#Lazytext

[lazyliars]

i'm gonna say it. tumblr peaked with character ask blogs.

[lazyliars]

Hey, I'm 3 days late but I'm also in this! It's a nicely put-together piece. Also voice reveal or something, blah blah blah. Go watch it!

Yo! This video about the Dream SMP is very good (and I don’t just say that, because I feature in it). Check out Em and leave a sub!

[sorahana]

Sportacus: Robbie, look here for a moment Robbie: [ turns with an irritated expression ] What is it Sportaflop? Sportacus: [ gently cups Robbie's cheek, staring intently ] There's something on your face Robbie: W-What is it? Sportacus: [ leans forward to plant a kiss on his cheek ] It's me Robbie: Sportacus: 💞💕💞

[woodlenelf]

Sport ended up stopping and getting Robbie a cake, though he had to make sure it was in a container so he didn't get sugar on him

[starrylamb]

had another weird dream (been having a lot of those ! ? ) 

I was onthis like, floating island sort of thing and we weren't supposed to be there anymore so someone activated these circular portal vacuum things and they started to suck literally everything in the rooms into them. I blocked the ones in the room I was in with tables and things but it was scary as fuck.  I made a friend with this HUGE guy and we were gathering up supplies (ala minecraft) and it was friggin strange. There were suddenly other people who were trying to get us to go into the portals. So I activated a magic carpet I had in my inventory and we flew off the island. It was REALLY hard to steer so I landed by a tree and got my bearings.  Nearby the princess (?) demon lady of the island was broadcasting at a stadium thing. She was complaining to her 'daddy' and whining about how he liked (me?) more than her. 

then I had a different one 

I was at a carnival sort of thing and we were using native american money which the exchange rate for was p shitty (it wasl ike 26% less than a dollar). I exchanged my money and went into this magic show thing. 

It was being lead by a cat man who asked me if I wanted to record it. I agreed and hopped onto the side of the giant truck he was using as a stage. I popped my camera in a (WINDOW? ??? ) and started recording. About halfway through the show he noticed me (seemingly for the first time) and basically told me I hadn't paid and was being sneaky and that I had to leave through the back gate. He laughed to the audience about how I would have to pay the entry fee again.  As I walked back through the crowd (out of the fair) I thought it was really weird that I hadn't paid an entry fee in the beginning anyway. Also I was really grumpy about the fact that he kicked me out after ASKING me to record it for him. And I should have told him that. 

then uh 

I woke up. 

[lazyliars]

I feel like it’s often understated just how much of a hard counter to Dream was lost when Wilbur went mad. Wilbur was basically the only person perfectly suited to shut Dream down because he had unparalelled control over the narrative - and I don’t just mean that he was writing the script.

He knew how to win a fight without winning a fight. L’manberg was able to hold the narrative high-ground throughout Wilbur’s presidency for this reason; both as the “young, scrappy and hungry rebels with a cause” and the “noble nation of persecuted people who just want freedom from the evil americans.”

Wilbur was excellent at keeping L’manberg firmly in the moral right, even when they technically weren't, and it absolutely rallied people to their side. He could turn a pitched battle in Dream’s favor to a win just by re-framing it in a better light.

He was also willing to mock Dream, fearless of the consequences, a trait he shares with the other SBI, but coupled with his unique status as “narratively powerful” he could do actual damage. (very d&d bard of him.)

When he decided to work with Dream instead of against him, it’s that same power that ultimately kept him from recovering. He had convinced himself that he was the villain, and he couldn’t escape that self-assigned archetype until it killed him.

It’s also worth mentioning that Tommy has been desperately carrying that flame - trying to rally people, trying to fight Dream the same way Wilbur did, trying to be Wilbur. But Tommy’s strength has always been his ability to crash through the narrative, ignorant of it. He is himself first and what people want him to be second, always, even when he tries not to be. He can’t be Wilbur, and he shouldn’t have to be.

So um. Yeah. Bring back general soot who body slams c!dream pls

bringing this up again; bring back general soot who bodyslams c!dream upon sight in tommys honor or bring me death

[lazyliars]

In toxic doomed yuri with my knees the way they’re killing me

[lazyliars]

to purchase plane tickets is to brush shoulders with the devil

[lazyliars]

Okay but the funniest, FUNNIEST thing to me about the SMP is that Techno lowkey treats Tubbo like his arch-rival.

