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dr3amofagame · 8 months

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I find it strange that a lot of people are coming forward and saying that the staged finale was a bad play for one reason or another but it really isn’t and I don’t understand where the hate is coming from.

yeah i've seen some of this the last few days--staged finale has always been somewhat "controversial" in the lorehead scene, so a measure of disagreement/discourse about it makes sense. especially bc it was honestly a very big change to what people thought was the story and required people to go back and reevaluate a lot, which. people are naturally resistant at doing

but while obviously i think that some healthy discussion about these things is good, and i feel like i have seen a level of...misunderstanding? about it?? which has gone into the ways that people disagree

staged finale refers to the decision to stage the finale. that's it. staged finale just asserts that based on preexisting foreshadowing and based on the sheer level of suspension of disbelief in order for genuine finale to be real, it made more sense for the finale to be staged than for it to have been genuine. how the finale was planned, when the finale was planned, and to what ends it was planned are all things that you can disagree on w/ other staged finale believers/supporters while still being a staged finale believer/supporter, ykwim? if you believe that c!punz faked his betrayal to c!dream, then congrats! you believe in staged finale. oftentimes i see people say things like "i don't believe in staged finale, i think that c!dream faked the betrayal and all and always had c!punz on his side but i think that the reason behind why he did it is [X]" and it's like. staging the finale is one (1) event, not a comprehensive explanation for everything c!Dream does. that would be more in line with something like the "strategist dream interpretation," which in itself does have different readings as well.

people have listed all of the inconsistencies in the staged finale before, but just to summarize--the guy literally could've dipped when everyone came to "defeat" him, c!tommy leveraging his own life is basically no leverage at all when the mans has the revive book, skeppy cage is a joke, c!dream revealing all of his plans when they were maybe 10% carried out (the entire damn attachment vault was empty of items besides stuff that was literally faked, his own damn stuff, and stuff that he stole recently from c!tommy such as the Axe of Peace and the discs) is ridiculously stupid, why the hell does he have blackmail against c!punz included in a bunker that c!punz clearly had access to???? the list goes on.

(as someone who took awhile to be fully convinced in staged finale, what really tripped me up was the stream punz did the day before: here's a post breaking it down that definitely helped me to see it in a different light.)

as far as foreshadowing goes, just off the top of my head: the original prisoner is a constant question from the day of the prison's creation, being something that's even highlighted on the day of the staged finale itself. c!Dream saying he has "the biggest house on the server" and how it's full of redstone. the entire conversation he has with c!punz, obviously. his holding back on the favor with c!techno, the connection between the revive book and the prison that he establishes the day they begin prison construction.

from a logical perspective, the plan as c!Dream establishes it doesn't make any damn sense. c!dream had opportunities to escape that he didn't take for illogical reasons (if the only reason why he allowed himself to stay in a fucking possible kill chamber was to keep c!tommy from committing suicide, then? what about the revive book? what about the fact that he literally kills c!tommy just a few months later????) -- a level of plot contrivance is expected in the medium, but for a lot of people this was just. Going way too far. Unless he literally lost his whole mind (which, to be fair, was the persona being played) there's just. really no other way to make sense of what was going on there, if it was all genuine.

the other argument is a narrative one--people claim that the story established by a genuine finale is cleaner than the story of the staged one, and honestly. it's like. like that's...a feature, not a flaw? the reason why the genuine finale worked isn't because it was logically believable. dream is Dream Manhunt. he's famously hard to nail down, famously good at escaping sticky situations, famously a man that can outsmart his way out of crazy disadvantageous situations--like. just in terms of minecraft skill, i'd wager that most people would think that dream would've technically been able to pull off an escape even when facing down the collection of enemies that were there. like he had 2 stacks of pearls.

narratively, though, the staged finale has a story that's quite appealing on the surface. the "story" of the events from the spirit speech onwards is one that revolved around the idea of "attachment." c!Dream rejects attachment in favor of control in the spirit speech when he says he refuses to let his love for his dead pet control him anymore, and he focuses on the ability to use the discs to control c!Tommy. the fact that c!Dream's relationships deteriorate at this time seems to support this point, and c!Tommy's strength in his relationships being what saves him and damns c!Dream ties everything off into a neat bow. c!Tommy wins because he has friends and c!Dream loses because he doesn't, moral of the story established, hip-hip-hooray. And so it goes.

