#and the original scene this is from was in minecraft and that just doesn’t work for references

[elairetexe]

“Acho I’m pulling you in- ACHO!”

Click for better quality, timelapse and me screaming about this moment under the read more

Timelapse:

OH MY GOD THIS MOMENT IS LITERALLY MY FAVOURITE THING EVER?? I HAVE REWATCHED THE STREAM SO MANY TIMES AHHDJDKSNSNSMS!! The way Owen was so quick to volunteer to dangle Acho in, they way she missed every opportunity to grab onto something?? The fucking way he yelled Acho’s name when falling into the whirlpool is just AUGH!! Also I will never forget how Owen said “if we weren’t still attached to eachother I would’ve drowned”. What do you mean by that why aren’t I seeing more angsty fics about it??

[watercolorsam-arts]

Why the Minecraft Movie looks so bad

Okay, let’s see if I can make this work

Hi, I’m Watercolor, currently a student learning animation and visual effects. I’ve got some more technical explanations for why exactly the trailer looks god awful

I’m gonna do my best to explain this in simple terms, but if I don’t explain something very good, let me know and I’ll explain more. Alright, this is gonna be a long post

Starting off with the obsession with backlighting. See how it doesn’t really match the environmental lighting? That’s one of the major things that makes it look so weird to a lot of people. It could have been done to better distinguish the actors from the background, but it does that a little too well and makes them look way too out of place. The environment has a very nice constant (most likely singular) light source, which is most likely an HDRI.

An HDRI (or high dynamic range image) informs the animation software on how the scene should be lit, and is often a weird panoramic image of whatever physical area you want to replicate.

In a reverse case, adding a CG character into a real set, you could take an HDRI of the physical set, and use it to apply similar lighting. Adjustment will most likely have to be hand adjusted by the lighting team (and tbh they add a lot of extra lights in anyway. It just needs to look right) but it’s a fantastic starting point for the compositing and lighting teams.

However, the McM’s live set has way different lights set up then what is seen in the environment.

Here, for example, the live set is most likely being lit by standard 3 point lighting, which are not only the wrong color (the lighting on the environment is much more yellow) but also washes out any shadows that would help define the actors. If this movie wasn’t obsessed with backlighting, you could fix that by lighting the actors and environment from the front, but because the sun is in the back, they have to make the front of the actors unnaturally brighter to see them more properly. I have a slight idea on why the kid in red looks especially “photoshopped” in, and it’s mostly because his hoodie doesn’t have a similar reflectiveness to everyone else’s outfit, and his hair is a more neutral color, causing the highlight to be even more washed out. Also, while we’re here, the cube is a physical prop, but it was not lit up during filming, and all the light output was tossed on after. And it’s really inconsistent and honestly, lazy. For the most part they just hit it with a blue blur effect in post, it doesn’t actually cast any light.

Another major issue is the color difference between the actors and the environment. The color balancing on the actors is particularly garbage, they’re somehow desaturated while also being too saturated, I don’t know how they managed that. But the technical issue on why it looks odd, is because the physical camera cannot physically pick up the same vibrancy as the “camera” in the CG world. You might have seen an example of this when trying to take a photo with your phone, especially of a very colorful event like the sunset. It’s also why “ugly sonic” looked particularly out of place, he was 10x more saturated than anything else around him.

Having the actors on a very low effort green screen stage also completely ruins any chance of getting the proper ambient light or ambient occlusion.

Ambient occlusion is basically the bounce light from other objects in your scene, gamers might know this as a form of ray tracing (ray tracing is live changes in ambient occlusion, games without ray tracing bake in ambient occlusion to get a similar result)

When everything is CG, (again art style aside) looks pretty darn good actually!

I attempted some edits to see if anything could make it look better (left is original, right is mine), and I don’t think proper lighting or anything could actually fix what this movie has wrong with it. They should have made the whole thing animated, I don’t think any amount of bullying would fix this, the studio basically has to scrap the actors, and make new CG characters from scratch in the same style as the rest of the world.

All of this is not the fault f the animators, or any of the vfx team, they did their absolute best with what they had, this is 100% the fault of the higher ups on this project. I have no idea how this good this far into production without ANYONE saying that it was a bad idea (Either that, or a lot of people got fired, which is unfortunately a likely possibility)

[t-the-ring-master]

“I could never write. I wouldn’t be good at it.”

Girl says who?

You wanna know what my first story was about? I wrote it with my best friends cousin (well I did she just gave me characters and gave me some ideas) and I wrote 20 chapters on that thing. It was about my character and her character becoming friends in high school and her character helped my character find the office after the normal textbook bully interaction and ended up with the wrong school schedule landing them in all the same classes together.

They had every Y/N 2015 tropes ever, from bullying, to marry sue, and even prom. It was god awful, but guess what. I loved it and was so proud when I finished it.

I have of course grown as a writer and write so much better now with practice and learning my preferences. Just know if 14 year old me can write a 20 chapter OC garbage fanfic, then you can write something you’re proud of at the time too.

Don’t know what to write? Find a fandom you enjoy and write about a character.

Don’t think you’re original and don’t wanna do something over used? Who cares! If you enjoy a trope then try it! I assure you, everyone eats up Enemies to lovers in every font. Just learn the difference between, bully to lover, rival to lovers, and mild dislike to lovers.

Don’t have a fandom? Make a random OC and throw some trauma onto that thing! I’m traumatizing a 15 year old boy in a situation of life and death with a 400 year old racist fairy.

All that being said. Never say “I could never be a writer.”

Because you absolutely can, you just need to learn basic grammar and find something you enjoy. It doesn’t even need to start out as writing. make a Minecraft scene or smp, add lore and go off of that. Use video game characters you enjoy for your story. Make a mini story on something you’ve always wanted to read/see in a story that no one else seems to have done in what you imagine.

I’ve gone from cringy dyslexic 14 year old author, to a dyslexic adult who is somewhat happy with her work and that is willing to take criticism and critique on their work.

That being said, you don’t have to be perfect to be an author, because I assure you, if you work on it, someone is gonna support that work and enjoy it like no one else. Because as you grow with your work, so will they and so will others. Also, you should be that person that gives that support to yourself, don’t rely on others attention to enjoy it. Idk why i decided to rant about this, but I just remembered a random conversation with a friend when she said she wouldn’t be able to start writing because she didn’t know how.

Believe it or not, it’s actually insanely easy to start. Write a sentence and go from there. No plot, no title, no characters. Just a sentence and see where that takes you.

[augustallosaurus]

Tag Game

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

I was tagged by @ogsimpgoose and then accidentally forgot abt it for a few days LMFAO. I was reminded tonight hence the poor formatting of the post because I’m doing this on my phone before I pass out.

I’m fairly certain @pastel-skulls hasn’t been tagged yet :) suffer

world building works

“The Myceal Desert” — originally a world doc dedicated to a cat civilization heavily inspired by Ancient Egypt that I’ve been considering adding into my Big Project (tm)

“The Origins” — a word doc dedicated to the scribbled down notes I have surrounding what was originally Wolvden Lore but has since grown into something much bigger. It’s currently mostly about the Parthenon of Gods that rule over my various wolf packs.

“End / Elytrian Lore” — a doc I have that’s similar to the Origins doc in the sense that it’s filled with what is mostly mindless notes and scribbles. Though this one is about my Minecraft Au and the History and Biology of the creatures of the End Dimension.

“The ARK” — admittedly my most empty word doc that is going to be scribbles of ideas for my AU based around the game Ark: Survival Evolved with the slightest hint of Horizon: Zero Dawn.

original character works

“The Afterwood CYA” — a choose your own adventure style game I’ve been working on and off over the past year. Essentially you play the part of a wolf (yes, within the Origins universe) that wakes up within a world of eldritch horrors and must do what you can to survive.

“Afterwood CYA Prologue” — another choose your own adventure game that would act like a prologue to the above. Unlike the above, though, it would have a ‘canon’ ending that would be alluded to throughout the main CYA game. It’s meant to be like a tutorial level for the larger CYA.

“Ghast loses her wings” — an original character of mine (more specifically, an elytrian minecraft oc based off the Origins Mod) gets her wings ripped off a la Maleficent style and has to come to terms with the consequences of that, both mentally and physically. The story is actually told through the eyes of Goose’s (tagged above! :D) OC.

“Lord of the Rain” — a God within ‘the Origins’ Universe, Thunder Weaver, comes face to face with his murderer; the woman who loved him more than anything.

Abandoned Works

^ I do not plan on finishing these fics, but I would be more than happy to answer questions about them :)

“In the Beginning, there was Nothing.” — a short, “introduction monologue” style fic that would have introduced the Parthenon of the Origin Universe as well as the reasoning behind their creation.

“Into the Night Sky” — another wolf fic but it was more of a ‘filler’ than anything else. Originally meant to be a short little scene explaining the beginning of a massive shift within one of the packs and was heavily inspired by dialogue from the show Grey’s Anatomy.

“Driftrot” — “My parents named me Vulturekit, for the markings on my face. My father always seemed proud of it, some sort of sign from Starclan, but as I grew it just felt like a bitter reminder.”

“Dying” — “Frosted was never an optimist, so when he realizes that Badger Bite doesn’t have the herbs he needs to help his friend recover from influenza, he goes to extremes to ensure Whispering Wood’s survival.” Set within the Origin universe.

[lunareclipsez]

the ‘make a fist and not a plan’ behind the scenes masterpost

I try not to ramble too much in my author’s notes, so I thought it would be nice to have a big old post that I continuously update with all my little notes about the pieces of canon lore and various superhero media that I’ve drawn on for inspiration for their role in the fic! I’m also adding some notes about any ‘blink and you miss it’ lines that confirm different character relationships, but might be hard to remember with chapter-by-chapter updates.

All characters referenced in the fic (so far! more will be added as they appear) are put in alphabetical order by the name they’re commonly called for my convenience.

Bad: Sapnap’s father and former mentor. Currently mentors Eryn. Powers have yet to be revealed.

Boomer: His power is inspired by Nightcrawler from the X-Men. I thought a sneaky movement ability would suit a bedwars player and someone with a frog motif.

Charlie: The details of his abilities aren’t confirmed yet, but the initial inspiration for his power comes from Ragdoll’s quirk, ‘Search’, from My Hero Academia. He knows a lot of the Essempi’s history.

Dream: Puffy’s former sidekick, currently teamed with George and Sapnap. His power is inspired by Shadowcat from the X-Men. I was very happy when I figured this one out because he stumped me for awhile, since I wanted something that was both strong and interesting. It’s also a reference to the fact that Dream the Minecrafter excels with movement and parkour.

Eryn: Bad’s present-day sidekick (I think the adoptive son dynamic they had in canon was so cute and under-explored so I wanted to draw on it for this fic!). Powers have yet to be revealed.

Fundy: An orphan. Does not like discussing his power.

George: Skeppy’s former sidekick, currently teamed with Dream and Sapnap. George is a wild one because his sotckpiling power reference a fantasy series that I like, Mistborn. He functions like a feruchemist, except he doesn’t need to use metals as a conduit. I wanted something that referenced the ‘canon’ of him constantly sleeping, and I really liked working the drawbacks of this ability into his character! There isn’t a one-to-one correlation, but the parts of his backstory that’s been alluded to are somewhat inspired by Hawks from My Hero Academia.

Hannah: Girl I am so sorry but your Elytra lore was right there... Born with a rare combination of a ‘useful’ hybrid trait (wings that she could use to fly) and a strong power. Power has yet to be revealed in full, but mentioned to be related to plants. Her arc is deliberately written with feminist themes in mind, especially since Hannah the Minecrafter has talked openly about doing the same with her character.

Karl: 🤫

Philza: Tommy’s current mentor. Technoblade was his former sidekick, but we don’t yet know what caused their separation. He’s got the epic bird wings, and I originally considered giving him Hawks’s quirk from My Hero Academia, ‘Fierce Wings’, but it’s kind of an awkward ability to describe without having the manga drawings as a reference, and I thought of something else that suited his story/character better (yet to be revealed).

Puffy: Dream’s former mentor. She is responsible for leading pro-heros as a a collective and reporting back to the Hero Commission. Powers have yet to be revealed.

Punz: A ‘vigilante’ (mercenary) who has ins with both pro-heros and villains. Powers have yet to be revealed (or have they?).

Purpled: Initially aligned with Schlatt. Has the ability to manipulate gravity, and this is somewhat inspired by Ochako’s quirk from My Hero Academia, but I buffed it to make him more OP.

Quackity: Died at the hands of XD, only to be resurrected and enlisted by Schlatt. Can shapeshift into anyone whose genetic material he ingests, and is also able to copy their powers while transformed (it’s not just aesthetic). His power was directly inspired by Toga’s quirk from My Hero Academia, with some tweaks here and there. I liked the shapeshifter headcanon that had floated around the fandom and I think it suits his planned character arc super well!

Sam: The Warden of Pandora’s Vault. Powers have yet to be revealed.

Sapnap: Bad’s former sidekick, currently teamed with Dream and George. His fire-powers are just basic and function via anime/comic book logic (ex: shooting fire at someone will just knock them out and burns only happen when they’re plot-relevant).

Schlatt: A villain who runs a pseudo-cult. Has the ability to bring back the dead, which is a reference to the fact that he was the first holder of the revival book before trading it in the lore. I was really happy to flesh out his backstory and try a new angle out with his characterization.

Skeppy: George’s former mentor. Powers have yet to be revealed.

Tina: Used to follow XD, but it now a prisoner in Pandora’s Vault. Her backstory and powers are directly inspired by Wolverine/X-23 from the X-Men. She’s got both the claws and the healing factor, that we know of. Her role in the story is inspired by the moment where she wrote ‘I want to be a god too’ in chat after seeing the DreamXD statue and her inclusion in the DreamXD fanclub.

Technoblade: Philza’s former sidekick, but now a prisoner in Pandora’s Vault for an unknown reason. Powers have yet to be revealed.

Tommy: Philza’s current sidekick. Has a healing power, but the drawbacks are currently unknown. I came up with his power because I loveeeee the idea of giving super chaotic characters traditionally ‘gentle’ abilities.

XD: The greatest villain the Essempi has ever seen. Currently locked up in Pandora’s Vault. Has the ability to take other’s powers and keep them as his own, and even distribute them to others. The extent of the power he’s accumulated is unknown. Directly inspired by the main villain of My Hero Academia, All for One. Since in canon he’s god of the server, I wanted to incorporate that into his motive and how he’s perceived by others. The whole idea of alluding to strong characters as gods is inspired by their presence in canon, but their lack thereof in this AU.

[ruby-whistler]

i made a list of the vibes of the hermits i watch, so you might want to check some of them out! this is just mostly jokes, but i thought all of the more “serious” propaganda was missing something, so have what truly makes hermitcraft worth it; the players’ unique styles!

will be back on my dsmp stuff asap but it’s the first day of season 8 and i would really appreciate if you checked them out through the links provided :]

Grian; [ episode one link ]

vibes of a 17 year old mcyter, is actually 27 and married

noo not my red jumpah!

chaotic capitalist

someone is making the server better through order? *starts another war* whoops, hand slipped :D

he built a- he rebuilt his entire megabase in survival, above a giant lake of lava, in the nether, on hard mode, upside down??

“watching as scar dies over and over in my trap is peak comedy and i’m tired of pretending it’s not” but it happens like 5 times i every season

video editing is very main-stream and good for short attention spans!

*sad montage over losing stuff he’ll get back in 15 minutes because he’s rich*

pesky birdd! great elytra flier! amazing builder! will tnt your house! poultrymannn!!

wholesome, chaos incarnate, talented architect

why won’t mumbo respond to my messages it’s been two weeks :[ (clingy)

doors???????????? your house has doors???? no doors for you good sir!

will laugh a lot at a lot of things, esp when he’s with his friends

genuinely just so fun to watch

Mumbo Jumbo; [ episode one link ]

perfect british accent

mustache man (warning: he has no mustache irl)

*fails ten businesses in a row* iskall please help

redstone is his element

“it’s actually quite simple” i like your funny words magic man, now can you repeat how in the hell you made a that fancy vault work-

filmographer?? i think? met up with grian irl

him and grian have a robot son named grumbot. that has nothing to do with the vibes but i had to mention him because he means a lot to me.

tries to stay out of wars and server politics until someone (grian) drags him into them

minigame maker, makes the hermits competitive and that is scary (also very funny) e. g. button, hermit challengesss!

“it’ll be fineee” *que shot of everything on fire behind him*

makes his base a living being and then all his neighbors end up feeding it instead of him

conspiracy theorist. bumbo baggins. the usual.

very entertaining videos that help you learn more about minecraft mechanics!

GoodTimesWithScar; [ episode one link ]

wheelchair creator with literally the best vibes

so wholesome i. he is so cool he makes me so happy :’D

*extremely cool announcer voice* ooooo hello there my fellow miners and crafters, good timeees with scar heree, and welcome backk to the wonderful world of hermits and crafting, and we’re flying over-

commentates everything extremely well

spends tenths of hours on builds within a single video and doesn’t bat an eye

lore for all of his builds! he builds these amazing bases to tell a story!

“i wanna see white flags! white flags, outside your base, by-“ wait no wrong anti-rebellion army leader

all videos have a clear objective

mostly building, but he loves hanging out/helping his friends!

loves disney movies! wants to go to space! :D

kind-hearted, always makes everyone else smile

can be chaotic but usually just tries to have fun and make sure everyone else has fun too

*flies into a tree on half a heart* wait what why did i die D:

scar. scar please eat. you’re going to die for the tenth time this video-

the non-chaotic capitalist, has extremely creative shop designs

a danger to himself, but also the kind of person you can’t be angry at for long

BdoubleO100; [ episode one link ]

the guitar music at the beginning of his videos brings a smile to my face, it just has such an immaculate mood

*camera pans over him as said music plays* ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of hoimycraffff

the way he talks is extremely endearing

one of the best builders on the server - probably best builder of interiors in existence

able to make a palette using any number of strange blocks and then make amazing builds using it

built a whole castle as a backdrop, then built an entire giant mountain for said castle

extremely sensitive to short jokes, usually gets pranked by others because his reactions are always so funny

his daughters show up from time to time in his room while he’s recording and it’s so cute

*has no way to see the sun but still knows it’s nighttime* gotta go schleep!

scar, pointing at him “this is why we can’t have nice sunsets”

(scar dies because of mobs every time bdubs isn’t on the server to sleep)

likes to be accomplice because he isn’t the one being made fun of (/lh)

*shoots himself in front of a confused grian because he thinks the guy wants his face again when he’s actually just looking for a netherportal*

is usually the underdog so it feels good when he wins

they’re all actually such great friends so it’s genuinely funny to watch

he himself is amazing at entertainment and just a very cool guy

ImpulseSV; [ episode one link ]

what’s going on everyone, my name is impulse and welcome back to hermitcraft!

always speaks with a smile in his voice

has a good dynamic with basically everyone

great co-worker and always helps out if he can

had his base turned pink during the swap, and instead of changing it back afterwards, he dyed his skin’s hair and clothing pink to match it

very cool and original building style!

makes a lot of farms and sells what he gets in his few shops

makes money to be able to do more stuff and make more farms

blows up most his base ever so often to rebuild parts. you know, like a normal person does in minecraft survival.

the grind is never over

the guy who always gets all of the work done on the school project and proceeds to be chill about it

always has very cool side-projects going on and puts his heart into all of them

pog timelapses!!

