#dream smp lore recap

[redstonedust]

wait im confused what is this kerilson lore you mentioned im apprently missing out on? Who/what is kerilson??

ok i'm gonna recap literally everything i can remember about kerilson because i'm not sure how much context you have. SO. INCOMING INFODUMP:

if you've been following the rest of hermitcraft season 9 you'd know that the majority of the active hermits went through the rift and got trapped on empires smp for a month. one of the only hermits left behind was xb, and he handled this... interestingly (badly)

so after showing footage of the hermits going through the rift via a security camera he apparently has set up in grians base, and then trying to claim the entire shopping district as his property (off to a good start) he opens his next episode proudly declaring that he's actually NOT alone, he has a friend, and that friend knows how to open the rift again!

enter kerilson:

i should clarify that kerilson is, first and foremost, a reference to the movie castaway. like. in that movie the protagonist is stuck on an island with nobody to talk to but a volleyball he's named wilson. so theres already precedent for kerilson being just xb going kind of stir crazy without his friends (especially keralis).

so according to xb, kerilson demands a diamond throne (which also includes concrete slabs, the first sign that something weird is going on) and then they reopen the rift. except the rift sends xb to previous hermitcraft seasons instead of empires, where kerilson is distracted by wanting to look at past keralis builds instead of helping xb find his friends. eventually xb DOES end up on empires, but its season 1, and he's completely alone.

he wanders through the server, finds the ocean, spends several days at sea, gets picked up by a flying kerilson themed boat, the scenery warps back into his base, he gets back into bed, and then is woken up by beef, who seems disturbed by the fact xb is even IN bed. bc, y'know, hermitcraft, sleep should be instant.

he concludes the whole thing was a dream, tho that doesnt explain how he's able to accurately dream of empires s1, but gem's empires lore establishes sleep based world hopping so...... put a pin in that.

anyways two episodes later kerilson can be spotted watching xb in the background of his base, but isnt acknoweldged. xb continues to be Totally Normal about his missing friends by building a giant keralis statue, except every time he looks back at it its head is replaced with kerilsons head. so he blows it up.

several months pass with v few kerilson hints, until xb starts teasing a makeship plushie of him and kerilson. in this weirdest way possible. ie. while building his base he mentions he's started hearing noises, and a low joepacity kerilson flashes on screen with scrambled keralis dialog in the background. (side note: xb heard similarly scrambled keralis dialog when keralis was coming back through the rift. unclear if this is related.)

aaand bringing it to now, xb gets a book inviting him to a TCG match, which turns out to be against kerilson. who is apparently real and able to hold TCG matches. except during the animation of the match kerilson never moves and keralis is shown to be helping him behind the scenes, implying kerilson was just an armor stand all along-- except for, you know, the whole established dream demon aspect.

and now he's a marketable plushie! :D

so yeah TLDR: he's an armor stand who has been simultaniously implied to be a figment of xb's imagination, a regular armor stand xb thinks is alive, a regular armor stand controlled by keralis, some kind of fragment of keralis, and an independent, dream controlling being. and also keralis has little to no involvement in any of these episodes.

and as a fun side note, this isnt the first time we've seen some kind of logic defying facsimile of keralis appear in somebody elses episode. when tango went to space to try and stop the moon crashing in season 8, he ran into keralis, who stated he'd been there for months, even tho this is not true in keralis' episodes.

both of these are also scenarios where the enviroment is implied to not be real (a dream / a simulation) and the keralis-a-like appears to help them as they try to leave the server. coincidence? absolutely. but i love to make lore out of nothing!

[piningpebbles]

the dream smp journey: attempting to make the lore of the dream smp more accessible.

so back when i first wanted to get into the dream smp i had absolutely no idea where to start. i asked some people and they told me pretty much “look up dream smp + [insert youtuber name] and start there” and so i did, but i quickly came to realize how much i was missing from the story by not seeing all the different points of view.

so i decided to make my own playlist.

it was just for myself at first, but as i got more obsessed with the story, i also gave the link to some friends of mine so they could have the full experience, and they loved it. so i kept updating it.

my goal was to try and make a capsule of the entirety of the lore on the dream smp across almost every single POV, because while i do appreciate those who make recap videos, they always miss something and it’s usually with peoples’ POV who aren’t considered to be “main characters” which sucks because one of my favorite things about the dream smp was how everyone was their own main character with their own individual storyline you could get invested in.

i’ve seen every single video in the playlist, and did my absolute best to discern what should be included and what didn’t need to be. 

for instance, while i personally enjoyed streams where they’d just goof off, this is a lore-centric playist so i didn’t include all of them unless one of the jokes or such gets mentioned/becomes important later on. or if there is a lore event happening but two people have almost identical streams to one another then i decided between the two of them which one to keep. or if the cc themself made an edited version of their experience, i would decide whether to go with that or keep the original vod

it’s far from perfect. i tried to keep up with it as long as i could I STILL HAVE VIDEOS IN MY WATCH LATER THAT I PLANNED TO ADD but simply put while the dream smp storyline got longer and longer it became harder to keep up with. i watched pretty much all the streams when they happened but failed to update the playlist accordingly so right now it has almost everything up until ”Hitting on 16.”

