#my lorehead take on things

[chapinii]

I think it'll be so much better (and healthier) for the lore to be entirely cc based in terms of control - imo as it should have always been, with the cc's able to approach admins in regards to lore instead of the other way around. You have people like cellbit and bagi who occasionally ask the admins to surprise them with lore because they know as seasoned roleplayers it is something that will intrigue both them and their audiences, but you also have people like Etoiles, who has less of a steady hand on lore but still likes to have fun with it with the help of admins when he wishes. Many of the cc's are talented in storytelling and rp on their own, and those who are less confident should have the option to liason with people who can point them in the right direction.

Though well intended in the beginning, the reliance on admins with how lore would progress brought so many arcs to a halt, with some creators (ahem, Pol and Charlie) even being told not to join until preparations that seemed to never get off the ground were ready. Using Purgatory as an example, so many of the server's events distracted completely from player's individual lore, and not only did it cause a huge rift in many stories, it left many open ends and questions unanswered after a multitude of exciting build ups, with some people's lore simply leading to what seemed to be a pseudo-advertisement for the events themselves with little payoff for the character (cellbit infiltration mission u are so dear to my heart and deserved better). It's so much healthier for the audience and for the cc's to have this control, and may even help twitch chats stop spamming stuff about qsmp lore every second of the day during hiatus (though one can only dream.) RP should be a fun little thing for a player and their audience, and I think things may feel a lot less pressured or stressful with this change.

[novembermorgon]

ok now I need to know about your lannister oc and her targaryen sons uwu

yes siree!!!!

get used to her because despite my boltonposting shes the only one ive been putting in any sort of work writing for . <3

her name is myrielle lannister :-) she's around during the dunk and egg era born aboutttt 192 ac ..? daughter of damon lannister and cerissa brax (one year younger than tybolt and one year older than gerold) - she's honestly just kind of awful sorry . spoiled and vain and selfish like a high school mean girl who goes to nursing school but if you put her in the place of the only daughter of an unbelievably wealthy medieval lord that's given her anything she could ever ask for . while tybolt is heir and the golden boy myrielle ends up being the favourite exclusively off the idea of being a good daughter who smiles politely and sits and looks pretty when they're meeting with this lord or the other . she has a pretty strained relationship with tybolt when they're younger but when they get past being 10 and insulting your sibling over every little thing they end up being really close .

her relationship with gerold on the other hand iiiis . weird . i think they're a little bit too similar in that they like to plot and scheme a little bit and she never really knows what to make of him . they're kind of at odds and while she always has some sense of loyalty to him by virtue of them being family she's never very fond of him, especially after tybolt and his daughter die (which she'd probably believe he's got some hand in).

when you really get into it grrm is notably not very good at telling us exactly what year things happen in this part of the timeline nor is he very in depth with a lot of these targs so a lot of this is going to be headcanon + assumptions etc don't get mad if you're the number one dunk and egg lorehead...

when she's 11 years old she goes to king's landing with tybolt and their father and she ends up engaged to aerion targaryen - which neither of them are suuuper enthused by . aerion because he's a little bit of a child emperor esque horrorshow of a son that holds fast to the idea of the targ legacy and traditions and from what we know about him he'd prefer to marry a sister. myrielle on the other hand finds herself at court and very quickly realizes that She wants to be important and She wants to be special and She wants to be queen so she has a bit of a period where she resents aerion for being a second son of a fourth son (!) and kind of goes well i shouldve married valarr or matarys or even daeron more out of a childish belief that she's owed something that stems from being raised the way she was. her and aerion end up bickering a lot but eventually settle into some kind of acceptance and eventually a fondness for each other in the way only two freaks of nature can . <3

at court she meets odessa dayne (oc + art by chloe), who's betrothed to valarr - they become bestiesss and form a very weird very complicated vaguely homosexual relationship that i don't know how to summarize but i think in some way myrielle ends up wishing she could be odessa's husband . doesn't know how to put words to her feelings that are so different from what she should feel (attraction to a woman) that she ends up kind of taking on a role of makeshift caretaker in the way a husband would - especially when valarr dies later on and odessa is kind of left in the dust at court in favor of her son. myrielle in my mind of much much more fond of her than odessa is of her by virtue of being the kind of person who makes up a complex made up version of their relationship in her mind .