He kind of treats Tubbo like an icon for Government as a whole, which is hilarious considering Tubbo was the third choice for leadership after the other two rejected the position, like--

Techno will be preparing for every possible angle of attack when raiding L’manberg and Tubbo will be getting yeeted 40 feet in the air trying to make a ravager teleport him for no reason other than to see if he can

It is LITERALLY JUST:

Techno: Ah yes... My nemesis, President of L’manberg, Government embodied, my Literary Foil; Leader of the Butcher Army, He who grounded the Angel of Death and survived, My true Arch-enemy... Tubbo.

Tubbo: i likeda bee :)

[lazyliars]

c!Ranboo is in the wrong.

He's treating this conflict like there are no stakes - and there are none for him, but there definitely are for Quackity and Las Nevadas.

If the Ranboo and Tubbo miscalculate this conflict and lose the Cookie Outpost - they lose a build. They lose something they've worked hard on. And it sucks.

But if Quackity miscalculates this conflict? He stands to lose everything.

He has repeatedly stated that Las Nevadas is everything to him. It's his proverbial (and potentially literal) last chance, and he said that if it dies, he does too.

So while the it's true, he's overreacting to a perceived threat, he's almost certainly aware that it's an overreaction, but he has no other options; he can't afford to be wrong.

If there's a 99% chance that the box has an apple, and a 1% chance it has a bomb, Quackity has to operate on the idea that it's a bomb, because even if it's extremely unlikely, he won't survive the bomb.

And to be clear, he is not the only one who felt threatened by the outpost. Foolish, Purpled and Fundy all seemed to be intimidated by it, and considering that Las Nevadas is all they have left too, it makes sense that they would be defensive. The scale of what each member of Las Nevadas has to lose is breathtaking.

And yes, it's sad that Ranboo can't make cookies, but again, the stakes for him are nothing. He is sad about not being allowed to build his farm out further. He is sad they misinterpreted his actions and that he couldn't make it better by just talking it out.

But Las Nevadas doesn't have a barrel of totems and powerful friends to fall back on if things go south. This is it for them. If they fuck up, it's over.

Kindness, open-heartedness, understanding? Those are luxuries on the Dream SMP. Luxuries Ranboo can indulge in happily.

Quackity cannot. Purpled cannot. Fundy cannot. Foolish recently learned what happens when you try to extend a kindness when you don't have the power to pull it back if those you're offering it to abuse it.

They cannot afford to be kind.

[lazyliars]

That was short but that was some of my favorite content we've gotten in s3 so far.

That was like. Pure payoff for some of the oodles of set-up we've been sitting on for MONTHS now.

And it was so good. It furthered some seriously important plot points. It gave the characters active and passive information to chew on and develop with.

And it's obvious but oh my dear god, Tubbo. Mans killed it. I haven't felt emotionally engaged like for a long fucking while.

It's extra nice too that it wasn't purely negative emotion fueling his feelings - it was hurt, it was sad, it was angry, it was depressed, but it was also hopeful.

Tubbo's character? Was and continues to be one of my absolute favorites. When cc!Tubbo sets out to give a performance, he fucking delivers.

My hope is that we get some follow up with Ranboo and Tubbo talking alone. I wanna see Ranboo coming to terms with what Wilbur told him and how it reconciles with his own world view, I want Tubbo to get the chance to express his own feelings about L'manberg, good and bad, and I want them to do it together.

[lazyliars]

I think I've finally settled in my mind why Wilbur saying "I never cared about L'manberg" doesn't ring true.

It's not that I don't believe him, because, with that line as context, looking back, it's very believable; it makes sense that he was interested in it as a way to "stick it to the man" during the rebellion, It frames his desire to call an election as a certain dissatisfaction and insecurity with his own power, and It puts his blowing it up into a new light.

However.

Wilbur also loved L'manberg.

He loved it. He wrote to Phil with designs for the flag. He wrote an anthem. He risked his life and fought a war.

"L'manberg, my unfinished symphony--" is not the anguished declaration of a man who does not care.

And the disconnect that both the audience and Tommy are having with these statements, is in the fact that Wilbur isn't lying.

But he is omitting something crucial; Why.

And the answer is, ironically, people.

Wilbur didn't care about the nation he was creating, it could've been anything, anywhere - but he cared about the fact that he was creating it with Tommy.

He cared about the fact that Tubbo jumped at the opportunity to help them and supplied the materials for the first incarnation of their walls.

He cared about the fact that Eret spent hours refining and building the walls out taller and more beautiful.

He cared about the fact that Fundy was born within those walls.

