#I am a soulfire fan to the core and it is in my nature to never support a bolas member in competitions

[sweet-potato-42]

Me and the soulfire bros watching and praying that the new purgatory ccs we're interested in wont pick up the BOLAS bit:

[crybaby-haha]

It doesn't help that most of the RP heavy streamers had to take a break after purgatory.

(Hello, future me here, this reblog spiraled out of control and this quickly turned into me spitting out all of my thoughts about purgatory 1, and the recent spark of non bolas fans being upset at bolas fans. I tried to be as unbiased as possible however, due to being human, I am still biased. Please take what I say in the coming paragraphs with a grain of salt considering that I am indeed one of the filthy bolas crows who pretty much only watches Phil aside from some clips so I might get some stuff wrong. I apologise greatly if I misinterpret the concerns some people have.)

I liked Purgatory however I feel like they didn't really take into account both how long the event was going to go and how each member plays the game. The thing about minecraft is that you don't have to be a PVP god or a MC Engineer to play it. You can just farm or build. Hell, you don't even have to be good at the game. You could spend your entire life just playong on peaceful or in creative mode and get as much out of MC as any Bedwas player.

But Purgatory felt like it was all about the mechanics - which considering that not many of the active members are experienced in the game - it didn't come with a good feeling while watching. I feel like the only reason that people continued watching and playing was bc of the eggs and bc the ccs are good at being entertaining. Bolas specifically for me felt great - but only because their number 1 priority was to have fun and keep morale up. Winning was only 2nd priority. While I still felt the want for the eggs to live, and the stress that came with the "cursed" team, it didn't feel as bad or as stressful when they didn't win a day. Because the bolas ccs weren't in full RP mode thanks to the rough first day essentially beating it out of them. It didn't feel as serious to me. Despite losing their morale was high. At most it felt like when your favourite sports team doesn't win a game.

However, with this analogy in mind, there is no sport without hard-core fans that get way too into it and feel so strongly about their team. And this feels especially heightened in streamer events bc being a fan of a streamer is much more personal than being a football team fan. Bc we as fans are fans of the personality displayed on stream/on camera. We feel more for the streamer than the average football fan feels for the player. We know more about the streamer than the average football player. Essentially, it's more parasocial (this is not necessarily a bad or toxic thing in and of itself btw, the toxic part comes from how both the audience and the creator treats it). We have more of a direct connection with these people. With this in mind, we naturally feel more upset when "our streamer" doesn't win something. Especially if morale is low. It's never fun to watch something if the player you're rooting for doesn't appear to be having fun. I believe this is why Soulfire fans were so much more serious about being upset when Rivers got killed by Bolas after just logging on in comparison to when Jaiden got spawnkilled by Badboyhalo. She was joyful throughout the entire thing. I dont know what Rivers' reaction was to being killed. I would be a fool if I didn't mention that people could argue against my idea by stating that there was likely A LOT more bolas fans upset by Bad spawnkilling Jaiden, thus leading to a possibility of there being a higher number or toxic bolas fans who were extremely unhealthy and sending death threats (I don't use twitter as often, thus I don't have this knowledge. I haven't seen this on tumblr). Personally however, I feel as though the morale of bolas helped stunt the growth of toxic bolas fans. It is difficult to compare the difference between the fanbases due to the difference in popularity and size. This is why I am using personal anecdotes and not numbers. I am trying to understand the general thoughts of each team's fandom and compare. I feel as though comparing numbers doesn't help with this. But, I am not delusional enough to not know that this could be my bias towards bolas talking here. I could be avoiding numbers because of said bias. I don't think I am but this could be unconscious.

Moving on, I think that the low team morale of Soulfire and Green Gay Ninjas - along with the lack of clarity of when streamers are playing their character and being themselves especially on the server (bc come on you can't expect someone to go through hours of gameplay thoroughly playing a character exclusively, I wouldn't even think a professional actor could do that healthily) AND with the amount of time younger fans have to spend on watching streams and wandering about their favourite fandoms (at least compared to older fans who are more experienced and know how to healthily exist within fandom culture) you get what seems like heavily emotionally backed outrage at people not responding the the same media the same way they do - especially if it makes someone whom they like look bad. Even if it's just the character because they like the character. They've got a lot of love for their streamer. Some people have that love for Bad, some have that love for Bagi, I have that love for Philza.

