#like i said i think it being a minecraft roleplay leaves A LOT up to the viewer's interpretation

[shortkidenergy]

ohh i really shouldn't post my thoughts on Tommy, Tubbo and Dream's dsmp finale because looking at other people's posts about it is kind of making me feel bad, but perhaps my favorite thing about the dream smp this whole time (that I don't think was lost at all in the finale) is that the inconsistency that comes with it being a minecraft roleplay allows for a fair amount of variety in interpretation.

so i want to propose one reading on the ending, particularly in terms of the common ground that Tommy and Dream seem to find.

cw for canon-typical discussions of suicidal thoughts and attempts.

(bear in mind, I was watching both Tommy and Tubbo's streams simultaneously, and I've gotta say Tubbo and Jack screaming over nukes perhaps distracted me a bit from the philosophical debate happening on the other screen. so if i missed something or didn't get it quite right. oops. but ive got to be honest especially in this fandom, i have a lot more fun when i don't worry too much about being accurate to the source material. there are so many conflicting things that happen (due to it being a roleplay that is sometimes scripted, sometimes improvised, and written and performed by over two-dozen gamers on a minecraft server) that i think part of the fun is picking and choosing what to accept as your own personal canon, and what to leave in the hundreds of hours of live streams)

when Tommy and Tubbo escape from the lava pit thingy, Tommy is hopeless. he has lost greatly, and everything he has left to lose is at risk of being taken away from him. so when Tubbo reveals the nuke to him, he sees only one option.

now you could view it as a pure act of heroism. of Tommy sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else. but i think it's worth noting that he seems almost strangely at peace with the idea of dying. while Tubbo is flip-flopping between accepting this as the only way and trying to come up with something, anything else. Tommy is convinced that this is the only way out. he makes his way around the server, saying his last goodbyes. he tells Tubbo his wishes for what to do after his death. he wants Tubbo to be happy. he thinks, genuinely, that Tubbo will be happier once he's gone.

which sounds a lot, to me, like the Tommy that built that tower. like the Tommy that drank invis. and wanted to disappear.

so. and here's the controversial part. what is the thing Tommy and Dream found common ground on in the prison? what is the thing that made Tommy regret the plan he and Tubbo had set?

life. both he and Dream wanted to live.

and here I want to note the part where Dream kills Tommy, and Tommy begs to be brought back. and it's only *after* that that Tommy has a change of heart. that he starts to think that maybe there could have been another way.

and i want to make it clear that that consensus would have been REALLY FUCKING HARD to come to. Dream would have to undergo some Incredibly Deep Psychological Changes in order for the two of them to be able to exist in the same world. and it would take an enormous level of trust and sacrifice for Tommy to be able to walk around knowing that the man who put him through so much pain was still out there.

but. the important part is that in that moment, Tommy (who loves Wilbur even after all of the ways he hurt him, who jokes around with Jack who tried to kill him, who wants Sam to come to their new nation despite getting him trapped and killed through his own rigidity) Tommy (who's greatest strength is coming up with a plan and bringing people together with his words) Tommy (who can be thoughtless and entitled, but at the end of the day will give up anything for the people he loves) Tommy. thinks there might be another way.

a way that means he doesn't have to die.

and so. I wonder. if that moment of regret. if that apology. has less to do with seeing eye-to-eye with Dream. has less to do with forgiveness or understanding. and has more to do with choosing to live. choosing to keep fighting. choosing to try to find another way.

but there isn't enough time. it's too late.

unless it's not.

unless they get another chance to try again. start over.

simpler this time.

[enneamage]

Word on the street is the QSMP might be flatlining due to three eggs leaving the server. So two lessons can be learned from this

1. The MCYT fandom and community can’t really do big lore servers that are whole productions. The fandom is too parasocial to handle it and everyone takes it way too seriously. If you’re gonna do lore, just do it with the streamers because that’s way simpler than whatever QSMP was trying to do

2. A server really shouldn’t have its entire livelihood hinge on one group of people IE the eggs. Because the MCYT community is so volatile that any of those people could be a bad person.

It’s a little sad for me despite never watching it. I’d be shocked if anyone else ever tries to these lore based servers with big planned events again after two disasters in a row. On the other hand, the QSMP fandom was very smug about their server being so much better than the DSMP server and would constantly shit talk it but their server barely lasted a year

So, as a DSMP fan, massive L on their part. Wish a Critblr blog was talking about the QSMP I’m sure it’s interesting

I think on some level we’ll always have lore servers because MCYT history-keeping is inherently obscured (young fans) and beyond a certain point it’s hard to not roleplay in minecraft if anything in-game is supposed to have any weight. Trying to give that as much depth as possible kind of makes sense from a storytelling perspective, it’s just the double-edged sword of investment that acts up every time, and then human error has a go. That being said, there’s only so many of these we can string back to back without people getting even more cynical, so I think there’s going to be a break for the moment either way. 

I always thought the eggs were funny because the biggest pull of the server turned out to be something that was never fully intended. It wasn’t a meditated gamble to hang the server on the eggs, it was a snowballing stroke of luck that people got attached and things just kept rolling. Something about that felt fragile, and sure enough it was, because losing them meant losing a lot of the heart of the server. 

The fact that the QSMP eventually ran into cultural value conflicts (French labor laws) from too much hand-waving feels like it was a long time coming. Something like this was going to happen, you can’t just handwave culture clashes without practical guidance, and you sure can’t act like they don’t exist by freezing them out.

[soemthingsparkly]

🐱 Who was your first hermit?

🐰 Who is your favourite hermit?

🐵 What season did you watch first?

🐧 What is your favourite season?

(love, Rora)

Thank you for the ask, Rora! :D

This ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be (well, no, I know what I'm like), so answers under the read more!

🐱 Who was your first hermit? Ohh! Fun fact, my first Hermit was actually Mumbo! I believe I started watching him because a friend watched him. I spent a long time only watching Mumbo, actually.

I think it wasn't until he really started to take time off at the start of season 9 that I truly began to branch out to other Hermits.

Which, to be honest, seems absolutely wild now. Granted season 9 started over 2 years ago, it seems silly that I've only really been in the wider hermit ecosystem since last season...

That being said, I have this really vague memory of stumbling across who I now think might've been Grian doing a Christmas-esque episode on some server somewhere and going 'what the hell is this? Is he roleplaying??' and then clicking off again... But, in my defence, this was back when I was coming out of the Lets Play Minecraft series from Achievement Hunter and looking for more content and it was very much NOT what I was used to hehehe.

---

🐰 Who is your favourite hermit?

This is tricky because the answer depends on various factors.

Right now, I'm kind of obsessed with Tango as a character in fanwork, but could probably take or leave his videos and streams (well, okay that's an overstatement, I get a lot of joy from his content, but the general content of his videos (such as redstone engineering) isn't what I'd typically choose to watch. So really, I watch for his personality and interactions, if that makes sense.)

I'm reluctant to say Grian, but that's mostly because I'm stubborn and hate to admit how much I love his content. Like don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore his videos, but it feels like the easy answer, ya know? I don't want to say I prefer his stuff over other hermits, but I really enjoy the vibes of his interactions, the composition of his builds and timelapses, his general pesky attitude... etc.

I think the thing I feel about Grian is that I pick up a general sense of displeasure towards his audience - and I kind of get that it's because of a small minority of audience memebers who persure parasocial relationships with him through his comment sections and interacting with him in online spaces, but from a very selfish viewer's perspective, I kind of wish he'd just not bring attention to those members of his audience. It makes it feel like his general frustration with them gets blanketed across the entirity of his viewership.

But then again, I know that that is just my rejection sensitivity playing up and that he should absolutely call out members of his audience that behave in ways he, quite reasonably, doesn't like.

So instead I'll say my favourite Hermit is Scar, because, frankly, he is.

I watch him for his personality, his builds, his interactions. He's such an incredbile entertainer and makes me feel so warm and welcomed in everything he shares online. I could not give a flying flipkick about Disney or Starwars and yet I will sit and listen to each three hour monologue, totally enraptured by his thoughts and opinions on either subject. This man knows how to be entertaining and charming and generally just such a joy to experience.

So yes, in answer to the above, my favourite hermit is Scar. Heh.

---

🐵 What season did you watch first?

(I'll try and keep these answers shorter hhehe)

My first proper season was season 7, I think! I remember watching Mumbo receieve stacks upon stacks of minecarts from Grian and, accidentally/on purpose, ignoring him. Oh, Mumbo.

---

🐧 What is your favourite season?

Honestly, I loved season 8 for so many reasons. At this point I was still primarily watching Mumbo, so I adored the Boatem crew and all of their shenanigans. I fondly remember each of the Boatem members constructing their messages to Scar in the sky - 'build here Scar!'. The Mooners bit made me laugh so much and I loved how encapsulated the season was.

These days, I'd probably be a bit disappointed to have a season so short, but back then, I adored the entire thing.

---

Thank you so much for asking! These were actually really fun to answer. I had a great time thinking about my time in the fandom and writing it all down, so thanks!

<3

[blockgamepirate]

I've been thinking about how much I enjoy the way roleplay allows stories to live and grow as they're being told, how it creates such unique narratives that nobody would probably have come up with just writing a conventional story

To some extent this is also something that happens with serialised storytelling, like with many TV shows and audio dramas and comics and even serialised novels, whenever a piece of media isn't fully written in advance, where often the story changes along the way, actors might leave, audiences might latch onto a character nobody expected to be popular so the writers have to quickly write them into more stories, storylines might be so unpopular that they get retconned or otherwise redirected, or the writers might straight up change their minds about something in the middle, etc.

And the result is going to be different from what you'd get if you rewrote the whole thing from the start with the changes in mind. The latter will probably turn out more polished and maybe even actually better, but it won't have quite the same kind of organic charm

Conventional, carefully edited storytelling can be great, and I often appreciate it a lot and strive to achieve it myself, but I also tend to find it kind of boring. Sometimes even when it's great, even when I find it to be a really special and revelatory experience, even if I enjoy it a lot in the moment, I just don't end up going back to it. It doesn't occupy my mind the way more flawed works do (and after all, flaws often create texture and style and what would art be without those)

And like I said, often you don't get the truly unique and strange kinds of narratives in conventional fiction because the strangeness gets edited out and polished out of existence, or just never even comes up because people set out to write a Good Story that follows certain concepts of what makes a story good. Concepts that serialised storytelling often completely ignores, because it's always moving ahead and can't look back

And of course improv storytelling is that but even more so because in improv the whole thing is "written" live. Roleplaying can be fully improv but it can also be somewhat of a fusion of serialised storytelling and improv when there's some sort of GM guiding the story to an extent. (Also of course even in improv you can sometimes have some pre-planned story beats that you're trying to hit)

I really enjoy that sort of middle point between full improv and serialised storytelling where a lot of roleplay series in general live, but of course I particularly enjoy MCRP because there's something really fun about having a setting that the players are able to freely move around in and interact with in real time. I mean I guess the same could be said about other video game roleplay too but I haven't watched any lol (also I think in some ways Minecraft could be uniquely flexible because you really can interact with almost everything)

That's also why I tend to find it really frustrating when people try to make Minecraft storytelling more polished and pre-planned. I enjoy how organic it can be, that's its main charm factor for me

I have more thoughts but I gotta go now do real life stuff so idk maybe I'll continue later (also don't have time to proofread this, sorry, there might be typos and weird wording choices)

[solidwater05]

I dreamed that I was in a clothing store of sorts, and it was organized in various continuous square rooms. Like, you entered from the south and it was the t-shirt room, you continued to the north and it was the coat room, and so on. I think I reached the end? Idk. The rooms were pretty miserable, with faded blue paint and exposed structural supports in the ceiling (actually there was no ceiling lmao)

I tried to put together an outfit and I tried some boots that didn't fit me. Instead of leaving them there for someone else, I was told to put them away.