The walls didn't matter. It wouldn't matter if someone built them back up overnight, and restored L'manberg to it's former glory and served it on a silver platter to Wilbur.

So, so similar to Ranboo, but also fundamentally different, is how much Wilbur believes in people, and how he sees them as inextricable from sides - he knows how powerful the allure of a cause to believe in can be, and he's been on both sides of the dangerous fallout when people stop believing.

A side is, ultimately, a way to find your people. If you're on the same side, those are your people. The L'manbergians may have been brought together by a man who didn't care about the land, but they didn't join for the land. They built the land. They joined for Wilbur, because they wanted to be on his side, and he was on theirs, and the form that took was a nation.

And likewise, the thing that destroyed Wilbur wasn't the loss of L'manberg - it wasn't losing the elections that got him in the end, it was his people; abandoned, betrayed, forgotten.

L'manberg is his unfinished symphony not because the walls fell, but because Fundy tore them down; not because Schlatt was on the podium, but because Tubbo was killed there; not because Tommy didn't want to follow him anymore, but because Tommy didn't believe in him anymore; because Eret (wilbur) pressed the button.

L'manberg started as a drug van that got busted by men who were stronger than they were.

L'manberg started as an uphill battle against men who set their forests on fire after they declared they used words and not weapons.

L'manberg was a way to stick it to the man.

(The man had more of a problem with Tommy than he ever did Wilbur.)

Wilbur never cared about L'manberg.

[lazyliars]

"If you ever care about someone, do not give up on them, Foolish."

There is something so poignant about Tommy being the one to deliver this advice to Foolish -- not just because he's young and Foolish is immortal, but because Tommy doesn't know jack shit about Foolish.

Tommy doesn't know Foolish is a god. He doesn't know that he has a dark past, and likely has conflicted thoughts on the idea of "second chances." He probably doesn't even know that Foolish just died recently.

But Tommy feels so strongly about this, feels like someone has to let Foolish know, because it's the right thing to do.

It's an action utterly void of ulterior motives, freely given from the hands of a teenager to a god.

[lazyliars]

This stream has solidified one thing for me - c!Techno needs a goal.

It was most obvious when Bad was waxing poetic about how the egg could grant Techno anything he wanted, and Techno’s response was pretty much “I already have everything.”

Because that’s true! He does! And it makes for less interesting content! I mean, he ended the stream directly after the egg stuff was done, because he didn’t have anything else to do. C!Techno doesn’t want anything, whereas, almost every other character does. Puffy wants the Egg gone. Bad wants what the Egg wants, which is an ominous “everything.”  Tommy, who fulfilled his main arc when he got the discs back, still wants his hotel to succeed.

Even Ranboo wants to not be involved, which offers some very interesting scenes when he fails to get what he wants.

But Techno doesn’t want anything. He’s a purely reactionary character right now. He has nothing to work towards, no reason to interact with anyone else, and as a consequence, nothing to do...

Even with the Egg taking over the damned server, Techno doesn’t have anything at stake until Bad threatens Ranboo. And once that threat is gone? He heads home. He’d have headed home sooner if he could’ve, because he doesn’t care about anything in the Dream SMP lands. They can get Egged-over for all he cares, as long as they stay away from him and his.

Now, I don’t like pointing out problems without offering a solution, so in my very humble opinion.............. Eggza.

It’s just win win win. Cool, awesomely threatening angel of death dyed red? Return of the Redza skin, anyone? Phil getting to play a chaotic evil villain and drop lines as bone-chilling as the ones he did on Doomsday?

And maybe the Egg offers Phil the thing that he wants the most... his son back.

Most importantly, it offers Techno a reason to become invested in the current narrative, because he can’t kill Phil. The problem suddenly goes from very solvable, via stabbing it, to something that Techno doesn’t know how to deal with on his own. If Phil becomes dedicated to protecting the Egg, even with his one life on line, it forces Techno to think outside the murder-box. He’d have to work with outside forces to find a way to break the Egg’s corruption.

It could give him reason to work with Tommy again. Or even Quackity, someone who feels very pro-omelette ATM.

Hell, maybe they have to get help from Tubbo in Snowchester! Maybe nukes are the only way to stop the egg! The possibilities are infinite!

[lazyliars]

c!Tommy's relationship to violence is a pretty fascinating one.

Specifically I got thinking about this in regards to Techno, and his proclaiming that he only saw Tommy as useful once he had displayed a willingness to commit violence against others alongside Techno.

And I think a lot of the difference in analysis of these moments between c!Tommy fans and c!Techno fans is that this kind of violence means different things between the two.