she marries aerion around 208 and instead of being sent off to lys in 209 after the tourney of ashford meadow he's kind of put on house arrest a bit - aerion, myrielle and odessa end up in dorne when the great spring sickness hits (odessa has family business and myrielle + aerion end up tagging along because they have nothing better to do) . valarr dies in 209 and myrielle's dad dies in 210 right before myrielle gives birth to twins anddd well i'll cut the timeline off there for now . sorry anon i could go on for way too long .

she has twin sons with aerion in 210, one of which like in canon aerion insists they name maegor (kid on the left in the first img) and to match she names the other aenys (kid on the right) . funny . by this time given that odessa had a surviving son with valarr she ends up becoming a bit jealous . my son/s should rule etc even if they're like number 234923 in line . raises them to be resentful and ambitious which works for aenys who becomes exactly like she wants but not maegor who ends up being very gentle and kind and trusting . get it.. its funny because theyre like their namesakes but reversed

when she gets a little older myrielle more actively pursues the idea of being queen because these targs just will not stop dying. by the time maekar becomes king she begins to make more and more attempts at convincing aerion to get rid of daeron in advance and really really pushes hard for him to consider himself heir and because he's kind of batshit it works . a strong sense of entitlement between the both of them and a belief that he'd do a better job than daeron when the time comes (very doubtful).

errr.. well in an ideal world in her mind they kill daeron and maekar dies and aerion is crowned after which she also ends up killing him when she gets sick of him or he gets a little older and less nice to look at and one of their sons gets the throne. errr . of course it doesn't end that well . but that's about what i have so far we'll get more in depth one day . <3

[greaterspawnislands]

hi! hope you don't mind me asking, but do you have any tips on writing hc!phil? he's gonna be in a fic i'm working on and i don't want to accidentally make him ooc if i can help it lol

HI. sorry this is late i was at a poetry open mic. but i have ur answer! shoutout philza nation discord i crowdsourced them for answers cause my brain was so broken by today's lore /pos

I think there's a few important aspects to his character that you'd wanna focus on beyond the like. Typical phil cubito-ness. the first is hc!phil's relationship with time.

"hardcore Philza writing that rings true to me often has a really chill, almost meditative element, especially with regards to time and completing things. It doesn't really matter whether he finishes today, there's always tomorrow. He's not going to give up or get frustrated (redstone sometimes excluded lmao), he's not intimidated by the idea that something's going to take a lot of time or effort." @the-arctic-commune

I'll be paraphrasing some of my other friends who contributed (thank u ty, xeph, rakk, and talon!!), but i felt like this quote is a standout in terms of how hardcore phil operates...there's no real end date to his story barring some accidental disaster that will cut his life short. he's free to take his time and lose time entirely as he works on his projects. ccphil before has spoken about (and implied today with the qphil lore) that being in hardcore causes some time dilation issues - what seemed like a week to the crows was Weeks upon Weeks in hardcore time. but for hc!phil, that time passes all the same, and it's not really a stressful thing within hardcore. the time is gonna pass all the same.

also, hardcore!phil is an archeologist. within the canon as it's currently establish, hc!phil isn't the one building those big projects. he's uncovering them as he moves through the world, maybe you could view it as restoring them, but he spends his time uncovering the histories of the deities and what happened before he arrived in this world. he views the world as something beautiful to be observed rather than something he's creating, if that makes sense.

aaaand also hardcore phil is easily the most carefree of his cubitos. he's still got plenty of classic phil anxiety and wouldn't take unnecessary risks, but he's the only living thing he has to keep track of in this world. this enables him to be a bit more of a bastard than other worlds - the most likely to "coo at an animal and then kill it to laugh at the crows" in the words of @manmadesunshine lol.

and he's also the most carefree because he's able to fly, of course. you can't ever forget the flying <3

any other hc!phil loreheads r more than welcome to add on!!! but i hope this gives someee subtle flavoring to ur hc!phil writing!