Rendog; [ episode one link ]

*short, funny scene from the video at the beginning slowly fades out into great music

dogs howling as the half-dog half-cog logo comes up*

greetiiings cyberdogs and citizens of the interbubs! this is ren diggity dawg coming atcha, in another minecraft episodes varuuummm the hermit. craft. server. (hey!)

we’re kicking things off today my friends, from the- *location name on screen*

that intro gets me hyped every time

he’s a furry who talks in bro language it’s great i swear - very atypical but fun

he transformed an entire biome into a star wars planet for his base

his building skills and dedication are incredible

horny (just a little bit)

the only person who cared about mycelium in the whole rebellion

does a lot of roleplay-themed stuff and mysteries to be solved

“b-dubba-dubs one hundred”

extremely upbeat & sweet guy

adds -age after everything “biddage” “flyage” to make it sound Cooler

amazingly positive always and funny as hell

mcc winner!! wooooooooo :D

always tries to be where stuff is happening and interact with people

very entertaining editing style

Iskall85; [ episode one link ]

drives joke into the mud and then picks them up and does it again which is funny

starts videos with one-off bits

iskallman!!! the superhero literally no one needed and yet there he is

only has one (1) braincell when with mumbo

they both do and they’re hilarious together every time

like when they laughed at squeaky noises for ten minutes straight. guys please you’re adult men

bernie the leaf master

omega (something) of doom!!

encourages gambling (in a videogame)

he has so many jokes he keeps using i can’t possibly fit them all in here

basically a wildcard

i have no idea what he’s doing this season

i have no idea what he’s doing ever actually

tame chaos, confusing to the point when it’s funny again

really great builder as well!

mostly for younger audiences but his videos are a good watch in general

feel free to send asks about hc! i’m already loosely involved in hermitblr but yeah, my dsmp followers aren’t immune :] /lh /j

[inksandpensblog]

@valenxizaw245 was doing a live recap of the newest episode last night/this morning, and reminded everyone on the discord of something important: there’s a huge disparity of info between each of the sticks, as far as “what is the ongoing situation” is concerned.

Green is the only one who knows Mango’s plan. He briefed Yellow and Blue on it, yes, but Green was the one who witnessed Purple’s original briefing. (This is especially noticeable after Mango obtains creative mode: all four caged sticks behold the lightshow but Green is the only one to slump in defeat.)

Yellow and Blue may only have Green’s briefing highlights to go off of, but they also have the fact that Mango attempted either to keep them distracted and out of the way, or to win them over. Before Green arrived, they had no idea Purple and Mango were connected. 

(There’s also something to be said about the scene Green walked in on to deliver said briefing; a scene that Blue had already noticed drew parallel to their first meeting with Purple. Green might’ve been too intent at the time to notice those same similarities though.)

(It is currently unknown how much of Green’s and Blue’s first meeting with Purple has been shared with the other sticks. For all we know, they might only be aware that Purple endangered them in the End.)

Orange and Red didn’t even know Mango existed until this episode. As far as they knew, trapping everyone in a parkour loop and stealing Alan’s minecraft had been Purple’s idea and Purple’s work alone. They don’t know about Green being imprisoned, or about Yellow and Blue getting played for suckers.

(Heck, Green never actually told any of them about being imprisoned.)

(Come to think of it, all the other sticks escaped the parkour loop by exploiting different mechanics, but Green escaped because he noticed Purple acting sus and did what it took to be nosy about it.)

It’s possible that Orange still doesn’t know Purple and Mango are connected. Red witnessed Purple giving Alan’s minecraft to Mango (he’s the only caged stick who moves to follow the two when the exchange occurs, which might be meant to indicate his realization that Mango wasn’t acting alone; then again this could just be because he’s physically closest and the zoom-in would’ve hidden any actions by the other sticks), but as far as we’re aware, Orange just flew through the portal, saw some tall stranger using creative mode to manifest a black hole in the nether ceiling, decided that was Not A Good Guy Move, and attacked. 

Mango might not be aware that Red was possessed by Herobrine in the footage he has of Red using creative mode, but if he is, he deliberately kept that information from Purple. 

Green didn’t specify, in his briefing to Yellow and Blue, that Purple is working for Mango rather than with Mango, which is a significant step down from Purple’s positions in their first meeting and in AvLOL.

Green was physically closer to Purple than any of his friends at the time of Mango’s betrayal. It’s possible he had a better view.

Now that everyone’s been separated again, Red and Orange, the two sticks with the least amount of info overall, don’t even have each other to cross references with. 

[garrothromeave]

let’s talk about minecraft diaries rebirth.

and why it’s literally amazing. (warning: this will contain spoilers. lots of them. also, long post ahead.)

i think a lot of people hate mcdr because they were expecting a remake; but the point of rebirth is for jess to rewrite it. it wasn't supposed to be exactly the same.

honestly i went into mcdr with a closed mind. as an og mcd fan, i thought that this was going to suck ass and that i'd rant about how bad it was to my friends later. but actually watching it, i just... couldn't help but immediately fall in love with it.

ik im probably the only motherfucker that likes mcdr, but honestly how could i not? for one, garroth and zenix actually have personalities at the beginning. AND; the villagers? actually amazing. donna made me smile, visher made me laugh and cry, brendan was just bein as good as ever. like... i even didn't despise emmalyn with every ounce of my soul like i usually do?? the characterizations of them were GOOD, man.

and honestly, aphmau like--the way she spoke, her whole thing. it was reallyyy well done in my opinion. she was oblivious to things, but it wasn't overdone and wasn't done in a way to make her annoying. she's a very appealing character in mcdr, a main protagonist i do not mind following along with. her dynamics to the characters are really cool and all very unique.  gonna cut it here so i don’t clog y’all’s feed cuz i got a lot to say :)

the early use of aphmau’s powers was actually pretty cool as well, it also really showed how clueless aphmau really was to everything going on around her. AND UH, THE FACT THAT SHE THOUGHT THAT GARROTH FELT FAMILIAR? GOLDEN. absolutely golden.

AND GENE OH BOY, the early introduction of gene? ik a lot of people are upset about it, but god DAMN i love it so much. his role in the story is very important in original, and i cannot express how much joy this brought me learning that he was actually getting the proper attention for it. and the fact that gene and aphmau were working together?? i mean ik gene was just trying to use her to get back to the "shadow abyss" (pretty pog replacement for the nether, gg) but god DAMN i loved every moment of it. i found their dynamic to be pretty fuckin funny to be honest, would absolutely love to see more of it.

i might be biased considering gene is one of my absolute favorite characters, but i honestly think that introducing gene this early on in the story was a good move. again, he's literally the right-hand man to the shadow lord. it makes you really wonder why he didn't have as much of an important role in season 1 or even 2 of the original mcd plotline. also, we get some of that good-ol-fashioned exposition with seeing early on how vylad and gene interact. vylad’s at a very strange point in the story right now; his motives are unclear, even to the side he’s ‘supposed’ to be taking (aka, a shadow knight.)  another early introduction to a character is zane! this, my friends, is good. really good. i’d say that zane is the main antagonist of season 1 in the original series--and he wasn’t even introduced until like, episode 50. it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but him being introduced this early on really gives the audience a better understanding of what threats are out there and what our protagonist will have to encounter in the future. in the original series, there’s not much explanation as to why lords are disappearing/dying left and right--and while yes, that was supposed to be the mystery of it, having some of that early information is a better move in terms of writing. 

AND IVAN?? BEING A PART OF THE JURY OF NINE?? I COULD NOT HAVE ASKED FOR ANYTHING MORE LIKE GOD DAMN that was a very pleasant surprise i'll just say that, thank you jess :)

and no i did not loop the 4 minutes of screentime laurance got in that one episode haha who would do that i would never do that anyways

SPEAKING of laurance, im so glad jess actually wrote him in this early :) she totally could have just waited for the first time aphmau visits meteli and meets him there, but no! she put him in an early episode. i dont even care if she did it just to shut up the fans about laurance but man that made me so happy seeing him, even if it was only for a bit.

okay i kinda wanna go over the guards real fast firstly; garroth. ignoring how weird the helmet showing emotions is, i really like how garroth is portrayed. he's under a lot of pressure because the village is putting a lot of the blame on him for malik's death, and he's trying his hardest to keep things running. the fact that garroth utterly refused the to take up the position of lord and even got a little snappy about it was actually really cool to see as well. and while he doesn’t have that same “reserved, quiet, observant” feel as the original mcd version of him had, this version of garroth is absolutely awesome. he’s more direct and blunt, is significantly more sarcastic, and isn’t as stiff or as much as a pushover as he is in the original. he even has a sense of humour. also, no homo, but he’s kinda adorable.  plus, the desperation that he goes through during the whole thing is just--it’s really cool to see how hard he’s trying to prove himself and help the village. my rating for mcdr garroth? 9/10. the helmet... the helmet is the main thing throwin me off, i can’t lie. next, zenix. oh BOY do i have a lot to say about this man. first of all, his and garroth’s dynamic is incredible. when i saw how the interacted with each other, my first thought was: father and son. zenix has this immaturity to him that is so fucking fun and interesting to watch, and seeing how garroth scolds him is so fuckin good man. and! seeing how he interacts with the rest of the village... honestly, if jess ever picks this story up again, i would probably cry when zenix (literally) backstabs garroth. HELL, i hope that’s something that still happens, it’d be heartbreaking to witness this character that we’ve come to love hurting his mentor, the man who took him in. he’s just a really good character all in all, and much more appealing than the original mcd zenix. ...except season 3 zenix. no zenix can be better than that one.  either way, zenix is amazing written to be the comic relief and he’s just an all-out lovable character in this series.  finally, dale and brian. yes i’m going to group them up because there’s not much to say regarding them, but i do want to address them. for starters, we have brian; who’s already 16 when the story starts. good on jess for doing that, because in the original aphmau watched brian be born and age INCREDIBLY quick, haha. THOUGH i do feel like there’s a slight connection lost there--one of the hardest things about brian’s betrayal in the original series in the fact that we watched him grow up in phoenix drop. we were there from the moment he was born, to the second he betrayed phoenix drop. BUT OF COURSE, this version is a lot more realistic, so it’s understandable. i just think that if it’s brian who’ll be betraying phoenix drop again (if it even goes down that same route), it won’t hit as hard unless jess really takes the time to grow the connection between brian and aphmau.  as for dale; gotta admit, love it. and like, i think one of the main things about how good of a call it was to make him a drunkard from the beginning is considering how much the village is struggling. the fact that the second-in-command is literally drunk all of the time really conveys the message of, “yeah. this village needs help.” plus, he’s another good comic relief character. i loved seeing molly and dale’s relationship too, it was very funny.  PLUS. we were blessed with a well scene, in which aphmau had to help villagers out of the well. i don’t know about you guys, but that was one of my favorite nods to the original series. i cannot thank jess enough for that, there was a smile on my face the entire time. another amazing thing--visher’s character. instead of just being introduced to this quirky lil merchant who only had one or two interactions with aphmau like in the first one, we got to sit there and really get a feel for someone worth remembering and worth mourning over. we had a reason to be sad over his death, it wasn’t just some npc getting blown up suddenly. this was different, and this hurt.  one of the major things that i hope is to come out of this is for jess to fix the major mistakes she had when writing the first series. she’d expressed how unhappy she was with some of the decisions she made, and i’m glad that she’s getting that second chance to undo the things she didn’t like. this series also gives her a second chance to really, really dig into characters and their motives. like, gimme laurance backstory in better detail. or like, garroth and zane’s relationship from back when they were kids? or how vylad died and who killed him? etc etc. she’s already done an excellent job so far, and i can’t wait to see where this goes. that is, if she ever continues it. god, i wish there were more episodes so that i could seriously let you guys know how beautiful of a series this is. there’s so much i want to say about rebirth, but i think i’ll stop here. i might say some more shit about it later, but if there’s anything i’d want you to take away from this, it’s: give minecraft diaries rebirth a chance. there’s a lot of potential, and this is a chance for jess to really change things for the better! ... but again, that is if this ever is continued. 

[justalads]

this is an essay post that was written in response to an in-depth discussion i was having with another person on a lot of topics. that’s why it’s written like it’s addressing someone. because of that, it is a little confusing on its own (because the things in quotes are responding to things the other person said) but me and the person who runs this blog thought it would be better to make this a separate post, so that people who want to see this response can see it without it being attached to the person i was having the discussion with. we spoke to the person and they said that would be fine. with that being said, this is a very long post. if anyone finds parts of it useful, it will have served its original purpose.

so what i mean about it “making sense” that dream became like that is that it kind of does, you know? i’m saying that the desires were always there. not that he was always willing to go so far for them, or even that they were as strong as they ended up being! after all, there’s a difference between declaring war to reclaim land and people, and making a vault in order to take things that were important to people.

what he always did possess is a sort of “ownership” of the server. and this was probably founded from the fact that it was, you know, his server. he wanted l’manburg back because he didn’t like that people came onto his server and then said he couldn’t have something. and that’s one of his primary points in his conversation with skeppy: the analogy he uses of someone coming into his house and saying he can’t have a table.

and later, in the vault, this is the reason he gives for wanting control: that it is his server. he tells tommy it isn’t supposed to be fair, it doesn’t need to be fair, because fairness implies equality, and he doesn’t see everyone else as having equal claim to the server. so that’s what i mean when i say the signs were always there: his statements match upand paint a path through the story. true, you don’t just “become” a bad person. there’s no reason for him to suddenly get all weird and want ultimate control, if he was completely neutral and peaceful in the beginning. this is why his character is decently written!

and since the potential was there in the first place, that’s what gave him the ability to or put him in danger of doing what he did.

so yeah, it’s true that his spiral was not only his fault, because even someone who thinks they own something is not going to just jump to the lengths that he did. he had other experiences, and saw how other people worked, and then was met by pushback from people when he wanted them all to do what he said. because his house analogy is lacking something: he owns the house, but everyone else lives there too.

it may be “his” server in that he pays upkeep fees, but that doesn’t mean he deserves control over everything that happens on it! if your roommate goes “i want this table and you can’t have it”, even if the house belongs to you, it’s kind of weird to go “no you can’t have it, it’s mine”. especially if all the roommate wants the table for is so they can play monopoly or something with their group. and even more so if the roommate will let you play monopoly if you want to (remember the embassy?), and if you can just buy a new table then what’s the point in getting upset over the one?

i just think you put a lot more of the responsibility on other characters. saying that all they did was villainize him and treat him as pure evil and break his boundaries is wrong because one, no, that’s not all they did, it’s exaggerated, and two, he was also doing things to them! it did not come out of nowhere! and clearly, his mindset didn’t come from nothing, so a personal flaw contributed to it! people who are innocent and care too much about others and are then mistreated do not do what dream did, and we know this because there is a character very similar to that: ranboo.

(i could talk about this for a super long time honestly. it’s very interesting how close they are, and since enderwalk ranboo is just ranboo with all his memories and he helped dream... there’s clearly something that happened that he’s forgotten that’s very important.)

hates conflict, tries to mediate things, cares about the people he loves to a fault. and we don’t see him running around and telling people they can’t build nations because it “divides people”! he has also been hurt and betrayed, but he still recognizes his responsibility to respect others and their agency. the difference between dream and ranboo is that one, dream has a spine, and two, dream thinks of the server as his. dream’s belief is one of the driving causes of his actions.

it’s true that nobody deserves to lose half their friends at once. it’s also true that before he declared war, nobody had any actual negative feelings towards him. they made fun of him for saying his side had more women. he made fun of them for having none. it was playful banter. that’s the thing about the hot dog stream: the tone is incredibly light. wilbur soot, known dramatic idiot, decided he was going to go play capitalism on a minecraft server. both tommy and wilbur at that point had been making various stupid attempts to gain “power”. and none of this was treated seriously, because others were doing the same kinds of things.

you know how many times tommy logged on and got involved in small petty conflicts? pretty much none of them are mentioned in canon again, because at this point, there wasn’t even much of a canon to get involved in. the smp at this point was a place for people to go and do bits. and invoking wilbur’s joke hatred of tommy and those like him seems a little unfair. wilbur’s main bit was calling tommy an annoying child. when wilbur was stealing the blaze rods, it was not an actual attempt to get power because it was not treated as such by anyone, it was treated with the exact seriousness that it deserved: sapnap and tubbo declared themselves the “police”.

what kind of actual control is going to come from taking blaze rods, especially on a server where you can just go get more? and it’s not like theft is really a crime on the server. everyone else chose to play into the bit.

it’s like now, when tommy shows up with a new idea and people who don’t like him start claiming that this is proof that he never learned anything and he was actually bad all along. the church prime thing, l’sandburg, any time he steals something or is rude to jack manifold. because although semi-lore is fun, sometimes people treat it as serious lore when parts of it are not intended to be and then use it to imply things about the characters that don’t line up with canon.

that’s kinda off topic and not really about dream, so i’ll move on

“i’d like to ask you to once again watch the actual stream.”

i mean, yeah. i did watch the stream. i don’t know a lot about george, and i prefaced my thoughts at the start by saying that. obviously attempting to catch up after isn’t as good as knowing the context and plot, (this sounds sarcastic but it is genuine i’m sorry sjhksjs) but i do want to offer this: it’s an opportunity to look at the plot in a different way. you say that you are on dream’s side in this scene, and while having that bias alone isn’t bad, i think it’s a good idea to attempt to see the other side. that’s what i’ve been doing while going back and forth with you; examining my own bias and attempting to look past it, and explain why it’s there.so dream kicks george off the throne. and you say that it’s not bad that dream does it, because george’s monarchy was already a figurehead. you know, i don’t see this as being any better? this means that when dream made george king, he already did it with the fact that george wasn’t really in charge in dream’s mind, meaning that dream was, you know, the ultimate authority. that is a power dynamic. dream has control over who is king of his faction.

when you watch the stream where dream makes george king originally, dream doesn’t really let him know that his power isn’t real. that’s the problem with this situation: the presence of a power dynamic alone is not the issue, it’s the fact that dream was misleading about its presence. dream just tells him “you’re king.” in fact, dream demonstrates more control over eret, by telling them just that they can’t be in charge anymore and george is king now. he tells them to take off their crown, to which they protest because it’s a layer on their skin and it would show their eyes, something they’re uncomfortable with. dream says “i need you to do it. you gotta do it. i mean, i’m not asking you, we have three of us here.”

they physically threaten eret. and by the way, the reason that dream thought eret had “betrayed” the greater smp? eret was attempting to help pogtopia and make things right with the people of l’manburg, something you claim was also dream’s wish during this time (he had switched over to manburg at this point). dream told eret that the king had a duty to remain neutral.

it is only then, when dream tells eret to remain neutral on things, that dream tells eret that the act of being king means nothing. this is where the “what makes you king” quote coms from, by the way. dream has the ultimate control over who is king. but whenever he makes someone king, he doesn’t tell them that. and when dream leaves, eret fully realizes this and admits that dream’s right: they don’t have any power. so what was the point of betraying l’manburg?

if there was no power with being king, why did george accept it? why was there even a king in the first place? the only reason eret agreed to betray l’manburg in the first place was because dream offered them power.

when dream confronts eret about remaining neutral, dream says “my plan is that there’s no manburg, there’s no l’manburg, there’s no pogtopia, there’s just dream smp and there’s dream smp everywhere. and that’s been my plan since the very beginning, i’ve never wavered on that. that’s why i had you betray them, and that’s why i gave you kingship, because i felt like you’d be a good king because you’re neutral.”

ignoring the fact that he’s twisting why he made eret king (they were on the side of l’manburg and he tempted them away), he also claims that his faction only has been his goal since the beginning. this will be important later.

cc!eret confirmed in a twitter thread on their alt that their character was possibly the longest victim of dream’s manipulation.

and finally, watching the stream where dream dethrones george, the thing sticking out to me is how dream is phrasing it. he says that george should step down because people are attacking him, and dream isn’t always going to be able to protect him. and then he says this.