i always wanted to finish it before i posted it, but i’ve been seeing people talk about how they miss the experience of watching the dream smp and while i obviously can’t provide the full interactive experience that the dream smp offered as it came out, i knew i couldn’t just keep this in my back pocket and thought i could at least offer a good chunk of the experience for you guys to still be able to keep!

here’s the playlist, spanning over 300 videos.

there’s also a semi-canon playlist (not nearly as thorough) for events that get mentioned by the cc’s a lot or are just cool to have and i wanted to include them somewhere so here it is also!!

to go along with it i also made a masterpost (can you tell i love making lists) which is what every single video on the playlist is supposed to be (and was last i checked, but videos get taken down every so often so there might be a couple missing here and there).

i hope to update this one day and have it fully finished, but with my schedule (full-time college student babyyyy) and simply the hundreds of hours of content i’d need to sift through it just seems impossible (and frankly just really intimidating) to challenge alone right now. so i also wanted to give this to the community to maybe be able to do what i couldn’t!

my hope with this is that if someone in a year or two (or whenever really) is interested in the dream smp they won’t have to sit through recap videos and instead can watch the real thing in a single playlist connected to the doc. my dream is for the masterpost and the playlist to go hand-in-hand, being like a guide people can follow that would also link to other moments and lore that is saved but just not avaliable on youtube, so we don’t have all these moments just lost to time.

i want to make this collaborative, i’m hoping this will maybe spark others to share what videos/moments they have saved and stored with each other for the dream smp and maybe together we could complete this thing somehow!! make the playlist and masterpost i dreamed of (the one right now is scuffed, but at least it’s something). the dream smp is one of my absolute favorite pieces of media out there and i want to share this with people but (as you can probably tell) i have no idea what i’m doing!! any step to help make the story more readily accessible is a good one, though!

i know i’ve missed things but i’ve done my best. and while not the perfectly polished thing i hoped it would be when i sent it out to the world maybe it could be a good building block for the community to use. so please share this!! reblog it!! all that jazz!! i want this to be for everyone!!

anyways, this is a long post. but the whole reason i got into the dream smp in the first place was because of the awesome fan content i saw and this crazy and creative community and i want to be able to give back, if i can.

[llitchilitchi]

oooookay, I'm not super versed in dsmp lore and I don't even really know the whole events in chronological order. but!!!! I love your monarchy restoration au. your art is so gorgeous. and the emotions there ... man

can you please give me some guideline of what should I know from the og lore to understand your au? or maybe some summary of your au?

just talk about it I really want to interact!!! :D

hi, editing Li here, the summary ended up being over 2k words. then I realised you asked for a summary to the AU, which is part of the masterpost. I went over the lore in brief, I promise it's just brief despite the length and doesn't tackle All there is to the SMP

okay, lemme try and speedrun the lore of the dream smp - given that the story of monarchy restoration centers around the Dream Team, or at least the parts that I shared, I'll be focusing on them. this will get long and I'm really sorry jghdfjd

the core ideas you should know is that: Dream, George and Sapnap were close friends, but they drifted apart as time went on due to conflicts on the server. Dream crowned George as King, but then due to George doing badly as a king and this position putting him in danger made him dethrone George, which made the rift between them grow. they were once inseparable, and now George and Sapnap thought of Dream as obsessed maniac who no longer cared for them as people. after Dream got put in prison and tortured, he broke out, and this is where the lore of Monarchy Restoration diverges from the original story of the SMP and becomes an AU, as instead of reuniting with Punz as intended, Dream is too weak and injured to do much and runs into George, who takes him in.

now for the Actual Lore Recap:

at the very beginning of it all, there were two friends - Dream and George. they found a little piece of the world for themselves, and everything was fine. then a third came, Sapnap, and then more people joined, and they lived in the same house in the middle of the lake and things were okay.

months passed, and fights turned into splits in the community and a community turned to factions, and the conflicts of factions were intertwined with interpersonal fights. (the interpersonal conflicts? the disc saga, aptly named over 2 music discs that were used as a bartering chip and have a pretty good significance in the overall story. put a pin into that.)

the two factions at play were the (retroactively named) Greater SMP and L'Manburg which declared independence from the Greater SMP on basis of xenophobia. they lost the war against the Greater SMP, the final fight being a duel between Dream and the original owner of the discs (Tommy). a deal was struck after, where Tommy offered his discs in exchange for independence (or independance, if you want to stick to the original text)

an important aspect of this war is to note that Dream offered one of the people on L'Manburg's side a deal - they betray the faction and get to become the King of the Greater SMP. this establishes monarchy in the story. they accepted, betrayed their allies, got the role of a King with the promise of 'staying neutral and uninvolved in further conflicts'.

