a threat given to either Minute or Jumper. Something to goad them into lore. 

He had no real plans, just a threat that he would do, a base he would blow up, if Minute or Jumper didn’t do anything to stop him. And he let them do anything they wanted to stop him. 

It was completely unplanned.

And you could hear in his voice the changes from, here’s my silly plan for the day, to, you just unlocked the Joker.

Changing it from a casual stream to something overly lore. Not going into it with a perfect character but using the encounter itself to bring out the character.

Interestingly enough, we all know that the Joker arc landed weirdly in relation to pb&j and how they were swept up into the lore.

And I think, in part, it had to do with the a flipping of roles compared to my above analysis about Foolish.

Zam was, more often than not, the one who was live AND the one who was going to take lore seriously and bring others into it. 

Vs Foolish being live and Dream/Bad/Sam being the one to take it seriously.

It broached a new style of mcrp, one that created streamers/characters who were resistant to doing lore, I think because they didn’t have the stakes behind it of being live. They were there for their recording, but they always knew they could cut it out of their YouTube video and it wouldn’t matter to their characters.

You only have to look at the difference between the Jumper/Zam yap session and Minute confronting Clown and Leo to see the difference going live had on them being wrapped up into the lore. 

Lore they did not expect to be doing when they first went live. 

As opposed to Jumper’s stream where she killed Mappic - she went into that with a plan and a character to play.

As opposed to Ash’s streams when he had a character and plan to execute.

They lost me on those streams because it was obviously so planned out and they entered the moment completely in character and resisted changing in response to anything that was said to them. 

Why does it matter? 

Because a character’s 3dimentionality comes from being fully fledged out. 

And you can make an extremely complex and compelling character when you draw on aspects of yourself. It doesn’t (and probs shouldn’t) just literally be you, but if you willingly draw on who you are as a person, the character comes alive. 

And the medium is Minecraft live streaming. It’s long winded. Time in the story passes by similarly to how real life time passes - day to day something new happens unlike a book or movie where they have to cut things out.

And the stories you create when you approach the medium of live mcrp is substantially different than any book, movie, or video. 

The method of storytelling allows you to explore a character over 100s of hours of content rather than a couple hours. 

And for my money, boiling that character down to something you put on for an hour or two at a time around completely unrelated grind streams, is so much less compelling than if both merged together and you never knew when a moment would turn from casual banter as a streamer into a character moment. 

[coffeegnomee]

Training my brain to learn that caring about something does not mean someone will die and it will all be lost.

Cw - death, OCD, mcyt death, dsmp and lifesteal, triggers

This is, obviously, something super personal. But sharing about it is what scares me, so I’m going to do it anyway and prove to my brain that it’s okay to care.

If you end up reading it, know you just read my heart. I hope it helps you process whatever you’re dealing with <3. 

I looked up OCD tonight because my brain constantly cycles through the same thoughts and worries about Lifesteal like Non Stop. Like I know I’m ADHD but this isn’t just a fixation on this server, but like debilitating spirals of thought. And all focused around analyzing if it’s all going to fall apart or not. 

They say ocd is a “limbic system impairment that occurs when someone experiences a traumatic physical or emotional event while their chronic stress load is already high.”

And that freaking resonated. They say exposure therapy can rewire the brain so let’s go explore what’s the event that’s keeping me spiraling.

My chronic stress load was extremely high that summer two years ago. And then Technoblade died. The longer it’s been the more I really sit with the fact that that was traumatic.

On top of the stress personally, now my favorite YouTuber, my comfort character on dsmp, the freaking anchor of that server, was just gone. Gone.

Dreamsmp came in a time of some pretty heavy depression. Obviously the pandemic was still occurring so that’s a chronic stress load itself (I found it January 16th 2021, so like, three days before the disc finale, but almost a year into covid) and watching through all the streams I was able to completely escape.

For the first time in months I was laughing. Like deep belly laughs. Full body. Actual joy. The neural rewiring my brain those first months was insane. It was pure serotonin.

I became motivated to work again, having something fun in the background. I looked forward to cherishing the lore, keeping those streams to the side for the evenings when I could really immerse myself into the story.

There’s a two-fold trigger that sends me into a spiral around loosing the thing that makes me happy. Unfortunately at the time, the things causing the chronic stress in my life stemmed from the things that used to bring me fulfillment and joy and purpose. They were being taken away, by my own choice, and from my health (more on that later).

So in the void of having my real-life anchors to bring fulfillment, dreamsmp was the thing keeping this whole body going. Truly a hanging on by a thread moment.

But even then, it’s not just about "loosing the thing that makes me happy" that causes these obsessive thoughts.

It’s the irrational connection that because the lore changed and the dynamic of the server stalled, that THAT therefore somehow that lead to Techno dying. (yes. An irrational and non related thought. I just realized with writing that that I have truly merged both those events so closely that when the first happens, I cannot let go of the idea of the second. I’m sitting here expecting someone to irl die.)

Huh. That’s interesting. 

It’s like, I read this from some random instagram post years ago. This woman’s husband died on a sunny day and then years later sunny days fill her with dread as if the weather was signaling that she would come home to the death of a loved on.

That’s what’s going on in my noggin.

Because it’s Quackity’s lore that changed the fabric of the dreamsmp. It didn’t have to, but it did. It came at the perfect storm when everyone was super burnt out and needed to run away from the insanity of both the fans and the haters and the sudden massive fame. 

He decided to do pre-recorded movies. On my live-stream smp. The very fabric of lore was changed. 

And because of the larger production, it took longer, and the other members of the server seemed to not know where to take their personal lore; everyone was waiting for that damn casino to open. And since all the lore ended up happening in pre-recordings we never again experienced that magic of live stream entertainment and improv and dumb bits. Everything was sanitized. For their own sanity, sure. But at the expense of the survival of the server. (Also Techno wasn’t available because of the chemo, so truly nothing was happening on any end of the server)

That perfect storm, loosing interest in the server and the lore being fundamentally changed, set the stage for the traumatic moment of loosing a member. That's my two-fold trigger.

