#fun fact if I put Jack in he would be evil (kinda)

[zero-zip]

Wait wait wait, Zip, is Dazzle in the celestial stars au?

Currently no but possibly in the future

[misterbitches]

joke knew from the beginning what he had and other people didn’t. me personally i’d keep my contacts with the pawn dealers because those aren’t the real enemies tho they’re acting like the petty managerial class i guess. fun (not) fact poor ppl have their shit pawned the most so i’ll allow it.

the show is very literal and there’s that fantastical element. obviously a single ring doesn’t give you power. i think the ring thing was to symbolize shifting money around? not sure and you know i kinda tune out when it comes to that plus it’s ugly but more people can explain the tightrope between the exaggerated and melodramatic and the realism whatever.

anyway his nice house, his dad’s nice job, his education, their cars. even the option to go to jail is so funny bc he could have just. not. gotten a lawyer. whatever. instead he spent his time being dyslexic and wanting to expropriate from the real thieves which are bosses and traitors (capitalism). i wish i knew more about thai movements to be able to tie it into a broader point but i know enough about what capitalism does. imagine this: there is no work in your home town so you must go elsewhere to do manual labor, leaving your family behind. that’s what extraction does but not purely internal—though “never colonized”, to say thailand has been untouched by western power would be silly and untrue by fact of being where they were. and obviously imperialism and monarchy and honestly what seems to be actually semicolonialism which seems a ridiculous marker but alright. the point is the british the french and eventually america all had their grubby little hands there and the monarchy supported it tho the monarchy is not their main enemy today—it is the military (imperialism lmao). (which now that i think about the parallels i guess the show is trying to say that which obviously with the bird flying close to the sun…to which i say no but it tried at least. that system doesn’t function the way the military does…get rid of hierarchy…)

this is the nature of exploitation. toi ting is dark, her dad is dark and an alcoholic; jenny is trans—none of these are central to who they are in the story but a part of them. Why would more poor people skew this way; what system of domination necessitates the darker and “deviant” seen as unproductive and unable to assimilate? what influences and exacerbates these ideas?

and even them talking about english. surprisingly jack knows and joke doesn’t. was joke a poor student or did he just not feel like trying? (obviously he struggles w school but my pt is…he also could not put in effort bc he struggles and is young and has money and will be fine) why was jack such a good student? just asking myself stuff like that.

I fundamentally clash with the idea that we owe anything to these evil people i really do. You see people trying to survive and struggling and grappling with their morality and these sick fucks STILL wont let go. They expect us to just lay down and die? To not fight? And that we are the same as them? Once we get free that we’ll do what they do? And this is where jack is wrong and where joke’s self loathing could be so transformed but i don’t know if the show can see that bc that is not the world we live in and the art that is accepted unless we make it so and usually thats thru other channels.

Just once i’d like us to be able to see that actually yes shit like this, who joke is, is righteous, moral, and good. it’s everyone else that has to understand that! he shouldn’t have to change, the world should and do something along with him about it! Like those angry townspeople are! even the way rosé placated them with bullshit indicates an INABILITY to get out of it without forcing them. They could simply solve the problem and they won’t. So we will make them. That’s it! And all labor fighters everywhere have turned violent and resistance and human flourishing go hand in hand. the need for that resistance, what binds us, that all comes from our labor, our work, being exploited and that’s what the contradiction cannot abide by

and if Jack is out for revenge are we going to acknowledge revenge as a motivator for freedom? morality of oppressors is not real morality. the morality of the resistance is one; it’s complex, dark, and nasty but also full of anger and with that love. it wrestles with the tradeoffs and discomfort but it tries to correct course. the difference between these two groups could not be wider so why pretend like the intent, method, and outcome are the same? What the fuck does it mean to come by anything honestly? joke is to me very deeply not wrong and for as long as we have it it’s refreshing to see a character who needs to do something that is integral to his way of life. that is an alienating dangerous thing

so that’s my real issue with the show: so much of joke growing is about leaving liberation in the past and growing up as if it’s a fantasy. like he was ever not putting himself in danger. but what’s interesting is how unsure i am that they are going to to reject the premise of violence and crime necessary to resistance/liberation entirely. It’s SO WEIRD bc it’s like ok is this jack’s rollercoaster? I hope so? Or am i so stung by the norm that i see this pattern and it isnt coming out? Maksksjuurhrhhebebwjqoeofidgeheb

[quillsinkwell]

I posted 352 times in 2022

That's 340 more posts than 2021!

25 posts created (7%)

327 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ministarfruit

@collabwithmyself

@senseiwu

@dreamwalker6500

@sugarglider-s

I tagged 195 of my posts in 2022

Only 45% of my posts had no tags

#quill's reblogs - 111 posts

#batdr - 55 posts

#ace attorney - 42 posts

#misquillaneous - 31 posts

#signal boost - 16 posts

#quill talks - 15 posts

#batim - 14 posts

#bendy and the dark revival - 12 posts

#bendy and the ink machine - 8 posts

#batdr spoilers - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 82 characters

#this is what happens when you turn all your queer employees into ink monsters joey

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

OK, FINALLY HOME, TIME TO SAY MY THOUGHTS ON THE TRAILER

The animation was really good, even for Illumination. You can really tell Nintendo *put a lot of money in to make this look good (read: held a gun to Illumination's head to make sure they didn't fuck this up)

So, fun fact about me, before this trailer, I have never heard Jack Black's voice. I didn't even know who he was until he got cast! Still, I gotta, you can tell he put a lot of effort into Bowser's voice, to make it that perfect mix of villainous so you can see why he's seen as a threat but also cartoony enough to be funny.

Speaking of funny, the scene with the peinguins? Hilarious!

Also, internet, can we bully Nintendo into getting rid of Crisp Rat? That man IS not Mario. We did for Sonic's design, we can do it for this.

Toad was pretty ok, he wasn't a dead ringer, but he also wasn't Crisp Rat.

Also, once again, My Boi Luigi is getting buried under the rug! But, at least there's confirmation they didn't fuck him up so....

Conclusion:

Me: I want to see my little boi

Nintendo: Here he comes!

Me: *slowly lowers the gun from Miyamoto's head* ok..you may live...but i want mORE

71 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

#4

AN ACTUAL TRAILER WITH GAMEPLAY AND NOT JUST A PRANK?!

BIG BOI SEARCHER BOSS!!

NEW CHARACTERS!!

ALLISON!!

PEOPLE BREAKING INTO THE MIRACLE STATION?!

WEAPON UPGRADING?!

EVIL ALICE HAS A GUN?!

MORE LOOKS AT AUDREY!!!

BABY BENDY REAL?!?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

86 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

#3

@knightinink WAIT REALLY? /GEN?

Whelp, time to ramble

TW for implied torture

Instead of trying to gas her, the Keepers decided to lock Audrey up with the rest of the Cyclebreakers

The barrier curtains that cover the cells? Outta here! Audrey interacting with Henry and Sammy (and Norman, he's there too) more then in-game!

During this stint in prison, Audrey sees one of the communication-radio thingies that Allison talked to her on nearby and goes for it while her cellmates cause a distraction!

She speaks into it only to hear instead...Porter?!

He was in the nearby area of one and heard her voice coming out of it and decided to strike up a conversation!

Obviously, she's like, "h e l p m e" and Porter, while kinda not getting the fact that her life's in danger, promises to come save her!

Audrey gives him instructions to find a woman with a sword named Alice and that he has to find a way to take out the power, because his powers would be canceled out.

But then the Keepers come and take Audrey away!

And they uh...let's just say that her punishment was exactly what Bendy was trying to prevent

And that everyone in the prison heard her screams.

And there was a certain someone with incredible hearing far away from the prison who heard her.

A n y w a y s, the next day, there's a power outage! So Audrey, Sammy, Henry and Norman take this opportunity to escape! (With Henry carrying Norman's head)

During the chaos they manage to unite with Porter, Allison, and Tom (the latter two have to be told that Sammy is an ally, so don't curbstomp him please-)

But then the Keepers corner them, and when it seems like they're dead just when they had a chance, the Ink Demon comes and takes advantage of the lack of power to f*ck em up!

While the others want to use Bendy's rampage as cover to escape, Henry, Audrey and Sammy aren't so inclined.

For Sammy, it's relatively simple; he can't abandon his lord! Not at his grand revival! What kind of prophet would he be?

For Audrey, she's having an internal debate. On one hand, she knows the Ink Demon could kill her, if stories from her cellmates are true and he had. On the other hand, he came here, even after what had happened to him here.

(Wilson spilled what he did to Bendy when he came by in a attempt to get Audrey's trust. It Did Not Work)

He wouldn't have done that just for no reason, and the reason that a part of her wanted to believe that it was to help her. (That part of you is right Audrey~)

Henry's having a similar debate, with the knowledge of the Cycle and the fact that's Bendy's one of Joey's pawns too.

The party's left in a stalemate until Porter just straight up yells to Bendy, "Hey silly! We're leaving soon! You don't wanna be left behind!"

And Bendy? He actually listens and heads towards the group

So now we have Allison and Tom trying to run away from Bendy but also trying not to leave Henry, Audrey, and Porter behind, Bendy in his massive Ink Demon self running behind him, Porter quick teleporting and having the time of his life, Sammy frantically screaming about Bendy, Norman screeching into Allison's ears, and Audrey and Henry just trying to keep up and wondering "how did my life get to this point"

It all comes to a climax when they're almost out of the prison when the power comes back on! And the Keepers found them

Bendy's shrinking into Benders and the Keepers are making a move on him and that's when Audrey makes her choice...

...by scooping him up in his arms and yelling at everyone to keep running

A long and heavy chase ensues, until the group manages to hide and shake them off

See the full post

115 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

#2

Thinks about ghosts as a recurring motif in BATDR. In the literal sense with Carly, the Phantoms of the Machine, Memory! Joey, etc. But also thinks about ghosts in a figurative sense. Joey haunting the studio even after dying, but not being the real Joey, just haunted by the monster the man was. Henry being created solely for Joey to haunt and torture. Audrey being haunted by Joey's legacy and not even remembering it. Alice being haunted and tormented over a false standard of perfection. Allison being haunted by Alice and what could have been. Bendy being haunted over never being good enough for Joey and being tortured and forced into what everyone else wants him to be until he meets Audrey.

god. this game heard the saying "there's more than one way to be haunted" and fucking ran with it huh

185 notes - Posted November 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

do i understand that since hunter is one of many clones of a dead guy from the 1600s him being transmasc most likely won't be canon?: yes

do i subscribe to the headcanon regardless?: also yes

289 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[fullofsunsetwhispers]

#he loves his little protege. that's why he entered the playful mode#i bet he chose that kind of a showdown so the others couldn't hear him teasing Omi bc they would find out sth is going on

Wow, it hadn't even occurred to me that the others couldn't see how much Chase was smiling and clearly having fun with the showdown from their vantage point way on the ground. For a spur-of-the-moment plan to help Omi hide their little temporary alliance, Chase sure thought it through well.

Oh, thank you for your input! It really means much to me that someone draws conclusions from my tags!

Yup, Chase sure thought it through well. After all, he had a lot of time spent plotting revenge on Spicer, meditating, and sleeping in the Sphere of Yun.

What also never fails to amaze me is the level of trust Chase puts in Omi. It wasn't said out loud, but the moment jack trapped him, Chase was 99% sure Omi would save him. Given that, he's a pretty intelligent evil mastermind - he knew Omi would rather choose him as a potential big-bad than Jack due to the fact Chase is more subtle in his evil plans while Jack is more prone to conquering and taking advantage of the newly acquired powers to the point he overuses them and eventually everything backfires at him. Welp, it backfired so badly that Jack and Cyclops were defeated, right?

Another factor that made Chase so certain Omi would free him is his belief that some force is drawing Omi closer and closer to him (the darkness is stronger in you little one yada yada). As a result, we have an over-confident Chase who thinks Omi's loyalty to him exceeds their respectful alignments. And well, the end of the episode kinda proves he was right.

Chase got everything he wanted - freedom, small revenge on Spicer, some quality time with Omi, and even a 'thank you' whispered by his little protege. Omi's decisions and behavior, according to Chase, only confirmed Omi is meant to be by his side, (given that he rescued him and even sort of lied to his friends, which is a big plus in Chase's books).

[rynzii-419]

OKAY time to talk about Pogtopia Wilbur because everyone should talk about him more

Disclaimer: c!wilbur is a bad person and his mental state is not an excuse for his actions but he is definitely not pure evil, so thats my point here basically

I’m gonna start this one off the same as my last one: Wilbur was never manipulative in Pogtopia. Honestly, I think the fandom has been overusing that word. The argument is supposed to be that Wilbur was attempting to manipulate Tommy into thinking that they were alone and were the bad guys, but my friends I hate to tell you this but that’s not manipulation, that’s a mental spiral and delusions. If Wilbur thought that everyone was on their side, this would be manipulation, but he really believed that they were all against them. From what he saw, his Lmanburg, the country that he bled and died for, that he cried every night over, was flourishing without him, and that made him believe that everyone was happy that him and Tommy were banished and in suffering. So yeah, definitely not manipulation.

NOW, about the whole idea that he didn’t care if anyone died. Yet again, wrong. He talked a lot of big game leading up to the Red Festival, a lot of “i dont care if anyone dies” and that he didn’t care about Niki. But if you look at his actions, you’ll see his words don’t line up with that idea. He made a deal with Tubbo that he would only blow it up if Tubbo gave the signal, giving Wilbur an easy way out. Plus, if you watch from his perspective as they watch Tubbo get executed, you’ll see he is worried about Tubbo and is completely shocked when Techno actually kills him. Yes, he starts frantically searching for the button with the intent to blow it all up, but he immediately drops his search once he hears that Niki might be in danger. I mean, he very well could have died right there. They were already out to kill him and then he put himself right out there on a silver platter? Sure Wilbur sure you don’t care about Niki /s. The very next day, he changes his story. We see that in the first ever button room scene with Tommy and Quackity. He says that this is the perfect time to do it because the only people that will be caught in the crossfire is him and Schlatt, and those are the only people he really wants gone. The only thing that stops him is Tommy telling him that if he does this right now, he wouldn’t just hurt himself but Tommy and Quackity too. So yeah, he can talk all he wants about killing everyone, but in the end he can’t do it.

Now, November 16. Oh boy this one hurt me so bad. I can’t take anything from this stream as pure evil. I just can’t. He was at the edge of his spiral. He was broken, and quite honestly he wanted his dad to be proud (i mean thats pretty canon I’d say). He thought that no matter what, even if they win, L’manburg, the country he made, is gone. And honestly, he was kind of right. If you look at New L’manburg, it was never going to be the haven that L’manburg was. That was gone, and that knowledge broke Wilbur. Was he right to blow it up? Absolutely not. But does that change how we should look at this? YES it should. Also, i think its kinda funny but everyone always says he blew up L’manburg and killed everyone but there were zero casualties that day other than him and Schlatt. I mean we can talk about how he killed Jack Manifold but i dont like that one much because at the time that he killed him, it wasn’t meant to be canon. But other than that he never had any canon kills, but everyone talks like he killed everyone there. I dunno, just something that bugs me sometimes. Also I don’t think this is acknowledged enough but his death was in fact an assisted suicide. That’s how far he was gone. That just feels really important to me.

So um yeah I think thats all, next up maybe i talk about L’manburg arc and how everyone who says that he’s always been evil is just very wrong. Also this is all /nm, its a minecraft roleplay at the end of the day, its just so fun for me to talk about

[save-the-spiral]

the dsmp wiz school headcanons hand em over

These are all as the CHARACTERS and not the streamers, because it’d be ridiculous for me to indicate that with ‘c!’ in front of every usage of a name, but these are based on the characters and their actions, which are far different from a bunch of irl nerds who roleplay minecraft, kay? I put SOME thought into this but feel free to disagree, because i haven’t watched every single streamer that would be insane. also thanks to the anon who also requested this!!! I said i wasn’t gonna post much more on this blog but! dsmp! dsmp!!!

Techno is myth with storm secondary. THE DRAMA !!! THE SHOWMANSHIP!!! The call backs to ANCIENT GREEK MYTH, HELLO? Some may say he’s death or fire because they’re wrong. The storm too, because uh, hey, summoning large dangerous creatures?? hello? also the accuracy counts because some of his moves could end up doing nothing or ENDING everything. Love this guy.

Tommy is life with fire secondary. He’s Wholesome. But also god bless this kid is annoying and I adore it. He’s so passionate and compassionate and will burn down things for the sake of it!!!

Tubbo is death with storm secondary. He’s chaotic and will Murder.

Phil is death. he’s the angel of death. But also i’d say star as a secondary, because of the star school’s focus on the self, and his usual solo player experience. And some of his in character actions are like. iffy and kinda selfish. bruh.

Ranboo is balance with shadow secondary. Said shadow is primarily because, uh, enderwalking. but BALANCE, hi yes the peacekeeper role he has put upon himself, his attachment to choosing people over sides and trying to avoid conflict?? yeah.

Wilbur is fire with shadow secondary. Passionate, charismatic, but putting everything into one idea, one part of himself, until he is unbalanced and things come back to bite him.

Ghostbur is life, like tommy :(

Eret is balance. this monarch is trying their best to be fair but everyone’s still hanging onto her betrayal because it was the First big betrayal and hurt the most.

Jack is fire with balance secondary!! He crawled his way out of hell! he’s angry and has his own right to be angry! He’s trying to bring balance and peace in his own way, even if yeah it involves a bit of murder.

Puffy is ice. She’s protective and trying her hardest, taking every burden onto herself as a father and as a knight, but things don’t work out that way no matter how much someone cares.

Hannah is life with a sun secondary!! she’s some kind of nymph or dryad and is so nice that she apologizes while stabbing someone in the back and trying to kill them. iconic.

Sam is balance. he’s too fair, following rules before considering people’s lives or well being.

Bad is shadow with a balance secondary, trying in vain to keep everything from getting out of hand, to save people beyond saving including himself.

Antfrost is. listen i guess he’s death? he literally has no character and I love that. go girl give us nothing !!

Punz is death with fire secondary!! mercenary pog!!! yeah i know he’s like evil now but he’s cool. and mostly playing Valorant these days lmao.

Purpled is death with a storm secondary!!! go mercenary boy!!

Ponk is life with balance secondary. He was a doctor, and is still caring for something in his own way, putting it above everything else, even if said thing is a force that demands blood.

Skeppy is shadow with a moon secondary, a trickster with shifting faces and personas, your best friend one moment and throwing everything back in your face the next, even if it’s not truly his fault.

Dream is balance with shadow secondary. talking so much about peace or unity but we ALL know he’s a manipulative bastard !!!

George is sun with myth secondary. sleepy man with weird dreams.

Sapnap is fire with a myth secondary. He’s trying so hard to protect things but he can’t when all he knows is how to fight and kill.

Karl is shadow. his powers, whether his wants them or not, have consequences.

Quackity is storm with fire secondary. imaginative, powerful, excitable and fun. Once he turns on people he becomes a far greater enemy than anyone ever expected, and vengeance is a specialty, but he will do anything necessary to achieve his goals.

Niki is balance with fire secondary, because while arson is pog, revenge took precedent for far too long.

Fundy is moon with myth secondary, a shapeshifting tragedy with prophetic dreams.

Foolish is myth with death secondary, a demigod who once was a Totem of Death and the world seems set on reminding him of that damning fact.

[alfredosauce50]

Ghost of jealousy [Possessive! America x reader]

Wordcount: 5,545 Synopsis: Alfred gets upset when he finds you hanging around Mathias during his Halloween party. You tell him he’s your friend, but everything escalates into an argument, so he takes it outside to his car. He regrets everything he’s done, but you refuse to talk to him while he drives off to find some lodging for the night—an old inn. While you avoid him by staying in a separate room, it becomes apparent there’s something very off about this place. Something otherworldly. Will he make it up to you by saving you before something terrible happens? 

(I was inspired by this song by Michael Jackson, “Ghosts”) The reader is referred to as she/her.

It didn’t bother you that Alfred always disappeared during his parties. He was the host, after all, and you were merely another attendee, boyfriend or not. There were guests to interact with, excitement to arouse, and the general gist of event-running. So while he was off doing his business, you loitered around in the kitchen with one of your friends. You were dressed as a mermaid, with a seashell bra and all, while Mathias was in his pirate get-up.

Here away from the incessant pounding of Halloween classics and chatter, you could actually hear him talk. "I think it’s cute that we’re matching! Are you sure you didn’t wear this on purpose just so we could look like a couple?" He grinned, earning a small gasp from you.

"Hey! It’s not my problem you wear the same thing every year, Mathias. I—on the other hand, change it up." You gloated a little at that, giving his hip a light bump. He had been sipping a cup of punch, but spilled some as a result. "Ah! Jeez.” Because it was so dark, with only jack-o-lanterns and fairy lights to illuminate the house, you never even realized.

"What’s wrong?”

"Why don’t you smell my coat to find out?” He hummed mischievously. Cupping a hand around your head, he pulled you in and pressed your face against a mysterious wet patch.

"Ew! What was that?!" You pulled away and rubbed your cheek as he exploded into a fit of laughter.

"... Juice?"

"That’s right, min prinsesse. And it’s all your fault." Leaning in with his hands on his hips, he tapped your nose. A dash of guilt was present in your eyes, so he quickly added this. "Don’t look so stressed, (F/N)! I always forgive what you do to me. Mostly. This time, if you wanna make up for it, you’ll have to go to our after-party for once!"

You blinked. "After-party? You mean with just you and Lukas and everyone?" He nodded excitedly. The question was innocent enough, but really, you had another concern in the back of your mind. Every year, you and Alfred would spend a night together after the festivities. You could only imagine how upset he’d get if that didn’t happen. He always valued the time together with you, even to the point of being a little excessive. "Mm... I don’t know. Alfred and I usually do something afterward. I’ll ask him."

His wide grin faltered a touch. Alfred this, Alfred that. Mathias couldn’t exactly say he was jealous—though he’d joke about it, a lot—but wasn’t he a little controlling sometimes? "Mm, mm. Not good enough. I won’t take no for an answer!" Scooping you up in a bridal style carry, you let out a small yelp and reached out for his neck to stabilize yourself. "Let the King of Scandinavia save you from the evil clutches of American capitalism!"

"Mathias, you idiot!" You hissed through a flustered expression, but you couldn’t deny you were enjoying yourself. While he laughed away, bouncing you in his arms, you bonked him on the head numerous times. "Put. Me. Down!"