Suddenly I was in my parking lot putting them under my dad's (parked) car. Niki and Cocción, who are two cats I know irl, appeared and started demanding to be pet. They're very cute so of course I pet them

I don't remember how the scenery changed but eventually I ended up in a town with a grey vibe/color scheme. My dad was with me. There was a weird truck with some sort of claw, it was meant to be some sort of heavy machinery but it looked more like two lamp posts attached together so it went up and then back down, and it had a claw at the very end. It looked like those from claw machines I think

My dad and I (and I think my brother too?) were familiar with that town and we knew that it had like, secret water hoses that randomly turned on and sprayed hot water everywhere to deter criminals?

Dad was asked to check one of them because the water was cold. He just left it on until it got hot again

The scene changed again, and Shady, like, the guy from Punctuationverse, was a normal person who owned a house

And he was temporarily modifying it with stuff like the thick foam carpets they use on playgrounds to create a specific scene for a very elaborate.. thing. Some sort of roleplay that behaved like a Minecraft map, because Shady did things like use a specific object to get some cool particles and then hide the source of said particles to get the desired effect

The final result was a dark room located outside of Shady's house (it did look like it was made out of foam carpet). At the end of whatever sequence they were following, they got sucked into a (fake) portal. That was planned and was supposed to take them to the next part of the map, but I didn't get to see what it was

Then I was on Tumblr and my For You tab was showing me a lot of BPD memes. And then I went back to Shady's house, on the inside this time, and there were a bunch of people talking about things they used as pretend guns when they were children. Memorable examples include a fucking lamp. (To be fair, the specific one from the dream was surprisingly gun-like, for a lamp)

The same person who said they used a lamp said something about v2 from Ultrakill, but the context evades me. Something about being fictionkin I think...? Idk. Everything with this person was in first person POV btw

They grabbed some sort of fake crystal ball that clouded up when you picked it up/pressed a button, and you had to shake it for it to clear up and reveal your fortune. And they got that they're cursed. It was unclear if they were already cursed and the ball revealed it, or if the ball cursed them.

It was revealed in the form of a weird ad-like png btw. It just said 'you're cursed!'. This is vital to the vibes.

They were incredibly concerned so they put the ball back on the table and walked away

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

Yay, another ask game! :D And yay I don't have to restrain myself cuz you said I can send tons! ;D Cozy, Holidays, Fresh Air, Novel, Rain, Tea, Intricate, and Trains! ~Pinestripe

Eeeeek thank you!!!

Cozy - describe your ideal fall day.

Oooh ooh ooh!!!

Sleeping in, the weather being cool but comfortable, a breeze blowing, TEA OR HOT CHOCOLATE OR SOMETHING, and lots of snacks :D

Holidays - do you prefer Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas?

Halloween, I think.

Because of the candy

Novel - favorite book?

The One And Only Ivan! It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and unique and emotional and AAAAAAAAAAAAH

I think you would absolutely adore that book! It’s about a gorilla, a dog, and a baby elephant, AND it’s based on a true story 🥺

Rain - favorite type of weather?

Extremely windy! Preferably cloudy/stormy, but the wind is the most important thing!

And no, I’m not talking about a gentle breeze; I’m talking WHOA THIS WIND IS INSANE MY HAIR IS A MESS LEAVES ARE EVERYWHERE THE TREES ARE BENDING OH GOSH WAS THAT LIGHTNING OH GOSH HELP I LOVE THIS

Tea - what's something that soothes you?

Listening to calming music 😊

Intricate - what's a subject you have random knowledge about?

A Minecraft roleplay server *shaky thumbs up*

Did you know that Philza is so old he can’t remember the exact age and that Techno likes potatoes and that Ranboo hates water and that Ghostbur can’t walk through walls even though he’s a ghost and that Tommy had a pet cow named Henry and that Wilbur never showers and never washed his l’manburg uniform once and that Tubbo adores bees and that Tommy and Tubbo became spies for a day and that Fundy was actually a spy for a long time and that Phil is a god-like being and Wilbur is a normal guy and Fundy is a fox and they’re all related and that Tommy died for a few days but then came back and is now Traumatized and that countries can go to limbo and that Tubbo and Ranboo adopted a zombie piglin and named him Michael and that George loves to sleep and missed a presidential election because he was sleeping even though he was the Vice President and that Ghostbur melts in the rain but kinda likes it and that

Trains - if you could spend the fall anywhere, where would you go?

My home, I guess? 😅

[businessbois]

“you’re the most orphan child i’ve ever met” an attempt at analysis of c!phil and c!tommy’s relationship

this is entirely an analysis of c!phil and c!tommy’s relationship. im not gonna be talking about morals or terrorism or really even wilbur or fundy because those are whole other points. just these two and the convoluted abyss of “canon”

title quote from technoblade here

manburg war- november 16th

doomsday- january 6th

butchers army day- december 16th

i mean phil’s first day, the manburg war, itself implies a lot of history and relationships with these characters. tommy shouts “philza minecraft” in joy and recognition when he sees him. phil says these two lines that confuse the hell out of me. “whatever tommy and tubbo do, i’ll follow them” and “i gotta take care of my kids.” again, “my kids” doesn’t have to mean biologically, he can just be a father figure, see them as his kids, but i suppose we retcon these? because of the relationship they imply that doesn’t really line up? “i’ll follow them” is a statement of devotion, loyalty. i’m not saying his goals couldn’t have changed from these, i’m saying that in order to have this goal of “following tommy and tubbo through whatever” in the first place, he’d have to really love and care about these kids. that doesn’t line up with how people are claiming he doesn’t know them or owe them anything. im okay with retconning these because this was when i think cc!phil still believed the family dynamic was canon.

but the thing about decanonizing something big like that, is that, okay, maybe we can get rid of the conversations and lines, but then we have physical things like friendship emeralds and tommy slippers. he visits tommy in exile and gifts him these things. a friendship emerald isn’t something you give to a random kid, it’s something gifted to ghostbur—his son—and techno—his best friend. i guess you could say he was just being nice to this strange kid? but then like, he could’ve stopped at the slippers? why the emerald? the emerald is a Big Thing, no? and we can’t decanonize or retcon, like, all of phil and tommy’s interactions, especially something with physical items involved because that’s beyond spoken lines and can’t be dismissed as easily. but then it also leaves us with this utterly confusing narrative. there’s the line from the butcher army day, “carls okay. technos okay. tommys okay. thats all i wanted to know.” do we decanonize that too?? it’s a statement of deep care “that’s all i wanted to know” and he includes tommy in it. (tommyinnit haha) with interactions and lines like this, you can’t just say “they’re not biologically related, so they don’t know each other and phil doesn’t have to care about this kid.” because he did at some point. a lot. and these lines prove it. you can’t decanonize every moment like this. (i mean, i guess you can, i cant stop you) not when tommy and phil’s interactions are littered with it. not when tommy keeps a friendship emerald in his special chest right next to phukkit (a prized gift from tubbo) to this day. 

moving on to tommy.

cc!tommy is very smart and very good at what he does. he’s studying film in college, he got a 9 on his english gcse, he’s got every cc he’s come into contact with singing about how clever he is. he makes character choices deliberately. i don’t wanna write off too much of this as him just doing bits and faffing around because tommy’s literally always in character. i am down to decanonize the supposed mishap of shouting phil’s name when getting locked in prison, though honestly, it doesn’t necessarily seem like an out of character action for tommy who has a history of calling for phil when he feels upset. see: “where’s dadza?” (this instance is strange too because “dadza” is a strange slip up to make. it feels purposeful. i don’t think cc!tommyinnit calls his friend “dadza” outside of roleplay. and honestly the whole delivery and head shaking is very much in-a-character) and @/my-stupid-fandoms said some smart stuff about it here. but anyways, sorry, i’ll take what’s surely canon. in the manburg war we have “AND PHIL’S HERE,” incredibly excited from him and tubbo. familiarity. they know him. look up to him. we have the heartbroken "philza minecraft?"s from doomsday, indications that he trusted phil and feels hurt and betrayed. then, we have some lines that are very interesting coming from Big Man “i raised myself” TommyInnit which are as follows “I want to go ‘Philza Minecraft, I built that hotel.’ Even though it’s a lie, it will feel true.” “And then I get to go ‘Philza Minecraft, I made this house, I made this house. Are you impressed?’ And he’ll go ‘Yes.’ And then he’ll pat me on the back and then he’ll teach me how to ride a bike.” “TELL PHILZA” “AREN’T YOU PROUD?” tommy loves phil. wants phil to be impressed with him. wants phil to be proud of him. during his encounter with the egg, he says “it didn’t hurt any of the other boys. it didn’t hurt phil.” he wants phil to be safe. cares about his well being even if this is not reciprocated by phil. he follows his “it didn’t hurt techno” with an “not that i care about techno” but there is no such denial for philza. and now, immediately after being dead and pieced back together, tommy asks after five of his friends. phil is third after tubbo and jack who are tommy’s Boys™. phil is also called for the most, four times to tubbo’s three and everyone else’s one. it does seem like everyone got the memo about phil not being tommys father except tommy. 

there’s a theory around that like, wilbur found tommy and brought him home and so tommy grows up looking up to phil but phil doesn’t reciprocate. this gets to keep the kind of found family on tommy’s end but maintains the “loosely connected strangers” thing for phil. i think maybe this holds more credence than anything else, but also, “loosely connected strangers” just doesn’t add up with the stuff i’ve mentioned before: friendship emeralds, “tommys okay,” there had to be some reciprocity to their familial-ish (or at least caring) relationship. he visited him in exile. he gave him the emerald. he said all those lines. there was a relationship there. of care. of trust. where tommy saw him as someone to look up to, to protect him. at any rate, i like the theory and since we simply have No Backstory for canon sbi at all, it works just fine even if it still just doesn’t fit.

closing

honestly i don’t know what this is. this is all the evidence, all the information i have. there’s no way they were strangers. tommy obviously definitively looks up to and cares about phil. this was reciprocated to some degree beyond “i kind of know you.” i’m a big defender of c!tommyinnit and that surely comes across here. i mostly just did this to get everything i have about c!phil and c!tommy’s out and to figure out what i actually make of it and all the confusion about it. this is here and the clips are linked, draw your own conclusions that are smarter and more concise than mine.