And his death sealed the deal. I’ve never held it against them for not wanting to continue after. Season 2 was impossible the moment that happened. 

My chronic stress had exploded so far that my thyroid was fucked and I’m diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease that keeps me fatigued more often than not. Besides that, my other main chronic stress was a realization that the Future I had always expected myself to take, the Plan that I had set out, I was suddenly extremely Not Sure I wanted to do anymore. 

But I had confidently told my friends and family for over 8 years that this is what I wanted (all this during college and after. I was already 26 at this time) (yes I’m old) (yes life is still crazy when you’re old) (but you start understanding yourself better). It was in this understanding of myself that I realized my direction needed to change.

Suddenly my whole identity I had built for myself was swept out from under me. 

At that. same. dang. time. That same week. That’s when the news broke. Literally broke me to pieces. 

And I hadn’t told anyone I was obsessed with Minecraft lore. Like bro. I’m out of college for a few years. Get a life. (But man. My eyes just light up when I think about this method of story telling. It’s just goated)

My mom sort of knew. She didn’t understand but at least I could tell her someone died and she had some sort of connection that I had been following this kid for over a year now. 

But no one else. The sorrow and pain of loss is just so much worse when you can’t explain why you cared about someone so much. It’s not like my parent died. Or sibling. It was a kid I had never met in person but I resonated with so much. 

And I remember distinctly thinking “It’s not worth not sharing the things you care about with other people”. Burned into my brain that day.

But time heals all wounds. Until something triggers it. 

I spent the next year just following Foolish, that ray of sunshine who was involved enough to have become my comfort streamer, but not too involved that it was painful to watch because of the memories.

It was a crazy fun year. Best comfort streamer. But people change, I change, and I missed Minecraft lore. You can only watch so much valorant before it’s just the same game.

Foolish found out he was on QSMP (I think it actually was before, I think he knew about the server before it was announced) and he started looking at Minecraft content and Minecraft builds again. For the first time in over a year. It was such a random day. 

But we watched Sandiction and… Rekrap2. 

Both of them stole my heart and I went, maybe it’s time to return to mcyt. See what’s been brewing.

And before I knew it I was on a month-long binge of Lifesteal content and just so absolutely lost as to what order everything came out in or what season everything was from. Shoutout them being allergic to click baiting “Lifesteal” or adding season tags to the description. It’s such a mess on Youtube lol.

Soon enough I found Baconnwaffles1. Not 0. 1. Somehow found his second channel first.

The videos caught my eye. I knew they were streams and I was trying to find the vods, but as you know Bacon doesn’t have a vods channel and his streams delete after 14 days. 

But then finally the fated video crossed my path: “This is PrinceZam and he just betrayed his teammates”

Oh my goddess what in the world is going on in this server. 

I needed to know. 

So began the true binge. Found Zam’s vods, watched season 4. And I discovered something amazing.

I have genuinely never resonated more with a character than I resonated with Zam season 4.

Every internal debate of Zam resonated with my own dilemmas. People pleasing and understanding what you value came to a head, and only one could win. But truly your values are the only real option because every moment of people pleasing will rub against your soul like hot coals. 

Remember those chronic stressors? The life I didn’t know if I wanted anymore?

As Zam walked between conversations with friends, teammates, and enemies, I recognized similar conversations in my life. 

I could describe the situation one way, and the person would agree and give advice. But then I realized I could describe the situation in a different light and then maybe they wouldn’t agree anymore. So I didn’t know what advice to take.

And then chat was so funny. The day before the wormhole they started giving too many opinions, the same opinions they had been giving for weeks, and in a flash I was like, omg he’s going to spiral again guys why are you like this. 

And then he was like, OMG chat, YOU’RE the problem! There’s too many of you and I’m trying to make everyone happy.

If I tell you I jumped up, screamed, giggled, and floundered around like a crazy person it wouldn’t even come close to what happened. I was so proud of Zam for realizing his emotions were being swayed by the barest opposition. From that third person point of view, I could so clearly see what was going wrong and I was cheering him on to realizing what he truly wanted.

I did, and still do, see so many of the decision making problems that Zam has, within myself. As a piece of media, and him being a character, it’s the craziest most relatable story I have ever seen. I’ve never resonated with a character more. 

Then we reached season 5. 

The first season I truly watched as it came out. I had gotten too obsessed with this Minecraft world. I wanted more. I loved these kids and their storytelling. 

But it was the first season when people started leaving the server on good terms.

Oh no. This sounds too familiar. People are loosing interest in the server I love. What’s next, a change in the fabric of how lore is created? 

Then there was a change in the fabric of how the lore was created.

We saw the new members approach the server with a recording-mindset. Who weaponized the lore against the old server members. Pretending they cared about the yapping but then revealing that in itself was a complete and total lie used to get you into the perfect position to either spoil the whole riddle or shoot you with an arrow canon.

And then. Not. Care. At. All. Zero remorse.

I don’t know why the betrayals by Jumper hurt so badly. But it hurt. A lot. (I was triggered that’s why) My emotional reaction was out of proportion to reality.

It’s not like it wasn’t a Lifesteal move, people had gotten into position to betray in the past, and would continue to do so in the future with Leo and Clown betraying Minute. 

But it was that “I have no remorse over the hours we spent as a team, not a single thread of care to you or to the yapping lore of this server”. It’s one thing to be betrayed by an enemy. Quite another to be betrayed by a friend.

So here I began. Triggered by something that wasn’t world ending. Quackity’s take on lore didn’t kill the server. Neither did Jumper’s. It was probably going to be fine.