“and i think you’ll just be targeted if you’re the king. and you want to be able to like, get revenge on tommy and stuff, right? so we can work together.”

i kind of wish he didn’t bring up tommy. i kind of wish his main goal at this time wasn’t just going after tommy because he thought tommy was the root of all the problems. and i think this kind of highlights a little bit that when dream built the walls around l’manburg again, it wasn’t just because he was “defending george” or anything, because i don’t think george really cared that much? dream was using the fact that it was george’s house that blew up in order to go after tommy.

after this line, the others all kind of gang up on dream, true. it’s partially for the joke, as evidenced by quackity’s “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!”, but it’s also kind of them being, you know, legitimately angry at his character. and it’s funny that it’s sapnap who leads it. sapnap brings up what dream said, that he doesn’t care about anything except for the disks. dream says that he didn’t mean it, and then george says “then why did you say it?” so dream saying that clearly hurt them, and he can’t just push it off by saying he didn’t mean it once.

and in the end, george doesn’t even agree before dream makes eret king again! george and sapnap are trying to have a conversation with dream about how they feel they’ve been treated, and dream brushes it off with “maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up,” before ultimately ignoring what they’re both saying because in his mind he has a good enough reason and it doesn’t matter what george thinks.

dream is in the act of passing power over to eret, and george says “i’m still king. i’m literally right here.” dream shushes him. dream also implies that the reason george is getting attacked is because he backs up everything dream says, reducing george down to an extension of his own will or calling him a follower. dream accuses sapnap of trying to divide him and george, and sapnap says this: “i’m not dividing anyone, i stand by george. he’s my king but most importantly he’s my friend.” dream replies that george is his friend but not his king.

i just sort of want to show you the other side here. george and sapnap weren’t just running around instigating conflict any more than dream was. and although george didn’t do anything as king, it meant something to him, because it was a symbol of the trust he thought dream had for him. dream saying he was taking it away for his own good meant he didn’t even trust george to protect himself. he was treating him like a child.

and then when george is silent, listening to everyone debate whether he deserves this or not, dream accuses him of only pretending to be sad. it’s true that he was pretending to cry, but i don’t think that warranted dream telling him he’s “acting like a baby” and that he was a bad king.

sapnap and george had a real point, and dream ignored them. he hadn’t addressed the things he had said that hurt them, and so they raised legitimate grievances with him! dream doesn’t treat their concerns as important, and talks down to george in particular.

ignoring the fact that sapnap and george were also hurting is kind of hypocritical. you’re right, “abandonment hurts you, no matter if the people have good reasons for it or not”. dream said the spirit thing before sapnap did any sort of real leaving him. and dream’s reasons were definitely not good.

i have no idea why you got the idea that george is so awful. he was walking around with his head down. the only one also calling him things like manipulative and a drama queen is, well, dream.

basically: (/hj)

george: :(

dream: you are attempting to emotionally manipulate me

butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

anyway

so sapnap, george and quackity felt betrayed there. they left, and went to mexican l’manburg to try and console george. and then dream shoots quackity and kills him, and tries to attack the others as well. it’s worth noting that quackity also had a reason to be upset at dream: dream’s treatment of l’manburg. dream then shows up and calls george a tyrant. dream never listens to what george says during this, he just continues saying what he already said. dream taking the kingship away from george hurt him more than letting him stay would have.

watching this is painful, because it’s making me realize just how much dream doesn’t actually care what his friends think! he says he cares, and he might think he cares, but then he calls them babies and liars and tyrants. his argument with george here reads like something awful. he’s using the excuse of “caring about him” in order to undermine and insult him, and take the moral high ground. dream essentially tells george that he didn’t make george king out of any respect for him, it was just random. he doesn’t treat his friends well during this scene. i don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to get angry.

when quackity, after sitting in silence for the entire conversation, says he disagrees, dream tells him that he’s just dumb. doesn’t wait to hear his reasons, doesn’t value his opinion, because dream is so sure that he’s right and he knows what’s best for the server, and by extension, everyone.

other interesting things: dream brings tommy into it again by saying he’s what causes all the problems on the server. dream tells quackity to think about what tubbo would think about him picking this fight. dream says that george would probably do anything he told him to do. his entire position is “you guys can think whatever you want, but it won’t change anything.” genuinely, tell me how this is them abandoning him? and when they do drift away later, tell me why they don’t have a reason to? dream doesn’t respect them! he takes their friendship for granted!

“would you consider it justified for all of tommy’s friends (even tubbo who he’s been close with for so long) to abandon him just because he’s said basically the same thing about the discs - like three times?”

thank you for bringing up the disk thing. do you really think that tommy and dream acted the same when saying that an item held more worth than their friends?

think about what the disks symbolize. control over tommy. tommy wants them back because they are a sign of dream having power over him! tommy doesn’t want his abuser having power over him! and yeah! it was a messed up thing for him to say to tubbo that the disks were worth more than him, but he apologized! he understood that what he said hurt tubbo, and he tried to rebuild the relationship! tommy took responsibility for what he said, and tried to be better. notice how afterwards, he was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of his friends? notice how in the vault he told dream to take the disks and do whatever he wanted with them, when dream switched from threatening the disks to threatening the life of tubbo?

and what do the disks mean to dream? they mean power over tommy. the disks have no power over dream. they are a tool that he can use to hurt and control tommy. and he never apologized for this, because he wasn’t sorry. sapnap told dream that this hurt him, and all dream said was that he didn’t mean it. who is he lying to, then? tommy or sapnap? it was so important to dream that he had ultimate control over the life of someone else that he almost drove them to take their own life. i’m sorry, but this comparison sucks.

people gave dream a chance. people gave him a lot of chances. the disregard he showed for others is disgusting, especially towards his friends, and even more so towards those who he didn’t like. my problem is that though you repeat that you don’t “blame” others for what they did, you still hold them to more responsibility than you’re willing to hold him to, or at least that’s what it seems like. i’ve been investigating the other side through this whole process. and yeah, there are definitely places where i was wrong. but sometimes i do not understand, and maybe that means i should just give up on trying to understand those places. if other people can see things i can’t, maybe we agree to disagree.

i legitimately cannot see dream being the person who was treated the worst here, but let me know if i’m misrepresenting you.

i’m sorry that i sound angry, and i’m not really upset at you, but the comparison of what dream said and what tommy said set me off.

“no one having respect for him as a person”

people did respect dream, man. he was the leader of his faction. he had a lot of power. his friends trusted him to be a good friend to them. but he didn’t feel like he had an obligation to do that, yeah? and you only get respect if you give it, so they stopped respecting them because he hurt them. he didn’t learn any hard lessons about violence being the only way because he never stopped to consider another way. when faced with a problem, his options were for the problem to go away or he would make it go away: surrender or die.

during the stream where he sets up the walls with sapnap, his message is the same throughout: wipe them out. no mercy. burn their land to the ground, leave no survivors. there’s no love in war. children get hurt in war. this is a warning shot, he says, as he fires into their land. as sapnap burns down tubbo’s house and chat spams “no mercy”. they don’t show mercy because mercy is weak, and they are powerful.

one day i’m gonna write a thing that talks about the greater smp like how people talk about early l’manburg because oh boy

i’d like to see evidence of dream learning that violence is the only way, and only being able to protect himself through fighting. i don’t remember this happening, i remember him generally choosing violence as the first option.

“dream didn’t have an arising god complex.”

a god complex means more than just saying “i’m a god.” there was buildup because that’s how characters work. tommy was also trapped in the prison, and he didn’t suddenly get a god complex at the slightest bit of power, did he? the definition of a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” dream cannot admit when he is wrong. he feels as if he has a right to the control of the server, and that grows into a state of obsession. and when he’s taking tubbo and tommy down into the vault, he mocks them for thinking he was weak or that he didn’t think ahead.

once dream knew he had control over death, the complex reached its peak, and that’s when he actually admits it. characters that antagonize others already possess traits that contribute to their arc.

and hey, i know that cc!dream says his character is blocked off emotionally. i also know that he’s been given a lot of chances to apologize to people, to be sorry, to admit fault, even in small situations. did dream show remorse during exile? did dream sound like he was being “forced” to isolate and control tommy, or did he sound like an abusive parent scolding a kid for something? when dream beat tommy and tubbo and took them down to the vault, did he sound sorry? the thing about subtext is that it has to actually be there, no matter how quiet, at least a little bit. listen to dream arguing with quackity after george was dethroned and tell me he sees himself as anything other than right.

a few one off lines are not enough evidence to wipe out the rest of his character’s development.

he sounds sorry once he is faced with direct consequences, because that is the only time he is held responsible for his actions.

it’s also a weak argument to say that something is happening when, as you said, we don’t see his pov. it is fair to say that i don’t know if it’s not happening, and that’s a good point. cc!dream’s comments about his character being closed off emotionally can mean a lot of things. for instance, they could mean that his character is willing to do this to himself in order to get control. or it could mean something else entirely, i don’t know. basing an entire fact about a character off something we don’t see at all doesn’t tell us anything useful about the character, and i apologize for doing that.

i guess my reason for saying that was that i don’t see evidence of him trying to get better during pogtopia. if we don’t see signs of him being sorry or attempting to treat other people better, why should we assume that he was doing those things?

“yes, and none of c!dream’s “friends” ever did.”

dream’s friends supported him until he abandoned them and disrespected them. his time in the prison is a consequence of his time out of the prison, albeit an unfair one.

“dream didn’t hurt george.”

dream’s disrespect of george is what hurt him. dream didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t attempt to understand what george was feeling, and he didn’t look for a compromise. and yeah, it was beckerson in the vault. he had a space for mars, he just hadn’t collected it yet. so yes, dream did betray sapnap. if you have legitimate evidence of sapnap doing something that made dream actually upset, before the vault, i’d like to see it. (there might be something lol i’m sorry i’m Very Bad on his lore but from what i’ve investigated i didn’t find anything really important.)

i don’t think puffy saying “this person does bad things” is her dismissing their trauma. and the eggpire and her have both hurt each other. puffy isn’t the Trauma Designator of the server. if there’s an instance of her straight up saying that someone doesn’t have trauma then i missed it.

“she’s another one c!dream was attached to and who failed to ever reach out to him”

i don’t see evidence of this? there was the one stream where the relationship was established, but after that he never tried to seek her out. he doesn’t even talk about her. it’s not a failure from her to not reach out to him, if their connection is light at best. i honestly feel like she was more attached to him than he was to her.

“like she’s doing something extra by being a decent person.”

she’s saying he didn’t deserve to see her because he did bad things! she still cares about someone who has done bad things, but she recognizes that those things are bad. she’s saying the punishment for what he’s done should involve not seeing her, personally, and i think she should be able to make that decision? she doesn’t endorse the rest of his punishment, because she doesn’t know what it entails.

she helped him by thinking he was in the right. she helped him by even trying to understand him, when everyone else could not. she gave him the help that she could by being on his side, by being friendly to him, and after she realized he was wrong she could not do that because he was off preparing the vault! and she had other things to worry about! “could have” is useless because it can mean anything! tommy “could have” not burned george’s house down. would it have mattered, when dream already had it out for him? no!

dream took anyone being close to him for granted. he did not give anything back to them once he started going down the path. if he did something bad to them, and they were angry, that was it for him. he did not attempt to fix the bond, like other characters do when they hurt someone they care about.

“i never said anything negative about them other than describing things they did that had a negative effect.”

here’s my main point: we don’t know they had a negative effect.

you criticize the characters for not taking an action that we do not know the implications of. everyone could have been super nice and worried about dream and that could have changed nothing. that’s why i think the criticism is unwarranted.

their crime is inattention to a situation that some of them did not even know was happening. that’s like saying that techno is “responsible” for some of the pain of tommy’s exile, because he did nothing to stop it. that’s like saying that quackity or tommy “should have” removed the tnt from the button room under l’manburg.

i just don’t get the point of the criticism. because it can apply to any character in any situation, you know? we could say that eret taking back the kingship from george enabled dream into taking more control over his friends, and that eret should have stopped him. we could say that skeppy telling dream he was wrong about l’manburg pushed him further into the role of the bad guy. if you aren’t being negative about the characters, then why bring it up in the first place?

“truly believe they did all those things” they didn’t do anything. if you’re talking about the “actual consequences and effect it had on him as a character”, you have to look at what affects his character.

we can say “sapnap should not have said this to dream”. because that is something sapnap actually did, directly to dream’s face, and it is something that visibly affected dream. considering the conditions of the prison, it is an inhumane thing to say. that’s something i would call reasonable to consider when analyzing dream’s character.

but puffy talking to herself, writing her own thoughts and reactions down? that does not impact dream in any way! and i think puffy thinking internally that dream is a bad person (when she has been given adequate reason to think so) has a lot less impact on Real Plot Events than the stuff that dream actually did.

what is her “fault” here? what harm did she do? what am i excusing? what did she do wrong, and how is the effect of her specifically visible in dream’s actions? he hasn’t mentioned her in months, and it’s my perspective that if he cared, we would know.

if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any noise?

(the person i was responding to linked a thread about how the prison isn’t helping dream and how puffy and sapnap saying he deserves it is inhumane)

that thread doesn’t actually seem to be assigning any fault to puffy, it’s just saying that hearing that kind of thing hurts.

(also, the person who wrote the thread saying “i told you so” is going to have nobody to tell it to. we all already know dream is going to be violent when he gets out, because he told tommy he would hunt down and take revenge on the things he loves. but he’s not going to be violent because puffy didn’t visit him.)

“another person he cared about who didn’t prove to care about him enough to stop him from spiralling or try help at all.”

how did puffy not care about him? what did she do before the vault that showed that? how did she specifically abandon him, by actions of her own will and not of consequences of his? for supposedly caring about her, dream did pretty much nothing to show it.

“if “they don’t owe him anything” is your base argument against someone being hurt via being left by people they care about over and over again until they’re utterly alone with no support system and unhealthy mindsets, we might have to agree to disagree”

we would disagree if that was my point, but it’s not. because that’s not what the characters did. they didn’t all abandon him, as i’ve said. he says that he cut ties with them, but if you say he’s lying when he says that you can disregard it, i guess. and five to six people are definitely not responsible for him. again, you’re critical of them for an action they didn’t take, and in some cases it was impossible for them to take like with tommy, who certainly didn’t abandon him, as hard as he tried to.

“his (dream’s) manipulation is the clumsiest thing i’ve ever seen”

i mean i don’t really find it funny that dream was “bad” at manipulation. and clearly it was powerful enough to work on multiple people, and if he was that ineffective at it it wouldn’t have worked. but i understand what you’re saying, although i disagree with your take on wilbur.

it’s true that wilbur’s smart, but this is again saying things about stuff we can’t prove. if you look at the context of wilbur’s actions next to everyone else’s, they seem pretty tame. and he can play a morally grey character without the intent being that the character was seriously manipulative all along. although i guess it’s nice to think that you’ve solved the code, if “solving the code” means “the majority of everyone else is wrong” then you may want to take a step back.

i think the principle of occam’s razor sort of applies here, and especially applies later to the conversion between dream and wilbur. unless there is strong, strong evidence for a theory that sort of goes against stuff, there may be a better explanation. i’ve scrapped like fifty theories because of this dude hskhdksjsthe things i said at the start about tommy and wilbur’s grabs for power not being serious still do apply, and so does the fact that at the start of the roleplay, the cc’s didn’t see their characters as that separate from themselves. i think it would be kind of weird for cc!wilbur’s intent to be genuine manipulation of his actual friends all along, especially when he wasn’t playing it as a bit.

“that’s precisely what he did and how he got them to side with him in the war.”

nope. he didn’t tell anyone they “needed” to to anything. anyone who joined the country joined of their own free will, and nobody joined during the war, just before and after.

wilbur didn’t really “recruit” tommy so much as they were on a team of causing small arguments. wilbur joined and he and tommy went to go scam people together, while tommy told him about the various other little schemes he had been running. and i don’t really think he was intending to do a real takeover, which is why i called it “weak”. the man told people that potions give you diarrhea. does that sound like the work of a mastermind? no, because it’s the self proclaimed “crime boy”. and that “drug empire” got shut down pretty quick for something that was supposed to last a long time.

“just put “revolution” instead of “business” as a guise of what he was actually doing.”

l’manburg was not the drug empire under a different name. l’manburg was about separation from the greater smp, admittedly because they felt that being stopped from selling drugs was a bad thing, but then they pretty much completely dropped the drugs and the empire throughout the wall vod.

so when he was recruiting people like fundy, he was doing it with the intent of getting them to make drugs with him. he says nothing about dream when fundy joins his drug empire. and yeah, he lied to him originally, but it didn’t work. fundy visited the van and saw through wilbur (and tommy)’s story, and then he decided to join, on his own. because he wanted to make drugs.

a quote from the wall vod:

“we’re starting a revolution, not a war.”

there was no targeted hatred towards dream until he approached them. and i would say the most “evidence” that wilbur was trying to go after dream in any way is the infamous “what’s tyrannical mean” moment. the thing about that moment is that taking a single moment and using it to define an entire period is unfair. it’s not like that’s a turning point, and after that they solely go after dream. they don’t. i agree that you have to watch the actions of wilbur, and his actions at the time were geared towards becoming independent and progressing the condition of l’manburg.

wilbur is honest with eret when they join that they are committing crimes. eret joins because “haha americans bad”. meanwhile, dream is in chat telling eret that there are “three defectors from the kingdom”.

“the only reason people disbelieve this is not because it doesn’t align with canon, but because they assume he’s lying for the sole reason that it doesn’t align with the way they see canon.”

if what revivedbur said agreed with canon, people wouldn’t be pointing out that it doesn’t. watch back the hot dog stream, the wall stream, the first war stream, even the stream after that when niki joins. look at how wilbur speaks, and also look at how he acts. it does not match up with all of what revivedbur says.

early wilbur is naive. he thinks he’s doing the right thing, so he therefore concludes the people against him are wrong. the only fighting back that l’manburg does before war is declared is killing alyssa (and this was tommy’s idea, wilbur was discouraging killing her), because they thought she set the fire. once she told them she didn’t, they gave her back the stuff they thought they had. tubbo still had her pickaxe, but didn’t realize. and for this? the people of the greater smp hunted him down, trapped him in a box, and killed him as well as killing tommy, who tried to save tubbo.

wilbur scolded tommy for killing alyssa. wilbur wanted to focus on building the nation, on declaring independence, and actively ignored the other side. he writes the declaration and he believes in everything it stands for! half the things in there are things that the other people of l’manburg yelled out, that he wrote in as they were being fired on by the greater smp. it comes from all the people.

the declaration of war from the greater smp pretty much says “sometimes you just gotta kill some people, you know?”

i am not disagreeing with you that after the first war, wilbur fell into corruption. it’s implied greatly that this is partially a consequence of the first war, and also partially stems from his fierce protectiveness of l’manburg.

also, if you’re saying that you have never and will never believe wilbur, i would urge you to re-examine that. it’s hard to avoid bias when you refuse to take most things that someone says as truth. i am also curious how you came to this conclusion as you began to watch the smp (if you never believed him at all) and who’s perspective you were watching.

