#context is wilbur most recent lore stream

[denrukatheblogger]

QSMP Rambling (Tallulah and Chayenne)

(Main context: QSMP is a multilingual minecraft multiplayer server with streamers playing and I specifically follow Philza but watch clips and read happenings from other streamers)

Good god help me I was going to just enjoy philza's qsmp portion of the stream but then apparently lore stuff happened and now the eggs are clashing. (I rambled way too much, so I'm putting it below oops)

Though the lore stuff is not something I dislike, my mind immediately honed in more on how the two eggs I watched QSMP for mostly ended up. Tbh, I started watching QSMP because I saw clips and animatics connecting Chayenne to Techno and then I think I started officially watching Wilbur's streams when Tallulah happened. Not immediately, but it was either the 2nd or 3rd stream with her.

Chayenne was one of the outgoing eggs, picking fights and jumping off of the wall his dads made a home on. Tallulah was the youngest at the time, I think, and was mostly sweet, gentle, loved flowers and music. Chayenne was one of the first eggs and iirc only 4 of the og batch remain. Wilbur left after making sure Philza could care for Tallulah, and Chayenne ended up needing to do the same considering he was the older kid that had more experience.

And then things got worse for the eggs. The code monsters, the kidnapping as people or groups organized shit, and then the eggs left thinking they would be protecting their parents after being threatened.

Chayenne ends up as one of, if not the main, leader of the eggs. Tallulah was known by most as "not a fighter". Needed to protect and needed to be protected respectively. Their dynamic was almost always like this. Chayenne was cared for by his dads of course, but Missa has irl stuff to do and Philza needed to give Tallulah more attention since she needed help. Tallulah has been missing her father for months now- even if the server cared for her, she wasn't their special person. She felt like someone that needed pity and was given it- not like as if they would've cared otherwise...

I'm going all over the place but despite it somewhat feeling sudden how they acted in the recent stream, I feel like I can understand mostly what was going on with them switching in choices. Tallulah used to want love and peace- she's tired of being "useless" and a "burden" for not being able to fight. Chayenne used to be one of the reckless eggs- he's exhausted from being given most of the responsibility whenever they're in danger.

He's tired from all of the action. She's tired from all the inaction.

Chayenne wants to fucking rest for once in his life, meanwhile Tallulah wants to actually help fighting for once in her life.

They got separated before/during Purgatory.

Tallulah had to survive with Dapper and Ramon who seemed to be closer friends with each other and Tallulah maybe envied their bond. But they're still siblings and so she cares deeply about Dapper being kept hostage right now. She frustrated over bonds people get to have because she can't connect with them when she doesn't even have a real pillar to stand on. Missed her dad so much that even with the family he left her with, she doesn't feel like she belongs. She just wants her dad back with her but she's changed. She's scared. She wants to be useful and actually do something so that people don't see her as a weakling anymore.

Chayenne was perceived as one of the stronger eggs. He had to keep calm and focus on keeping everyone safe. He was stuck for however long without even knowing if Tallulah was still alive. He was cared for by Phil and Missa and then Missa needed to leave while Phil had to figure out how to take care of Tallulah with Chayenne. He wouldn't necessarily blame his dads, but a kid wants attention. A kid would love to feel special care from their parents more. But no, Chayenne needed to push aside his wants because others need more care and protection. Maybe not intentionally forced by others into the leader role, but he got into the role and people listened, so people started perceiving him as the one in charge if things happened to the eggs. But it's not like he's immune from all the bullshit they've been going through just because he's not acting out like some others. He's been carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders by staying in the protector role. He loves his siblings and wants them safe, but he's tired and wants to be cared for back instead of simply being looked up to as a leader. He doesn't want pure idolization or criticisms in doing his "job"- he just. He needs a break.

Philza, god bless him, the man's gotta deal with all this bullshit happening on the island while still caring for his eggs. The kids say he's a wonderful dad while Phil says he's been shit at it if he didn't notice them feeling this way or not caring sooner. He does care, but Rose told him he needed to recover his lost courage for a reason. He's understandably terrified of everything that could kill the eggs, that could kill or take him away from being able to be with his kids again, but he needs to regain the confidence he once had in himself to be able to face things stronger too. But that's... It feels bad saying things like that.

Like father like son, I guess. They both just want to rest. But Tallulah's tired of being given rest. That's what most people seem to tell her to do while everyone else goes off to do all the important shit. She can't do the important things because she "can't" fight. She's changed. Chayenne's change. God, Philza's changed from what the Ender King and Rose saw of him before QSMP.

I don't know a solution for this, I don't think a solution could be easily made when there are factors outside of this family's control affecting them. I know they talked it out by the end, but I'm still worried yet intrigued by how things might continue on. The dynamic between the two eggs just tickles my brain in the fun way. I don't think I tend to focus so hard on things that aren't my own OCs- usually I take what happens in a thing and use it as inspiration for my own stuff. But these two are just... I want them to be okay in the end. I want to see Tallulah being allowed to be the strong badass she wants to prove herself to be while still accepting that people care for her in a way that they'd be willing to risk a lot for her too. I want to see Chayenne being allowed to relax, to take the backseat and have fun while not needing to worry about shit messing up their entire lives. I want to see Philza being able to take the kids on adventures and just being able to have a good time with them without the terror of everything threatening their damn lives.

I want for them to be okay and they're trying. Damn it, they're trying as much as they can to be okay for everyone else too.

[siddoesstuffig]

helloooo!!!

For mission 'getting into qsmp', I watched unofficial fan made recaps when I first got into it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpqQUU45gf4 Here's the link to the first one) sadly these stopped a while ago, there are only three completed, but they are very well made & it's already a lot so maybe it's a good starting point!!! An official recap channel has been launched very recently (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfUwNOL-hDC-itUoUEIJ7kQ ), but as of now there is only one recap video, so maybe when you're done watching the fan made ones there will be more, & you can continue catching up on the lore over there!

The wiki is good for context and to get info that still has to be included in either of the recaps (like the French streamers' storylines).

I wouldn't recommend starting with Wilbur's pov since he really hasn't been active for most of the lore, (jaiden's streams are good for lore now but there was a time where she wasn't online as much either) so maybe if you want to stick to English speaking ppl you can try: bbh, quackity, foolish, fitmc (since they are the ones that have been there for a lot of lore & still are active) & phill but he 'doesn't do lore' so more for chill vibes <3

But tbh the nature of qsmp is that we switch povs constantly (and for example the Brazilians are also v lore heavy even though I personally find it difficult to follow the streams since some of their translators are set to spanish- or BagheraJones!!! She even put a better translator on her stream which is really nice) so once you're caught up you will most likely also hop from stream to stream depending on events or just who is online when you can catch streams :)

Pls don't be afraid of trying to watch streams in other languages that's kinda the whole purpose & it's very fun once you get used to it!! 😊

Anyway I hope you'll have a good time <3

tysm!! i do definitely wanna start watching streams from other languages i just would like yo start with people i know and am comfortable with to get used to who everyone is before i can jump into trying to comprehend other languages on top of understanding the dynamics, yknow?

i’ll check all these out wawawa thank you!!! <3

[bonkboodoodle]

um ranboo wtf is this /rp

[khizuo]

God I love Wilbur lore streams so much.