[stellocchia]

So, I once made a post about c!Tommy and c!Dream’s relationship throughout season 1 (which you can find here), but today I was thinking, why not do the same for the Exile Arc?

There are some people that still don’t seem to have a comprehensive idea of what actually went down during that time (either because they joined the fandom afterwards or haven’t watched it at the time) so I’ll try to do that here. I’ll cover the first 2 streams here, and then continue in the next part because this is gonna be way too damn long otherwise...

As always I’ll be talking only about the characters and the roleplay from here on out and also I’ll be touching on some very heavy topics under the cut (such as gaslighting and abuse). Also this is gonna be another one of my Overly Long Analysis, so... you know... be warned of that.

I’ll be going through this vod by vod, so It will be so long... God why do I always do this to myself?

Let’s start with TommyInnit Is Exiled From The Dream SMP... which is the vod when Tommy actually get’s exiled.

So, the exile scene per se has been covered a 100 times over, but, right after Tubbo asking Dream to “please detain and excort Tommy out of my country” Dream yeets Tommy off the walls and then he immediately establishes the general idea of how it’ll be in exile: “I don’t think you wanna die Tommy. You need to- to listen to me”.

Also it is to be noted that in this “exile” time and time again Dream establishes arbitrary rules that were most certanly not meant in the initial sentence (which is why it’s much more of a kidnapping then an actual exile). Starting from before they even leave L’Manburg completely. In fact when they are still in the vc with the others and still just down from the obsidian walls, Tommy and Dream have this exchange:

“Do I have any time to speak words? What can...” “NO. NO. NO. NO!” “what the...” 

And then right after (just after leaving the vc):

“Do you have food?” “Yeah...” “Good, we’ll be going a long while still” “Am I not allowed- well surely- surely I’m only exiled from L’Manburg-” “Oh, no no no. You’re exiled from everywhere that’s been touched”

The sentence was only for him to be exiled from L’Manburg. Dream theoretically only had authority over the Greater Dream smp in any case, so how come immediately Tommy’s “sentence” becomes being exiled from “everywhere that has been touched”? What authority did Dream have to exile him from the Badlands? Or the Holy Grounds (considering those are widely considered neutral)?

This is from right after Ghostbur joins them:

“Well, I don’t- I don’t have to come with you” “Well, I mean, I’ll kill you” (...) "I don’t have to follow you! I don’t-” “Tommy! Then I’ll just kill you. What happens if I kill you?” “I die...”

Again, technically Tubbo only asked Dream to escort Tommy out of his country, not all the way to his place of exile. Tommy here is right, he is exiled, he is not supposed to have a jailor going with him, he is not supposed to be imprisoned. All he supposedly had to do was get off the lands he wasn’t allowed into and then he’d be good. Of course Dream’s plans were different there.

Also the trend of constantly undermining anything Tommy is feeling at any given moment sure doesn’t stop with the Exile Arc! 

“No, no! I don’t want to head anywhere! I wanna to go back! I wanna go back!” “Fine fine, we’ll head this way then. It’s fine, this is fine” “I don’t wanna go!” “Tommy come on...”

Honorable mention to Dream talking about the first time he exiled Tommy:

“Do you remember- this is actually funny! Do you remember the first time you ever joined the server? And uhm... you got exiled? By me?” “Yeah?” “It’s kinda like that, except now if you don’t listen you die”

And the conditioning begins all the way here, with Dream trying to decide Tommy’s emotions for him:

“Oh... I hate you” “*laughs* Okay Tommy, you don’t hate me” “No, no I definitely do” “Noooo, you don’t hate me”

Cue Dream just blowing up Tommy’s second Summer Home after he explained that it was supposed to be a safe haven for him and Tubbo. Also note that Dream is already getting rid of any mob attacking Tommy even if at this point he still had armour and weapons to defend himself. I talked about this before, but Dream does seem to want Tommy to be as dependent on him as he is on Tommy, which is why during exile he made him dependent on him for protection/safety and company and in prison for food. Also Ghostbur going: “I don’t think this man is very nice...”, thank you Ghostbur, I wish you could remember that, but you’re trying your best and I appreciate it...

“How long is- how long am I exiled for? When can I just go back?” “You can’t (...) if you go back you die”

Again, not Dream’s decision to make. Tubbo was the one exiling Tommy meaning that, if Tubbo actually had the decision power in that istance, Tubbo was the one who should have decided when he could come back. Also, again reiterating the point from before:

“I thought I was only banished from L’Manburg, that was the deal, not the entirety of the smp-” “Oh no. No you’re banished far enough where they don’t see you”

Also, a little look into Tommy’s mentality here:

“Tubbo said he wasn’t thinking with emotion, but with reason, but: what the fuck is the point if there isn’t any- any emotion?!”

This is honestly why he is Dream’s exact opposite and probably why he finds him fun, while Tubbo is irrelevant to him. Tommy thinks emotions should always be taken into account when making decisions and he values sentimentality over everything. Dream is the opposite, to him emotions are irrelevant and sentimentality is a weakness. Tubbo is a bit of both, which makes his clash of ideologies with Dream a lot less evident. 

Anyway, they get to the island and Dream builds Tommy a dirt shack for him to set his spawn into. And then there is the first istance of Dream taking all of Tommy’s stuff (building blocks and food included) and blowing it up. Which, again, is in no way an actual exile condition. Tommy is in jail basically. He got kidnapped and now he is in jail. Also right after that Dream gives them food and obsidian (of course acting like he is doing them a big favour, when he actually just created that need), which Tommy bromptly refuses, later burning the obsidian.

Also Dream’s parting words here are: “I’ll see you never”. Which couldn’t be less true! There is quite a bit more after that, of Tommy and Ghostbur settling in, finding a ruined portal with some armour and the village nearby and Techno visiting, but this is about c!Dream and c!Tommy and it’s already incredibly long as is, so maybe I’ll talk about everything else another time...

Onto the next one: Tommy Is Alone in Exile with Dream...

This stream starts off with Bad visiting Tommy to give him a few presents (which consist of Chirp, 2 diamonds, an enderchest, and almost dead diamond pick with silk touch, some coocked chicken some bones and a few stacks of oak wood logs). Also Tommy sees Logsteshire for the first time. Then Dream arrives and he is not happy about the present (something something, having other people giving Tommy useful stuff would make him less reliant on Dream). Also Bad seems to be slightly scared of Dream since he immediately tells Tommy that he should not say that any of the stuff he gave him was from him. Anyway, Dream destroys everything, but Tommy, with Bad’s help, manages to save Chirp. Here’s their exchange in this scene of course:

“Tommy?” “Yes! Yes?!” “Do you have uh... something you wanna put on the floor here?” “Yes *throws in 3 red concrete blocks*” “Anything else Tommy?” “No! You’re evil by the way, you’re an evil man-” “Come on... I know there is something else you wanna drop down here...” “No there-... *gives disk to Bad* I don’t reckon there is!” “Okay are you sure...?” “Yes!” “Alright... how about uh- how about your armour Tommy?” “No this is- I actually earned this myself” “I know you did! Just drop it in the hole Tommy” “No, no! You can’t just come and demand things from me! I’ve been exiled, I’ve done your shit! What- what do you mean-” “Tommy~” “What?” *Dream hits Tommy with an enchanted netherite axe* “Drop them down~” “Hooooo okay okay okay!”

So, in case anyone was wondering, physical abuse is there as well. And this is fully depicted as physical abuse. Like, normally, with this being Minecraft, it is implied that violence is generally inconsequential, here though c!Tommy reacts to it clearly in pain and shock. There is no doubt there. 

Sapnap arrives at this point as well. After that Dream makes it a point that Tommy cannot have the enderchast that Bad gave him because you can never have enough random arbitrary rules when kidnapping someone apparently! 

“Why are you here? Why are you here? What- what could you- what could you possibly want more from me? You’ve tortured me-” “I’m just! I’m just... keeping an eye on you Tommy” 

I’ve highlighted this because, considering the last time Dream was there he said he would never see Tommy again, Tommy’s confusion here is more then understandable. But of course Dream acts like it’s obvious that he would be there and that it’s necessary to make sure that Tommy is not “up to no good”. Also, another extremely important exchange: 

“You’ve exiled me you stupid manipulative green bastard!” “Yeah I know! I know! And you know why I did that” “Yes? Yes?” “No, you know why” “Why?” “Because you don’t listen to me ever. You’re the only person who doesn’t ever listen to me (...) listen, you are like a little annoying bug in my room and it pisses me off so I take you and I put you outside and that’s what I did. And now I’m just making sure that you stay outside”

So... the bullshit about this being about George’s house is out of the window by the first proper exile stream. Also Dream goes in the ever increasing list of villains who, if annoyed enough, will reveal all their evil plans to the protagonist. Like Tommy screaches enough and Dream will immediately go in evil monologuing mode...

“So what do you actually want from me then?” “Well nothing, I’m just here to talk to you. Tommy, we’re still friends ok? Just because I exiled you doesn’t mean we’re not friends-” “Just because I killed your friends and family doesn’t mean we can’t be bros...” “Well, it’s true!”

Ok so, it’s confirmed that Dream would still go on with this “friendship” facade even if he killed Tubbo or Wilbur then. Also:

*Tommy sees a creeper* then in the most monotone tone ever: “Help me” Dream sprinting from the other side of the cave: “TOMMY!”. I love this scene and I love this two dumbasses (and I mean the cc’s here). Also, to go back to the serious stuff: once again Dream is the one killing every single mob around Tommy because he blew up all his means for defence. Also Bad and Sapnap are still there as well, but Dream is always the on interveening (mostly because he is the one following Tommy around more closely). I’ll have a few of the more interesting quotes here afterwards until the next interesting scene:

“If I had 8 legs I would fuck you all up” “Oooh, no you wouldn’t” (Dream de-valuing Tommy’s anger once again)

“Stop following me” “NO” “Well okay then...” (honestly this was just funny...)