“according to his actions and all known laws of logic” according to the streams and vods that very much still exist, and his actions in them, no, he wasn’t lying since the beginning. did he tell lies? yes, everyone did. was he being untruthful about his devotion to l’manburg when he took arrows for it and died for it? no. it’s pretty clear to see when you watch the vod. his actions speak louder than his words.

so no, it doesn’t make sense for him to be lying since the beginning. it doesn’t make sense that revivedbur’s ideals are a switch from how he was even right before he died, so we cannot trust his memory and his morals to remain intact! the man was alone for thirteen years, speaking of torture.

“he thought l'manberg his and no one else’s, a weapon of power for him to use however he pleases. unlike dream who destroyed himself bit by bit trying to take back what he cares about, because it was not power, but people - wilbur saw no more worth in it and destroyed it instead.”

hmm. i’ll come back to this later.

a point- not everything cc!wilbur says about his character is negative.

a lot of his commentary on his character came after his death, so it encompasses his spiral. i will again suggest that you listen to “eight” by sleeping at last. it’s true he can play a morally complex character, because he does, but he does not play an intentional antagonist the entire time, even in “secret”.

“i was just talking about how hypocritical and downright ridiculous his later accusations are, which you didn’t address.”

how are his later accusations hypocritical? wilbur calls him a tyrant in the moment, yeah. wilbur thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and since it’s the dream smp, he assumes dream is the leader. dream never contradicts this, by the way. wilbur writes in the declaration of independence that “in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the bonds which bind us. disregarding of this truth is nothing short of tyranny.” so that’s what he considers tyranny. when he got stopped from selling drugs and tommy got arrested, he didn’t yell “tyranny”.

mistreatment of citizens by authority and denial of independence is tyranny.

dream and the people of the greater smp hurt and attack the people of l’manburg throughout the wall stream. importantly, since they denied l’manburg independence, the people they were firing and attacking were their own citizens in their eyes. mistreatment of citizens is cruel. upon hearing that l’manburg existed, they became even more tyrannical. thus when wilbur writes this in the book, as they are being fired on, he believes this to be true because it is.

“despite there being no evidence” watch the wall vod. think about the definition of tyranny, and even the different definitions of tyranny.

“a capitalistic empire on dream’s land” so wilbur did have reason for thinking dream was the leader, yes? because it was his land? his “house”? how dream said they were taking back the land that was rightfully theirs? how he called them “traitors to the kingdom”? ignoring the fact that once again, wilbur did not say anything negative towards dream until dream showed up and insulted l’manburg.

wilbur’s form of lying and deception for the drug empire was the norm for the server at the time. we don’t see him pulling this sort of exaggerated bit once he gets into l’manburg, because he’s idealistic and he really believes in it. if you watch tommy’s stream where wilbur first proposes the country, he jokingly says the reason he’s making it is because “americans ruin bits”. also during that stream, tommy asks if they’re making a drug empire, and wilbur says that no, they’re making a nation where drugs are legal.

“didn’t even do that much” hmm. no, i’m pretty sure dream and the people of the greater smp did do the stuff wilbur accused them of. one, he wasn’t directly accusing dream, (because. his problem wasn’t with dream specifically.) and two, the things he said in the declaration did happen?

“they have robbed us.”

to be fair everyone on the server did that lol

“imprisoned us.”

tommy was imprisoned for the drugs and for other things he was involved in, and tubbo was trapped and murdered for a thing he didn’t even know he had.

“threatened us.”

they were fired on multiple times when building l’manburg, they were threatened with consequences for the drug stuff, they told them in pretty clear terms that they were prepared to kill them instead of letting them be independent. the day of the war, dream and sapnap burned down all the trees around l’manburg and lavacast walls around it, saying it was a “warning”.

“killed many of our men.”

again, true. tommy and tubbo in particular died a lot during this time.

so since these things really did happen, how is wilbur lying about them?

“the people he was accusing of being tyrannical were very selective”

one, he accused sapnap of being an american, and it was the americans that were going for them. you don’t need to protect people that aren’t being hurt. most of his reasoning for “no americans” during this time was that anti-mask protests were happening in america, and he was making fun of them. two, the others imprisoned tommy, which does not count as “self defense in an anarchist society”. they accepted tubbo because he was european, and because he was willing to work for the nation like the rest of them. sapnap just wanted a drug dealer.

“dream’s “no factions” thing he had going on also included no government by default, showcased by him having problems with people starting countries.”

if there was no government, why did dream never point this out when wilbur said he was seceding? the server is dream’s faction! he doesn’t want “no factions”, he wants only his faction. dream refers to the server multiple times as a nation, and even a kingdom. anarchist societies don’t have prisons. the prison and the police is a system. if you have an anarchist society, but two specific people are going around arresting people, them going “oh but there’s no government” doesn’t take away the fact that they’re creating a hierarchy, using their own power? they also never claimed that there was no government.

everything that dream said later in the conversation with skeppy also lines up with this. ignoring the fact that there was a monarchy established because it “didn’t have any real power” is disregarding the fact that one, it was there, and two, that there was someone around with enough power to establish it in the first place. i don’t know how to say this any clearer. anarchist places do not have kings.

and anarchy is not the only thing that fits. it wasn’t designed to be a geopolitical drama, they just made the mistake of letting wilbur soot onto the server. so they didn’t need to have a name for the system, because the system was “do whatever you want”, including establishing authority.

“dream had all the reasons to believe they were aggressive and was fully justified in declaring war.”

dream didn’t declare war because alyssa was attacked. he had done stuff to them before that happened, and they got back all of her stuff (again, not by asking and trying to work it out, but by kidnapping someone who genuinely believed they were innocent and killing them as they begged for help.) dream started the official conflict because he declared war. he also started the unofficial conflict. he didn’t think they were aggressive, he thought they were weak.

“if he (wilbur) thought he was being mistreated he could just stop trying to mistreat others”

what, because he had any sort of power? he did stop mistreating others. l’manburg legitimately did nothing to intentionally hurt anyone, and tommy killing alyssa doesn’t count because that was his decision and revenge was already paid out for that. so wilbur stopped scamming people, built the walls to contain his country (he said that they needed nothing outside the walls at some point) and then was attacked multiple times. his mistreatment didn’t stop.

“it was supposed to be his l'manberg.”

wilbur didn’t destroy it because it was supposed to be his and it got away from him, that’s why he held the election: to try and restore peace through attempting to rig the election. he destroyed it because “the thing i built this nation for doesn’t exist anymore”, meaning the freedom it originally granted to its citizens was gone under schlatt. meaning the policy of no violence and using words was ruined. if the thing he built this nation for was power, this would make no sense. he could have taken power so easily. he passed off the presidency.

“something worth having power over” is something important. it is something that can be good for lots of people, and the power over it is what makes it safe. it’s worth having power over because when others, like schlatt, take that power, it is no longer safe.

violence and tyranny had become so much a part of l’manburg that wilbur felt the freedom and peace was gone. so when he blows it up, and says “my l’manburg”, he means it can no longer be used for evil. “my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished”. he saves it for himself by destroying it. so yes, he is being selfish, but not to ruin it for other people. he takes it into his own hands to weed out the fighting, and by doing so takes himself with it. his vision was never complete, because the wars had taught him that the only true freedom, the only true victory (“i won.”) for him was in death. (and then that turned out to be wrong.)

there’s a reddit post that cc!wilbur approved

that explains this a little better than i can, and cc!wilbur commented on it “any truers???” so i think it can be counted as reliable.

this full quote from cc!wilbur about his character (from his hey and stuff podcast) is very interesting. i’ll transcribe it here:

“i decided i was going to make a breaking bad style roleplay, where me and tommy would be drug dealers. and uh, one thing lead to another and i’m the president of a nation losing it due to my own insolence and uh, short sighted naivety. basically disregard for my fellow citizens who i claim to love so much. and a, and a dark, twisted understanding of what is possession. and what is, what is my right.”

i like this quote a lot because it highlights the initial traits that caused his spiral. it also places him as kind of similar to dream. the reason he lost the presidency is that he got too cocky. and the reason his spiral was so selfish is that it was all he could see— when his earlier vision of freedom was shattered by the first war, he didn’t know how to adapt and so became attached to power as it now felt like the only way to keep what mattered to him.

this is emphasized in his conversation with quackity during his second lore stream: that there was a drastic change between the person who made l’manburg and the person running for president. this quote matches up very well with the election arc. wilbur’s motives were different before the election, and they were different after.

once he had the freedom that he wanted, he became scared of losing it and that is what pushed him down. “if i can’t have it, no one can” is on the surface about the power, but the lament for what he once had (freedom in a country without tyranny) is there. that’s why he became so power-oriented. if he did not have control of l’manburg, it could be used to go against his original vision and it would be better off gone.

another good piece of information is cc!wilbur’s comment on his dnd alignment post, where he says this:

“wilbur is on the border of chaotic and neutral evil. wilbur, in his chaotic sense, is a crazy man who wants to blow up his old nation and kill his friends. but, more realistically, in his neutral sense, wilbur is the archetype of a man who had great power and who lost it all due to his own poor choices and negligence who sees destruction as his ratification.”

note the “realistically”.

he feels as if he owes it to l’manburg at the end to blow it up, and he didn’t mind taking himself with it as he thought that nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t have any more to give.

(related to this, in the dnd alignment post, cc!wilbur places season 1 dream as chaotic evil and says his only motive is chaos. firstly, this would only apply to season one, and although cc!wilbur was working with cc!dream and everyone else to write the plot here, i wonder why he says this instead of saying anything else about dream’s motives. this seems to disagree pretty severely with what you think, but it also disagrees with what even i think about dream during this time.)

revivedbur comes back and has plans because he regrets his past. he hates that he gave up that easily. and he could absolutely lie about his past actions! there is no reason to ignore the contents of an entire war because someone who was alone for thirteen years says it!

“shouldn’t have it” doesn’t mean he was lying when he said he wanted it. he was just wrong, which he knew when he blew up l’manburg and that’s part of why he did it.

“they said they “fought with words”, like that doesn’t sound like a peaceful solution, more like a different approach, and it was because that is what they did”

they said the words thing a lot of times, and most of the time it was used as a “tommy don’t attack that person.” and “fighting with words” is arguing, it is replacing the trauma of real battle with talking it out. l’manburg did stick very closely to their motto of words over violence. look at the contents of the first war.

and once war was declared, wilbur was enthusiastic for it. sounds suspicious from someone claiming to not want war, right? he said it was a chance for them to prove themselves, to prove they could rule themselves. he also said that if they could defend themselves it would be proof. he never went “time to attack them”, and when he said he didn’t want a war in the past he meant that he didn’t want to start one. his being enthusiastic about the war ties into his naivety about running a country. it was also an acceptance in a way, no? it meant that the greater smp saw them as something worth declaring war on.

and it’s heartbreaking seeing him so excited to prove himself, because we know that the experience of the war is what lead to his spiral and his cynicism as president. we know that a few weeks later, he’s going to be crying into his pillow every night.

for the clip (the “something worth having power over and then you get killed by your dad” clip), i kind of don’t know what to say. i don’t think this is a clear condemnation of the entirety of l’manburg’s beginnings, but i do think that i was probably reaching a bit with trying to interpret it. there are definitely a lot of ways to see that, though.

no, he showed it in the first war and he clearly said it. i don’t think somebody who wants to mess with dream is going to not even think about him until he shows up, and even after then largely ignore him until he declares war.

“yes, it was worth something to wilbur, and that worth was power.”

question: power over what? power for what purpose? how did he use that power?

if it was only worth having power over, then why did he give it up? why didn’t he just kill schlatt in the first place? again i think the reddit post addresses a lot of this. original l’manburg was worth more to wilbur than power because he was willing to surrender when his life and his friend’s lives were threatened, and he told tommy it was not worth it to enter a duel and sacrifice his own life for it. after the war, he cared about power over it in order to keep peace, and then he realized that his own desire for power caused him to abandon his morals and he attempted to destroy it all.

“the greater smp did represent anarchy and peace.”

i just don’t think the ideals of the early smp line up with anarchy, and especially not dream’s actions later. he believes in forced peace, and unity under his terms although that belief is more gradual.

“see you tell me you didn’t fall for propaganda and then say this.”

it’s not “falling for propaganda” to watch the streams and interpret them. “propaganda” is defined as an attempt to spread information, often of a misleading nature. it’s what wilbur used during his presidential campaign, it’s what everyone used during the election. i do not base my opinion of his character off things that have been said about him after the fact. i watched the content when it happened.

so what about the facts that one, he wanted peace at the start, and two, that he cared about protecting his nation and the people he cared about is propaganda? it is information that i believe to be true based on my own analyzing of his actions during that time.

wilbur never says this as an attempt to lie to anyone. he wanted peace if it meant he could have freedom, but he would not attack anyone for freedom, he would defend it once he had established it. he wasn’t trying to establish an empire after the drug van stream (he says this in the vod where he discusses his plans for l’manburg with tommy) and the actions of the greater smp were tyrannical. what happened is that later, after the first war, he lost faith in peace because people continued to attack him!

“he did create division for his own benefit the way i see it.”

can you explain the “benefit” that division would give him? because like i said, his goal was his own personal freedom. he wasn’t attempting to divide people, he was reacting to mistreatment, whether perceived or real. and more often than not, people asked to join him, he didn’t try to convince them.

“yeah wilbur said it genuinely to tubbo when he first brought him armor”

as i was going through the old vods, i did find the origin of that quote (the quote where wilbur says “we go in with no armor and then stab them in the back” or something along those lines)! there’s something funny about it though. notice how he says it and then never does anything about it? and how nobody from l’manburg acts on it? because you have to look at his actions, something you emphasized that i agree with. they have more weight than his words. he also said “wanna kiss” to dream, so i don’t think this really counts as “proof” of an ulterior motive, because he said a lot of things.

“you see a pattern already?”

the “pattern” i see of his reactions to conflict in his nation is that he didn’t want to assert control in order to oppress people, he wanted to assert control to keep the peace, by rigging the election so that he had “legitimate” authority. was it a hypocritical? yeah! it reminds me of what dream was doing, too: placing his goal of peace over his wish for freedom of everyone.

the difference is that dream didn’t have any reserves about “starting an army and asserting dominance over his own people because they didn’t respect his authority and he was irritated by it”. weird that that can be used to describe dream as well, huh? and before it can be used to describe wilbur?

this is also after the first war, where wilbur learned a very important lesson! and it’s right before he realizes he’d become what he had tried to destroy. the other person who acts like this never realized this, though. it’s because he was never trying to destroy it. just saying.

“the friendships inside of it could’ve existed without, and would’ve probably been better off without being stained by war”

wilbur did not consider making l’manburg as a severing of relationships between the two nations. he even expresses neutrality towards some members of the greater smp. wilbur didn’t “make people think” they needed l’manburg, he saw it as a thing to devote yourself to, an ideology. he did not force others to think this way, although he encouraged it. people ended up sacrificing a lot for that (against their will sometimes), and so they became attached to it.

“the original dream smp was this but actually true instead of just being a front.”

ah yes, the dream smp with absolutely no hierarchies. nothing like mister “my house” at all. no “my land”, no “my server”, no “the king has no power”, no “it’s the dream smp”. /s

“wilbur didn’t fear for anyone’s safety”

hmm, no, wilbur did fear for everyone’s safety. you know, when they were being attacked continuously throughout the war? and when he finally surrendered because they were being threatened and killed?

“the dream smp was already safe”

dream and sapnap need better ways to “keep the server safe” than by blowing up people who wanted to go off and do their own thing and posed no threat to the greater server.

i don’t know how to provide “evidence” that dream and the others attacked l’manburg? the evidence is the fact that they did. again, wilbur’s initial goal was not conflict with the greater smp, it was emancipation. when tubbo was taken hostage and killed, shot at, robbed multiple times of materials it had taken him hours to get, and had his old house burned down simply because he was part of l’manburg, those were the reasons that tubbo ever fired a shot at them in the first place!

when wilbur lead his people out on the first day of the war, it was to negotiate. they dodged the arrows and went to the embassy, where they were then trapped and driven back into tommy’s house. it was then that they fought back. self defense. i don’t know what else to tell you.

“trying to end the war as soon as he could” is kind of misleading, because it implies that dream hated the violence. he just wanted to win as soon as he could. he didn’t care what he had to do to win it. no mercy.

the dream smp was not freedom because when you try to leave freedom, it doesn’t hunt you down and try to destroy you. anarchy doesn’t call you a traitor when you leave. and yeah, dream was real friendly to tommy when he continued the disk war when it first settled. and of course when your friends join a different nation, the most logical course of action is to murder them repeatedly! /s

the definition of anarchy includes personal freedom, the exact thing wilbur wanted. anarchy does not include authority, it is firmly opposed to it. i think i would place the early greater smp as more of a stateless society, if i had to put a name on it (again, i am extremely wary to do that because it wasn’t written as anything with a name. this is also a mediocre take that i don’t really believe because dream had his own faction.). a stateless society is one of the goals of anarchism, but does not encompass the entire belief.

dream’s main motivation was that he didn’t want anyone being independent. it didn’t matter who was leading it.

and i’m sorry, but you can’t just take away evidence by saying “he was lying” when there is no proof he is? if you take this conversation at face value it makes more sense! (this is about the conversation between wilbur and dream right before the “independence or death” scene)

“both sides had their losses and were ready to harm the other” what did the greater smp lose. its people? its land? there was other land, and the people could still remain friends. some of them did. dream even says before this that yeah, l’manburg is losing. and wilbur here is attempting to downplay that loss, claiming they’re on even ground because that’s what he wants to happen. he is trying to appear stronger than he really is. he’s bluffing, but it doesn’t work.

i don’t like saying “nobody’s the victim” here when one side was getting absolutely whaled on by the other. wilbur has the ability to be genuine, and he does. if he was trying to “play” the victim, he would exaggerate the damage his side had suffered. his words and his actions match up, and this is a pretty different circumstance from him doing a bit. he is a victim. that’s just straight up true.

i’m not surprised that you think this way, as you’ve said you were on dream’s side since the start, but i’d like to once again ask you to examine where you got these perceptions.

dream offering them “chances” was just offering them surrender. that’s not merciful, and it’s not fair, either. and he may not have wanted to hurt them, but he sure didn’t mind doing it. wilbur wasn’t sewing some kind of anti-dream propaganda in his nation while the battle was going on, the hatred for dream came from the fact that he was attacking all of them.

“colonize” is a bad word choice for what l’manburg was. nobody was living on that land before they got there. the land should have belonged to nobody, so why did dream get so mad about “his” land being taken? what about that specific area was so important to him, when he did have the ability to visit?

wilbur was pacifist, he was not the instigator, again i have to say i can’t offer up proof if you’re convinced that he was lying. when he fought back later it was in self defense. please watch the vods. and recognize that wilbur’s actions election era are consequences of his experiences revolution era.

i genuinely don’t understand what you mean by comparing this to exile. please rephrase your point. if you’re comparing what dream did to tommy to wilbur trying to stop dream from hurting him and his people more i have to say that’s a... questionable take. it’s probably a bad idea to make exile comparisons if you’re going to use them to victim-blame, as that’s very antithetical to exile as a whole and kid of ironic.