The subtlety? The wonderful acting? The employment of "Show, not tell" through tone, Minecraft movement, and allusion? The references to past lore, showing cc!Wilbur knows his dream smp history even when it's only tangentially related to his character, yet making sure to keep his character believably oblivious?

c!Wilbur isn't exactly an easy character to play. In his current revived state, he's dazed, lonely, filled with self-loathing, still struggling with his past tendencies. He's a character who's healing isn't linear, who is still fucking up while trying to figure things out, yet has a sympathetic core to him.

But cc!Wilbur doesn't explicitly tell us any of this. Rather, he shows it first, through Wilbur's actions (wanting to make a burger van), his strained conversations with Phil and Ranboo, his inability to fully let go of the TNT in his inventory. And then when he hits us with the "I feel like I'm in social limbo" and the "I can't believe Jack Manifold actually forgave me after just an apology" (I don't have the time to go back and find the exact quotes rn so I hope I paraphrased it well enough, let me know if I haven't), it fucking hits us, because it gives us the ability to contextualize actions, words, and beliefs of his that may have had first seemed erratic.

What's more amazing is that he's able to do this across multiple streams. Revivedbur's odd 'admiration' for c!Dream has been something that has been carried across multiple lore streams, in a real-life timespan that's spanned over a month. It's only until this stream that Wilbur has provided some fuller context for Revivedbur's feelings on Dream: he thinks that he's done equally bad things as Dream has, and he deserves to be punished the same way, especially considering Dream has, in a sense, saved him from 13 years of solitary confinement.

I remember a month or two ago my dash was worried that Revivedbur's statements on c!Dream would mean that he was a c!Dream apologist, but with the most recent stream, Wilbur has provided context for Revivedbur's feelings on c!Dream that retroactively makes his previous statements, which had seemed to come out of nowhere at the time, make a lot more sense.

And this is why I love Wilbur's rping, why I think c!Wilbur is so impeccably written, and I've been saying this since November 16th. Wilbur's acting blends bombastic emotion with subtlety. He's able to carry a plotline across multiple streams, to seed tidbits of information in earlier streams that lay the groundwork or context for things he says or does in later streams. He trusts the audience to pick up the context and piece it together. He doesn't require long monologues or heavy exposition to convey his character's philosophy, feelings, and thoughts. While his reddit bits are fun to read, you could also examine c!Wilbur completely outside of them and come to similar conclusions.

Wilbur shows us first and then tells us, and it's done with a level of intentionality that it's hard to pick up on at first glance. But that doesn't make his character difficult to understand — he still provides a clear character trajectory for viewers to follow along as long as they're discerning enough. His character is nuanced, but it's also simple. It's compelling, deliberately written, and very well-acted. He's the full-package RPer for me, and "Healthy Competition" was one demonstration of that.

[justalittlelemony]

card symbolism and dream smp members

ok so with both c!wilbur and c!quackity having a card motif for their respective games (solitaire and poker), my little gremlin brain immediately tried to attach people to specific cards and their symbolism. i have filled the roles of kings, queens, jacks, aces, and jokers for all four suits and can defend every single one of my choices (although some are less defensible than others). also i am not familiar with every single card game under the sun, so my idea of which cards are more “powerful” than the others is based solely on the game of War, which i feel is pretty fitting for the dream smp (also i don’t know shit about poker).

Kings:

Eret, the King of Hearts

Philza, the King of Spades

Bad, the King of Diamonds

Ranboo, the King of Cloves

Kings appear to be the most powerful cards, but are not actually, being able to be taken by aces. In this way, kings can represent the illusion of power, but with a single weakness. Eret is the King of the Greater Dream SMP, but, as it was pointed out on November 16th, that power can easily be stripped away. Philza is the Angel of Death and along with Technoblade and Dream, completely demolished L’manberg on Doomsday. But Philza only has one canon life. Bad is the leader of the Eggpire, but he isn’t really the one in control, the Egg is. Ranboo seemingly has strong morals with his defining belief of “choosing people not sides,” however he is not fully in control of his actions and could be unknowingly assisting Dream.

Queens:

Niki, the Queen of Hearts

Puffy, the Queen of Spades

Hannah, the Queen of Diamonds

Tubbo, the Queen of Cloves

Look, I don’t really have that much of explanations for these other than 3/4s of them are female and therefore are queens. Tubbo is the only one that I have a real explanation for. Tubbo has been called a pawn by Dream, and yes I’m mixing my chess and card metaphors, but in chess, a pawn can be promoted if it makes its way to the other side of the board, usually becoming a queen, the most powerful piece in the game. Between his nukes and his relationships with Tommy and Ranboo, Tubbo has the potential or is already a power player on the server. While I don’t have great reasons for the choice of queen for the other three (other than being women), I can explain the choice in suits. Niki’s journey has been one filled with heartbreak: the loss of og L’manberg, Wilbur’s fall and eventual death, and the destruction of L’manberg, twice. Puffy, as of late, has been fighting for causes that she has seen as right and good: being one of the leaders of the pro-omelette resistance and being one of the few adults to try and help Tommy. I’ve kind of associated the diamond suit with the Blood Vines for the King and Jack, so Hannah is a good choice for the queen.

tldr: these explanations are weaker than most but these characters are important and i wanted to put them on here and this post has been sitting in my drafts for like a week

Jacks:

Fundy, the Jack of Hearts

Jack Manifold, the Jack of Spades

Antfrost, the Jack of Diamonds

Tommy, the Jack of Cloves

Jacks were the servants of the king in medieval times. The characters I have chosen as Jacks are people whose worth or purpose is often determined by how they are helping or affecting the people around them. I’m not super caught up on Fundy’s lore, but I know part of it in Season 1 was how Wilbur did not see him as his own person, but rather seeing him as more of a symbol or something to protect. Jack Manifold constantly feels used and belittled by Tommy, which is currently the driving force behind his arc. Antfrost’s main purpose in the story right now is to be the second-in-command to the Eggpire, to the point that we don’t even know why he joined. Within the context of the SMP, people only seem to have a positive opinion of Tommy when he is doing something for them. Any other time, he is seen as the cause of all problems on the server. 

Aces:

Sam, the Ace of Hearts

Wilbur, the Ace of Spades

Quackity, the Ace of Diamonds

Karl, the Ace of Cloves

Aces, despite having the number value of one, can take Kings, making them arguably the most powerful cards. Thus aces can symbolically mean characters who are overlooked or underestimated. Sam, until very recently, had not been considered a powerful person on the server. However, despite new breaks in his will, he holds a lot of power as the warden of the prison. Wilbur refused to wear armor and was not great at pvp, but he was able to found L’manberg and eventually destroyed it. Quackity is usually only seen as comic relief, but as proved with yesterday’s stream, he now has Dream scared of him. Karl had not had any major impact on the lore until fairly recently with his time traveling, but now that has the potential to be extremely important to the overall story.

Jokers:

Technoblade, the Red Joker

Dream, the Black Joker

Jokers don’t have suits and are used wild cards. Technoblade and Dream are the two pvp gods on the server and are not held back by a single narrative role. They can be an ally, victim, or villain and the opinions of other people on them vary greatly.

