#the characters of the dsmp are always alive to me forever

[rabble-dabble]

well in my head there's a story where wilbur didn't leave tommy behind. or maybe he apologized, grew vulnerable for just a moment and finally said 'i'm sorry i hurt you' and they could both find peace from it. there's a story where tubbo heals from his grief or maybe manages to bring ranboo back and they can be a family again. there's a story where quackity finds success with his casino so Las Nevadas isn't always so empty or maybe karl gains control over his powers and memories and sapnap can sigh in relief knowing his people are okay. there's a story where sam managed to keep tommy safe or at least keeps dream locked away and he forgives himself for doing terrible things to save people. a story where jack and fundy and niki don't feel so left out and powerless and alone and a story where phil has his son alive, cracked and splintered and raw but alive, a story where technoblade can find peace knowing tyrannical governments are things of the past, a story where hannah finds her wings again, a story where captain puffy seeks her lost memories and crew, a story where eret discovers what the mystery of her own past is, a story where george finally wakes up from an endless dream, a story where friends are reunited and homes are rebuilt and the universe learns to read its own code and it talked about love. there's a story in my head where everyone gets a happy ending, or at least one more day of happiness, forever. the story ends with a happy ending, to me. it does to me

[liauditore]

number 1: when/how did you get into hc?

number 19: favorite design?

and number 23: first impression of a hermit and how it did or didn’t change

1 - when and how did you get into hermitcraft?

I'm actually a pretty recent fan. I got recommended Lizzie's Last Life POV in April I think? It was completely random and I wasn't into MCYT at all but I remembered watching Lizzie as a kid and it was like 3am and I couldn't sleep so I was like why not and then my life literally changed forever.

I had to, completely unhinged, BEG my friends to watch this stupid ldshadowlady series that had the best storytelling I'd seen in anything ever with me. @kanohirren recognised Bdubs and Etho's names and we got curious so we watched their POVs as well. Cue "he loves me" and now neither of us are the same.

We ended up also watching 3L and DL and LimL when that came out and needed extra dosages to keep us going so we ended up watching Etho's Hermitcraft 7 (Shad-e-e's!) and various Hermitcraft 9 videos (mainly Pearl, Scar and Ren). I've watched a little bit of season 8 as well so I know about the whole moon big thing.

So yeah this is cursed but hermitcraft is basically my "they're all alive and well and happy and not dead" copium fanfic for the life series.

Sidenote he's not a hermit but I listened to screw the nether maybe too many times as a kid and lost it a bit when i realised it was the same martyn.

19 - favourite hermit design? (whether yours or someone else’s)

OUHGHKLGLHKKLHHKFHL THERES SO MANY GOOD ONES NOOOOOOOOOOO.,

ummm uh just to machine gun fire a few there's luminousslime's buttercups, applestruda's gem and doc (and basically everyone else), hybbart's tango, jay's gem has won my heart, lunarcrown's hels!bdubs and hels!etho are maybe cheating but i care them and so has basically any interpretation of bdubs as a small (evil?) creature. First example that popped up in my mind was kanohi's accursed gremlin.

In terms of my own designs my style's gone through a bit of a shift recently so I've actually been meaning to redraw everything 😭😭but from what I've done so far I do really like my Pearl and Bdubs.

23 - what was your original opinion on hermitcraft/a hermit? did it change?

For MCYT as a whole tbh I used to be kind of a hater 😭😭 as someone who only really watched the occasional captainsparklez ig i didn't really "get" roleplay and all the fanart and stuff that was everywhere when DSMP was popular. +the whole character vs CC stuff.

((note here I don't actively dislike DSMP because I never got into it and wouldn't know I just choose not to interact with it out of my own reasons. I don't mind talking abt it or seeing it and so on))

I always knew hermitcraft existed but again I wasn't really into MCYT as a whole so I didn't think it would really be my thing ig?

And now look at me 😔😔

for individual hermits I had a very visceral reaction the first time I saw bdubs' skin like EW EUGH WHAT IS., THAT. and now i think he's the cutest ever.

[stellocchia]

Today I’m departing from my normal analysis content to bring you all an Overly Long Analysis of Foolish’s lore!

Why? Because I love him dearly and that was literally the best thing that came out of the Red Banquet... 

Am I late to this? Yes, but, you know... better late then never, am I right?