[cdroloisms]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[cupcraft]

The thing about me is that I will take my lorehead meta analysis disease to every fandom and every media I consume forever

[sunieepo]

one of my biggest pet peeves with the bloodborne fanbase (from reading fics, mostly) is that everyone assumes that gender roles in yharnam were the same as gender roles in irl victorian england

...but this is textually not true. yes bloodborne is heavily inspired by victorian england but it's definitely not exactly the same. for starters, obviously, yharnamites worship eldritch gods which isn't at all in line with the cultural values informed by following christianity (i dont think i need to elaborate on what i mean by this)

the most obvious low hanging fruit example is vicar amelia, who is laurence's successor and current head of the healing church... and a woman, something that would never be allowed in victorian england era christianity (and honestly isnt even allowed today in many denominations)

the other which is slightly more obscure but even more valuable is that yharnamites are, in-canon, heavily inspired by the culture of the pthumerians. whether yharnam was literally built in the name of pthumerian queen yharnam or if it was simply named after her later is unclear, but the yharnamites evidently hold pthumerian society in high regard. and the pthumerians were almost certainly a matriarchy (female rulers, and only women were embalmed in coffins). i think of pthumerian to yharnam the way one might think of what rome was to the european countries later influenced by it.

other little things are:

the existence of gratia: an old hunter who was a woman renowned for her physical prowess. not very "womanly", yet clearly exalted by the church; item description refers to her as heroic

clothing details: most clothing items have very little differences between male and female hunters. most notable that does off the top of my head is that the church set for women has stiletto heels, which i think falls in line with my belief that most women of the church were blood saints. nevertheless, you do fight a pair of female church hunters in the dlc who seem to have no issue kicking your ass in said heels. this could be said to be due to game dev laziness, but importantly there are sets that Do have gender differences (like the cainhurst set...)

cainhurst: cainhurst is commonly pointed out by fans as the "odd one out" for its matriarchal vibes, so people assume yharnam must not have been. i agree, but that still doesnt mean yharnam had the same gender roles as the ones we have irl. in fact if anything, theres a distinct lack of emphasis placed on gender in cainhurst item descriptions or even alfred's hateful ramblings; although we assign misogynist intent to him, pointedly what he (and item descriptions) take most issue with isnt the #feminism, but rather cainhurst's obsession with nostalgia and bombast.

this isnt to say that yharnam had No gender roles. it did. just Different ones. (and im not saying it was a matriarchy either btw.) the existence of blood saints indicates that women likely were relegated to religious roles in yharnam. women who could not become blood saints probably became hunters of the church. characters like yurie also show that amelia wasnt an isolated case; women also comprised some amount of choir members as well, indicating that they likely regularly held high positions within the church hierarchy. additionally, lady maria being one of the byrgenwerth scholars indicates that women were allowed as students alongside their male peers, even if they may have been less common. all of these things are markedly different from how victorian gender dynamics were.

its just a bummer because i actually think the gender dynamics of bloodborne are super unique and interesting and are way more nuanced than a simple "women and men swap roles" type thing. but then all these fans who claim to be bloodborne loreheads just supplant irl victorian england gender roles into yharnam and call it a day when that is like... at best lazy/uninspired and at worst directly contrary to canon.

i rly mean no hate ofc (ive even enjoyed reading fics that include such things, even if i disagree with them heavily) and im happy to discuss these thoughts further, i just want to draw attention to smth about the bloodborne lore that i think is sadly overlooked because, when it comes to bloodborne and its feminine themes, ppl get much more caught up on the more overt pregnancy symbolism (which is understandable, but doesnt exist in isolation of the above). i have a lot more to say on this topic but this post is already getting long enough so ill just stop there lol

[trueoathbreaker]

watching a video that was recommended to me about trickster, i dont remember if i played this one? loreheads will know i was one to try many mmos but barely got anywhere in them (in fact id say it wasnt until my revisit to tera in 2015 that i really began to truly play mmos...) as well as being able to almost if not completely forget things

and i think its extra sad for mmos and other live service games bc....u cant always easily revisit these games

not all of them are like mabi or wow in that theyre still going strong decades later (or at the very least still online)

or have player run servers you can freely join like toontown (and thats even finding servers that arent pvp focused, have a not so great team behind it, or completely abandoned)

if youre lucky you'll find someone else whos played it, screenshots or videos talking about the game or maybe someone trying to pick up the pieces and get it running again

when tera shut down i felt sad even tho at that point i hadnt played it in like what 2-3 years? i still had good memories of the game

but if i had never played again after 2013 i feel like itd just....feel weird....