But like. My brain is not agreeing. So I’m pushing back on it. 

Here’s what I’m finding.

This is a fun tidbit - when Mapic said “streams are delayed” when he was in the hospital before the finale I could not convince myself that he didn’t had cancer and wasn’t going to die. Bro. Tell me you’re triggered without telling me you’re triggered. (In case you didn’t see, it was just a concussion)

I’m so hyper aware of everything that could indicate I’m going to loose someone I care about again.

The pattern recognition is going out of control. 

And I keep trying to calm my brain down and catalogue all the reasons I know and believe Lifesteal will be perfectly fine for probably a while. Like how they have meetings all the time to discuss what went down on the server. They’re talking all the time to work out interpersonal problems and lore problems so that everyone is happy and feels heard. And they’re watching movies together. Meeting up and strengthening relationships. Changing admins as necessary. 

And I say it again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Every time something throws the smallest pebble at stability I walk my brain back through all the indicators that everything will be fine. 

Jumper:

Jumper loves being on the server. She’s said it. She’s so excited about it. She did have a plan. She didn’t tell us the plan as it went, but she does stream. She’s getting comfortable with the idea of streaming, she’ll learn to trust chat over time. She’ll learn how to loose gracefully on this server at some point. Probably. hopefully. And since I don’t know when that will be I’ll just have to wait until season 6 and see what happens. It’s out of my control. She’s fine. It’ll be fine. 

Pentar:

Pentar is fine. He doesn’t understand why chat would tell him he’s the most likely to betray even though every video he betrays. Why is he doing that that’s so weird. But he’s a great teammate and everyone likes having him around. I don’t like how he laughs at Zam, but like I can give him the benefit of the doubt that he just doesn’t take anything seriously and laughs in the face of anything serious. I’ll have to wait and see until next time to see how I feel about what he does on the server. Real life can’t be repeated over and over so just let it go. It’ll be fine.

Minute:

Minute is just so happy to be in Lifesteal. He loves it so much. You can tell by how he speaks every time there’s a group moment. He’s going to be admin next season. He loves this server. He may be overly attached to the Rules and have black and white thinking and he sometimes wields that for his own gain and I hate when he does that can he just have fun and take things less seriously? But I think he’ll get it. He’s competent. And he loves the server. He wouldn’t destroy it even on accident because someone would call him out before that happens. It’s going to be fine. 

Ash: 

Ash can be mean and also not care about the good that our side is doing and just wave them away saying they’re just evil. He does’t get it. But also he’s quite the actor. He puts on a lore face when he logs on, you can see it in season 4 with the wormhole. You can see it when he logs on for the justice league returns and he’s so committed to being good and fighting evil and as Zam is killing Mid in the background and he’s all shocked as if he was not the one who goaded Zam into killing her moments before. It’s a character. Even when it feels like it shouldn’t be. He does take random events in stride, pulling up the meditation guidance video when they all got killed. He’s stressed out by it, but also takes it with some levity. He’ll be fine. He just chose a questionable character to act this season and didn’t know how to balance his position as admin separate from his need to win. But he’ll be fine.

Can you see how this is exhausting? This is my brain on the daily. 

Every day I find myself working through each person one after another as something small comes up to threaten the balance, or reinforce the good.

This is when I noticed this wasn’t simple excitement about the lore, thinking and guessing about what might happen.  It was the same thoughts over and over and over. And I couldn’t stop a line of thought until I mentioned all the things. That’s what made me look up ocd. 

But back to it, I’m actually so much more okay with Ash because it’s been a couple seasons with him. I’m starting to see his tells. So I can just let the rough parts slide away. 

And that’s really what I just have to accept. That I can’t self soothe my way into being okay. Resisting acknowledging what I’m afraid of is just making me spiral more. 

We’ve seen people choose to leave after stressful seasons. We know some people become aware that they aren’t cut out for Lifesteal. Or they just don’t want to be. Some of these members might decide that. And Lifesteal has continued despite members leaving. 

OMg can I please stop cataloging how it will be fine?

I have to sit with the reality and realize nothing bad DID happen, NOT that nothing bad MIGHT happen. 

(This is unironically so counterintuitive to my brain. What do you mean I have to just accept that nothing bad happened, what if something bad does happen!) (But that’s what anxiety looks like. That’s not a good)

How do you convince yourself that you can’t predict the future? Asking for a friend.

I think it goes back to caring. I don’t think I’m allowed to care about any of this. That it’s silly, or dumb, or immature. 

It was, in fact, in caring itself that the loss of Techno was so painful.

So I don’t allow myself to care. To get too invested. Any time I see that I’m caring I push up on the walls of my trenches and shove that shit out. Only analytical thoughts in here. Measurable, quote-filled analyses.

But caring does not therefore mean there will be a loss.

So. Okay. Pivot. What am I really afraid of? 

I’m afraid the server will end. That something will make Zam give up and leave. 

Wow. I thought that was going to be a long ass paragraph but it really is just that. I know I’ll stop watching lifesteal if Zam is gone. Unless someone new comes in that has his same spark and dedication. Unlikely. 

So that threat is the worst. 

And I’ve seen his interest wax and wane. I know he can disappear for a month. 

But I also know he can come back. And he’s been a lot more mature and healthy and confident in being the streamer of Lifesteal. In how much he loves the server. 

Which is where pb&j being such a threat to the fabric of how lore is done is so scary, because that changes Zam’s care. But then again. It really didn’t. He just pivots. 

One of the most healing things has been watching the old members leave and continue to make content. And seeing how they choose to make their exit. They honored the server and the time they were there, in Rek’s case uplifting Lifesteal.net, in Parrot’s in completely reediting all his footage into a cohesive story. 