As someone who's on the autism spectrum, I can empathise with this initial hurt. When it feels like someone is badmouthing something I like (especially if it's a special interest that I have invested a lot of emotions into) it can result in me feeling bad about it initially. Feeling personally hurt by it. Hell, I even felt that breifly when Soulfire beat Bolas at their own game, when tehy waited until the last moment to win for that day. Obviously I realised pretty quickly that this was a fair win for Soulfire. In fact Bolas had done that exact thing to the other teams before. That's how they had gotten their wins by that point. I have had time to understand that most of the time, said person isn't actually badmouthing something I like, it just doesn't cater to their tastes. And I think this is something certain people on this fandom need to understand. I'm also learning how to look at things more objectively. I'll never be able to fully look at something objectively as I am human, but I do think even trying to learn how to do this is beneficial. And again, I think this fandom could be better if people tried to do this.

Just because someone dislikes a character you like, that doesn't mean they are attacking you for liking said character or the streamer who plays them. Just because someone dislikes the way they are portraying their character does not mean that they hate the creator who plays them. Just because someone dislikes a strategy that your streamer used, that does not mean they hate said creator(s). Just because one team has more fanart, that does not mean that fans of said team hate the other teams/streamers/ccs.

At the end of the day, Bolas has more fan made content. I believe that this is because of the lack of stress and the easily built apon imagery within the team (Bonnie, Gas Masks, general unhinged cult-like stuff). Soulfire comes in second for fannade stuff I believe, with the amount of members that were active for the event (most notably Tubbo, Pac, Bad, Rivers and Tina (if I forgot anyone this is not a slight against any cc I just have terrible memory, especially since most of what I saw of other teams was stressful and of clips. I'm a Bolas main so I'm obviously biased however I am trying my best to be as objective as possible in this) and the smaller imagery they had (winter attire, obviously mc soulfire, the headcanon with the matching flame capes (which is extremely cute omg) and generally cool sports team vibes ("coach")). I seriously think soulfire could have ended up with a lot more fan content if fans latched onto the coach thing, however from what I understand this occurred around the same time that Gay Green Ninjas were split into the two teams. Speaking of Gay Green Ninjas, they come in last with Etoiles, Bagi, Quackity, Roier and Fit being the only consistent active members from what I recall (again, I suffered with Bolas brainrot throughout Purgatory so if I'm missing someone this isn't a slight etc etc.) and with the only team imagery being Green and I guess Ninjas? But only Etoiles really has that with his domino mask reminiscent of some certain adolescent acrobatic amphibians. I know a lot of people latch onto Bolas being family however I would argue that all of the teams had a family feeling to them.

To conclude, I'm sorry that this is so long and the end has nothing to do with the original POST AAAAAAA OP IM SORRY I TOOK YOUR POST AND RAN WITH IT. This spiraled too quickly. AAAAAAA I'M NOT CONSISE NOOOOOO.

Man sometimes I think about how sad it is that purgatory broke the lore progression of the server so badly. Like we had so many good story beats going on (in no particular order):

Everyone breaking rules trying to figure out where the eggs are. The first run-through of the Maze and Tubbo thinking he killed all the eggs in the wheel spin. Foolish being crowned KOC and getting officially hired by the fed. Cellbits despair and murdering rampage. Bagi and Cellbit backstory. Roier backstory and angst. Foolish taking the muder case knowing and covering for Cellbit. BBH kidnapping a worker and Tubbo figuring it out. Baghera covering for Bad despite it hurting her. Tubbos and Freds blooming "friendship" and subsequent kidnapping. Forever happy pills arc. Forever getting stuck in the nether. Fit backstory on his secret mission. Mikes kidnapping and brainwashing. Jaidens fucked up birthday party from Cucurucho. Pol working for the fed 20 years ago. Philza being tormented by the fed and losing sense of reality. Charlie and codeFlippa. Kameto rescue and him being a spy. The giant code structures. The black concrete/"black matter". Cucuruchito being a spy. The mini-mes which "are gonna be super useful in the future." A federation jail and courthouse being built.

It was fine I guess to put all the rp on hold for Purgatory, but the end wasn't worth it at all. Aside from how unsatisfing the ending was and nothing got explained, over half the CCs didn't come back and most of those that did are "non canonically" there gearing up to go back for round 2.

I wasn't expecting any huge lore during the holidays but I really don't expect any of these storylines to be resolved until February, that is if some of them are even brought up again at all. Like at this point I don't care if the main story is driven by NPCs, I just want the CCs characters to be involved in the story at all.