I'll breeze through the Manberg era for the most part (despite being the most interesting one, imo). L'Manburg ran a presidental election, the original leader (who wanted to take power by scamming the whole thing) lost, and the new leader of L'Manburg (renamed to Manberg, because they're not taking any L's anymore) exiled the OG president and his right hand man Tommy, things went bad. the two exiled men started a new faction (Pogtopia) that they hoped to use to take back their "rightful place" and were given support from Dream because the new Manberg was a little too expansive. (he ended up siding with Manberg last minute for Yet Unknown Reasons, we will get to them, again, put a pin in it)

the King of the SMP very vocally sided wih Pogtopia, which was a betrayal to the core principles of their position as King. the King was dethroned, and Dream put his best friend George on the throne, with him and Sapnap serving as his knights.

upon the defeat of Manberg by Pogtopia (since Manberg's authoritarian regime ended up driving people out and most joined Pogtopia, Dream and his people fought for Manberg only as mercenaries), one of the core allies of Pogtopia - an anarchist, the blood god himself, Technoblade - turned on his former allies because they told him it was about defeating a tyrant, but all they wanted was to kill one tyrant and put their own people in his place. Techno then fled into exile.

next chapter begins after the rebuild of L'Manberg, yet the L' is back, under a new rule given that the OG president uhhh Blew Up The Country with several megatons of TNT and then persuaded his father into killing him.

King George is vibing. he is unaware of all faction wars, builds himself a holiday house far away from everything, enjoys time with new friends, all while Dream grows more and more distant due to trying to keep what is left of his old life together.

the reason the home is important to mention is that, once peace has settled over the world, Tommy decided that the discs that he traded for independence are His, in fact, and he needs to steal them - or barter for them in any shitty way possible. he still had tons of grudges against Dream, and in one of these half-grudge fueled fuckeries, he and one other character set fire to George's holiday home.

Dream found it in ruin and still burning when he came see his friend with a bouquet of flowers. there are several interpretations to this, and since Dream himself never really specified, there's a speculation that he thought that this event maybe killed his best friend, and given that George is the King of the Greater SMP, an attack by the right hand man of the current L'Manberg president on the physical property of the King of a rival faction is de-facto a war declaration.

so we are presented with an ultimatum, where Tommy is either exiled or a war starts. (exile won. it was voted on by the fans we wanted that bitch Out. this is not quite as important but the dynamics shaping up between Tommy and Dream had a massive impact on the plot.)

while Tommy is in exile, George becomes rather friendly with a new budding faction on the server. his involvement with them means that his neutrality vow was broken, and given how frequently he got harassed by L'Manberg, Dream decided to dethrone George, and put the previous King back in power. this dethronement caused a huge rift to form between George and Dream (and Sapnap, who sided with George) and the three of them fell apart with the parting words from George to Dream being "Just say you hate me."

I'm sure this won't have any lasting effects on the man who was tearing himself apart to make the world the same as it was when it was just the two of them

now in brief: the L'Manberg cabinet decided to take revenge on Techno after he turned on them after they tricked him into helping them against Manberg. the punishment? execution. how did they achieve that? they hunted him down, threatened to kill his animals, told him he will get a court process but just set him up in a guillotine. Dream intervened and saved him, thus earning a favour from Techno because both of them are traumatized warriors with trust issues that rather treat kindness as currency. Tommy runs away from the place he was restricted to in his exile, moves in with the anarchist-in-retirement-gone-pacifist Techno, the two of them end up teaming up for the time being as Techno protects him from Dream. L'Manberg in the meantime decides to host a festival to show that they are peaceful now, and nothing bad will happen again :) it takes place a week after they unlawfully tried to execute Techno, and the festival is meant to serve as public execution of Dream. However, the festival is cut short when Dream storms in because the original house where he and his friends lived - known as the Community House - got blown up. he blames L'Manberg and Tommy, and after a short conflict that happens then he declares that L'Manberg has a day to evacuate and him and Techno agree to blow up the country. a second time. and completely now.

so L'Manberg is gone now and the members of the faction scatter. within days, Tommy receives an invitation from Dream to come get his discs (I didn't know how to include it, but after the whole 'setting George's house on fire' Tommy tried to barter for the discs and for Dream to ignore him setting the house on fire, all while trying to leverage things that Dream held dear. attachment to objects and people is a running theme in here. Dream then proceeded to give his "I don't give a fuck about Spirit, I don't give a fuck about anything actually" speech, basically telling everyone they have nothing to leverage against him and he will destroy them if he needs to and them holding something hostage won't bother him.) This sets the stage for the Disc Finale. Tommy and his best friend Tubbo make their way to a specific location, far away, all alone, where they are to fight against Dream to win the discs back. they lose spectacularly and Dream reveals his "grand plan" where he has a vault to gather "all the precious items people own to control them" (and I wrote "grand plan" because it was a farce. it was a show, it was staged, all just to get Tommy to leave him the fuck alone and stop meddling with his greater plan. what is the greater plan? fuck if I knew.)

the whole thing is then intercepted when a large group of people, one of which is Dream's right-hand-man Punz who was running errands for him before, and more importantly, Sapnap. he's beaten and just as he is about to be killed, he reveals his secret: the reason he sided with manberg, all those months ago, is because in exchange for his services he got a book of necromancy. he can now bring people back to life. because of this, he is locked up in an inescapable prison in case anyone needs to use the book.