And then they still make content together. All the members make content with each other outside of Lifesteal. (And those that left the internet forever, that was okay too)

So that’s nice. Some bad things came to pass, and they've shown their response to it. Also Zam taking a break didn’t change how the lore was created, so that wouldn’t be a trigger. 

The trigger from that fear would be if he did leave, my brain would go into high gear looking for who was going to die. And I would have a new post to write lol. 

The trigger that is still tilting me is that pb&j changed how the lore was made, and my brain went *danger* *danger* This is something that happened last time and you know how that turned out! Start looking for who is going to die!

And it stopped me from seeing how this is not the same situation. The pattern for a death that I think I’m seeing, is not a pattern. 

And sitting with how nothing DID go wrong, that fear did not come to pass, is exposure therapy.

Because nothing went catastrophically wrong with the season 5 finale. I just keep closing my eyes, sitting in the problematic lore, and not accepting what actually happened at the end of the season, and freaking out that disaster is coming.

So what happened?

Season 5, you tried to kill my server. 

But The server resisted. (Hahahah undertale reference!)

Clown came back. Ro came back. Branzy betrayed everyone for Clown. Bacon and Zam sat in vc the entire finale fight. Mapicc fought until he couldn’t.

Spepticle gave his account then fought for it back. Pangi gave his account. Spoke gave his account. Red did the blessings/curses as Zam wanted. 4C said he was glad to give Minute the presidency because he knew Minute wanted peace and he knew peace was not an option in Lifesteal. Actually the quietest of goats. Didn’t realize he thought that deeply about the server. 

And it meant so much that Clownpierce, who hasn’t been meaningfully involved since the season 3 finale, came back and fought for his server. He made Lifesteal season 2. It’s always been his domain and he fought for its soul.

That’s the season 5 finale. 

The Players fought for Lifesteal. The server resisted destruction. 

This chapter is closed. This season got it’s ending. And it’s “not like last time” like my brain keeps thinking. 

The season might have ended with a lot of unknowns for how it will affect season 6. Will these old members still care? Will pb&j be a menace still? 

But what happened was a moment where everyone came together to care about the server. And that means the anxiety was unfounded. If something happens like this again, I have an example where everything didn’t fall apart to counter my fear that it will. 

See you around!

If you actually read to the end you’re amazing. Hopefully this is something you can do in your life to help understand what is the cause of your pain and anxiety. I wasn’t going to post it initially, but working it out as a post I could theoretically show to other people helped make it way more real than trying to work it out in my head, talking to myself. I had to write it in such a way that someone else would understand. Even if I didn’t post it. 

I’ll probably have many more days of writing when I notice a new trigger. Exposure therapy isn’t a one and done. (I probably won’t post any of those.)

But my body feels so much more relaxed now. Something has shifted in my head as a result of writing this all down.

Good luck!

[coffeegnomee]

Everybody thinks Clown is really mean/scary… until they end up at his house.

-He has ADHD, so there’s fidget toys everywhere

-He has a ton of pets that he’s always interacting with; if there’s not a cat on his lap then there’s a bird on his shoulder or a bunny sniffing around close by

-Despite being “The terrifying swordsman of Lifesteal SMP”, there’s not a weapon in sight other than nerf guns (he’ll say it’s to practice his aim, but he has nerf wars with Branzy on weekends)

-Depending on the day someone visits, there might be a fort set up smack in the middle of the living room. And I don’t mean a flimsy pillow fort, I mean a well thought out fort that visibly took hours to construct. He got bored 🤷

-Ball pit. He has a ball pit.

-Did I mention the ball pit has a slide?

-He constantly has circus music playing throughout the house, leading to some hilarious moments in which Branzy was trying to get some redstone work done and all of the sudden “Entry of the Gladiators” is blasting from upstairs

-He paints, and if you accidentally walk in on him while he’s doing an abstract piece, he might have paint all over his hands from smearing it on the canvas (he also loves finger painting)

-🧷 anon

.

[coffeegnomee]

its so funny that all minute—the guy who once upon a time hoped to redeem zam—'s team has accomplished is getting him to consider giving up his remaining honor in order to match the level they're playing on ?

[coffeegnomee]

Watching the beginning of season 4 of Lifesteal is so adorable.

Zam - “There are probably people hoping we do like dreamsmp with like roleplay and shit. Lifesteal will never do that. The closest we’ve ever come is that one finale stream [s3]. That’s as close as we’ll ever go” (pranking Rekrap around 4:16:00)

Zam had just no idea. No idea. What that season would become. And how much it affected Lifesteal permanently.

He was so adamant right from the start at not being the main character. I thought he only said that in s5.

The craziest thing is all the little things, he doesn't even have his optimized Ender chest skulkers. He isn't a walking base yet. Doesn't have every niche material. He's not paranoid. He was impressed by Parker's three extra gear sets like it was crazy someone would have that many ready and could come back to battle that many times. Three (3) sets got him talking like that.

I feel like I'm panning for gold and every time I find a nugget that is different than the modern day my brain gets all happy.

Also like the current mod team wasn’t even chatting yet. I saw van’s first chat. I literally cheered. (Mod team, I love you. Lifesteal wouldn’t be the same, it isn’t the same, without your comments. You guys made s5 so much fun and chat so much more bearable to read.)

---

I watched the season 3 finale for the first time as well, and ALL the lore was in one stream. I was in disbelief. Literally flabbergasted. I thought the two Spoke conversations were different days this whole time.

[coffeegnomee]

another @mcyt-drabble-exchange treat for @fruitboxing ! this one's spoke (& parrot)

-

Spoke, after season four ends, says I didn’t give a shit about NPPP. I just used it for the Wormhole.

It’s even true, sort of. It was useful. Having something that Parrot cared about. Having fun with each other, that’s not just fun, that’s strategic. It’s building trust. Parrot will never see the betrayal coming.