“i mean, what other choice was there?”

no, dream had a lot of choices. he did not offer them a peaceful way out. he declared war and then he attacked. it was then that he told them many times to surrender. and no, wilbur didn’t push them to go and die, evidenced again by the times he used himself as a distraction so that they could run, and that he didn’t want tommy to do the duel but ultimately respected his decision and his freedom.

“dream constantly asked them to give up instead of fighting.”

dream has a responsibility to not attack kids. dream also has a responsibility to attempt any sort of peaceful negotiation. tubbo was boxed and murdered before war was declared, and tubbo personally had done straight up nothing to the people of the greater smp, and he didn’t even know why he died until tommy saw that alyssa’s pickaxe was mixed in with his stuff.

if wilbur claimed to wish to prevent violence, and then he did, or at least attempted to, i don’t know why you think it’s untrue. calling someone a rude name is not equal to murder. “verbally violent” means pretty much nothing and was coming from both sides.

(this next part is about the “let me be your vassal” scene in pogtopia)

“there’s a theory wilbur legitimately thinks dream selfish”

i mean, yeah. i think that kind of sums it up. wilbur was appealing to dream’s personal goals. i don’t see how he was shut down though. he already helped pogtopia, so him being asked to further help someone from pogtopia shows that they trusted him enough to tell him the plan.

i’ve watched the clip a lot of times and i think that the meaning can be ambiguous. i am using dream’s other actions during that time to determine how much of an effect i think it had on him. i don’t think he got “shut down” in any sort of meaningful way here.

“he didn’t seem to hold even that against him as he tried to help get back l’manberg with him.”

if dream didn’t hold the disk thing against tommy then, he sure decided to get mad about it later (he brings it up when arguing with quackity), despite the fact that he had also re-opened the conflict in the past.

“i believe they (dream and tommy) had genuinely been friends once.”

sure, i think they were friends before dream did what he did with the disks, and allies during early pogtopia. dream still decided to switch sides and team with manburg because schlatt offered him the book. this is, ironically, dream abandoning tommy.

“he has a sense of responsibility (not control) over the people on his smp.”

i think it can be responsibility and control. most of the responsibility is misguided, and lots of it is just actual control. i don’t know where you’re getting a lot of this.

and i do not know where you got that his fatal flaw was caring too much? he “cares” in the way of having control! he doesn’t care about the well being of others as long as he thinks he’s right. i’m just saying that he sure could have walked away, because he did just that later when he sided with schlatt. it’s not a speculation about his character when it’s something that he did.

him walking away did not entail complete surrender to wilbur. there were a lot of other things he could have done, but i don’t want to get into “could have”’s as i don’t really think there’s a point. wilbur was attempting to convince him, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was true. we know that wilbur was lying about wanting ambition.

also, i don’t think dream was allied with pogtopia because he liked them or he was trying to be better or anything. he said in “tyrant” that it’s because schlatt was worse, and wilbur didn’t have any ambition to expand.

“maybe you misunderstood something i said, but no, he definitely didn’t.”

okay, so since dream didn’t think wilbur was a villain, wilbur was not “pressuring him” into becoming one by helping him. my point was that dream didn’t think that, and wilbur didn’t care. sorry for not making that clear, i was asking a rhetorical question.

(i said here that “someone calling someone else out for hurting them is not the same thing as villanizing them,” and they responded with this)

“yeah, they are. and dream was villanized.”

oh boy.

vilify: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against, to defame.

(i probably should have been saying vilify instead of villainize because they mean the same thing but i straight up did not know it was a word, sorry lol)

slanderous means false and malicious. abusive means offensive and insulting. defamation is things that are not true.

if somebody says, “this guy punched me.” that would not be vilifying them. it is a true statement with a neutral tone. if they add “he is a bad person”, that could possibly be seen as abusive, as it is insulting, but the point of vilifying someone is that you are making them out to be someone they’re not. it involves the use of lies and continuous exaggerated language. slanderous and abusive. abusive only is not enough to classify something as vilifying.

someone reacting to something dream did by calling him a name is not vilifying him. it is true that he did the thing, and it is also true that the person saying it believes it. it is rare that someone criticizes him without real reason or goes overboard (the person who really does this as far as i can remember is tommy), and when tommy does so it is almost always reciprocated. so we have dream and tommy constantly vilifying each other, and other people saying negative things about dream and sometimes vilifying him, if they lie about it. he sometimes vilifies them.

my point is that vilification is not wilbur telling niki, “dream burnt tubbo’s house down”, despite the fact that he calls dream a bad guy. it’s not slanderous because it is true. dream assisted sapnap with the act. vilification is not tommy explaining to ranboo what was happening during exile, or telling dream that dream makes him worse. “someone calling someone out for hurting them” implies truth, and it doesn’t necessarily imply abusive language, but it doesn’t matter because it’s true.

maybe we were going off different definitions of vilify. but when we’re accusing characters who are victims of abuse and manipulation, we need to be careful with what we accuse them of.

anyway

wilbur saying he wanted to use the tommys of the world was left in the drug van stream. tommy himself was pushing a lot of the “dream bad” stuff because he had more experience with him. when tommy was confused during those two scenes (vassal scene and revivedbur calling dream his hero)it was because he believed that wilbur respected him, and wilbur working with or idolizing someone who had hurt tommy in the past was a contradiction to that belief. wilbur does not question tommy’s anger during the vassal scene because he doesn’t care that dream is bad, and when he is revived he either does not believe it or does not want to acknowledge it. revivedbur cares a whole lot more about power for the sake of power than wilbur ever did.

again, tommy isn’t stupid. he has his own reasons for not liking dream, and the disconnect comes from a place of trusting wilbur.

by the way, wilbur left the vc before saying that tommy didn’t care. he was talking to himself (and chat). and he was more fearful that tommy was leaving than angry. plus, he didn’t actually force tommy to give up his house: there was miscommunication between them and the embassy was the power tower in the end. wilbur just wanted confirmation that tommy would spend time in l’manburg. it’s true that he went about it in a bad way, though.

he didn’t push patriotism onto them, they were also excited about the country. there were other scenes beside the tyrant scene, and the amount of times wilbur had to tell tommy to shut up about how great the country is is a lot higher than the one time he had them call dream a tyrant.

true, that scene (scene where wilbur asserts his authority as president) is before pogtopia. it’s also after the war for independence. i am not saying that wilbur should have said any of that stuff. i’m just pointing out that it wasn’t always like that.

also i do not really see “you’re never gonna be president” as a taunt or manipulation or anything. i think wilbur genuinely believed that having tommy in charge of the country would one, get them into more conflicts, and two, mess up tommy mentally. being the president sucked and wilbur knew that. wilbur was not kind to tommy. but a lot of stuff that’s pointed at as manipulative is pretty clearly wilbur’s own paranoia spilling over in a desire to protect tommy, ie saying that tubbo would betray them. wilbur genuinely thought that and he was trying to warn tommy.

“tommy, when i said you’d never be president, it wasn’t a challenge. it’s true. you’re never going to be president.”

tommy’s life has been hard, that’s true. not disagreeing with you there. but not every adult has been using him the whole time. and if you’re looking for fault, i would personally look at the guy who killed him three times first, just saying. other things had impacts but there’s a clear scale.

“tommy formed an attachment to them as a result of the disc war, not the other way around.”

so yeah, initially it was a shallow trade: the disks for the armor. once that conflict was resolved, and tommy apologized, that should have been the end of it, yeah? especially since tommy now had a stronger connection to the disks? that would have been nice.

the problem is that dream took them back for no reason. because he did, he went back and dug up tommy’s whole front yard and spawned months of conflict after. having “leverage” over someone like that is kinda messed up! it’s not like tommy was going around committing mass murder every tuesday, he got in scraps with other people on the server who also committed petty crimes. so i can’t really blame tommy for wanting them back, even though he stole them.

and if dream didn’t care about the disks, why did he later use it as “proof” that tommy caused all the trouble on the server? if they were so worthless to him that he gave them to skeppy, why did it matter that tommy stole them?

i don’t know what you mean about this being the only way dream could control people. the amount of genuine fear other characters felt when he logged on was there for a long time. he held a lot of power on the server, and a lot of his control was physical, evidenced by exile in particular but also the wars.

when he did ultimately use connections to control people, that was still a bad thing.

“his friend’s house got burnt down and he wanted the person who did it to be held accountable?”

okay, george’s house got burned down. do you remember the initial punishment that dream proposed? probation for tommy until he was eighteen. and when dream was arguing with his friends, he pointed out that the only reason l’manburg was being held hostage for tommy’s crime was that tommy was involved in the government. he said that if tommy hadn’t been involved in the government, he probably would have just hunted him down and killed him.

also, someone responding to this pointed out that dream was trying to frame tommy for things at the time. dream was intentionally creating other conflict in order to get to tommy. dream did not care about the house. he burnt down other people’s houses.

that’s not “holding someone accountable”. that’s not even close.

“he was taught this from experience”

the leather from the horse was used to blackmail him after he had already started doing that to people. you know how tommy mimicks him? that’s what was going on (still bad that he did it but like. come on.) so that may have been the push that caused dream to cut his own connections (so that nobody could ever do that to him again, and he would have no chance of failure), but it didn’t just happen to him for no reason: it was a behavior he taught someone else.

“he did genuinely think he was a villain before the war”

tommy called dream a lot of stuff before the war, and most of it was unprompted by wilbur. a lot of it was also, like you said, two friends joking around. just because wilbur taught him a new word (he didn’t really tell him what it meant though) doesn’t mean he was manipulated into using it all the time or something. and i’m pretty sure tommy got a decent definition of tyranny later, when the greater smp decided to attack l’manburg before anything went down.

“it’s just a character acknowledging what people who looked deeper into the narrative already knew.”

what i’m saying is that narratively, wilbur has an extremely good reason to be biased right now. taking anything he says as truth doesn’t solidify an interpretation as truth. there has to be enough evidence to actually back the entire thing up in the first place, and i’m just not seeing “wilbur was always going for power and division” as solidified by his actions during the first war.

and again, tommy’s not stupid, and the entire time tommy is yelling at him! tommy knows something is off! if people also in the story are saying “this isn’t right”, i feel like they’d know? tommy was also part of l’manburg, he has an opinion too. so when he says “we founded l’manburg because we knew dream was the bad guy”, he’s talking about why he did it. and he brings up a good point: “you say you did it to stick it to the man, but you’re idolizing dream, who is the man”. (paraphrased i don’t know his exact words but this was his point) this shows that wilbur’s motives have changed, even from what revivedbur will say.

(they linked three twitter threads here. i don’t know if relinking them here is a good idea as the whole point of this separate post is to disconnect the two sides, but the threads were by dr3amofagame on twitter, for reference purposes. i’m not going to link the independent threads but i think people can tell which ones i was responding to.

if this is wrong to say who made them please let me know, i do not know how Any of these websites work. if you’ve read this far, please don’t try to like,,, look up who any of these people are (especially the person i was debating with. don’t do that /srs) and send anything bad to them. that’s the whole point of this separate post. if anyone sends negativity directly towards people because of this post i’ll bite you)

that first analysis has some Opinions. oh man.

i don’t know man i’m just going to point some things out:

-the person who wrote the thread pulling the “child” card makes me laugh because tommy had committed more crimes than wilbur at that point. ah yes tommy innit innocent child being horribly dragged into a giant war by evil wilbur /s

-wilbur did not call dream a tyrant before dream showed up and made fun of their land

-wilbur did not legitimately think dream a tyrant when he told tommy and tubbo to call him that. neither, really, did tommy and tubbo. it was a joke. like infinite women. like dream saying “i’m evil” when he was blowing up creepers on their land before the battle. like dream and sapnap being all “down with the british”.

-their attitude on that changed when the greater smp begin exhibiting tyrannical behavior (before war was declared!).

-“having tommy and tubbo fight his battles and build his walls” is just untrue

-the l’manburg anthem was, one, not written by wilbur (he commissioned someone to do it on fiver), and two, was written after the first war. they sing it in the stream where niki joins. so yeah, at that point, they did emancipate from the brutality and tyranny of their rulers! it doesn’t say who the rulers are (therefore it’s. not blaming solely dream.) but pretty much all of them were brutal!

-also oh my god this thread has a lot of things that wilbur just straight up didn’t say (or do).

-“would rather die than submit to your tyrannical rule” is a quote from the speech wilbur gives before dream lights the tnt. dream had done stuff to them at that point. this is out of context.

-i don’t want to seriously critique this thread because a lot of it seems more like something emotional than an attempt to start conversation, and i can’t really go against that.

-the main argument, that dream did nothing before being irreversibly forced into the role of the villain does not really match up with what happened.

-there’s a lot less of people calling dream a villain than people seem to remember.

-and also, dream was lying about wanting l’manburg to be something. he says to eret a few days later the quote that i included a while back, that his goal has always been for there to be one faction: the dream smp. note that at this point he’s officially on manburg’s “side” now. he also says he has never wavered on this from the beginning. so he’s either continuing his manipulation of eret and lying to them, or he’s just saying that he wants l’manburg to be something to wilbur and tommy to try to get them to trust him. and hearing him yell “YES!” after the explosion? i’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

okay, so then looking at the second analysis:

-once again, calling wilbur a colonizer? there is a definition of that word that matches up with his actions, but that definition is something establishing itself in a place. by that definition, everyone on the server is a colonizer. so calling just wilbur that seems... a bit weird, considering that the common definition does not match up with what he did.

-“got his (wilbur’s) entire side killed” ignores the fact that it was Dream And His Friends Who Killed Them hghfnjgnfm

dream: wow wilbur you’re bad at this war thing

wilbur: please stop killing us

dream: how could you do this to your people

wilbur: you??? declared war???

dream: no you don’t understand. i had a really good reas—

sorry sorry i’m just. yeah

-also this thread reminded me that “tyrant” (the book) exists and yeah, i do see your point that dream did care about tommy (a little bit). i just wonder why he turned against him again? and why dream is willing to admit here that l’manburg was peaceful, and also that wilbur was not like schlatt in some key ways?

-and again i don’t see wilbur calling dream a villain during the vassal scene.

-some of this thread is just speculation. i’m not going to consider “wilbur may manipulate dream in the future because they had a conversation in the past”, especially because revivedbur’s mental state right now is godawful, because i don’t think it holds any value to examining the past. the important part is the breakdown of the vassal scene.

-i’ve already said what i think about the vassal scene. dream wasn’t getting tossed around during that. just because he’s quiet doesn’t mean he’s being manipulated? and wilbur isn’t going “you think this”, he’s asking dream what he thinks by paraphrasing what wilbur’s heard from him before, and adjusts it once dream corrects him. i do think this one is more open to interpretation though; this is just my opinion and it doesn’t have a lot of stuff to back it up lol but i’m not convinced either side has much evidence

and the third analysis:

-dream had no idea what kind of government they were setting up there. he didn’t ask, so he wouldn’t know if it was a dictatorship. and again he was allowed on the land, he just never built the embassy. the “no americans” rule was weakly enforced during the first war, and the reason wilbur got so serious about it later is that the americans were the ones who went after him and killed everyone during the war! so he had a reason to want them off. objectively a bad reason? maybe

-it would be cool if dream said “hey don’t do this here’s why” instead of stomping off during negotiations and then coming back to beat them up and declare war. he didn’t though

-the problem people have with greater smp vs. l’manburg is scale. the greater smp was quite literally infinite, and l’manburg was a small space. there wasn’t anything important in l’manburg that other server members needed to get to. people could still leave to visit their friends. they didn’t legitimately hate americans. but nooo, you can’t have the table because it’s my table. what if you do something bad with the table? remember when you tried to sell people “better air” for three dollars and then took someone’s air conditioning? you just want power! i’m going to go bring back rubber bands to pelt you with.

anywAys moving on

no, i do agree with you on the sam stuff. for some reason i was under the impression that cc!sam was uncomfortable with being depicted as torturing dream a while back, but with the stuff happening with quackity now, i’m reasonably sure that doesn’t apply. they don’t retcon stuff that was intentional but there may have been something taken back a few months ago before they planned this.

but yeah, clearly the prison stuff is awful and messed up. that’s why i noted the thing at the start of the reply: i am in no way saying that anything sam or quackity have done to dream since prison hasn’t affected him. these are things that i see as having visible impacts on the character.

(i pointed out that dream originally commissioned the prison)

i understand that it’s frustrating to hear that used as an excuse, but i wasn’t using it that way. i was pointing out that neither of them deserve it. during the vault stream, dream tells tommy that his plan is to put him in the prison. he says that exile was “perfect”, and the only issue was that tommy could get away. putting him in the prison fixes that.

so yeah, what dream was planning to do to tommy is different than what’s happening to him. but the reasons that other people wanted dream in the prison match why he wanted tommy in there: like you said, it’s a vault. it’s so he can store him and use him later, to give attachments and thus power and control over others.

tommy’s original plan was to kill dream. ultimately, he didn’t want him to suffer more, he wanted him gone. nobody on the server knew yet that death was limbo, and tommy probably thought it was mercy for someone like dream. dream was the one who brought up the book, as an attempt to save himself. he will say whatever he needs to say to avoid death, because anyone would (except someone like wilbur who’s. accepted his role. you know?) so he’s the one who reduced himself down the the book, saying if he goes, so does it. that’s when sam suggests the prison.

true, the arc is dark. this is where sam’s actions become corrupted and he loses sight of some of the responsibility he claims to have. it’s also the arc where dream lied to tommy that he had changed, and pressured him into staying by saying he was his friend. it’s the arc where dream kills tommy, and doesn’t allow sam to come get his body for days. it’s the arc where dream gets even worse, whether because of his time in the prison or because of his peaked god complex, probably both.

and again, my problem is that criticizing characters for actions they didn’t take is pointless. it tells you not much about the character, and considering the circumstances of what dream had done it does make sense for none of them to step in! they are looking at the fact that dream had an entire vault dedicated to controlling them. they are seeing that dream was fully prepared to murder tubbo and lock tommy away forever to be used. they are witnessing tommy giving dream exactly what he got.

so “acknowledging” this does nothing useful! we do not see these actions (or lack of) specifically affecting dream. i can tell you what dream told people he was doing, and it matches up with things he had done in the past, and there are moments he denies the narrative that you say drove him to do this. but i can’t really prove anything when you say he’s lying here because it fits how you interpret the story.

it’s what you’re saying people are doing to revivedbur: saying he’s lying without any proof, when with him there is evidence and he has the motive to lie. when revivedbur lies, tommy calls him on it. tommy doesn’t call dream on it. i’ve laid out why i think it’s not true, and i’ve seen stuff in early canon that directly contradicts what revivedbur says. occam’s razor! many pieces of evidence versus a few statements from someone who at that point commonly lied about things like that.

dream standing by while tommy and the other citizens get killed in l’manburg by his own orders isn’t very peaceful or non-tyrannical of him. tommy was enforcing an eye for an eye, and to be honest? i don’t think “kill your abuser” is such a terrible message to send, despite the fact that we know that tommy’s coping mechanisms come from a bad source. and tommy was far from free of what dream did to him, as evidenced by later when he again attempts to mirror what dream had done to him in the past.

yeah, i read your analysis of the interaction (skeppy and dream arguing over l’manburg). that’s not the only interpretation. skeppy doesn’t call him the villain. he is repeating back to dream the actions that dream took, and dream tells him he’s making him sound bad. skeppy wasn’t influenced by any “propaganda” you think l’manburg was putting out while they were getting murdered. skeppy was an outsider who was calling it as he saw it.

and if other people saw what dream was doing as bad, maybe he was... doing bad things? for bad reasons? skeppy was critical of dream for his actions. talking over somebody does not certify it as “twisting words”. skeppy was accusing him of doing the actions, like “so you did this? you started the war?”. dream was defending the logic behind his actions, like “well i did it because.”

basically

skeppy: hey it’s kind of. messed up that you killed a bunch of people. you know? you kind of just attacked them out of nowhere

dream: no no no you don’t understand. i had a really good reason

skeppy: i don’t see a reason?

dream: you’re making it seem like i didn’t have to do this

skeppy: you d i d n ‘ t

and skeppy didn’t finish the conversation with “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, he just told him he was wrong! as in his actions were cruel and needless! “people must have hated coming to your house”.