[thespoonisvictory]

Okay, I need your input on the Wilbur-Quackity /r thing. Because I'm no shipper, but this just reads as ... barely subtextual. Like just a little bit more and it's just blatant text in my opinion.

Like, that most recent stream when you look at Wilbur's facecam. Boy, oh boy ...

This touches generally on romantic relationships within the story of the Dream SMP, where I feel like fans are oftentimes more "restrained" than the creators themselves (which is funny, because usually in fandoms it's the other way around). I feel like sometimes the fandom leaves some interesting analysis on the table there.

finally getting around to answering this yee haw

my thoughts are as follows, and it's a pretty subjective matter so feel free to disagree:

at this point, c!tntduo is too explicit in the text to ignore it. you can't ignore that wilbur's feeling some sort of way about quackity without shifting the text or ignoring parts of it to make that make sense. even if you're against shipping, I don't think it's reasonable to except c!tntduo and the possibility of romance between them to be excluded from wilbur analysis, as it's clearly part of his character.

it's also obvious that cc!wilbur and cc!quackity are doing this intentionally to lead the audience in that direction, or at least not actively trying to stop it by any means. while that's not a "yes go ahead ship us", I don't think it's fair to hold it against viewers for picking up on the subtext/literal text that's obviously being put down.

also- this is firmly in the realm of characters, more so than, say, even c!beeduo. cc!wilbur and cc!quackity don't act at all like this outside of lore, this is purely a character thing, and c!wilbur's theoretical reasoning for being drawn to c!quackity is one that only makes sense in the context of his dsmp character. it's not irl fic, essentially.

c!quackity makes c!wilbur feel human, as stated verbatim, and that in itself is not only great basis for analysis, but also something exclusive to the characters and not in any way the ccs. shipping feels fine to me, not in the sense that you're writing nsfw fic about them, but if you're drawing fanart of wilbur blushing and generally rooting for them to get together, I don't really see how that's a problem when that's what's explicitly being supported by the narrative at that moment.

basically: analysis should be 100% fine because it's so present in canon at this point that ignoring it would give an inaccurate reflection of c!wilbur, and shipping is ok because again, this is about explicitly fictional characters and their staged interactions, but like, don't be weird about it.

[chitto]

I ANALYZED ALL OF THE NEW SONGS ON RANBOO'S LORE PLAYLIST - HERE'S WHAT I FOUND

Back in March, I listened to every single song on Ranboo's DMCA Lore Playlist. I came up with a solid theory, published my evidence and that was that. My work was done.

But nope! Ranboo's back and he's deleted a ton of songs and added more. And so I listened. Again. And I'm back with a theory, and it does not look good.

This new batch of songs shows us that this is a new era of c!Ranboo. Redesign Your Logo is meant to tell us that things are changing, and so is c!Ranboo. This could be do to the fact that something bad is most likely going to happen to c!Ranboo in the near future, probably the taking of his first canon life. Songs like Eyewishes and Goodbye heavily point to the ending of a chapter (or life) of c!Ranboo. The song Blue Monday isn’t anything revolutionary, as we were already well aware of the toxic relationship between c!Ranboo and c!Dream. Another thing to point out is that Everybody Wants To Rule The World sets up an interesting take on nuclear weapons, a thing that c!Tubbo has and c!Ranboo doesn’t know exists. If c!Ranboo were to find out about the nukes, it could lead to the two fighting over whether or not they were a good thing. Going into Time Moves Slow, the narrator there discusses a relationship that just ended between them and their lover, meaning there could be a c!Beeduo divorce arc in the near future.

Below are the analyses on each individual song and the added and deleted songs

Deleted: Prologue (StarKid), Introduction to the Snow (Miracle Musical), Dream Sweet in Sea Major (Miracle Musical), Turn the Lights Off (Tally Hall), The Mind Electric (Miracle Musical), The Ruler of Everything (Tally Hall), Ain't No Rest for The Wicked (Cage the Elephant), The Bidding (Tally Hall), Stranded Lullaby (Miracle Musical), Hidden in the San (Tally Hall), & (Tally Hall), I'm Gonna Win (Rob Cantor).

Added: Redesign Your Logo (Lemon Demon), Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears), Blue Monday (New Order), Eyewishes (Lemon Demon), Bystanding (Lemon Demon), Goodbye (Bo Burnham), Time Moves Slow (BADBADNOTGOOD and Samuel T. Herring).

Redesign Your Logo (Lemon Demon) - This song is about a pdf that went around during 2009 about the Pepsi company logo. In it, the Arnell group is trying to sell Pepsi a new logo, so that they can make tons of money. I feel that this song symbolizes evolution and growth, we’re entering a new era of c!Ranboo. He’s redesigned and rebranded. This song could also be on this playlist because of a fan animation on youtube set to the same song by Shyshui.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Tears for Fears) - This song was written about the Cold War between The Soviet Union and The United States that happened during the 20th Century. The main line of the song ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ is about how everyone wants power, and the misery that it brings with it. This is a theme we can see clearly on the DreamSMP, with many leaders such as c!Eret, c!George, c!Bad, c!Wilbur, and c!Dream all leading lives of misery in one way or another. This is also important for c!Ranboo, as he is the most powerful man on the server. It tells us that his power will soon be his misery. Also a small little thing I’d like to point out is the line ‘Say that you’ll never, never, never, never need it’ which is meant to be about the use of nuclear devices during that time period. Many governments had them but claimed they would only use them if another country was launching a nuclear attack. This could translate to c!Tubbo owning nukes and c!Ranboo possibly finding out, which could cause discourse between the two.

Blue Monday (New Order) - Blue Monday is about the singer pondering the mistreatment of their person by someone they trusted. The person seems to be manipulative and toxic for the singer but the singer is too far under their control to leave them. Immediately we can tell that this song is most likely about the relationship between c!Ranboo and c!Dream. c!Dream uses c!Ranboo as his errand boy, making him do all sorts of tasks, although this hasn’t really happened since the Disc War Confrontation. However, we know the c!Dream still has some sort of hold over c!Ranboo because we saw c!Sapnap trigger an Enderwalk episode by giving c!Ranboo a message from c!Dream.

Eyewishes (Lemon Demon) - Eyewishes is a song about a distraught man who has no eyelashes, as he used them all on wishes, and now he can make no more wishes. The man pours out his frustrations and then resolves to committing suicide. While I don’t believe c!Ranboo would take his own life, I believe that he soon will die. The last line of this song is ‘So take care of my plants and pets and now I’ll say good-’. c!Ranboo has many pets in his care and he would want them taken care of after he dies. I could see him saying this line to a character like c!Tubbo. However, c!Ranboo is still on three canon lives and would not perma died if killed.

Bystanding (Lemon Demon) - Bystanding is the direct sequel to Eyewishes, starting off with bi, completing the phrase ‘goodbye’ started at the end of Eyewishes. Other than this, the song has no real points of interest as it’s just the singer repeating different words, working his way up from 2 to 5.