(The easiest way to make someone think you care is to care. The best lie isn’t a lie at all.)

In season five, Spoke says I’m trying to redeem myself. I can’t handle being alone again.

Parrot leaves anyway. Spoke tells himself he doesn’t care.

[coffeegnomee]

Pentar…. Is hiding something. Without being obvious about it, he’s just as much of a grinder as Zam. Over 800 achievements and 3.1 mil jumps is no small feat. And in his first real Minecraft base he had a fully fleshed out trading hall.

Like have you seen Planet’s trading halls? They’re bed pits and there’s no zombification. Pentar casually figured out how to grind gear and he put the time in.

Then there’s his sneakiness. I knew the moment he joined Gucci Gang that his heart wasn’t in it. I think he was on 5 hearts or something on his stream the day before, and he clearly was on 10 for the initiation meeting given how long it took Bacon to kill him, and then he was Way too okay with killing Jumper and he asked about giving her stuff back. Then on his next stream he was on 5 hearts again. Like clearly something was up between him and her.

It’s crazy to see Jumper confirmed that in the book at the grave. 

And then he got back on the team for the Captain Sparklez event and I for one completely believed he was genuinely rejoining. He's sweet sweet Pentar, how could you not trust him.

And then he hit the unironic betrayal. 

But it was weird; like how Spoke sometimes is when he joins teams or infiltrates the underdog team so that they have a more even chance in the conflict. Like idk if anyone else agrees, but Spoke crushed it in managing the wormhole and (at least by day 2) made both sides have buffs and nerfs so the final moments were really close. He could have just steamrolled them, but he made sure it lasted until the final minutes.

Pentar reminds me of Spoke in that way. Like he understands the value of evening the playing field for content (Zam does this too), but in the Lore he will never mention it. He will just actively say everything he can to oppose that concept. 

Which I think why he sometimes makes zero sense in the lore. Because it’s an out of lore reason why he does what he does.

But then he like blows up his base before Zam can do it, seemingly for the petty reason of not giving Zam the satisfaction. So I really have no idea.

And then he’s just like casually really really really good at pvp despite saying he never practices.

He's simultaneously innocence and incompetence personified and also cunning and devious.

What will season 6 look like with a new player who is potentially the intersection of Zam and Spoke? What will he do when he is on from day one? Day one will change things I think. Because he knew nobody going in to his first day except Jumper and he immediately stole Mintue's hearts and did a video on that so of course the three of them ended up teaming. But now he knows everyone.

Idk if I’m giving Pentar too much credit, but after a full season (or rather half I guess) with him I still haven’t pinned down his personality traits and that’s so interesting. I can’t wait to see his pov of this whole conflict and I’m so excited to see him grow on Lifesteal.

[coffeegnomee]

the land of lifesteal itself is alive.

lifesteal is meant to be chaos its meant to be destruction and its fed by the blood of the players. its fed by their traps and their escapes and the earth wakes up to the sound of a sword getting blocked by a shield. a shield that once held some sort of banner but is now stained in blood and burnt to a crisp yet somehow found its way back to someone. thats the morning songbird. the peaceful rain it falls asleep to is the true reign of a player, whoever the "winner" is, and when lifesteal finally knows peace.

the only peace on lifesteal is after the destruction. after the dictators dig their swords deep into the chest of their enemies, their armor cracked enough to let the blade slip through. when impossible entities that break the entire nature of the server slip through (and yet despite the rules in place, the entities are spared for their ruthlessness.) lifesteal is alive and it feeds. every leader makes its plans knowing that their control will lead to the downfall of themselves or of the entire server. the cycle of death and death and death and death. the life on this server is just planning to make more death. every attempt at peace is never peaceful or it is immediately crushed, peaceful players fed to the core of the server and the hunters move on to find the server's next meal.

i was gonna say its funny how lifesteal has life in the title, but well. theres a reason the steal is there. there really is no life on this server and any attempt at it is destroyed. and if the life is not destroyed then there is peace and if there is peace the server itself is destroyed.

it's like a planet that escapes the orbit of its sun. a lonely player standing on a dead server and it has to wonder, is peace worth it?

the cycle starts again.

[coffeegnomee]

i want to say few words about the players.

their history is full of failures and difficulties, it was never easy for them, but they continued to adapt to new conditions over and over again and look for other ways to achieve their goal. they've jspent an insane amount of time on all of this, and it's impressive.

having started somewhere there, after abyss arc, having lost their way and direction, they found their identity and what they were ready to fight for. neither external nor internal problems ever left them, but they still finished this race together.

the motivation of the players is the torch, which they lit for each other. their whole arc was an arc of struggle – not only for achieving their goal, but also for simple survival, when even they themselves did not believe in success, when they lost the key components of what they were, they still continued to move forward no matter what, and eventually got their good ending.

the very fact how they got this ending, literally crawling out of the chunkban, perfectly embodies everything they are in their own way. no matter how difficult the situation is, they kept going forward because they don't have the right to give up.

i was really glad to see everyone so motivated. i was glad to see bacon with them despite his early ban, i was glad to see zam rooting for everyone, i was glad to see mapicc playing in the windows before parties and graduations and fighting with concussion, i was glad to see ro, who continued to push forward despite the terrible game of exhaustion.

and I was especially happy to see clown – he was not in the original team and at first it was difficult for me to believe him, but he was motivated and locked in so much that it caused only admiration. two days of waiting at the pb&j base, grinding crystals right before the finale... he showed himself to be the true player, and i was very happy to see him really dedicated to the team and their ideas. and, of course, it was wonderful to see that their bond with branzy is still strong. it's beautiful.

sometimes it was physically painful to watch them, but looking back, i'm glad it happened. they made a very good team. back in january, just starting abyss arc, bacon, zam and mapicc were looking for two more members to make a full-fledged team, and it took them another whole arc to find the remaining two people for this five. it is especially ironic that both ro and the clown, just like jumper, were their enemies before that.

