#when I'd never picked up on that despite having watched all of Q's streams

[dreamingkelz]

I’ve been thinking a lot about family dynamics . . .

NOTE: I wrote this post several months ago, and it’s been in my drafts ever since.  I’ve been reluctant to publish it, since I know a lot of people really care about certain characters being brothers, or parents/children, and if that’s your jam, more power to you.  For me though, I can’t say I’m a fan. And after watching Foolish’s stream yesterday where he had to assert to chat that no, he and Dream aren’t brothers after chat kept needling him about it while he was trying to advance his story, I kind of felt like I wanted to revisit this, and maybe give a different perspective.

I admit, I’ve always been a little meh on family dynamics in the DSMP.  I think in this medium, Found Family is the way to go, rather than blood relations.  (disclaimer: I have not seen every stream from every cc, so there may be things I’ve overlooked.).

None of the CCs are blood relatives.  They’re friends, and even then, a lot of them weren’t all that close prior to streaming on the DSMP, and that shows in the way they interact on the server.  That’s not to say familial relationships are impossible to pull off, but if you’re doing a three hour stream where you want to goof off with your friends, or get to know each other better, it becomes a lot harder to keep up the illusion that you and the person you’re streaming with are meant to be related.  

Foolish and Puffy, for instance, never felt all that familial to me, because a. most of the interactions I’d seen between them included several other people; b. most of those same interactions were from more casual or sillier streams where they were less inclined to be deeply ‘in character’ and c. each seems to have a fairly solid backstory thought out, but neither seem to have considered the role the other plays in it.  When Puffy was mourning her son at the Red Banquet, my reaction wasn’t to mourn with her so much as it was to go “oh yeah, I forgot they were related.”  Because up to that point, her most emotionally impactful relationship had been, not with her son, but with BBH. 

A lot of this is exacerbated by the fans as well, I think.  A cc may make a joke in passing, that the audience reads more into than what was intended.  Sometimes a figure of speech gets misinterpreted.  Sometimes relationships or in-jokes from other streams get recycled here.  And sometimes, without the ccs doing anything, the fans collectively decide that certain characters are siblings due to superficial similarities (I’ve seen a lot of hcs that Punz and Purpled are brothers, for instance, despite Purpled saying in character that he didn’t really know c!Punz).  The cc will thus, go right on interacting with their friends as normal, only to find their actions judged through a familial lens, regardless of whether the cc actually has any interest in a familial relationship with whomever they’re interacting (Foolish has regularly tried to dismiss assertions that he and Dream are brothers, for instance).

For me, the best example of a familial relationship on the server would be that of Philza-Wilbur-Fundy.  The relationships between these characters are not only regularly stated in the text, but are shown through the characters’ actions. They each have a major impact on one another’s stories, and often serve as each other’s motivations.  When they interact, they are constantly aware of the relationships they share, and act it.  This is, incidentally, why I’ve never been a fan of the whole of SBI as family.  To me, Philza never really felt like a father to Techno and especially to Tommy, Techno never felt like he had any particularly strong connection to Wilbur, and Tommy reads so easily as a scrappy urchin desperately imprinting on big brother figures, that I find giving him a family actually weakens his story.  Season 2 certainly wouldn’t hit quite the same if Tommy had had a family waiting in the wings for when things got rough.

That being said, the Philza-Wilbur-Fundy family is portrayed about as well as a family can be in this medium.  Even when there are dubious elements, for instance, Revivedbur failing to acknowledge Fundy, the dynamic has been established well enough that this feels like a deliberate choice, rather than something the cc’s overlooked or forgot about.  And boy, does the latter happen a lot.  

Does Sapnap have any feelings about BBH inviting him to what was meant to be his death, or did he forget that BBH was supposed to be his dad?  Foolish wants to break Dream out of prison so that he can make money by pawning him off to the highest bidder.  Is this because they have a bad relationship?  Are they estranged?  Are they even brothers at all, or does Puffy canonically have a habit of adopting people she finds charming (which I think would be a more interesting angle to pursue, tbh)?  And when stripper!Quackity was dancing for Sam at Nikki’s birthday party . . . well, a familial relationship does add some weird implications to that.  

In order for the family dynamic to work, all involved parties need to be on board (not to mention aware), and they need to be invested enough to take advantage of it - to tie it into their storylines, to let it reflect in their actions and color their relationships, and most importantly, to remember that it’s actually there.  There’s clearly some appeal to characters having the sort of close relationships that family would have, but if those relationships aren’t reflected in the story, they end up feeling incidental at best and forced at worst, and wind up detracting from the story as a whole.