"Ow. Ah! Okay, okay, stop hitting me!" The Dane was as big of a goofball as your boyfriend, but just less serious most of the time. That was right. As your relationship with Alfred progressed, he was less easy-going than he initially seemed. More stubborn. Argumentative. And you never imagined how soon you would see this side of him.

"What’s this about saving (F/N) from the evil clutches of American capitalism?"

The chorus of you and Mathias’s laughter came to an abrupt end. Uh oh. Turning to the voice, you found yourself staring at none other than your boyfriend, dressed in a long orange coat with a Jason Vorhee's mask on the side of his head. And his arms were crossed with an unamused expression. Only then did you feel yourself get set down to the floor. Great. "Alfred, hey! We were just talking about his after-party. You know, the one where they have a lego-building contest?"

"Mhm. Sounds fun. But we’re doing something even better." Reaching out to your hand, he pulled you away from your friend, much to your displeasure. Mathias didn’t look all too happy either. Alfred then managed a small smile, but it was a little strained. "So c’mon, babe. Most of the party’s events are ending, anyway. Let’s go to my car." He squeezed you in his grip and turned to leave, all with you in tow.

But you weren’t having it. Couldn’t he at least let you explain yourself a little better, considering how upset he seemed already? You stopped, the action pulling on his arm so he would too. "Wait, Al. He asked if I wanted to go, and I kinda want to. Just this one time, please? Lukas, Berwald, Tino, and Emil are gonna be there too—" The fact that you were listing all these names only made it blatantly obvious who was in right, and who was in the wrong.

All you were asking for was some time with your friends. But he played the jealous boyfriend role all too well.

He turned to you with a frown. It was annoying enough to see Mathias carrying you like that. But going to a sleepover with him? He couldn’t be any less enthusiastic. "No, (F/N). Halloween is our thing. We’re supposed to spend the night together like we always do." Reaching out to your cheek, he caressed it gently. "You can hang out with them any other day of the year. Just not today."

Unlike other times, you didn’t give in. He already showed up with an attitude, so sweet-talking wasn’t going to cut it. Especially when you felt Mathias’s hand on your shoulder. The thought that he was behind you and trying to calm you down only egged you on to stand your ground. "Any other day? You’d have to exclude Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Year’s, and St. Patty’s as well. I never get to celebrate them with my friends, either, so can’t you let me go this one time?"

The room fell silent. Even with the Dane’s friends present, nobody spoke a word. And nobody had to because they all shared one thought.

Alfred was being way too controlling.

Almost as if he could read their minds, he felt himself crumble under their scrutiny. "I’m not talking about this here with you." Without another word, he pulled you out of the house against your will.

"And why not? Is it because Mathias is here?" You retorted, feeling bile rise in your throat.

Once you and he disappeared out the door, Lukas made a brief comment.

"... He really has to stop doing that." 

“Yep. Man, I wish he’d just step on a lego." The blonde heaved out a sigh. 

"Fair enough."

Once Alfred managed to get you outside his car, he turned to you to finally give you an answer. "And what if it is because he’s there, (F/N)?" He exasperated, already feeling his tongue start slipping now that he was alone with you. And his words only held more impact against the deafening silence of the night. "The reason why I don’t want you hanging out with them on special occasions is cuz’ he’s in the group.”

“Why? Do you hate him or something? But that’s got nothing to do with me!" You ripped your hand from his grip to see his eyes widen with shock. This was the first time you ever lashed out, so he could already feel the inklings of regret well in his chest. He should’ve just shut his trap and let you go.

But something told him he would’ve never let that happen.

"They’re my friends, Alfred! You can’t expect me to pass on every invite they give me just because you don’t like someone!"

He dug his hands through his sandy locks of hair stressfully. 

"That’s the thing! Mathias obviously doesn’t just wanna be friends with you! He likes you, I can tell!" He yelled. 

The cat was finally out of the bag now. What had been plaguing his mind for months was this—competition. And he hoped that admitting it would somehow get you to understand his behavior, no matter how uncalled for it had been.

But you didn’t. You refused to.

Your jaw dropped, but not out of surprise. Instead, it was pure disappointment. "Even if he did, are you saying you don’t trust me with him?" You scoffed, folding your arms at him.

At this point, Alfred knew how bad he fucked up.

"No, that’s not what I—" His brows knitted together, and his cerulean blue eyes welled with moisture. "I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I just..." But it was.

Wasn’t it?

Otherwise, why else was he so possessive of you?

"It’s exactly what you meant. If it wasn’t, you’d be defending yourself by now." A small smile curled up at your lips, and it was from anything but mirth. It was your defense mechanism to keep the waterworks at bay, but even that had failed you. The tears finally came spilling over the rim, streaming down your face as he watched on with guilt.

"Even if you hate him, he’s not what you think he is. It wouldn’t matter if he loved me. He wouldn’t do anything because he respects me." Reaching up to your eyes, you rubbed them, but the effort was in vain as you let out a sob. "If you’re so quick to doubt me, then maybe..." You struggled to string together the words as you continued to cry. "Maybe we shouldn’t..."

Maybe we shouldn’t be together anymore. 

Alfred froze. Anything but that. And yet, you had all the right in the world to think of ending things. But his heart couldn’t take it.

"No, no, no... Don’t you finish that sentence..." You would probably hate him after this, but kissing you was what he first thought of. The connection between his and your lips managed to silence you, and the close proximity let you feel the waves of heat radiating from his face. And he continued to kiss you, gently, for as long as you let him until you decided to shove him away.

"Don’t." You whispered faintly, albeit firmly. Leaving his side to get into the passenger seat of his car, you buckled yourself up and turned to the window.

He breathed out a sigh, but joined you in the driver’s seat. Facing you with remorse so deep, it made his eyes droop. "You know I love you, right?"

You were still crying, and you never spared him so little as a single glance.

He royally screwed up, for sure. 

The engine purred to life. Now, to find a place to stay for the night. Hopefully, he could make up with you before lights out. But his gut told him it wouldn’t be so simple. The car began to move, crushing sticks and leaves under the wheels as he drove on a dirt path deep in the woods. He picked this cabin for the ominous ambiance, but he was beginning to regret his choices. The same could be said for everything he did tonight, hell, the same could be said for how he acted all these months.

He was the jealous, insecure, shitty boyfriend.

And the whole time, he never realized how kind you were to put up with him.

He wanted to tell you he trusted you. To pull you into his arms and apologize a million times. But what could he say to convince you when he’d come off as a liar? Even he didn’t know if he could be honest. Why did Mathias’s presence get him to feel like this, anyway? He boiled it down to how similar he was to him. Like you always said, he and Mathias were two of the same person. Loud, fun, and obnoxious sweethearts. So of course he started comparing himself to him.

And he was doing it right now. He couldn’t imagine Mathias ever having these kinds of problems if he dated you. Fuck. Aside from self-loathing and bitter regret, he was beginning to feel the beginnings of ugly jealousy all over again.

Are you serious right now, Alfred? He thought. 

Narrowing his eyes on the road that seemed to disappear, he slowed to a stop. Was it just him losing concentration over these thoughts, or did he really lose his way? Perhaps. But at least he found something. He peered around his windshield to see a few rooftops resembling an old, vintage villa in the distance. Could that possibly be a motel?

He sped up and drove closer and closer until he reached a clearing. Climbing out of his car with you trailing close behind, he made his way to the entrance of the establishment. There was an open lawn in front of the building, and in one of the gardens stood a wooden sign with "The Aura Inn" inscribed into it. Neither of you thought much of it, let alone read the little sub-paragraph of text below it.

"Let’s go." Looking at you over his shoulder, he held out a hand for you to take. You just brushed past him and kept walking. Right. He forgot for a second that you were mad at him.

The only thing that concerned you was having somewhere to stay the night, so the reception was the first stop. Making up with him could come later.

Upon arriving, you were greeted by nothing but an empty room. There was no furniture besides a wooden counter, and even then, it was lacking quite a few amenities. There was no receptionist here either, and yet, the lights were on. That could only mean one thing. Somebody was here, just not in a way you liked. But you were just overthinking, weren’t you? Needless to say, this inn was starting to feel a little off to you.

Gripping the scales of your mermaid dress, you turned to Alfred with a nervous glance. Immediately, he responded with a reassuring smile.

"You okay, babe?"

Hold on. Did he just call you babe? Your mood went sour when you felt yourself nearly give in to him. What he did couldn’t be forgiven so easily, otherwise, how could he take your feelings seriously? So you forced yourself to lie.

"Yes." You murmured. "I’m perfectly fine."

He knew you were lying, but he couldn’t blame you.

"Okay. I’ll just... Get us a room. I think this is an Airbnb." He pulled out his phone.

The thought of sleeping in the same bed as him irked you, to say the least. After the stunt he pulled today, which effectively stopped you from going to Mathias’s after-party, you needed some space. That was right. How come after all these years, you’ve never been to one of his infamous after-parties? Even though you were a close friend of his? It was simple. Because Alfred never let you go. God, thinking about it just made you relive the anger all over again. 

So before he finished the booking, you reached out for his arm.

"Wait. I don’t want to be in the same room as you."

He paused, and you saw sadness flash in his eyes. And once again, you found yourself tempted to cave. But you didn’t. You couldn’t.

"... Oh. Sure." Alfred finished with the online forms and walked you to your room. The halls were long, winding, and dimly-lit. You would’ve thanked him for accompanying you in this unsettling place, but you couldn’t bring yourself to. Once you managed to open the door, which wasn’t locked, he gave you a reluctant goodbye. Resting his arms against the doorframe, he gazed down at you with a bittersweet smile. "Night, babe. I’ll see you in the morning—"

The door slammed in his face and he cringed.

"... Love you too." He murmured, clenching his fists against the door. This was by far the worst argument he’s ever had with you, and it was all his fault.

Pressing your back against the door, you felt blood rush up to your face after hearing what he said. He nearly had you. But you managed to seal yourself away in the safety of your room. It hurt to push him away, but you had to. He couldn’t keep having his way. Alfred needed to accept the consequences of his actions, and you needed to be strong enough for that to happen. 

And plus, he needed to get used to not having you around him all the time. But the boy was excessively clingy, and you let this carry on for far too long. 

Unpacking your things on the bed, you got your things ready for a shower. As you melted into the hot embrace of the water, your concerns of this inn melted away too. It was just Halloween jitters, wasn’t it? Turning off the faucet, you dried yourself off with a towel before getting dressed. When you exited the bathroom, your room was plunged into almost pitch-black darkness. But you never turned off the lights.

Perhaps this was an energy-saving function. 

Well, it saved you from the effort of going to the light switch, anyhow. 

Before you moved from your spot, you shuddered at the feeling of a cold draft blowing against your body. Looking over to the source, you were shocked to see that the door was wide open, letting the dim halls stare back at you. 

There was probably a little wind tonight, and somehow, you didn’t shut the door properly. Making your way to close it again, you made sure you heard a little click. When you did, you didn’t feel any wind from outside at all, not even a gentle breeze. 

Weird. 

Setting your things down on the bedside table, you climbed into bed and tucked yourself in. While you made yourself comfortable, you faced the entirety of the room, which had a small wall-mounted TV, rocking chair, and desk. Of course there was a rocking chair. And you somehow couldn’t tear your gaze away from its faint outline in the dark. 

Then, it began to rock. 

Forwards and backward as if an invisible entity was sitting in it. 

“!” Your blood ran cold and you buried your head underneath the blanket. Something was in the room with you. Unlike before, you couldn’t blame it on the wind because you just closed the door. As you came to terms with that reality, the icy hands of fear gripped around your heart. Your breathing grew ragged and uneven. There was something behind you. Someone behind you. 

You could practically feel their presence creeping towards you. Closer and closer to your bed as the carpet compressed under its footsteps. Your chest constricted when you felt the bed dip under a weight. 

Then, it began to crawl. 

But you were too terrified to scream, let alone move. 

In that moment, you never regretted your decisions this much in your life. And you never wished more for Alfred to be with you.  

Unbeknownst to him as he finished up with his own shower in his room, you were left paralyzed in bed. If he’d known what was happening, he would have run to you as fast as he could. But he didn’t. He only assumed you were busy brooding over him, and maybe even second-guessing your relationship with him. The thought was reasonable, and that upset him to no end. Throwing his towel to a random spot in the room, he fell on his back onto the bed. 

Reaching out to the ceiling to stare at his arm, he sighed. 

“I’m so sorry...” He murmured, lowering his hands to cover his face with them.

If he was lucky, he’d be able to make up with you by the end of tomorrow. But for now, he was burdened with uncertainty. But his attention was quickly diverted to something else. A laugh. Your laugh. Sitting up with visible confusion, he listened in to the muffled sounds of your voice down the hall. 

The walls here were thin, so it didn’t surprise him he could hear you so clearly. 

But what did was what he heard next. Another voice talking, and it belonged to a boy. His heart sank to the pit of his stomach as he registered it as someone he knew. Mathias. Wait a second, what the hell was he doing here? But there was no way he could be, right? Didn’t he have an after-party to be at? The longer he eavesdropped on the conversation, the more obvious it became that it was Mathias. And they were talking about him. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come this year. Again. But you know how Alfred gets.”

“Yeah... Don’t worry about it. This can be our own little after-party. Just as long as he doesn’t find out, you’ll be fine!” 

Wait, what? 

From what he heard, it sounded like you really had moved on. But you never had the decency to tell him, and that was what filled him to the brim with betrayal--it broke his heart. Was this why you wanted to be in a separate room tonight? Sliding himself off the bed, he stormed out the door to find you. His glasses were already fogging up, but he never bothered to clear them as he marched down the empty halls. 

Your voices grew louder and louder, all until he came to a stop outside a room he never booked. That was right. He applied for one with a single bed. He could only imagine what you were doing with Mathias in a room with a double bed. 

The laughing continued behind the door. 

“You know these walls are thin, right?” He began lowly. Swinging open the door, the noises disappeared along with the people inside. The room was completely dark, and when he flicked on the lights, you and Mathias were nowhere in sight. Not a soul was in here. 

“... What the fuck.” He grumbled.

He swore he heard you both giggling away like school children. Did you two hear him coming and hide somewhere? He was skeptical, but he checked around nonetheless. In the wardrobe, then under the bed. There was no sign of either of you. The shower, maybe? Stepping into the bathroom and pulling open the curtains, he was prepared to catch you red-handed. But there was nothing there except for a porcelain white tub.  A defeated sigh fell from his lips. What the hell was going on? Alfred was completely sober, a miracle considering he usually drank at his parties. So he had a terrible feeling he wasn’t just hearing things. That only pointed towards one explanation. 

This inn was totally haunted. 

And whoever, or whatever that haunted it was toying with him.

He swallowed thickly and turned to the mirror, only to jump at what he saw. The reflection revealed a figure standing behind him. 

It was Mathias, except his face was twisted in a sick smile. 

“Holy shit--!” Alfred paled as he stared face to face with the entity. As he lost himself in its soulless, blue eyes, he was overcome with dread, almost as if the spirit was forcing fear into him. Reminding him of his failures, insecurities, and the uncertainty of his relationship. All of his faults flashed in his mind again and again so incessantly, he thought he would break down on the spot. 

Where is (F/N)? 

She doesn’t want you anymore. 

You should just give up. 

And the deeper in he spiraled into these self-destructive thoughts, the wider the entity smiled, its lips stretching to impossible lengths it became grotesque. Darting his wide eyes around the reflection in his bout of panic, he saw its hand reach out to his shoulder in the mirror. He didn’t know how he managed to do this, but he spun around quickly to defend himself. And there was nobody there.

In his brief moment of disorientation, the spirit shot out two arms, breaking the barrier of the glass. Tightening its hands around his neck, Alfred was pulled back against the mirror and choked. “Gh--!” His airway was completely constricted by the iron grip, and he was forced to struggle a few inches above the ground. 

Digging his fingernails into the hands, he never felt them loosen. 

So he did the unthinkable--he started to smash his fist against the mirror. It hurt like hell and left his knuckles bruised and raw, but the thought of you in danger kept him going. That was right. There was no saying if you weren’t being choked, attacked, or worst. Punching the glass again and again, it finally shattered, and the grip around his neck loosened. 

The mirror was reduced to shards and fell into the sink.

Falling to the ground in a loud thump, he stood up while coughing violently. 

The arms disappeared, and so did the entity. 

And Alfred had a feeling it had to do with the mirror it was in. 

Leaving the bathroom with heavy breaths, he ran back to his room and picked up his chainsaw. Halloween had the perks of carrying around dangerous tools, and he was never this glad that he took it with him instead of leaving it in his car unattended. Too bad he was out of costume, though. But a white tank and boxers would do. Holding it above his chest, he revved his chainsaw and ran out the door. 

It was time to fuck shit up. 

You were still stuck in bed, but the spirit managed to remove your blanket. A soft whimper fell from your lips as your only form of protection was stripped away. If you thought you were terrified, then you would prove yourself wrong with a whole new level of fear as two arms wrapped around your neck from behind. No way. Was it going to choke you? One of its legs was thrown over yours, so you were completely enveloped by its limbs. 

As you trembled away in the dark, you let out a soft cry when you felt its warm breath tickle your ear. 

“I missed you. Why didn’t you wanna stay in a room with me?” It cooed, the voice sending shivers down your spine. It sounded strangely similar to Alfred’s, and what he said was exactly what he would’ve said too, except it wasn’t him. You never saw him come in, and the last time you checked, he wasn’t invisible. 

“... W-What... What are you?” You stammered, feeling a hand glide down your bare thigh. “Stop--” 

“I’m his desire, sweetheart.” It began in a low and alluring voice. “Every feeling in the Aura inn festers into a semi-physical form. That’s why I’m here right now. Because he wants you.” 

You screwed your eyes shut. Just what the hell kind of place was this inn? A magical hut that personified emotions? “... Can you please let me go? I don’t like the way how you’re... Hugging me.” You pleaded, only to feel the entity tighten itself around you. 

“But I don’t want to. He doesn’t want to.” It responded with a hum. “I reflect everything he wants. And currently, he wants to see you more than anything. Especially when he’s dealing with jealousy... And having a hard time at that.” 

“Jealousy?” It wasn’t shocking, per se, but he had you curious. If desire festered into a sultry form of someone and hugged their object of affections, what did jealousy turn into?  “... I knew he was jealous of Mathias. But that’s not the problem here. We’ll sort it out later. If you’re desire, then what’s jealousy like?” 

It let out a deep, foreboding laugh. “Depends. If it’s only a little bit of envy, he’ll start hearing things that hit his nerves. Nothing but... Harmless fun.” You felt yourself get rolled onto your back, and you were caught off guard by what loomed over you. It was Alfred himself, or more accurately put, his personified desire, but this time, you could see him. “But if his jealousy gets mixed in with insecurity, that’s when things get pretty ugly...” 

You furrowed your brows with concern. “Ugly? How so? Is he gonna be okay?” 

It craned his head from side to side. “Who knows.” 

“But I’ll tell you a few things that I do know. Jealousy tends to be pretty sneaky. It’ll snoop around in mirrors and attack him.” You tensed up all over. “So Alfred will have to smash every mirror in the inn to get it to come out. And when it does, all he needs to do is be with you to send it away.”

Loud chainsaw noises were heard down the halls, silencing both you and the entity. Following that was the shattering of glass. 

“... Hm. Looks like he already figured it out.” 

Joy filled you to the brim and you smiled wide. “He really did! I’m so glad!” Reaching out to hug the entity around its chest, you pulled away and slid yourself off the bed. 

“Thank you, um, Alfred’s desire! I’m gonna go find him now!” 

He laid on his side and watched you run off. “You can just call me Alfred.” 

“Okay, Alfred!” 

While you exited the room to stand in the halls, you found yourself staring at a number of doors that were wide open, and the lights on inside. You assumed those were the rooms he already cleared, which meant he still had quite a bit to do. But he was fast. Appearing out of one room, he continued tearing down door after door to smash every single mirror and window in the inn. And soon, he managed to reduce every piece of glass present into shards. 

Once the chainsaw revs came to a stop, you called out his name. 

“Alfred!” 

He jerked up at the sound, then glanced around. “(F/N)!?” While he was on the first floor in the courtyard, you were on the second in the mezzanine, so he had to glance up to see you. “Oh God, I was so worried! Are you okay?” He shouted. 

“Yes!” You called back. “This place is... Super haunted. Let’s get out of here!”

“You called it. I nearly got murdered!” 

Running down the stairs to meet with him, you practically jumped onto him after he dropped his chainsaw to the ground. Embracing you with his strong arms, he pressed kiss after kiss all over your face. While he did, you spotted another figure standing by the stairs. Was that Mathias? You couldn’t take a better look at him before he disappeared into thin air. “Oh my fucking god. I missed you so much.” He exasperated, setting you down on your feet. “You won’t believe what happened. I’ll explain everything in the car.”

As he led you out of the Godforsaken inn, he gripped you tight with his hand. And you squeezed right back. “Let me guess. You were attacked by something in the mirror so you shattered every single one here. I know.” 

At this point, you and him had arrived outside his car.

Turning to you with shock, he placed his hands on his hips. 

“And how the hell did you know? I thought it was original enough that you wouldn’t be able to guess!” He exclaimed, much to your amusement. 

“Mm... Not really. With how many horror movies you’ve watched, I wouldn’t put it past you to come up with a solution like that.” Giving him an affectionate pinch on the cheek, he rubbed the spot with a light pout. You considered telling him the truth, but you already wanted to forget tonight. If he didn’t know about it, then moving on yourself would be so much easier. 

“Now, I think you have some apologizing to do.” 

He softened his gaze. “Yeah... I really do. Sorry for everything. Sorry for being a dick. And not just... For today.” Pulling you into another hug, he nestled his chin into your shoulder. God, did it feel good to have you in his arms again. “I’m gonna be real. I never hated Mathias. He’s my friend. But seeing him with you gets me... Really jealous. And it’s not cuz’ I don’t trust you, it’s because I’m...” His cheeks grew rosy. “I don’t know. I just feel...”

You knew he’d get stuck at this part, so you helped him. 

“Because you feel insecure?” 

“... Yeah.” 

“You idiot...” A soft, content sigh was heard from your end. “It doesn’t matter how similar you are to him. You don’t have to try to make any changes or keep him away from me for me to choose you.” 

His heart fluttered as he released you with a sheepish smile. 

