#tftsmp critical

[rainystressed247]

Flower boy 🫣

P.S. have I ever altered the way you view the tales character? because if yes, the spreading of Cornelius supremacy is working 😈

[betweenlands]

[ID: Two asks from my inbox. The first is from @12u3ie and reads "Drop the essay, Solar /nf". The second is from @artisticgryfess and reads "wait no tell me about joe being technos hels". /End ID]

holy shit you guys i'm not even a hermitcraft or dsmp blog rn. fair enough this is a longstanding conspiracy theory of mine, though. ok, so. Joe Is Techno's Hels, the not-an-essay (mainly because i'm not going to cite SHIT, this is PURELY in the realm of headcanon/theory except if i explicitly indicate something is supported by canon)

so, the joke theory starts like this: back when hermitcraft/dsmp crossovers were first getting popular, there were a lot of crack theories about "hels!joe is technoblade" because... well, a lot of factors. they're both loosely english majors (i know joe is a history major just humor me), both slightly strange guys who operate by their own logic, both have somewhat similar (ish?) accents, both have a very deadpan sense of humor and incredible delivery on that deadpan, and most of all both of them Cannot Be Killed In A Way That Matters.

however, i am your local Hels Analyst, no like seriously there's so much weird shit about helsknight we haven't discussed yet, and one (implied? this is a theory but i feel it holds water) thing that's always been key to me about Hels versions is... they represent bad traits present in the original individual. whether or not those bad traits are the Objectively Bad ones or the traits the original self-identifies as bad is pretty up in the air right now (welsknight come off anon i just need you to tell me if helsknight likes pineapple on pizza it is absolutely fucking critical to our understanding of hels lore) but we'll be going with the latter, for reasons i'll explain later and by later i mean right now.

so! assuming there are hels versions of more players than just welsknight (i cannot stress enough how much we technically don't know this in canon -- it can reasonably be extrapolated but we really aren't sure!), that brings up an interesting issue with techno being joe's hels.

joe is not a particularly violent person.

"well solar," you say, "what does that have to do with techno being joe's hels?"

"well, strawman i have made up to make this long-ass post more visually broken-up and less formal-feeling," i reply, "hels versions of players only exhibit traits that are present in the original person." and this is confirmed canon, by the way -- wels himself has explicitly cited specific ways he can sometimes suck that are directly visible in the way helsknight acts!

so. joe is not a particularly violent person, and... okay yes listen i know there's a lot of very good writing on how technoblade isn't entirely 100% down for violence all the time and maybe wants to peacefully retire, okay. i get it. i am not calling techno a murder machine all i'm saying is that one of them enjoys pvp enough that he helped train other people and the other one is recording as he always does from nashville tennessee. i am a variety mcyt blogger and the only dsmp essay i have ever written before now is about how the tftsmp metaplot parallels redstoner. just bear with me.

imo joe also exhibits a lot of self-awareness about his own bad qualities as a character, and none of those traits are really... present in technoblade? but here's where it gets interesting.

i am no genius and certainly no master c!technoblade analyst, but if we assume technoblade trained to become a fighter and identified certain of his traits as being Not Ideal for someone who focuses on pvp and being a strong pigman, we can. kind of see those traits in joe, even if we can assume technoblade has learned enough to stop displaying those traits:

will commit to the bit even if it's inconvenient for him

obnoxious about whatever form of literature is closest to him

will start quoting from that work of literature to fit the situation even when it totally doesn't fit the situation

zero bloodlust and an active need to avoid direct conflict; a tendency towards pacifism even

malicious compliance

perfectly timed awful timing

overwhelming amounts of Just Some Guy and also English Major energy

exceedingly stubborn and would rather go through a problem than around it; will also see a tunnel through a mountain and climb over the hill instead

and. hm! yeah that feels like a joe hills description. you could make a joe hills out of this. add to that the fact that both of them refuse to die, but technoblade never dies whereas joe conquers death by dying over and over and coming back repeatedly out of sheer spite -- yeah i'd say joe could very easily be seen as the hels of the two.

and if Hels, the dimension, is the hostile and horrible place that helsknight claims it is -- where "everyone's unyielding and everyone there rebels" -- well, only one of them has a (mostly) canonical backstory that involves struggling through a hellish landscape designed by a hostile architect who wishes to cause pain and suffering. and it's not technoblade.