i am glad to see such a finale. they're great. they won. and they absolutely deserved it. happy finale!

p.s. honorable mention: dear ally (-teammate?) of the players, wemmbu. it's interesting how he stayed true to their union in his own way, more because of the circumstances than because he felt he had to. zam said that wemmbu changed his mind about making his video about what happened, and it's sad – because his pov must be just incredibly interesting, because he put just some crazy amount of everything into this arc and just because it would definitely be a very cool video. but very understandable.

lifesteal tends to go wrong, and even a small problem can devalue a potential video for you, and there are so many things that went wrong, topped by the fact that your own plugin was turned against you. it remains for us to collect a picture of what happened in the future through the contributions of everyone else, and i hope that wemmbu has not lost the motivation to play on the ls as a whole.

[coffeegnomee]

Hi Zam, I wrote a whole analysis/essay on my blog about why I think Eclipse is still so loved by the community since you were talking about it on stream the other day and it's still such a beloved plot in my heart. It's about what brings a viewer in to a story: basically that you let us into your thoughts, wrestle with difficult situations and weigh what matters most to you, and then make a decision which moves the plot forward. You do it so well. Absolutely no pressure to read it though!

Hello I just read it and I loved it. This has inspired me to also read the mer essay which I will find time to do one day but this was very well put. My favourite aspects of story telling are based around character growth so it’s interesting to see how that carried over into Eclipse. I mainly thought about the dynamic of going from a brave fearless heroic character in season 3 to a more afraid character that hides from conflicts and worries about literally everything. It’s interesting to see how my character continued to evolve in believable (I think) ways despite me not really putting much thought into it. (It probably came from me trying to take everything as seriously as I possibly could and acting like everything happening is literally happening to me)

I love the section where you mention the other people that contributed to the story because you’re absolutely right. Without any of those people it wouldn’t have been anywhere near the same story. Subz having an entirely different character arc that you can view through his streams is also one of my favourite parts of the story. Multiple perspectives added a lot to our interactions because through every conversation you would’ve seen what made him act the way he did and I think that’s beautiful.

I already believed it before, but man. If I made a video for season 4 that only centred around the eclipse federation and was more accurate to the streams, it’d be a completely different video. Thank you for making this, I’m so excited to take certain things I did here on accident into account for next season :333

[coffeegnomee]

Why the Eclipse Federation is so beloved for so long. An essay about Story.

In the book “Story Genius: How to use brain science to go beyond outlining and write a riveting novel” author Lisa Cron proposes:

“What drives a story forward is, at first blush, invisible. It’s not talent. It’s not voice. It’s not the plot. Think electricity. The same way even the most powerful lamp is useless unless it’s plugged in, a story can’t engage readers without the electricity that illuminates the plot, the voice, and the talent, bringing them to life.

The question is: what, specifically, generates that juice?

The answer is: it flows directly from how the protagonist is making sense of what’s happening, how she struggles with, evaluates, and weighs what matters most to her, and then makes hard decisions, moving the action forward. This is not a general struggle, but one based on the protagonist’s impossible goal: to achieve her desire and remain true to the fear that’s keeping her from it. As we’ll explore in detail, story is not about the plot, or what happens. Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result” (bold added) 

And more to the point, “You can’t write about how someone changes unless you know, specifically, what they’re changing from.”

———

Where we begin

We launch the Eclipse Federation arc with PrinceZam telling his tale to ItzSubz_ in Detroit. Zam has just left his team because they duped thousands of items, terrorized the server, and were unwilling to let go of this unfair advantage. He tells how he battled them on the nether roof, lost everything, and was exiled. He was chased down, followed to his castle and was terrorized every day until he was killed over and over (#stonesword). He’s lost everything. He needs a team, he needs friends. 

This is where our story begins, a hero who has a specific and definitive backstory, something that compels him to reach out to our inciting incident: speaking to Subz when he’s on 2 hearts. 

Subz, seeing everything that has happened, sympathizes with Zam citing that he thinks they have both been wronged by the server and it’s time they stopped letting that happen. 

This is where the tragedy begins. 

Subz operates under the assumption that Zam wants to get back at those who wronged him. Zam agrees with this in the moment. 

But Subz fails to realize that it is the exploits that caused Zam to be wronged: if the exploits hadn’t happened, if the dupe war hadn’t happened, Zam would never have left his team and he, in turn, would never have been terrorized for weeks. 

And above anything else, Subz fails to realize that Zam does not want to be on a team that exploits.

Our hero, with a definitive backstory, is placed in a situation that directly places tension on that selfsame backstory.

The days go by and the team, now including Vitalasy, grows together, bonding over shared fights, laughing and joking, creating silly bedrooms with the most obnoxious blocks possible. 

All is well.

Then Ashswag reveals that he can one-tap any player, in any amount of armor, he has seemingly infinite amounts of totems, and he’s acting like he’s on a power trip, giggling and evading questions. 

Exploits have returned to the LifestealSMP.

Zam’s heart sinks as he realizes that something huge is brewing on the server. And it’s worse than any duped item he previously had been involved with.

Confused and hurt, he reaches out to his team to figure out what their next steps will be. How they’ll fight this disaster. 

But tragedy strikes again. Thanks to the beauty of streamed content, Subz accidentally goes live instead of starting a recording and he reveals that he and Vitalasy are the cause of these new exploited items and that they are very upset with Ash for showing them off. Because of this mistake, they decide to tell Zam everything.

Suddenly, against all odds, against all logic, against all reason, our main character is once again on a team who is using exploits and is unwilling to let them go.

It baffles the mind. How could he have been so clear with Subz about the reason behind him leaving Team Awesome and Subz still let him on the team knowing they had this exploit plan.