“I really needed to hear that. So, thanks.” Alfred murmured, reaching out to cup your cheek. “Kinda lame of me to put you through that. I should’ve just talked it out with you.” 

“Yeah, you dumbass.” You grumbled, but it was on an affectionate note. 

“So, do you think we’ll make it in time to the party for me to carpool with Mathias back to his place? I wanna see what they’re building this year!”

He frowned, but his expression was short-lived as a smile began creeping onto his lips. “Are you serious right now?” 

“I’m kidding!” 

🎶 Tell me, are you the ghost of jealousy?

This is a request. Thank you for requesting.

[justalads]

this is an essay post that was written in response to an in-depth discussion i was having with another person on a lot of topics. that’s why it’s written like it’s addressing someone. because of that, it is a little confusing on its own (because the things in quotes are responding to things the other person said) but me and the person who runs this blog thought it would be better to make this a separate post, so that people who want to see this response can see it without it being attached to the person i was having the discussion with. we spoke to the person and they said that would be fine. with that being said, this is a very long post. if anyone finds parts of it useful, it will have served its original purpose.

so what i mean about it “making sense” that dream became like that is that it kind of does, you know? i’m saying that the desires were always there. not that he was always willing to go so far for them, or even that they were as strong as they ended up being! after all, there’s a difference between declaring war to reclaim land and people, and making a vault in order to take things that were important to people.

what he always did possess is a sort of “ownership” of the server. and this was probably founded from the fact that it was, you know, his server. he wanted l’manburg back because he didn’t like that people came onto his server and then said he couldn’t have something. and that’s one of his primary points in his conversation with skeppy: the analogy he uses of someone coming into his house and saying he can’t have a table.

and later, in the vault, this is the reason he gives for wanting control: that it is his server. he tells tommy it isn’t supposed to be fair, it doesn’t need to be fair, because fairness implies equality, and he doesn’t see everyone else as having equal claim to the server. so that’s what i mean when i say the signs were always there: his statements match upand paint a path through the story. true, you don’t just “become” a bad person. there’s no reason for him to suddenly get all weird and want ultimate control, if he was completely neutral and peaceful in the beginning. this is why his character is decently written!

and since the potential was there in the first place, that’s what gave him the ability to or put him in danger of doing what he did.

so yeah, it’s true that his spiral was not only his fault, because even someone who thinks they own something is not going to just jump to the lengths that he did. he had other experiences, and saw how other people worked, and then was met by pushback from people when he wanted them all to do what he said. because his house analogy is lacking something: he owns the house, but everyone else lives there too.

it may be “his” server in that he pays upkeep fees, but that doesn’t mean he deserves control over everything that happens on it! if your roommate goes “i want this table and you can’t have it”, even if the house belongs to you, it’s kind of weird to go “no you can’t have it, it’s mine”. especially if all the roommate wants the table for is so they can play monopoly or something with their group. and even more so if the roommate will let you play monopoly if you want to (remember the embassy?), and if you can just buy a new table then what’s the point in getting upset over the one?

i just think you put a lot more of the responsibility on other characters. saying that all they did was villainize him and treat him as pure evil and break his boundaries is wrong because one, no, that’s not all they did, it’s exaggerated, and two, he was also doing things to them! it did not come out of nowhere! and clearly, his mindset didn’t come from nothing, so a personal flaw contributed to it! people who are innocent and care too much about others and are then mistreated do not do what dream did, and we know this because there is a character very similar to that: ranboo.

(i could talk about this for a super long time honestly. it’s very interesting how close they are, and since enderwalk ranboo is just ranboo with all his memories and he helped dream... there’s clearly something that happened that he’s forgotten that’s very important.)

hates conflict, tries to mediate things, cares about the people he loves to a fault. and we don’t see him running around and telling people they can’t build nations because it “divides people”! he has also been hurt and betrayed, but he still recognizes his responsibility to respect others and their agency. the difference between dream and ranboo is that one, dream has a spine, and two, dream thinks of the server as his. dream’s belief is one of the driving causes of his actions.

it’s true that nobody deserves to lose half their friends at once. it’s also true that before he declared war, nobody had any actual negative feelings towards him. they made fun of him for saying his side had more women. he made fun of them for having none. it was playful banter. that’s the thing about the hot dog stream: the tone is incredibly light. wilbur soot, known dramatic idiot, decided he was going to go play capitalism on a minecraft server. both tommy and wilbur at that point had been making various stupid attempts to gain ��power”. and none of this was treated seriously, because others were doing the same kinds of things.

you know how many times tommy logged on and got involved in small petty conflicts? pretty much none of them are mentioned in canon again, because at this point, there wasn’t even much of a canon to get involved in. the smp at this point was a place for people to go and do bits. and invoking wilbur’s joke hatred of tommy and those like him seems a little unfair. wilbur’s main bit was calling tommy an annoying child. when wilbur was stealing the blaze rods, it was not an actual attempt to get power because it was not treated as such by anyone, it was treated with the exact seriousness that it deserved: sapnap and tubbo declared themselves the “police”.

what kind of actual control is going to come from taking blaze rods, especially on a server where you can just go get more? and it’s not like theft is really a crime on the server. everyone else chose to play into the bit.

it’s like now, when tommy shows up with a new idea and people who don’t like him start claiming that this is proof that he never learned anything and he was actually bad all along. the church prime thing, l’sandburg, any time he steals something or is rude to jack manifold. because although semi-lore is fun, sometimes people treat it as serious lore when parts of it are not intended to be and then use it to imply things about the characters that don’t line up with canon.

that’s kinda off topic and not really about dream, so i’ll move on

“i’d like to ask you to once again watch the actual stream.”

i mean, yeah. i did watch the stream. i don’t know a lot about george, and i prefaced my thoughts at the start by saying that. obviously attempting to catch up after isn’t as good as knowing the context and plot, (this sounds sarcastic but it is genuine i’m sorry sjhksjs) but i do want to offer this: it’s an opportunity to look at the plot in a different way. you say that you are on dream’s side in this scene, and while having that bias alone isn’t bad, i think it’s a good idea to attempt to see the other side. that’s what i’ve been doing while going back and forth with you; examining my own bias and attempting to look past it, and explain why it’s there.so dream kicks george off the throne. and you say that it’s not bad that dream does it, because george’s monarchy was already a figurehead. you know, i don’t see this as being any better? this means that when dream made george king, he already did it with the fact that george wasn’t really in charge in dream’s mind, meaning that dream was, you know, the ultimate authority. that is a power dynamic. dream has control over who is king of his faction.

when you watch the stream where dream makes george king originally, dream doesn’t really let him know that his power isn’t real. that’s the problem with this situation: the presence of a power dynamic alone is not the issue, it’s the fact that dream was misleading about its presence. dream just tells him “you’re king.” in fact, dream demonstrates more control over eret, by telling them just that they can’t be in charge anymore and george is king now. he tells them to take off their crown, to which they protest because it’s a layer on their skin and it would show their eyes, something they’re uncomfortable with. dream says “i need you to do it. you gotta do it. i mean, i’m not asking you, we have three of us here.”

they physically threaten eret. and by the way, the reason that dream thought eret had “betrayed” the greater smp? eret was attempting to help pogtopia and make things right with the people of l’manburg, something you claim was also dream’s wish during this time (he had switched over to manburg at this point). dream told eret that the king had a duty to remain neutral.

it is only then, when dream tells eret to remain neutral on things, that dream tells eret that the act of being king means nothing. this is where the “what makes you king” quote coms from, by the way. dream has the ultimate control over who is king. but whenever he makes someone king, he doesn’t tell them that. and when dream leaves, eret fully realizes this and admits that dream’s right: they don’t have any power. so what was the point of betraying l’manburg?

if there was no power with being king, why did george accept it? why was there even a king in the first place? the only reason eret agreed to betray l’manburg in the first place was because dream offered them power.

when dream confronts eret about remaining neutral, dream says “my plan is that there’s no manburg, there’s no l’manburg, there’s no pogtopia, there’s just dream smp and there’s dream smp everywhere. and that’s been my plan since the very beginning, i’ve never wavered on that. that’s why i had you betray them, and that’s why i gave you kingship, because i felt like you’d be a good king because you’re neutral.”

ignoring the fact that he’s twisting why he made eret king (they were on the side of l’manburg and he tempted them away), he also claims that his faction only has been his goal since the beginning. this will be important later.

cc!eret confirmed in a twitter thread on their alt that their character was possibly the longest victim of dream’s manipulation.

and finally, watching the stream where dream dethrones george, the thing sticking out to me is how dream is phrasing it. he says that george should step down because people are attacking him, and dream isn’t always going to be able to protect him. and then he says this.

“and i think you’ll just be targeted if you’re the king. and you want to be able to like, get revenge on tommy and stuff, right? so we can work together.”

i kind of wish he didn’t bring up tommy. i kind of wish his main goal at this time wasn’t just going after tommy because he thought tommy was the root of all the problems. and i think this kind of highlights a little bit that when dream built the walls around l’manburg again, it wasn’t just because he was “defending george” or anything, because i don’t think george really cared that much? dream was using the fact that it was george’s house that blew up in order to go after tommy.

after this line, the others all kind of gang up on dream, true. it’s partially for the joke, as evidenced by quackity’s “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!”, but it’s also kind of them being, you know, legitimately angry at his character. and it’s funny that it’s sapnap who leads it. sapnap brings up what dream said, that he doesn’t care about anything except for the disks. dream says that he didn’t mean it, and then george says “then why did you say it?” so dream saying that clearly hurt them, and he can’t just push it off by saying he didn’t mean it once.

and in the end, george doesn’t even agree before dream makes eret king again! george and sapnap are trying to have a conversation with dream about how they feel they’ve been treated, and dream brushes it off with “maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up,” before ultimately ignoring what they’re both saying because in his mind he has a good enough reason and it doesn’t matter what george thinks.

dream is in the act of passing power over to eret, and george says “i’m still king. i’m literally right here.” dream shushes him. dream also implies that the reason george is getting attacked is because he backs up everything dream says, reducing george down to an extension of his own will or calling him a follower. dream accuses sapnap of trying to divide him and george, and sapnap says this: “i’m not dividing anyone, i stand by george. he’s my king but most importantly he’s my friend.” dream replies that george is his friend but not his king.

i just sort of want to show you the other side here. george and sapnap weren’t just running around instigating conflict any more than dream was. and although george didn’t do anything as king, it meant something to him, because it was a symbol of the trust he thought dream had for him. dream saying he was taking it away for his own good meant he didn’t even trust george to protect himself. he was treating him like a child.

and then when george is silent, listening to everyone debate whether he deserves this or not, dream accuses him of only pretending to be sad. it’s true that he was pretending to cry, but i don’t think that warranted dream telling him he’s “acting like a baby” and that he was a bad king.

sapnap and george had a real point, and dream ignored them. he hadn’t addressed the things he had said that hurt them, and so they raised legitimate grievances with him! dream doesn’t treat their concerns as important, and talks down to george in particular.

ignoring the fact that sapnap and george were also hurting is kind of hypocritical. you’re right, “abandonment hurts you, no matter if the people have good reasons for it or not”. dream said the spirit thing before sapnap did any sort of real leaving him. and dream’s reasons were definitely not good.

i have no idea why you got the idea that george is so awful. he was walking around with his head down. the only one also calling him things like manipulative and a drama queen is, well, dream.

basically: (/hj)

george: :(

dream: you are attempting to emotionally manipulate me

butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

anyway

so sapnap, george and quackity felt betrayed there. they left, and went to mexican l’manburg to try and console george. and then dream shoots quackity and kills him, and tries to attack the others as well. it’s worth noting that quackity also had a reason to be upset at dream: dream’s treatment of l’manburg. dream then shows up and calls george a tyrant. dream never listens to what george says during this, he just continues saying what he already said. dream taking the kingship away from george hurt him more than letting him stay would have.

watching this is painful, because it’s making me realize just how much dream doesn’t actually care what his friends think! he says he cares, and he might think he cares, but then he calls them babies and liars and tyrants. his argument with george here reads like something awful. he’s using the excuse of “caring about him” in order to undermine and insult him, and take the moral high ground. dream essentially tells george that he didn’t make george king out of any respect for him, it was just random. he doesn’t treat his friends well during this scene. i don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to get angry.

when quackity, after sitting in silence for the entire conversation, says he disagrees, dream tells him that he’s just dumb. doesn’t wait to hear his reasons, doesn’t value his opinion, because dream is so sure that he’s right and he knows what’s best for the server, and by extension, everyone.

other interesting things: dream brings tommy into it again by saying he’s what causes all the problems on the server. dream tells quackity to think about what tubbo would think about him picking this fight. dream says that george would probably do anything he told him to do. his entire position is “you guys can think whatever you want, but it won’t change anything.” genuinely, tell me how this is them abandoning him? and when they do drift away later, tell me why they don’t have a reason to? dream doesn’t respect them! he takes their friendship for granted!

“would you consider it justified for all of tommy’s friends (even tubbo who he’s been close with for so long) to abandon him just because he’s said basically the same thing about the discs - like three times?”

thank you for bringing up the disk thing. do you really think that tommy and dream acted the same when saying that an item held more worth than their friends?

think about what the disks symbolize. control over tommy. tommy wants them back because they are a sign of dream having power over him! tommy doesn’t want his abuser having power over him! and yeah! it was a messed up thing for him to say to tubbo that the disks were worth more than him, but he apologized! he understood that what he said hurt tubbo, and he tried to rebuild the relationship! tommy took responsibility for what he said, and tried to be better. notice how afterwards, he was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of his friends? notice how in the vault he told dream to take the disks and do whatever he wanted with them, when dream switched from threatening the disks to threatening the life of tubbo?

and what do the disks mean to dream? they mean power over tommy. the disks have no power over dream. they are a tool that he can use to hurt and control tommy. and he never apologized for this, because he wasn’t sorry. sapnap told dream that this hurt him, and all dream said was that he didn’t mean it. who is he lying to, then? tommy or sapnap? it was so important to dream that he had ultimate control over the life of someone else that he almost drove them to take their own life. i’m sorry, but this comparison sucks.

people gave dream a chance. people gave him a lot of chances. the disregard he showed for others is disgusting, especially towards his friends, and even more so towards those who he didn’t like. my problem is that though you repeat that you don’t “blame” others for what they did, you still hold them to more responsibility than you’re willing to hold him to, or at least that’s what it seems like. i’ve been investigating the other side through this whole process. and yeah, there are definitely places where i was wrong. but sometimes i do not understand, and maybe that means i should just give up on trying to understand those places. if other people can see things i can’t, maybe we agree to disagree.

i legitimately cannot see dream being the person who was treated the worst here, but let me know if i’m misrepresenting you.

i’m sorry that i sound angry, and i’m not really upset at you, but the comparison of what dream said and what tommy said set me off.

“no one having respect for him as a person”

people did respect dream, man. he was the leader of his faction. he had a lot of power. his friends trusted him to be a good friend to them. but he didn’t feel like he had an obligation to do that, yeah? and you only get respect if you give it, so they stopped respecting them because he hurt them. he didn’t learn any hard lessons about violence being the only way because he never stopped to consider another way. when faced with a problem, his options were for the problem to go away or he would make it go away: surrender or die.

during the stream where he sets up the walls with sapnap, his message is the same throughout: wipe them out. no mercy. burn their land to the ground, leave no survivors. there’s no love in war. children get hurt in war. this is a warning shot, he says, as he fires into their land. as sapnap burns down tubbo’s house and chat spams “no mercy”. they don’t show mercy because mercy is weak, and they are powerful.

one day i’m gonna write a thing that talks about the greater smp like how people talk about early l’manburg because oh boy

i’d like to see evidence of dream learning that violence is the only way, and only being able to protect himself through fighting. i don’t remember this happening, i remember him generally choosing violence as the first option.

“dream didn’t have an arising god complex.”

a god complex means more than just saying “i’m a god.” there was buildup because that’s how characters work. tommy was also trapped in the prison, and he didn’t suddenly get a god complex at the slightest bit of power, did he? the definition of a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” dream cannot admit when he is wrong. he feels as if he has a right to the control of the server, and that grows into a state of obsession. and when he’s taking tubbo and tommy down into the vault, he mocks them for thinking he was weak or that he didn’t think ahead.

once dream knew he had control over death, the complex reached its peak, and that’s when he actually admits it. characters that antagonize others already possess traits that contribute to their arc.

and hey, i know that cc!dream says his character is blocked off emotionally. i also know that he’s been given a lot of chances to apologize to people, to be sorry, to admit fault, even in small situations. did dream show remorse during exile? did dream sound like he was being “forced” to isolate and control tommy, or did he sound like an abusive parent scolding a kid for something? when dream beat tommy and tubbo and took them down to the vault, did he sound sorry? the thing about subtext is that it has to actually be there, no matter how quiet, at least a little bit. listen to dream arguing with quackity after george was dethroned and tell me he sees himself as anything other than right.

a few one off lines are not enough evidence to wipe out the rest of his character’s development.

he sounds sorry once he is faced with direct consequences, because that is the only time he is held responsible for his actions.

it’s also a weak argument to say that something is happening when, as you said, we don’t see his pov. it is fair to say that i don’t know if it’s not happening, and that’s a good point. cc!dream’s comments about his character being closed off emotionally can mean a lot of things. for instance, they could mean that his character is willing to do this to himself in order to get control. or it could mean something else entirely, i don’t know. basing an entire fact about a character off something we don’t see at all doesn’t tell us anything useful about the character, and i apologize for doing that.

i guess my reason for saying that was that i don’t see evidence of him trying to get better during pogtopia. if we don’t see signs of him being sorry or attempting to treat other people better, why should we assume that he was doing those things?

“yes, and none of c!dream’s “friends” ever did.”

dream’s friends supported him until he abandoned them and disrespected them. his time in the prison is a consequence of his time out of the prison, albeit an unfair one.

“dream didn’t hurt george.”

dream’s disrespect of george is what hurt him. dream didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t attempt to understand what george was feeling, and he didn’t look for a compromise. and yeah, it was beckerson in the vault. he had a space for mars, he just hadn’t collected it yet. so yes, dream did betray sapnap. if you have legitimate evidence of sapnap doing something that made dream actually upset, before the vault, i’d like to see it. (there might be something lol i’m sorry i’m Very Bad on his lore but from what i’ve investigated i didn’t find anything really important.)

i don’t think puffy saying “this person does bad things” is her dismissing their trauma. and the eggpire and her have both hurt each other. puffy isn’t the Trauma Designator of the server. if there’s an instance of her straight up saying that someone doesn’t have trauma then i missed it.

“she’s another one c!dream was attached to and who failed to ever reach out to him”

i don’t see evidence of this? there was the one stream where the relationship was established, but after that he never tried to seek her out. he doesn’t even talk about her. it’s not a failure from her to not reach out to him, if their connection is light at best. i honestly feel like she was more attached to him than he was to her.

“like she’s doing something extra by being a decent person.”

she’s saying he didn’t deserve to see her because he did bad things! she still cares about someone who has done bad things, but she recognizes that those things are bad. she’s saying the punishment for what he’s done should involve not seeing her, personally, and i think she should be able to make that decision? she doesn’t endorse the rest of his punishment, because she doesn’t know what it entails.

she helped him by thinking he was in the right. she helped him by even trying to understand him, when everyone else could not. she gave him the help that she could by being on his side, by being friendly to him, and after she realized he was wrong she could not do that because he was off preparing the vault! and she had other things to worry about! “could have” is useless because it can mean anything! tommy “could have” not burned george’s house down. would it have mattered, when dream already had it out for him? no!

dream took anyone being close to him for granted. he did not give anything back to them once he started going down the path. if he did something bad to them, and they were angry, that was it for him. he did not attempt to fix the bond, like other characters do when they hurt someone they care about.

“i never said anything negative about them other than describing things they did that had a negative effect.”

here’s my main point: we don’t know they had a negative effect.

you criticize the characters for not taking an action that we do not know the implications of. everyone could have been super nice and worried about dream and that could have changed nothing. that’s why i think the criticism is unwarranted.

their crime is inattention to a situation that some of them did not even know was happening. that’s like saying that techno is “responsible” for some of the pain of tommy’s exile, because he did nothing to stop it. that’s like saying that quackity or tommy “should have” removed the tnt from the button room under l’manburg.

i just don’t get the point of the criticism. because it can apply to any character in any situation, you know? we could say that eret taking back the kingship from george enabled dream into taking more control over his friends, and that eret should have stopped him. we could say that skeppy telling dream he was wrong about l’manburg pushed him further into the role of the bad guy. if you aren’t being negative about the characters, then why bring it up in the first place?

“truly believe they did all those things” they didn’t do anything. if you’re talking about the “actual consequences and effect it had on him as a character”, you have to look at what affects his character.

we can say “sapnap should not have said this to dream”. because that is something sapnap actually did, directly to dream’s face, and it is something that visibly affected dream. considering the conditions of the prison, it is an inhumane thing to say. that’s something i would call reasonable to consider when analyzing dream’s character.

but puffy talking to herself, writing her own thoughts and reactions down? that does not impact dream in any way! and i think puffy thinking internally that dream is a bad person (when she has been given adequate reason to think so) has a lot less impact on Real Plot Events than the stuff that dream actually did.

what is her “fault” here? what harm did she do? what am i excusing? what did she do wrong, and how is the effect of her specifically visible in dream’s actions? he hasn’t mentioned her in months, and it’s my perspective that if he cared, we would know.

if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any noise?

(the person i was responding to linked a thread about how the prison isn’t helping dream and how puffy and sapnap saying he deserves it is inhumane)

that thread doesn’t actually seem to be assigning any fault to puffy, it’s just saying that hearing that kind of thing hurts.

(also, the person who wrote the thread saying “i told you so” is going to have nobody to tell it to. we all already know dream is going to be violent when he gets out, because he told tommy he would hunt down and take revenge on the things he loves. but he���s not going to be violent because puffy didn’t visit him.)

“another person he cared about who didn’t prove to care about him enough to stop him from spiralling or try help at all.”

how did puffy not care about him? what did she do before the vault that showed that? how did she specifically abandon him, by actions of her own will and not of consequences of his? for supposedly caring about her, dream did pretty much nothing to show it.

“if “they don’t owe him anything” is your base argument against someone being hurt via being left by people they care about over and over again until they’re utterly alone with no support system and unhealthy mindsets, we might have to agree to disagree”

we would disagree if that was my point, but it’s not. because that’s not what the characters did. they didn’t all abandon him, as i’ve said. he says that he cut ties with them, but if you say he’s lying when he says that you can disregard it, i guess. and five to six people are definitely not responsible for him. again, you’re critical of them for an action they didn’t take, and in some cases it was impossible for them to take like with tommy, who certainly didn’t abandon him, as hard as he tried to.

