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derww · 3 days ago

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gnome, im so fucking happy youve spoken about chat being a character and member, ive been thinking about for so fucking long and seeing our ideas merge and respond to each other is just so awesome. <3

for me zams chat just was a character in some way or another, even if muss less formed, from the team awesome breakup and further. yes, princezam is a very anxious and uncertain guy, but would he actually be so constatly changing without listening and wanting to please a chat divided by opinions and therefore always unhappy with him? he got his breakdown few days before the wormhole about how chat is the reason he is in such a bad position, because he wants to please everyone and he can't, and i see it. in some way, eclipse!pz chat was a second planetlord, always making him unsure and asking questions and saying to leave, and i really dont think wed got even close to the plot we got in the end without chat. i started thinking about it for the first time when writing my lifesteal retrospective (tldr i briefly and not too accurately retold plot of s4 with pz focal to nivalu, its like +- 350 pages i think) and really fast got into the point where i was not able to write princezam at all not explaining how much had chat influenced him. in my head, at some point, most active chatters even became a characters on their own, being not a hivemind, but their own personalities with a vision and way to show it, and for the while seasons they were not only influencing pz, but they formed alliances with each other, changed their opinions and ways of influencing what was happening. and many of it actually mattered in the end, and if it wont, pz wont be so angry for all the voices in his head. while he has a character and his vision, over the past month, I've been discussing how driven he really is by the narrative and the world around him, and in general, he's reactive, and chat is part of it. it is a part of a reason why i stopped writing in chat, actually.

while zam had said that hes trying not to be influienced by the chat while making his decisions now, and i believe that hes doing his best, he really still is. loved that you mentioned your and zy theories and how it was not only presented to zam but influenced him and turned out to be completely true (I owe you and zy for not wanting to believe yall, you're incredibly smart and you were right!). before chat had mentioned it, he didn't even think about it, and initially completely dismissed the idea, but continued to reason, and by the time of the conversation with mapicc he perceived it almost as an accurate fact. there is much more less impressive but still noticable moments like that, when a chatter brings quote or idea from tumblr and it influences him, and i think while the basis of the conclusion does not include any info from others streams (staring at derapchu chatters), its awesome. its not entirely fair since we are still influenced by the knowledge, but its sorta a consequence of chat being the only lifesteal character existing out of the server. we can have no body, but we surely do change things, how any important convo can change many things in a person.

i really love it, and i also think that other chats are also partially like that, even tho less formed than zams, but still obviously changing things (even just helping the streamer, with the farms, with the riddles, how is it different from having a cool teammate who cant come right now but can explain?), but it is also a reason why i actually almost stopped writing in chats. because, while i like having the chat as a character, i dont want to be part of a lifesteal that way. but its actually so, so awesome that we have all of this. technoblade had made his chat in a part of his character as something that makes him want blood and death, but he rarely heard distict voices just because of how much of them were. zam has much less of them, and important part of them grew up with his character and gets how exactly to not just discuss a lore, but to be a part of it. not-quite-a-hivemind, but definetely a character that cannot be ignored. another reminder of how much can be done at lifesteal without spilling a drop of blood (except for the blood of the chatters who had died in !lifesteal chat pvp, of course).

All About You

This is about to be the most meta analysis post of my life, but something that has fascinated me the most about lifesteal recently: chat is the 38th member.

As a live stream story, lifesteal is always going to be affected by the live audience, the streamer reading messages, talking back and forth, sometimes doing what chat wants. This is the streamer-chat dynamic. It's natural, it's part of the story.

But something that has fascinated me particularly since season 4, particularly post zam's break s5, and Particularly in s6 since I've started interacting on tumblr, is just how much chat influences the lore and how much we influence each other.

At each of these moments there was a shift in the PrinceZam streamer-chat dynamic.

Season 4 was a lot of anti-lore chatters. People who blah blah blah'ed it up whenever Zam went into a spiral about what he should do. It heightened the feeling of isolation and confusion, especially as some chatters (shoutout van) tried to gently encourage zam in his decision making, giving counter points to the negativity. Unfortunately it often just lead to more confusion as chat was split 50/50 on almost every decision.

In season 5, after the break, there was a reset of the mod team to the team we have now (knowing most of you are here potentially reading this is weird.) These were the best chatters of s4, the ones who became highly invested in Eclipse, and lifesteal in general, and Zam in particular.

In season 5 the hivemind of the mod team getting excited about lore was hilarious to watch. Half the team reprimanded backseating of the rest of the mod team (shoutout meep), the other half lored it up (shoutout chips), everyone loved it. 'Credit to the artist' was born as direct quotes from chat made it into the character.