but when we look at this more in specifics...? it does start falling apart a bit, doesn't it?

although c!Dream supposedly begins his rampage over his existing emotional connections with the spirit speech, his reputation had been in shambles long before that point. c!Dream-as-villain is first established as part of the greater story in the lmanburg revolution, and that's a title that he never really sheds (this point being emphasized in inconsolable differences and the book c!Wilbur has c!Dream write.) Dethronement happens within a day of Spirit Speech, iirc, and on that day c!Quackity specifically points out that c!Dream has no one on his side but c!Punz. the moments where he is more specifically isolated go back to events such as november 16th, where his alliance with c!Wilbur involved blowing up L'manburg, his deal for the revive book, which involved his publicly betraying Pogtopia, or his opposing Manberg to the literal Manberg cabinet. etc. all of these events in the Manberg/Pogtopia era had c!Dream's loyalties erode to end up as just c!Wilbur and later c!Schlatt for the book, two dead men. (and i say eroded loyalties as if pogtopia really believed dream was on their side, like, ever? like he was never trusted in their ranks, even by c!Tommy, who was definitely the person he worked the closest with outside of c!Wilbur.)

if we look at Dethronement itself, it doesn't actually fit the pattern of "c!Dream cuts off his attachment to people in order to make himself uncontrollable" -- in fact, what it does fit the pattern of is. Staged finale? Faking an end in a relationship with people that he does consider important to him, making a public appearance of betrayal + anger to mask an existing connection, drawing attention to their being enemies to hide the fact that they're actually friends--that's not c!Dream cutting anyone off. That's just the exact same ploy that he uses to make people think that c!Punz betrays him (only c!Sapnap and c!George ended up deciding that Nah We're Gonna Kill You Now. Fuck You It's Coup Time. so that's how that ended up.)

Otherwise there's...the Badlands, who were perfectly happy to agree to joining the coup on the day of dethronement if it got them more power and land. c!Techno, who c!Dream wasn't an ally of until later on with the favor established and then doomsday, and who was someone c!Dream was quite openly wary of + afraid of due to his combat skill. c!Dream was alone literally before exile even happened, his remaining "attachments" of c!George and c!Sapnap turning against him like the day he goes on a whole spiel about ohhoho from today onwards i DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY ATTACHMENTS !!! I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE DISCS !!! like congrats you don't even have a chance to cut off any attachment at all dingus they all hate you and want you dead already.

further, with c!punz, he literally says that they're more than just employer/employee in the infamous conversation they have about planning a betrayal. if the whole point of the story is "attachment good," then why is it that what takes down c!dream is...his one remaining attachment? if his fatal flaw is that he didn't trust people enough, why is it that he loses because he trusted someone too much? it's not like c!tommy had any attachment to c!punz--c!punz explicitly "has a reason" to betray c!dream because of money. he helps c!tommy because dream "should have paid [him] more." none of that reflects that spirit of "attachment" that people claim was c!dream's downfall.

(not to mention how the people present in the staged finale to take c!dream down included people who literally hated c!tommy's guts. like. what brought them together wasn't the power of friendship, it was the power of we hate this green bastard.)