Sapnap and George are very much under the impression that Dream doesn't care for them. Sapnap comes visit Dream once, promises to return, never does. George doesn't even bother coming in, instead sleeping his days away and it catches the eye of a deity who wears the same face as his beloved Dream, and he loses himself to the illusion of being reunited with his best friend in a world where everything is perfect.

another important thing to note is that Sapnap stumbles upon a Book Of Death (yes, its death note, sapnap is a weeb, it even functions the exact same.) the thing about the book of death and the book of necromancy is that they are both books that were placed into the world by the deity wearing Dream's face (known as DreamXD, or XD for short, yes it's a little silly) and XD reveals to another character (a somewhat-deity, Foolish) that the books and their owners are intertwined in a way, and if one were to die the other dies with him.

so we have three friends, one locked up in prison and seen as nothing more but an object to use (Dream), the other a man who watched his friends, his parents and his lovers fall apart (Sapnap) and a man who cannot face the world falling apart and the loss of his friends so he gives into an illusion created by god in his dreams. and all of them have a strange tie to a stranger god.

this very fractured relationship the three have, along with their ties to the god, were the main driving force behind making this AU.

the last thing you should probably know is that Dream was locked in prison for 10 months, starved, tortured, with little to no social contact until Techno was locked in with him, but with the use of some fun magic Techno managed to escape and then "return the favour" from when Dream saved him from execution, and broke him out of prison.

there's a lot of little nuanced things I probably forgot about but this is the core of it all I hope it helps

[sethdomain]

now im curious but what do you think about beeduo or alliumduo

Guys im going to be hoenst… i dont really gaf about beeduo they are whatev… but im just not as attached to them because i only read their story and stuff in wikis and lore recaps and that makes me not as attached as i would to character like ctommy or ctechno whereas i would always watch their cgaracter stream and that makes me really attached to their character as a whole. But overall as a ship i think theyre a solid married couple that try to survive on this hellhole called the dream smp

For alliumduo, i think tbh they lack a bit of those ‘chemistry’ in the story so i’m not rlly into their relationship that much tbh. Rn ctommy kind of only see cranboo as like some kind of obstacle to ctubbo ‘friendship’ and thats like whatev man. They just lack more in depth story where they interact w/ each other for me to care if yk what i mean. BUTT i see the vision of this ship, maybe if in season 2 I snort cocaine and make up season 2 and they have more story where they intertwined with one another more and progressed their relationshop maybe i will kind of like them.

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

watching a four hour video on the Dream SMP (mostly a lore recap with fanom discussion in the interludes) and goddddd I miss that fandom so freaking much I wish hyperfixations lasted forever oh my god take me back to my beloved Dream SMP I need to commit murders ...!

[minecraftrelatedrandomness]

6 dec 2023 pirates smp lore recap

aka my god this is a doozy

spoiler warning is obvious, everything is roleplay disclaimer VERY MUCH APPLIES TODAY

acho

offscreen since 2 days ago, p!acho managed to rescue p!apo from the icy seas and has dragged him back to the faction isles

p!apo has been unconscious since that whole stunt, and p!acho has been keeping him in the seagull dungeon until he wakes up

p!acho is only planning to stay for another day or two before going back out on the kishi quest (they passed that island on the way to the ice wall)

star just spends pretty much the rest of the stream questing and exploring

LORE STREAM TOMORROW AND DAY AFTER, 1PM EST (joint brother lore on friday)

will + shep

p!will wakes up to a past memory type of dream back on the luscinia about his father forbidding him contact with caer

he decides to convince p!shep to help him recruit the luscinia crew

meanwhile, p!shep is down to 71 gold from gambling

p!will lies about trying to find more info about the cultists. p!shep just goes along with it

they sail north to the impaled shipwreck quest island

when p!shep hears about p!will's actual plan, he's not convinced in the slightest and p!will calls him out for being unhelpful and apathetic to the whole situation

CUE THE CULTISTS COMING DOWN FROM THE HILL

p!shep decides to shove p!will in the direction of the cultists and then run for it

he thinks p!will can handle himself in the situation and is sure he'll be fine, and decides to go looting chests and taking quests like if this were a normal pirates stream and he didn't just throw someone to the wolves

p!will is the furthest thing from fine: being literally dead from petrification does that to you

tldr:

p!apo is presumably alive but unconscious. p!acho lore pending. p!shep has self-preservation and p!will is dead because of that.

[rutadales]

Do you not think cDream is the villain? Sorry this is not at all meant to be agressive or anything, I just have trouble understanding that interpretation. I’m genuinely interested in what you think bc I’m not as well versed in lore as many dsmp fans but from what I’ve seen, cDream is a pretty unequivocally bad person. I think few of the characters aren’t to be fair, but though cDream is more complex than the common interpretations, he doesnt necessarily seem to be morally better? Again, don’t mean to sound rude or anything!! Just kinda trying to understand :)

So this question kinda expands into several branching off points for me, but I'll try to keep it simple and break it down into sections as best I can. this is going to get long

So do I think c!Dream is a villain? Depends on what definition you're using first of all but also in what context, in which storyline, and from whose perspective you're consuming the story from. A strength of SMPs as storytelling devices is that the concrete plot and hard facts of the story are often pretty fluid; what happened when, who was there, who saw what, and who is a villain or a hero is all dependent on which stream you chose to tune into at the time. But as much as this is a strength, it's also a detriment. Entire character beats and motivations can be missed or obfuscated by simply not tuning into a creators stream. A big example of this is how many people missed the Staged Finale reveal, anyone who didn't watch Punz stream will still be operating under the belief that everything Dream did in the disc finale was his true nature, and not an act. Completely changes how to interpret those characters and the entire finale as a scene.