[bugflies00]

seeing dt criticism on my dash i feel the need 2 add. gnf has always been boring & ive always thought of it as to each their own but hes genuinely just unfunny .. i tried to forcw myself to like him at some point bc i thought i was supposed to as a damp fan but like. hes so boring. it numbs my brain his humor's just SCREAMing. thats it.. he needs other people to be funny

sapnap is whatever i enjoyed him in tftsmp. he also yells soosooo much but his val etc stuff also just isn't for me..

but fuck dream. genuinely fuck dream & also How come gnf is friends with drm still like Dont you know.. fucking What the fucl tjats so gross??!!! i donr keep up with dt for aforementioned reasons but im like 90% sure they are still friendly. WHAT!!

i like how my inbox has basically become dteam shittalk nation not complaining lmao (btw for people who dont want to see it bc theres starting to be a lot of these posts, block the negativity tag)

i agree with the george thing i think its also because i need content thats like. pretty high energy or at least more like entertaining than that . but hes just always bored me

im just not really into the games sapnap streamed i liked some of his lore stuff (like c!fiances or the (abandoned) plotline w ctommy) but thats literally it . out of the three hes probably the one that grates the least on me but eh

and oh no yeah the only reason i feel comfortable shitting on these guys is because theyre still full on roommates and bffs with dream lmao like otherwise itd just be like. Eh they bore me but everyones got different tastes yknow. but now i just do not care they suck LMAO

[gnflorida]

You have recent post about mcyt tumblr blogs and "what they were posting about karl jacobs in the beginning of 2021" and you tagged it with "ppl used to karl crit on main like you would not believe..." What does "karl crit on main" mean? Thank you :)

i feel like nowadays ppl generally do a good job at keeping like. needless negativity off the dash whether that means putting it in tags, ranting on a second blog or a priv twt account etc.

but back then karl used to get like paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism for shit that was ultimately just like. stealing items out of chests in dsmp or talking over others in conversations. which some people treated like war crimes against the general public 😭 you’d see blogs answering a dozen asks at a time about how karl was annoying selfish clout chasing whatever. he’d show up on a stream and there’d be like 5 liveblog posts in a row just like Ugh.

and idk i’ve always enjoyed watching karl’s content even before he got super close with dteam and quackity but i think there were a lot of dt fans on both twitter and tumblr that held a thinly veiled dislike of him when he started showing up more and more often. gradually that veil just got thinner and thinner until the whole ice poseidon thing came along and people took that frustration out into a whole full fledged #cancellation that caused him to stop streaming for like a month. but after that he wasn’t doing tftsmp or any dsmp streams really so most of the crit kind of eased up

[the-king-of-lemons]

[appleflavoredkitkats]

I feel that a big problem with the tales is that casts are too large and the characters are very forgettable. And like I don't mean this in a mean way but like I don't understand the point of some episodes. Like what was the point? They do put a lot of effort into them but it is overhyped

YES, THIS. I do think that most TFTSMP episodes do have a point, and right now, I’m leaning towards TFTSMP’s main takeaway to be “We cannot fix anything and everything that has happened in our past, present, and future. Nothing can be perfect, and things sometimes should just Happen because that’s how we progress as a society.” This could explain why c!Karl’s involvement in some TFTSMP episodes is practically useless, like in The Village that Went Mad, the Pit, the Masquerade, the Haunted Mansion, etc. So, you know, basically if there’s no point to Karl’s time travelling, I think it all connects to the takeaway I mentioned earlier.