“his (dream’s) manipulation is the clumsiest thing i’ve ever seen”

i mean i don’t really find it funny that dream was “bad” at manipulation. and clearly it was powerful enough to work on multiple people, and if he was that ineffective at it it wouldn’t have worked. but i understand what you’re saying, although i disagree with your take on wilbur.

it’s true that wilbur’s smart, but this is again saying things about stuff we can’t prove. if you look at the context of wilbur’s actions next to everyone else’s, they seem pretty tame. and he can play a morally grey character without the intent being that the character was seriously manipulative all along. although i guess it’s nice to think that you’ve solved the code, if “solving the code” means “the majority of everyone else is wrong” then you may want to take a step back.

i think the principle of occam’s razor sort of applies here, and especially applies later to the conversion between dream and wilbur. unless there is strong, strong evidence for a theory that sort of goes against stuff, there may be a better explanation. i’ve scrapped like fifty theories because of this dude hskhdksjsthe things i said at the start about tommy and wilbur’s grabs for power not being serious still do apply, and so does the fact that at the start of the roleplay, the cc’s didn’t see their characters as that separate from themselves. i think it would be kind of weird for cc!wilbur’s intent to be genuine manipulation of his actual friends all along, especially when he wasn’t playing it as a bit.

“that’s precisely what he did and how he got them to side with him in the war.”

nope. he didn’t tell anyone they “needed” to to anything. anyone who joined the country joined of their own free will, and nobody joined during the war, just before and after.

wilbur didn’t really “recruit” tommy so much as they were on a team of causing small arguments. wilbur joined and he and tommy went to go scam people together, while tommy told him about the various other little schemes he had been running. and i don’t really think he was intending to do a real takeover, which is why i called it “weak”. the man told people that potions give you diarrhea. does that sound like the work of a mastermind? no, because it’s the self proclaimed “crime boy”. and that “drug empire” got shut down pretty quick for something that was supposed to last a long time.

“just put “revolution” instead of “business” as a guise of what he was actually doing.”

l’manburg was not the drug empire under a different name. l’manburg was about separation from the greater smp, admittedly because they felt that being stopped from selling drugs was a bad thing, but then they pretty much completely dropped the drugs and the empire throughout the wall vod.

so when he was recruiting people like fundy, he was doing it with the intent of getting them to make drugs with him. he says nothing about dream when fundy joins his drug empire. and yeah, he lied to him originally, but it didn’t work. fundy visited the van and saw through wilbur (and tommy)’s story, and then he decided to join, on his own. because he wanted to make drugs.

a quote from the wall vod:

“we’re starting a revolution, not a war.”

there was no targeted hatred towards dream until he approached them. and i would say the most “evidence” that wilbur was trying to go after dream in any way is the infamous “what’s tyrannical mean” moment. the thing about that moment is that taking a single moment and using it to define an entire period is unfair. it’s not like that’s a turning point, and after that they solely go after dream. they don’t. i agree that you have to watch the actions of wilbur, and his actions at the time were geared towards becoming independent and progressing the condition of l’manburg.

wilbur is honest with eret when they join that they are committing crimes. eret joins because “haha americans bad”. meanwhile, dream is in chat telling eret that there are “three defectors from the kingdom”.

“the only reason people disbelieve this is not because it doesn’t align with canon, but because they assume he’s lying for the sole reason that it doesn’t align with the way they see canon.”

if what revivedbur said agreed with canon, people wouldn’t be pointing out that it doesn’t. watch back the hot dog stream, the wall stream, the first war stream, even the stream after that when niki joins. look at how wilbur speaks, and also look at how he acts. it does not match up with all of what revivedbur says.

early wilbur is naive. he thinks he’s doing the right thing, so he therefore concludes the people against him are wrong. the only fighting back that l’manburg does before war is declared is killing alyssa (and this was tommy’s idea, wilbur was discouraging killing her), because they thought she set the fire. once she told them she didn’t, they gave her back the stuff they thought they had. tubbo still had her pickaxe, but didn’t realize. and for this? the people of the greater smp hunted him down, trapped him in a box, and killed him as well as killing tommy, who tried to save tubbo.

wilbur scolded tommy for killing alyssa. wilbur wanted to focus on building the nation, on declaring independence, and actively ignored the other side. he writes the declaration and he believes in everything it stands for! half the things in there are things that the other people of l’manburg yelled out, that he wrote in as they were being fired on by the greater smp. it comes from all the people.

the declaration of war from the greater smp pretty much says “sometimes you just gotta kill some people, you know?”

i am not disagreeing with you that after the first war, wilbur fell into corruption. it’s implied greatly that this is partially a consequence of the first war, and also partially stems from his fierce protectiveness of l’manburg.

also, if you’re saying that you have never and will never believe wilbur, i would urge you to re-examine that. it’s hard to avoid bias when you refuse to take most things that someone says as truth. i am also curious how you came to this conclusion as you began to watch the smp (if you never believed him at all) and who’s perspective you were watching.

“according to his actions and all known laws of logic” according to the streams and vods that very much still exist, and his actions in them, no, he wasn’t lying since the beginning. did he tell lies? yes, everyone did. was he being untruthful about his devotion to l’manburg when he took arrows for it and died for it? no. it’s pretty clear to see when you watch the vod. his actions speak louder than his words.

so no, it doesn’t make sense for him to be lying since the beginning. it doesn’t make sense that revivedbur’s ideals are a switch from how he was even right before he died, so we cannot trust his memory and his morals to remain intact! the man was alone for thirteen years, speaking of torture.

“he thought l'manberg his and no one else’s, a weapon of power for him to use however he pleases. unlike dream who destroyed himself bit by bit trying to take back what he cares about, because it was not power, but people - wilbur saw no more worth in it and destroyed it instead.”

hmm. i’ll come back to this later.

a point- not everything cc!wilbur says about his character is negative.

a lot of his commentary on his character came after his death, so it encompasses his spiral. i will again suggest that you listen to “eight” by sleeping at last. it’s true he can play a morally complex character, because he does, but he does not play an intentional antagonist the entire time, even in “secret”.

“i was just talking about how hypocritical and downright ridiculous his later accusations are, which you didn’t address.”

how are his later accusations hypocritical? wilbur calls him a tyrant in the moment, yeah. wilbur thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and since it’s the dream smp, he assumes dream is the leader. dream never contradicts this, by the way. wilbur writes in the declaration of independence that “in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the bonds which bind us. disregarding of this truth is nothing short of tyranny.” so that’s what he considers tyranny. when he got stopped from selling drugs and tommy got arrested, he didn’t yell “tyranny”.

mistreatment of citizens by authority and denial of independence is tyranny.

dream and the people of the greater smp hurt and attack the people of l’manburg throughout the wall stream. importantly, since they denied l’manburg independence, the people they were firing and attacking were their own citizens in their eyes. mistreatment of citizens is cruel. upon hearing that l’manburg existed, they became even more tyrannical. thus when wilbur writes this in the book, as they are being fired on, he believes this to be true because it is.

“despite there being no evidence” watch the wall vod. think about the definition of tyranny, and even the different definitions of tyranny.

“a capitalistic empire on dream’s land” so wilbur did have reason for thinking dream was the leader, yes? because it was his land? his “house”? how dream said they were taking back the land that was rightfully theirs? how he called them “traitors to the kingdom”? ignoring the fact that once again, wilbur did not say anything negative towards dream until dream showed up and insulted l’manburg.

wilbur’s form of lying and deception for the drug empire was the norm for the server at the time. we don’t see him pulling this sort of exaggerated bit once he gets into l’manburg, because he’s idealistic and he really believes in it. if you watch tommy’s stream where wilbur first proposes the country, he jokingly says the reason he’s making it is because “americans ruin bits”. also during that stream, tommy asks if they’re making a drug empire, and wilbur says that no, they’re making a nation where drugs are legal.

“didn’t even do that much” hmm. no, i’m pretty sure dream and the people of the greater smp did do the stuff wilbur accused them of. one, he wasn’t directly accusing dream, (because. his problem wasn’t with dream specifically.) and two, the things he said in the declaration did happen?

“they have robbed us.”

to be fair everyone on the server did that lol

“imprisoned us.”

tommy was imprisoned for the drugs and for other things he was involved in, and tubbo was trapped and murdered for a thing he didn’t even know he had.

“threatened us.”

they were fired on multiple times when building l’manburg, they were threatened with consequences for the drug stuff, they told them in pretty clear terms that they were prepared to kill them instead of letting them be independent. the day of the war, dream and sapnap burned down all the trees around l’manburg and lavacast walls around it, saying it was a “warning”.

“killed many of our men.”

again, true. tommy and tubbo in particular died a lot during this time.

so since these things really did happen, how is wilbur lying about them?

“the people he was accusing of being tyrannical were very selective”

one, he accused sapnap of being an american, and it was the americans that were going for them. you don’t need to protect people that aren’t being hurt. most of his reasoning for “no americans” during this time was that anti-mask protests were happening in america, and he was making fun of them. two, the others imprisoned tommy, which does not count as “self defense in an anarchist society”. they accepted tubbo because he was european, and because he was willing to work for the nation like the rest of them. sapnap just wanted a drug dealer.

“dream’s “no factions” thing he had going on also included no government by default, showcased by him having problems with people starting countries.”

if there was no government, why did dream never point this out when wilbur said he was seceding? the server is dream’s faction! he doesn’t want “no factions”, he wants only his faction. dream refers to the server multiple times as a nation, and even a kingdom. anarchist societies don’t have prisons. the prison and the police is a system. if you have an anarchist society, but two specific people are going around arresting people, them going “oh but there’s no government” doesn’t take away the fact that they’re creating a hierarchy, using their own power? they also never claimed that there was no government.

everything that dream said later in the conversation with skeppy also lines up with this. ignoring the fact that there was a monarchy established because it “didn’t have any real power” is disregarding the fact that one, it was there, and two, that there was someone around with enough power to establish it in the first place. i don’t know how to say this any clearer. anarchist places do not have kings.

and anarchy is not the only thing that fits. it wasn’t designed to be a geopolitical drama, they just made the mistake of letting wilbur soot onto the server. so they didn’t need to have a name for the system, because the system was “do whatever you want”, including establishing authority.

“dream had all the reasons to believe they were aggressive and was fully justified in declaring war.”

dream didn’t declare war because alyssa was attacked. he had done stuff to them before that happened, and they got back all of her stuff (again, not by asking and trying to work it out, but by kidnapping someone who genuinely believed they were innocent and killing them as they begged for help.) dream started the official conflict because he declared war. he also started the unofficial conflict. he didn’t think they were aggressive, he thought they were weak.

“if he (wilbur) thought he was being mistreated he could just stop trying to mistreat others”

what, because he had any sort of power? he did stop mistreating others. l’manburg legitimately did nothing to intentionally hurt anyone, and tommy killing alyssa doesn’t count because that was his decision and revenge was already paid out for that. so wilbur stopped scamming people, built the walls to contain his country (he said that they needed nothing outside the walls at some point) and then was attacked multiple times. his mistreatment didn’t stop.

“it was supposed to be his l'manberg.”

wilbur didn’t destroy it because it was supposed to be his and it got away from him, that’s why he held the election: to try and restore peace through attempting to rig the election. he destroyed it because “the thing i built this nation for doesn’t exist anymore”, meaning the freedom it originally granted to its citizens was gone under schlatt. meaning the policy of no violence and using words was ruined. if the thing he built this nation for was power, this would make no sense. he could have taken power so easily. he passed off the presidency.

“something worth having power over” is something important. it is something that can be good for lots of people, and the power over it is what makes it safe. it’s worth having power over because when others, like schlatt, take that power, it is no longer safe.

violence and tyranny had become so much a part of l’manburg that wilbur felt the freedom and peace was gone. so when he blows it up, and says “my l’manburg”, he means it can no longer be used for evil. “my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished”. he saves it for himself by destroying it. so yes, he is being selfish, but not to ruin it for other people. he takes it into his own hands to weed out the fighting, and by doing so takes himself with it. his vision was never complete, because the wars had taught him that the only true freedom, the only true victory (“i won.”) for him was in death. (and then that turned out to be wrong.)

there’s a reddit post that cc!wilbur approved

that explains this a little better than i can, and cc!wilbur commented on it “any truers???” so i think it can be counted as reliable.

this full quote from cc!wilbur about his character (from his hey and stuff podcast) is very interesting. i’ll transcribe it here:

“i decided i was going to make a breaking bad style roleplay, where me and tommy would be drug dealers. and uh, one thing lead to another and i’m the president of a nation losing it due to my own insolence and uh, short sighted naivety. basically disregard for my fellow citizens who i claim to love so much. and a, and a dark, twisted understanding of what is possession. and what is, what is my right.”

i like this quote a lot because it highlights the initial traits that caused his spiral. it also places him as kind of similar to dream. the reason he lost the presidency is that he got too cocky. and the reason his spiral was so selfish is that it was all he could see— when his earlier vision of freedom was shattered by the first war, he didn’t know how to adapt and so became attached to power as it now felt like the only way to keep what mattered to him.

this is emphasized in his conversation with quackity during his second lore stream: that there was a drastic change between the person who made l’manburg and the person running for president. this quote matches up very well with the election arc. wilbur’s motives were different before the election, and they were different after.

once he had the freedom that he wanted, he became scared of losing it and that is what pushed him down. “if i can’t have it, no one can” is on the surface about the power, but the lament for what he once had (freedom in a country without tyranny) is there. that’s why he became so power-oriented. if he did not have control of l’manburg, it could be used to go against his original vision and it would be better off gone.

another good piece of information is cc!wilbur’s comment on his dnd alignment post, where he says this:

“wilbur is on the border of chaotic and neutral evil. wilbur, in his chaotic sense, is a crazy man who wants to blow up his old nation and kill his friends. but, more realistically, in his neutral sense, wilbur is the archetype of a man who had great power and who lost it all due to his own poor choices and negligence who sees destruction as his ratification.”

note the “realistically”.

he feels as if he owes it to l’manburg at the end to blow it up, and he didn’t mind taking himself with it as he thought that nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t have any more to give.

(related to this, in the dnd alignment post, cc!wilbur places season 1 dream as chaotic evil and says his only motive is chaos. firstly, this would only apply to season one, and although cc!wilbur was working with cc!dream and everyone else to write the plot here, i wonder why he says this instead of saying anything else about dream’s motives. this seems to disagree pretty severely with what you think, but it also disagrees with what even i think about dream during this time.)

revivedbur comes back and has plans because he regrets his past. he hates that he gave up that easily. and he could absolutely lie about his past actions! there is no reason to ignore the contents of an entire war because someone who was alone for thirteen years says it!

“shouldn’t have it” doesn’t mean he was lying when he said he wanted it. he was just wrong, which he knew when he blew up l’manburg and that’s part of why he did it.

“they said they “fought with words”, like that doesn’t sound like a peaceful solution, more like a different approach, and it was because that is what they did”

they said the words thing a lot of times, and most of the time it was used as a “tommy don’t attack that person.” and “fighting with words” is arguing, it is replacing the trauma of real battle with talking it out. l’manburg did stick very closely to their motto of words over violence. look at the contents of the first war.

and once war was declared, wilbur was enthusiastic for it. sounds suspicious from someone claiming to not want war, right? he said it was a chance for them to prove themselves, to prove they could rule themselves. he also said that if they could defend themselves it would be proof. he never went “time to attack them”, and when he said he didn’t want a war in the past he meant that he didn’t want to start one. his being enthusiastic about the war ties into his naivety about running a country. it was also an acceptance in a way, no? it meant that the greater smp saw them as something worth declaring war on.

and it’s heartbreaking seeing him so excited to prove himself, because we know that the experience of the war is what lead to his spiral and his cynicism as president. we know that a few weeks later, he’s going to be crying into his pillow every night.

for the clip (the “something worth having power over and then you get killed by your dad” clip), i kind of don’t know what to say. i don’t think this is a clear condemnation of the entirety of l’manburg’s beginnings, but i do think that i was probably reaching a bit with trying to interpret it. there are definitely a lot of ways to see that, though.

no, he showed it in the first war and he clearly said it. i don’t think somebody who wants to mess with dream is going to not even think about him until he shows up, and even after then largely ignore him until he declares war.

“yes, it was worth something to wilbur, and that worth was power.”

question: power over what? power for what purpose? how did he use that power?

if it was only worth having power over, then why did he give it up? why didn’t he just kill schlatt in the first place? again i think the reddit post addresses a lot of this. original l’manburg was worth more to wilbur than power because he was willing to surrender when his life and his friend’s lives were threatened, and he told tommy it was not worth it to enter a duel and sacrifice his own life for it. after the war, he cared about power over it in order to keep peace, and then he realized that his own desire for power caused him to abandon his morals and he attempted to destroy it all.

“the greater smp did represent anarchy and peace.”

i just don’t think the ideals of the early smp line up with anarchy, and especially not dream’s actions later. he believes in forced peace, and unity under his terms although that belief is more gradual.

“see you tell me you didn’t fall for propaganda and then say this.”

it’s not “falling for propaganda” to watch the streams and interpret them. “propaganda” is defined as an attempt to spread information, often of a misleading nature. it’s what wilbur used during his presidential campaign, it’s what everyone used during the election. i do not base my opinion of his character off things that have been said about him after the fact. i watched the content when it happened.

so what about the facts that one, he wanted peace at the start, and two, that he cared about protecting his nation and the people he cared about is propaganda? it is information that i believe to be true based on my own analyzing of his actions during that time.

wilbur never says this as an attempt to lie to anyone. he wanted peace if it meant he could have freedom, but he would not attack anyone for freedom, he would defend it once he had established it. he wasn’t trying to establish an empire after the drug van stream (he says this in the vod where he discusses his plans for l’manburg with tommy) and the actions of the greater smp were tyrannical. what happened is that later, after the first war, he lost faith in peace because people continued to attack him!

“he did create division for his own benefit the way i see it.”

can you explain the “benefit” that division would give him? because like i said, his goal was his own personal freedom. he wasn’t attempting to divide people, he was reacting to mistreatment, whether perceived or real. and more often than not, people asked to join him, he didn’t try to convince them.

“yeah wilbur said it genuinely to tubbo when he first brought him armor”

as i was going through the old vods, i did find the origin of that quote (the quote where wilbur says “we go in with no armor and then stab them in the back” or something along those lines)! there’s something funny about it though. notice how he says it and then never does anything about it? and how nobody from l’manburg acts on it? because you have to look at his actions, something you emphasized that i agree with. they have more weight than his words. he also said “wanna kiss” to dream, so i don’t think this really counts as “proof” of an ulterior motive, because he said a lot of things.

“you see a pattern already?”

the “pattern” i see of his reactions to conflict in his nation is that he didn’t want to assert control in order to oppress people, he wanted to assert control to keep the peace, by rigging the election so that he had “legitimate” authority. was it a hypocritical? yeah! it reminds me of what dream was doing, too: placing his goal of peace over his wish for freedom of everyone.

the difference is that dream didn’t have any reserves about “starting an army and asserting dominance over his own people because they didn’t respect his authority and he was irritated by it”. weird that that can be used to describe dream as well, huh? and before it can be used to describe wilbur?

this is also after the first war, where wilbur learned a very important lesson! and it’s right before he realizes he’d become what he had tried to destroy. the other person who acts like this never realized this, though. it’s because he was never trying to destroy it. just saying.

“the friendships inside of it could’ve existed without, and would’ve probably been better off without being stained by war”

wilbur did not consider making l’manburg as a severing of relationships between the two nations. he even expresses neutrality towards some members of the greater smp. wilbur didn’t “make people think” they needed l’manburg, he saw it as a thing to devote yourself to, an ideology. he did not force others to think this way, although he encouraged it. people ended up sacrificing a lot for that (against their will sometimes), and so they became attached to it.

“the original dream smp was this but actually true instead of just being a front.”

ah yes, the dream smp with absolutely no hierarchies. nothing like mister “my house” at all. no “my land”, no “my server”, no “the king has no power”, no “it’s the dream smp”. /s

“wilbur didn’t fear for anyone’s safety”

hmm, no, wilbur did fear for everyone’s safety. you know, when they were being attacked continuously throughout the war? and when he finally surrendered because they were being threatened and killed?

“the dream smp was already safe”

dream and sapnap need better ways to “keep the server safe” than by blowing up people who wanted to go off and do their own thing and posed no threat to the greater server.

i don’t know how to provide “evidence” that dream and the others attacked l’manburg? the evidence is the fact that they did. again, wilbur’s initial goal was not conflict with the greater smp, it was emancipation. when tubbo was taken hostage and killed, shot at, robbed multiple times of materials it had taken him hours to get, and had his old house burned down simply because he was part of l’manburg, those were the reasons that tubbo ever fired a shot at them in the first place!

when wilbur lead his people out on the first day of the war, it was to negotiate. they dodged the arrows and went to the embassy, where they were then trapped and driven back into tommy’s house. it was then that they fought back. self defense. i don’t know what else to tell you.

“trying to end the war as soon as he could” is kind of misleading, because it implies that dream hated the violence. he just wanted to win as soon as he could. he didn’t care what he had to do to win it. no mercy.

the dream smp was not freedom because when you try to leave freedom, it doesn’t hunt you down and try to destroy you. anarchy doesn’t call you a traitor when you leave. and yeah, dream was real friendly to tommy when he continued the disk war when it first settled. and of course when your friends join a different nation, the most logical course of action is to murder them repeatedly! /s

the definition of anarchy includes personal freedom, the exact thing wilbur wanted. anarchy does not include authority, it is firmly opposed to it. i think i would place the early greater smp as more of a stateless society, if i had to put a name on it (again, i am extremely wary to do that because it wasn’t written as anything with a name. this is also a mediocre take that i don’t really believe because dream had his own faction.). a stateless society is one of the goals of anarchism, but does not encompass the entire belief.

dream’s main motivation was that he didn’t want anyone being independent. it didn’t matter who was leading it.

and i’m sorry, but you can’t just take away evidence by saying “he was lying” when there is no proof he is? if you take this conversation at face value it makes more sense! (this is about the conversation between wilbur and dream right before the “independence or death” scene)

“both sides had their losses and were ready to harm the other” what did the greater smp lose. its people? its land? there was other land, and the people could still remain friends. some of them did. dream even says before this that yeah, l’manburg is losing. and wilbur here is attempting to downplay that loss, claiming they’re on even ground because that’s what he wants to happen. he is trying to appear stronger than he really is. he’s bluffing, but it doesn’t work.

i don’t like saying “nobody’s the victim” here when one side was getting absolutely whaled on by the other. wilbur has the ability to be genuine, and he does. if he was trying to “play” the victim, he would exaggerate the damage his side had suffered. his words and his actions match up, and this is a pretty different circumstance from him doing a bit. he is a victim. that’s just straight up true.

i’m not surprised that you think this way, as you’ve said you were on dream’s side since the start, but i’d like to once again ask you to examine where you got these perceptions.

dream offering them “chances” was just offering them surrender. that’s not merciful, and it’s not fair, either. and he may not have wanted to hurt them, but he sure didn’t mind doing it. wilbur wasn’t sewing some kind of anti-dream propaganda in his nation while the battle was going on, the hatred for dream came from the fact that he was attacking all of them.