(they asked me to name one person who dream cut off first)

okay, name one? puffy. sam. punz? he did cut them off, he straight up told tommy he did it, and making a place in the vault for fran when sam had done nothing but work with him? and they didn’t “show up ready to kill him”, they showed up to see what he was doing. so he tells tommy he abandoned them, and indirectly tells them with the spirit scene. sapnap and george noticed this, and called him on it, but he just said he didn’t mean it?

if dream “wasn’t as close” with sam/puffy/punz, why are we putting responsibility on them for his actions.

so sapnap and george walked away from him, but because he did something to them. and puffy didn’t abandon him. punz didn’t abandon him, punz got paid off because that’s what punz cares about: money. he’s a mercenary.

using “they left him first” for sapnap and george doesn’t allow for why they left him: because he wasn’t treating them fairly. he isn’t their parent, he’s their friend, and he wasn’t acting like it.

“he was hurt and abandoned to the point” “he ended up hurting people doesn’t negate the fact he was hurt himself first” “the environment they all were a part of pushed him this far, and that’s just what happened”

so you’re saying it’s right that the reason dream did bad things to people is because bad things were done to him first? because dream was definitely the one who got attacked first during l’manburg. because he just cared so much about george that he kicked someone out of society just to defend his honor. /s and then, because his real purpose was protecting george, he went back and tried to make things right with george because it wasn’t about tommy? oh wait, he didn’t. he focused on only tommy. because george’s house was an excuse.

“that’s just what happened” is a bad take on “people got abused”. the fact is that dream started a lot of the conflict. looking at the retaliation and self-defense that people did towards him and saying “he got hurt a bunch that’s why he did the later bad stuff” completely negates that he started it? and his “retribution” was always exponentially worse than the actual crime committed?

dude, i’m just trying to point out that the story says he cut people off. yeah, he was hurt at times, but that is not an explanation for what he did. it’s not even a logical cause, because we do not see it affect his character. the subtext has gotta be there. the fact that he was hurt does not make him any more justified.

“circle of violence” does apply (not all of them, though). but in this situation, it’s a kid stealing someone’s lunch money, and then the other kid breaks their nose. the first kid punches the kid, the second kid puts them in the hospital. when the retribution dream gave was always worse than whatever happened to him, the issue is not “look at the people hurting him”, it’s “stop him from hurting people”!

so clearly dream needs some kind of therapy (not from puffy though i’m not letting him near her /hj), because just killing him would be a permanent solution but it would upset people who like his character. the prison is awful and not going to work. my personal solution for him is to send him out somewhere a long way away, so that nobody he’s hurt has to see him again. maybe people that wanted to go with him could, and it would be like a new smp. but when that idea was proposed, tommy said darkly that he was always going to come back. maybe it’ll be the solution in the future. who knows.

if the mistakes were unintentional, why criticize the characters for them? and what about “the environment” besides the other people changed how dream thought? a lot of it was internal.

we have him exiling tommy as a weird, desperate plea for friends (not really) when he very much could have gone back and spoken to the people who were his friends. we have him continuously saying that tommy causes all the problems, and he needs to be “restrained” or “controlled” or whatever other excuse he came up with for taking away a person’s free will.

we have him obsessing over the disks, and we know it’s not about the disks, it’s about power over tommy and power in general. he says this in the vault. he says this at the community house scene. his progression is towards a twisted sense of possession, same as wilbur, oddly enough. but they are different in that wilbur is possessive over the idea of freedom that he created with l’manburg (and having power over that) and dream is possessive over control over all.

wilbur’s idea is ruined. he tied his sense of self to the nation and when it was used for corruption (kind of by him and mostly by others) he saw himself as corrupted and decided to take them both out so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. he admits his own fault to the point of self destruction.

dream’s idea is threatened. other people live there, other people want to do things, and so he becomes so attached to the idea that it’s his server and he will do anything to control opposition. he cannot admit his fault unless forced to.

wilbur would do anything to control a tool of power, because he wanted to not use it as that tool. wilbur wanted anarchy at the end. he says so in his last presidential speech. his naive views about freedom from the start of the server had worn off, as he saw people use power as a tool in a way that he had never intended or meant to use it.

wilbur created the election so that he would have an actual authority over the land, and he could stop the fighting of its citizens. he thought he knew better, kind of like dream did. this is when his motives get the most twisted and selfish, he wanted peace so bad that he would take away freedom for it (like dream). but when he lost, he accepted it, and that’s the difference. he saw the desire for control in his own actions, and hated himself for it. that’s why he wanted to blow up l’manburg, to take away the tool for power and the person who had been tempted to use it.

wilbur was a good leader in the political sense (dream admits this in “tyrant”) but when he stands before the rubble of l’manburg and calls it his, he’s saying that his rule would only lead to destruction. anyone’s rule would. power corrupts. l’manburg ruined is his l’manburg, it’s his original vision of complete freedom laid out before him, and tracked to its inevitable end.

so then, you would say, dream was right, yeah? he didn’t want l’manburg. but wilbur before he explodes l’manburg doesn’t like dream. he thinks dream’s right in that factions lead to oppression, no matter how good the intentions, but he also knows that dream was a little too willing to hurt them and that dream doesn’t believe this. dream does not want anarchy, he wants chaos but only if it gives him control. he treats the smp like his country, and once again, power corrupts.

went off there, sorry. dream and wilbur are similar but different in some very important ways.

sapnap had been hurt by dream before the vault, and as dream didn’t see himself as in the wrong, he didn’t reach out. sapnap was with pogtopia (wait this might be wrong i do not remember but he was definitely on l’manburg’s side during doomsday) because tommy had shown him more kindness than dream, and that was originally dream’s side. dream just turned on them for the book.

and sapnap also witnessed dream mocking tubbo, making fun of tommy, exposing ranboo. he heard dream going off about how tubbo was so stupid for thinking dream was his friend, for thinking dream cared about him. why would sapnap side with dream if dream was showing no signs of even wanting him?

sapnap accused dream of that, and dream did not listen to him. he could not see the other side: he was so convinced that he was right. we do not know if sapnap went into the vault with the intent of killing dream. i’m pretty sure most of them were there to see if what tommy had said was true. and then, sapnap saw that it was.

nobody abandoned him because of the vault because he had already abandoned them. they just made it mutual. it being a “consequence” of stuff doesn’t make it any less of a messed up, power hungry thing to do, and some of them had done nothing to him before he decided he needed to control them. he was planning to use friend to control ghostbur, who he had already taken advantage of and tried to kill once.

“people do not decide to isolate themselves for no reason.”

true, people don’t cut themselves off for no reason. the reason was power and control. i once again have to emphasize that nobody forced him into this: it was a spiral. other people didn’t do everything “first”. the small taste he got of his own medicine was a poor mimic thrown at him by someone he had done terrible things to. he started spiraling before the spirit scene happened. and if people are telling him he can’t achieve peace, maybe they’re just... right? did he go up to someone and go “i don’t know how to make this server peaceful :(“? because if he did, and if they then pointed at his long list of war crimes and told him not like this, i don’t really see that as anything more than a consequence for things he had already done.

someone can lie about what they want. maybe he did originally want peace, or maybe he was lying to himself that he did. l’manburg did not invite war. he wanted unity above peace, and that “unity” dissolved into “control”.

it was a defense so that nobody could control him the way he was going to control them. cutting himself off was out of fear, yeah. collecting everyone else’s items? power and control. he says this a ton of times, sometimes not even out loud.

i did rewatch the vault vod. that’s how i got all the quotes of him stating his motives. i’m not saying it was a healthy thing to do at all. i never said dream was mentally healthy, i said he had a god complex and he was obsessed with control. someone’s bad mental state can hurt others as well as themself, and they’re still responsible for the others and for trying to be a better and more respectful person. that’s why revivedbur’s “apologies” mean nothing right now.

“he lists his reason for starting the war as them declaring independence, so i don’t think it really matters when the official document was sent.”

it does matter a little bit, actually. they were already attacking l’manburg before official war was declared. they also attacked them during the peace period. wilbur wrote the declaration as he was standing on the roof of the caravan, being shot at by the greater smp.

a country becomes independent when it officially declares itself to be independent. they were still united; it was tyranny.

when dream saw that l’manburg was writing the declaration, he scrambled to declare war. he had reopened and started other conflicts in the past, and involved himself in places he did not need to be. it’s true that a response is a response, but you cannot treat all responses the same way. quackity’s “response” to the things dream had done (killing tommy among those) was to torture him. we do not consider that good, or fair, or “just a response”, we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.

the greater smp fulfilled the words that wilbur had not yet written in the document, and that’s because they weren’t a prophesy, they were a history.

“...would be completely honest about (dream’s motivations in the vault) in front of his biggest enemy. /s”

i don’t see evidence that dream wasn’t being honest. what did he have to lose by it? tommy could do nothing to hurt him. so yep, he would be honest about it. and he’s listed his reasons as power before. he also has the ability to tell the truth about his motives.

dream does not see tommy that way. he sees him as someone whose only positive contribution to the server is attachment. he tells tommy that evil is relative, and to dream, tommy is the evil one. in fact, he says that tommy is evil lots of times. he only says that tommy sees himself as a hero when he’s trying to convince him to let him kill his friend. dream is using tommy’s black and white perception to get him to do what dream wants. he only says tommy sees himself as the hero, not that dream sees him that way. dream does not care about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, because he’s not idealistic like wilbur and he’s not a kid like tommy.

him making a joke about building the prison with a “little bit of evil” doesn’t matter because next line he says that tommy’s evil to him. dream isn’t playing the villain, cc!dream is. cc!dream is playing a character that is antagonistic towards others, and he plays into it and jokes around with it, as other people playing antagonistic roles have in the past. cc!wilbur does this a lot during the election and pogtopia. cc!techno hints at it with his “ah yes, blowing up a country, we must be the good guys”.

it may sound like a character because someone’s playing it, but it’s not dream.

this video matches up with some of my points here, but it’s also framed like an english class. it is an interesting meta argument, and one that i would say i partially agree with, but as we’re not really arguing on terms of meta it does not act as a general opposition to your argument. the intent of the authors does not dictate how you see the story, but it can help with interpretation of it.

dream’s words during the vault scene sure do line up with his actions for the months before that. so yeah, no discredit to cc!dream. he’s playing his character. and it’s not like he’s unwilling to make him sympathetic. he’s done so in the past (and is doing so now) and the fact that he does not do it during the vault, and downplays the tragic part of it (him losing his friends) sure makes it seem like the main point here isn’t “poor dream”, it’s “poor tommy”. they’re telling a story. it has a moral.

dream being reserved about his plans may be shown in the fact that nobody knew about the vault (except punz i think?) until dream was ready to put it into play. he generally is quiet about what he wants, he just cares a lot about it and will do a lot to get it. he’s not one for speeches unless he’s trying to make a point. the point here being that tommy is trapped. dream’s capable of explaining his thoughts. tommy asks him why and invites him to share, so he does.

this isn’t really a “nobody can interpret it like this”, it’s just pointing out that the events of canon are there and should be fully considered. character dream’s perspective of the story is biased, so people can look at it and be correct in how dream sees the situation, but “how dream sees it” and “how the story goes” do not necessarily line up.

conflicts dream has started besides the vault? okay.

-reopening the disk war by digging up the hidden disks

-declaring war on l’manburg the first time

-burning down other buildings in order to frame tommy

-blowing up the community house (or having it done for him)

-attacking l’manburg again with techno and phil

(didn’t start really, but inserted himself into when it wasn’t his business:)

-helped pogtopia

-gave wilbur tnt

-sided with manburg in the fight

-built walls around l’manburg

-demanded tommy be punished

-took personal responsibility for exile and used it as a way to isolate tommy

there’s also this post that describes things dream has done in general. the tone of the post is biased, but the actions were canon. some of these may be “retribution” but they sure were uncalled for.

so when he exiled tommy, that was about “unity”? big happy family except for one guy because “he causes all the problems”? it doesn’t matter whether he believed he was in the right for his motives. the vault does not make sense for peace or unity. it is a twisted, controlled unity. what i’m saying is that he uses peace as an excuse for his actions. he had to exile tommy, tommy would have just gotten worse. he had to declare war on l’manburg, it was a necessary evil. because nothing screams “peace” like declaring war and killing the other side, right?

those may be his actual motives in the early scenes, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. this changes with the vault. he no longer uses this as an excuse, his “excuse” is that he has a right to it. his self proclaimed motive is power and control, and unity through that. so why not accept that as his motive when he says it there?

“becoming a control freak as a result of feeling the loss of control over your own circumstances isn’t equal to dehumanizing the people you’re trying to control.”

nah dude he absolutely dehumanized them and took away their agency? he describes tommy as a pet and a tool, minutes before he switches and describes himself as the book. this could also be used to make an interesting point on how he sees people as their values, in item form. so he’s using one item to control another. tubbo’s a pawn, tommy’s a tool, techno’s a weapon, he’s the book.

he calls george a baby, and makes decisions for him. by planning to using the items to control the people, he was prepared to take away their freedom and agency by emotionally manipulating them. he did this to tommy. agency is the capacity of someone to act. he takes away that ability in order to have control.

he’s not just a control freak over his own life, the problem is that he does it to others. again, we’re talking true freedom here: the ability to do anything, even things that we would consider morally wrong. he takes away george’s power, which is revealed to be nothing. he then swiftly turns and tells him that if he tries to overthrow eret, he would be a tyrant. not acknowledging that dream just overthrew a king and stated in a new one, he hypocritically calls george the tyrant for planning to do that.

(i didn’t even notice this until now, but it’s actually interesting: dream is extremely hypocritical here, unless, of course, he sees himself as having more claim to who is king. now why would he think that? a hierarchy, perhaps?)

“which is understandable seeing as you’ve said already you never tried to look deeper into him, but it’s incorrect nonetheless.”

i said that before this i had not attempted to examine his character in a sympathetic light. that’s what i’ve been doing. his wish to “fix” his home is really just a wish to control his home, which is pretty evident when you look at right before exile. the smp was peaceful then. tommy had committed petty crimes before, and george didn’t even really care about the house. it was minimal damage. dream jumped at the opportunity to convince everyone else that tommy was the real problem (speaking of propaganda and vilifying).

and “he was getting better until the sixteenth” disregards that he threatened eret, enabled wilbur (however you interpret that, he still enabled him), and sided with schlatt for power reasons even though he said he would help pogtopia. giving pogtopia some stuff doesn’t make him the “good guy” because pogtopia were not the good guys! that’s the point! he sided with them because wilbur had less ambition than schlatt, and therefore posed less of a threat to the greater smp! he wasn’t helping them just purely out of the goodness of his heart. he didn’t think schlatt was right, he abandoned him very quickly, but he could have just taken the book and dipped. he fought in the war. he took the book for personal gain and he placed that above the trust of pogtopia.

“he wasn’t on a power trip at all, he didn’t have a god complex up until the prison stripped him of all his dignity and then threw an opportunity at him, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.”

power trip: an activity or way of behaving that makes a person feel powerful

exile and the vault, arguably before that a few times as well. there are a few quotes that emphasize this.

dream’s god complex was already there in the vault. that’s why he was scared enough of being controlled that he shut everyone else away: he wanted to secure himself even more as the sole power.

and exactly. he wasn’t proving anything to anyone else, he was proving it to himself. therefore he also wasn’t trying to “prove” he was big and bad and evil and irredeemable, he was trying to feel confident about his own power!

if he doesn’t care if he’s thought as of evil, why did it supposedly drive him into the spiral? if he stopped caring about it, that would also explain why he was indifferent towards it (because he was indifferent towards it, every time someone called him that, indifferent or angry). he didn’t think he was evil because he thought he had a right to what he was doing. so he pushed himself into wanting more control, after seeing something he identified as a problem: tommy. you’re right that that’s part of what makes him tragic: that he stopped caring about what he owed to anyone else. that’s why he hurt them.

“it’s likely and fits perfectly into his character arc in canon.”

people who are emotionally repressed still show emotions, they just don’t show them as often. dream shows emotions but he does not show the specific emotion that would give evidence to this theory. i’m saying that claiming something is deeply rooted in his character (not the emotional repression, that’s confirmed) when he shows no sign of it doesn’t line up with canon. it’s more of a theory than an analysis.

“it is good storytelling because cc!wilbur pulls it off brilliantly.”

cc!wilbur still played a complex character! his behavior changed significantly after the war, but there is evidence that he was a certain way during the war. his character grew from that point but my argument is that he was not always a liar about important things and that he genuinely believed in the values he formed l’manburg for. if you want to watch wilbur being power hungry and hypocritical, rewatch the election arc.

actions, not words. cc!wilbur pointed out hypocritical things his character said, but that just shows he was playing a flawed character. people using the wall thing as some kind of proof that he was evil is stupid because part of the idea behind the wall was poking fun at america. it was “look, this is what you guys do”.

his early character was passionate and naive. cc!wilbur was aware of this. he was still a chaotic crimeboy, the nation was founded on drugs. but not everything he did was “for chaos” because again, he played a multi-dimensional character. he can make jokes about politics.

“his main support system left by themselves.”

i’ve already explained why i think dream broke most of his own bonds. again, there’s textual evidence to support this and actions as well that line up with it. and lots of people were willing to help dream. he didn’t murder all those people by himself.

“it also seems you’re strongly biased against c!dream, which, to be fair, the majority of the fandom is.”

it’s true my bias is against dream. it’s also true that my reasons for that bias are backed up by moments in the story where he clearly states his intentions, and a lot of the evidence to the contrary is, to me, one-off moments that can be interpreted in many ways. a lot of the bias also comes from the fact that he did pretty bad things and i’ve been watching this for a long time.

this post is pretty much what i’m saying, i guess.

alright @flypaw here it is :]

~ Lad 2

[condorclaw]

Why It’s Hard To Understand c!Technoblade

Note: These are my own thoughts and beliefs. This isn’t meant to be hate or critical at all, but rather trying to figure out why Technoblade’s actions are harder for some people to understand. I’m always open to friendly discussion, as some people might have noticed things that I haven’t!