“Can I call you Wilbur? Or is it Ghostbur...?” “You can call me whatever you like” (for those saying that Ghostbur not correcting Tommy was weird)

“Alright Wilbur, what do you need an enderchest for? I might make an exception but-” “We- we need it so that we can access our stuff from the old world, the old world” “But not to go back” “How would we be able to go back with an enderchest?” “Well I don’t know maybe there is stuff in there that’s... better” “Tommy do you have anything that could get you to go back? In the enderchest?” “A boat? What’d you mean?” “Yeah to be honest we just need wood to get back, it’s not really-” 

Here we have Ghostbur poking holes in one of the new rules that Dream added that day. As a matter of fact, why would an enderchest be dangerous? Tommy mostly keeps sentimental stuff in there and a bit of iron. Still that’s the whole point: Dream is trying to get Tommy under his control so he needs to bring him to a point where he’ll listen to his orders even when they don’t make any actual sense. Also, btw, Dream doesn’t actually give them an enderchest after this exchange.

“Do you want to come with me Tommy? Do you want to come with me and visit the old library?” “No no no” “Yes! Yes please!” “No he wants to stay here with me” “I don’t. I definitely don’t” “He does! He’s just trying to be nice to you Wilbur. He’s trying to be nice to you” “I’m not Wilbur, I want to come with you” (way to gaslight an amnesiac ghost...)

“So how long is Tommy supposed to be here?” “Like a week?” “Oh, a week is not bad!” “*laughing* No he’s here forever” (Like goddamn, imagine if every minor griefing was punished with permanent exile!)

“M-maybe like- does Tommy gets like visitations? Like once every month he get’s to go to L’Manburg-” “No! No no no” “No visitation, huh?” “No visitation” (well, let’s thank Sapnap for trying...)

So, after this Tommy gets his plan to go through the Nether and find a quick way to and from L’Manburg to, perhaps, sneak in unnoticed at some points. Dream “allows” him here to go to the Nether (even though technically there is no reason why the exile would extend to there as well), so they get to work on fixing a ruined portal. “Did you know, I apparently blew up a nation and killed everyone” (thank God we have Ghostbur, he makes everything better). One thing I want to note though: at this point Tommy still kills the mobs attacking him when Dream is not stalking him and doing it for him, which is kind of nice. We are still at the first exile stream though...

“Can I go back for like an hour and see all my friends?” “No, they can come here though. I-I mean Tommy, I think- I think that someone could come here and visit you, but you can’t ever go back. Like I-I don’t have anything against people coming here and visiting you if they want to. They don’t HAVE to, but they can if they really want to” “Tommy think of it this way: whenever you’re in prison you can’t just go and visit your friends, but they can come and visit you” “They can come and visit you, yeah, that’s actually a very- that’s a perfect analogy”

I wonder why the best analogy for Tommy’s situation is not a f*cking exile analogy, but actual prison. Maybe because he is confined to one place, not allowed to keep any personal items and never allowed to go back? Also they actually get to Nether hub at this point and there is the famous scene with Tommy looking at the lava: 

A curious thing about this scene (aside from being a clear indication of the beginning of Tommy’s depressive spiral) is both that Dream didn’t seem to particularly care about Tommy dying up until now (and in the future as well) as long as he is the one to kill him. Meaning that he seemed fine with it as long as he had control over it. And yet at the end there he agrees with Tommy’s statement of “it’s never my time to die” which kinda makes me think that Dream by this point was already entirely set on his idea of Tommy needing to be alive for Dream to control the whole server. Tommy and Dream head back to Logstedshire after this scene.

*Tommy looks at the lava while standing very close to the edge* “I’ll go back through just to... check and see” *Dream hits Tommy away from the edge* “Come on” *Tommy goes back to the edge and Dream pushes him away again, this time covering the hole* “It’s not your time to die yet Tommy” “It’s never my time to die” “That’s true” 

“Home sweet home...” “Home sweet home. I think it’ll be good! People might visit you all the time, I mean, I can visit you! It’s- it’s actually fun to come here! It’s a little bit- it’s a change of scenery, you know?” “It’s not fun to be stuck here” “Well... you’re not ’stuck’ it’s your vacation home!” “Can I go back? I’m ready...” “No but you can leave this area, you can go somewhere else. This is just- like, I took you far away, you can go further if you want”

So, if anyone is wondering, this is not, in fact, Dream giving Tommy more freedom. Especially considering that when Tommy does leave Logstedshire later on Dream literally hunts him down, so no, that was never an option. What Dream is doing here is make himself sound benevolent by comparison by telling Tommy that the only other options he has are worse since they are even further away.

“I’m here for a good time, not for a long time” (more hints towards Tommy’s depressive spiral)

“Guys how do you know when it’s too much?” (and again)

“Can I go and see the tree?” “Tommy, you can’t go and see the tree” “Dream why don’t you let him just- it’s not in L’Manburg! Why don’t you let him just see the tree and then escort him back?” 

Ghostbur my beloved, pointing out holes in Dream’s rules all the time. Something tells me that’s the reason why Dream tried to kill him later on...

Anyway! This concludes this first post because it’s... Oh fuck this is REALLY long.... welp! I’ll make the others in the next few days! 

[hiemalice]

Jimmy was really off during the latest episode.

Let me explain

So, let’s start with when they got in the End. because I’m way too lazy to analyze any more than that

After they realize they’re in the End and Jimmy realizes his cod head isn’t the real one, his immediate reaction is “well we’re gonna have to kill the dragon anyway” and then “it doesn’t matter where [the Codfather head] is for now, we need to just get out of here”.

Note that he says he doesn’t care where the head is at the moment, and they just need to kill the dragon. He doesn’t care where the sole object of his reasoning to be there, that he’s waged a whole war for, is at the moment.

I guess it’s understandable because they’re literally fighting the main boss of Minecraft, with a team that’s not the greatest at fighting, but still. It’s enough to kinda stick for a second.

Also let me note that he’s smiling and laughing during this bit, they’ve just been thrown into the End and have to fight a boss but he’s just like eh whatever. Jimmy is really good at being in character and roleplaying, so I feel like it’s worthy to note down the facecam expressions.

Then we kinda see normal Jimmy. He gets mad at Fwhip and Sausage obviously. His facial expression is angry and for a moment he’s completely focused on getting his head from Fwhip.

When he doesn’t, he threatens to kill the dragon. Which, from his perspective, shouldn’t be a big deal? Fwhip kinda said “don’t kill it” but was cut off by Jimmy, so it doesn’t really seem like there should be this aggressive initiative to kill the dragon in the way that Jimmy is portraying it.

And then immediately everyone is like “don’t kill it” which still doesn’t settle Jimmy, even when people like Pearl and Gem which he’s on fairly neutral grounds with says it.

This could just be impulsive Jimmy because we all know how he gets when he wants something, but let me just jot it down for the sake of little things adding up.

He said “if you give it back I won’t kill the dragon” but then when Fwhip does he questions why Fwhip wants the dragon dead. When Fwhip responds he says one of the most suspicious lines yet.

”Fwhip, I think whether you like it or not, this dragon is dying”. Yeah it could be a little logical because there are people killing it already, but it just. Seemed off.

Additional note, but Jimmy looked so confused when Fwhip was giving Lizzie end crystals.

I’m not gonna go into why Jimmy abandoning his allies feels out of character because this would get way too long and I feel like we all know it.

Then we go into a lot of Jimmy continuing the wanting dragon dead skip ahead skip ahead.

Once the dragon’s dead for a split second, Jimmy looks horrifed. Like. What did they just do. But immediately it’s covered over with a smile. He says he “doesn’t know how to feel” but from that split second of horror it seems like we do know how he really feels, but it’s instantly masked. He just turns happy go lucky and says “I got my head back!”

Cutscreen to everyone yelling about the dragon, Jimmy is completely unphased. He’s happily confused and just got his head back. He doesn’t even really react when he hears the demon’s been unleashed, and Sausage and Joey confirm it. He even notes he’s just happy to have it. Absolutely no concern for the bombshell drop of the demon, of which he’s the number one target of.

None of the other Cod Alliance would care, Joel and Pix straight up aren’t afraid and Xornoth can’t reach Lizzie, but Jimmy? He’s absolutely terrified of Xornoth. It would seem logical there would be at least some reaction.

To be fair, he says “what?” once when Joey says Xornoth’s free, but it’s kinda nonchalant and could probably be to Joey referring to Xornoth as his husband.

When Jimmy sees Xornoth, he immediately breaks out into a smile, which is about the biggest and most out of character one can get with Jimmy Solidarity. I know I’m relying a lot on facecam, but again his role playing is really good especially with Xornoth I feel like this was intentional.

He’s just smiling at the demon and repeatedly looking at them.

And finally, when everyone’s noping out and leaving and he says “Sausage what did you do?” it’s still not. mad? We’ve seen mad Jimmy just minutes before at Fwhip. He wasn’t like that at Sausage. And when Jimmy gets mad he’s comedical lengths of mad. He does that lip biting chin jutted obviously angry thing. But with this he just doesn’t. Which is extremely off considering again, his relations with the demon.

TL;DR, Jimmy is giving off major odd vibes after going to the End and while it could have logical explanations I just can’t seem to let it go.

Then again I could just be soaking up unrelated bits in hopes of corrupted jimmy but who knows.

And this is all from a very biased person so please take this with a grain of salt I’m not Directly saying “this is all super OOC and corrupted Jimmy must be the answer!!” I just think the vibes are a bit strange in this episode.

[raisans-art]

What the Fuck Are these Characterizations: The Essay

Full warning: This is only concerning Tommy's stream made today, 4/29/2021. I know Ranboo has streamed after Tommy but I haven't watched that.

On with the essay.

A lot happened.

Tommy tried to kill Dream, Dream actually killed Ghostbur, Wilbur is back (pog). It's a lot. A lot of plot and a lot of emotions. I will preface this with the usual "holy hell these people are pretty damn good actors for having no formal training as far as I'm aware." They get their emotions across very clearly and that's kinda why I'm making this in the first place. The way some of the characters acted in Tommy's 4/29 stream is a bit odd in my opinion.

Now, I will concede that I have not been diligent with the Dream SMP lore. I've been given broad strokes and have seen various clips but I have definitely not been on top of it. I may have missed streams entirely and you all more avid fans may be able to name scenes that I haven't seen that rationalize some of these reactions that I will be criticizing. If you can, please do so! I'd love to start a dialogue over this!

So, how I'm gonna break this all up is to take a look at Tommy, Wilbur, Ranboo, and Awesamdude and how their CCs characterized them during the stream. I'll sing praises where they are due and point out my criticisms where they arise. Then, I will try to surmise some meta as to why I think these characterizations came to be in the first place.

Tommy

Tommy, to me, has the best characterization in this. CC Tommy clearly has a very good sense of what he wants from his character and has been playing into that line of thought from the beginning of this whole debacle.

Tommy is scared, paranoid, and pissed off. Ever since he left the prison he avoids taking damage like the plague, rambles indecisively, is easily sent into a panic, and is hypersensitive to the people around him. He panics when he sees weapons out and one crucial thing that he made clear from the start was that he wants Dream dead.

