#I do think I probably got c!Tubbo a bit ooc here but not enough that I’m super pressed about it

[discoblocks]

Had to finish this before it’s inevitably refuted by canon tomorrow!

[blockgamepirate]

Okay so, “Avenging Ranboo” thoughts, specifically re: Technoblade

tl;dr: I think this IS consistent characterisation, actually?

Also I’m kinda mad that I didn’t make that post I had been planning for weeks now but didn’t finish because writing is hard, because it would have tied very well into point 3. Oh well.

I know my friends have been posting about how Techno was OOC in this stream and that’s valid, I just kinda disagree.

1. The Red Festival apology

I think this was a good scene actually? I mean aside from the one life reveal which was a bit awkward and felt forced, probably because he was SUPPOSED to say it naturally in the course of his speech but ended up missing that cue.

I mean, I am pretty excited to have that theory that goes ALL the way back to the canonization of the three lives system finally confirmed, I just think the execution was awkward lol. But yeah, the main issue against that theory was that Wilbur Word-of-Godded it out of existence like immediately after it was first suggested, but I’m frankly glad that we’re just allowed to not take Wilbur’s Reddit posts as definitive canon anymore. And that theory always made a ton of sense based on c!Techno’s characterisation.

But anyway yeah, I actually liked the apology scene. This is another very very old notion I had. Idk if I ever posted about this (it would have been like over a year ago if so) but the sense I got from c!Techno and the Red Festival was that a) he felt very defensive over the whole thing (for very good reasons) and frustrated that his allies didn’t understand what he believed had been a rational choice, b) he was at least somewhat traumatised by the incident and felt abandoned by Wilbur and Tommy and not ready to deal with those feelings even in his own head which is why he focused solely on point a, but also c) on some level, probably subconsciously, he still felt guilty and this is part of why he always deflected the issue with humour, pretending not to care, pretending like it wasn’t a big deal. Particularly around Tubbo.

Point a was pretty much confirmed during the Spooky Stream

Point b was pretty much confirmed during Doomsday

And now point c is pretty much confirmed here.

Point c is just a very natural human reaction to a situation like that, but at that point in his story arc, and especially with him feeling attacked and defensive, I don’t think he processed that at the time. (Tbh I don't think he processed point b either for that matter.)

And the thing is, because he wasn’t processing it, I think all the things Tommy and Wilbur and everybody said about him being a traitor, about how he shouldn’t have just caved to Schlatt’s orders, about how of course he could have just fought everyone, all that was left to fester in his subconscious and made the whole thing worse.

I do think c!Techno has some very fundamental insecurities about his own morality, despite his convictions when it comes to ideology. His entire pacifist arc is full of pretty blatant evidence of this. And I think it did start with the Red Festival, and then was later reinforced by November 16th and its aftermath. Consciously, he felt justified at the time, but it’s hard not to question yourself when literally everybody hates you and thinks you’re a monster. And hanging out with all these guys who are all about noble self-sacrifice, it’s enough to cause a nagging feeling that maybe you ARE a coward and a scoundrel.

And c!Techno does call himself a bad guy a bunch, often sort of jokingly or ironically, but it kinda betrays a sense of fear that he might be in the wrong after all-- or maybe not in the wrong, because he never actually doubts his own convictions per se, but just because he's confident that his convictions are good doesn't mean he's equally confident that he himself is a good person. And when the guilt becomes too heavy, he overcompensates, first with the whole pacifist arc, and now, increasingly, by adopting that self-sacrificial mindset that everybody finds so noble.

Which, for the record, is not healthy or good. Throwing your own life away when it doesn’t achieve anything is not helpful. But it makes sense why he would feel that way after being told over and over again that he should have simply died rather than doing what Schlatt told him to do.

And there absolutely is precedent for him going into extremes like this. I mean, again, look at the pacifist arc.

Because he DOES self-reflect. Maybe not always in the most constructive way but he absolutely does.

And even then it’s not like he’s forgotten point a and b. He brings both up in this scene. It’s only that now he’s giving them less weight, maybe because he’s literally just managed to process that sense of guilt that he’s been stewing on, subconsciously, for over a year. Just like it took him nearly three months to process point b but when he did, it was what he fixated on the most.

So yeah, I think this makes sense, I think it’s a good scene and it makes sense for his characterisation and it was something him and Tubbo needed to talk about to move on (not that they necessarily needed to move on but I can't say I don't appreciate it because I want them to become friends). And I'm glad he figured this out, even if the conclusion he came to is not so great, and even though I know a bunch of haters will take this as validation for their views on the Red Festival.

2. Him viewing Tubbo as a power-hungry dictator

Look, I absolutely do think that it isn’t that simple, and he’s always definitely seen Tubbo as a person, not just the representation of government. What he said to Tommy was that Tubbo might be a nice person who thinks he's doing what's right. And it’s true that he was very much willing to give Tubbo the benefit of the doubt during the Snowchester visit.