The nature of stream based storytelling is audiences are consuming completely different stories, simultaneously, and there's no hard copy of this story. It's not a book you can go pick up at Barnes and Noble or a movie you can stream on Netflix. To get caught up and engage with the fiction you either have to go back and rewatch hundreds of hours of live content (with dead space and parts that have been completely ret-conned), watch recaps edited by third parties who are at liberty to cut out anything they deem irrelevant to the story, or get it exclusively word of mouth by the audience. A character being more loved by the audience now means that character's narration is given higher value in contrast to other characters. Even supposedly non-biased sources, like the fan wiki, meant to lay out bare bone facts of the story are riddled with un-sourced fan interpretations of the media. Look here

Now, reading a characters unreliable narration as reliable isn't a failing as it is more just engaging with the media as intended. The intent of utilizing unreliable narrators is often to "trick" the audience or to showcase how that character sees the world. Its fine and is used is a lot of different mediums, I'm actually a huge fan. Love me some bitches who just lie. The thing is, due to everything I've laid out above, having a character who is unreliable, like c!Tommy often is, in this medium means fans who only consume the content via world of mouth are getting an unreliable narration without the context that its unreliable. This completely changes entire swaths of the fiction and more, to our point, who is the villain.

A really, kind of neat phenomena in the fandom is how fans bought into c!Wilbur's lies about L'manberg the same way the characters he was manipulating did. Fans became part of the narrative in a strange way. Which is actually a perfect example for how other characters shape the narrative around Dream, both within the fiction and within the fans trying to engage with it.

With that in mind, I don't even read the dsmp as a story with "villains" or "heros", its a story with a lot of different perspectives that clash with each other. Those terms don't really lend themselves to the kind of questions I'm asking about the story.

I think the question you're really asking is "Do you think c!Dream is a good person". You bring up being "unequivocally bad" and moral a couple different times, which to me flags as a question about fictional morality. Because the question of who is a villain in the dream smp is completely dependent on who you watch, which streams you've watched, and whosever narration you decided to subscribe to-- and is why I find the label villain in dsmp analysis fairly mute. It's kinda a pointless exercise to try and determine who earns that label and who doesn't. Not the kind of analysis I'm interested in.

But to answer the question I think you imply here, no I don't think c!Dream is a good person. I don't think anyone on the smp is. Maybe Michael? Well he tried to break into a prison for information, so by some moral standards, absolutely not! I'd certainly agree with you that Dream is more complex than common interpretation would lead us to believe, but that complexity does lend itself to morality in some cases.

Is Dream wrong to want to prevent his home from being split up into countries and thus filled with conflict? Is it worse to threaten, torment, and assault someone because you're pathologically obsessed with them or because you have a larger goal in mind and find those actions beneficial to the goal at hand?

To me, that's it's just pointless hole to get sucked into. I am personally uninterested in ideas of a character possessing or gaining moral purity and much more interested in characters learning to move on from the harm they've caused. C!Dream is interesting to me, not because he's a good person, but because hes a complex one. TL;DR: I am uninterested in using villain as a term within the context of dsmp and find the discussions of the moral goodness of characters reductive.

If you have any other questions feel free to shoot me an ask! I actually quite enjoy breaking down how I think about characters and media and am always open to (friendly) discussions on the matter. <3

[saltyyetbland]

people that were apart of the dream smp fandom and have now moved on to the qsmp, do yall remember that one fanmade document that had all the lore of the server and was being regularly updated by a team of fans? why does the qsmp not have one?

like besides qsmp info which is months behind and also kinda biased and selective, we have no easy one-stop place for the lore. the wiki is a bit of a mess with some character lore not being updated for months, the youtube lore recaps made by fans are pretty outdated nowadays, and people aren't scrolling through months of tweets from update accounts to figure out the lore. sure clips hit the major parts but like there is no like easy timeline of events with the lore of all the characters mapped out.

i feel like esp with the meta knowledge that the qsmp team is planning on adding more languages and players in the new year, plus with all this lore that is hitting us recently, there has to be a way to accurately document the lore and keep it updated.

[x-i-l-verify]

Trick or treat!

One good turn deserves another!

-

If you want a rec... hm, well, it's not a "rec" per se, but I'm sure you see me posting a lot about it, so I figured I'd explain what the Dream SMP is just for clarity's sake. ^^;

So, to quote tumblr user existentialterror: "The Dream SMP is a private multiplayer Minecraft server. A bunch of Twitch/Youtube streamers roleplayed on it regularly from 2020-2022. It grew a 'plot' based on improv which later became somewhat scripted in advance. There are arcs, seasons, worldbuilding, and factions."