Straight out of limbo, Tommy concludes that Dream needs to die. From there he plans this whole mission with Ranboo, Tubbo, and Ghostbur to get in and kill Dream. He says that Dream can't keep living with this power at his fingertips, and from before his final death, Tommy clearly wants to be rid of his abuser, adding a personal layer to his plan. Tommy is stubborn and determined since the beginning, sacrificing his life and disks for L'manberg and refusing to believe that his home is gone until the place is blown to bedrock. Of course, he would stick to his plan to a T.

Now, is this a smart decision to sneak into the highest security area in the entire SMP? Fuck no. It's a stupid idea. Even if Tommy hadn't messed up, Sam would've seen Dream die to a floating axe and kept Tommy and Ghostbur in that containment cell. It would've been a one-way ticket, especially given what we see of Sam in this stream.

But this all makes sense for the character CC Tommy is playing. Tommy isn't thinking about how smart of a decision this is and he hardly ever does when he takes action. He shoots from the hip, takes his first instincts, and acts on them.

It's easy to draw a clear line of progression of Tommy as a character from season 1 to this moment in season 3 and past Ghostbur's death. His hyperventilating as he tries to get his plan to work after it failed, Trying to save Ghostbur from what he went through, lashing out at Sam, and yelling at Wilbur. All of this in line with who Tommy is as a character and how events have changed him. This is a good characterization.

Wilbur

Wilbur has changed a lot since we've seen him last, both alive and dead. Since he's been alive, Wilbur has changed his tune from "I want to die" to "hell sucks, mate." What's particularly interesting is that this sentiment that he has from being alive carried for a long time into his limbo, as evidenced by his appearance in the season 2 finale on the bench. He wanted to "stay dead" at that point. Since we've seen him in limbo, he's gone from content in his situation and understanding why he's there and that he's there forever.

Now we have Revivedbur. Revivedbur is ecstatic to be alive again. He goes from numb to embracing feeling again. The fandom once thought that Revivedbur would be annoyed with or hateful towards Dream for bringing him back turned into joy and reverence. This is quite a drastic leap. Bad characterization.

But it isn't.

I have seen one clip from Ranboo's stream on 4/29 and that is Ranboo telling Philza that Wilbur is alive. In this bit, after mentioning that Wilbur has been in limbo for a perceived 13 and a half years, Phil says "13 years is a long time to be away... he almost certainly isn't the same person... people can change quite a lot in a single year, two years, three years, four years, even five years, Ranboo."

Wilbur has been gone for 13 years. He's been in the same place with no change other than Tommy for 13 fucking years. That's 13 years where we heard from him 2 times. We know virtually nothing about what those 13 years were like for him, but from what Wilbur has said, it was torture to him. He was stagnant, stuck in a fucking tube station for 13 years, unable to leave no matter how hard he tried.

We know so little about how his time in limbo changed him because it's such a long span of time with radio silence. I dare say this is fucking great characterization.

Ranboo

This is where I start having some issues, and this is where I have the least amount of context. From what I've seen, Ranboo is little miss angst who forgets things and is constantly on the verge of having a panic attack (hyperbole). From what I have surmised of his character in various contexts, serious and dramatic scenes and domestic ones, Ranboo really cares about the people around him and is scared of himself and his mind.

So why is it that he straight up just sneers at Tommy, saying "the hell did you do?"

I'm really just focusing on this because it just seems really off to me in the context of his character. Ranboo was in on this plan. It's pretty common knowledge that the only person with revive powers is Dream. Ranboo doesn't know everything that happened within the prison, sure, but why is he so quick to assume that Tommy was the root cause? Is it because he's been hanging out with the world's 2nd biggest Tommy hater, Niki (the character for clarification)? I honestly don't know where this jump-in assumption is coming from. Given what I understand of his character, this line and the implications I'm getting are just a bit out of character. Feel free to explain why I'm wrong because I am not in this loop whatsoever.

Awesamdude

Sam is where I have the biggest issue. How does a man go from living on an isolated island in grief over a death he could've prevented if only he had been quicker, to yelling at that same formerly dead person that he was at fault for the death/revival of another person?

Now, one thing that is strengthened by this characterization is Sam's dedication to the rules. He has his strict protocol and he is not going to let that slip up for anything. He wants to keep Dream in prison and never let him out.

But I'm just having a hard time grappling with a man so quick to blame himself last time something like this happened being so quick to place blame on a child he, from what I've seen, had a good relationship with. It feels like I'm missing something here.

Yeah, Tommy broke into the prison, but why is Sam's first thought that Tommy was trying to break dream out? This harsh turn on Tommy just doesn't come across right to me.

Why Did This Happen?

I do think there could be a meta reason as to why these don't land right to me. These two characterizations are centered around Tommy. How people are reacting to Tommy's actions. Tommy and Dream are the head of the prison stuff right now. at least as far as I know. I'm not sure if Wilbur has come back on as a writer yet but last I heard it's still Tommy and Dream handling their shit. With the writers in mind, I wouldn't put it past them to decide to add more conflict with Tommy and other members of the SMP right now. The Egg is a bit busy with other things, Jack is just running the hotel, and the Syndicate doesn't really have any qualms with Tommy on any level that they would act on. It could be the writers trying to add conflict to the prison storyline by generating conflict between Tommy, Ranboo, and Sam with Wilbur being a fuckin wild card.

I don't know mate, I just wanted my thoughts out there and maybe be fucking pounded into the ground by people more knowledgeable than me.

Have a dialogue with me I'd love to debate. (All friendly debate please I don't feel like taking this too seriously it is Minecraft roleplay after all.)

[tobi-smp]

Context: [Link]

@maryqueenofmurder said: ok this is so totally nitpicking and probably incredibly irritating to see buuuuuut… “here’s the truth that a lot of dream apologists don’t like acknowledging: it’s Both true that no one deserves to be tortured And that dream’s actions lead him to the position that he’s in now.”

Actually, a lot of us acknowledge it. Being put in prison is a direct response, pretty much, to the things he’s done. But so many people use ‘karma’ and 'it’s his fault he’s in prison’ to excuse/justify the abuse he was/is put through. it leaves a kind of sour taste in my mouth to see it now because it’s usually followed with the sentiments mentioned above.

dream “apologists” are very, very, very rarely people who think what dream did was okay/excusable. Maybe a few see it from a slightly more justifiable perspective.  but most of us are aware that dream has caused harm, and that he did bad things. I don’t know how many dream apologists you’ve heard from, but most of us are aware of the fact that he’s brought a good deal of what’s happening to him down on his own head.

I personally think that even if Quackity was furious over what Dream did to Tommy, he’s still doing something very wrong. And what I’m about to say is going to sound even more irritating than the previous rant but, Practice what you preach. It’s both true that Quackity didn’t deserve a lot of things he got/will get but they’re also the inevitable fallout of his actions.

And if Dream apologists paint Quackity as the villain?  It’s because they’re seeing/writing from Dream’s perspective. I’m not saying Quackity is some one-dimensional villain. I’m saying he’s definitely an antagonist in Dream’s perspective. It’s just that us Dream Apologists don’t talk about his motivations because they’re irrelevant to the story we’re telling. Plenty of other stories/takes are written like that. And if he is OOC or does things that don’t match his motivations in canon?  it’s just a h/c i guess. or he has motivations you just don’t know them. [End Transcription]

So before anything else, I’m gonna have to ask that if you send me a response this long that you don’t put it in the replies. I’ve never had to ask that before but I’ve also never had to choose Not to include screenshots of what I’m responding to for length before. moreover, it’s much harder for me to know when you’ve finished your point if you’re sending 6 replies in a row as opposed to one reblog (for instance, several more replies came after I’d initially seen that you’d responded). if you’re trying to engage in a direct conversation with me that can’t fit in a couple of replies then just reblog or make your own post and @ me in it, anything but this would be better fadsjkljlkfds.

secondly, you’re right ! this wasn’t an appropriate response to the conversation in question and I’m not certain why you sent it to me.

The first post that I wrote was about how ridiculous I found it that people dance around, ignore, or straight up deny that dream designed and commissioned the prison as it is to hold tommy, and how that fact leads into the prison arc (and the thematic significance of that for both characters and the arc in general).

an anon fixated on a line from those posts wherein I point out the fact that the disc war finale was dream’s downfall stemming from his own actions. the anon disagreed, insisting that what’s happening now is only down to quackity’s desire for the revival book and not anything that dream has done. I got annoyed (because I’ve seen this argument in many forms often used to reduce quackity and his motivations down), so I decided to expand on how dream’s actions lead him to this point and influenced quackity’s actions towards him.

that’s the context of the post that you’re responding to, and you almost acknowledge it too. you point out the fact that I Explicitly stated that Nobody Deserves To Be Tortured, and yet you act as if I’ve excused everything that quackity has done by pointing out the reasons that lead him to take those actions. “practice what you preach” you say, while you insist that dream apologists don’t Excuse his actions while in the same breath making the assumption that I Don’t think quackity deserves comeuppance for his actions based solely on the fact that I insisted that he’s a complex character with motivations driven by revenge for him and his friends.

I think if dream fights back against quackity and sam, if he kills them even, when he inevitably escapes then that’ll be in his right to do so. I also think that las nevadas is going to blow up in his face some day, that the people he manipulated into joining him are probably going to play a part in that, that technoblade and phil are probably going to become a problem very shortly, etc etc etc.

my post was not about how quackity is going to eventually face the consequences of his actions (or how he already very much so has), it was about how dream is Already doing that. I Explicitly condemned quackity’s actions Twice, so why do I have to go in more detail now to appease you? why did you react to a criticism of dream’s actions by demanding that I criticize a different character too When I’d Already Done So?

and while I Am bothered by quackity being misrepresented in fanworks, what that post was in response to is the Overwhelming mischaracterization of quackity in the fandom’s consciousness as a whole. not just for Fun but in serious discourse, meta, and character analysis. he is Chronically stripped of his nuance All The Time. which is what gives value to pointing that nuance out. again, you tell me to “practice what you preach” and yet you’re telling me that I should just suck it up when I character I like is misrepresented while you actively identify with and push for the label of a character apologist.

finally, while it’s easier to use shorthand to refer to a general collection of ideas (and people with similar ideas) within a specific space, that shorthand becomes insufficient when you try to apply hard definitions to it. “us dream apologists wouldn’t do that,” no You haven’t done that. there are plenty of people who self identify with the label who Do excuse his actions, who Do vilify other characters and infantilize his character. they’re straight up common, especially on twitter and youtube. but those things (apparently) don’t reflect You or the people that you associate with.

which is fine, but the problem comes in when we drop nuance. I’ve attributed an action to a group that you don’t agree with, therefore this is read as an attack on you and your standing in that group. which just isn’t true. “dream apologists” are not a monolith, they’re people. and while there are trends that can be observed those trends are going to look different depending on what angle you look at them, and individual people are going to Still Be individual people with unique experiences and opinions.