Goodbye (Bo Burnham) - I’m going to split this song up into two sections, just because I think there’s a lot to cover here. Let’s start pre-bridge. For context, Goodbye is the final track from the comedy-musical special Inside, done by Bo Burnham. Bo says the special was a long project for him as he filmed the entire thing in his house during COVID-19 Quarantine. The beginning part of this song talks a lot about how Bo doesn’t want the special to be over because now he has nothing else to do, and he’ll just have to live his life. This could translate into c!Ranboo losing a lot of things that he worked for, such as his valuables (totems and riches) and just being a normal person again. It could also signify an ending of a chapter for him, maybe his marriage ending, his partnership with the Syndicate ending. However, I believe that its most likely to be c!Ranboo’s neutrality ending. During the recent lore stream he did with c!Wilbur, we finally saw c!Ranboo pick a side. He chose Wilburger over Las Nevadas, losing his trademark neutral stance. c!Ranboo thought his neutrality made him more than others, that he was the one able to see over the conflict, but now he’s just like everyone else. He has a side and an enemy. Let’s move into the bridge and ending of the song now. The first line I’d like to call specifically is ‘Wanna guess the ending, if it ever does.’ This line could maybe signify the fact that throughout the history of the SMP there have been many times that the conflict and story feel like they’ve finally come to a close, only for everything to start up once again. The next lyric is ‘If I wake up in a house that’s full of smoke, I’ll panic, so call me up and tell me a joke.’ This is a callback to another song on Inside, Comedy, in which Bo talks about using his comedy as a way to help people, but really it was he who needed help. c!Ranboo acts as a protector for a lot of characters, most notable c!Tubbo and tried hard to please most people and aid as many as he can, but most of the time he’s the one needed the most help. Similar to Bo, c!Ranboo doesn’t realize he needs help until it’s too late.

Time Moves Slow (BADBADNOTGOOD and Samuel T. Herring) - This song is about a person who’s lover has left them, and although it’s painful they know its for the better. This could, unfortunately, suggest a c!beeduo split but there is another part of this song that I’d like to touch on. ‘Running away is easy, its the living that’s hard.’ This is the chorus for the song and it talks about how running from your problems is easier than facing them but having to live without them is hard. Throughout the story, we often see c!Ranboo ignore his problems, most recently with the vandalism of c!Tubbo’s cookie shop. c!Ranboo found it and decided to fix it and tell no one it happened, which lead to a hostile confrontation between c!Quackity and c!Tubbo.

[grace13star]

There’s been a recent uptick in posts claiming that “c!Wilbur is a worse villain than c!Dream” or that he’s “more manipulative” and it’s made me think a lot about just....how villainized Wilbur is? Because while he has done bad things, I’ve seen people just making things up or projecting onto him and making him just. so much worse than he is in canon. 

Again, this is all about the characters in the Dream SMP roleplay and are not the actual people. 

Let’s go over the bad things Wilbur is accused of doing. These are arguments I have actually seen people use and defend with their whole chest. 

1. Created a nation. 2. Sell drugs. 3. Talk about rigging an election. 4. Was a dick. 5. Blew up a nation. 6. Died. 7. Manipulation. 8. Neglectful dad. 9. Child soldiers. 10. Dictator. 11. “Threw a fit” over losing. 

Let’s talk about these and break them down a little. Another disclaimer, this isn’t trying to excuse any hurt that Wilbur has caused, because his actions did cause harm, but this is trying to explain and add context to things that are often taken out of context or just wholly misinterpreted.

1. A common argument for why this makes Wilbur evil is that he “stole Dream’s land.” But like...no. L’Manberg was created on untouched land where no one was living, and had a combined area smaller than Purpled’s garden. Dream, until he declared war, didn’t even care about them making their nation. 

I’m also including in here the claim that he “turned Dream into a villain.” ....What are you talking about. Before Wilbur was even on the server, Dream was part of the disc war, where he stole Tommy’s discs, and then kept perusing them even after the initial conflict ended, including griefing Tommy’s lawn. Before war was declared, Dream and his friends kidnapped and killed Tubbo and Tommy. Dream then also declared war on a peaceful nation (Wilbur said “if they try to declare war we will just say ‘no’”). None of that was in any way forced by Wilbur. Dream made his decisions on his own. Just because someone comes in and says “hey you suck,” doesn’t mean you have to actually suck. Dream made his own decisions, and his decision was to become a villain. 

2. Potions (drugs) are an infinite resource in Minecraft and everyone uses them. This is a stupid argument. 

3. Some people act like he actually did rig the election but...he didn’t. He definitely could have! Quackity wasn’t a citizen of L’Manberg, Wilbur could have banned him from the election easily, especially since his running mate was a previous enemy of L’Manberg. But he let him run, and then he let Fundy and Schlatt run as well. The worst he did here was talk about doing something bad. Also the reason he was trying to consolidate power wasn’t just for the sake of having power. There was, at the time, a civil war going on, and Wilbur tried to stop it but no one listened to him. He wanted the power to be able to protect his citizens and stop a war. 

4. Being a dick is not evil.

5. This is by far the worst thing Wilbur did, and though it hurt a lot of people emotionally, it really wasn’t as bad as everyone says it was. Though the explosion caused property damage, it only destroyed the podium and some of the walkway. People’s actual houses- Manifoldland, Niki’s bakery- were totallu untouched. No one even died in the explosion- the worst thing that happened was Quackity being blown back, but he landed in water. (This isn’t to say that characters shouldn’t be hurt by this! Wilbur betrayed them and definitely hurt them, but people acting like the 16th was worse than Doomsday and also blaming Wilbur for Doomsday even though he was dead is weird.)

There’s also the claim that Wilbur blew it up for the sole purpose of hurting people, which is easily disproved by just...watching a Wilbur stream. Like seriously, stop trying to do analysis on Wilbur if you haven’t even watched his streams. Wilbur had multiple chances to blow everything up, but when he had the choice between blowing it up and hurting people or not hurting people and not blowing it up, he chose the latter every time. At the festival, while Tubbo was trapped on the stage, he stopped going for the button. When Tommy and Quackity were in the button room which would have exploded if he pressed it, he refused. Also I’m gonna use the Reddit post that’s confirmed canon again- Wilbur blew up L’Manberg because he saw how much power it had, and he saw how it hurt people. He tried to destroy it to save everyone from the pain and conflict caused by the nation. He didn’t think they would rebuild. 

6. This one is the one that actually makes me angry. Because guys....Wilbur’s death was a suicide. If Phil wasn’t there, Wilbur would have done it himself- he had been planning to do it himself for months, as there was originally TNT in the button room that would have killed him with the explosion. The reason it makes me angry is because suicide is an extremely serious topic. Characters and the fandom framing it as “Wilbur left or abandoned them” is an ableist take that enforces the stereotype that suicide is a “weak” option or that it’s “running away.” 

There’s also people that will villainizing him for “forcing Phil to kill him” but while I empathize with Phil and realize it was a stressful situation, Phil very much made his own decisions here too. Wilbur didn’t force Phil to kill him, he asked him a few times and then Phil did it. 

7. Again, this is not an attempt to excuse, but an attempt to explain. So first of all, people try to claim that Wilbur was manipulative from the beginning. This is false. Persuasion and making sure someone is “loyal to a cause” is not manipulation. And then Pogtopia- he’s never manipulative in Pogtopia, again, he is only persuasive. I have a longer post that goes into more detail, so definitely check that out. After he is revived, he is definitely guilt tripping Tommy in his most recent stream, but (again, not an excuse) it’s clearly from his desperation to not be alone anymore after 13 years of near constant isolation. 