I personally describe it to people as this strange, unholy mix of Game of Thrones, Homestuck, and Loony Tunes, but it manages to still be compelling somehow despite all its many flaws (the story could have seriously benefited from having whatever the Minecraft RP version of a Dungeon Master is, that's all I'll say about it). It's also the single most nuanced and fascinating study of morality and perspective I've ever seen in a fictional medium (one that was absolutely wasted on its target audience because a lot of people - especially younger people - aren't capable at looking at stories through an objective lens anymore), because the DSMP has no single main protagonist. Every character is the "main character," and their story intertwines and intersects with the other characters', creating a vast web of character conflicts and interactions. A character can be the flawed hero of their own story, and a despicable villain from another character's POV. A silly little guy to one character, and the worst person imaginable to another. Basically, "Villain" by Stella Jang is the DSMP theme song. And I think that's neat!

Characters include:

A violent anarchist pigman who somehow manages to be the most open-minded and based character in the entire series.

A sentient slime monster who pretends to be human by saying things like "I have so many bones! I have like 300 bones in me like everyone else!" and "Hello, fellow meat brother!"

An anthro fox who suffers from prophetic nightmares and serious daddy issues.

A sweet, silly demon who spends half the series being a chaotic menace and the other half either being mind-controlled into a cult leader or being traumatized by what he did under the influence of said mind control.

A former king who spends most of the story sleeping to escape from the crushing disappointment of reality and who reshapes his dreams into what he wants reality to be courtesy of a deity he befriends while there.

And many more

Also the fandom is full of very talented animators. :D Here are just a few of the super cool animations they've made over the years. (Links because the rest of the videos are unavailable outside of YT dangit)

Requiem | Fundy Lore [DSMP animatic]

Tightrope | GeorgeNotFound Lore [DSMP animatic]

Folding Chair | BadBoyHalo Lore [DSMP animatic]

The Search | Season 2 Lore Recap [DSMP animation]

Put “trick-or-treat” in my inbox and I’ll give you either a) a meme or two related to a fandom you’re interested in (if I don’t know you as well I’ll go random/miscellaneous) or b) a random book/movie/game rec. Feel free to specify, or to ask for both!

[anachronistic-falsehood]

hooloooo i see you rebagel a lot of stuff for mcyt... what is that? how do i watch it? it sounds so dramatic and full of lore! thankya!

OH WOW ok!!! alright. sit down because i am about to learn you a thing!!!! so MCYT stands for "minecraft youtube" and it actually encompasses a HUGE amount of youtubers/twitch streamers, minecraft smps, content, and storylines. A LOT of different creators fall under the MCYT umbrella, but the SMPs are probably what you're talking about, because those are FULL of lore. you don't have to watch one to understand another, although some might make references to other SMPs. think of it like... huge DND campaigns but in minecraft. they roleplay as fictionalized versions of themselves and do a lot of improv acting

the servers i'm into right now are the DSMP and QSMP!! the DSMP was a server owned by Dream (who is kind of a shit person which is part of the reason the server ended) but the storyline created by creators on the server like Wilbur Soot, Tommyinnit, Technoblade, and a lot of others was AMAZING. they created this insane story about a small nation who went to war, there was a revolution, an election that resulted in a dictatorship, and so much more. oh my god it was so cool. someone named EvanMC made videos summarizing some major plot points (playlist here), but if you REALLY want to get into it, there's a channel called Blueberry TV that's making full recap videos, and the playlist (here) has like. over 300 videos so far. BUT NOT ALL OF THEM ARE NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!! you can skip ahead at a lot of points, or even just find a single creator's character you like and watch vods or videos from their point of view. i would highly recommend Wilbur Soot, Tommyinnit, Tubbo, BadBoyHalo, or Quackity because their roleplay was consistently just absolutely insane, but i'd also recommend POVs like Fundy, Captain Puffy, DropsByPonk, or Jack Manifold if you want to explore different viewpoints! I know Wilbur and Tommy have made edited down videos of many of their DSMP vods, so that might be a decent place to start if you're curious (although searching for those in the mess of their other videos might be a hassle lol), or you can skim the wiki if you'd like (here!!!) it officially ended i think late 2022-early 2023 (i can't remember) but the official canon ending to the overall story is really up in the air, so it's mostly left to fan interpretation now.

THE QSMP IS SO GOOD oh my god. it's a huge multilingual server that started around March and is still going!! it was started by Quackity, and the plot really started when a bunch of eggs appeared on the island and the members were paired up to take care of them, with one English speaking creator and one Spanish speaking creator to a pair. eventually five Brazilians were invited to the server, and later some French creators as well!! they're all trapped on this one island by an organization called the Federation, and no one knows exactly what's going on, but there are mysteries to solve and monsters to fight and lots of found family elements in the overall plot. if you want some general recaps, the official QSMP Info channel has a couple videos recapping stuff (link here) and there are channels like Angry Thomas that make bite sized videos (like 5-20 minutes) about some general plot points. Quackity ofc has his own vod channel where you can watch his streams and learn about his character's lore. you can also skim the wiki (link here) to familiarize yourself with some of the characters. if all else fails you can probably make a post asking for the plot and throw it in the qsmp tag here on tumblr and you'll get a decent handful of people in your notes giving you a sparknotes summary. we love talking about our weird little minecraft guys