“colonize” is a bad word choice for what l’manburg was. nobody was living on that land before they got there. the land should have belonged to nobody, so why did dream get so mad about “his” land being taken? what about that specific area was so important to him, when he did have the ability to visit?

wilbur was pacifist, he was not the instigator, again i have to say i can’t offer up proof if you’re convinced that he was lying. when he fought back later it was in self defense. please watch the vods. and recognize that wilbur’s actions election era are consequences of his experiences revolution era.

i genuinely don’t understand what you mean by comparing this to exile. please rephrase your point. if you’re comparing what dream did to tommy to wilbur trying to stop dream from hurting him and his people more i have to say that’s a... questionable take. it’s probably a bad idea to make exile comparisons if you’re going to use them to victim-blame, as that’s very antithetical to exile as a whole and kid of ironic.

“i mean, what other choice was there?”

no, dream had a lot of choices. he did not offer them a peaceful way out. he declared war and then he attacked. it was then that he told them many times to surrender. and no, wilbur didn’t push them to go and die, evidenced again by the times he used himself as a distraction so that they could run, and that he didn’t want tommy to do the duel but ultimately respected his decision and his freedom.

“dream constantly asked them to give up instead of fighting.”

dream has a responsibility to not attack kids. dream also has a responsibility to attempt any sort of peaceful negotiation. tubbo was boxed and murdered before war was declared, and tubbo personally had done straight up nothing to the people of the greater smp, and he didn’t even know why he died until tommy saw that alyssa’s pickaxe was mixed in with his stuff.

if wilbur claimed to wish to prevent violence, and then he did, or at least attempted to, i don’t know why you think it’s untrue. calling someone a rude name is not equal to murder. “verbally violent” means pretty much nothing and was coming from both sides.

(this next part is about the “let me be your vassal” scene in pogtopia)

“there’s a theory wilbur legitimately thinks dream selfish”

i mean, yeah. i think that kind of sums it up. wilbur was appealing to dream’s personal goals. i don’t see how he was shut down though. he already helped pogtopia, so him being asked to further help someone from pogtopia shows that they trusted him enough to tell him the plan.

i’ve watched the clip a lot of times and i think that the meaning can be ambiguous. i am using dream’s other actions during that time to determine how much of an effect i think it had on him. i don’t think he got “shut down” in any sort of meaningful way here.

“he didn’t seem to hold even that against him as he tried to help get back l’manberg with him.”

if dream didn’t hold the disk thing against tommy then, he sure decided to get mad about it later (he brings it up when arguing with quackity), despite the fact that he had also re-opened the conflict in the past.

“i believe they (dream and tommy) had genuinely been friends once.”

sure, i think they were friends before dream did what he did with the disks, and allies during early pogtopia. dream still decided to switch sides and team with manburg because schlatt offered him the book. this is, ironically, dream abandoning tommy.

“he has a sense of responsibility (not control) over the people on his smp.”

i think it can be responsibility and control. most of the responsibility is misguided, and lots of it is just actual control. i don’t know where you’re getting a lot of this.

and i do not know where you got that his fatal flaw was caring too much? he “cares” in the way of having control! he doesn’t care about the well being of others as long as he thinks he’s right. i’m just saying that he sure could have walked away, because he did just that later when he sided with schlatt. it’s not a speculation about his character when it’s something that he did.

him walking away did not entail complete surrender to wilbur. there were a lot of other things he could have done, but i don’t want to get into “could have”’s as i don’t really think there’s a point. wilbur was attempting to convince him, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was true. we know that wilbur was lying about wanting ambition.

also, i don’t think dream was allied with pogtopia because he liked them or he was trying to be better or anything. he said in “tyrant” that it’s because schlatt was worse, and wilbur didn’t have any ambition to expand.

“maybe you misunderstood something i said, but no, he definitely didn’t.”

okay, so since dream didn’t think wilbur was a villain, wilbur was not “pressuring him” into becoming one by helping him. my point was that dream didn’t think that, and wilbur didn’t care. sorry for not making that clear, i was asking a rhetorical question.

(i said here that “someone calling someone else out for hurting them is not the same thing as villanizing them,” and they responded with this)

“yeah, they are. and dream was villanized.”

oh boy.

vilify: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against, to defame.

(i probably should have been saying vilify instead of villainize because they mean the same thing but i straight up did not know it was a word, sorry lol)

slanderous means false and malicious. abusive means offensive and insulting. defamation is things that are not true.

if somebody says, “this guy punched me.” that would not be vilifying them. it is a true statement with a neutral tone. if they add “he is a bad person”, that could possibly be seen as abusive, as it is insulting, but the point of vilifying someone is that you are making them out to be someone they’re not. it involves the use of lies and continuous exaggerated language. slanderous and abusive. abusive only is not enough to classify something as vilifying.

someone reacting to something dream did by calling him a name is not vilifying him. it is true that he did the thing, and it is also true that the person saying it believes it. it is rare that someone criticizes him without real reason or goes overboard (the person who really does this as far as i can remember is tommy), and when tommy does so it is almost always reciprocated. so we have dream and tommy constantly vilifying each other, and other people saying negative things about dream and sometimes vilifying him, if they lie about it. he sometimes vilifies them.

my point is that vilification is not wilbur telling niki, “dream burnt tubbo’s house down”, despite the fact that he calls dream a bad guy. it’s not slanderous because it is true. dream assisted sapnap with the act. vilification is not tommy explaining to ranboo what was happening during exile, or telling dream that dream makes him worse. “someone calling someone out for hurting them” implies truth, and it doesn’t necessarily imply abusive language, but it doesn’t matter because it’s true.

maybe we were going off different definitions of vilify. but when we’re accusing characters who are victims of abuse and manipulation, we need to be careful with what we accuse them of.

anyway

wilbur saying he wanted to use the tommys of the world was left in the drug van stream. tommy himself was pushing a lot of the “dream bad” stuff because he had more experience with him. when tommy was confused during those two scenes (vassal scene and revivedbur calling dream his hero)it was because he believed that wilbur respected him, and wilbur working with or idolizing someone who had hurt tommy in the past was a contradiction to that belief. wilbur does not question tommy’s anger during the vassal scene because he doesn’t care that dream is bad, and when he is revived he either does not believe it or does not want to acknowledge it. revivedbur cares a whole lot more about power for the sake of power than wilbur ever did.

again, tommy isn’t stupid. he has his own reasons for not liking dream, and the disconnect comes from a place of trusting wilbur.

by the way, wilbur left the vc before saying that tommy didn’t care. he was talking to himself (and chat). and he was more fearful that tommy was leaving than angry. plus, he didn’t actually force tommy to give up his house: there was miscommunication between them and the embassy was the power tower in the end. wilbur just wanted confirmation that tommy would spend time in l’manburg. it’s true that he went about it in a bad way, though.

he didn’t push patriotism onto them, they were also excited about the country. there were other scenes beside the tyrant scene, and the amount of times wilbur had to tell tommy to shut up about how great the country is is a lot higher than the one time he had them call dream a tyrant.

true, that scene (scene where wilbur asserts his authority as president) is before pogtopia. it’s also after the war for independence. i am not saying that wilbur should have said any of that stuff. i’m just pointing out that it wasn’t always like that.

also i do not really see “you’re never gonna be president” as a taunt or manipulation or anything. i think wilbur genuinely believed that having tommy in charge of the country would one, get them into more conflicts, and two, mess up tommy mentally. being the president sucked and wilbur knew that. wilbur was not kind to tommy. but a lot of stuff that’s pointed at as manipulative is pretty clearly wilbur’s own paranoia spilling over in a desire to protect tommy, ie saying that tubbo would betray them. wilbur genuinely thought that and he was trying to warn tommy.

“tommy, when i said you’d never be president, it wasn’t a challenge. it’s true. you’re never going to be president.”

tommy’s life has been hard, that’s true. not disagreeing with you there. but not every adult has been using him the whole time. and if you’re looking for fault, i would personally look at the guy who killed him three times first, just saying. other things had impacts but there’s a clear scale.

“tommy formed an attachment to them as a result of the disc war, not the other way around.”

so yeah, initially it was a shallow trade: the disks for the armor. once that conflict was resolved, and tommy apologized, that should have been the end of it, yeah? especially since tommy now had a stronger connection to the disks? that would have been nice.

the problem is that dream took them back for no reason. because he did, he went back and dug up tommy’s whole front yard and spawned months of conflict after. having “leverage” over someone like that is kinda messed up! it’s not like tommy was going around committing mass murder every tuesday, he got in scraps with other people on the server who also committed petty crimes. so i can’t really blame tommy for wanting them back, even though he stole them.

and if dream didn’t care about the disks, why did he later use it as “proof” that tommy caused all the trouble on the server? if they were so worthless to him that he gave them to skeppy, why did it matter that tommy stole them?

i don’t know what you mean about this being the only way dream could control people. the amount of genuine fear other characters felt when he logged on was there for a long time. he held a lot of power on the server, and a lot of his control was physical, evidenced by exile in particular but also the wars.

when he did ultimately use connections to control people, that was still a bad thing.

“his friend’s house got burnt down and he wanted the person who did it to be held accountable?”

okay, george’s house got burned down. do you remember the initial punishment that dream proposed? probation for tommy until he was eighteen. and when dream was arguing with his friends, he pointed out that the only reason l’manburg was being held hostage for tommy’s crime was that tommy was involved in the government. he said that if tommy hadn’t been involved in the government, he probably would have just hunted him down and killed him.

also, someone responding to this pointed out that dream was trying to frame tommy for things at the time. dream was intentionally creating other conflict in order to get to tommy. dream did not care about the house. he burnt down other people’s houses.

that’s not “holding someone accountable”. that’s not even close.

“he was taught this from experience”

the leather from the horse was used to blackmail him after he had already started doing that to people. you know how tommy mimicks him? that’s what was going on (still bad that he did it but like. come on.) so that may have been the push that caused dream to cut his own connections (so that nobody could ever do that to him again, and he would have no chance of failure), but it didn’t just happen to him for no reason: it was a behavior he taught someone else.

“he did genuinely think he was a villain before the war”

tommy called dream a lot of stuff before the war, and most of it was unprompted by wilbur. a lot of it was also, like you said, two friends joking around. just because wilbur taught him a new word (he didn’t really tell him what it meant though) doesn’t mean he was manipulated into using it all the time or something. and i’m pretty sure tommy got a decent definition of tyranny later, when the greater smp decided to attack l’manburg before anything went down.

“it’s just a character acknowledging what people who looked deeper into the narrative already knew.”

what i’m saying is that narratively, wilbur has an extremely good reason to be biased right now. taking anything he says as truth doesn’t solidify an interpretation as truth. there has to be enough evidence to actually back the entire thing up in the first place, and i’m just not seeing “wilbur was always going for power and division” as solidified by his actions during the first war.

and again, tommy’s not stupid, and the entire time tommy is yelling at him! tommy knows something is off! if people also in the story are saying “this isn’t right”, i feel like they’d know? tommy was also part of l’manburg, he has an opinion too. so when he says “we founded l’manburg because we knew dream was the bad guy”, he’s talking about why he did it. and he brings up a good point: “you say you did it to stick it to the man, but you’re idolizing dream, who is the man”. (paraphrased i don’t know his exact words but this was his point) this shows that wilbur’s motives have changed, even from what revivedbur will say.

(they linked three twitter threads here. i don’t know if relinking them here is a good idea as the whole point of this separate post is to disconnect the two sides, but the threads were by dr3amofagame on twitter, for reference purposes. i’m not going to link the independent threads but i think people can tell which ones i was responding to.

if this is wrong to say who made them please let me know, i do not know how Any of these websites work. if you’ve read this far, please don’t try to like,,, look up who any of these people are (especially the person i was debating with. don’t do that /srs) and send anything bad to them. that’s the whole point of this separate post. if anyone sends negativity directly towards people because of this post i’ll bite you)

that first analysis has some Opinions. oh man.

i don’t know man i’m just going to point some things out:

-the person who wrote the thread pulling the “child” card makes me laugh because tommy had committed more crimes than wilbur at that point. ah yes tommy innit innocent child being horribly dragged into a giant war by evil wilbur /s

-wilbur did not call dream a tyrant before dream showed up and made fun of their land

-wilbur did not legitimately think dream a tyrant when he told tommy and tubbo to call him that. neither, really, did tommy and tubbo. it was a joke. like infinite women. like dream saying “i’m evil” when he was blowing up creepers on their land before the battle. like dream and sapnap being all “down with the british”.

-their attitude on that changed when the greater smp begin exhibiting tyrannical behavior (before war was declared!).

-“having tommy and tubbo fight his battles and build his walls” is just untrue

-the l’manburg anthem was, one, not written by wilbur (he commissioned someone to do it on fiver), and two, was written after the first war. they sing it in the stream where niki joins. so yeah, at that point, they did emancipate from the brutality and tyranny of their rulers! it doesn’t say who the rulers are (therefore it’s. not blaming solely dream.) but pretty much all of them were brutal!

-also oh my god this thread has a lot of things that wilbur just straight up didn’t say (or do).

-“would rather die than submit to your tyrannical rule” is a quote from the speech wilbur gives before dream lights the tnt. dream had done stuff to them at that point. this is out of context.

-i don’t want to seriously critique this thread because a lot of it seems more like something emotional than an attempt to start conversation, and i can’t really go against that.

-the main argument, that dream did nothing before being irreversibly forced into the role of the villain does not really match up with what happened.

-there’s a lot less of people calling dream a villain than people seem to remember.

-and also, dream was lying about wanting l’manburg to be something. he says to eret a few days later the quote that i included a while back, that his goal has always been for there to be one faction: the dream smp. note that at this point he’s officially on manburg’s “side” now. he also says he has never wavered on this from the beginning. so he’s either continuing his manipulation of eret and lying to them, or he’s just saying that he wants l’manburg to be something to wilbur and tommy to try to get them to trust him. and hearing him yell “YES!” after the explosion? i’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

okay, so then looking at the second analysis:

-once again, calling wilbur a colonizer? there is a definition of that word that matches up with his actions, but that definition is something establishing itself in a place. by that definition, everyone on the server is a colonizer. so calling just wilbur that seems... a bit weird, considering that the common definition does not match up with what he did.

-“got his (wilbur’s) entire side killed” ignores the fact that it was Dream And His Friends Who Killed Them hghfnjgnfm

dream: wow wilbur you’re bad at this war thing

wilbur: please stop killing us

dream: how could you do this to your people

wilbur: you??? declared war???

dream: no you don’t understand. i had a really good reas—

sorry sorry i’m just. yeah

-also this thread reminded me that “tyrant” (the book) exists and yeah, i do see your point that dream did care about tommy (a little bit). i just wonder why he turned against him again? and why dream is willing to admit here that l’manburg was peaceful, and also that wilbur was not like schlatt in some key ways?

-and again i don’t see wilbur calling dream a villain during the vassal scene.

-some of this thread is just speculation. i’m not going to consider “wilbur may manipulate dream in the future because they had a conversation in the past”, especially because revivedbur’s mental state right now is godawful, because i don’t think it holds any value to examining the past. the important part is the breakdown of the vassal scene.

-i’ve already said what i think about the vassal scene. dream wasn’t getting tossed around during that. just because he’s quiet doesn’t mean he’s being manipulated? and wilbur isn’t going “you think this”, he’s asking dream what he thinks by paraphrasing what wilbur’s heard from him before, and adjusts it once dream corrects him. i do think this one is more open to interpretation though; this is just my opinion and it doesn’t have a lot of stuff to back it up lol but i’m not convinced either side has much evidence

and the third analysis:

-dream had no idea what kind of government they were setting up there. he didn’t ask, so he wouldn’t know if it was a dictatorship. and again he was allowed on the land, he just never built the embassy. the “no americans” rule was weakly enforced during the first war, and the reason wilbur got so serious about it later is that the americans were the ones who went after him and killed everyone during the war! so he had a reason to want them off. objectively a bad reason? maybe

-it would be cool if dream said “hey don’t do this here’s why” instead of stomping off during negotiations and then coming back to beat them up and declare war. he didn’t though

-the problem people have with greater smp vs. l’manburg is scale. the greater smp was quite literally infinite, and l’manburg was a small space. there wasn’t anything important in l’manburg that other server members needed to get to. people could still leave to visit their friends. they didn’t legitimately hate americans. but nooo, you can’t have the table because it’s my table. what if you do something bad with the table? remember when you tried to sell people “better air” for three dollars and then took someone’s air conditioning? you just want power! i’m going to go bring back rubber bands to pelt you with.

anywAys moving on

no, i do agree with you on the sam stuff. for some reason i was under the impression that cc!sam was uncomfortable with being depicted as torturing dream a while back, but with the stuff happening with quackity now, i’m reasonably sure that doesn’t apply. they don’t retcon stuff that was intentional but there may have been something taken back a few months ago before they planned this.

but yeah, clearly the prison stuff is awful and messed up. that’s why i noted the thing at the start of the reply: i am in no way saying that anything sam or quackity have done to dream since prison hasn’t affected him. these are things that i see as having visible impacts on the character.

(i pointed out that dream originally commissioned the prison)

i understand that it’s frustrating to hear that used as an excuse, but i wasn’t using it that way. i was pointing out that neither of them deserve it. during the vault stream, dream tells tommy that his plan is to put him in the prison. he says that exile was “perfect”, and the only issue was that tommy could get away. putting him in the prison fixes that.

so yeah, what dream was planning to do to tommy is different than what’s happening to him. but the reasons that other people wanted dream in the prison match why he wanted tommy in there: like you said, it’s a vault. it’s so he can store him and use him later, to give attachments and thus power and control over others.

tommy’s original plan was to kill dream. ultimately, he didn’t want him to suffer more, he wanted him gone. nobody on the server knew yet that death was limbo, and tommy probably thought it was mercy for someone like dream. dream was the one who brought up the book, as an attempt to save himself. he will say whatever he needs to say to avoid death, because anyone would (except someone like wilbur who’s. accepted his role. you know?) so he’s the one who reduced himself down the the book, saying if he goes, so does it. that’s when sam suggests the prison.

true, the arc is dark. this is where sam’s actions become corrupted and he loses sight of some of the responsibility he claims to have. it’s also the arc where dream lied to tommy that he had changed, and pressured him into staying by saying he was his friend. it’s the arc where dream kills tommy, and doesn’t allow sam to come get his body for days. it’s the arc where dream gets even worse, whether because of his time in the prison or because of his peaked god complex, probably both.

and again, my problem is that criticizing characters for actions they didn’t take is pointless. it tells you not much about the character, and considering the circumstances of what dream had done it does make sense for none of them to step in! they are looking at the fact that dream had an entire vault dedicated to controlling them. they are seeing that dream was fully prepared to murder tubbo and lock tommy away forever to be used. they are witnessing tommy giving dream exactly what he got.

so “acknowledging” this does nothing useful! we do not see these actions (or lack of) specifically affecting dream. i can tell you what dream told people he was doing, and it matches up with things he had done in the past, and there are moments he denies the narrative that you say drove him to do this. but i can’t really prove anything when you say he’s lying here because it fits how you interpret the story.

it’s what you’re saying people are doing to revivedbur: saying he’s lying without any proof, when with him there is evidence and he has the motive to lie. when revivedbur lies, tommy calls him on it. tommy doesn’t call dream on it. i’ve laid out why i think it’s not true, and i’ve seen stuff in early canon that directly contradicts what revivedbur says. occam’s razor! many pieces of evidence versus a few statements from someone who at that point commonly lied about things like that.

dream standing by while tommy and the other citizens get killed in l’manburg by his own orders isn’t very peaceful or non-tyrannical of him. tommy was enforcing an eye for an eye, and to be honest? i don’t think “kill your abuser” is such a terrible message to send, despite the fact that we know that tommy’s coping mechanisms come from a bad source. and tommy was far from free of what dream did to him, as evidenced by later when he again attempts to mirror what dream had done to him in the past.

yeah, i read your analysis of the interaction (skeppy and dream arguing over l’manburg). that’s not the only interpretation. skeppy doesn’t call him the villain. he is repeating back to dream the actions that dream took, and dream tells him he’s making him sound bad. skeppy wasn’t influenced by any “propaganda” you think l’manburg was putting out while they were getting murdered. skeppy was an outsider who was calling it as he saw it.

and if other people saw what dream was doing as bad, maybe he was... doing bad things? for bad reasons? skeppy was critical of dream for his actions. talking over somebody does not certify it as “twisting words”. skeppy was accusing him of doing the actions, like “so you did this? you started the war?”. dream was defending the logic behind his actions, like “well i did it because.”

basically

skeppy: hey it’s kind of. messed up that you killed a bunch of people. you know? you kind of just attacked them out of nowhere

dream: no no no you don’t understand. i had a really good reason

skeppy: i don’t see a reason?

dream: you’re making it seem like i didn’t have to do this

skeppy: you d i d n ‘ t

and skeppy didn’t finish the conversation with “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, he just told him he was wrong! as in his actions were cruel and needless! “people must have hated coming to your house”.