this isn't to say that c!Dream didn't have some relationships that go up in flames because he starts acting particularly cackling evil villain (with the green festival being the specific moment where he really goes full in with that persona, going from someone that was framing himself as having a Reasonable Complaint to literally the joker as soon as he gets the disc from c!Tubbo. It's purposefully played as a "mask off" moment that is meant to make him look like a crazy fucking villain in front of a large audience--whether or not you think that was a choice that he made in character or not, the way his personality changes as soon as he receives the disc is jarring.) In particular, his relationships with c!Puffy and c!Sam come to mind--c!Puffy burns the house she made him when she decides that he's too evil (but, uh, c!dream really wasn't even there for that and didn't ever have a particularly close relationship with her) and c!Sam is among those whose opinions of c!Dream become drastically more negative around the period of time that spans green festival->doomsday->staged finale. but it's important to note that c!Dream's relationships on the server aren't...great, at the time of spirit speech. They're uh, really fucking bad, actually. dethronement only makes them even worse, and all of this happens pre-exile. c!Dream had significant reason to be paranoid and afraid for his life long before exile happens, which is Quite Significant, Actually, when you consider that that paranoia is literally what goes into his decisions to carry out the staged finale + put himself in the prison (which isn't the case for genuine finale, where he's more motivated by a desire to control the server without being controlled himself.) staged finale does solidify c!dream-as-villain for a lot of people, but it never would've worked if people didn't already see him as a villain in the first place. c!Dream doesn't make people hate him with the staged finale; he uses hatred that he already knows exists to put himself in what he sees as a safer position.

and look we could go into a whole discussion about manberg/pogtopia c!Dream (which i do think is way overdue to be fair considering that that's where the paranoia + isolation that motivates him post-november 16th comes from in the first place) but this post is long enough already and i still have to figure out a better way to articulate my thoughts on the matter. anyway. carrying on:

people still have different feelings on why he carries out staged finale in the first place, but what we do know for sure is that it was meant to protect punz and protect the revive book. by firmly establishing that c!punz and him were on opposite sides, he keeps the revive book safe and both of their lives safe by extension: as long as no one would kill both of them at the same time, they had a means of reviving the other if need be and obviously had the information on how to raise people from the dead secure. which was important to them. and otherwise...c!Dream is paranoid. c!Dream is very, very paranoid, and this paranoia goes back at the very least to when he learns about the revive book. the prison, for all the dependence that it required of him, was tailor made (and the construction process controlled by dream every damn step of the way) to make sure that whoever was in the main cell would be safe from external threats. the security of the prison and the prisoner was the POINT. i've seen some assertions that staged finale implies that he predicted everything that happened after he was put in prison and...no? i'd say that c!dream's behavior indicates him being thrown off by c!sam as early as bad's prison visit, c!sapnap's prison visit for sure. c!Ranboo being banned from visitation pretty damn obviously fucks him up, tbh. he has c!punz explicitly out there to keep an eye out on the server while he's in the prison, where he was meant to remain for a period of time that was supposed to be much shorter than how long he ends up being there. likely because, you know, he was supposed to have a consistent and reliable source of information with the outside world in the form of c!Ranboo, and c!sam wasn't supposed to fall off the fucking rails as soon as the prison started. people have also talked about how having the staged finale be true means that c!dream doesn't lose, which...i mean. gestures at the prison arc? that whole thing is a loss so catastrophic it literally destroys him. he's never the same after the prison happens. the false betrayal of c!punz is deliberately like ironically described to c!sam, who was the REAL betrayal that fucking. ruins him. he loses SO MUCH over the course of the prison, which was something he literally designed to keep himself safe from external threat. as far as losses go, i definitely find that a lot more compelling and a lot less contrived than watching c!dream go "whoop de doo guess i have to die now" when he's like 3 pearls away from making a clean escape in the disc vault, tbh.

at the end of the day, i think having some conversation about staged finale is fun! and it's always good to reexamine what you believe to make sure that it still holds water. but i've really not seen much staged finale crit that makes the genuine finale feel favorable as an explanation: logically, it makes a lot less sense. narratively, it relies on a story that the audience wants to be true and acts as a "clean" explanation for everything while not actually taking into account a lot of what was ACTUALLY going on for c!dream (cutting off attachments for the sake of control versus watching people turn against you and becoming increasingly paranoid, for example). and believe them or not, the content creators involved have always asserted that staged finale was the plan from the beginning, not any form of retcon. (and we do know that people have been dodgy about stuff like the "original prisoner" literally since the week that c!dream was imprisoned, so take that as you will.) (okay to be fair theyve been dodgy about the original prisoner since the day that the prison began to be constructed, but the QnA from that first week of imprisonment sticks out to me in particular because cc!Sam had the biggest fucking smile on his face and staged finale would've been planned out and then carried out in entirety by the ccs and the c!s by that point.)