Read that again: Direct Quotes From Chat Made It Into The Character.

That is weird.

No longer was it simply the mind of PrinceZam forming the character of Zam, as we watched and reacted, but chat itself became an integral part of the lore (these are his amends. make him repent) forming and shaping it, right alongside Zam, into what that season became.

In particular the conversations as the Joker (specifically the Jumper yap in your president doesn't care about you) brought out comparison after comparison to past seasons of princezam as chatters brought up and compared jumper to zam season 3. This sparked a huge renaissance of past season analysis of Zam which became heavily integrated into the final months of the server, with zam to minute, with minute bringing up his own inspiration of season 3 zam, and with zam musing about how each character approaches what past seasons mean to them (concluding, iirc, that they remember it but it doesn't matter to them. tell that to s6 zam lol).

In season 6 the dynamic has shifted again. Credit to the artist has died down, usually in favor of admitting he's reading a suggestion from chat, but the back and forth conversation, reading out specific messages, from often the same few people (shoutout arch and van and citrus (hi citrus)) has flourished more than ever (also shoutout the new chatters. there's been a turnover again and a lot of new names who are consistently affecting the lore)

Right at the end of season 5 I began interacting on lstumblr and writing and reading posts. It came from the end of season conversation about The Mering essay, Barrier Blocks: a breakdown of lifesteal in 22k words about season 4 and conflict. It wasn't the first time that essay and the story of Eclipse Federation was brought up and analyzed on stream as Zam encountered head on that his darkest time on lifesteal was the defacto fan favorite story of the server.

The analysis of the chatters was being shared with the streamer and therefore, the character. These were the seeds of thinking deeply about his actions in s4 and s5 and how he actually felt about them and not just moving on and forgetting.

And then something else started happening. Maybe it happened often before, and I was just not aware of it; I do remember a few times in s5 the mod team referencing and asking zam questions about his character that they had talked about or mused over between each other on discord. So it was happening to some extent, but particularly since starting to hear your opinions and analysis about the story on tumblr, I'm seeing a new trend in s6.

The fandom stream snipe:

When someone in chat innocently brings up something I damn well know was talked about on here just the day before.

Some analysis about a previous stream. Some wishful musing about interactions we hope to see. A tidbit about a previous stream that was unresolved.

And it changes the lore just as much as Planet is known to change the lore by talking to Zam.

The two instances that got me really thinking about chat being the 38th member were recent:

After 4c betrayed there was of course a lot of discussion and the general consensus was the we would love to see another 4c and zam conversation. Especially after 4c gave kab the disc, and zam did the short confrontation of him with derap. Multiple people, I mean it was on everyone's mind, wanted another interaction.

And when the timing was good, chat struck. Or should I say, van cooked. After Zam wrote signs about kab and wondered what to do about his interactions with her, someone mentioned 4c, and the door was opened to talk about what we were all wondering about. Van delivered, nearly single handedly driving the conversation towards talking to 4c, musing that it felt unresolved. When zam got distracted by demi talking about his base, van brought the discussion back around to 4c and the rest of chat started cooking too, innocently encouraging a second conversation. And Zam /msged 4c to talk.

It would not have happened without chat.

The second was yesterday: talking about Leo potentially being a mole. I had analysis, I know zy had analysis, I think others did as well. But until chat started bringing up fandom analysis, zam and derap were not sus of Leo in the slightest. Zam was only partially suspicious about Mapicc wanting to kill Flame, but he only thought of it in terms of letting Mapicc down.

And it got me thinking; at what point are we stream sniping ourselves? It's not really stream sniping (though the 4c one gets very close) because it's based on our own analysis, and usually just based on zam's streams, or doesn't include knowledge that isn't known.

But that Leo analysis was lifesteal spoiler walled. It was, by default, something that was kept hidden from lifestealers on tumblr (though less for zam and more for anyone else), though, as a theory, is it really a spoiler? But as a theory, is it really meant to be seen by the character? Unless we were a member and wanted to tell our teammate we thought something was up?

It's an interesting conundrum. Our analysis is a hivemind of hyperfixating viewers who Think about lifesteal all the time, rewatch streams, watch everyone and know how everyone is likely to be thinking and acting, breaking it down, reading each other's analysis and cultivating a deep web of theories and hopes and dreams about this lovely server of ours.

And that holds weight. All the minds of the viewers pushing together to have an affect on the server. Honorable mentions are our opinions/analysis on lskab that ran rampant in chat for that like month, and, in the opposite direction, mer's rewatch of s4 ending in a "i wish zam could talk to vitalasy again" post which plausibly reignited the deep dive thinking about that season and then culminated in this past saturday's stream!