(they asked me to name one person who dream cut off first)

okay, name one? puffy. sam. punz? he did cut them off, he straight up told tommy he did it, and making a place in the vault for fran when sam had done nothing but work with him? and they didn’t “show up ready to kill him”, they showed up to see what he was doing. so he tells tommy he abandoned them, and indirectly tells them with the spirit scene. sapnap and george noticed this, and called him on it, but he just said he didn’t mean it?

if dream “wasn’t as close” with sam/puffy/punz, why are we putting responsibility on them for his actions.

so sapnap and george walked away from him, but because he did something to them. and puffy didn’t abandon him. punz didn’t abandon him, punz got paid off because that’s what punz cares about: money. he’s a mercenary.

using “they left him first” for sapnap and george doesn’t allow for why they left him: because he wasn’t treating them fairly. he isn’t their parent, he’s their friend, and he wasn’t acting like it.

“he was hurt and abandoned to the point” “he ended up hurting people doesn’t negate the fact he was hurt himself first” “the environment they all were a part of pushed him this far, and that’s just what happened”

so you’re saying it’s right that the reason dream did bad things to people is because bad things were done to him first? because dream was definitely the one who got attacked first during l’manburg. because he just cared so much about george that he kicked someone out of society just to defend his honor. /s and then, because his real purpose was protecting george, he went back and tried to make things right with george because it wasn’t about tommy? oh wait, he didn’t. he focused on only tommy. because george’s house was an excuse.

“that’s just what happened” is a bad take on “people got abused”. the fact is that dream started a lot of the conflict. looking at the retaliation and self-defense that people did towards him and saying “he got hurt a bunch that’s why he did the later bad stuff” completely negates that he started it? and his “retribution” was always exponentially worse than the actual crime committed?

dude, i’m just trying to point out that the story says he cut people off. yeah, he was hurt at times, but that is not an explanation for what he did. it’s not even a logical cause, because we do not see it affect his character. the subtext has gotta be there. the fact that he was hurt does not make him any more justified.

“circle of violence” does apply (not all of them, though). but in this situation, it’s a kid stealing someone’s lunch money, and then the other kid breaks their nose. the first kid punches the kid, the second kid puts them in the hospital. when the retribution dream gave was always worse than whatever happened to him, the issue is not “look at the people hurting him”, it’s “stop him from hurting people”!

so clearly dream needs some kind of therapy (not from puffy though i’m not letting him near her /hj), because just killing him would be a permanent solution but it would upset people who like his character. the prison is awful and not going to work. my personal solution for him is to send him out somewhere a long way away, so that nobody he’s hurt has to see him again. maybe people that wanted to go with him could, and it would be like a new smp. but when that idea was proposed, tommy said darkly that he was always going to come back. maybe it’ll be the solution in the future. who knows.

if the mistakes were unintentional, why criticize the characters for them? and what about “the environment” besides the other people changed how dream thought? a lot of it was internal.

we have him exiling tommy as a weird, desperate plea for friends (not really) when he very much could have gone back and spoken to the people who were his friends. we have him continuously saying that tommy causes all the problems, and he needs to be “restrained” or “controlled” or whatever other excuse he came up with for taking away a person’s free will.

we have him obsessing over the disks, and we know it’s not about the disks, it’s about power over tommy and power in general. he says this in the vault. he says this at the community house scene. his progression is towards a twisted sense of possession, same as wilbur, oddly enough. but they are different in that wilbur is possessive over the idea of freedom that he created with l’manburg (and having power over that) and dream is possessive over control over all.

wilbur’s idea is ruined. he tied his sense of self to the nation and when it was used for corruption (kind of by him and mostly by others) he saw himself as corrupted and decided to take them both out so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. he admits his own fault to the point of self destruction.

dream’s idea is threatened. other people live there, other people want to do things, and so he becomes so attached to the idea that it’s his server and he will do anything to control opposition. he cannot admit his fault unless forced to.

wilbur would do anything to control a tool of power, because he wanted to not use it as that tool. wilbur wanted anarchy at the end. he says so in his last presidential speech. his naive views about freedom from the start of the server had worn off, as he saw people use power as a tool in a way that he had never intended or meant to use it.

wilbur created the election so that he would have an actual authority over the land, and he could stop the fighting of its citizens. he thought he knew better, kind of like dream did. this is when his motives get the most twisted and selfish, he wanted peace so bad that he would take away freedom for it (like dream). but when he lost, he accepted it, and that’s the difference. he saw the desire for control in his own actions, and hated himself for it. that’s why he wanted to blow up l’manburg, to take away the tool for power and the person who had been tempted to use it.

wilbur was a good leader in the political sense (dream admits this in “tyrant”) but when he stands before the rubble of l’manburg and calls it his, he’s saying that his rule would only lead to destruction. anyone’s rule would. power corrupts. l’manburg ruined is his l’manburg, it’s his original vision of complete freedom laid out before him, and tracked to its inevitable end.

so then, you would say, dream was right, yeah? he didn’t want l’manburg. but wilbur before he explodes l’manburg doesn’t like dream. he thinks dream’s right in that factions lead to oppression, no matter how good the intentions, but he also knows that dream was a little too willing to hurt them and that dream doesn’t believe this. dream does not want anarchy, he wants chaos but only if it gives him control. he treats the smp like his country, and once again, power corrupts.

went off there, sorry. dream and wilbur are similar but different in some very important ways.

sapnap had been hurt by dream before the vault, and as dream didn’t see himself as in the wrong, he didn’t reach out. sapnap was with pogtopia (wait this might be wrong i do not remember but he was definitely on l’manburg’s side during doomsday) because tommy had shown him more kindness than dream, and that was originally dream’s side. dream just turned on them for the book.

and sapnap also witnessed dream mocking tubbo, making fun of tommy, exposing ranboo. he heard dream going off about how tubbo was so stupid for thinking dream was his friend, for thinking dream cared about him. why would sapnap side with dream if dream was showing no signs of even wanting him?

sapnap accused dream of that, and dream did not listen to him. he could not see the other side: he was so convinced that he was right. we do not know if sapnap went into the vault with the intent of killing dream. i’m pretty sure most of them were there to see if what tommy had said was true. and then, sapnap saw that it was.

nobody abandoned him because of the vault because he had already abandoned them. they just made it mutual. it being a “consequence” of stuff doesn’t make it any less of a messed up, power hungry thing to do, and some of them had done nothing to him before he decided he needed to control them. he was planning to use friend to control ghostbur, who he had already taken advantage of and tried to kill once.

“people do not decide to isolate themselves for no reason.”

true, people don’t cut themselves off for no reason. the reason was power and control. i once again have to emphasize that nobody forced him into this: it was a spiral. other people didn’t do everything “first”. the small taste he got of his own medicine was a poor mimic thrown at him by someone he had done terrible things to. he started spiraling before the spirit scene happened. and if people are telling him he can’t achieve peace, maybe they’re just... right? did he go up to someone and go “i don’t know how to make this server peaceful :(“? because if he did, and if they then pointed at his long list of war crimes and told him not like this, i don’t really see that as anything more than a consequence for things he had already done.

someone can lie about what they want. maybe he did originally want peace, or maybe he was lying to himself that he did. l’manburg did not invite war. he wanted unity above peace, and that “unity” dissolved into “control”.

it was a defense so that nobody could control him the way he was going to control them. cutting himself off was out of fear, yeah. collecting everyone else’s items? power and control. he says this a ton of times, sometimes not even out loud.

i did rewatch the vault vod. that’s how i got all the quotes of him stating his motives. i’m not saying it was a healthy thing to do at all. i never said dream was mentally healthy, i said he had a god complex and he was obsessed with control. someone’s bad mental state can hurt others as well as themself, and they’re still responsible for the others and for trying to be a better and more respectful person. that’s why revivedbur’s “apologies” mean nothing right now.

“he lists his reason for starting the war as them declaring independence, so i don’t think it really matters when the official document was sent.”

it does matter a little bit, actually. they were already attacking l’manburg before official war was declared. they also attacked them during the peace period. wilbur wrote the declaration as he was standing on the roof of the caravan, being shot at by the greater smp.

a country becomes independent when it officially declares itself to be independent. they were still united; it was tyranny.

when dream saw that l’manburg was writing the declaration, he scrambled to declare war. he had reopened and started other conflicts in the past, and involved himself in places he did not need to be. it’s true that a response is a response, but you cannot treat all responses the same way. quackity’s “response” to the things dream had done (killing tommy among those) was to torture him. we do not consider that good, or fair, or “just a response”, we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.

the greater smp fulfilled the words that wilbur had not yet written in the document, and that’s because they weren’t a prophesy, they were a history.

“...would be completely honest about (dream’s motivations in the vault) in front of his biggest enemy. /s”

i don’t see evidence that dream wasn’t being honest. what did he have to lose by it? tommy could do nothing to hurt him. so yep, he would be honest about it. and he’s listed his reasons as power before. he also has the ability to tell the truth about his motives.

dream does not see tommy that way. he sees him as someone whose only positive contribution to the server is attachment. he tells tommy that evil is relative, and to dream, tommy is the evil one. in fact, he says that tommy is evil lots of times. he only says that tommy sees himself as a hero when he’s trying to convince him to let him kill his friend. dream is using tommy’s black and white perception to get him to do what dream wants. he only says tommy sees himself as the hero, not that dream sees him that way. dream does not care about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, because he’s not idealistic like wilbur and he’s not a kid like tommy.

him making a joke about building the prison with a “little bit of evil” doesn’t matter because next line he says that tommy’s evil to him. dream isn’t playing the villain, cc!dream is. cc!dream is playing a character that is antagonistic towards others, and he plays into it and jokes around with it, as other people playing antagonistic roles have in the past. cc!wilbur does this a lot during the election and pogtopia. cc!techno hints at it with his “ah yes, blowing up a country, we must be the good guys”.

it may sound like a character because someone’s playing it, but it’s not dream.

this video matches up with some of my points here, but it’s also framed like an english class. it is an interesting meta argument, and one that i would say i partially agree with, but as we’re not really arguing on terms of meta it does not act as a general opposition to your argument. the intent of the authors does not dictate how you see the story, but it can help with interpretation of it.

dream’s words during the vault scene sure do line up with his actions for the months before that. so yeah, no discredit to cc!dream. he’s playing his character. and it’s not like he’s unwilling to make him sympathetic. he’s done so in the past (and is doing so now) and the fact that he does not do it during the vault, and downplays the tragic part of it (him losing his friends) sure makes it seem like the main point here isn’t “poor dream”, it’s “poor tommy”. they’re telling a story. it has a moral.

dream being reserved about his plans may be shown in the fact that nobody knew about the vault (except punz i think?) until dream was ready to put it into play. he generally is quiet about what he wants, he just cares a lot about it and will do a lot to get it. he’s not one for speeches unless he’s trying to make a point. the point here being that tommy is trapped. dream’s capable of explaining his thoughts. tommy asks him why and invites him to share, so he does.

this isn’t really a “nobody can interpret it like this”, it’s just pointing out that the events of canon are there and should be fully considered. character dream’s perspective of the story is biased, so people can look at it and be correct in how dream sees the situation, but “how dream sees it” and “how the story goes” do not necessarily line up.

conflicts dream has started besides the vault? okay.

-reopening the disk war by digging up the hidden disks

-declaring war on l’manburg the first time

-burning down other buildings in order to frame tommy

-blowing up the community house (or having it done for him)

-attacking l’manburg again with techno and phil

(didn’t start really, but inserted himself into when it wasn’t his business:)

-helped pogtopia

-gave wilbur tnt

-sided with manburg in the fight

-built walls around l’manburg

-demanded tommy be punished

-took personal responsibility for exile and used it as a way to isolate tommy

there’s also this post that describes things dream has done in general. the tone of the post is biased, but the actions were canon. some of these may be “retribution” but they sure were uncalled for.

so when he exiled tommy, that was about “unity”? big happy family except for one guy because “he causes all the problems”? it doesn’t matter whether he believed he was in the right for his motives. the vault does not make sense for peace or unity. it is a twisted, controlled unity. what i’m saying is that he uses peace as an excuse for his actions. he had to exile tommy, tommy would have just gotten worse. he had to declare war on l’manburg, it was a necessary evil. because nothing screams “peace” like declaring war and killing the other side, right?

those may be his actual motives in the early scenes, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. this changes with the vault. he no longer uses this as an excuse, his “excuse” is that he has a right to it. his self proclaimed motive is power and control, and unity through that. so why not accept that as his motive when he says it there?

“becoming a control freak as a result of feeling the loss of control over your own circumstances isn’t equal to dehumanizing the people you’re trying to control.”

nah dude he absolutely dehumanized them and took away their agency? he describes tommy as a pet and a tool, minutes before he switches and describes himself as the book. this could also be used to make an interesting point on how he sees people as their values, in item form. so he’s using one item to control another. tubbo’s a pawn, tommy’s a tool, techno’s a weapon, he’s the book.

he calls george a baby, and makes decisions for him. by planning to using the items to control the people, he was prepared to take away their freedom and agency by emotionally manipulating them. he did this to tommy. agency is the capacity of someone to act. he takes away that ability in order to have control.

he’s not just a control freak over his own life, the problem is that he does it to others. again, we’re talking true freedom here: the ability to do anything, even things that we would consider morally wrong. he takes away george’s power, which is revealed to be nothing. he then swiftly turns and tells him that if he tries to overthrow eret, he would be a tyrant. not acknowledging that dream just overthrew a king and stated in a new one, he hypocritically calls george the tyrant for planning to do that.

(i didn’t even notice this until now, but it’s actually interesting: dream is extremely hypocritical here, unless, of course, he sees himself as having more claim to who is king. now why would he think that? a hierarchy, perhaps?)

“which is understandable seeing as you’ve said already you never tried to look deeper into him, but it’s incorrect nonetheless.”

i said that before this i had not attempted to examine his character in a sympathetic light. that’s what i’ve been doing. his wish to “fix” his home is really just a wish to control his home, which is pretty evident when you look at right before exile. the smp was peaceful then. tommy had committed petty crimes before, and george didn’t even really care about the house. it was minimal damage. dream jumped at the opportunity to convince everyone else that tommy was the real problem (speaking of propaganda and vilifying).

and “he was getting better until the sixteenth” disregards that he threatened eret, enabled wilbur (however you interpret that, he still enabled him), and sided with schlatt for power reasons even though he said he would help pogtopia. giving pogtopia some stuff doesn’t make him the “good guy” because pogtopia were not the good guys! that’s the point! he sided with them because wilbur had less ambition than schlatt, and therefore posed less of a threat to the greater smp! he wasn’t helping them just purely out of the goodness of his heart. he didn’t think schlatt was right, he abandoned him very quickly, but he could have just taken the book and dipped. he fought in the war. he took the book for personal gain and he placed that above the trust of pogtopia.

“he wasn’t on a power trip at all, he didn’t have a god complex up until the prison stripped him of all his dignity and then threw an opportunity at him, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.”

power trip: an activity or way of behaving that makes a person feel powerful

exile and the vault, arguably before that a few times as well. there are a few quotes that emphasize this.

dream’s god complex was already there in the vault. that’s why he was scared enough of being controlled that he shut everyone else away: he wanted to secure himself even more as the sole power.

and exactly. he wasn’t proving anything to anyone else, he was proving it to himself. therefore he also wasn’t trying to “prove” he was big and bad and evil and irredeemable, he was trying to feel confident about his own power!

if he doesn’t care if he’s thought as of evil, why did it supposedly drive him into the spiral? if he stopped caring about it, that would also explain why he was indifferent towards it (because he was indifferent towards it, every time someone called him that, indifferent or angry). he didn’t think he was evil because he thought he had a right to what he was doing. so he pushed himself into wanting more control, after seeing something he identified as a problem: tommy. you’re right that that’s part of what makes him tragic: that he stopped caring about what he owed to anyone else. that’s why he hurt them.

“it’s likely and fits perfectly into his character arc in canon.”

people who are emotionally repressed still show emotions, they just don’t show them as often. dream shows emotions but he does not show the specific emotion that would give evidence to this theory. i’m saying that claiming something is deeply rooted in his character (not the emotional repression, that’s confirmed) when he shows no sign of it doesn’t line up with canon. it’s more of a theory than an analysis.

“it is good storytelling because cc!wilbur pulls it off brilliantly.”

cc!wilbur still played a complex character! his behavior changed significantly after the war, but there is evidence that he was a certain way during the war. his character grew from that point but my argument is that he was not always a liar about important things and that he genuinely believed in the values he formed l’manburg for. if you want to watch wilbur being power hungry and hypocritical, rewatch the election arc.

actions, not words. cc!wilbur pointed out hypocritical things his character said, but that just shows he was playing a flawed character. people using the wall thing as some kind of proof that he was evil is stupid because part of the idea behind the wall was poking fun at america. it was “look, this is what you guys do”.

his early character was passionate and naive. cc!wilbur was aware of this. he was still a chaotic crimeboy, the nation was founded on drugs. but not everything he did was “for chaos” because again, he played a multi-dimensional character. he can make jokes about politics.

“his main support system left by themselves.”

i’ve already explained why i think dream broke most of his own bonds. again, there’s textual evidence to support this and actions as well that line up with it. and lots of people were willing to help dream. he didn’t murder all those people by himself.

“it also seems you’re strongly biased against c!dream, which, to be fair, the majority of the fandom is.”

it’s true my bias is against dream. it’s also true that my reasons for that bias are backed up by moments in the story where he clearly states his intentions, and a lot of the evidence to the contrary is, to me, one-off moments that can be interpreted in many ways. a lot of the bias also comes from the fact that he did pretty bad things and i’ve been watching this for a long time.

this post is pretty much what i’m saying, i guess.

alright @flypaw here it is :]

~ Lad 2

[blookmallow]

rating spirit halloween’s new animatronics for 2021

or at least what’s showing as New Arrivals on the site for me. looks like we got 15 new arrivals listed here and im HYPE about them so here we go

the caretaker

pretty standard reaper character with a Gravedigger theme to it. hes... fine? nothing about this particularly stands out to me, but i dont dislike it at all. i like his gravestone. would be good for a graveyard set. i guess ill give him... 6.5/10

mr. dark

at first glance he also just looks like a standard reaper character (or voldemort. he definitely looks like voldemort now that i think about it) but it turns out he SPRINGS UP RIDICULOUSLY TALL LIKE A CURSED WACKY INFLATABLE TUBE MAN and the spring motion in the video is actually really fucking fast so, while this isn’t a lot different from other jumpscare animatronics, i gotta give him credit bc i guarantee this would have scared the fuck outta me in person. according to the site he’s almost 9 feet tall at his full height 

i expected him to jump out and scream but i did not expect. That. i feel like if you put him up on a stage or something to make him loom over people even more he’d be very menacing indeed. would also be really good if you put him behind something so you don’t see him until he's suddenly There

i like him, 8/10 springy spook man 

click for more 

grave grabber

pretty much just a zombie but he’s cute i like him. i like the green eyes. i dont know what it is about him in motion but the video makes him kind of endearing to me for some reason and i dont know why. 6/10

ophelia

at first for some reason i thought the monster’s name was ophelia but i think that’s supposed to be the name of the victim? i think the idea here is “girl haunted by a Nightmare” but the fact that the monster itself is so small and doesn’t actually have a body for the most part makes this unintentionally hilarious to me 

like. it. it’s so small. it’s just a little shoulder demon. it’s so cute 

psst. hey do we have any more cheetos

anyway i like how the girl’s eyes move back and forth but the sounds she makes are uncomfortable and she just looks so. stiff and solid and there doesn’t seem to be any movement at all other than her eyes and the monster peeking out so it’s just kind of weird to look at. it’s an interesting concept but the execution is just strange and unintentionally hilarious. 7/10 bc i still think its really funny 

someone should buy this and mod it into chrona and ragnarok 

harriet hustle

WE DID IT KIDS WE FINALLY GOT A FEMALE CLOWN ANIMATRONIC im so happy i could cry i wish my store had her set up i want to meet her  

i love how they have her hanging upside down like this, it makes it so much more visually interesting than the figures that just kinda stand there looking spooky, even though she doesn’t really Do much (she just swings and her head moves around a little, just laughs, doesn’t have spoken lines) 

i love her outfit i love her hair shes SO cute i love this little murder gremlin i love her i love her 

im still waiting on spirit to give us a female clown figure that isn’t “creepy little girl” (ive commented before on how their only female figures tend to be either the Old Hag or the Creepy Little Girl and not a lot else) but i absolutely love this all the same 20/10

this one is fun too because we also have: 

henry hustle

according to the description he’s actually harriet’s dad!! we have an evil clown father and daughter duo here and im LIVING for it

i dont think ive ever seen spirit do characters that are related to each other like this that’s so cute,

apparently his wife/harriet’s mother left them and ran off with the ringmaster. he’s a single father clown trying to raise his evil daughter clown and i support him wholeheartedly

there doesn’t seem to be any more animatronics on this storyline, we don’t have the mother here and the only ringmaster animatronic they have is the rotten ringmaster who was released previously, but i doubt he’s the homewrecker ringmaster in question. he Could Be. imagine if your wife left you for That. we dont even know if henry’s wife was also a clown or not. spirit halloween clown lore going on here

anyway i absolutely LOVE this clown, he does something INCREDIBLY STARTLING AND UNEXPECTED which i dont want to spoil for you. go watch his video and see what he does its great 

my absolute favorite type of halloween animatronic is the “does something completely unexpected” category and this one is ALSO a clown and a GOOD clown at that

and he’s got this great vintage clown style i really like, i love scary clowns like this that actually look like they could believably be a real guy and not just some kind of mutant Clown Monster 

and hes got cards!! card suit motif!!! i love it i love him this is a great clown 20/10 for him too

w. raith 

we have this one at my local store and listen to me. im completely obsessed with this ghost

it’s pretty much just a ghost but it’s SUCH A GOOD ghost. especially in this photo here with proper spooky lighting and everything. i would absolutely LOVE to see this in a haunt attraction, it looks SO good even in bright store lighting. i feel like this under the right lights and in the right environment could look SO fuckign cool  

the shredded rag look!!! the ethereal glow!! the weird jellyfishy movement!!! the classic wooOoO oO o o ooo noises!! this may perhaps be the ideal ghost. it is without flaw. a perfect specimen. i fuckign LOVE this ghost i want it so badly but i do not have the space or the money for this thing 15/10 w. raith my beloved. my true love. maybe one day 

buzzsaw

at first i was slightly disappointed to see that this guy didn’t have an actual name, but then in the description apparently his name is Bill “Buzzsaw” Jackson and his backstory is he tried to be a wrestler but it didnt go very well so he grafted weapons in place of his hands. i guess. you know, to be better at wrestling. i dont really understand it and i definitely would not have gone with “disgraced former wrestler” as the concept for this guy  

but anyway we have mr jackson at my store right now, he’s Big, i like him. he doesn’t really move very fast and doesn’t jump at you, he just kinda swings his saw around. for some reason he just seems friendly to me and i dont know why. makes me think of like an uncle dressed up for halloween rather than an actual murderer guy. i dont know i cant explain it but i like him hes my friend 8/10

wacky mole

this guy’s also at my store this year, i didn’t know his name was wacky mole fsdgjsdg

he’s listed as a new arrival, but i thought i remembered seeing him before, and the description says he’s a returning fan favorite, so. i guess this is a re-release 

anyway pretty standard Scary Monster Clown. his teeth look like candy corn. i like it but i think they should just Be candy corn. i like his colorscheme and his silly giant buttons. light up eyes are always a nice touch. he doesnt really stand out but hes overall a pretty good clown. 7/10

grim

good ol’ classic skeleton. he’s pretty nicely modeled though and i highly recommend watching the video for this guy because he moves REALLY well for a spirit animatronic, he’s got a way wider range of movement than most of them do and his head moves really nicely. one of the benefits of a skeleton animatronic is you don’t have to deal with lip movement, so his jaw movements match with his lines a lot more realistically. i like the animated glowing eyes too, it really gives him a lot of personality. he’s really interesting to watch. like, it’s just a skeleton, but it’s a really really good skeleton, so, 8/10 

BEETLEJUICE!!

i love love love franchise character animatronics and spirit has so much great beetlejuice stuff this seems well suited to them but looking at it............. hm. hm

he just looks so. stiff and his face comes across like, deer caught in the headlights to me. it Does Not look very natural but it looks slightly better in motion (he just swivels from side to side and says a few phrases but it somehow looks less. shellshocked when he’s moving) 

maybe not the greatest execution but maybe he looks better in person and im still hype to see him so 8/10 regardless 

night stalker

we have this guy at my store too, im still not really sure what’s going on with his arms (did he just rip loose from them and leave them behind? did someone do this to him? i dont know) but i love a good spooky scarecrow. love his Wiggles. hes a pretty good boy. 6.5/10

here we have another pennywise, it pretty much just pops out at you, but it’s still pretty good. i like the full size one they had before better, but this one’s slightly cheaper and would be easier to integrate into a haunted house attraction since he comes with a built in set piece. it looks good but doesn’t do much. 7.5/10 i guess 

GHOSTFACE!!!!