like our time together was just short and then its gone, you never stuck around to really know it

i dunno where im going with this

cherish your memories of online games and communties, take pictures and videos

you never know when you might be one of the only sources of a community existing online

[simplepotatofarmer]

During dsmp s1, I was not a c!dream apologist. I thought he was a really cool character but I could not excuse his actions (same goes for other characters). I didn't really interact with the lorehead side of the fandom so I didn't really see how the rest of the subblrs treated dreblr. I may not agree with dreblr on some parts of the lore but reading how they were treated breaks my heart cause you guys are genuinely some of the nicest people I've seen, especially you Loyal. Your tags on fanart are always encouraging and your chicken posts are always so heart warming. I haven't been following you for long but its been very enjoyable. I'm sorry that alot of the fandom treats you like shit cause you don't deserve it :/ hopefully s2 of dsmp will drive away the more toxic people. Sending some good vibes your way ✨ 💜

it's funny because i never really did the whole 'sub tumblr' thing. i joined tumblr forever ago, there really wasn't anything like that, you know?

and i got some really weird hate for my c!techno takes because i joined fandom in the height of 'techno has a victim complex' takes and i was very vocal against them. it was a lot of the c!dream fans that stuck up for me the most.

when i started to post more about him and doomsday trio (my everything), it got worse and even though i still never really considered myself a part of dreblr, they literally always went to bat for me. i'd say that they defended me even for the c!techno hate i got even more than any techno-centric blogs ever did.

there's plenty of good people in the fandom, there really are! i think most people are good people, even the ones who haven't been so kind to me. sometimes that happens. sometimes we have off days. sometimes we fall into that trap of 'it's okay if it's this group'.

like, overall, i think everyone has the capability to be good and i have hope things will get better! and i'm extremely thankful for all the people who have stood up for me, people like blockgamepirate and others who aren't a part of dreblr, and definitely the people in dreblr who also have to deal with awful harassment but always make a point to stand up for me. <3 <3

and i'm thankful for people like you, too! it does a lot knowing people take time out of their day to send kind messages when they don't have to. <3 <3 thank you so much!

[megabuild]

21, 25 for violenc 🔥

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

i have an actual tasty hater answer for this but it's super petty and probably wouldn't get much agreement LOL. maybe mumscarian/daffodils or whatever tf they were called? they're a fun trio and i like their stuff but i think a lot of people manage to make Everything about them. especially everything about ANGST when they're just funsilly guys. its fine because this is a common thing but it confuses me a little.

25. common fandom complaint that you're tired of hearing

hmm. there's been an uptick recently of people complaining that's Its Not That Serious and lorehead analysts are like secretly guilt tripping people into feeling bad about their mid takes or something. I don't know if this is a common complaint nor do I really care cause like I'll do my thing you do yours but.. genuinely metaposters and loreheads make this fandom go round idk how people can complain. and then they turn around and rb theminecraftbee or sarioh in the same breath like okayy so you do like meta. ok

[blue-is-a-sapphic-color]

For the dreblr ask game 5, 20, 23, 24?

Hellooo thank you for the ask <3

5. What do you think is the most character-defining c!Dream scene?

I'm going to be more general than a single scene, mostly because my analyst days are long behind me. I'd say c!Dream throughout the daedalus arc.

A little late in the timeline and there are probably way better and obvious choices (maybe the revival book montage) but I'll stick with this one.

I think these scenes are the closest we ever were to a c!Dream pov. My mental recollection of these scenes sometimes has Dream looking at Sam in Minecraft instead of the other way around. They are very private moments between c!Dream and c!Sam without the extreme power imbalance that other scenes with them had.