The DSMP and QSMP are so good in their own ways, the DSMP for its insane improv roleplay and the QSMP for its crazy planned events and and the way it brings multiple communities and cultures together!!! you don't have to watch one to understand the other. i suggest you only get into one at a time because they are both crammed with backstory and lore. i'd recommend getting into QSMP first because it's still going, and once you feel more or less caught up, you can probably test the DSMP waters. they can both get quite heavy in their stories, so if you need a list of trigger warnings or anything feel free to ask and i can def provide :3 if you're intrigued by either of them but don't know exactly where to start, i'd suggest the Blueberry TV playlist for DSMP and the Angry Thomas videos or the Quackity VODs for QSMP. see if there are any creators you enjoy watching and go from there!!!! consuming the stories of these SMPs is a bit difficult because there's so much content, but no one is expected to watch every single video or stream by every creator. a lot of the story gets passed around through word of mouth through the fandoms, so don't feel bad if you feel like you miss anything!!! if you have questions, you can ask just about anyone in the fandoms and they'll probably have an answer!!!

if you're interested but need a little more convincing, feel free to shoot me another ask. i will gladly ramble about my favourite minecraft roleplay characters. it's like my entire life at this point i think it's a problem <3

[megabuild]

been thinking 💭 about their time spent as worlds most annoying students

lore dump LOOK OUT

- i will make a proper explanation for the worldbuilding i have for empires one day but basically all thats necessary is that its set in a high fantasy world separate from any other smp, i consider most smps being set on the same "planet" i guess? (special thanks to rendog for making me have to clarify that.) but at different times so empires s1 takes place fairly early, a time similar to the renaissance period for us.

- pix and fwhip knew each other before the series though because as said above They went to school together! About ten years before season 1 is set. Specifically a very prestigious academy in the city they both grew up in, it's more like a university than a school, they're both young adults when they enroll.

- fwhip is studying alchemy not just out of the love of it but also to follow in his father's footsteps (his relationship there is. not great but that's another ballpark) while pix is studying astronomy which in this world is a very important and magical study! the people of this region believe the stars and planets can help predict future events and disasters, so talented astronomers are basically like prophets. he doesn't actually have any prophetic visions or anything though.

- pix has a whole thing i'll get into some other time that basically means his ability to harness and use experience/magic is limited. most humans aren't as naturally predisposed as some other species but pix is especially Not good at this. but he's very studious and wants to learn all he can about magic even if he can't use it, so he's a model student

- fwhip on the other hand has natural disposition for magic due to having elvish genes, and is a bit of a slacker tbh, not because he doesn't care but because of bad past experience with educational environments.

- the two of them meet because they have a handful of classes that overlap. Don't really get along at first (quite badly actually though I'm considering changing that LMAO) but they end up becoming friends and eventually falling into dating yayyyy great awesome who clapped.

- fwhip has bigger dreams though. he wants to become Thee royal alchemist and it's sort of in his game plan that pix will become the royal astronomer even though pix... Isn't really that certain about astronomy as a career path at all. He has a family business that he might need to go back to but more importantly for him he just sort of wants to slow down and focus on rn!! Their relationship ends up falling apart for a lot of reasons but this is one of them.

- I say falls apart but it never actually has a defined end lol fwhip just. Leaves one day before he even graduates because he gets offered a very lucrative position that he can't really say no to. He leaves a letter but he never says bye and pix will hold a grudge to this for over a decade.💙

- their time at the academy is probably the happiest years of their relationship (unless i decide to say fuck it and give them a semi happy ending) and almost definitely the happiest years of fwhip's life. they are the most annoying bitchy gay couple u know. they pull so many pranks (pix has always been a lover of those and fwhip only enabled him in taking them to extreme levels) and generally are quite sweet at times even if its not always clear like. how committed fwhip actually is (he loves pix! he's just allergic to commitment and showing feelings without backtracking to make a joke after)

- on their designs there's not much to say, fwhip cuts his hair shorter including his little horn tufts and generally doesn't let it get long enough for the green to show cause he's trying to be more cool and professional. (Later on he actually starts dying it to make sure no green shows which is fake as hell of him but anyway) Pix bears a striking resemblance to recap!pix which doesn't really mean shit other than he is his great x10 peepaw uncle twice removed and ithought it was cute. Fwhip bought those earrings for him which I think I've posted about before somewhere. Their outfits are sort of lame cause I made them up in five seconds just so I could draw something orz I don't think the academy had any strict uniform though pix probably did wear gloves due to working with magic and fwhip definitely never wore suitable gear for working with highly dangerous chemicals

- tldr blows them up in my mind

[void-chara]

does anyone remember those dream smp recaps that people used to do. like recaps of every stream and all the lore and events of the streams. i am soooo tempted to start doing something like that for lifesteal but i KNOW i am too busy for that. i was literally complaining earlier today about how i already dont have enough time for all my projects.