this is a longass post but uh hopefully it makes sense, lmao. tried to touch on most of what i've seen recently 😅

#my asks !!#long post #c!dreamisms #also like. im making this post from the perspective of someone who always saw staged finale as really cool #but really wasn't 100% convinced until like ehhh halfway through the prison arc roughly?#like im not claiming any credit as a believer from the beginning it took me awhile #so like. i get it.#i think for me a lot of it was also just a lack of faith in the ccs' planning and writing and feeling that narrative contrivance #could be explained through the ccs being less experienced writers + the sheer level of what they were carrying out #but you know. staged finale canon now and im not gonna sit here and pretend that im the smartest person in the room #when these guys definitely overachieved in terms of what i was expecting them to pull off #by making a plot twist that was THIS BIG and conning the whole damn fandom and server in one #like nah they deserve their W actually lmao

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chirpsythismorning · 1 year

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So are we gonna talk about how we have to face homophobia on a daily basis online and it has not once been addressed by Netflix or the writers like ever. And it's not like they do not see any of that stuff happening. It's happening basically HD on Twitter.

And the way they do not even bother to say something, even though they were the ones who teased Byler during the whole pride month. Literally, multiple queer fans felt like they received a slap in the face, yet no one said anything regarding the treatment of Robin and Will in this season. And all this happening during the pride month was trash. Never once addressing any of this and the treatment Will got from the show and by the fans... was a choice. Not to mention them constantly fueling homophobia on twitter or queerbaity posts are... a choice.

It's just simply disappointing and makes it harder to respect the writers.

I just want to preface this by saying that homophobia is bad. Obviously. It will always be bad and how I feel about that doesn’t change just because I’m not acknowledging it every time it occurs.

I’ve had asks like this before where I say pretty much the same thing every time, and so I considered not posting this bc I just sound like a broken record.

To be clear, the writers have posted in the past about how fans should be able to ship whoever they want to ship, at a moment in particular when people were hating on byler and non-canon queer ships in general. And so we can’t expect them to come to the rescue every time something is blowing up on Twitter. Otherwise, they would never have a day off.

Twitter is a cesspool and giving attention to it only makes it worse, that’s what it really boils down to. Once you open up that can of worms, it never ends.

It isn’t even just homophobia on there. Every form of bigotry thrives on that platform, where everyday they’re mad about something and demand everyone to confront it or else. And that’s just not healthy. Its not sustainable at all.

And to be clear, all sides on there have really, really toxic stans, including bylers. Not all of them are toxic, but it’s really hard to get by on there unless you can handle seeing that stuff on a daily basis. Some byler discourse on Twitter is a large part of the reason people want to claim all bylers hate El. And it's because of the toxic ship wars on there, where they always take it too far and create division by hating on Will or El or Mike, and then it stretches to the actors and goes on and on. All of that drama is best to ignore for your sanity. Confronting it won’t solve anything. A lot of those people, even when faced with common sense, still choose the road that revolves around hatred and disrespect without any remorse. It’s not worth getting worked up over.

Also want to make clear that the original tweet Stranger Things posted had nothing to do with byler. Shippers on Twitter will make any and every post about their ship and pressure the people running the account to post something. The comments are always filled with all sorts of tweets like that so it’s not just bylers either. This means it arguably could have been anyone that was called out for commenting something unrelated to the post. It just so happens that byler is getting a lot more popular, to the point where they do dominate on Twitter as a platform considering most of the ga doesn't even like milkvan anymore anyways, and a lot more people are open to byler. So I would imagine most of the comments did look something like that.

When it comes to queer-baiting from official Netflix accounts last summer, I do think that the only reason they did that stuff, like make posts with byler in the literal caption on tiktoks, was because it was during an official promotional circuit that focused on byler in the penultimate season. If byler is endgame though they couldn't disclose that, they arguably did exactly what they had to do. They had to refer to it by name to get more people aware of it, but also keep it subtle, and they especially had to drop it post vol 2 because s4 closed off in a way that wanted us to think milkvan was endgame based on the monologue.