We got the reveal that c!Dream wanted to sleep in the prison cell even after he escaped. We got c!Dream free but freshly out of hell, hiding things from c!Sam, keeping The Plan and c!Punz safe but letting some things slip, revealing some things because it felt good to make c!Sam see how wrong he was about him.

We saw c!Dream kill c!Sam but ultimately, let him go. We saw c!Dream let c!Sam leave.

20. What are some of your favourite pieces of c!Dream analysis?

Oh my, so many. From the OG analyses from @ruby-whistler, to the amazing meta from @simplepotatofarmer. And of course, some of the awesome posts from the loreheads™.

But I'll link two posts that I think never really got the love/discussion about them/their content that they deserved:

c!punz's motivators by @merrinpippy

how c!dream lies by @rutadales

23. To what extent are you a c!Dream apologist?

If we are talking Seriously™, all the things he did to c!Tommy and others are unforgivable, and the stunt he pulled with the boomers is straight out of a horror movie. Any good intentions he has will always be stained black by his completely fucked up morality.

If we're not talking Seriously™, then he suffered a thousand times more than Jesus. He quite literally never did anything without a logical or justifiable reason, and all the crimes he's accused of are greatly exaggerated for the purpose of dehumanizing him and using him as a scapegoat for everything wrong with the server and all its other members.

I think he should be loved like he deserves by like half of the server At Least, starting with c!Sam in this essay I will-

No because I'm serious, c!Sam is just a mentally ill puppycat (he has ocd) who placed his loyalty on the server when he shouldn't have, and just has to learn he can let himself love c!Dream like he's fighting tooth and nail not to!!!

As you can see canon and arguing about morality doesn't serve me At All and I couldn't care less if my meow meow tortures people and is Extremely Weird About, first of all why do you think they're my meow meow in the first place, second of all it's literally all in Minecraft my meow meows aren't hurting anyone irl Calm Down Everyone Let Me Have My Fun!

24. When/how did you become a c!Dream apologist?

Early 2021. The first big dream smp stream I watched was Doomsday from Techno's pov so I was not that invested in clingy duo's fate during the disk finale, I just wanted to Take It All In and enjoy the spectacle aka Dream's performance. Then, the very first prison visit got me Interested, and the subsequent c!Ranboo lore streams got me Hooked. I was big into endersmile then, but I slowly transitioned to being more focused on the prison arc as a whole as well as the prison trio.

This animation was definitely a turning point to my interest in the character. Made my brain invested in c!Dream's mental state and well-being, which means I would never again be a c!Dream casual and would from that point on be a c!Dream apologist <3

[suenitos]

i am a lore head and i won't even apologize for it i was writting essays in my friends dms on the wholeeee thing until Um techno's passing where i lost any and all motivation to tap in (he was my favorite). idk it was so special i can atest that the reason it was sooo build up was because it worked in a way you could both take things at face value (as in, dream looking for the disc using his minecraft abilities being translated to him having those abilities in-character) and also imaginate stuff (such as burning george's house and/or the pogtopia arc could both be dramatized and downplayed). IDK IT WAS SO FUCKING SPECIAL

i do agree that q's lore being of incredible visual quality and cinematographic helped create this sense of greatness but it lacked so much succint stuff. you couldn't do anything but strong lore beats with that kind of lore, so a mixture of normal rp-ing and big lore cinematographics would've been good, but he missed the equlibrium and made a lot of people very annoying in how they reacted to the "writting" of the dsmp (like, remember those people saying that certain characters should have certain endings for how their characters had done, while the ccs were just having fun? yeah the change between dnd kind of rping to the fake idea of this being a fully scripted and narratively consistent arcs was q lolol). ANYWAY IDKKK lots of thoughts about everything always

sidenote on "is this lore" "is this canon" i also hatedddd that so much everything is canon lore. nothing is canon lore. lore doesnt even mean what you think it means 😭 you really mean plot.