FUCK YES I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

please. please spirit halloween set him up in my store so i can see him

anyway hes got kind of the same issue beetlejuice has where the figure just. looks kind of stiff, and he looks more like a spooky ghost decoration than like, A Person. he doesnt seem to have any lines or anything either, he just kinda pops out. but then again i guess whenever we see ghostface in person in the movies he doesn’t usually talk anyway. i dont really know how id make this better but it seems a little underwhelming somehow. still hype to see it though. 7/10 i guess 

now if we could just get a jack torrance and a bela lugosi dracula id be content 

i would LOVE to see Red from Us but i doubt they’d do one. my other horror beloved is norman bates but i know if they made one of him it’d just be him in a dress waving a knife around (not that i wouldn’t still be hype to see him, but, y’know) (anyway. tangent. moving on) 

mr. howle 

it’s. a werewolf. he howls. that’s....... about it 

it’s a very nice looking werewolf, it’s a well designed figure and definitely looks very imposing, but it’s... just a werewolf. there’s not really anything particularly interesting or creative here. its a perfectly good werewolf. i dont have anything to say about this. 6.5/10 

i also just am not a werewolf person so maybe someone out there who has a greater appreciation for werewolves might like him more 

[linddzz]

Pitch Black for the ask meme bc I'm forever on my rotg bullshit

002 | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character: THE OG! THE BASTARD THAT STARTED IT ALL! My first fanfic was because I didn’t like how anyone else was writing him at the time. He is still probably one of my favorite villain characters tbh. He’s got the classic Bad Guy vibe with evil laughs and a killin aesthetic but just adding all the potential for ancient eldritch personification of fear in the shadows???? Chefs kiss. So much cool shit was done with him in fandom because of that. But he’s also a goofy fuck??? He tells stupid jokes and he sasses and we must never forget the prancing around on the globe like a big fucking nerd.  And then the angst potential. The reveal that he’s also a lonely miserable motherfucker who is largely acting up to get attention and make people notice him. He’s manipulative but I like interpreting him as also being fully sincere and never really lying because that makes it so much more interesting.  Later learning about the book Kozmotis backstory??? Making Pitch into the end result of a formerly noble hero character being taken over and fully corrupted by cosmic darkness??? AMAZING. INCREDIBLE. EXACTLY MY SHIT.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Jack Frost. (Who uh, just to be clear for newer kids, bc of his voice I always took as “twink who died between 18 and 25″ since if I remember right no one could find an official age for movie Jack??) I mean, you got the Cold and Dark dynamic that even Pitch tries to appeal to. You can also go into fun often has a bit of fear going on. They’re two immortals who know what it’s like to be totally ignored, overlooked, and invisible while being increasingly desperate for some sort of recognition. They can take each other in a fight and GOD I always loved Pitches legit batshit GLEE when Jack hands his ass to him and hes all like OH YEAH SHIT GOT INTERESTING AGAIN. I also am a person who loves me some unhealthy obsession in my fiction ships and Pitch immediately going “IF YOURE NOT GONNA BE MY FRIEND YOU’RE GONNA BE NO ONES FRIEND!!!!” just made my Hot Problematique Content senses perk right the fuck up. Scissor Sisters “I Cant Decide” is MY SONG for them ok like they just got that MOOD. Even in my more uh, mutal and balanced version of them (aka Evil Boyfriends) I see any relationship with Pitch getting full on codependent and obsessive and contentious. But even with all Dark Vibes there’s that fun aspect to them both! There is so much potential for stupid shenanigans and jokes and mischievous idiocy right alongside the dark nightmare shit and god I love that dichotomy.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Him and Sandman have a two-sides-of-the-same-coin balance dynamic that is so great to explore. I also have an AU where Pitch is less Absolute Villain and more of a like, weird asshole antagonist who is still Part of Their World and anyway him and Toothiana get together to have tea parties where they talk shit and act like passive aggressive PTA mom frienemies.

My unpopular opinion about this character: Fandom made him too nice. Just. In general. I also got a lot of flack in the height of fandom for saying that without a LOONNNGGGG redemption arc and likely a bit of reverting back to Kozmotis, Pitch as he is in the movie isn’t really made for “healthy and wholesome romantic relationship”

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I only kinda read the books but man i would KILL for that Kozmotis backstory presented as an adult sci-fi/fairytale. Give me space fantasy and noble knights and really digging into that “how much of the old man is in there still” nightmare potential.

my OTP: I pretty much put my blackice manifesto right up there already

my cross over ship: Shrug

a headcanon fact: Pitch doesn’t remember his old life but his personality is pretty much unchanged, but twisted up. He still sometimes gets set off and almost triggered by things that hit on Kozmotis trauma, but he has no idea why and those instances freak him out a little bit. He dances around a lot and if he wasn’t so fucked up by his growing isolation and need for vengeance he would probably be a great non-evil overall harmless antagonist who just likes stirring shit up for shits and giggles and (other peoples) screams.

[kinsey3furry300]

5 ships I hate, why I hate them, how to (kinda) fix them, the better ships you should be doing in that universe, and why you should ignore me and keep writing them if it makes you happy.

Note: this is done for amusement, please don’t be offended; I’m not attacking your ship, I’m just listing some ships I do not always care for, and how I think they could be improved, and maybe made brilliant, by clever writing.

In no particular order, and focusing on ships that often annoy me, with no attempt by me to say anything meaningful or popular about the current state of any particular fandom. I’m also a firm believer in the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad ship, only a badly executed ship, so my objections to these is less a dislike of shipping, or the paring, and more that they raise writing issues that I think are difficult to fix in a satisfying way. That’s why in a lot of the examples below I prefer AU ships to ones that try to messily work it into the cannon. Anyway, enjoy... I guess?

 Marco x / anyone (Animorphs)

Why I hate it: Animrophs is an intensely character-driven story, where the tension of each book comes from the conflicts, external and internal, that the five Animrophs (and Ax) face during a long, hard, traumatic war.  And while several of the character are paired off romantically, it’s always to emphasise character conflict over their different points of view. Jake and Cassie are a pair because Jake’s struggle with having to make hard, grey, morally ambiguous choices as leader is highlighted by Cassie’s burning need to make the right choice, the lesser evil, the choice that leaves some small shred of humanity and dignity and kindness left in this bleak world. Tobias and Rachel are a pair as their arcs deal with literal and figurative loss of humanity, as the slow accumulation of trauma over time turns these happy(ish), normal kids into psychologically ruined husks of their former selves and destroys them slowly, one fight at a time.

Marco’s arc, isn’t about either of these things: Marco’s arc, is about the bright, clear line between A and B, between problem and solution. Marco is a utilitarian, a pragmatist: his concern isn’t the burden of leadership, or the cost of the decision, but about how to put that all aside and make hard decisions that actually work regardless of cost. It’s not about what to do, the path is obvious: the bright, clear line of ruthless logic, but how to do it. His match, his counterpoint, the other character who’s all about the logic of taking awful decision in a way that actually works for the team, and his foil, his female counterpart in this, is not a romantic partner, but his mother: Visser one, making the exact same hard, difficulty ruthless decisions using logic and maths, but for the other side of this war. A romantic paring gets in the way of this arc because a partner doesn’t help him with that bright, clear line, and worse, any attempt to pair him of with either Rachel or Cassie breaks up not only a cannon paring, but their respective character arc.

How to (kinda) fix this: Marco’s arc is, at the end of the day, a trolly problem. So make sure whoever you ship him with is one of the people tied to the tracks. Introduce a character he crushes on, and then in the second act reveal that they are either a Controller, or in the family of a Controller or the proximity of the target of their next mission in a way that will make them collateral damage ,and let Marco struggle with what happens when that bright, clear logical line from A to B cuts through someone he actually loves; you know, like it did with his mother. See, even trying to fix this ship is weirdly Freudian.

The far better ship you should be doing: Ax x / EVERYONE. Ax in human form is described as a worryingly pretty, worryingly androgynous male of indeterminate race. He is a literally Bishonen alien hedonist with no familiarity with human senses, poor impulse control in human form, and no knowledge or understanding of human courtship rituals, and he can shape-shift, including into other members of the core team if needed to compel a mission, he calls Jake his prince,  and he is incredibly close to Tobias, the lonely outcast woobie that the LGBT fans adopted as their poster boy. Come on, the potential for shipping, both with wacky hijinks and sad, tragic star-crossed lovers’ trope is endless. Every line dedicated to Marco shipping is a line of text that could be dedicated to Ax trying to eat a Cinnabon erotically on his first date as a human and hulking out mid way because he forgot just how good they are. What could be better than him leaning into to erotically kiss a team-mate, and then fucking up due to his failure to understand human mouths, making weird mouth sounds, and then licking crumbs of the table in the middle of the mall, in front of the entire school, while his crush awkwardly tried to pretend this is normal? What’s wrong with you Marco-shipper people, do you hate fun?

 Riz/Tem (beastars) Why I hate this ship: Okay, just to quickly ask a question, to people who un-ironically like this as a serious ship and not a dark joke, just one little question: What’s wrong with you? I mean,are you okay? Keep taking the meds: the show is VERY clear on that point.

It’s like those people who say Joker X Harley Quinn is their ideal dark, edgy relationship: no it’s not, it’s abusive! Morticia x Gomez is dark and cool but CONSENTUAL and HEALTHY. This… this is a deeply imbalanced person murdering someone and telling themselves after that fact it was special and rare and magical. ITS HOMICIDE! And even if you write that out (and you shouldn’t, because that changes the character arc of every other major character) it’s still got more red flags that a soviet military parade. This is the botulinum of a toxic, one-sided teenage infatuation. Riz’s entire arc is about how he projects his thoughts and feelings about himself onto this idealised, made-up version of his and Tem’s relationship which, from Tem’s point of view, never existed. Riz never loved Tem: he loved the idea of Tem, the idea that someone would see the real him, see his inner pain and accept him anyway, but he never once told Tem this. He didn’t warn him “Hey, because of you I don’t feel I need my meds any more, do you mind if I try not taking them and we can meet and talk about this in a safe, well-lit pace?” He’s not honest with Tem, and on top of that It doesn’t make sense from the point of view of either of the characters for them to be actually, romantically in love (although  they were clearly close friends), because it undermines and cheepens Riz desire to just be seen and accepted for his real self, and the cannon Tem X Els ship. It also doesn’t make sense from a story point of view: Riz is a shadow archetype for Legosi. He’s what Legosi would have become if someone hadn’t interrupted his attack on Haru. That’s why Legosi needs to beat Riz with his own hands: because then he’s beating the darker version of himself he’s been carrying with him, and he can finally move on with Haru guilt-free. Having Riz and Tem’s relationship actually be what Riz imagined it to be undoes that. It undoes Riz’s interesting, dark inner struggle between truth and fantasy, it turns Tem’s tragic, unsolved murder that sets the entire story in motion into a just sort of weird Romeo-and Juliet suicide. It’s ruins the character arc not only for Riz, but for Legosi, and also, by extension, Louis and Haru, because Legosi’s internal angst over whether or not herbivores and carnivores can have a relationship as true friends needs this example of a tragic, flawed, toxic, failed friendship to bounce off of.

How it could (sort of) work: an AU where Riz’s attack on Tem is interrupted and Tem lives with a slight arm injury, and doesn’t tell anyone out of his complex feelings for Riz. Meanwhile, that bunny girl from the gardening club had been brutally devoured and Rz and/or Tem are so horrified with how close this was to their own near-miss, they start to investigate the murder, and in doing so get caught up in Louis’ inner struggle. Because that’s how the story needs to work, it’s about duality and struggle: and if Riz takes Legosi’s role, and by dating a herbivore he de facto takes the role, so Legosi must take Riz’s. This could be a great AU!

The better ship you should be doing: Pina/Riz (with a dash of Pina x Els), no, seriously, I’m not shitposting. You want to give Riz a redemption arc with a cute woolly boy? How about a story where Pina, out of a need for closure about at happened to him, starts to visit Riz in jail and they talk, mockingly at first, confrontational at first, but later Pina slowly becoming more fascinated in Riz and Tem’s life and asking Riz for more and more detail until they both bond over their shared traumatic experiences and their sense of loss for Tem’s senseless death, Tem’s unfished life casting a shadow over both off them. Eventually, the two of them find, from Legosi who still has the diary, that Tem had planned out an elaborate and beautiful first date with Els that he never got to take her on, and Riz, guilt ridden and sad than Tem never got this beautiful moment, decides to ask Pina take her on that date for Tem, with Riz coaching him by phone cyano-de-Bergerac style, Riz finally getting some closure that he helped one of Tem’s wishes come true and finally acknowledging to himself that Tem had a life and loves outside of him that were cut of short by his actions, and just crying over his lost friend, as Pina and Els slow-dance in Tem memory. Or if you just want to see Tem awkwardly date a carnivore boy from school, why not something less creepy and more wholesome and ship him with Jack? That would be cute AF, and more importantly, not romanticize brutal murder. Or an AU where everything is happy and nice, I’d argue at that it’s no longer Beastars at that point, but if it makes you happy, go for it. Let’s not shame anyone here.

 Snape X Lilly (Harry Potter)

Why I hate this ship: honestly, it’s not for the reason you think; I just like Snape too much as a tragic character, and making him in any way happy destroys his arc in my opinion.  The objection’s others have raised: that Snape acts in a worryingly possessive stalker-ish way towards Lilly, and that if Voldemort had gone for Nevil rather than Harry as a child Snape would have remained a loyal death eater, are true and I acknowledge them as having some validity, but that’s not why I can’t stand this ship. Snape is supposed to be a morally and emotionally complex, tragic figure. That “After all this time?” line was the best line in the Deathly Hallows.  Snape is supposed to show the equality destructive and redemptive power of  love. It’s sort of trinity: Lilly shows the pure power of true, unconditional love in her sacrifice to save Harry, Voldy shows what self-destruction and cruelty a life without understanding love leads to, and Snape sits somewhere in the middle: his one-sided  un-requited love being both the cause of his darkest, and his greatest actions. His curse, and his redemption, fall and rise. Making him happy messes that up.

How to (kinda) fix this ship: make them miserable. Make them fall for each-other only to be pulled apart by circumstance (you know, like they were in the darn original source material). You’re serious about making this a tragic, dark romance? Don’t ship them when they’re at school: Ship them during Voldemort’s rise to power, in the 80’s, after Lilly is married. Have the original Order of the Phoenix send her to meet with Snape and use their previous relation to try to milk some information out of him. Have her feel conflicted about it, have James furious about it, but have her do it anyway for the greater good. Have her meet up secretly with Snape who is angry and distrustful, knowing his must be a trap, and talk. Have the relationship slowly build over time against the backdrop of a cold-war spy thriller, as Lilly slowly realizes that she has some lingering feelings for Snape, but can’t reconcile them her loyalty to the order and her family. Make this a love story of conflicted feelings, divided loyalties, and spy-work against the background of drawing war-clouds. Have Snape offer to leave Voldemort, if she’ll leave the Order, and run away with him, but by that point she knows she’s pregnant and chooses to stay, out of loyalty even though she’s crushing on Snape. Have him show up at the rendezvous expecting for her to be there only for James to lead an Order Ambush, and a fight to ensure, on top of Tower Bridge in the howling wind and rain, Snape surviving but having his spirit crushed and fleeing before Lilly can tell him her true feelings. Make it big, and melodramatic, but above all, make it tragic.  Because that’s the only way Snape works as a character. Always.

The better ship you should be doing: Ginny X Nevil or Luna x Nevil: You want tragic lovers, at school, with divided loyalties, who never get together in the main cannon because a Potter ruins it and gets the girl? Ginny X Nevil. Write what was happening that final year Harry wasn’t at school when they took Dumbledore’s Army and make it work in earnest. Heck, you could even have Snape, as headmaster, hated by them but secretly trying to protect them as a secondary character to their secret, forbidden love. You don’t want to break up Harry X Ginny? Luna X Nevil is sweet and wholesome, but also tragic as they never get a chance, having their school life taken over by the horror of that final year and the need to fight for their very souls in a school run by Death Eaters and the trauma of the Battle of Hogwarts meaning that in order to put away the past and move on, they need to leave each other behind. Hell, do an AU where they canonically end up together, why not? They deserve happiness.

 Dean / Sam AKA Wincest (Supernatural)

Why I hate this ship: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. Several times.

How you could (sort of) fix this ship: You can’t: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. I guess a body-swap arc could fix this, as it’s less squicky if its just their bodies with someone else’s minds,  but seriously, the reasons why this shouldn’t exist are extensively covered in the show, and it was hilarious.  To be honest, I don’t hate this ship done as a joke, but I have seen some dark spots on the internet, and I can say with all honesty it’s not always treated as a joke. Some folks are really invested in this, and all I can ask is, is your home life okay?

Now, done as a joke, I’m 110% behind this. This is exactly the sort of insane wacky bullshit that makes for a good crack-fic. For example imagine that the supernatural threat of the week was book that made anything written in it come true, and the brothers are trying to find and destroy it, but they keep getting distracted by their burgeoning romantic feelings for each-other, and suddenly realise that the owner of the book is a fan on the in-universe novels, and writing slash-fic in the book. They need to find the writer before they make them do something they’ll both regret, but it’s just so distracting when Sam’s beautiful eyes are right there and- dammit, Sam, it’s happening again! Make Sam less concerned and even a little amused, with it, but make Dean hate what’s going on. Especially when the writer’s description suddenly makes Sam noticeably better hung that him. Make the villain turn out to be Becky from “Sympathy for the devil” and end with them trying to take the book away as she writes frantically to force them to do her bidding, and you’ve got yourself a good fic.

The better ship you should be doing: Cas/Sam or Cas/Dean or Cas/Sam AND Dean fic. Duh. Once again the show-runners beat the fans to the mark and pointed out that this is the best ship, and then they took it away just to fuck with us.

 Any Katniss ship that ignores her obsession with Emotional Security Logic. (The Hunger Games)

Why I hate these ships: Katniss is, briefly put, a mess before the books ever start, her father’s death and harsh upbringing have arguably given her PTSD before she ever volunteers for the reaping, and it doesn’t get better from there.  In psychology, Emotional Security Theory (EST) is a hypothesis that the heightened emotions surrounding repeated violent exposures leaves children vulnerable to dysregulated distress responses and eventual psychopathology, aka, why Kat be so messed up.  Her internal monologue makes the books completely clear that her choice in partners is not motivated by normal affections, but by deep, deep fear. A fear of loss, abandonment and death that leads her to make every decision about what minimises her, and her sister’s, exposure to potential physical and emotional harm. It’s frantic, fraught, cold survivalist thinking. And the other characters in the book notice and acknowledge it! “Which of us will she pick?” “She’ll pick whoever she can’t survive without.” Kat doesn’t like herself for it, but she does eventually admit to herself that she makes her decisions like this.

How do we fix this ship: Ship Kat with whoever you like, but give her a good reason to pick them: and in Kat’s mind “A good reason” is based on Emotional Security Logic, she needs to have a pressing reason why this ship makes her and her sister safer. Do that, and you’ve got yourself a good Katniss story. Don’t do that, and while you may or may not have a good story, the person staring in it isn’t Katniss Everdeen anymore.

The better ship you should be writing: Finick X Annie. Or, Haymitch prequel ships

FinAnn. This, this ship has some real potential to it, and is criminally underutilized. Finick and Annie’s relationship is one of the most tragic and romantic in the story, and has so much to offer. Or, if you want to have a hard-bitten character from district 12 struggling with trying to find love in the hellish combat of the games, do a prequel in which Haymitch finds love in the capitol during training, but loses then in the area and turns to drink as a result. Heck, you could even have some fun with this and turn it into a dark comedy, or a great tragic love story, whatever you like. It’s got potential, and his backstory is vague enough you could do a lot with it.

So, tell me below why I’m wrong, and have fun with your writing: just because I hate that ship doesn’t mean you should. Enjoy yourselves.

I’m off to write awful Ax/Pina/Luna Polyjuice’d into Nevil/Cas/Finick fiction set at an anime high-school that fights a magical war against other fictional schools, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[whirlibird]

fgo fate for your fandom ask?

ALRIGHT HELL YEAH LETS GO. THE CAST IS MASSIVE BUT I WILL DO MY BEST.