For Techno, fighting for or alongside someone is a pretty important thing; for someone who feels like he is often dehumanized and viewed as a weapon, choosing who he fights for and who he lends his power to means a lot.

As I see it, It's why his feeling abandoned during the Red Festival has much more weight amongst Techno enthusiasts then Tommy or Tubbo enjoyers, and why his bringing it up during Doomsday is such a point of contention between the two groups.

For the people in Tommy and Tubbo's corner, it's a deep hypocrisy; Techno claiming to feel used as a weapon after he had admitted that Tommy's usefulness and status as a friend and/or equal was tied directly to his being willing to fight.

But for the Techno corner, that's not what it's about; For Techno, fighting for someone you care about is a big deal, especially for someone who ends up being a loner a lot of the time. The willingness to protect someone is something deeper, almost symbolic.

It's a pretty nasty spot of miscommunication, tied with genuine misrepresentations of what Techno wanted from Tommy and a complete misunderstanding of what Tommy wanted from L'manberg and Tubbo, largely because during the Bedrock Bros arc, Tommy didn't know either.

Which ties back into how Tommy's relationship with violence works, and how it is pretty much the antithesis of Techno's.

For Tommy, not fighting someone is often a better indicator of his caring for them then his willingness to fight for them.

The best example of this is the scene in the community house; Tommy realizes that hurting his friends (specifically Tubbo) is not worth it - it's not going to get him what he wanted, and it's the turning point where he starts to understand what he always knew subconsciously; that what made the discs important wasn't entirely linked to the physical objects, it was the feeling of a carefree 'before time' that he wanted to return to.

It's Tommy's refusal to keep fighting Tubbo that is a transformative and inspiring moment for him, and a deep betrayal for Techno.

And it's why it hurts them both so badly.

Tommy doesn't want to fight Techno. He's genuinely apologetic to him and very obviously feels horrible for leaving him, and I imagine, had Dream not escalated the situation, Tommy would've been protecting him if the Butcher Army had tried to press the attack and finish what they started.

But for Techno, this is a brutal betrayal - Tommy used him, despite the fact that Tommy had just lost the very thing he had joined Techno to retrieve, because Techno was conflating Tommy's willingness to fight with his willingness to protect Techno, because that's how Techno shows that he cares.

To Techno, Tommy refusing to fight for him is a betrayal. For Tommy, it is a reclamation of his sense of self, but not an abandonment of Techno inherently.

Another example is Tommy continuing to follow Wilbur during the Pogtopia era, even when it was becoming more and more clear that Wilbur's spiral was endangering the people Tommy cared about.

Tommy refused, at every point, to get violent with Wilbur, or even to abandon him. He refused to believe that it would come to that, and he continued to believe in Wilbur's ability to pull himself back from the edge.

(It also makes Wilbur's beliefs on violence in his conversation with Big Q during the elections even more tragic. It was never a belief set that Tommy shared, even when Wilbur was being consumed by it.)

And again, when the cabinet was talking about killing Techno, Tommy was the one piping up in his defense because he was (at the time) just minding his own business. This is the foreshadowing to bedrock bros.

And we can see the reverse of this when Tommy is being violent. It's generally portrayed as something negative for his character, as a failing.

It's why Revivedbur goading Tommy into fighting him while they're doing the tour is such a dark moment.

It's why the scene in the pit and Techno's killing Tubbo is such a sticking point for Tommy and why Wilbur's giddiness at the brutality is so disturbing; Wilbur was aware that this was a devolution for Tommy.

It's also why I personally consider his killing Jack to be the lowest point of exile. It was a full refutation of the kind of 'silly' violence, AKA violence with no consequences. What would have been a dumb joke before suddenly took on this somber tone, as Jack tried to swim back up and save himself. This ends up being further compounded by Jack declaring this a canon death - Tommy, at his lowest, kills someone he once considered a friend.

This is why many Tommy enthusiasts view Bedrock Bros as the closest he ever came to a villain arc; Tommy hurting people for the sake getting what he wanted was a massive shift in his character's morality - it's why his declaration of being "worse than everyone I didn't want to be" means so much.

And while it's easy to think that "someone he didn't want to be" means Techno here, I'd argue he's referring to Wilbur. Wilbur, who gave in to his worst self and ended committing violence against all of his loved ones, precisely when he realized that he wouldn't be able to recover the thing he wanted most. Wilbur, who was the one who taught Tommy to fight with "words, not violence."