Once again it’s the beauty of streamed content that has brought our main charater into the most absurd of situations: they’re friends. Genuinely. Outside of content. Of course Subz brought him onto the team. Why would he not.

The reasons for the situation are simple, but the gravity of them affects Zam deeply. 

Our hero has to face a situation that directly relates to his past, as struggle of friendship vs values. 

No longer is this a situation of school yard bullying, creating obsidian prisons at spawn and using duplicated items to win fights; this is an apocalyptic situation. Lifesteal season 4 will end if this exploit is not stopped. What was obsidian is now bedrock, what was duped netherite is now one-tap potions, what was once withers destroying spawn are now mysterious creatures that kill players instantly.

So our hero has to face not only the apocalypse, but also himself. Battling against his love of his friends and his need for community and safety, while also battling for the safety of everyone on the server.

These streams slowly unfold a dark reality that anyone who has every been in a bad relationship has had to face. What do you do when the person you love is no longer recognizable? 

When your values are no longer aligned, have never been aligned? 

Do you leave them? Do you stay? Do you hope you can change them? 

How do you process the fact that they lied to you, let you in knowing that you are diametrically opposed to something that they were secretly doing? How do you process that it was an accident? That you hadn’t communicated the depth of the importance of this value (not exploiting) well enough so they didn’t pick up on it as important to communicate from the start?

How do reconcile lies that are told to your face? How do you stand up for yourself in the face of gaslighting? 

To quote Lisa Cron again, “The purpose of story - of every story - is to help us interpret, and anticipate, the actions of ourselves and of others.” (bold added)

This is the foundation of why this arc was so tragic, so compelling. Why it sticks in my mind for over a year now, the details as clear and crisp as the day I watched the streams. I can still see the actions being played out in that Minecraft blocky world like it was yesterday. The deepslate tiles of the communication room, the glowing yellow and purple and red signs, the prison in the sky, the exchange of trust apples. 

It’s not about the apocalypse, it’s about one man’s battle within himself. So he leaves the team. Sticks up for himself and stakes a claim against exploits.

But the tragedy continues. As the days pass we realize that maybe Vitalasy was telling the truth and he isn’t going to be the villain. Everything contradicts this opinion. He’s flying, he’s one-tapping Planet in the prison, he’s using the potions. He’s going insane but remaining delusional. 

And yet he continues to insist he’s not evil. He’s good. 

Every storytelling tactic says this man should be the villain and yet he refuses to do so (creating some new interesting content as the streamers have to contend with other members who don’t act within the rules of Play and of Content).

Eventually Vitalasy burns all his exploited items. Zam, left in abject frustration, releases a chunk ban which only bans Mapicc. Giving up, he leaves. And Vitalasy bans himself, throwing himself off the prison over and over, sealing the story that he is not the villain. He was misunderstood.

To quote the Mer essay “anger transmute(s) into grief as if by magic” and FarmerZam is born. The story has affected our protagonist deeply and he has changed. He has no enemies. He refuses to look at how he’s hurt his friends because it’s simply too painful. Everything that could have gone wrong has. 

Then Subz revives Vitalasy. Takes him around the server to their old bases while Vitalasy remains in depression about being misunderstood. He doesn’t want to be here. 

But as Subz reveals the final base, before they go through the end portal, Vitalasy catches a glimpse of a new sign room, one filled with depressive thoughts. The same thoughts he has been having this whole stream. You can almost hear his posture fix as he realizes the state of mind Subz is in. He needs to convince Subz to stay.

But we all know what happens, the trajectory of lives are changed. Subz has Vitalasy kill him, banning him off for the rest of the season, promising to be back when Vitalasy needs him most, but for no one else. 

Zam sees the death message and panics. He needs answers, he needs to bring Subz back. He’ll do anything to bring him back since it was Subz, it always has been Subz, who took him in when he had nothing. He realizes in a flash that he cares more about the friendship than about any values he held. But it’s too late now.

The tension, the sorrow stays. Zam decides to repair all his old friendships before the wormhole opens and this world ends. Vitalasy is forgiven. Spoke, Mapic, Ro. Planet, Bacon, Jaron. Everyone he betrayed. Everyone he let down.

But he forgot about Pangi. 

But Pangi didn’t forget about him. He has always been there for Zam, but Zam time and again has abandoned him. He’s had enough. With the server ending, he’s going to get his amends, make him repent (thanks Chips. I mean. Credit to the artist)

He traps Zam in bedrock. 

And Zam breaks. 

Friendships, betrayal, enemies. Everything comes full circle. It seems you can’t escape your past just as you can’t escape being on the exploit team.

Once again we enter the story with a defined background, but this time it breaks Zam completely. 

It’s not about exploits. It’s not about fairness. It’s about friendship. It’s about Subz. Subz was the only one who truly cared about him. He didn’t bring him onto the team maliciously, he really and truly cared about Zam and now he was Gone. Grief wells to the surface, Subz’s words about getting back at everyone who wronged them rings in his ears. 

He’s going to talk to Spoke and end the world. 

But his heart rebells even now. He’s betraying everyone again. But he’s sick of betraying. He won’t do it again, no matter how much chat tries to convince him Spoke is just using him and doesn’t care about him.

He’s going to end the world so that Subz will come back. 

And then the pièce de résistance. Subz IS revived. And he’s disappointed in Zam for changing sides and joining the exploiters when he left them because if it.

The depths of that final conversation makes Zam’s story the most insane tragedy. It has been 5 months of near daily or every other day developments on this story. The twists and turns have produced laughter and tears, cheering, anger, frustration, satisfaction, depression. 

And in the end? Subz still chose Vitalasy. Man how I wanted them to take him back in that moment. But what was done was done. These are the consequences of our actions. 