As always from here on out I will be talking about the character in the rp unless stated otherwise

Sadly, Foolish does not have a vod channel, so the only link I can provide here is the twitch link: Death? - Dream SMP (LORE)

The stream starts with Foolish’s death scene at the Red Banquet. To be more exact, during Puffy’s and Ant’s discussion. 

Now, it’s important to give a bit of context to all of this: 

The Red Banquet was a trap organized by the Eggpire to kill anyone who ever opposed it (and Hbomb... which is fair). After a bunch of uno reverse scenes it looks like the Eggpire is winning and, at first, they call up Eret to be executed. Foolish opposes this by trying to summon lightning once again to destory the Egg, but this fails and Foolish is put on the chopping block instead. Puffy loudly opposes this as Foolish is her son (aopted or just son-figure? I’m not sure) and her and Ant get into a discussion about this where Ant blames her for everything that happened because she left the Eggpire, while she debates that, no, their actions are their own responsability and she was trying to do her best all the while Foolish tries to reassure Puffy that, indeed, it isn’t her fault. The debate then gets cut short by Ant executing Foolish.

Screen cuts to black and we hear the distorted voice of the Egg before Foolish comes back inside the green light of his beacon in his pyramid.

Now, I think that one of the most interesting things about this stream was the great weight given to the death, despite it being Foolish’s first one, but also the idea of Foolish, who is a God of life, formerly God of death, coming to the realization that even he is not immune to death and coming to the slow realization that he is now scared. In fact, he is terrified of dying, but that’s not all. He is also scared of the Egg and scared of going back to what he once was. Of course I’ll be talking more in depth about it, but this are the general themes of the stream: coming to terms with mortality, coming to terms with fears and confronting his past.

His first reactions to being back are confusion and then denial:

“Wha...? No... was that...? Is- did I...? Did I d...?” and right after “No. No no no no no. I’m immortal. No no no no no" 

Also, cool description of death: “It felt different, it was- I- I felt something, I was- I was somewhere, but it was- it was nowhere it was... it was dark but it wasn’t just nothing”

After his moment of disorientation is over Foolish remembers about the Baqnuet and immediately starts wondering what happened there and wether the other partecipants were still alive. His musings though get interrupted by the Egg who starts talking once again to him, this time though the Egg’s voice is not distorted, which could indicate the link between them getting stronger after part of Foolish’s life force went to feed the Egg.

“Where are you? I know that voice!” “I am in your mind” “No. No no no...” “I am in your soul” “No! no no no no. This is- this is just tricks, games. This is... something new” “It is not a dream” “Is this- is this the Egg?”

So, at first Foolish is still in denial, he recognizes the voice as he’s spoken with the Egg in the past, but he doesn’t admit that that’s who he is talking with until the Egg points out that everything that Foolish is experiencing is real. Which is interesting because, up until that moment, he was also fully in denial about his death and only start questioning that afterwards.

“Call me what you want, I have many names as you know but you’ve forgotten” “What do you mean? What do you mean? No no no no, I never heard of you before, wasn’t that long ago that I first met you. You’re something new, something that I’ve never met before”

Now, before jumping the gun and saying that Foolish is yet another member of the amnesiac gang, we have to remember that Foolish has: 1) lived a really long life and probably seen lots of things, forgetting something is normal and 2) Foolish seems to do an active effort to repress anything having to do with his past as a Totem of Death. The second one is what I want to focus on because the Egg seems to have known Foolish back when he was still covering that role, as it’ll be mentioned later. It is also possible that when Foolish and the Egg first met the Egg wasn’t in this form (after all we know that it does have another form) and Foolish simply fails to realize that the 2 are the same thing.

“I’m an ancient one, even more ancient then you”

We did have some idea of this with both “The Masquerade” and “The Village That Went Mad” from tftsmp alluding to it (the second one mostly through Ponk’s lore), but now we’ve had the confirmation that the Egg is indeed something that has existed for a long time (how powerful that makes it is debatable considering how the story has framed it thus far). 

“I’m not afraid of you! Even after all that I’m still... not afraid”

Denial seems to be Foolish’s first response to anything new he experiences. I’m sure someone smarter then me could draw some interesting parallels to Tubbo here, but that’s not me!

“Afraid... you are truly Foolish if you thought you were stronger then me... you should be afraid” “Maybe... maybe I had it wrong. Maybe I thought I was stronger... but I’m still here!”