After completion note: This could be slightly hard to read due to my jumbled thoughts, and the sudden realization I had while working on this, but I tried to explain everything as best as I could! This is now not even c!Technoblade critical, but rather Minecraft critical /j

A quick lookover at the cast of the Dream SMP will definitely show how many unique characters there are within the story, and that’s only based on appearances. Diving deeper into each of them, they all have their own morals, backstories, and relationships that drive what they do.

There’s another factor that makes each of them unique too, and that’s how they tell their stories. Some are more reactionary, while others take time to work out their own feelings and thoughts. Imagine it as a scale:

While some characters are more introspective and express their feelings and motivations more through words (ex. Ranboo, Ghostbur), other characters share their own morals through their actions, be them extreme or subtle (ex. Sapnap, Dream). Of course, those aren’t the only two options, with the storytelling being a sliding line where there is a middle ground for some characters to display their own feelings through a combination of words and actions (ex. Jack and Tommy).

Now, this isn’t saying that Ranboo can’t act on his morals, or that Dream can’t use his words (we’ve all seen them do both very well). It’s more so a representation of the storytelling they’re most common with. All the ones who use words to express their feelings have backed it up with actions, and the ones who’ve acted on their thoughts have shared reflections on it with words. One way of storytelling is not better than the other, and it’s rather good to have multiple ways of seeing how characters react to situations through their common/preferred method of expression.

However, when it comes to Technoblade, he exists on the scale in a very weird way.

While he can appear on the scale, he doesn’t exactly fit within the similar boundaries of other characters. He acts, but rarely backs it up with almost any words. When he does use words, while they make sense, there’s too little to connect them to the full extent of what he does.

There’s another character who’s also in the same spot as Techno on the scale: Phil, who does tend to act in the same way Techno does, also having the same explaining gap as Techno.

So why do I understand Phil’s reasoning more than Techno?

It’s because of something else outside of words and actions, just rather character explanation. It’s an overlying trait.

Phil’s overlying trait is that he’s centuries old and has seen loved ones die. With this knowledge, it’s much easier to come to an understanding of where Phil’s own thoughts lie and why he acts the way he does. Of course this trait isn’t applicable to all his actions, but it allows us to bridge gaps between his disconnected actions and come to an understanding of why he might believe in specific ideals and morals.

Overlying traits can change though, Ranboo being an example of this. At the beginning, his trait was memory issues, which caused his feelings to be affected by his condition, and seek out those who he remembered to be good. It’s why he had the memory books, and why they were used to bridge parts of his own thinking and actions. Currently, his overlying trait has shifted to wanting peace. It’s through this why he takes his alliances and friends into consideration when making decisions, because all he wants in the end is the best result for everybody to benefit from.

Techno doesn’t appear to have a current overlying trait that originated from anywhere. “Destroy the government” could possibly be seen as this, but it’s more of an overlying statement than an overlying trait, something that’s rooted in mostly words rather than in a fact. “I’m a person too” could also be it, but that thought is rarely covered, with Techno currently leaning towards a more militaristic and authoritarian mindset.

At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a clear overlying trait for Techno’s character that connects his actions together. Techno rarely goes into his own mindset, rather acting upon what he believes in the moment without exploring it in a coherent way. With characters like him who don’t use their words for solid explanation, visuals are especially important to convey how a character is feeling outside of said words, which Techno tends to do.

Now, this isn’t Techno’s fault in being unable to convey his specific emotions to his audience. IRL limitations are in the way of that, such as cc!Techno streaming very infrequently. With cc!Ranboo, he streams every day, so there’s time for him to introspect and to do what he wants to do in terms of lore. Minecraft is also extremely limited in specific emotions of players, which is why crouching is the closest thing to conveying fear or playfulness, and the arm motion is used for waving or expressing anger.

For c!Techno, facial expressions would be the most useful tool in explaining his internal thoughts, but he can’t show them like how he could in animation or live-action. As seen in the content created by the fans, famous Technoblade scenes will have a wide variety of facial expressions, since that would be the visual focus of his character.

I believe the reason it’s so hard for people for understand Techno as well as they could, is because he doesn’t express his feelings through words or actions, but rather a third category: his expressions, which we are unable to see due to the limitations of the game.

Actions don’t always equal true feelings, and while words are important, they can be inconsistent with how one expresses them.

So while this is the more linear form that we can expect:

In reality, it’s actually more like this:

And with the third category, the previous linear form is rather inaccurate within itself. Yes, this makes things more complicated in terms of working out how each character can portray their own morals and ideals.

But isn’t that what Dream SMP is about? Absolute insanity wrapped in different perspectives that might not be as clear as they seem?

TLDR: Technoblade is hard for me (and possibly many others) to understand due to the most important factor of his storytelling, facial expressions, being limited to nonexistent within the game Dream SMP is set in.

(Thank you so much for reading this if you got this far! I really appreciate it!)

[bones-sprouts]

SELF INDULGENT APOLLO JUSTICE ACE ATTORNEY AU BECAUSE IT BRINGS ME JOY ( SPOILER WARNING ⚠️‼️)

@burnoutandbookworms-ohmy you wanted to be tagged :>

okay so the cast would be as follows

apollo - tommy

phoenix - wilbur

trucy - tubbo

klavier - ranboo (this one's ambitious but hear me out-)

kristoph - dream

ema - techno

lamiroir - kristin

zak - phil (F in chat for mr minecraft 😔)

and then all of the filler characters would be various other smp members (suggestions?)

so then the plot would go as follows (we're bullet pointing this bitch you better run)

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

• so tommy arrives in the courtroom with dream, and he's nervous as hell, because not only is it his first trial

• his client is wilbur fucking soot

• world renouned defense attorney, now disbarred for forging evidence

• but tommy is 110% sure wilbur is innocent

• because wilbur is his HERO

• and then dream introduces them and damn he looks like shit

• i'm talking full pogtopia era get-up, plus a ratty beanie that has wilby painted on it and a crown pin

• so wil spouts the standard cryptic bullshit you'd expect from phoenix

• and tommy does an early smpe earth 'i am so cool and not at all starstruck' type act

• and they head in

• you meet the judge, who i didn't replace bc it's the judge

• tommy does his chords of steel, but with significantly more swearing then apollo would use

• and dream seems to be just a bit off

• and he goes on this big tirade about blue cards

• the case goes smoothly, until

• tommy feels something akin to a burning from the compass he's kept as a necklace for as long as he can remember

• and he just knows that the witness is lying

• it's like he can see the tiniest of tells that tip him off

• dream doesn't quite understand it, but wilbur looks like he knows exactly what's going on

• before he calls this out, though, a recess is called

• wilbur and dream have a chat, so tommy's left to his own devices

• and this boy about his age in a green magician's outfit runs up to him

• and he looks like an older version of the picture of wilbur's kid that he showed off in court beforehand

• and he hands tommy a (bloody??) playing card and poofs away

• then the trial resumes as normal, with tommy grilling the witness and eventually accusing her

• but it just doesn't seem right

• he knows she's not lying about being innocent, her tells would have tipped him off if she was

• but dream pushes and pushes him to formally accuse her

• until wilbur fucking soot interjects with an OBJECTION!

• while tommy geeks the hell out, wilbur asserts that there must have been someone else in the room

• and accuses dream.

• tommy's confused, and the both of them argue back and forth for a bit, until wilbur starts explaining his theory with evidence from tommy along the way

• but it's seeming like they don't have any non circumstancial evidence

• until wilbur has tommy pull out the playing card

• (i haven't been explaining the case but it makes sense i promise)

• they win the case, with dream never faltering or showing emotion, even after being taken away

• tommy's shaken up, but happy, all things considered

• but before he can ponder on what's just happened, wilbur takes him aside to talk

• and admits the card was forged

• tommy's shocked, and he's sad, and he's angry, because how could wilbur fucking soot forge evidence??

• and he punches him in the face

• wil smiles and gives him an offer to work at his office, since tommy's boss is kind of in jail

• tommy leaves

• but he comes back a few months later, only out of desperation

• he's greeted by the boy from the trial (wil's kid?)

• who demands to know his name and his 'talent'

• tommy says he's a lawyer and introduces himself

• the kid says his name is tubbo and that the building hasn't been a law office in a long time

• tommy asks to see wilbur

• so they go to see him

• in the fucking hospital

• he managed to get hit by a car, which sent him flying 40ft back into a telephone pole

• and he sprained his ankle

• he's very lucky apparently

• so from there, cases 2 and 3 play out (i'm gonna skim though these bc if i write them out ill end up rewriting plot points and i don't have the energy)

• along the way, they meet a few interesting people

• ranboo, a prosecutor who's dream's younger brother and the guitarist for a popular band, that tubbo immediately gets along with and tommy despises

• dispite seeming cocky, he's impressively awkward outside of court

• technoblade, a detective who's fairly standoffish towards tommy and tubbo alike, but has a soft spot for wilbur (do they have a history)

• kristin, a singer with a past she can't remember (unbeknownst to tommy, his compass tends to point towards her and tubbo. odd)

also before we move on to the final case, a quick summary of the dynamics and other small shit bc seritonin

• though wil adopted tubbo, they have much more of a sibling dynamic, and cause general mayhem

• wilbur does actually warm up to tommy fairly quickly (beanix and apollo dynamic, my abbhorrent) and while tommy still doesn't 100% trust wil, they do end up getting pretty close as time goes on

• tubbo and ranboo IMMEDIATELY hit it off, much to the dismay of tommy, and the two of them act like the dummy named micheal that tubbo uses for magic tricks is their son

• tommy acts like he hates ranboo's guts, but that won't stop him from trying to sweet talk his way into getting evidence from him (it always works, ranboo has no spine.) he also, like in canon, vents to ranboo whenever he needs to, and ranboo ends up knowing more ab him then even wil and tubbo

• jack is eldoon. they all go to his noodle shop constantly and tommy always complains about them being too salty. jack hates him with a passion but adores tubbo and wil

• instead of snakooos, techno deadass just has entire bags full of raw potatoes that he eats like chips, this is terrifying to everyone except wilbur, who acts like it's completely normal

• instead of pretending to be taken hostage in case 2, tubbo deadass pretends to have a nuke and threatens to set it off unless a recess is called. after things calm down they go back in and he just,, doesn't get arrested. the law is fucked

• after case 1, dream wears a smiley mask in order to not show his face, paranoid that tommy or someone else like him will know his secrets though his tells

okay now final case here we go

• wilbur tells tommy and tubbo that he's been working on a special trial with the jury system, and that he needs them to defend

• they agree, and go to meet the client

• things generally go like any other investigation, but there's just something about it that feels game changing

• and as they power though the first part of the trial, they start to uncover that there might be someone pulling the strings from behind the scenes

• tommy clocks her tell (chewing her nails) and they start to make progress

• but before they can uncover answers from her, she passes out

• a recess is called, and so are paramedics

• it turns out she's ingested the same kind of poison as the victim, coming from her nail polish

• tommy and tubbo are shaken up, and they go to wil for help

• he decides they need to know the full truth, but he knows that some of the evidence is lost at this point

(and holy shit stay with me here i promise that as out of left field this is the original game made significantly less sense)

• he phones a friend that he knows is the only one that can help them

• karl

• he explains the situation, and karl agrees to help them

• and they fucking time travel

(again, the game makes even less sense i promise)

• they chat with the victim and defendant from seven years beforehand, right after wil was disbarred

• they watch the trial wil got disbarred over, where he defended tubbo's bio father, phil

• and they see a much smaller tubbo hand wil the forged evidence, saying that a kind man told him to give it to the man with the bright blue hamilton suit

• and they watch wil present it, only to be shot down by a much younger ranboo, who proves it's fake

• and they find out tubbo and tommy are bio siblings, which they're shocked about but decide to talk about later (fuck canon tommy and tubbo get to know)

• and they go visit dream in prison

• at this point wil is CONVINCED dream is behind everything, they just need the right evidence

• so they head to the cell, only for it to be empty

• naturally, they start snooping

• wil finds a letter, and opens it to reveal exactly what they need to win the case

• but before they can leave, dream, equipped with a smiley mask, stops them

• they exchange a few words before they leave, letterless

• luckily, wil has a trick up his sleeve, and reveals that his crown pin has a built in camera

• they examine the contents of the letter, and wil hastily makes a replica, and they head off to the trial

• since they're experimenting with the jurist system for the first time, they can't afford to wait for the defendant to heal, so they proceed

• they call dream to the stand

• they grill him for quite a while, with the help of ranboo who refuses to protect his brother, getting him to show his true colors, and then pull out the letter

• and he says that it's a fake, which the judge unfortunately agrees with

• so they don't have their evidence

• and even though they've shown pretty much everything and dream had practically admitted to bring a murderous bastard and the one who gave tubbo the fake to give to wil

• they don't have enough to convince a judge

• tommy and tubbo are crushed

• but wil is happy

• because they don't have to convince a judge

• they have to convince a jury

• and they win

• dream shatters along with his mask, going completely off the deep end

• their client is safe, and so is wil

• kristin also reveals to wil that she's tommy and tubbo's bio mom, saying that she'll tell them when she's really

• so things come to a close

• for now, anyway

so yeah, thats AJ but dsmp, to anyone who didn't play the game, i'm so sorry this makes no sense, and to anyone who did, you're cool as hell can we be moots 👉👈

[bangtansbun]

Endgame || Gorgeous

pairing: jeon jeongguk x f. reader

genre: fluff and pining

word count: 1,550

warnings: just a lot of pining on yn’s end.

a/n: this is the start of everything and i really cannot stand how sweet they are. please listen to the song to get a better feel for the emotions running through yn’s head. I know this isn’t a very long written part, but I think the scene fits perfectly. lemme know what you guys think after you read!!

song: Gorgeous by Taylor Swift

Masterlist

The two of you had always been this way. Always wanting to spend time together regardless of whether you’d already seen each other 5 times that week. It was movie nights and sleepovers in Jeongguk’s room, late night pizza parties in yours, and everything in between.

Originally there had been nothing there, just a pure, loving friendship of the best kind. However, as you’d grown into your teen years you started to realize that some of the feelings you had toward him may not be of the friend variety. Jeongguk started to change too. Although you weren’t sure if his feelings changed, the physical change he underwent was very apparent. No longer this scrawny and gangly boy, but someone with a strong jawline, defined abs, and thick thighs. Of course you knew this because in all the years you’d been friends you’d changed in front of each other at least a million times. Only turning away when when the more intimate parts of your bodies were being exposed.

Needless-to-say, it was hard not to notice the rapid change in his body.

His personality had changed a little bit too, but only in a way that made your crush for him grow even more. He used to be so shy and quiet. Always kind of keeping to himself. And while he still preferred you to other people even now, he was more outgoing and goofy than he was when he was younger.

All of that to say, it was hard to ignore the feelings of jealousy when girls at school talked to him. The pang of disappointment when he’d turn down a hang out session with you to do something else. The turmoil you went through when he’d talk to you about his crush of the year and dates he went on here and there. Although none of them ever turned into something serious, you still always felt regretful anytime he was spending a romantic evening with someone other than you.

That said, you’d invited Guk over to play minecraft with you and just chill, no school work, no talk of school at all. Just you and him playing minecraft and spending quality time together. However, he got bored about halfway through you building a new base and decided to take his laptop out to play his own games. Normally you wouldn’t care, but when he was playing with you he was sat in the same chair, cheeks almost touching, and warmth from being so close to you. Now he’s sitting on your bed cross-legged and the coolness of his body no longer next to yours is settling uncomfortably into your bones.

The idea was popping into your mind the instant you noticed he wasn’t even responding to you anymore, too focused on his game to carry on the conversation. You were going to bother him. Would it cause him to lose his game? Maybe. Would he be mad at you for it? Only for a minute or two. Would it be worth it? 100%. You couldn’t go without his attention for one more second.

Without thinking twice, you quickly get out of your chair and leap onto the bed, effectively tackling him in the process. He quickly moves his laptop out of the way so as not to let you break it and braces himself for the impact. You’re immediately going for his sides, knowing he’s most ticklish there. He lets out a yelp and tries to tickle you back so as to distract you from your attack. “You little brat!” he gasps out. “What?? You weren’t even t-talking to me, Guk!” the stutter falling out  of your lips when he gets you where you’re most ticklish.

You started out hovering over him, but he’s shifted the position and now he’s on top of you. Desperately trying to tickle you so that you’ll stop in your tracks.

It worked.

The position he put the both of you in, having moved you with ease, has caused a shift in the air. You thought it was just you. Being this close allowing you to notice just how gorgeous he is. His brown hair flopping in front of his face, the cute bunny teeth that poke out when he’s trying to conceal his laughter, and the way his nose scrunches right before he laughs. You can’t help but be mesmerized by him. Completely lost in his chocolate brown eyes, almost twinkling when he’s looking at you. He was so cute you couldn’t stand it. All of those years of teasing him and play fighting with him leading up to this moment. You not only had a big fat crush on him, but you might also be in love.

You thought it was just you, but it wasn’t. 

He felt the shift too, your faces so close to each other now, and the warmth from your bodies spreading between the two of you. Your lips just a hairs breadth away from each other. But just as quickly as you had attacked him, he’s moving off of you. “Ah, sorry yn,” he says as he rubs the back of his neck, something you know he does as a nervous habit. “I didn’t mean to ignore you, you know how I get with these games sometimes,” a light chuckle coming out of him as he avoids your gaze. You’re still lying down on the bed, your breathing still struggling to return back to normal after such close proximity to him. “Uh, it’s okay, Guk. It doesn’t matter, just wanted to spend some time with you and we are, so that’s all that really matters,” you finally move to sit up, trying to bring some normalcy back to the room.

There’s a moment of silence between the two of you, which normally wouldn’t  matter, silence being comfortable from years of friendship, but this time the awkwardness is palpable. Jeongguk is the first one to break the silence, “why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on while I was sucked into my round?” You’re quick to get up from the bed and bound over to your gaming chair. You always loved showing him your intricate builds or mineshafts that you’re able to clear out, skillfully evading the mobs that would spawn erratically.

With that, the energy between you guys starts to go back to normal. You two spend the rest of the evening just like that, chatting lightly and advancing in the game together. Eventually, 10pm rolls around and the two of you start to feel tired, needing to get ready to go to bed so you both can feel rested for school tomorrow morning. You walk Jeongguk to the door, “bye Gukkie. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight,” you say with a soft smile. “Of course, yn. I’m always down to hang out with you.” With a smile and wave, he walks across the street to his own house, and you’re left to sit in your messy feelings.

You flop back down onto your bed with a huff. What was going on with you? This crush has been going on for a while now and you’re usually able to repress your feelings enough for everything to continue as normal. This time was way different, you felt like your feelings for him were practically oozing out of you. He could probably smell the desperation on you. God, you hated how much he made you want him. Sure he was your best friend, but he wasn’t really yours to have just by default. You wished he’d be yours though, it’d make this whole ordeal a lot less painful. 

Your roll over onto your stomach and groan into your pillow. Wallowing, that’s what you were going to do for the rest of the night. Felt like the right next move to you considering your predicament. 

Just as you’re making a plan of turning on netflix and drowning yourself in ice cream in the dark, you hear your phone go off with a *ping.* 

From gukkie:

[10:17pm] thanks for having me over. really hope you’re not mad at me for ignoring you for my game. you still seemed kind of weird when I left :/

Damn, he could read you like a book. Although, while you were feeling weird when he left, his reason for that is wrong, so you’re still able to skillfully evade confessing to him.