And in the end the circle comes to another completion: he’s back on a team with Mapicc, the same person he betrayed over the duped exploits. They promise each other to end the server with everyone banned, no matter what anyone else has to say. In the end they jump into the portals together and the server is moved to season 5. (I too, in union with where Zam ended his video, think it’s a good place to end the plot here rather than with that final scene on the grass. This is the last character decision he made)

———

The Present Moment

Zam was talking on stream a few days ago about how Kaboodle wanted to know why Eclipse was so beloved still. Mer’s essay came up (which I read and absolutely loved), but the essay talks more about the dynamics of the streamers themselves and how their relation to Play made the story compelling to watch. Which it absolutely does, and I’ve written about how much this has reframed how I view Lifesteal.

But I think that only covers one aspect. The deeper reason why there’s still fanart being drawn of Eclipse is how Zam created (and/or was handed) one of the most tragic plot lines ever created by man, and how he allowed himself to be affected by the story, and how he brought it alive through his streams as he “struggles with, evaluates, and weighs what matters most to [him], and then makes hard decisions, moving the action forward.”

And this is why Zam is so beloved by the community in general. This is how he approaches every arc on Lifesteal. Most recently the Joker arc launched from the Abyss betrayal, which in turn, after his ban the first day of hardcore, turned into the possession arc as he realizes his love of Mapicc and Ro goes beyond his obsession with Minute and Jumper. 

Each note of Lifesteal flows into the other as he lets us into the inner workings of his mind as he weighs one decision from another.

Because at the end of the day, I remember the tragedy, the longing for friendship and the betrayals, more than I will ever remember the circular reasoning of Vitalasy or the “okay”’s from pb&j. I only remember the strained voice of Zam as he wrote signs and went in circles trying to reconcile the fact that he couldn’t stay on a team and he couldn’t leave. How he was being dangled off the edge of a cliff being held up by Vitalasy. How Minute just doesn’t get it, he needs to be shown what Lifesteal is. His maniacal laughs as the Joker. Zam allows the story to affect him and he uses every ounce of it to create even more. 

As Branzy said in the therapy session “It’s a human story. About what humans are.”

To their credit, Subz and Vitalasy also allowed themselves to be affected by the story. Without Vi banning himself because he was so misunderstood, and Subz bringing him back to ban him so that Eclipse could have some sort of ending, and without Subz doing so much lore with Zam in 1 on 1 conversations, we wouldn’t have the same story.

The same with Pangi finishing his lore by trapping Zam because Zam didn’t do the god-off with him. The same with Ash being Ash and flexing his god powers. The same with Spoke bringing Zam into the team and then getting caught up in managing the wormhole so he didn’t have time for 1 on 1’s with Zam to make him feel totally accepted as a valuable member. The same with Mapicc always being willing to let go of the past to save himself as well as never letting go of the past so he has something to do on the server. The same with Planet talking to Zam and Bacon and figuring out how to fight the exploits and realizing they needed to convince Zam to betray. The same with Branzy giving the craziest therapy session lifesteal has ever seen. Without each member allowing themselves to be affected by the story, the story doesn’t go anywhere. 

[coffeegnomee]

I read the Mering essay in the aftermath of ls Sunday, and the shift in the major conflict from what we saw in s4 with Vitalasy and Zam to this new tension with the new players and rp is so fascinating.

With the meeting on Monday, we saw a breakdown in composure from pb&j when the Players refused to show up to the anti-trapping box (so proud of the Players for finally putting their foot down). It was something that bothered me when I first watched it. 

They took such a small conflict, one that they have created for themselves with the arrow cannon (hello the consequences of your actions), and it was the most tense part of the entire meeting.

And it hit me that Minute&co see Lifesteal more as a recording server than a place of Play. Conversations about rules should be done non-canonically, behind the scenes, away from the cameras. But if they have to be in the script (“script”), everyone should show up so the recording can be pretty. 

We’ve seen this before. Conversations on motive shouldn’t be brought up over and over, pvp should be limited for ease of editing, conflicts like blowing up bases shouldn’t be done more than once so it doesn’t get repetitive.

But that’s not Lifesteal. It’s an unscripted free-for-all where every single player gets to have a say in what they themselves do, and it can be wildly unpredictable. The goal is to play, literally have creative fun, within that world and craft a conflict and story within that.

Ro’s line “I feel like- nah - I feel like it’s honestly cooler that like, now there’s no more higher power left. Like it’s down to the players, like this is a human story, not like a let’s get god to revive everyone” 

And Jumper claps back with “and then what do we get out of this”. 

Jumper is looking for a recording solution. Her recording has been messed up a Lot. Woogie, Vortex, Planet, and Terrain have all died. Zam and Mapic and Bacon have all died and now Pangi and Spoke are basically dead since they’re being possessed. 

This vision of a peaceful ending is gone. And pb&j Need a recording-server Kingsmp/Civ event-type plugin to add a revive beacon (something, can I say on the side, exists within Lifesteal already. But thanks to the presidency arc has been taken away. They could advocate for the complete removal of all presidential decisions and I would love that, to have a vanilla Lifesteal ending like season 3, but it is too late. But they do have 86-odd hearts. Reviving everyone would be trivially easy)

Or they could be moved by the narrative and see that the peaceful option? It was never possible on this server. But that's an rp solution soooo

(I love them anyway)

——-

Hey guys, I’ve been a vod-only watcher since the Eclipse betrayal, and I’m finally saying hello! Live streams are painful for me to watch since I’m a chronic pause-to-freak-out-about-the-lore-before-moving-on (or when I’m just deaf), so unfortunately I’ll probably never be in chat. 

But mer’s essay has actually reframed my entire mind about Lifesteal this season and I can actually enjoy watching this conflict unfold, all four days we have left of it, so, thank you Mer!