The confident facade is starting to crumble, although he has yet to accept the fact that he has in fact died or that he may be truly afraid, some doubts are starting to creep in.

“Foolish, when we met you said you feared nothing, but now I can sense your fear Foolish” “No no” “You fear death itself” “No!” “Don’t you~?” 

The taunting continues and more of the facade keeps crumbling. It seems for once that the Egg is in fact capable of manipulation (which I started to doubt as it failed to corrupt most people it came in contact with). The Egg seems to know what are Foolish’s weak points at the very least.

“I know who you are, even though you have forgotten something of what you are”

After this premise Foolish challenges the Egg to tell him something only he would know. So first of all the Egg brings up Foolish’s secret room and ‘what he keeps in there’ and, at first, Foolish’s ponts out that the Egg could be lying, but then realizes that it is, in fact, in his head and starts to find a way to get rid of it. Later the Egg picks this up again revealing that it knows about the deal with Ranboo to try and stop Foolish from getting rid of it.

“You still think like you’re gonna get me to join your side? It’s not gonna happen!”

And here we get Foolish’s refusal and the actual motive for why the Egg is even talking to him in the first place. The Egg tries to convince him to join it by harping on that Foolish how he is now is “weak” and tries to convince him to go back to how he was before, when he was a Totem of Death. But, as I said, Foolish actively despises his past and he doesn’t bend to the promises of power because, as a matter of fact, he tried that already and it didn’t work for him. Foolish has no interest in power (he still desperately searches for control though) which is actually quite unique for a Dsmp character...

“I’ve tried ‘power’ in the past and it doesn’t work! It doesn’t work! You can’t just use overwhelming force, it works for... short-term at best” (...) “I can’t control the actions of the world through overwhelming power, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t”

(Wish the dumbasses from Doomsday would learn this...)

Either way Foolish explains that strenght, power and violence didn’t work for him in the past because they simply can’t work. Not long term at least. All the while building provides him with a sense of control over his own creations satisfying both his desire for control and his desire to create.

“Deep down you miss the power you once held. Go back to being a Totem of Death and together we can rule and create peace. Peace is what you want, right Foolish?” “Yes but it doesn’t work that way! It doesn’t work that way! It’ll never work that way...”

After a few moments of hesitation their conversation draws to a close with Foolish bathing himself in the water from Church Prime, with a honestly iconinc line: “You know, and I mean this in the most polite way possible, go to Hell”. This is also when the facade he’s had to somewhat keep up until now completely crumbles. Suddenly he realizes that he is too late to help anyone and doesn’t even know if anyone is still alive at all. He also starts confronting the fact that he died and the implication of this being that he is mortal. He also confronts the fact that he is scared. 

“Did I really die?” “Why am I afraid of it?” “How can I live such a long life and be afraid of it to end?” “I don’t see beauty in mortality” “I can’t die, can I?” “Even if I could die, why am I so afraid?” “The answers... I just want answers!”

He doesn’t find answers to his panic induced questions but, then again, he is not supposed to. Death doesn’t have a meaning, it’s just a function of life, nothing lasts forever. The same goes with fear. Even if in this case it is far from 

inexplicable for him to be afraid of the Egg or of dying (as one was the direct cause of the other in his case), fear is still an emotion. Emotions aren’t rational by definition. Basically what I’m saying is that there aren’t always answers to be had. Sometimes questions are meant to remain as such and that’s what makes them meaningful.

“Every time I thought I knew the Egg, every time I though I understood, I never had it right? Was I arrogant about it the whole time?”

He also seems to have developed a level of paranoia about the Egg, wondering how much it knew, how many people knew about his stuff, if he is safe anywhere or if the Egg was right about him and what he wanted. He also starts questioning his own perception of reality and wondering if the Banquet itself was just an illusion created by the Egg.

It’s also interesting that Foolish remains of the opinion that no-one in the Eggpire is at fault. No matter what happens to him he still sees the Egg as a sort of infection and all those under it’s control as victims just as much as anyone else the Egg harms. 

(Also the sun is used once more as a simbol of hope, though Foolish describes it as “cruel” because it disappears)

The stream ends with Foolish promising to himself that he’ll figure things out. Though, as I said before, sometimes the point of a question is to not have an answer.