“dream apologist” is not an identity, it’s not a set of beliefs. it’s a vague group of people that enjoy the character dream from the hit minecraft roleplay “dream smp” who are defensive of his character in one way or another. different people are going to have different associations with that term depending on the different people they meet because those people are going to believe and do different things. making assumptions about the people that you’re talking to based on labels Without a solid definition is not conductive to productive conversation.

you don’t have to defend yourself if I criticize behavior that you don’t do, and you Certainly don’t have defend the honor of a subsection of a subsection of a subsection of minecraft youtuber fans.

[lovevejoy]

hello tumblr dot com welcome to eve is bored and tired of seeing the same stuff about characters on twitter so she decided to make a big rant about it :D

(( dream smp! this is all roleplay! ))

the universe does not revolve around tommy

tommy is not the "main character," tommy is not the reason behind every characters actions. watching his pov doesn't always put him in the right. stop villainizing characters because they don't agree with him or think their motives work against his.

like... the amount of times i've seen people justify their hate for certain characters because of how they perceived their interactions with tommy is mind blowing. and i get it, a lot of people watching mainky from tommy's pov, but when you look at a character and say "oh! that's tommy's best friend" or "oh! that's his mentor!" then you need to start seeing it a different way

and i'm not talking about characters like dream or jack, who are bad people for the things they've done and planned to do with tommy. obviously dream manipulating to tommy to the point of him considering jumping into lava makes him a horrible person

i mean the characters who are being... themselves? who have their own separate motives for doing things and personalities that aren't an extension of tommyinnit? i think the main characters that are hated because of this mindset is wilbur, phil, and tubbo. wilbur did not start the elections to "put tommy in his place," nor did he blow up l'manburg because "he was jealous of tommy." wilbur did not spend his time as president carefully manipulating tommy and doing everything just to put him down. phil did not "leave his son in exile and not check up on him" or "betray tommy to work with technoblade." tubbo's character is a thousands times more than "tommy's best friend" or "evil because he exiled tommy."

these are complex characters with their own issues! wilbur was struggling with paranoia, anxiety, and likely depression during the time of his presidency, but trying to stay strong for his people and keep a straight face. the least thing he's worried about is jealousy towards tommy. a literal civil war happens between tubbo and fundy and wilbur realizes they need a real way to show who has authority so the people will actually listen to them. on top of that, wilbur's personality is generally pretty snarky and playful? him calling tommy a child, who generally retorts with calling him a dickhead, isn't "trying to belittle him and make him feel useless"

(pogtopia wilbur is a different story that i won't get into here because then i'll never shut up but basically: he didn't blow up manburg because of tommy and if you think that then you're wrong.)

phil? phil isn't even tommy's canonical father! of course he's going to side with techno, his closest friend on the server, to destroy a nation that has done nothing but evil in his eyes. he has an even more valid reason for blowing it up than techno does. but the amount of times i've seen his character summarized to "tommy's bad father" is just ignoring everything his character has said and done? i don't think he's the best father based off what he did to wilbur/ghostbur, but if you're gonna blame him for bad parenting at least don't use tommy as the reason

and finally tubbo, who has dealt with so much shit it's a miracle his character is still so... himself. but this fandom neeeeds to stop summing him up as "tommy's best friend!" or marking him as evil because of the whole exile thing. i know that was an early s2 thing, but i still see people talking about it occasionally. tubbo is an independent character who was forced into presidency way too young while being manipulated by quackity and dream at the same time. dream threatens war, he's scared, he has to do what's best for the county. he is his own character! he's not an extension of tommy!

obviously there are more characters the fandom views at with this mindset, but those are the three biggest i've noticed and the ones that annoy me the most. so yeah, look through multiple lenses when hating on characters! no character's first thought is "i wonder how this will affect tommy" when they do something

that was my rant woo remember again this is all pretty lighthearted and also a minecraft roleplay :]

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Hey guys, I was having thoughts on the meta-side of the Dream SMP. Okay, so we know that Technoblade has done much of the scripting for this present arc, Tommy, Dream and Quackity have also done some in collaboration, presumably doing each of their own characters and motivations, and Tubbo and Fundy have also been involved too. Uh, this will be rambly as it’s a lot of unsorted observations.

Obviously these are my thoughts, and ideas purely based on my observations as a viewer but you can definitely tell that they’re all very aware of the fanbase and are likely very influenced by them. I could see this even in the Pogtopia arc where Tommy started reusing phrases before when debating ethics with Wilbur, eg ‘let’s lose as winners, not win as losers.’ or something along those lines and how Techno made a callback to his only universal language is violence speech in his wither monologue. 

But wow, the scripting is definitely becoming a lot more obvious in this new season of the SMP. Not a bad thing at all, by the way, it’s just a difference. Clearly they’ve gotten more detailed plans and are more ambitious with what they convey in minecraft, with more players taking inspiration from Wilbur after how well he executed it. It’s also the difference in how the various people write, I’m sure. 

Tommy and Tubbo have streamed the SMP for the longest and have very gradually evolved into the roleplaying and their respective approaches to it are very interesting. Tubbo’s streams are typically chill and usually involve him working on some sort of project - he’s very chaotic when with other people but is usually very reactionary when it comes to the roleplaying - doing most of his best stuff when bouncing off Tommy, or occasionally Quackity. On his own he doesn’t like to lead bits but is among the best at making other people’s bits work. Same with the RP! His character’s in a weird spot right now as the other writer’s seem to be writing him in quite an unflattering way and he doesn’t do solo, emotional performances all that much meaning he’s less sympathetic right now then he really should be. Like, Tommy garnered loads of sympathy during his exile as he gave a very expressive performance where Tubbo’s character also presumably feels very isolated and alone and he’s being manipulated by the people around him but he gives a lot less. This has made it easier for the audience to start siding more with Technoblade, the literal mass-murderer, over the traumatised kid who was manipulated into exiling his best friend and continues to face terrible choices with no good options.

 While I can of course make less meta theories on why Tubbo should be appreciated more and what it says he’s got no real support and is compartmentalising his problems, in the end it’s how his streams work. Tubbo does plot related streams, and he does streams where he simply vibes - and even in the serious streams, he can joke around and cheerfully lampshade the goofiness by doing things like joking about wanting a good review from Techno while kidnapping him - that stuff is priceless and does not fit into the melodramtic scripts but it adds so much to the SMP and why it is so much fun to watch. Tubbo’s really good at making content better! He’s not afraid to look ridiculous, he will also unapologetically avoid engaging in too much melodrama himself when he doesn’t feel like it. I consider his character highly underrated in the plot right now.

Tommy knows what he’s doing. Even before the roleplaying really took off, Tommy liked to play a character and lead bits and the SMP shifting in a more scripted direction suited him exceptionally well. Tommy focuses heavily on streams with lots of content, only rarely doing more chill stuff - especially more recently. He has always approached streams with a plan - but usually their extremely loose and he has said that he’d sometimes just come up with an idea 10 minutes before the stream and improvise from there. Tommy’s good at improvising and seems to work best with a very loose plan. Where I think Techno likely came up with the plan for Tommy to get exiled from L’Manburg and then join forces with him, Tommy likely filled in how to play his character and - wow.

Tommy’s writing seems to be incredibly simple - each exile stream had no major plot points or anything and the plans that are there don’t even make logical sense (let’s throw a party in one day and let’s invite everyone but have Dream not send out the invitations so no one shows up - and I’m going to do this even with Philza and Fundy literally in the call.) but Tommy pulled every one of them off very well and proved to be compelling enough that no one cared at all whether the plot made sense nor did Tommy make much effort to justify that sort of thing - ‘cause he knows how the SMP works and how much the audience will go along with it. And instead, Tommy focused entirely on his characterisation and spent all his time exploring it. That’s how Tommy works - very simple plans, then improv in character into an engaging bit. He’s managed to pull off the most ridiculous things like that, and has confidence that the other streamers will support it - that’s how he’s prepared to try insane things like pretending to be Clarencio the llama. And, like Tubbo, he’s always willing to throw for content. 

Then there’s Technoblade. He’s streamed the SMP a lot less - though he’s done so much more recently - but he’s spent a lot more time playing on the SMP, doing tons of grinding. He here for the RP but is also committed to playing the game itself very optimally. He seems to have a much larger view, taking in the bigger picture, of the story where Tommy has a very personal view. His approach to content is all about the fanservice. 

He’s always trying to create big epic, moments, that both look and sound awesome. Like the butcher’s army plotline which let him both seem like an underdog, a victim against a mean group, and also an incredible badass figure who outplayed them all and came out as victorious. The butcher’s army were really given an antagonists role there, and were really made to seem unlikeable. Then he met up with fan-favourite Tommy and suggested a team-up with him. (This is also leading to the ultimate fanservice that is the Sleepybois team-up.) Techno’s got a very, dry self-aware sens of humour too and he’ll often make simple meta observations about the SMP - like noting that the pacing’s fast or teasing in the chat in the middle of wars. He’s also made himself into a bit of a meme what with logging just to say his name and leave. 

I don’t know how much it’s just Techno of course, but the plot really seems to be heading in a direction that suggesting that Technoblade was Right. L’Manburg’s seeming corrupt, and Tommy is being seen as Theseus. At the time Techno first made the Theseus speech, I felt like the comparison seemed unfair - but now it’s like the plot itself has bent over to make the comparison make sense, and Techno’s one of the writers of the script. Techno also of course, prepared a vault to show Tommy so he could say ‘welcome home Theseus dramatically - total fanservice as fans were indeed talking about how cool saying a line would be, and then he absolutely did. The way Techno calls his viewers chatting as the voices in his head is also fanservice. It’s not like actually true, as Techno ignores the chat if they tell him information his character doesn’t know and meanwhile all the streamers interact with their chat too - so all chats have always been a part of the story and calling them canon is absolutely meaningless. Not a bad thing though - it is nice and makes the fans happy and makes them feel included. I don’t know if this sounds critical by the way - it’s not meant as such at all - all the streamers love engaging with the fandom, and Techno’s approach to giving lots of fanservice by providing so many epic moments is great. I just wanted to highlight it. 

And those were some meta thoughts on the SMP right now and its writing. I don’t really think I had a point or argument. I just wanting to make some observations and my impressions. If you’re curious I am course a Tommy fan first. I love how he’s evolved with the SMP most of all and I appreciate his character-driven storytelling. His main weakness is probably getting too into bits and going too far and it’s so nice that the SMP is a place where even his weaker ideas are supported rather than shut down. I like how he’s able to improv so well and simply how he streams. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I love Tubbo best when he’s with Tommy as they bring the best performances out of each other. I find Techno interesting as a contrast to both of them, as he approaches so many things in such a different way. 

