#aka niki should never be allowed to have free time ever

[kitamars]

domestic doobles from this weekend

[lazyliars]

The Quackity Meta: Justice without the Blindfold

[Anonymous asks: (DSMP) Somebody talk to me about Quackity and Eret’s character. I wanna talk about what Quackity’s views on power are with what he’s planning to do with Sam along with whatever he saw in the egg. I wanna talk about why Eret thinks reviving Wilbur is the best option for the sever to lead and their views on what a leader should be with them being the king of the Dream SMP. I wanna talk about Quackity planning to create a casino for the server to rise to the top. What does it mean to be king?]

[/rp. All mentions of dream smp members should be assumed as referencing the character, not the cc, unless specifically stated otherwise.]

At the heart of every conflict, if you look closely enough, you will find a similarity. Two contrasting ideals will reveal their own likeness, in the stage they play out their war – they both fight for the same result; to be known and followed and asserted, and in this they are the same. There would be no conflict if both sides shared nothing in common.

Lets talk about Quackity.

We'll gloss over a good deal of Quackity's history to get to the meat of this discussion, which involves Technoblade. But there are a a few lesser known facts about Quackity's early days on the server that are relevant to the discussion, like  that Quackity joined the server because of Tommy.

Namely, he joined for The Cartel, a short-lived organization comprised of him, Tommy, Tubbo and Jack Manifold, and their aims of obtaining power over the entire server by getting a monopoly on one object, the Phantom Membrane.

(Trivia: This is why Technoblade had to strike a deal with Tommy for the membranes – Phantoms are turned off on the Dream SMP now, so their monopoly actually ended up working. (Un)fortunately, Tommy traded nearly his whole supply for the priceless act of... making Techno scream really loud and talk in a funny voice. Worth it.)

However, Tommy's interest in the Cartel waned almost immediately, to Quackity's frustration. Tommy was constantly busy with his Vice Presidential duties in L'manberg. Quackity wasn't entirely left out, and he helped Tommy on multiple occaisions, but this was back in Wilbur's L'manberg, where non-europeans were strictly banned.

Quackity would slowly come to resent Tommy for this over time. He joined the server to be with him, took his side in nearly every conflict, including the ones that were L'manberg-oriented, and yet he wasn't allowed to be a citizen of his friend's own nation.

The resentment would reach a boiling point when Quackity discovered Wilbur's bid to consolidate power by running a sham election – with a one party system. Quackity challenged him, formed Swag 2020, and the rest is history...

The takeaway here is that from the start, Quackity has been shunted aside by people in power – Tommy, Wilbur, and then later, Schlatt. This wouldn't prevent him from executing his own immoral power grabs, but that trait – the distaste for people with power holding it over him, is one that would stick around, and become even more prominent later... Quackity has more reason than most to hate tyranny.

But “Tyranny” Is a word thrown around on the SMP often enough, that it's probably up there with “betrayal” and “pop-off” in total wordcount. But few use it more commonly, or more persuasively, than Quackity and Technoblade.

This begs the question: what is Tyranny in a M/inec/raft role play, and why do Quackity and Technoblade both detest it so much while still hating each other?

Well, after a moderate amount of research, I have discovered the following:

Tyranny is complicated.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

...No, but really. Tyranny is very old concept. The words originates in, you guessed it, Ancient Greece, but conceptually, the idea goes waaaay back.

Now, that last thing I wanna do is give anyone a history lesson. I'd suck at it and I haven't done that much research. But the takeaway here is that “Tyranny” has come to be defined in fairly vague terms. We'll look at a few different ones in reference to the SMP.

Oxford dictionary defines a Tyrant as: A cruel and oppressive ruler. / a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way. / (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

Lets look at the first and last definitions:  A cruel and oppressive ruler; (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

By these definitions, one could call Quackity tyrannical during his term as Tubbo's VP. He exercises the power granted to him as a government official to spearhead an operation to execute a man without trial. He violently invades the home of a citizen and then puts said man on house arrest, and to subdue the target of this operation he threatens a pet (-a vague but ostensibly severe criminal act in the terms of m/inec/raft specifically-) and then reveals to Techno that the reason he's doing this actually has nothing to do with the crime Techno was accused of, and it is instead a ploy to consolidate power.