YESSSS LIKE THESE PEOPLE WERE OUT THERE CHECKING EVERYTHING ANF CATEGORIZINFG EVERYTHIGN JESUS CHRIST THAT FAKE NATION YOU LOVE ROSE UP TO MAKE A DRUG MONOPOLY AND MAKE CDREAM'S LIFE HELL NOTHING MORE !!🌟

like people forgot really quickly that this used to be a mishmash of breaking bad and hamilton roleplay 😭 and most of the ccs are not actors or writers but they clearly had a lot of fun with it and again the relatively unserious medium of streaming made a lot of those moments actually more epic becuase it was serious but also not. i love your persepctive on this! its kinda funny you mention the dream irl abilities a little bit because i remember a few months ago friday got slammed for that here by an insane lorehead who was very much of the Everything Must Have A Reason crowd even though that was WAYY before any actual substantative plot HAPPENED.

i agree with the balance aspect and even though a lot more interactions between LN characters happened on other peoples streams (and was relatively more chill), i think the emphasis on these huge lore streams was a detriment to the story it was trying to tell whatever that was. i was confused more than sad that slime fucking died because as a casual dsmp viewer i only tapped into the big streams and nothing about the way slime was intro'd or integrated into the story through those streams really captured me the way someone might be swept into like crimeboys for example. it just wasnt the same. and also on the point of obsessive viewers FUCK michael i wish sapnap killed his ass

[flamedoesart]

I refuse to let this story go until my brain decides it’s not worth it anymore.

Maybe I’m stupid for sticking so fiercely to something that has become moldy and rusted over the past year and a half, but I just can’t let it all go yet.

How can I, when s1 + s2 + early s3 exist? How can I when c!Tommy is my sweet little guy, my absolute favorite character ever?

Of course I’m bitter. I don’t speak on it much, but I am bitter over a lot of things that happened. If I wasn’t an artist and if there weren’t as many talented people in this fandom keeping this series alive through their works, I am sure I’d have left ages ago.

As a lorehead I feel empty and as an artist I don’t. Two contradictory things that don’t mesh cleanly in my head.

It’s not fair that it all became this way. It’s not fair that Techno is gone, it’s not fair that c!Wilburs ending was so rushed and disappointing, it’s not fair that volume 2 keeps getting pushed back, it’s not fair that it took the Egg plotline an entire year to have its conclusion, it’s not fair that TFTSMP has been pushed back indefinitely, it’s not fair that. Well. The shit with Dream happened.

None of it is fair.

I don’t feel punished for enjoying this story, but I feel punished for sticking with it for so long. I get it, people move forward and the ccs have other shit they want to do, but it leaves everyone who still cares about this story with Well, what about us?

What about all the subs and donations and money we gave these people because they had a sub goal that was lore-related? Hey remember when Therapuffy was supposed to happen?

And that’s not to say that the ccs don’t care. I know Tommy is basically fighting in the front lines for all us loreheads, bless his little heart. I know Quackity, despite how long it takes him to do his lore, still gets it done and it’s beautiful every time. I know some of these guys do care and do want to give us all the story we deserve.

But it’s hard. It’s hard to be happy knowing that 1) anything Dreams name is attached to is gonna forever be fucking tainted bc of well [gestures at Everything] and 2) these guys have not made due on their promises so many times that it means very little anymore.

I don’t know where to go from here. I wanna rewatch the entire series and stop at c!Wilburs revival. I wanna quit but I can’t, because this is my hyperfix and I don’t wanna return to the Empty Void again where I didn’t care this intensely about anything.

I still watch the ccs, but the lore is what I initially came here for. I want Some type of conclusion, please.

I just want to be happy.

[tobi-smp]

hot take but maybe inniters would be less “annoying” if they weren’t constantly being blamed for liking things and accused of horrific shit. maybe the reason inniters are so “loud” is bc they're fucking tired of being called idiot loser weirdos who don’t get characters. maybe treating fandom like a Competition where you attack the Enemy makes it more unbearable for everyone.