[fraseris]

watching this technodad stream where hes watching those old evanmcgaming dream smp lore recap videos that i always HATED but also im having so much fun

[jeweledstone]

Dream Lore Recap Part 2: In which I find one of “Dream”’s former victims and he’s okay (thank god)

Another dream thingy I’ve been stalling on for way too long! Funnily enough this dream happened 1 or 2 nights after the other lore important dream I kept stalling on. It was also the first “Dream”/DreamSMP related dream I’ve had in quite a while tbh (not like that’s a bad thing or anyway lol)

It started out normally, or as normally as a “Dream” dream would start, with the prick himself basically kidnapping me while I was asleep to take me back to his stupid pocket dimension for god knows what. Now, usually when he’s abducting me, I’d start transforming against my will into whatever character he wanted me to take the role of in the “SMP” (usually Wilbur for some fucking reason), but this time through some deus ex machina or glitch in the matrix, I ended up turning into my Heart interpretation (which you may be familiar with if you’ve seen my Chonny Jash fanart) instead. (Honestly now that I think about it, I had an unusually large amount of dreams involving either me or someone else being turned into Heart during the week or so this dream was had in. Wonder what that means if anything)

Now, because if this transformation, “Dream” ended up not taking me to his little SMP and instead kinda sorta abandoned me in the middle of whatever universe/timeline he was passing through to get there. This was around the time where I regained consciousness and ended up hiding in some random house I found in case he decided to come back for me.

Turns out, through sheer coincidence, I ended up in the house of this lesbian couple who were actually survivors from the universe “Dream” destroyed in order to recreate his pocket dimension that one time along with the unnamed Tommyinnit that was one of “Dream”’s previous victims who the couple technically adopted and look after. I remember that despite being freed from the SMP, he still was stuck in that form and couldn’t remember anything about his previous life before being abducted.

After meeting each other, one of the lesbians was a bit put off by me, probably cause of her previous (and most likely traumatizing) experience with another reality bender, but ended up somewhat tolerating me after I explained that I was just as spiteful towards “Dream” as she was. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that) In the end we ended up deciding to sorta team up to try and stop “Dream” along with this random punk guy who was friends with the couple and came from the same destroyed universe as them.

So yeah, that’s a thing. If anything it’s good to know “Tommy” is safe and not, y’know, dead or something. Anyway, it’s like half past my bedtime rn where I’m at so I’m going to sleep for the night. See y’all’s tomorrow I guess. I’ve got a few more previous dreams to catch you all up on, so look forward to that I guess! :)

[ihaveyourleftsock]

okay, little be of a confession here (it's not bad, just gonna talk about a fanfic). in the years of 2020 - 2022 I was kind of in to the DSMP. I didn't follow the whole story, but I did watch recaps and listen to my other friends talk about itthe general lore. in any case we still talk about it from time to time and for about a year now they have been trying to get me to read this fanfic called Devil Town.

TELL ME WHY DID I SPEND A WEEK AND A HALF OF MY LIFE DEDICATED TO READING THIS FIC. guys, I'm obsessed with this fic.

by far one of the best fics I've ever read, it's SOOO good. just the horror of having a family member missing and the emotional burden of essentially being a stranger to someone who is supposed to be family to you. god. it's such a good fic.

anyway, here is the link. be ready to cry, I for sure did. make sure you read the warnings, it gets way to real when reading.

[blockgamepirate]

Spoilers for the poll I just reblogged

Embarrassingly the one that didn't click for me was the ghost one

Despite the fact that I was a Joe main for years

In my defence, I never really imagined the Jhost thing happening on Hermitcraft. I always figured that was more of a separate Joe Hills stream lore thing I guess? Because AFAIK it never actually affects the actual Hermitcraft videos? Idk, it makes sense in my head. But I assume that for the purposes of the poll that counts.

Especially since Doc losing his arm is much more obviously something that definitely didn't happen on Hermitcraft, even tho in my mind that's more canon than the Jhost since Doc still has the robot arm on Hermitcraft even though it predates him joining the server... but it didn't happen in Hermitcraft

But yeah, Scar fed the NHO to the alien thing or whatever in s6, the turf wars happened in s7, Herobrine shows up in the Area 77 plotline in s6, I don't remember the Renbob lore all that well but that hyperdrive thing def sounds like a thing that happened and I probably even watched it happen I just don't remember anymore. Grumbot got introduced in s7 and expanded upon in s9 (maybe also s8? I don't know, I heard he was in Ren and Doc's lore somehow but I didn't watch any of that), aaand I assume the rap battle is about Helsknight in s7. Oh yeah and also the house swap in s7 altho I mostly missed that plotline, or at least the details of it. I think I only watched Stress, Zed, Cleo and Joe at that point and not even all of them consistently, and I don't remember if any of those four ever actually explained what the story behind the house swap machine was. Because I don't remember any of that. I might have heard about it on the recap but I can't retain information that I've only heard on the recap lbr.

(I really lost motivation to watch Hermitcraft around the mayoral election (I hate election arcs as I've mentioned*), and stopped watching completely around when the turf war started; that's the whole reason why I originally got into the Dream SMP which was just starting to become popular around that time as I lost interest in Hermitcraft (temporarily))

* yes, there was also an election arc on DSMP, and in fact that very nearly made me quit watching it too, and I probably would have if the timeline had worked out even a little bit differently. I happened to be just far enough behind (as I was catching up) that by the time I made it to the election arc, in real time it was actually already over, so I was able to literally just skip the whole thing lmao. Just as I had gone "ew, election arc, I'm not watching any more of this" I heard that the election arc had actually ended in some kind of disaster and that piqued my interest just enough that I checked out the stream where Techno joins the server (as it had just happened) and... that got me properly hooked. It was the perfect timing.