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most) - LANCELOT. berserker lancelot in particular. enjoyment of his lore is enhanced by arthuriana fun facts my friend gave me and that i found while diving thru his wikipedia pages. raised by the lady of the lake. a damp, watery mary sue of a man blessed with beauty and martial skills but doesnt know how to cope with interpersonal difficulties at all. perfect knight but his main method of dealing with any problem that cant be solved by Sword is to promptly go insane and then run naked into the woods. an ideal man. emotionally fragile! i want to shatter him like glass! i think fate is the only adaptation of lancelot that really leans into his tendency towards hysteria but unfortunately they kinda waste it. making his insanity because arthur forgave him and therefore he couldnt forgive himself is.....kinda meh? ive got opinions about it. anyway this has gone on long enough. last thing: if theres anything else i wish fgo would do with him, its either 1. galehaut or 2. his susceptibility to being kidnapped by various women

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped) - jack. i am wrapping her up in a giant fluffy winter coat as we speak. she is going to wear so many layers that she is practically a sphere.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave) - theres so many underused characters with squandered potential in fgo lmao. i cant really think of one right now - i think i'd have to say nezha - theres a lot more they can do with her, i think.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week) - moriarty is by no means obscure, and he pops up all the time, but. every time he does i fuckin lose it. also shoutout to chen gong. again not obscure at all considering how busted he is gameplay wise, but i do want him to appear in actual story stuff more often, bc he's fucking hilarious

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave) - this is also a major blorbo. shoutout to archer emiya. god's perfect housewife. born to cook forced to kill. this is a twofer, i think, because u cant love archer without also loving shirou (i mean guess you can but :/ whack) emiya theme lets fucking GO. i dont know how to explain why i love him so much without citing like.....the entirety of fsn. he's allowed to cause problems on purpose because he is sad </3

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason) - izo. he's so mad all the time. i dont think this quite counts, but im putting in ryouma and oryou as the plinko. i could watch izo being pinged around by them emotionally for hours. just bouncing around like a windows screensaver.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell) - archer gilgamesh. considering he already got dunked in the world's evils and just came out even more naked than before i think he'll be fine. he is getting launched into turbohell more for his many, many crimes than being gay, but he is also gay.

honorary mentions: - salieri, who was the reason i started fgo in the first place bc his whole everything is so deranged in such a fun way

- quetzalcoatl. love her so much but why is she white

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

[chryzure-archive]

And WHILE we’re on the subject of ChrysiJacks… got any crumbs of that fairy AU? 👀

UM… YES, ABSOLUTELY. i’ve been meaning to draw more of it bc i’m a slut for jacks w/ an open-back shirt, but jst some thoughts i’ve been having thus far:

chrysi and jacks meet at the fairy equivalent of what would be his gambling den—but make it a little more high-end club and fantasy, and there you have it! still haven’t entirely figured out why chrysi was there, but jacks was lounging around with other fated fairies and they were all discussing how she’d be great arm candy, with her golden scars along her back. jacks became intrigued and decided he would attempt to lay claim first. he got punched in the jaw for his trouble.

mistress luck thought that was hilarious. she was probably the one that had invited chrysi in the first place. but she’s also somewhat protective of chrysi (in whatever way a fate can be), so she tries to dissuade jacks by mentioning that chrysi can’t fly, so she’s not worth the trouble. regrettably, that only piques jacks’s interest more :(( he ends up plaguing chrysi after that. actually, he’s kinda an asshole about it. i hate him. so does chrysi.

but one day, some other fairies decide to mess with chrysi (everyone knows her wings were torn off in a “freak accident” as a child—truthfully, chrysi was mauled by some creature when she was younger. i wanna implement demons or ghosts or some other supernatural element on top of the fairy aspect, simply because it adds drama and it makes chrysi a little scary)—and they do so by grappling her and flying her up high. meanwhile, chrysi’s screaming and scratching and fighting back hard enough that they all decide that it’s easier to just let her drop now.

fortunately! jacks came across her and recognized (intimately) her swearing from afar. less fortunately! he’s now come across her plummeting to her doom. turns out she actually can’t fly. he didn’t really realize realize that she couldn’t this entire time.

he dives after her and saves her. which is great! he’s so prepared for chrysi to be pleased with him! she’ll thank him for saving her!

he gets punched in the jaw again.

at least it’s not personal this time??? he hopes so, anyway.

once she calms down, she mostly just demands he put her down somewhere. when he asks if she knows where she is, she goes silent, then tells him to put her down anyway. she’d rather find her way home on her own than to continue interacting with him.

“listen, either i put you down and fly behind you the entire way home to ensure you’ll get home safe, or i fly you home myself. which will it be, princess?” “why do you even care?” ((insert jacks panic here as he realizes he’s, like, actually catching feelings and he has to consider the fact that he might become killable)) “….. because it’s more fun when i torment you myself…….” ((nailed it))

she gives up and lets him take her home. you’d think she’d be annoying the entire time, but instead she’s letting him hold her bridal style, with her arms wrapped around his neck. how are those feelings doing rn, jacky?? holding up okay??? no??? perfect! cry about it.

after that, jacks wants to teach chrysi how to fly, which… does not end well. chrysi laughs in his face because, wow, you think i can learn how to? try and lift my wings, jackass.

((spoiler alert: chrysi goes sprawling in agony whenever someone raises her wings above a certain level. she can really only let them twitch))

also, because i’ve been listening to a lot of thumbelina, i want to have a scene where chrysi’s hiding in little hidey-holes in a teapot or books or whatnot. it’s just something i’ve wanted to do since i was a little girl. i also love the idea of jacks suddenly realizing there’s lots of hiding places on the forest floor, because he’s never thought about things like that before.

anyway, probably for more malevolent reasons, chrysi ends up being lured out into an open area and she’s trapped in a glass jar :((( presumably by an evil witch.

jacks is going to go insane!!! chrysi’s missing now, and he’s so scared for her since she can’t fly!!! he’s officially in love with her and mistress luck, in her unfeeling sort of way, feels bad for him. mostly because he’s mortal now.

later, jacks finds the witch’s house and tries to get chrysi out of the jar. a VERY suspenseful scene, where he’s trying to hide from the witch while chrysi’s trying not to be too obvious with her hope. he manages to get her out, but not before the witch sees them struggling out and essentially casts a spell on them both so they can’t fly. bad for jacks! really just same-old for chrysi.

they get out, but jacks is freaking out because he can’t fly now :((( but chrysi’s like “oh, it’s only temporary. no need to worry about it. it’ll wear off in about two days.” “… how can you tell???” “just looks like it, i guess” “………. it looks like it???” “yep.” “i guess that’s not the weirdest thing that i’ve heard of.”

they’re struggling to get home and they camp together during this time. jacks begins to appreciate chrysi’s way of life a little bit more, plus more tension between them… yep!!!

tbh, i kinda want to have him be engaged to someone, since he’s the prince… it would add drama :) esp when they get back home and they’re like “oh, you’re back!!! perfect, your fiancée is waiting for you!” and he’s dragged off while looking desperately back at chrysi. but of course she’d step back and look away, because she’s been thinking it would never happen this entire time :(( after all, she can’t fly.

yeah ummm more drama like that, but sdlkfjslkfjsdlkfsdflk i’m super sleepy and can’t think. i jst think. they’re neat. .

plus, also, i imagine various subsections of a fairy au w/ them. like pixie hollow on some occasions, thumbelina on others, and other fairy concepts as well!!!

[riddlegecko]

Hmm...

I think it would be interesting to flesh out Emma going to visit Jane (and see Tim, maybe for the first time if we’re staying in canon here) and learning that she’s gone. Maybe not terribly fluffy though, but fun dynamics with Tim and it could explain how she ended up staying with Tom and Tim for the borrowers AU?

In terms of fluff, sorry my brain doesn’t like fluff without some tinge of sadness, for HOHF, Emma and Paul fight [villain of your choice] and someone gets hurt and the aftermath of that. Alternatively, I’d love to know if Tim has the Nitro Gene and if so, if he joins his Aunt Emma and Uncle Paul in the field. That could be so cute! (Although, he could also join mission control or maybe make friends with another super if Hannah has powers as well? But that’s not Paulkins...) If you feel like picking up a family fluff piece, which is personally my favorite genre, lol, I’d love to see Paul and Emma as parents and if their child shows their powers early (since it’s not nitro gene specific from Paul, if it can be inherited, of course, and now I’m imaging Jack Jack from the incredible, lol) or for Harriet and Tex to come back and see their baby (oh that would be adorable because grandparent plants and you can imagine how proud they would be of Emma!) or to see how Slacky interacted with the baby. (I’m imagining a how a Golden Retriever interacts with babies now... 😂) Or, if you’d prefer to ignore children all together, Emma going back home and taking Paul to meet Harriet and Tex (meet the parents essentially). Well, I’m not sure if any of those ideas seem interesting, but if not, I hope they’re able to help get some fun ideas flowing. Have a lovely weekend! 😊

Okay, so... A lot of these are stuff that I want to explore in longer stories eventually, both the Borrowers AND the HoHF prompts. But you DID give me an idea for some HoHF family fluff between Emma and Tim!

"Here's that big project I was telling you about!"

Emma had been back in Hatchetfield for what, six, seven months now? And she'd long since made a name for herself as Wild Flower. She was respected, loved even, by the town that had once cast her aside. And what's more, she'd managed to connect with her nephew, who seemed to think she was cool despite her absence for most of his life! If it wasn't for the fact that Tim didn't know she was Wild Flower yet, she would've chalked it up to that.

After all, Tim loved superheroes. Understandable, considering his mother was one of the most revered supers in the country before she died. Being raised by someone like that was bound to give someone a deep respect for the career. And right now, Tim was showing Emma his most recent token of appreciation. A social studies project he'd done for school about superheroes around the world.

It was a large cardboard diagram, with a map of the world taped to it. Coming from a line pointing to each continent (barring Antarctica, because duh), was a photograph of a super that was native to said continent, accompanied by a short paragraph with information about them.

"Wooooow, you really know your supers, bud!" Emma mused as she scanned over the diagram, impressed.

Tim looked up at her with a bashful smile. "Thanks," he said, blushing. "Wanna hear more about each one?"

"Educate me!"

"Okay, so," Tim began excitedly, pointing to the super whose picture corresponded to Australia. A woman with long, blonde hair and a bright blue superhero getup. "That right there is Tidal Crash, she's an Australian super with the power to control water."

"Can she talk to sea creatures?" Emma asked, encouraging her nephew to continue.

"Yeah, telepathically," Tim replied. "She's like the cool version of Aquaman."

Emma snickered at Tim's snark. God, he was such a Perkins. He continued on, pointing to the picture next to Africa. A dark-skinned man with long dreadlocks and an award-winning smile, half his face covered by a deep purple mask.

"That's Radi ya Umeme," Tim continued to explain. "He's from Kenya, and his name is Swahili for 'Lightning Strike'. He can control the weather, but he's really good with lightning, hence the name. He's kinda like Madbolt in a way, only y'know, not evil."

Emma chuckled, remembering her most recent encounter with that old nutjob. Madbolt was a fascinating case, he'd been causing trouble for Hatchetfield since around the time Emma was born. Not even Jane had managed to land him behind bars. Tim continued, his finger landing on the South American picture. A man with dark, curly hair and deep brown eyes, clad in a black leather costume.

"That guy is Espalda con Púas, his name is Spanish for 'Spiked Back'," Tim said, talking as though he was still presenting the project to his teacher and classmates. "He's from Chile, and as his name would imply, he can grow spikes out of his back and sharpen his teeth and nails into fangs and claws!"

Emma nodded, urging him to continue. With an excited smile, Tim moved on to Asia, where a picture of a short-haired woman with a shining mask lay.

"That's Dá Quy, she's from South Vietnam," he continued. "Her name means 'Gemstone', and she can control different ores and minerals and stuff."

Tim moved on to Europe, where a picture of a woman with short brown hair and an elegant, but still practical costume lay.

"That's Lady Nighthawk, she's from England," he explained as Emma continued to listen intently. "She can talk to animals and harness their abilities to fight. She visits Hatchetfield once a year, too!"

"Right! I think I remember your mother telling me about meeting a 'Lady Nighthawk' before!" Emma exclaimed in recollection.

"Yeah, mom worked with a lot of supers," Tim mused fondly before moving on to the final picture, the one corresponding to North America. A grizzled man with long dirty-blonde hair and a decked-out suit. "And finally, there's Eagle Eye! He's an ex-military general who can shapeshift into a bald eagle! And he's got this awesome combat suit that he uses in human form! He's from Washington D.C., but just like Lady Nighthawk, he visits Hatchetfield sometimes!"

Emma smiled at the sight of the super who'd been acting as a mentor to her for the past week. During a rescue mission she'd nearly bungled, Eagle Eye- or John MacNamara as she'd learned his real name was, swooped in to lend a hand. He'd taken a shine to her, and offered to help coach her in the ways of being a superhero. Emma had been learning lots of valuable information off of John. But of course, there was no way Emma could tell Tim about-

"Speaking of, did you hear that he's been working with Wild Flower lately?"

Okay, nevermind! Emma froze, surprised by her nephew's casual mention of her alias. Was this a good time to tell him? Better test the waters to be sure...

"Oh yeah, Wild Flower!" she exclaimed, trying to play it cool. "I've, uh... been hearing lots about her lately!"

"Yeah, it's so weird!" Tim chuckled. "It's like she just came out of nowhere!"

Emma nervously drummed her fingers on the headboard of Tim's bed, where they'd been sitting for the past couple of minutes. Did he mean that in a good way or a bad way?

"She's awesome, though!" Tim continued, an excited sparkle in his eyes. Emma's heart began to race. "Her powers are so cool! I mean, she can summon that big flytrap thing! What was it's name again?"

"Slack-Jaw?" Emma replied, a barely-contained smile on her face.

"Right, Slack-Jaw!" Tim recalled. "And did you see her new costume? The green jacket with the cool logo on it?"

"Mhm!" Emma hummed in response, happily recalling the day she was presented that jacket at Town Hall. The mayor had recognized her feats of heroism, and had the jacket tailor-made for her to replace that ratty old, ill-fitting red leather jacket she'd bought from a Goodwill in a scrambled effort to make a good costume. It still needed some tweaks now, but the new jacket was an excellent start.

"And now that she's getting lessons from Eagle Eye, she's only gonna get better!" Tim gushed. "She's just so- Aunt Emma? What're you smiling so hard for?"

God, Emma couldn't keep this secret any longer. She had to tell him.

"I have a question for you, bud," she began, resisting the urge to just tell him outright. "Did your mom ever say anything about both her and me having the Nitro Gene?"

Tim's eyebrows shot up. "Oh yeah!" he exclaimed. "But she said that you didn't like talking about your powers, so she never told me what they were. I figured you still wouldn't wanna talk about them, so I never asked."

Emma's heart fluttered. What had she done to deserve such a considerate nephew? "You wanna take a guess?"

"O-okay, but why n-" Tim cut himself off, the gears clearly turning in his head. After a few moments, he turned to Emma with a look of awed realization on his face. "W-wait, Aunt Emma... Are you saying that you're...?"

"Wild Flower?" Emma finished, eyeing him cheekily. "You bet!"

A smile slowly blossomed onto Tim's face. "No way!" he exclaimed. "B-but mom always said you didn't wanna be a superhero!"

"Well, people change their minds sometimes!" Emma retorted. "And I decided to finally put my powers to good use once I came back home."

"Wow..." Tim gaped breathlessly.

"But I'm still your Aunt Emma, first and foremost!" Emma quickly clarified. "I'm still the same person, just y'know... with plant powers."

"O-of course!" Tim stammered, his mind looking certifiably blown. His face grew serious. "And don't worry, I won't tell anybody about your secret identity!"

Emma snickered, tousling her nephew's hair. "I appreciate it, bud," she said, pulling him into a hug. "...Want me to introduce you to Slack-Jaw?"

"...Maybe."

[woulddieforperrytheplatypus]

Dan Povenmire, co-creator of Phineas and Ferb and the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, just did a zoom call for fans, and this is a link to it on Google Drive and a link to it on YouTube.

Here’s a brief overlay brought to you by my incessant live blogging, and because I was speed typing on my phone, I can guarantee not everything made the cut. If you’re interested in hearing Dan talk about growing up an artist and becoming an animator and trying to pitch Phineas and Ferb and working on the show and movies, I would definitely suggest checking out the full 75 minute video. The highlights from the call are below the cut.

They added Doof and Perry because they liked chase scenes. They realized fairly quickly that more than not, the pair led to good comedy, and found it much more interesting to see how their relationship developed. He also says that they are "the most important person to each other” and “they’re really good friends.”

They wrote the Perry theme song in an hour between meetings with Disney

They decided during the pilot that they weren't going to try to get comedy from the characters saying mean things to each other. Even Doofenshmirtz wasn't motivated by evil, he just wanted to get the attention he didn't get at home.

Doof’s backstories were not Dan and Swampy's idea. They were from Jon Barry and Chris Hendrick, who [itched the lawn gnome backstory. It was long and compliated and Dan and Swampy couldn’t stop laughing. They also provided the "it all started on the day of my birth” one the next day.

making the 2D movie while making the movie was the busiest Dan says he has ever been, and that's not even counting the PnF Take Two and Doof's web show and all the interviews. Basically, 2010ish was a very busy time in the Dwampyverse.

They decided to give each pair of writers their own section of an outline to work on, and each pair got to make up the dialogue and jokes based on it. it works well for the show, but writers kept going on their own tangents and the movie ended up like 6 hours long. Dan and Kyle Menke had to redraw 80% of the show because they had to cut gags out and rewrite it so it was still funny. Note: in the new movie, they did the opposite — they wrote a script and told the board artists that they could put brief gags in but nothing too long

He thinks the show became one of the most beloved shows bc it was innocent and the adult humor wasn't dirty so the whole family could watch it together. He also said the songs at the closest thing you get to immortality in a show. Those combined made the show as big of a hit as it was, and hopefully those things will get older people to watch the movie.

His advice if you want to follow in his footsteps are to draw (and suggest you check out Cartoon Animation by Preston Blaire and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee) and to know that these jobs are out there

One of his favorite gags in PnF are the silent moments where something big happens and no one reacts (like something big fell in an early episode and crashed next to Phineas and co and at first they were all shocked but Dan changed it to them just kinda looking at it for a moment with no emotion)

Q: Did you ever want to quit what you were going?

A: "I don't really... do... anything else..."

He finished his new pilot today (July 2nd, 2020) and the movie is due tomorrow.

He would love to do more PnF and there's been talks of another PnF movie

He would love to do more Milo Murphy's Law, but it never got huge ratings and Disney's not too big on it but if people start watching it on Disney+ they might get to keep doing it. They did that with Family Guy, and it could happen to MML too.

The movie feels like old Phineas and Ferb and there are a lot of great songs! 

And now, the Q&A (in which he draws random characters are he talks)

How was the process of kicking the voices?

It was sometime easy but sometimes very difficult. For Phineas, they listened to maybe a thousand people. they actually recorded someone but they put it to animation and it didn't really work. He knew as soon as he heard Vincent that he loved him. They literally recasted the lead (Vincent) the day before they had to deliver the pilot.

He knew immediately that he liked Alison Stoner. She was the second Isabella he heard, and he listened to maybe 50 others afterwards, but he knew he wanted Alison Stoner

They decided on a different Candace and they sent it to the head of the channel and the guy asked if he heard Ashley Tisdale. He told Dan to have her come in and give her direction and Dan was hesitant bc he had one that he liked but he was lowkey forced to bring her in. It was his only audition that day, and after his big block of text Dan gave her like 20 notes and she wrote the notes on the big block of text and she did it again and it was perfect and obviously Candace (but he feels bad for the actress that was almost Candace bc she'll never know how close she was)

What was the most impactful episode you worked on?

Either the last (hard to watch w/o crying) or three moments that made himcey while doing them: the end of Summer Belongs To You when Phineas gives up trying to get off the island and decides to watch the sunset with Isabella which was what she always wanted and she exploded and talked him back up onto being the person he is even tho it's a sacrifice on her behalf. He later says he started crying while pitching to his wife the AYA scene of Phinabella getting together.

Do you regret any episodes?

There are some he likes more and some he likes less but he doesn't regret any of them. He was a little disappointed in an early episode without a sing but he watched it alter and decided it was actually pretty decent. None of them make him cringe or wonder why they did that.

How has social media impacted PnF?

He recently got on TikTok and found out that's where all the PnF fans are. He was thrilled to see the response everything was getting and it made him feel good about everything he accomplished. The fact that this generation knows what an aglet is is his biggest accomplishment in pop culture.

Favorite part of working on the show/movie

He likes editing, but writing the songs is the most fun bc it feels the least like work

Who is Ferb's mom?

Never established or really thought about Ferb's mom or Phineas's dad AND IT'S NOT DOOFENSHMIRTZ THEY MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THAT TO BE TRUE STOP ASKING and Phineas and Candace are full brother and sister. The bio parents aren't interesting to them bc the family already has a mom and dad and the other ones are just out of the picture and not important.

Will there be a new character in the movie?

Super Super Big Doctor (and Disney keeps telling him what he can and can't talk about)

Are there any secrets or theories that he can tell them?

The freaking creepy pasta about schitzophrenic Candace IS NOT TRUE Phineas and Ferb do exist and are alive. There's also a theory that Candace is not based on the diary of a teen girl in Russia who killed herself, and that's not true either. He genuinely thinks they are really freaking stupid theories and they make no sense at all.

Who is your favorite guest star?

Writing a song with Slash from Guns n Roses was really cool. He also liked working with Ben Stiller, Christian Slater the delivery guy (he called and said he'd do any part in MML so they wrote him a role), Jack McBrayer (Irving/Fix It Felix), Wayne Brady (co-wrote In The Empire)

What is the motivation of Candace to bust the boys?

He's not trying to hurt them. She doesn't dislike them. She gets irritated but she's really just looking for fairness. If she built a rollercoaster in the backyard, she'd get in trouble, so they should get in trouble, too.

How did you think about hot to end the show?

Disney was starting to cool off on PnF. The merch wave had plateaued. Dan and Swampy had the next two years in the show already made, but Disney wouldn't pick up another season until they finished airing that season. They'd have to restaff for a new season and they didn't like that idea, so they turned one of their hour long specials into the finale. He wanted to be able to say goodbye and thank the fans.