I’ve also seen claims that Wilbur manipulated Techno and that Techno didn’t know they were planning on starting another government, but this is easily disproven by the fact that Wilbur said multiple times that they’re “taking back L’Manberg” and that he wants to be it’s “rightful ruler” again while Techno was in vc. What about that implies they’re not going back to the government. 

Also since this is relevant- he never manipulated Niki. He was always kind and caring with Niki, even through his mental breakdown. He wasn’t able to bring her into Pogtopia at first, but he talked to her and made sure she’d be okay there (and she said yes!), he offered his life for hers at the festival before hitting people around them and yelling at her to run, she was the first person he gave Blue to, he gave her an inspirational speech and showed her the fox that had been left for her, she was one of the few things Ghostbur remembered. He betrayed and hurt her, but it was not manipulation.

Gonna combine this with this point also but Wilbur was not in any way abusive. A lot of people in this fandom for some reason equate “unhealthy relationship” with “abuse”, especially after the exile arc. Wilbur and Tommy’s relationship, while unhealthy, was not abusive. Please learn the difference. 

Also, if you’ve ever said that “Wilbur gaslit anyone” or that Wilbur is “insane” I want you to define those terms for me right now. No looking anything up. Tell me what they mean. Do it.  

8. What about any of Wilbur and Fundy’s dynamic implies any kind of neglect. No, seriously, where did this take come from. Wilbur was canonically overbearing and he babied Fundy. While it definitely wasn’t the best relationship, it definitely wasn’t neglectful. The only times in canon we’ve seen Wilbur be separated from Fundy was when he was exiled and Fundy cheered while he was shot and killed, when Fundy disowned him in front of their enemy, and when he committed suicide. Even before his death, when they were still on rocky terms, Wilbur stepped forward to defend Fundy from Schlatt in the van. 

9. This take is irrelevant. Child soldiers don’t matter. For one, this is Minecraft. Every single person has equal opportunities. Anyone can become powerful no matter what age they are as long as they grind enough. For another thing, at the beginning part of the roleplay no one was trying to make a long serious story about war and trauma, it was just some friends fucking around and fighting each other. Wilbur also revealed that while writing the Revolution arc that he headcanoned Tommy and Tubbo to be about 20- we know these ages aren’t correct because they’ve been reffered to by their irl ages in lore- but it shows that the “these are children” plot point was added way later- no one mentions it at all in season 1. It doesn’t matter. 

10. This is directed at one person. You know who you are. 

A dictator is defined as “one holding complete autocratic control : a person with unlimited governmental power.” Wilbur didn’t have control. That’s the whole reason for the election. It literally takes one google search to prove you wrong. 

11. There’s a difference between “losing” and “being unfairly exiled by your political opponent who is now declaring himself emperor.” Wilbur was totally fine with losing. He said during the election that he was fine with Quackity winning, and when they actually did lose, though he wasn’t happy about it, he encouraged Tommy to calm down and told him “We’re citizens tonight.” He only “threw a fit” after he was thrown out of the nation he built by someone who immediately declared himself emperor. 

So in conclusion, Wilbur Soot is an antagonist, but he is villified way beyond canon and I’m getting tired of some of these takes that I see over and over again that are easily disproved by just using critical thinking skills. 

This is most of the takes I’ve seen- some I haven’t even dignified with a response because of how clear it is that someone is just lying to try and excuse someone else’s actions- but if anyone has anymore they’ve seen that they want me to talk about, my ask box is open. 

[caketexturepack]

C!Dream, a redemption arc, and why it wouldn't work

Recently there have been many posts in the fandom expressing a common anxiety about c!Dream getting a redemption arc. And I have that anxiety too because I genuinely think that they won’t be able to pull it off.

Here is why a c!Dream redemption arc wouldn’t work.

Let’s start by looking at one of the most famous, and most successful redemption arcs of all time, Zuko’s. His redemption arc has become the blueprint for countless others, and that is because of three reasons.

He is never the main antagonist

His growth was not linear

Those he had hurt were not obliged to forgive him and had power in the situation

1. While DSMP has had a wide range of villains, ranging from alcoholic dictators to brother figures turned terrorists, c!Dream has remained a constant villain throughout the story of DSMP. From the early L’manberg days to even now while he’s trapped in Pandora’s box, throughout the narrative c!Dream has continued to hold onto the title of “the big bad”

Comparing this to Zuko, who while he was initially the first antagonist introduced to the gaang, that title was soon shared by Zhao. Besides being an antagonist force against the gaang, he was also an antagonist force against Zuko, instantly setting up the ground blocks towards Zuko's redemption arc and putting Zuko closer towards the same level as the Gaang, a child stuck in the middle of a war, trying to do what he thinks is right.

Now while Dream certainly thinks he is right, he’s never had another villain before Quackity at least, be an antagonist force towards him. Largely he HAS teamed up with the majority of the antagonist forces on the DSMP, taking on the role of the man in the shadows for Wilbur, Schlatt, and arguably Technoblade and Philza on doomsday. c!Dream has always been on the top of the narrative food chain, and when combined with his pvp skills, supplies, and power as server admin he holds an incredible amount of power over almost every server member.

2. C!Dream has been an incredibly linear straightforward character, he started as a moderately controlling power-hungry character and soon evolved into someone completely obsessed with control over every server member and an extreme god complex.

Throughout ATLA Zuko’s character growth has extreme ups and downs, he is often doubting the choices he’s made, whether they be good or bad, till midway of season 3. When given the chance to achieve his original dream of “redeeming” his honor and returning to the fire nation- Zuko takes it, betraying his uncle. But upon achieving his dream he soon realizes that he was in the wrong and that his true destiny is training the avatar and fighting against the fire nation. Zuko got everything he wanted, and he was still unhappy, and it was only because of his self-doubt and introspection was he able to see this mistake and jump back onto the path of redemption.

While we haven’t been able to see c!Dreams perspective (though one day we may if cc!Dream ever finishes editing) at no point have we seen c!Dream has doubts in his actions or his worldview. Any time he is confronted with opposing ideas or examples to prove otherwise, his convictions only become stronger and he in turn only becomes more twisted. For him to suddenly have the sparks of self-doubt in his actions after torture in prison? It would be poor writing and unrealistic, torture doesn’t make people better, it makes them worse.

3. While redemption can be earned without forgiveness, in the context of c!Dreams actions against the members of the server and specifically c!Tommy, c!Dreams redemption would be impossible to truly achieve without forgiveness, which is, in turn, an impossible thing to attain.

When Zuko tries to join the gaang in season 3, he understands and accepts the fact that the Gaang justifiably hate him and have no reason to trust him. He apologies, and never becomes defensive when they express their anger and distrust towards him. Zuko accepts this with patience and only after this acceptance does the gaang slowly begin to let him in, with Zuko continuously putting in the work to build trust all the while. Another key point when Zuko was trying to join the gaang was the fact that they had all the power in the situation, he was entirely on his own with no one backing him and he even offered himself up as a prisoner.

c!Dream on the other hand holds tremendous amounts of power. Pre the prison arc he was one of the richest server members, an incredible pvper, the admin of the server, and very manipulative. Since the prison, he has lost some of his power (which could easily be achieved again if he escaped) but with his manipulative abilities, he still holds power over the server members in general, specifically the bench trio who are all positively terrified of him.