Context: [Link 1, Link 2]

genuinely, the way that the fandom at large treats tommy, c!tommy, and his fans is absolutely Absurd. it’s genuinely just the way that people talk about c!tommy translated directly into how they treat the Real Living People that are his fans. and it’s Bizarre. 

they can’t just dislike a character or dislike a content creator, they have to prove that everything associated with it is the devil so they can justify lashing out every time they’re exposed to it. which Isn’t Healthy. scu fans throwing a massive hissy fit and accusing inniters of stealing their fandom of them because people made fan art of tommy’s role in a new scu video for two weeks Isn’t Healthy, it’s not a rational reaction and it doesn’t lead to a healthy fanbase. people throwing fits about inniters making fanfic and writing meta centered around a character they like as if it’s some Conspiracy that makes inniters uniquely awful people ruining the fanbase Isn’t A Rational Reaction.

all of this is Especially ridiculous in the context of tommy (both c and cc) having had Multiple Incidences of being widely demonized in the fandom. people justify reactions like this by insisting that inniters are Everywhere and with tommy’s popularity, and then you Look and the fanbase has been openly hostile to him longer than there’s even Been a dream smp. people being openly hostile towards tommy goes back to him playing a villain (or at least someone who Caused Things To Happen Through Shenanigans) on smp earth.

just like you said, inniters started becoming loreheads and making essays and being loud about c!tommy’s history Because people were so fucking hostile that the fandom would’ve been unusable otherwise. I was a technoblade main and c!bedrocker until the backlash after the green festival and doomsday was so obviously Unwarranted and meanspirited that I was forced to reassess my place in the fandom. I didn’t even Make fandom posts until then. and that’s the point. the people being hostile are doing it because they want to push out the content about a character or streamer that annoys them, and now that it’s failed (now that it’s made that content More Pointed and harder to ignore) it’s only making them angrier and More hostile.

and instead of doing the work to filter their own experiences or just growing up it turns into a game finding every way imaginable to keep justifying that harassment. on the extreme end of that you have whatever’s going on with c!dream apologists, and on the more mild end you have people insisting that being critical of a character they like is a moral failing that has to be fixed.

[dwter]

What do u think the big dsmp update is i think itl be something like a memory wipe or so idk idk what else it could be unless its like some big fight but ik cdream has something planned and lots of people on the server kinda like him ish (remmeber the line "everyones gonna think i changed while i make ur life a living hell") i think maybe wel get that also in dre and wilburs reddit post they make the point of cdream tormenting ctommy by bring back cwil clear 🤔

this shit is so long brah im so sorry but IM SO GLAD IVE FINALLY WRITTEN EVERYTHING IVE WANTED DOWN 😭🌟 ok click for my. Thoughts 🙌🏽

if its a memory wipe im killing myself Hope that helps BUT i also have a few reasons why i dont think it will be. a) i dont think the smp would be as enthusiastic as they seem to be for whatever dream has planned if it was a memory wipe. we can look at it from a passion/sentimentality point of “they care too much abt what theyve already put into the story/developing their characters” but even from a logic standpoint it makes no sense. no one on that server that very few ppl have motivation for would suddenly become excited at the idea of having to “start fresh” but not even genuinely start fresh as theyd still have to adhere to whats around them. plus having to remake dynamics that were heavily cc-based anyways takes so much effort specifically bc they would be different from the original lore which was build on, again, the ccs actual dynamics that evolved over time. i just dont see the ccs, esp someone like tommy for instance who has said hes excited for what dream has planned, to be motivated by any form of a memory wipe.

b) i feel like dream (cc) sees and understands the value in the dynamics that currently exist in the smp and wouldnt change and discard them to that extent, both as a storyteller/lorehead but also career/retention-wise. do i see him creating an event that fucks up/twists/moves around the dynamics? absolutely. completely amnesia tho? no. hes a smart guy and one of the people most invested in the lore (and probably the lore-based community as a result) he KNOWS what ppl like and what keeps them here and there no way he doesnt see the personalities, histories and evolved dynamics as what does that, at least partially

c) it would be too much work + wouldnt make people log on a lot or in massive crowds. usually what makes ppl log on both in large amounts and consistently is 1. a set goal/focus 2. knowing other ppl are on 3. being able to do what makes them comfortable. 1 and 2 are self explanatory but with 3 i mean that ppl who dont want to do lore/dont enjoy doing heavy intense lore where they have to be in character all the time would not like or be comfortable with a memory wipe where they have to pretend and stick to that basically the whole time, esp if they cant rmr each other. imagine someone like tubbo for instance wanting to slip into casualness and just play and half talk to chat half be involved and slipping up about the memory stuff and getting frustrated like thats super real. amnesia would be terrible for morale and is just too much investment for a ton of them and wouldnt motivate ppl to log on (at least in the long run)