But I don’t think any of that contradicts the “power-hungry dictator“ thing, actually. Even after the Snowchester visit Techno was suspicious of Tubbo and wanted to keep an eye on him (which is frankly justified, the guy had nukes and was doing some pretty sketchy shit, like the entire interrogation stream after one of the nukes is stolen. Also Techno KNEW from personal experience that he was the kind of guy who would execute someone without a trial, despite the fact that Tubbo himself should really have known better than to condone such a thing, considering he was ALSO executed without a trial).

And during the NLM era Techno absolutely did view Tubbo as kind of his archnemesis, because it makes sense: he’s the president. Yes, Techno had some level of respect for Tubbo as a person (saying he did have courage), but I think it was pretty obvious that he strongly condemned the fact that Tubbo had exiled Tommy, no matter what his own feelings towards Tommy were. Techno was always quick to put the responsibility of Tommy’s exile on Tubbo, who HAD been the one to make that call and veto the decision of his own cabinet.

As much as Techno bullies Tommy in this era, there’s ALWAYS the implication, between the lines, that he believed Tubbo had wronged Tommy, and this is one of the major disconnects between Techno and Tommy during the whole Bedrock Boys arc: Techno cannot understand why Tommy still cares about Tubbo and honestly my sense of it was always that Techno kinda saw Tommy’s relationship with Tubbo as equally troubling as his relationship with Dream. Because from Techno’s point of view the way Tommy acted in regards to both of them was very similar and as far as Techno knew, Tubbo didn’t seem to care about Tommy's wellbeing.

Not to even mention everything Tubbo's government did to Phil and Techno himself, which would obviously give him a pretty grim view of the guy. (Again, justifiably so. Tubbo was allowing authoritarian notions to guide his actions. He was taking pages straight out of Schlatt's playbook, like the whole execution without a trial thing. Although some of the things the cabinet members did actually had nothing to do with Tubbo, to be fair, and the Butcher Army definitely wasn't his idea and in fact he originally opposed it. Not that Techno had any way of knowing, and I think he might have still seen those things as ultimately Tubbo's responsibility as the president.)

And going back even further, again, as far as Techno knew at the time, the people in Pogtopia who were planning to stage a coup d’état were Quackity and Tubbo. Those were the two guys he found scheming about taking power. Techno didn’t know that Wilbur had been misleading him into believing that Pogtopia’s goal was definitely anarchy. From Techno’s point of view, it could easily have been Quackity and Tubbo who had been pulling the strings behind the scenes and pressured Wilbur into caving, especially since Wilbur had the whole speech about how he had realised that government was not the answer, but that he couldn’t dictate what other people chose to do.

You see how that could EASILY look like Tubbo had pushed Wilbur into nominating him as the president? This kind of stuff is not at all unprecedented, historically. There have been a lot of revolutions that have been stolen in this way. Especially so since Tubbo and Quackity were both members of Schlatt’s cabinet who defected. Yes, Tubbo defected VERY early, but still.

And Techno’s attitude towards Tubbo while he was president and to some extent after it was consistent with this theory. He didn’t even try to talk to Tubbo after Tubbo was declared president, he just immediately attacked him and only after that talked to the crowd. Just the crowd, not Tubbo himself, as if he had already dismissed the idea of Tubbo as someone who might listen. Because I think he had, due to the logic I mentioned above.

All that doesn’t negate the fact that Techno understands that good people can be corrupted by power, that’s basically his entire shtick. So yeah, there’s nothing stopping him from seeing Tubbo as both a potentially good person AND a power-hungry dictator at the same time.

3. Locking Sam up in the prison

I’m leaving this last because it was obviously my least favourite part of the stream. Not a fan. This is what forces me to become a c!Techno anti now because this is the last drop. Can’t excuse shit as dubiously canon or isolated incidents anymore.

But was it out of character? For the guy who once went along with the plan to kidnap and enslave a random stranger? And the guy who once kidnapped and tortured a completely innocent bystander in order to get his weapons back from NLM? Nah, this is unfortunately also very much in character.

I know we tend to kinda gloss over the "hostage" streams, because they seem like "bits" (and frankly probably because they also make Tommy look very very bad) but I mean, those things were never decanonised, actually. Not that I know anyway.

So he has done this before, and if he was willing to do it to a completely unrelated guy he had no grudge against, why wouldn’t he do it to the guy he had ALL the grudges against? It’s perfectly consistent. Shitty, but consistent.

Revenge always seems to bring out his ugliest sides. It’s kinda like the part of him that thinks he’s a bad person just gives up and goes “oh well, might as well just be a bad person then”. And maybe that’s what the point of the obvious foreshadowing towards the start of the stream with the revenge exchange was about. Idk, I hope that’s the point anyway.

But yeah, as much as it sucks, I can see him going along with this, because sometimes he’s just too full of rage to stay true to his ideals. It might in fact be his biggest character flaw.