To gukkie: 

[10:20pm] no, of course i’m not mad at you. i’m just tired is all and i hate my classes tomorrow so dread is setting in. don’t worry guk, i had a good time :)

Leaving it at that, you turn your phone on do not disturb for the rest of the night, as you usually do so you can actually make sure to get some sleep, select the kdrama you’ve been watching lately, and dig into a tub of ice cream until you’re so tired you can’t keep your eyes open anymore. You go to sleep feeling a sort of emptiness, but also not because even though you were sure Jeongguk would never like you back in that way, at least you got to keep him as your best friend. There was always comfort in that and that could keep you going, at least for a little while.

[mangobubbletea7]

Doomsday, Technoblade, and Preparation

(This essay is kind of disjointed because it’s made of two different essays kind of smashed together, but I don’t think it works as well if the two points are apart so I’m keeping it the way it is. This is basically Techno’s habit of over preparation and how playstyles affect their character in the lore mixed with why I think it makes sense that L’manburg got destroyed in Doomsday. This was mostly inspired by this post )

Part of why L’manburg got obliterated at Doomsday was because they one had a day to prepare, their citizens were extremely unmotivated to get involved in another battle and fractured, and because of those two points, the thing that really killed them was Fundy blowing up their supplies so close to when the battle was supposed to start. If they had been at their A-game with time to prepare and everyone in a healthy mental state they definitely would have stood a chance but they got outplayed.

L’manburg was dying a long time before Doomsday happened because Tubbo got a burden he wasn’t ready for thrust on his shoulders and other citizens felt demoralized from the trauma and constant battles. People were even pointing out how Tubbo was pretty much the only citizen who had no ties to outside countries or groups left. More than half of the people fighting for L’manburg that day weren’t even citizens, that’s how much it had fallen from it’s glory days, partly because of Schlatt and partly because of Wilbur. And this is not to criticize Tubbo either, Tubbo inherited a nation that was supposed to die, he kept it alive but he had to start from a hole with citizens who felt demotivated from seeing what happened with Wilbur. And then he was yet again stomped on by Dream exiling Tommy. It’s not Tubbo’s fault at all but let’s not pretend L’manburg was even close to what it once was. Niki hated it. Fundy had a breakdown and turned on it. Tommy was exiled. Wilbur was dead. Jack Manifold had Manifoldland and given what he said after the battle was over, it sounds like him fighting for L’manburg was some last ditch effort to finally have his friends treat him with respect. And Tubbo was drowning in responsibilities he didn’t ask for. Those were the original members of L’manburg. They were a long way from the team they had been when L’manburg was at it’s peak.

Techno’s strong but his strength all comes from being over prepared, we see this in how he crushed the butcher army before they took his horse hostage, part of why he was winning so easily was that he spent 15 minutes crafting every potion he could think of and downed all of them before going into the fight to give him an even footing against his 4 adversaries. Part of this is because Techno’s character is pretty paranoid, he doesn’t trust easily and he prepares for the worst, and part of it is because it seems like that’s what CC!Techno enjoys. He’s done this many times now, with the vault for the Manburg vs Pogtopia war and the Wither vault he showed Tommy. CC!Techno likes to grind offscreen to prepare for big surprising moments like these. You’ll notice that other super powerful characters in terms of equipment are people who play on the server everyday and like to grind. Ranboo is stacked to hell because CC!Ranboo streams everyday and likes to go netherite mining when he has nothing to do. Foolish is stacked because CC!Foolish APPARENTLY NEVER LOGS OFF (pls CC!Foolish get some rest away from Minecraft I beg of you, you are too powerful for my mortal brain to comprehend.) Awesamdude is stacked because CC!Awesamdude enjoys grinding, he likes to work towards big things in the game. It just lines up with their play styles.

Yes L’manburg got crushed. That was the point. They were all at their lowest and it would have been weird if they did win. It was Act II, it’s Empire Strikes Back!!! They’re supposed to fail. If the protagonists don’t fail at first, it makes the antagonists look weak. If Dream hadn’t blown up L’manburg, if he hadn’t won as a result of his months of manipulation and pulling the strings behind the scenes, there wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a payoff as there was to see Tommy and Tubbo win in the disc finale. Dream had to do something bad enough to unite the server against him so that they could all band together and defeat him with numbers. That was the theme of Season II! Attachments good! People are stronger together than they are apart! It’s okay to rely on others when you need help! Those were the themes that needed to be conveyed in the finale of the disc war and Dream crushing L’manburg because they were disconnected and on different pages was the point! It’s all about preparation and L’manburg was unable to prepare on Doomsday.

[inactivepersonnnnnn]

Markiplier played the newest game from the Henry Stickmin series (Completing the Mission) and I’m crying it’s so good-

(Me just gushing over stuff after the cut because I don’t want to spoil and I typed out so much stuff)

The Henry Stickmin series lets plays were one of the first videos I’ve watched from Mark. Why is this a big deal? If I hadn’t watched them, believe it or not but my life would probably be so much different from how it is now. So, seeing him playing a game from the series gave me MASSIVE nostalgia. Also has made me realise that I’ve been watching his content for five years which frankly is amazing.

If you don’t know the Henry Stickmin series, you better play/watch a playthrough of them before reading because I’m going to spoil it so much. From what I know, the remaster of games 1-5 as well as the newest one is found on Steam but the original 1-5 are on Newgrounds and Stickpage.com. (Technically there are 7 in the series but whatever)

I really like the references in this one (mainly because I got a lot of them) and they were hilarious. The Undertale reference made me laugh a bit, I think I would’ve liked it more when I was Undertale trash 5 years ago. The Minecraft references were pretty good, the one where Henry was bridging to the rocket made me laugh waaay too much. Them making him go ‘oough’ when he died was a good nod to the old death sound. 

Aside from that, the text on the fail screens have just been amazing. I specifically remember the drill fail where it said something like ‘haha drill go brrrr’ as well as the part where they downgraded the animation and said the budget ran out. 

The choices this time were awesome. I LOVE the fight scenes. I don’t really watch anime but I really like how they put in one of the characters just talking during the fight and explaining everything. The funniest part for me though would be when you pick the barrel, Henry and Ellie get shot up, and you need to do a combo with Charles and the choice ‘Grab’ just makes him give you a high five before you fall. That fail had me laughing so hard it hurt. It’s probably one of the funniest fails along with Henry 360 no scoping Ellie, Charles crashing the helicopter, and the dancing distraction (all from Fleeing the Complex).

The callbacks to the previous games were also really heccing great, the dancing distraction fail was one of my favourites and I love how they made it work this time. The teleporter too, the entire scene was so well made and I love how Henry didn’t even want to use it because it screwed him over so many times. Oh! I almost forgot, in one route, the fail screen says ‘Henry will remember that’ which is a really nice nod because it references the text you see from the Ghost Inmate ending when you leave Ellie behind (’Ellie will remember that’)

I also really love how the characters from the government, the tophat clan, and the wall all appear in the game. It’s just- I love it, so so much.

Ellie and Henry’s dynamic is also really, really good. It reminds me of Joe and Cleo’s (Hermitcraft) dynamic. On his own, Joe’s chaotic but he makes it work in his own way. On her own, Cleo feels more organised and logical. Together, they do stupid things. (Terrible summary but give me a break, it’s late and I’m tired but I wanna finish this) I just really, really like their friendship and I find it so great that they’ve only known each other for like what- a day or two? And, Ellie trusts him enough to follow through with his plans even when she doesn’t fully understand them.

Okay, Ellie and Henry are great but can I just gush about Charles? 

Best. Character. In. The. Game.

Him with his plans back in Infiltrating the Airship and Fleeing the Complex were enough to make me love this guy but Completing the Mission just made Charles SO GOOD. I love his chemistry with Henry (plus Ellie) and his dialogue is absolutely hilarious. Seriously, he probably has the best lines in the entire series.

Also, he is SUCH a good friend. He’s only met Henry either once or twice (depending on the endings) but in the Valiant Hero ending, he seemed perfectly fine with exploding because Henry was safe and the mission was complete. And, his final lines DESTROYED ME. His dialogue was all written out in the captions but the voice never completed it.

When watching the video, I legitimately CRIED for Charles’ death. Markiplier did NOT leave enough time to just process and get over his death. In that ending, Charles died a hero but it was so SAD. His final lines- oh g od. 

“We did it though. We got' em. Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greates-” 

...

That being said, favourite ending (and the one I consider canon in my head) is Triple Threat. I want an ending with both accomplices alive please.

I’m still not over Charles’ death aaaaa-

[etihw000]

isnt tommy an actual 16 year old why are you making angst fanart of him. like i get that its a character he plays but also thats a literal irl child

i’m genuinely sorry if you do not like this content! please block me if you don’t wish to see them, because i do a lot of angst stuff - just in general.

i’ll put the bulk of my thought process under the cut. please note that i talk about self-harm and suicidal ideation sometimes, but it’s not in detail; it’s simply in name.

perhaps i’m just from an old age of fan culture, but to me there’s a very distinct separation between role and actor. and so i freely do fanart of the character, because i don’t connect it to the original person at all.

his character in the arc is very sad, very angsty, depressed, abused, suicidal. obviously i don’t believe that this is ‘actually him’, just like i don’t believe dream is actually a manipulative asshole. i’ve also seen people freely do fanart or animatics of That One Moment With The Lava ... haha. i don’t see my exploration of other themes as any different from drawing these specific scenes which so clearly struck a chord with so many people.

(i’m uncomfortable with that part, though - which is why i never wrote any events about it! the events i write tend to just be what-could-have-beens.)

i would feel differently if he had never roleplayed on dsmp. if he had never formed a ‘new’ character completely different from his ‘real’ self, i probably would never have explored such melancholic angles for it, because like you said - he is a child and he doesn’t deserve to be put into such sad content without his permission!

but to me, he wrote himself into such sad content. i don’t think it’s right to ignore his effort put into his sad content during roleplay, especially since he’s the one who wrote it. how lovely it must feel, to have someone so in love with what you’ve done that they want to explore unexplored potential options for it. imagine having put so much emotional work into emotional scenes and having them be completely ignored in favor of all the happier, light-hearted parts! to me, that’s utterly depressing.

(although my writings tend towards the self-indulgent; you perhaps notice that the topics i talk about tend to be topics that i feel strongly about. 

about missing someone who’s technically still around. about wanting so badly to be something to someone, but ultimately realizing you’ve never gotten to be more than just ‘a thing’. about pushing everything and everyone away because you’re angry, but inside you’re just lost and lonely. about wondering whether everything that has ever gone wrong was your fault, although logically you know it isn’t.

i wished to try and voice these feelings, because a younger me somewhere needed something like this to tell me that these feelings are alright to feel. although perhaps this part of the answer is too self-indulgent, haha.)

i know that to you it’s probably different; that is, that dream is an adult and tommy isn’t, so it’s a bit more questionable to do fanart of him in this way. and i get it! you’re completely valid in feeling that way. 

but i don’t. that probably just sounds uncaring, asshole-ish, or something, but i genuinely do not know how to phrase it better. 

i just don’t see his character on dsmp as having any connection to him in real life, other than having a similar look (like an actor) due to his minecraft skin. that’s all.

[marcilled]

[this is gonna be a big long post about minecraft youtuber drama... press J to scroll past this if you don’t care about that. lol. sorry]

idunno if anybody took my post the other day as me “cancelling dream for cheating in a videogame”, i posted it mostly out of bemusement of the whole situation, and because that video was really well put-together. (context: his 1.16 speedruns were disqualified by the minecraft speedrun.com moderators & there was a video & document explaining why).

I definitely don’t correlate cheating a speedrun w/ ableism, racism, etc etc. I already knew about a lot of nasty shit dream has done, like the video he did with Notch, and how all of his early content was about pewdiepie, just further normalizing those two to his young audience. I’ve always disliked him for those things, which I’ve been aware of pretty much as long as I’ve known of him, and he has never apologized for those things. It’s why whenever I posted about him before (which was... maybe once or twice?), I always say “don’t stan him or anything he sucks”.

I had no idea there was so much more to it honestly. It’s kind of galling seeing the full context now, because whenever I’ve seen any kind of criticism against him, it’s been him presenting it in an apology. I dunno why I wasn’t suspicious of this given what I already knew about him, but the guy seems to be very clever with how he damage controls any sort of possible controversy regarding him. He presents a really heartfelt, honest apology for whatever happened and gives a few cherrypicked examples of things that people said about him and says how wrong he was and how he doesn’t want to alienate his viewers.

The fact that it’s Dream presenting the evidence of his controversies, means that he gets to control how the conversation goes. Instead of a popular “mcyt” stan account getting to control the conversation, pointing out the shit he’s said and done, he addresses it in a livestream, and does not provide the original context. Huh, I wonder why. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want everyone to see that his mistakes are more than just little “oopsies”, it’s him being actively malicious and getting so defensive that he tells off anybody who could possibly disagree with his view of things.

While his actions and words are pretty horrid on their own, I think the thing that has me most concerned about Dream is... He seems pretty fuckin’ good at manipulating peoples’ perception of him.

-----

After the video about his speedruns being cheated came out the other day, he had this to say on twitter (this is his second, “personal” account):

Now, as I said before, cheating in a videogame isn’t at all comparable to racism or ableism. What I’m trying to point out here is his response to any sort of criticism.

The video he’s referring to is this one, published by Geosquare 2 days ago (dec 11th). What’s interesting to note here is how he singles out Geosquare specifically in this tweet. If you click on the video, the first few seconds establishes that it’s a video made by the entire Minecraft java edition speedrunning mod team (which is made up of a team of over a dozen people). The video and document was a true team effort from every single one of them, and it only got posted to Geosquare’s account (& got his narration) because he’s already a youtuber with a pretty comfortable amount of subscribers.

So, instead of pointing his ire (and those of his many, many fans) at the whole speedrun mod team, instead, he points it squarely on Geosquare, so that people have a convenient name to latch onto. He then accuses Geosquare of using his name as “clickbait” in order to get “easy views”, sowing the seed of this idea that Geosquare is doing this in an opportunistic grab for personal gain. If you clicked on the video and saw the description/pinned comment, you’d see that not only did Geosquare disable monetization on the video, he disabled monetization on his entire channel for as long as this drama goes on (and he knew there would be drama, dream made extra sure to threaten the mods with a video of his own in retaliation if they ended up banning him).

Then, in a reply to the first tweet, he says that there are “multiple moderators” messaging him saying the verdict was “biased” and that they may quit the mod team. He provides no evidence for this. However, if you click on the tweet and view any of the thousands of replies from his fans, it doesn’t matter that he gave no evidence, his word is enough. If you’re wondering, Geosquare and a few other mods have stated many times that it was a group decision on their part, and nobody had any question in their mind that Dream must have cheated. So... Dream, who are these “mods” that are messaging you? He won’t say.

Lastly here, I want to point out that in his next tweet on the matter, he makes this very bitter comment about how useless it was for them to investigate a “16th place run”. It’s a minor detail, but I think it’s worth mentioning; this kind of downplays how impressive his run was at the time. At the time he submitted his sub-20 minute speedrun, it was a top 5 run, in a very competitive category of speedrunning the game. In the 2 months since, several people have passed his time using new strats, but that doesn’t diminish the fact it was a pretty amazing “run”... if it weren’t cheated of course. But, I’m just rambling on about how petty I am about him cheating at this point so let me get back to the main point here.

If you see the numbers on these tweets (hundreds of thousands of likes), you’ll understand why this is pretty scary for those speedrun mods. The same day this happened Geosquare joked around “I’ve only gotten one death threat so far!”. Dream’s fanbase is unparalleled in minecraft youtube, and incredibly sizeable for a youtube channel overall. If you’re not familiar with this new wave of “mcyt” minecraft accounts, it’s... it’s pretty much exclusively because of Dream’s fame. He’s the driving force of minecraft youtube content right now. Any youtuber who even breathes near the guy blows up in subscribers & views. His minecraft server, “Dream SMP”, is like... it has a legitimate cultural impact, whether that sentence disgusts you or not. Especially for young gen Z kids.

The point I’m trying to make is, ever since he came onto the scene in early 2019, he’s grown and grown at exponential rates, and I can’t understate the kind of influence he has on not just his own fans, but the fans of like. Pretty much anyone who is plugged in to anything minecraft youtube related right now.

People have discussed this before, but Dream’s sudden rise to fame happened shockingly quick. So quick that it’s almost impossible it were by accident. He’d spent something like a year or two studying how the youtube algorithm works, how famous youtubers grow their popularity, etc. He spent a lot of time studying, and it paid off for him. It makes me wonder if he’s studied how youtubers deal with controversy as well. Because it seems like he’s doing everything right to keep his fans “loyal” to him.

So I think it’s not unreasonable to say that it is pretty goddamn concerning when he reacts to criticism like this. His immense fanbase, who are often worryingly obsessed with him, of mostly impressionable kids... It’s a recipe for disaster, in the hands of someone so entitled and immature.

I think what really has me worried, though, is a video he published to his second channel the other day. Recently, he published a video about his “stans”. The entire video essentially boiled down to him disputing claims that “dream stans” were toxic, or that stanning people or “stan culture” was creepy/unhealthy. He spent a lot of the video comparing stans of content creators to passionate fans of football teams, and expressed repeatedly how he thought it was normal and OK to be totally obsessed with a content creator and engage in “stan culture”, as long as you weren’t being a legitimate stalker. He pretty much only talked about the positives of being a Dream Stan, and how positive the “community” is. The whole video painted this really idealistic image of what it means to be a Stan of a person, and fandom in general.

Now... I don’t know about everyone else reading this, but I found that video to be... incredibly creepy and weird. It completely ignores any actual arguments about how stan culture can be unhealthy, and how engaging so heavily in parasocial relationships can be quite damaging, especially to younger people.

But, mostly? It seemed like the whole video was basically designed just to reinforce the most unhealthy impulses of his stans, and reward them with the positive encouragement that he actually enjoys it when they are obsessed with him so much that they can’t imagine he could ever possibly do anything wrong.

And that? That is fucking dangerous for a person with such a huge fanbase to be peddling to their fans.

Surely, he must know- a great deal of his fans are so obsessed with him, that they think they know him as well as, if not more than, a personal friend. So that when he does something disagreeable and wrong, and he claims “no that’s not how it happened, they’re biased and trying to cancel me because they’re jealous”, they just take that at face value, because why would he lie? He’s so honest and genuine in his videos and livestreams!

This sort of behavior from Dream, along with his tweets I posted earlier, reads to me as if he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think he is purposefully insulating his fans from the truth of his actions, so that he can present this idealistic picture of him in their mind, so that it seems absurd that he would do something wrong.

I think it’s only a matter of time before it comes out he’s done something much worse, honestly. What it is, is hard to say- he’s already done so much that anyone reading this should rescind their support for him, imo. But, I know that none of this matters to his millions of fans. While I worry for them, I also worry for anyone who becomes a target of Dream. I could see this speedrunning drama being the start of a downward spiral for him. Things could get real ugly with all that minecraft clout getting to his head... I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

TL;DR, dream sucks, and not just because he cheats at videogames.

I apologize again for writing a multi paragraph post about a minecraft youtuber. I will not post about this anymore (probably) please do not unfollow me .