The strongest example of his power is the revival book which he has memorized and has shown no hesitation in using when beneficial to him. c!Dream knows entirely that revival is a painful traumatic process, but has continuously ignored that fact and even declared that he wants to study it and achieve immortality. c!Dream will always have this extreme level of power over everyone on the server.

Nearly every member of the server has at least a moderate fear of c!Dream, with of course the clingy duo having the most extreme fear. c!Tubbo was nearly murdered by c!Dream and was heavily manipulated, and of course c!Tommy was murdered, abused, kidnapped, and manipulated by c!Dream as well as being the subject of his twisted obsession. If c!Dream was to be released, they would be constantly looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives and be unable to heal from their trauma. At no point has c!Dream shows remorse for his actions, only its consequences, he constantly believes that he is in the right.

The message it would send

One of the most common praises the DSMP receives, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream, is how well they portrayed and handled abuse in the exile arc. Showing how abuse starts with isolation and then the cycle of abuse, showing c!Tommy has realistic reactions to abuse, him being suicidal and ultimately realizing he was abused and beginning his healing arc instead of committing suicide.

c!Dream from the beginning has been the main villain, and throughout the story he has never shown any regret or self-doubt towards his beliefs and actions, intent on spiraling down over his obsessive need for power and control.

If c!Dream was to be redeemed, forgiven, and given a healing arc, especially at the cost of c!Tommy’s healing arc. It would send a horrible narrative towards abuse victims. That they have to forgive their abusers, that they have to accept them back in their lives and if they don’t then they’re the ones in the wrong because their abusers are trying to change, trying to heal. To quote @stellocchia “a healing arc with no redemption is a cheap cop-out from having to deal with the heavy topics they introduced.”

But here’s the good news

cc!Wilbur has spoken on stream before about c!Dream and c!Tommy and how c!Dream was abusive towards c!Tommy. He is also writing the current arc and I believe is involved in the writing of Tommy’s lore. cc!Wilbur has handled dark topics masterfully before, and I have a lot of trust in him towards his writing of this arc.

As someone who was in the fandom during the exile arc, I remember the common fear that c!Tommy wouldn’t make it out alive and would either be murdered by c!Dream or take his own life. That was a real fear for a while that the arc would end in such a horrible mishandled way, but they defied expectations and instead created a one of hope.

DSMP has surprised and subvert our expectations many times, let’s hope that this fear is one they will subvert as well.  

[cupcraft]

Heyyy i wanted to talk something about the lore that I saw no one mention. In the stream where Wilbur and Ranboo start working together, I’m pretty sure Wilbur tells Ranboo that he lied to Tommy about not caring about L’Manburg. Now, in the most recent lore Wilbur says that he never (knowingly) lied to Tommy. This can mean two things for me:

1) either Wilbur lied to Ranboo about lying to Tommy

2) or Wilbur did lie to Tommy, and it’s lying to him again for whatever reason

What does this mean? I have no idea but I wanted to tell someone lol

It is definitely canon that he told c!Ranboo that he lied to c!Tommy. Though, in the context of Hitting on 16, I think in general c!Wilbur has mostly not lied to him but there are times he canonically has. And saying he did not care about L'Manberg was one of them. This probably is not regarded as a lie to c!Wilbur because it was done out of protecting c!Tommy from himself in a sense, because he fears c!Tommy being a follower to him again and getting hurt. In reality it's done out of care, even though objectively it was a lie. It's almost as if he doesn't think he's worth sticking around. I'd say a lot of his lies were done out of protecting c!Tommy, despite that not being the best choice and that c!Tommy prefers honesty.

However I do agree that c!Wilbur doesn't lie really, because the things he says are true...to him. They aren't true to the audience. Like when c!Wilbur said "we were no good for that server". He probably really means that, because he probably genuinely thinks suffering in a hell basically for 13 years means he was bad for that place. Him saying he was a villain in Pogtopia probably was not a lie considering he really did view himself that way. And maybe him saying he didn't care about L'Manberg was a half life in the sense he felt "maybe I really didn't" as a way of processing his actions.

Thanks for your thoughts anon hope mine help or send you with good thinking material!

[ruby-whistler]

"ruby is going to manifest a c!dream redemption arc with her essay" i'll do you one better, i'm going to manifest a c!dream sympathetic arc via the power of logic behind the laws of decent storytelling

alright so here's why the "the narrative makes him unsympathetic on purpose" and "we don't have his pov" arguments are gonna crumble beautifully from the base up as the story progresses

1. Technoblade - Due to the laws of Chekhov's gun, he's going to visit Dream in prison after he gets the message. A Dream prison breakout will very likely ensue. We get Dream content - not only that, we get sympathetic Dream content, because that man's gonna be a wreck. Since we'll see him more after that, expect information*. Note that his interactions with c!Techno in this case will logically be positive.

2. Wilbur Soot - We'll be watching from the POV of someone who is sympathetic to c!Dream. Whether they end up interacting or not, or whether this affects them negatively or positively as characters, it's going to make him sympathetic and we might even get more positive interaction (c!Dream called c!Wil "awesome" last time he talked about him, and I wouldn't expect c!Wil of all people to shut that down). Since c!Wilbur is who he is, it's highly possible we'll get information*.

3. Ranboo - The more memories he uncovers regarding Dream, the more information* we're going to get - even more so, since these memories would be from Season 2, we'll get his perspective from when he's most unsympathetic in the whole story. Ranboo mentioned recently how there might be a completely different story he might be missing, which very likely refers to the relationship between his Enderwalk state and c!Dream. Relationship has been insinuated to be positive, meaning the revelations are likely to by themselves paint c!Dream in a positive light.

4. Lore Stream - Guaranteed information*. Everyone's perspective of themselves is going to be sympathetic to themselves.

5. MichaelMcChill. Enough said.

*Now, as you might notice, I left the little asterisk things besides all the mentions of information. What's the deal with that?

Well, I believe very strongly that the narrative is pushing the prison arc as the beginning of a c!Dream sympathetic arc. It might be a very harsh start, and it doesn't contextualize his past actions, but it's setup - priming the audience, you could say.

Now, since c!Dream has been very deliberately shown as a victim, the information we gain about him has no business being negative. If we take Season 2 as his "unsympathetic arc" and a parallel to this one... we've got enough c!Dream negativity, plus gaining more information about him being just a Terrible Person right after making him out to be the victim would both confuse the audience and probably tear the groups apart further, which... the writers would know this much, they aren't idiots, which is why logically this isn't happening.

That's right. There's two kinds of information then that we could get: positive, and context.

A lot of people say that even with a c!Dream perspective, they would think the same of him because of his actions. These people are clueless about how storytelling impacts the human psychology and don't know anything about perspective bias.

Context itself is going to make c!Dream seem a lot more reasonable, and portray him in a positive light - not his actions, but most likely his motives, his reasons, and the general behind the scenes we usually wouldn't get to see because the character is so secretive.

And the positive narrative that would apply to his current situation is just going to - you know already. We're all redemption arc truthing here fdkfhk my boy is gonna get OUT he's gonna get BETTER he's gonna be LOVED and HAPPY and NOT IN PAIN and then we're all gonna celebrate and the world will be beautiful.