"The thing I built this nation for doesn't exist anymore," and "The discs were worth more than you ever were" are lines that parallel each other.

But where Wilbur follows his words up with an act of tragic, self-destructive violence, Tommy catches himself. Tommy stops hurting Tubbo. He stops trying to hurt L'manberg. He tells Tubbo to give Dream the disc, refuting Wilbur's idea that "if I can't have it, no one can," that poisoned his mind.

None of this is to say Tommy is a pacifist. He will definitely fight when he has to - he's a war veteran, after all.

But I do think there's a distinct difference in how he relates to violence when contrasted against other characters, and how he's failed and succeeded with regards to that.

[lazyliars]

“You weren't trying to kill me Jack, you're Jack Manifold.”

A small theory.

Tommy is treating Jack as his baseline, his anchor. Jack is (in Tommy's mind) the one thing that has remained constant in his life, and he's happy to completely ignore any and all changes that Jack might be going through.

Tommy is a character that thrives when the things around him have a degree constancy, – and the world seems intent on making sure that isn't the case, for better and for worse. Tommy has had a rainbow of different when dealing with change; from failure to process and shutting down, to begrudging acceptance and growth.

The bench is a good example of this – Tommy's main goal throughout s2 was getting that feeling of simplicity back; when he and Tubbo sat on the bench and listened to music discs together. The discs as physical objects were never important, it was about the sentiment behind them.

It's worth stating that Tommy can adapt to change. His sacrificing those very discs during the first L'manberg war proves it. He was willing to sacrifice a precious sense of constancy to risk everything for someone else's (primarily Wilbur's) dream of change because he loved Wilbur and believed in L'manberg.

But there are changes that Tommy is forced to accept, and ones that he can avoid confronting. His rationalization of Pogtopia Wilbur and the “real” Wilbur as different people being a good example of the latter.

Through this lens, Jack Manifold as a person also falls into the category of “avoidable change” I believe largely because he didn't see Jack develop as a person; he did it mostly quietly, during the Manberg war, and then further when Tommy was in exile and not in a situation where he was able to see outside himself and his own pain. In both cases, Tommy wasn't present physically or emotionally to adjust to his friend growing up.

On the other hand, someone like Tubbo is so inextricably tied to Tommy that the changes Tubbo went through are impossible to ignore. Even then, he was still blindsided when Tubbo chose to try and protect the nation he had been saddled with over Tommy, a choice that would've been obvious to someone more perceptive of such things.

Tommy doesn't do this maliciously – on the contrary, he seems to imagine an idyllic “before time” where there was no conflict and everyone was happy. Of course, we the viewers know that this time never existed and the peace that Tommy remembers was never built to sustain a, well, changing world. There is of course an irony to this, as Dream wants a twisted version of this very same thing. They aren't comparable morally, but there is an almost tragic note to this shared desire to go back to simpler times that, really, didn't exist the way they remember.

Meanwhile, Jack has also been through the ringer. Like Tommy, change has been forced upon him, and he's fought to keep things the same. However, instead of bullheadedly trying to force things to stay the same, Jack has adjusted – badly, in some cases, and in others, he's outright destroyed the option to go back, like with Manifoldland, and in some ways, in trying to make himself the Villain in Tommy's story.

Jack isn't the person who Tommy thinks he is anymore. He's scared, pissed off, and lonely. He can't be Tommy's sidekick anymore and he isn't the same – Tommy treating him like is part of why Jack hates him so much.

Back to the interaction they had in the hotel: Tommy refuses to listen when Jack tells him the truth and he refuses to believe it when he can’t deny having heard it. Tommy can’t accept that Jack has changed, because that means that he has to accept that he can’t ever go back.

Jack literally told Tommy that he tried to kill him. He told him about the nukes! Tommy has been suspicious of Jack in the past, he’s not an idiot. But he is intentionally ignoring the warning signs (something he did with Technoblade) even when they’re blaring red in his face, because it would hurt so, so bad, and he would likely interpret it as himself being “worse than everyone he hated,” if he accepted the whole truth, and that’s terrifying.

I think this reflects on what i perceive as Tommy’s biggest character flaw: Stubbornness.

And it’s a boon as much as it’s a flaw; It’s what has allowed Tommy to continue persisting even when the world seems intent on wrecking him and everything he loves. But the same thing that kept him alive through a string of horrific occurrences also makes him resistant to change - because when things have changed for him in the past, they’ve often been for the worse.

I could say more but i’d run the risk of rehashing my other “Jack Manifold and Tommy should reconcile” post lmao