But I agree that it’s definitely overhyped, but I think people do recognize its flaws but are too afraid to speak out because Karl works so hard on its build. The problem definitely just has to be on how badly it’s structured narratively, because in episodes like the Pit, the Haunted Mansion, the Beach Episode, and the Village that Went Mad, there was no BUILD UP. In episodes like the Masquerade and the Lost City of Mizu, there was a build up, but it was executed much poorly. The Masquerade falls victim to the Pit’s problem which is that it dragged on for too long, and some parts were kinda boring, but the Lost City of Mizu’s problem definitely goes with how terribly the characters were acted out/established. I’m looking at you Ranbob, you’re given too much credit for a poorly executed character, sorry Dream KJGKLJGLG

I think the episode with the BEST execution overall has to be the Wild West. I’m sorry guys, it’s literally the only episode I feel Something for. Its character establishment is quite literally the best out of all, and we take our precious time understanding and liking the characters one by one. Not to mention its setting helped us visualize and understand each character better because each of them had their own designated builds and houses. Additionally, it was pretty funny throughout, and all cc’s were IMMERSED in their acting. No “haha I’m a shitty actor” energy, except from Karl, but that’s kind of just a Karl acting thing in general. Also, the Wild West followed PLOT STRUCTURE.

I’M TELLING YOU GUYS, IF TFTSMP ACTUALLY FOLLOWED THIS? IT’D BE SO GOOD? AND WILD WEST WAS PROOF. Exposition introduced the characters one by one, and the rising action introduced the problem easily too with the republicans. Climax involved the shooting ring and the campfire where the bandits intruded, falling action involved the duels, then the resolution was the bittersweet resolution where Karl had to leave. IT WAS GOOD, IT WAS CONSISTENT, AND IT HELPED MAKE THE FUNNY BITS NON-REPETITIVE BECAUSE WE WEREN’T STUCK IN THE SAME SCENE AGAIN AND AGAIN.

TFTSMP would honestly be MUCH better if we followed this one plot structure we learned in fourth grade,,,

[captain-lonagan]

long one here we go. some discussion of why tftsmp is often found lacking by different people and an idea for how a certain twitch streamer might go about making improvements

tftsmp is such a difficult thing because it’s permanently caught between being a comedic adventure map with very light roleplay/story and being heavy lore that mixes with the rest of the dsmp.

they can’t do pure comedic adventure map because karl promises big Lore. they can’t do heavy lore because a variety of reasons. for one thing there’s never been a time where Everyone decided to do actual acting, there’s also karl needing to hand hold people through a lot of the maps, the lack of lore related stuff that makes sense in the context of the greater smp (lost city of mizu what is Up).

a lot of those heavy lore problems could be ignored if you viewed this as a goofy spin off of the dream smp but again that’s not how it’s presented.

so karl ended up doing this big split where there’s the comedic fun adventure map where the gang goofs around and OwO egg sighting, and then after that he switches over to a completely silent book reading with some lore. and theoretically that could be pulled off if there’s something to even slightly tie the two settings and moods together. 

the solution: make c!karl a character.

have c!karl remember that he’s a time traveler and make little winks and nudges to the problems he’s facing. instead of breaking the fourth wall all of the time, maybe mention something about fiances or worries about time travel. make c!karl cope with his impending amnesia via humor or something. that way you can keep the comedy, but then you still get something tying in the lore. there’s a bigger, sadder, heavier lore thing lurking below the surface that you can tap in or out of whenever you want. give him consistent feelings and memories and wants, give him a Character.

not only would that help tie together the lore and the comedy bits, it would make tftsmp more...not exactly interesting, but it would give the audience a lot more to care about? right now we’re told that c!karl is losing or will lose his memories, but we never actually See that because we never actually See c!karl do anything other than silently read books. just. give c!karl a character. karl. play c!karl on stream, don’t just refer to him in books. practice voice acting or something if you want and turn off face cam if that makes you more comfortable acting. yes i know karl isn’t reading this but i must speak to him regardless.