Would PrinceZam the character ever have wanted to talk to vitalasy nearly half as much without the love of the fandom (not just mer) for eclipse federation that persists to this very moment nearly 2 years later?

We mighteswell be a member on the server asking zam to talk to someone!

Not to give us a big head.

I'm in no way criticizing these actions. I don't have an opinion either way for when it's too much. It's part of the medium to have a chat. Lifesteal would simply not be lifesteal without the audience interaction and this influence is hardly new to the story. One could say the ls story never got started until the audience cared enough about the story as story to have an opinion on where it should go.

And it's the same with the server members: they have to care about the story enough to log on and be in the story. And then they start affecting it and the story is created.

#d.thoughts #lifesteal spoilers

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calamitoustide · 6 months ago

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Lily, oh Lily I just loathe you lately...

microfic - jegulily/regulily - 1.7k

It started with a kiss.

One Regulus wasn’t even included in. He wasn’t even there, he didn’t see it, and yet he replays it in his head almost constantly. It’s the first thought he has in the morning, he carries it with him through lunch. White knuckles braced against the table as he stares longing towards the other side of the hall, his ears ringing and he can’t hear anything anyone is trying to say to him. His friends all make comments but he doesn’t notice them. His mind is too loud, thinking of soft skin and eyes that bite. He forgets his notes, it doesn’t matter, they’re not even there. He lays awake at night unable to close his eyes without thinking, thinking, thinking.

He should be thinking about James. He should be obsessively counting his every step. It’s how this whole thing started. James is everything, he hung the moon, and every single star in the night sky. He walks around the halls calling out to everyone by name, his smile hung wide across his face. And yes, Regulus thinks of him. He thinks of his sweat covered skin as he skips off to the locker rooms after practice. He thinks of him drunkenly coming up to him, leaning close to his ear to whisper nonsense. Even if he can’t understand it Regulus clings onto every single word. He thinks of how he looks in the morning, a sight Regulus has only seen a handful of times and yet he cherishes it like it’s the world. He thinks of his hair all messed up, and his eyes wide and soft like an infant. He thinks of him stretching out his exhaustion and the little moment his shirt lifts up to reveal what’s underneath. He thinks and he thinks and he thinks, but he’s not looking over at him. He’s looking at her.

The rumors of James Potter and Lily Evans finally working it out spread like wildfire. It’s embers branching out until there wasn’t a single person who didn’t know about it. Their kiss happened in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, apparently no one was there, but there are always sources. Always whispers. Regulus woke up to a burn to his cheek, and a crackling outside of his window. His friends looked over at him, pity drowning in their eyes, but none of them said anything. None of them knew how. It was Pandora who finally brought him over, holding his hands gently as she broke him the news. He can’t remember his reaction. He just remembers the moment his face dropped, but he wasn’t thinking of him, he was thinking about her.

He never minded Lily Evans before, he barely gave her a second glance. He saw her sometimes in the library, she always sat alone, pushed in the back. Even in the darkest parts of the castle the sunlight always tended to reach her. It covered her and highlighted every freckle on her face. Her eyes were always soft with contemplation, but Regulus didn’t care for her much. He always heard about James’ crush on her, of course he did, but he never cared. He didn’t think it would go anywhere. He thought to himself Lily Evans was as blind as a person can be for rejecting James. He could never understand it. How could she get James to even so much as look at her and not truly understand what that meant. How much other people would die for him to look at them like that. Resentment climbed in his liver, it overwhelmed him. Before it was a scoff at any remark. It was an eye roll at the stupidity of Lily for thinking James would just be there when she realized how daft she was truly being.

Though the only stupid person truly was Regulus, for James was there waiting for when Lily finally opened her eyes. He was there to chase after her, like the tail-end of a shooting star. James ran circles around her, watching her like she was everything, like she was his entire world. He held open every single door for her. He’d make himself bleed for an ounce of her attention, and she never never cared. She never cared before now, but Regulus has been here. He’s been here and Lily just walked the epitome of angel dust to smile and beckon James over to her like he’s a dog on a leash she’s holding.

“Regulus,” Pandora’s voice catches him out of his retched mind.

“What?” Regulus snaps, not taking his eyes off her. Her with her perfect skin. Her with her perfect everything.

“You’re going to drill a hole in her head, you know,” She comments.

Regulus finally releases his gaze, “What are you talking about?”

It’s just the two of them. Barty and Evan ran off somewhere, and Dorcas well she’s always with Marlene now anyway. Pandora looks over at him softly, her eyes filled with pity, “You don’t have to pretend you’re looking at James when it’s just me.”