Yes, this was literally just an excuse for me to pull wishful thinking and then start gushing y'all but if you haven't noticed yet c!Dream is my comfort character and he's going to get a sympathetic arc if it's the last thing I ever manifest.

[insert-cleverurl]

solaine copies her dsmp meta twitter part one

preface: i wrote this on february 13th and am now archiving it over here on tumblr before i get around posting it to the actual archive (of our own). i'd like to clean it up before i go there, becuase i wrote this at like one am lying in bed and typing on my laptop that was sitting on my stomach. it's a lot of rambling. i go on a lot of tangents. it is not the cleanest nor likely most accurate meta you will ever read.

how characters (children) on the smp learn from history rather than repeat it: a thread

aka: stop liking the other one you fucks i opened the wikia so i actually know what happened now /lh

context here is that i had earlier made a much less coherent thread (not that this one is very coherent) with the caveat that i was going entirely off memory

this thread is mainly going over how tommy + tubbo both emulate and turned away from wilbur + schlatt respectively, and how i think that's going to reflect in ranboo's arc

"as long as i can't be the next jschlatt, you can't be the next wilbur." okay we all know this. it's obvious from this point on that both tubbo and tommy saw or had fears of how they were each developing into scarily familiar people - schlatt, a dictator, and wilbur, a madman.

starting with tommy, the parallels between his exile arc and wilbur's pogtopia arc are immediately, and glaringly, obvious. paranoia, trust issues, "maybe i'm actually the bad guy here", and most notably, intense loneliness. wilbur made it obvious he believed pogtopis's allies would all abandon them in the end (them being he and tommy, though how much he trusted tommy by the end is also up in the air), and he was completely prepared to kill anyone he had to in order to secure pogtopia's victory, despite also preparing himself to be the one to end it. wilbur gave up on l'manberg, at the very end. he believed tyranny was all that would ever reign, so he blew it up.

tommy, in his exile arc, was also despairingly lonely. he hallucinated tubbo, grew attached to dream, etc etc. tommy was very very close to "becoming" wilbur here (god i'm sorry this is so long already and just me summing things up we already know it's to keep my thoughts in order + satisfy my inability to shut up and use too many words)

where wilbur and tommy go their separate ways is when they were given an out. dream gave wilbur tnt + for tommy, he was. you know. gestures vaguely at logstedshire. wilbur took the out - he gave up. he gave in. we know he had moments of clarity (when niki was in danger) and Maybe this was one he could've had too, but he didn't. he took the tnt.

tommy decided enough was enough. so at a crucial moment in time, tommy turned away from being wilbur. he did not repeat history.

onto tubbo; admittedly i know much less about his arc as president so this will be less outlined. tubbo,,,, acted very similarly to schlatt. probably moreso than tommy and wilbur! strange new laws, ignoring his cabinet, execution, generally appearing to lose his care for the world and the opinions of others. i'd argue the thing that separates him from schlatt is the most important part of this thread, because it proves my point: he remembered.

i just want to clarify here: by "proves my point" i mean this is the clsoest we get to an agreement of the ideas i'm putting out here in canon?? ig?? as in like. this is the most on the nose way to say it. similarly in recent days to quackity consistently referring to his treatment of dream as torture, which seems to be a very "I Am Not In Character" move but is definitely meant for us, the viewers, rather than character dream or character quackity themselves. tubbo's is a little less like that but still it's kind of like pointing at the X on a map for us the viewers. ok tangent over

tubbo lived under schlatt's rule as one of those people he treated extremely shittily. he lived under schlatt's rule as that person he executed. and tubbo remembers all that! tubbo remembers how schlatt's rule played out, and he looks at his own uh, less than stellar time in office, and he admits this out loud (to ranboo, according to the wikia. i am getting all of this off the wikia. i did not watch any streams during this arc.) that he can See himself becoming schlatt.

and when quackity tries to execute ranboo for being a traitor, tubbo stops him.

onto dream and ranboo! dream is a special case in that we never get to see his perspective of things and are rather left to play fill in the blank, and this whole arc is special (in terms of this thread) in that it isn't over. so i will be doing a lot of extrapolating here.

dream starts out as a generally ambivalent character who has very few rules that he pretty much never bothers to enforce anyways (i think? i don't remember).

by this i mean, this is all stuff i heard secondhand in recent months and can no longer remember what it actually was because i never went back to check. i'm pretty sure, but just a disclaimer. i don't wanna get hit with an "um, actually

his villain arc starts very very early - two whole seasons before he really became one. in the war, he is the antagonist and he plays up to it! most of the war is from l'manberg's pov (or that's how we look at it now, at least) so obviously he is the Bad Guy here.

ranboo griefed a house like two days into the server. 'nuff said /lh

ranboo + dream are both heavily vilified characters from the get-go - dream's part should be fairly obvious (uh, the everything leading up the exile arc where he actually did villainous things), whereas ranboo's is most notably during the second festival's aftermath. taking the blame for blowing up the community house, wanting to "pick people not sides" (he wants all his friends to be happy - sounds familiar, right?), etc etc, and now he's with techno and phil, the former of which is Definitely considered a villain for working with dream

now many many parallels are being drawn between he and dream, especially with the whole enderwalking thing. in the aftermath of everything happening, he chooses to stay out of all conflict, until Something Happens and forces his hand. (the egg!) he wants peace for everyone, which again, sounds very familiar, right?

(slight tangent: yes, the griefing was forcing dream's hand. it's nigh impossible to construe it as anything other than a political attack - the vice president of l'manberg griefing the home of the greater dream smp's king? dream looks weak + open to attack if he lets it slide)

this was a bad way to put it but the spirit of it gets across i think. fuck character limit on twitter

that catches us up on all current lore. where do i think dream and ranboo are going to split? dream has been alone in his decision-making basically since the very first war. not once has he (successfully, we don't know if he tried) gone to fall back on his friends' support and ask for their help in making these hard decisions (of which there are many). he severs his final connections ("i don't care about anything on this server") and cements his place in history as a monster.

i think it is very likely that we are getting a ranboo "friendship and relying on other people" arc here. there are other ways they could go with it, obviously, but given his current arctic anarchist ties and what appears to be other friendships developing. hmm! i'm interested. this part is entirely speculation/extrapolation. point being. the kids on the smp do, in fact, learn from history. they still make mistakes sometimes, but past a certain point, they're always different mistakes. they learn, and they almost always get happier endings for it

i don't know if it's a coincidence that it's the three lore-relevant kids who are the ones doing this. i don't think it is, because this is a very well-written and clever story. the younger generation is the one learning and fixing past mistakes and leaving the world better off for it. that's very neat! i like it a lot. also now that purpled's becoming lore-relevant, goddamnit if i don't want to see next season being his "learning from history" arc. punz vs purpled, maybe? that'd be neat. who knows. ok i think im finally done lol ty for reading :)

caveat I forgot to add last night: obviously ranboo and dream start out in very different positions, moreso than both tommy and tubbo. but at the end of the day, all three of them are their own people who just happen to take after other people in some ways :)

again, ty for reading! here's the original thread. i'd like to add that this is probably out of date and i may come back to it some day but who knows. maybe this will just be a relic of before Now (may 25)