don’t silently read books all the time. give us a character to give a shit about. draft up a google doc of ideas for who your character is and how they behave. do NOT copy and paste that google doc into a book or a twitter thread for the audience to read. act it out.

thx bestie

[balillee]

i remain consistent with the opinion that the masquerade was the best tftsmp episode, mainly because i think that one actually has the most connection to current lore with it's inclusion of the egg and what avenues it opened up regarding the nature and the history of it.

i just don't think we found out much about the world of the dream smp from this other than more connor and schlatt lore. which is fine - they're really fun inclusions and i know connor has the whole hating minecraft streamers bit, but his little inclusions in the lore are really fun and refreshing to see. the problem is that connor and schlatt don't really have any connections to mainstream lore outside of tftsmp.

in the village that went mad, we got hints that dream might be older than he lets on through the inclusion of cornelius. in mizu we got a heap of potential ranboo lore. in the masquerade we learnt more about the history of the egg. in the wild west we learnt about some history of church prime, and we get some tiny teasers about egg lore with billiam's poster and the bird's nest.

but in the haunted mansion we got what glatt does in his free time.

it was fine, it was just lackluster. there was simultaneously too much and nothing at all going on. you could have easily cut characters from the episode. this isn't to rag on these cc's or characters specifically, but you could have probably omitted sapnap, george's and techno's characters and you would have had the same outcome.

and another point that i wanted to mention is that, while the builds for tftsmp are fine - probably the best aspects of the episodes - a lot of it feels overproduced at times. i think karl might be under the assumption that every episode must be bigger and better than the last, which is fine for motivation, but it can lead to a kind of blown out fuse of an episode. the inbetween sections feel a lot more overproduced now with the third person perspective and the books to the side.

i think production value is fine, but i think in some cases less can be more.

keep the credits sequences, keep the build team - just don't go overboard with details we'll never even see. keep the inbetween segments in first person and cut the book graphics, and limit the cast to around 5/6 crucial characters per episode, only exceeding that if absolutely necessary (such as with the larger cast of the wild west and the more restricted cast of mizu).

i think this episode was a victim of being overhyped. i myself was hyped for some ghost lore from the smp, and especially with tommy's plotline it could have delved more into how the afterlife works and how ghosts work in the world of the smp. the entire episode was just glatt doing a landlord bit. it would be funny for a regular stream, but i don't think it's good for tftsmp. hyping it up as being lore-filled when it had a very similar jokey semi-lore tone to the beach episode made it fall a bit flat.

there could have been very interesting discoveries about glatt's relationship with the afterlife or whether or not glatt and the schlatt that tommy talked about in the afterlife are the same entity, similar to the disctintion between wilbur and ghostbur.

the episode feels like a lot of wasted potential.

[comradeboyhalo]

one of my wishes for future tftsmp episodes is for karl to use it to boost smaller rp streamers like hannah, punz, ponk, etc. tftsmp has been pretty techno and ranboo biased lately (which im not mad abt, theyre great rpers and carry the story) but i do think its a bit of a lost opportunity to give lesser known dsmp rpers a bigger stage

[felinedetached]

I can't believe I came to tales for Philza + Techno content, had to watch Phil be wiped out in the first round, stuck around for Ranboo and Hannah, had those two die too and then didn't even get to watch Ranboo's obviously Mizu character fitfull the threats he lowkey implied about four times

[blockgamepirate]

tbh I just refuse to consider Tales canon.

I know it's canon, I just reject it. I don't think it fits. Also honestly I don't think DSMP needs this kind of extra lore.

I have more fun with Tales when I consider the references to canon as just fanservice and pretend that it's completely unrelated. I prefer to think of it as oneshots set in a separate alternate universe. And the less it crosses over with the main story the better.

[sp-ud]

More tales crit but honestly if Karl’s trying to make characters and a story that’s fun and interesting every time he needs to get people to actually play there part and this includes him. Running around screaming and doing obnoxious voices isn’t going to make these characters memorable, if people aren’t going to take it more seriously then it shouldn’t be treated seriously.