[blockgamepirate]

Technoblade’s purpose in the political narrative of the Dream SMP

I can’t sleep so I decided to finally write the post I’ve been struggling with for literal months, except way more casual because I can’t be bothered anymore and also I’m sleep deprived.

So the thing is: to me the DSMP storyline has always been primarily political, probably because I was introduced to it through Wilbur who was definitely going for political, and also because I’m just generally interested in political narratives right now. Obviously I appreciate the character work and the personal relationship stuff, that’s what makes it more interesting than just dry allegory, but when it comes down to it, this story is about politics to me. So that’s the angle I’m going to approach it from.

Also not to spoil the conclusions here, but I’m an anarchist, that’s my lens.

(Obviously all of this is about rp from here on out unless otherwise specified)

Basically the situation as Techno joins the server is this: L'Manburg exists as an autonomous nation and is de facto independent although not officially recognised by the Dream SMP. The self-appointed president Wilbur Soot decides to hold an election and rig it in order to consolidate his power over the nation he founded and he gets his VP Tommyinnit to join in on the plan. Their scheme fails and they end up voted out instead. The new president, Schlatt, immediately establishes himself as an authoritarian figure and exiles Wilbur and Tommy.

A couple of points on what the election arc demonstrates:

1: the appearance of democracy can be used for distinctly undemocratic purposes.

2: even if the elections aren’t rigged, the electoral system could be massively flawed and end up favouring a party that in fact didn’t have the popular vote

3: even if the winning government (the coalition in this case) has the majority vote, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll actually act according to the popular will.

4: the supporters of the losing parties basically just have to let the majority overrule their wishes, espcially since apparently L’Manburg doesn’t have an established role for an opposition, yikes. That’s actually a MAJOR oversight in the system but I’m not gonna go into that too much.

5: frankly as an anarchist I am just deeply cynical towards representative democracy, and just because you have a token appearance of choice and consent doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hierarchical and authoritarian system. And to be fair, from my point of view this applies even to so-called liberal democracies and progressive parties. Full disclosure: even if L'Manburg was the ideal example of a representative democracy (which it very much isn’t) I would still be opposed to it because I fundamentally do not believe in top down systems, even electoral ones.

6: despite all these flaws, all the characters seem to implicitly accept the electoral system as legitimate. There’s criticism against the actions of individual characters acting within the system, such as Quackity calling out Wilbur for trying to rig the election, but nobody is questioning the system itself.

So at this point I’m sitting there, watching all this go down, and thinking “man, this would be so much more bearable if there was an anarchist point of view being represented in the story.”

And hey, look who IMMEDIATELY SHOWS UP.

Okay, I’m not gonna lie, early installation Technoblade is not the best representation of anarchism. I was mostly rooting for him out of sheer contrarianism initially. I didn’t really even care if it would be another Killmonger/Magneto/Zaheer situation because I’m used to reading against the authorial intent when it comes to these things. Sometimes any representation is better than no representation, even with political ideologies. That’s not to say that him just straight up spouting this hobbesian notion of a “dog-eat-dog world” didn’t grate on me, obviously it did.

That kind of worldview of humanity needing authority in order to prevent chaos and conflict is literally antithetical to anarchism and is the favourite talking point of authoritarians, the least anarchist people there are. It’s literally what people use to argue AGAINST anarchism. I think it’s mostly because cc!Techno obviously wasn’t particularly educated on anarchist thought and was just basically having fun roleplaying with his friends at this point. Which is frustrating but fair enough I guess.

Cynical ideas about human nature are pretty deeply rooted in the mainstream, unfortunately, most people just consider it common sense. And like I said, it’s a huge talking point in the propaganda against anarchism.

(… even though in fact these arguments were originally used against proponents of representative democracy. Hobbes himself was very much a monarchist, the idea of letting normal people vote for their representatives would have been terrifying to him. Like surely the world would descent into a free-for-all war, all against all. Imagine letting commoners have OPINIONS, the horror.)

So yeah, that stuff was pretty ehhhhh. It was basically what I’d expected though: cc!Techno isn’t an anarchist and we just don’t get accurate representation from non-anarchists, ever. What I dared to hope was that Techno’s character would at least stay consistent about his opposition to ALL governments. I was pretty sure that he would, even though it seemed like the majority of the fandom at the time was convinced that he would switch over to Schlatt’s side or something. It would have been a really shitty twist, I would have ragequit immediately. I mean what would have been the entire point of his character then? He might as well have been a random mercenary. Why even have his character be an anarchist if you were just going to make him work for a government?

(ftr this is kinda my biggest problem with the Hypixel Skyblock revolution event lol, honestly I think that was a worse depiction of anarchism than early DSMP Technoblade. I mean the speech was good, but… still became a government official, tho. booooooooo, cringe)

And yes, I was rooting against L'Manburg, obviously, and I would have even if it had meant having to deal with another badly written anarchist villain character. I never understood why people saw L'Manburg as the good guys, they were nationalist and exclusionary and their whole existence was based on trying to scam people for money.

I mean they were definitely funny, they were great entertainers. I have no problems with people rooting for them because they’re fun to watch; I did that for a bit too. But people were starting to get really into the story and talk about Wilbur and Tommy, the corrupt politicians, and the country that literally excluded people based on nationality as the heroes, unironically, which was wild to me. And when Wilbur started his “villain arc” well: people called it a villain arc, as if he hadn’t been pretty much a bad guy from the beginning, constantly just out for money and power and taking advantage of the people around him and then pretending to be the victim when challenged. I mean yes he got worse, but I wouldn’t call it a villain arc, more like just a mental breakdown arc.

More importantly, to me L'Manburg represented so many things I hate about the status quo in real life, and seeing the fandom mostly unquestioningly accept it as good just pissed me off. Still pisses me off tbh. I mean, to be diplomatic I could say that I understand the emotional attachment and the way L'Manburg was built up mirrors a lot of how real nations are built and how they create a sense of patriotism out of symbols and a sense of honour and loyalty, and it’s actually really fascinating how it even works in a Minecraft roleplay. Says something about the human mind I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Anyway, I just wanted to see literally any kind of opposition to power, even if it had to come from a character that was unquestionably a villain, which I fully assumed Techno would be. Because political narratives so often just leave us out, or at best barely mention us. And even from a narrative point of view, adding an anarchist perspective to a political story just objectively broadens its scope and actually challenges people who are used to only arguing along the lines of conservative or liberal, welfare state or privatization, nationalism or multiculturalism, etc. Even if the original work dealt with it poorly, at least it would give me the excuse to rant about it on Tumblr, which is kinda why I revived my old Minecraft sideblog for this. (That and pig!Techno fanart.)

Also how can you have a story so fundamentally about power without its counterpoint: the rejection of power?

(Yes, Dream SMP as a whole is definitely a narrative about power, it’s a huge theme for Wilbur, Quackity, Dream, Eret and the Badlanders at least, as well as obviously the anarchist characters from the opposite direction.)

So yeah, the build up to November 16th for me was mainly about the anticipation for what Techno would do, how would Techno’s character respond to the seemingly inevitable formation of a new government. THAT was the point of interest for me, that was what I was the most invested in. Would we get an actual anarchist opposition as a new side to the conflict or would they just awkwardly drop that whole angle? Or even have him team up with Schlatt like a complete sellout? There was so much potential but I worried they might just waste it.

And I was right to worry since apparently in the original script Techno wasn’t supposed to do anything, he was just there to help fight Schlatt and witness the explosion along with everyone else.

And WOW that would have been so incredibly boring

Not even just from the political perspective, just talking about the narrative in general terms here: imagine November 16th without Techno’s plot points. Not only would it have been boring for Techno’s character but it would have been equally boring for basically everybody but Wilbur and Philza. An anticlimactic fight followed by a big explosion that pretty much everybody had seen coming already. Yes, the button room scene is dramatic and heartbreaking… for Wilbur and Phil. But nobody else was there to see it. For everybody else, it was just a big explosion. It would have been such a huge disservice to anyone watching the other POVs.

Techno’s intervention gave everyone an ACTUAL climactic fight, it allowed characters other than Wil and Phil to witness some actual drama happening and to participate in it, rather than just waiting around for the explosion, while also foreshadowing the explosion. Even better, it provoked SO MUCH discussion in the fandom AND gave a perfect hook for future conflicts to arise. Wilbur’s end was tragic but it was, at the time, final. L'Manburg would have still suffered a catastrophe but it would have been left with just the same exact antagonist as before: Dream.

And at this point Dream’s core goals had barely changed, just his approach was now different. Yes, that makes a difference for the plot, but it doesn’t really change much in terms of ideological conflict. Especially since there really isn’t that big of an ideological difference between Dream and Tommy, because arguably neither of them are particularly big on ideology in the first place, they just have conflicting goals and use different tactics to achieve those goals (well, the tactics aren’t always even that different *cough Spirit cough*).

Techno’s conflict with Tubbo and especially Quackity (and honestly most of the other characters in general) brings in so much more depth to the story, just by introducing another angle, not to even mention how much it brings to focus questions about power and violence. These are themes that exist in other characters’s storylines too but nowhere in the same way or as central as with Techno.

I’m getting kind of ahead of myself here, though.

The real twist of November 16th was the fact that Techno WASN’T a straight up villain, actually. It was a twist to me anyway, because with all my cynicism I just didn’t see it coming, I didn’t expect him to actually start making reasonable criticisms. I didn’t expect him to drop the hobbesian arguments entirely and start making points that actually sounded like anarchism.

I have to assume that cc!Techno must have seen some of the criticisms of his character and been inspired to adjust because the difference is pretty notable.

(Sidenote: I’m just forever kinda sad that Techno’s “I may seem like the villain here” monologue was cut from the video and most people never heard it.)

And I felt SO validated by the way, because it works so well in the story! Everyone is mostly content with the restoration of a status quo of some sort, Schlatt is gone, this is supposed to be the good ending, and then Techno calls them all out and turns the narrative around completely: This was just a coup d'état. This was just the previous political leadership retaking power by force. Why is everyone celebrating the same exact system that lead to Schlatt’s authoritarian rule in the first place?

What he does there is force the audience to question the narrative they’ve been presented so far, that they’ve accepted without a thought. It might not convince them, but they can’t just ignore it either.

Whatever you wanna say about the discourse around Techno on that day, in the ideological narrative THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART. Not who betrayed who or when is political violence justified, that’s about personal relationships and morality and it’s mostly all more relevant to the aftermath than the event itself. In my opinion, the REAL point in the moment is that the characters and the audience were comfortable with the ending only to be presented with a completely new perspective on the events.