[limelocked]

/rp

Hello! May I just say that the anons and your takes make my day? They are all very interesting and although I might disagree with a few of them, I still enjoy seeing a variety of opinions. So given that, what is your spiciest take both within the lore and with the fandom? I want a scalding hot take. 😉 (It is alright if you don't. I am also okay with you talking about the recent lore streams.)

okay that ask i just answered made me come up with the answer to this ask and even then i dont think this will be a super spicy take, a lot of my takes and the takes of my anons are like a Mild Curry at best if you look at my blog with no context to the tag but might be full on like california reaper takes if you look at the tag as well

my spiciest take is that fandom needs to stop turning this into a jesus story where tommy is the messiah that can do no wrong and will die for our sins and dream is the devil that can never gain redemption or sympathy 

even before the exile arc there was this strained relationship between fandom and c!dream where even if dream was on the side of the narrative “heroes” (a word i only use because wilbur wrote the narrative to be kinda one-sided) he was still evil and irredeemable, i think i could count on one hand the number of posts before nov 16 i saw that looked at the story from dreams perspective and realized how fucked up it was that lmanburg just Chose to demonize him

theres this problem of demonizing and dehumanize the antagonists to some point, before the boom of techno apologism/analysis techno would be stripped to only the most evil of traits exhibited and to a point schlatt as well, its not only about how we have a bias eye towards tommy, the minors or even just our favourite streamer, its the fact that we as a fandom look at this very nuanced narrative and unless yelled at to Think for a Second... we just flatten it into the most boring story we can with bland heros and villains

dream has had an arc where he got hurt got vilified then decided fuck it lets be the bad guys and went too far, his motivations are so incredibly clear and people just Dont Look

quackity has had an arc and one at that that’s leading to being a “bad” guy, wanting to manipulate people the same way dream did (citation needed because ive only heard this second hand) and wanting to manipulate/extort?? dream in prison in exchange for better living conditions (bads stream was Something)

phil is a person first and a father second, a traumatized person that is three dimensional

-

in short i think the hottest take i can give is that fandom has no excuse to demonize and dehumanise the antagonists in the narrative since we have an omniscient perspective where the characters within that narrative do not

and i wish we wouldnt flatten every character into a silhouette of who they actually are

[greedygreedyphilza]

incoherent rant time, but um basically tldr: i hate the three canon lives system so much 

tw death , suicidal thoughts mention , suicide mention 

also so so many dream smp spoilers 

also putting under a read more to save people the scrolling 

okay so dream has recently been confirming and clarifying things about canon deaths and it has reignited the fire in me that hates the three canon lives system. i think my best point in this argument is that its super annoying that after every stream where someone’s character dies that person will have to clarify if it is canon or not. i understand that some clarification is needed in the medium that the dream smp story is revolved around and that some interpretations can be harmful so ccs wanna squash the bug before it gets anywhere (ie ranboo’s situation where people were wondering about if his character had DID). but the canon lives thing just feels so annoying and what has already had to be clarified is annoying. most people’s best place for information is the wiki (and i can feel them pulling out their hair as dream clarifies canon lives, thank you for your service wiki writers) which is great for something like the dream smp where you have to jump right into the fandom or you will never really catch up with it. however there has been just multiple occasions of the wiki writing something and then completely having to change it because the cc’s clarified. but back to what i was previously talking about, we have no way of knowing which deaths are written in and which deaths aren’t unless the cc’s specifically tell us. we’re not mind readers and you may be saying ‘well, we’ll just know from context and if the stream is lore or not and if the death was important’ to which i say great point but important deaths have been retconned away already and i argue that if that was true everyone wouldn’t constantly be confused whether or not a death counts as canon already. quackity’s deaths are by far the most confusing to me, because his first death at the festival has been retconned away along with most other members from the festival (aside from tubbo of course) but for jschlatt’s death to count as canon his death there has to canon so they can’t retcon that awway which makes no sense for quackity’s death not to count then, i can understand retconning the deaths of the other festival members simply because 1 that’s a lot of canon deaths and 2 the argument could be made that techno was messing around at that point. but retconning jschlatt’s death means he should still be alive which we can infer from what other members of the smp have said (i’m like deathly certain wilbur or phil said something about this) that jschlatt doesn’t want to come back (i mean he literally said he didn’t want to come back during ghostbur’s failed resurection but that was during roleplay so). also there is the whole point the even dream himself has said that a death doesn’t exactly have to be planned to count just that it is important (ie wilbur’s second death when he was exiled from manburg and was shot by punz while running away), which makes everything so much more confusing. dream has also even said the way they count deaths is inconsistent which is so incredibly annoying to deal with as i’ve stated before. the smp storyline is quick and not every cc may remember to say which death is canon and which isn’t before important streams which can leave people in the dark to what is going on. 

the only time i’ve seen the canon lives system have any real narrative weight or kinda work in a way is with tommy’s exile and ghostbur. the only reason tommy stayed in exile was because dream could have killed him and he would be an official ghost in the smp lore which they didn’t want to happen. but i could also argue that this doesn’t even really work at the later parts of tommy’s exile because of his suicidal thoughts. tommy’s exile works just as well if dream was threatening to burn a disc as that’s what tommy has consistently cared about through out the entire smp and it can be easily retconned that dream got a disc from skeppy earlier then he did since to my knowledge skeppy never did anything with the disc of any plot significance during that time. plus if we go with the idea that i like the most of the players choosing when they die that at the end of tommy’s exile that the scene where he was going to commit suicide still have the significance it did. the only reason ghostbur really exists is because of the three canon lives system kinda, i think its more that the three canon lives system was implemented so that wilbur and schlatt could actually die in canon (which is such a dumb reason, they literally could have made death canon is so many other ways ugh). however with the idea that i like the best, ghostbur still works. wilbur wanted to die, he literally begged phil to kill him there’s no arguing he wanted to die. but he came back as a ghost which to my knowledge hasn’t been explained in canon why he came back, but in my mind he always came back because he knew he had unfinished business which still works. 

a point could also be made that the three canon lives system benefits pvp players so much more, i know i read a post about it and if i can find it i’ll link it but i won’t go to into it here. this point still stands even if canon deaths are scripted. technoblade is arguably the best known minecraft pvper, it makes no sense for him to lose a life in pvp ever unless maybe its against dream. but apart from dream no one really matches techno in pvp prowess (at least to my knowledge) so it wouldn’t make sense for someone to just be able to kill him, even if they had a large group since we’ve seen him hold his own against a good portion of the server (no idea how many people were at doomsday or the retaking of lmanburg). plus there is the entire thing with totems now, the way they may work is already confusing because they could 1 negate a scripted canon death which is incredibly op or 2 not do that and be practically useless (i could write a whole post about how kinda useless totems are as a minecraft mechnic or even how they don’t compare to philza apples (i refuse to call them n*tch apples) but that is a whole nother post). totems arguably have already made techno’s execution confusing to me because does that mean the that was a planned death that he escaped or was it possibly just a planned death for the butcher army and no one else? (ugh i’m already making this worse). also if totems are completely useless the scene of techno giving phil a totem means nothing. 

anyway i think that’s all of my points but i might come back to this post and add more if i feel like it lol, thanks for reading this mess if you got this far