This also applies to those who were actually in character and we’re trying to act. In this tales I’d say a grand total of 4 people were actually trying to act like regular people in this sort of setting and not just using it to be loud. And those 4 people are techno, foolish, Charlie, and bad. They were trying to act out for this story and they got yelled over or killed off early on, hell from looking at the vod you can tell when foolish and Charlie just got fed up.

karl really needs to find the balance between dicking around and a good story. because it is possible. look at honestly a majority of the rest of the dsmp. they have a good balance of dicking around and a good story, but karl just has not yet managed to get that balance.

and it sucks because i am once again talking about how tftsmp has so much good potential there to work with. but time and time it just gets stomped on by only a small handful of people not taking it seriously.

like, you really wouldn't think you would need to railroad people into getting through a maze. the whole point of a maze is to get out. and yet.

[memoryboy]

karl to the other tales participants

[stunfiskz]

yknow i would feel a lot harder for karls character losing himself if we. actual saw it happen. like at all.

[beacon-lamp]

Ngl, I don’t think TFTSMP would be even half as fun without the incredibly scuffed nature of it. Telling a serious story is great, but we get enough from the main DSMP, yknow? Quackity bringing... some kind of constant energy... and Karl literally yelling out all of the cues, the serious names and then the jokey ones, it makes it stick more because it’s so unique.

i think this ask is so amusing because people are Critical of tftsmp for the exact same reason.

but yeah honestly i Personally agree with this take anon. but that’s because i value entertainment value and humor over serious plot and angst.

at the end of the day, tftsmp is Entertainment and boy was i Entertained today. i heard technoblade state “poor people don’t deserve healthcare” and decided to stay and watch. i thought quackity was Hilarious just simply because of how In Character he was. compared to everyone else, his acting was Phenomenal. but i saw a lot of ppl say that he ruined the tone of the story and that he should learn to read a room better.

a bit more of a critical tone under the cut if anyone cares enough

i’ll say i’m not a big fan of tftsmp, bc it’s like. a serious storyline but with just the Worst acting (no hate no shade, i can’t act that much better). it’s one thing to purposefully ruin the immersion w quips and fourth wall breaking. it’s another to have the immersion and suspension of disbelief ruined by the writing and acting itself. but that’s why i don’t watch it. like if you don’t like a thing. don’t watch it? idk it’s not that deep. like there’s some stuff in the plot rn i don’t particularly care about and i don’t have the time to catch up on it anyways. so i just. don’t watch.

it’s ok to not like everything!! but just as a friendly reminder, it’s Not ok to shit on other ppl for liking something this harmless and insignificant if you don’t like that thing. idk like i get the criticisms of tftsmp but i just don’t get why you would watch something you have that many criticisms about. not to say the criticisms aren’t at least in some part valid. but like why repeatedly watch something you so actively criticize and dislike?

also i see people Hating On karl himself for the shortcomings of tftsmp. um. maybe don’t do that. it’s not his fault fans are giving him more recognition and credit for egg lore. is it unfair to bbh, antfrost, etc. yeah. but is it karl’s Fault? no. and it’s obvious that he doesn’t have any prior experience with this sort of storytelling/performing. but he’s trying it out and he’s having fun with it while also giving everyone else a role/spotlight in these streams and thus more exposure. idk i just. constructive criticism is Good. hate is not.

like it’s not like he’s putting in the bare minimum effort and just Expecting everyone to shower praise and give him money. the man is learning and trying his best and you really can see the Effort he’s putting in. and i really do respect him for it. putting himself out there like that and showing 200k+ people Live something he created. i just am not gonna watch tftsmp unless techno is in it lollll. but this stream was Great, loved it, had fun, laughed a fair amount.

[the-king-of-lemons]

my exact reaction seeing karl pull out more than 3 books in the inbetween