It also recontextualises the finale, including Wilbur’s actions! It’s a much more ambiguous end to the Pogtopia vs Manburg arc and to Wilbur’s original run as the head writer. Wilbur’s “even with Tubbo in charge I don’t think [that ‘special place’] can exist again” is vague enough to be dismissed as just part of his paranoia and internal conflict, but with Techno, there’s a concrete question: what if Tubbo, given the same powers as Schlatt, will turn out to be just a new Schlatt? And suddenly you have to wonder what Wilbur meant by his words too. And was all this foreshadowing something about L’Manburg’s future?

Okay I’ve only made it to November 16th and there’s so much more DSMP to talk about but the post is getting too long and I’m starting to lose my energy. Will I ever make a part two? No idea. But I’ll try.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not the spokesperson of anarchism, other anarchists might disagree with my reading

[thespoonisvictory]

my opinion on irl/vlogging stuff is that it's going to be big for a few months, alongside the dream smp (see june-august/september probably) then start falling off and then turning into a regular thing on youtube that's alongside gaming content. we might get less streams during that time but i think around october or november things are going to shift back into more gaming and streaming-focused (especially with winter), with vlogs on the side as well (i can see a biweekly schedule for a lot of people, that shifts into weekly during warm periods). i could also see people getting burnt out on vlogs very easily when compared to gaming and variety content, however i do thing irl streams where people just mess around in their houses/backyards (like tommy has does) could become more and more commonplace. i also don't think another smplive/dream smp level big smp will show up for a while, however smaller smps might become more commonplace for people to just mess around on (see 3rd life smp, origins smp, etc) and roleplaying on different games might also get a boost (or the return of more aphmau-style minecraft roleplays in general). i also am imagining at least 2-3 attempted and failed music careers and/or just releasing one song (sorry about the length i have a lot of thoughts on the future of twitch and youtube)

dude I could talk about this topic for ages this is my shit I love you

*this is all sbi and co related, dteam career stuff is a whole other ballgame that I love to talk about but I'll limit myself to them

honestly? I agree. for all that I'm happy tommy's really excited to vlog, I just don't think it'll live up to the hype for more than a few months unless he dramatically changes his style. the main draw of his vlogs (and other sbi people) is the high, exciting energy, and seeing him and his friends irl together. but can he maintain that? eventually it'll be normal to see him and tubbo together, and he won't be able to keep up that kind of energy constantly. they have diminishing returns, each one gets slightly less hype.

the only person I could see being good at actual consistent vlogging and making their content very central to it is niki- she's very aesthetically similar to the sub-genre of chill daily vlogging that I really like rn (annika's leaf, linh troung, leah's field notes, etc), and I think people could latch onto that. if wilbur ever sits down and seriously decides to do travel vlogs, based off his deleted one, he could find serious success there too (but he could find serious success in pretty much any field imo lol).

as for the dream smp's longevity, it really depends on if wilbur and tommy decide to pick up the story again to finish off their arcs. as much as I appreciate the other writers, the story never quite moves like it does without at least one of them driving it, for a variety of reasons. I think quackity might burn himself out with this high production lore stuff by setting standards higher and higher, tbh. I hope we get to see some sort of resolution for every character via people coming together to give it a nice ending, but the days of daily lore streams and l'manburg are over unless someone picks up the story and starts running. could it happen? absolutely, but like I said, I think tommy and especially wilbur are the only ones who could pull that off. wilbur's like a gravity well for projects, he tends to be the one pouring the life in them, if that makes sense (rust, smpearth, soothouse, etc).

from there, I pretty much agree with you as to what's going to happen to non-smp content. I think either sbi and co will stay together as friends but it's going to split off content wise more than it already has, or they're all going to move near each other and stick even closer together (probably in brighton). once again, wilbur has said he's not just gonna leave the internet, but how much he streams and stays involved is going to be a deciding factor here, as well as how quickly/if lovejoy gets popularity outside of mcyt. (Ik this is full wilbur simp mode but genuinely he's the lynch pin of the friend group in a way, and he and tommy organize most projects). mcc is a constant.

feel free to send more asks I love this topic

[ruby-whistler]

Your c!dream post came on my dash and while I can definitely agree with the main point (torture is wrong no matter who it happens to) some of the contents of that post were a bit bothering to me.

the fact that you implied that your concerned for people who really hate c!dream and therefore see the torture as payback is really crossing a line. I really hope I misinterpreted that because it sounds like your implying that you think those people would dehumanize people in real life. That is a big assumption to make my friend, not something you can just throw around because you see someone talking bad about a character you emphasize with.

And like I said, I’m saying that while agreeing with your main point. I can say that your right about that being something we shouldn’t do while also knowing that this is about a Minecraft roleplay revolving around a character who canonically abused a 17 year old. The accusation your making is not something you should throw around. Just like people shouldn’t accuse Dream apologists who say bad stuff about c!tommy of being real life abuse apologists. There’s a huge difference about being attached to a character and saying something dumb and doing these things irl.

Also I thought we were past referring to lmanburg as colonization? I’m not sure if that’s what you were doing but That’s a real thing that effects people and not something you can just pin on a couple of white streamer men roleplaying. Someone more equipped then me can explain why they are very much not comparable at all, and why it’s bad to compare it, ill probably butcher it. I saw a good post about it somewhere.

And then onto the stuff that’s more story based and doesn’t matter as much:

- dream very much did plan to keep tommy in the prison cell for life, like I’m pretty sure he flat out said it or at least very heavily implied it during the confrontation, someone probably has a clip.

- I can agree that Sam wasn’t manipulated by dream, but he does have trauma from him, in fact it’s a big part of his arc. Dream would brag about what he did to tommy in exile, laughed in his face after killing tommy, and often screamed at him threatening to kill him as well. It affected sam greatly and is what started his spiral.

- There are other things in your post that I disagree with to some extent but honestly debating lore things isn’t what I’m here for. So we can agree to disagree. I’m not really to concerned about the lore stuff.

just like you were talking about being careful about what you are saying about c!dream because it can hurt people, I will also say to be careful in what you say about c!dream in his favor because it can also hurt people. Please do not forget he very canonically abused, murdered, and threatened to murder teenagers. That’s a touchy subject, especially because it was displayed in such a raw manner. Is he deserveing of abuse because of it? Of course not. Is he unworthy of growth or change? Of course not. Does that mean people have to forgive him or like him or sympathize with him? No. No one is morally required to sympathize with a character, as long as your not saying gross things about them. ( like claiming that they deserve torture! )

Someone saying something in the heat of the moment about a character who reminds them of their abuser does not justify calling them real life dehumanizers, or claiming they are prone to it. It’s not cool. And, I and feel like In liking c!dream (or any character who has done something really morally wrong) you have to make sure to be respectful towards people who have been in those situations. You can like a character without excusing their actions. Not saying your doing that, just a blanket statement.

Also, please take care of yourself. If seeing people criticize or say bad things about a character you like is causing you genuine distress, please take a break. I tend to hyperfixate and project and I know that sometimes it can be a really harmful thing. It helps a lot to take a deep breathe and step away for a few minutes. This is a reminder to everyone else as well to always tag crit. And to clarify, I’m not trying to like drag you through the mud for anything I disagree with in your post. Like trust me I get heat of the moment reactions and not completely thinking through everything you write down. And just blatantly not knowing that something isn’t cool to say. I just want to make sure it’s known that hey, maybe people shouldn’t say _.

If there’s anything in my post that’s wrong I apologize, I’m open to respectful criticism. And also just to finish this off, I know getting critical asks can be upsetting, so if you are genuinely made upset, angry, or anxious by this ask, please just leave it be. Don’t respond, or take a breather before you do. I’m saying this because like I said I just came across this post, I don’t know you or how you tend to react to things so I don’t want to start a huge thing. Just giving my thoughts and crit.

And also because having people yell/be really rude at me makes me very genuinely anxious! Even if it’s anon. Please keep that in mind if you respond (you don’t have to, it’s up to you) You can respond and disagree however much you like, just please don’t be a jerk about it cause I’ll probably cry lol (seriously tho like I said I’m sensitive)

Alright, so first as a quick disclaimer, I’m going to out a summary of the original post’s points, just to ensure that we’re on the same page;

The post does say:

- don’t dehumanize c!Dream because it continuously hurts people who relate to and/or sympathize with him, also dehumanization in general is an inherently wrong mindset

- don’t attack people who sympathize with him because he’s a victim of abuse besides other things

The post never says:

- you cannot hate c!Dream and not sympathizing with him is wrong

- the things c!Dream has done are to any degree excused

- don’t dehumanize c!Dream because he’s a good person

- people who dehumanize c!Dream are real life abuse apologists

If you read the post and didn’t get these points from it, i advise you to reread it as I made pretty much all of these abundantly clear.

I absolutely never said anything about real life abuse apologism. I continuously put (fictional) in front of things to make that point. I don’t know how you got that from the post.

Dehumanization is wrong. Dehumanization of fictional characters on a large scale to the point where people will excuse his abuse is wrong and it hurts people and I will speak out about it. It doesn’t mean people will dehumanize people irl or that they are prone to it, but it’s still wrong.

I never said L’manberg was colonization. I said some people who have had their country colonized relate to him because he had his home torn apart and is desperate to return it back to its original state. This is a completely valid reason to relate to him as it is a pretty big part of the character.

He said he would “put him in the prison”. I don’t remember him saying it would be forever, but he could’ve said that, however I’d like a clip first. He never said he would be stored in the inhumane, main cell, and it makes a lot more sense that he wouldn’t be in there 1) because Dream said it was only a security measure 2) the prisoner was supposed to be able to move around the prison.

I don’t care that the abuser was “traumatized” by the abuse victim telling him of his actions. If I was being tortured mentally and mistreated and neglected physically by a person who hates my guts for weeks I too would probably threaten him. It didn’t start his spiral. His spiral was caused by corruption and possibly hatred, not being “hurt” by c!Dream. c!Dream didn’t cause himself to be abused, that was fully c!Sam’s decision, and saying otherwise is victim blaming (not saying you did that, just putting this point out here).

I do not forget the bad things he’s done. I was there. I saw it. I hated him for it. I still sympathize with him. I still believe he deserves better. I still believe he deserves to get better. I 100% agree with the point that it’s wrong to say someone is required to feel sympathy, as long as they don’t dehumanize him and harass people who do. That was the literal point of the post.

I am one of the many c!Dream fans who get constantly triggered because of how overwhelming the dehumanization is in the community. It’s not being hypersensitive, and I really hope you’re not implying that. It’s a very real issue that should be solved so that people don’t have to “take breaks” because of it.

I don’t care if people hate him or criticize him. I genuinely couldn’t care less. He did disgusting things. I’m used to it. But it is normalized in the community to say stuff about the character that is genuinely triggering, and would be to anyone if people were saying it on a large scale about their favorite character.

Hope this didn’t come off as too aggressive, I have anxiety and I didn’t want to let my feelings bleed into this because that wouldn’t be good for me. Wish you a nice day.