The thing about queer-baiting and why it is so fucking shitty, is because it almost always leads no where. They do all of that stuff, with the creators behind the scenes knowing it will never happen. They mock and hype it up and get people psyched, only for it to lead to nowhere. That's how it's always been.

The point of how they are approaching byler, is to give the impression it's like every other queer-bait before, only to flip the switch. The beauty of it, is all of these people that have been wrong before, and were told they were be going to be wrong again, weren't wrong this time. And that's going to be even more satisfying after they pull the rug under those that were telling bylers to know their place and to accept that it's like every other queer-bait. Once and for all when s5 comes out, the roles will switch and it will be much more satisfying than them just laying it all out there at any point in advance super obviously.

Like people who are paying attention, know the message of the show goes against all of those things and those that don’t and insist that doesn’t play a role, are the ones who have to wait to find out, with them tuning until the very end only to realize they were the ones wrong.

And there is a difference between the st writers account, who is often an intern directly in very close contact with the writers, or the writers themselves potentially at any given time. Whereas the official netflix accounts are run by various interns connected to Netflix, with people above them calling the shots for official major posts. Though stuff like replies is often given at the discretion of the person running the account at that moment. Sometimes they say stuff that doesn't land or that was inconsiderate. I'm sure there has been instances of people being fired in the worst cases of stuff going down. But in this case, it really is just a case of fans being chronically online and making everything about ships when it never was in the first place.

Also, in terms of the writers, there is a strike rn so under no circumstances will the writers be tweeting at all, bc that’s the whole point of striking, not participating in writers duties. And that is literally a writers account for Netflix’s Stranger Things.

I also try to keep this rule for myself on here, but believe me when I say, you do not need to follow the crowd and give input into every drama that arises.

We have our own drama over here on tumblr too, so it's not like we're by any means perfect at all times. Sometimes one person says something and suddenly people are saying that a bunch of people are saying that even though it was only one person and now everyone has to give their two cents and you can't go in the tag without being bombarded with the same posts rehashing it from every which angle.

But you can choose to not participate every single time something occurs. You can choose to live your life without reacting to every given thing. That's just a lot better of a way to live mental health wise too. Like I personally don't want to be confronted with a bunch of homophobia in the tag bc one person said something. And that's also why we try to encourage people to just block the sloppy seconds anon, bc most of us don't want to see that in the tag. We come here for appreciation and making connections not giving homophobes a platform to spout their bs.

I will probably make a post about this again inevitably when the next big thing happens.

But just remember, the back and forth in general with these accounts messing with fans in regards to ship wars is far from over (well at least 2 years max).

Also keep in mind, we are on hiatus rn, so anything from ST accounts is going to be related to like press and merchandise outside of the show itself, which we saw with this one today that ignited all of this, was related to a ST game releasing...

When the promotional circuit finally starts, like in the months up to release, that's when you're going to see really intentional promotion that was planned ahead of time, months in advance, by experts and graphic designers working closely with people from the ST production on their vision of what they want to hint at in promotion.

The first promotional post for s5 we can look forward to, is the picture they are bound to post when announcing the first day of filming. With the strike it's hard to know when that will be, but once the strike is over hopefully with a fair deal made for the writers, that post announcing filming will be dropping soon after presumably.

In the mean time lets try to make this a space that isn't like Twitter where everything is so deep and we need to call it out. More often than not it's not that deep and the trolls don't deserve our attention in the first place. The best way to piss them off is to keep having a good time and ignore them. They hate that shit more than anything lol!

#byler #byler tumblr #twitter #st writers #queerbaiting #is bad #but if we're dealing with a straight bait situation...#giving the assumption this is queerbait for as long as they can #is going to make the rug being pulled that much more satisfying to those that have been through this and are going to finally be right #it's revolutionary tbh #and when people inevitably are like genuinely homophobic about the results of the show itself #as opposed to mindless ship wars with the sole purpose of getting a rise out of the opposing side #it will actually mean something to confront it when they are making clear where they stand on things when the show speaks for itself #s5 is going to be followed by press and interviews and cons and a bunch of opportunities for them to call out fans for the rest of eternity #my advice #stay off stan twitter #for your sanity

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