ok now that ive explained myself about this: what do i think it could be

i am a huge believer in the apocalypse theory/things similar. it would be a perfect ripple in the dynamics currently set without damaging, eroding or erasing them. it also would be able to give a goal/focus for the ccs which is one of the biggest motivators for ppl logging on which is also part another motivator which is literally just ppl being there when u log on/logging on with u. and it also lets ppl interact with lore and intensely or casually as they want as there is nothing they have to commit to the whole time or force them to go in and out of “lore mode” awkwardly. they can do whatever they want and say whatever they want, it is just up to them how in character they want to be and they can hang out and be with whoever fits their vibes the best in that sense, or go back and forth.

it just does what the reboot/update SHOULD do: give purpose in playing again, refresh whats already there, make things less ridged, let ppl start fresh without actually starting fresh and most importantly: LETS PPL HAVE FUN! and whether fun is lore breathing into a mic for an hour or a chill mining stream to prepare for whatever the apocalypse has caused/is or just fucking with your friends—this specific kind of reboot lets all of those co-exist if they want it to.

as for ur ideas: in my heart of hearts i dont want to believe it but the “im going to make ur life a living hell etc” line seems to be referencing the boy who cried wolf plot which is. Dead in the ground i fear <- says through gritted teeth. i would LOVEEEEEE if that line became important again but i just feel like all its implications have kind of been abandoned, at least what they used to be. and about ppl mostly liking cdream hmmm ….. i dont know how much that will play a role if things got rebooted, especially regarding ctommy. i dont think anything like final disc finale but with cdream and ctommys role reversed will happen. no one/not enough ppl on the server is cdreampilled OR ctommynegpilled enough for anything like that. plus a big fight wouldnt cause this much excitement (although i do wonder if the revamp is partially pvp based bc with how excited cctommy sounded about it, it definitely could be. thats something he rly enjoys and likes about minecraft and dsmp like he mentioned it in the tribute video (like the battles he had with dream being his fav)). that last point IS interesting tho hmmm ….. maybe it was just stating a fact rather than it being foreshadowing? although cdream hasnt used cwilbur enough as leverage for me to think theyre done/didnt have anything else planned for that. either way tho, im not sure how much that involves the update since i think for it to make EVERYONE excited, it has to be something that involves the entire smp/affects it all/everyone, not just the big three

ANYWAYS thank u for reading all my rambles and thoughts if u made it this far anonnie or anyone else. i feel at peace now. mind body and soul. all at ease. 😊❤️

[cupcraft]

I think my gripe with most bad takes is like if ppl presented it as an au/hc/thing they enjoy I'd just not read it but I'd be like yeah it's your own creation I'm not gonna be a hater but when it's like this is my take and it's canon and I'm like oh lord my lorehead demons are here to be summoned. So yeah ig it's just how they're presented.

[faebriel]

my first slander is techno could have saved tubbo at the festival and fought off everyone and others would have stepped up to help

🎤 the mic is yours anon

ironically the festival is the one thing i would have let c!techno off on if he apologised at some point 😭 i really like the idea of the festival catching everyone off guard - we talk a lot about how it was a turning point for c!wilbur but i think that could stand for c!tommy, c!tubbo, c!niki, c!quackity and yes c!techno too. it's a horrifying event!!! the "peer pressure" thing was a joke but i do really like the idea of even the most powerful warrior they have thrown entirely off guard and brought to their knees by c!schlatt's cruelty

HOWEVER i agree with you that yes he physically could have fought people off 😭 i understand he's on one life (well....we understand now) but he's fought in wars before and since and also totalled everyone in the crowd entirely. also if we're buying 2022 cc!techno's lorehead takes then it bothers me a bit that c!techno is like "oh well no one communicated the plan with me" MAYBE COMMUNICATE YOU HAVE ONE LIFE LEFT ?? anyway. and yes i very thoroughly believe c!tommy would have jumped in to help, even possibly c!wilbur as well (esp as SBI brothers was in wilbur's mind canon then)