Regulus furrows his eyebrows, shaking his head, “I’m not just looking at her.”

“You’re looking at both of them?” Pandora suggests.

“Yeah,” Regulus answers, lies dripping from his mouth.

Pandora smiles, “James walked away five minutes ago.”

Regulus head whips aside to find her right. It’s only Lily, laughing at something one of her friends are telling her. She throws her head back like she’s a little kid. Coated in innocence in a kind of nostalgia not many people can reach towards. Sunlight nips at her face as her nose crinkles in a laugh. Her beauty endless, it’s like a knife to Regulus’ skin. Every perfection he finds in her is a scar on him.

“Regulus?” Pandora calls out again, as if she’s talking to a child. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“Like what?” Regulus grumbles, looking back down at his plate, trying to fight the pull to look over at her. It’s like he’s under a spell, he’s certain she’s behind it. She wants him to look at her. She wants for all of this. She’s out to get him. He looks up again. She’s still sitting there. Why is she still there? Shouldn’t she be off chasing after James? Shouldn’t she be at his feet beck and call? Shouldn’t she be giving him the world right now? Why is she still just sitting there?

Pandora hums, “Nothing.”

Regulus looks over at her, “What’s your problem?”

“You’re torturing yourself,” Pandora tells him.

Regulus hesitates, he opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. In any other world this would be torture. He’s staring off at the girl who’s got the one thing he’s been begging for his entire life. He’s never wanted something as much as he’s wanted James. Looking over at Lily should be torture. It should kill him. It is. It’s the sweetest kind of torture. It’s a twisted lullaby. It’s a stinging on his cheek.

“Unless,” Pandora starts, “You want to be looking at her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Regulus says quickly.

Pandora reaches out to grab his hand, “I’m gonna hold your hand while I tell you this.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Regulus tries to cut her off but when Pandora gets something in her mind it’s hard to resist it.

“I did it with James,” Pandora explains quickly. “I’ll do the same now. You’re in love with Lily Evans.”

“I am not in love with Lily Evans,” Regulus argues.

Pandora narrows her eyes, “You’re not?”

“No.”

“Why are you staring at her?” Pandora asks.

“She’s with James,” Regulus answers weakly.

“Why aren’t you watching him then?” Pandora questions. “Do you even know where he is? You used to always know, you used to have his schedule perfect.”

Regulus shrugs, “I’ve gotten busy.”

“Right,” Pandora scoffs. “So you wouldn’t mind if I called her over here.”

“Pan—“

Before he can even finish Pandora is raising her hand. Shouting out across the hall, “Hey, Evans!”

Regulus scrambles for something to hold, to bring Pandora’s hand down and stop her from this, but it doesn’t do any good. Lily’s already looking over, her eyes dazzling in the sun. The rest happens like a dream as she leans over to her friends explaining that she’ll be going. She walks over on clouds and then she’s in front of him. His stomach ties itself together. His mouth opens but nothing comes out.

“Hey,” Lily says, leaning across the bench to put her hands on the table. Her perfume reaches Regulus’ nose and it’s overwhelming, it’s making him slip back, like he’s in an ocean, drowning in all the waves.

“Hi,” Pandora replies.

Both of their gazes go towards him, but Regulus is only looking at her.

Lily smiles with his silence, he wants to kill her. She looks away and he wants to kill her even more, “You still working on that potion?”

“You know it,” Pandora tells her. “It’s close to being done now.”

Regulus doesn’t care what they’re saying. He just watches Lily. He can’t look away. She’s the greatest thing that’s ever existed, and she’s got James Potter wrapped around her finger. Its should be him.

She doesn’t stay long. Before she leaves she looks back over at Regulus, “Goodbye, Regulus.”

“Bye,” he forces out, his tongue resting uncomfortably in his mouth.

She laughs, it’s as soft as fresh daisies and she’s doing him in, “You’re cute,” she says, like it’s nothing, like it’s not eating Regulus whole. “I’ll see you two around.”

Then she’s gone again. Walking down the hall, her hair blowing behind her like a fucking magazine ad. There can’t be someone that perfect. She’s just a person. She’s nobody. She’s the one James wants. She won his heart over. She’s the one lying beside him. And all Regulus wants is to lie when she lies. Lily Evans is poison and it’s slowly driving Regulus mad. She’s everywhere, like a call of the wind. He’s nothing worshipping at her feet, it makes him uneasy.

“So,” Pandora breaks the echoing silence. “Not in love.”

Regulus swallows thickly, his eyes still stuck in the last place she was, even if she’s moved on, “Not in love,” he forces out.

The ache is endless, and bullets line his skin. A scar for every beauty, for which Lily Evans has infinite.