Quackity is leveraging his position in the government to amass power, and using that power to harm individuals (Philza and Techno,) in process. As an added bonus, his position in that government came from usurping Schlatt, a legitimately elected official. Thus, Quackity is a Tyrant.

But there, in Schlatt's government is where things get complicated.

Quackity had some power in Schlatt's government. Not the same kind as he did in New L'manberg, but arguably a more unrestrained form – Quackity could basically do whatever he wanted, as long as it pleased Schlatt. In New L'manberg, Quackity needed to convince not only Tubbo, but the rest of the cabinet whenever he wanted to initiate a new project. New L'manberg, while still maintaining a ruling class, had a far more equal distribution of power than Manberg did. It was still democratic.

And while we're on the topic of Quackity as Schlatt's VP, Quackity had almost instant regret the day of the election. He was undermining Schlatt from the start, questioning him, trying to stop Tubbo from breaking the signs that read “if you break this sign, you hate your viewers” and freeing Niki when Schlatt trapped her in Jack Manifold's house and then whispering at her to run.

Quackity only fell into step with Schlatt in the aftermath of Election day, when he saw a major desire fulfilled; the tearing down of L'manberg's walls. These walls were a symbol of L'manberg's isolationist roots that prevented Quackity from joining in the first place. It was one of his biggest promises whilst campaigning.

From this point on, up until the festival, Quackity would be in support of Schlatt. The things he did try to push back on would be downplayed and ignored, if not scorned. This period of time is difficult to pick apart where Quackity's personal morals and ideals begin, and Schlatt's influence ends. The steadily worsening abusive dynamic between them doesn't help this vagueness, either.

I point this out because I've seen people conflate Quackity's abuse at the hands of Schlatt, and his willingness to participate in Schlatt's rule as being of the same root; implying that Quackity only followed Schlatt because he was in an abusive relationship with him, when the reality is far more complicated. Yes, their relationship was a major factor in Quackity's actions, but downplaying his ambition and willingness to accept Schlatt's Tyranny when it helped him realize his own goals does a disservice to the nuance of Manberg-era Quackity.

What all of this points to is an individual who has a strong, some might say defining sense of Justice, yet also a susceptibility to Temptation. Quackity’s experiences with disenfranchisement by Wilbur and Tommy, coupled with his Dark horse victory in the election paints him in a sympathetic, even heroic light. But the way he slowly relinquished more and more power to Schlatt, and ended up indulging in the fruits of tyrannical gains when they proved they could get him what he wanted.

...

So, back to the question... Is Quackity a tyrant?

The answer to that question is a solid “mmmmaaaybe??”

It comes back to what you consider Tyranny. Quackity has never held complete power – he has always, always been scrapping and struggling and fighting to get a foothold in the machinations of the truly powerful, like Dream and Wilbur. He's very much an underdog story.

On the other hand, the times that Quackity has held positions of power, he's done some questionable shit. People like to forget that, while he was deeply disturbed by it, he wasn't exactly against Tubbo's execution at the festival. Putting Phil on house arrest and executing Techno without trial also count against him.

Like most things on the SMP, it's just complicated. Quackity's motivations run deep and aren't always obvious. He doesn't seem to want to hurt people just for the sake of hurting them, or use his power in arbitrary ways, but when he can personally justify it, the sacrifice of his moral integrity gets severe sometimes.

What it looks like is that more than anything else, Quackity wants control, and to never, ever lose his own autonomy. That is also why he despises Technoblade.

...And here we are at the Technoblade part of this meta, AKA the MASSIVE BULK OF THIS ANALYSIS. Which you can read HERE, because it’s too long to fit in just this one post.