we're fucked
Blood for the Blood God I guess. On to Act 3.
Also NOT ME GETTING UPSET OVER WILBUR AND PHILZAS SCENE
Not me sitting around waiting for a bunch of minecraft players to go to war for more writing inspiration
WIZARD COUNCIL 2022 BANNED SPELL LIST
Greater Circle of Bind White Boy
Aura Lobotomy
Hail of Gnome Corpses
Transmute Blunt
Vengabeam
i think Eret’s betrayal was really the turning point of the SMP, and it deserves more credit. like, before that we had conflict (of course) but it was all fairly standard. hell, the Revolution was one of the most vanilla stories you can possibly tell; a group of underdogs rise up against the tyranny of rulers and establish their independence. it’s such a basic conflict, and was defined by very clearly established good guys and bad guys: L’Manburg good, Dream SMP bad. this is exemplified by the L’Manburg national anthem, which is a fantastic piece of propaganda that idealises L’Manburg as a “special place”, free from the “tyranny and bloodlust” of the Dream SMP. this was a narrative that the audience never really challenged, and the streamers didn’t either.
but Eret’s betrayal began the spiral into moral relativity and clashing ideologies that defines the SMP today. suddenly, those good guys and bad guys weren’t so clearly defined. suddenly, motivations went deeper than just ‘fighting for our country’, and the pursuit of power became a common theme. it took some time for those ideas to take root (for example, the second version of the anthem dismissed Eret entirely: “fuck Eret”. he’s a bad guy, now. we’re still the good guys). but the ideas were there, both for the audience and the streamers. people began to question the narrative they had been fed, the notions of right and wrong, leading to an election arc where Wilbur and Tommy - our initial heroes - were very openly undermining the democratic process. even as the audience was overwhelmingly on Pogtopia’s side, questions were raised as to the fact that they were staging a coup against a democratically elected leader simply because they felt entitled to it, because they were the heroes. the story began to embrace this: Wilbur wondering if they were the “villains”. it culminated, of course, in Techno’s bid for anarchy and rejection of systemic power structures, his assertion that power corrupts, and that L’Manburg was never the paradigm of goodness that it painted itself as, and perhaps never will be.
and that’s just on a meta level; in character, i honestly believe the effects of Eret’s betrayal can be felt in practically every major L’Manburg character decision since. it’s most obvious in Wilbur, of course. the dude never recovered, never quite learnt to trust again. Eret’s betrayal was the first crack in his image of a perfect L’Manburg - the L’Manburg from the anthem - a crack that would spread after Schlatt’s rise to power, and eventually shatter in his corruption arc. in the culmination of this arc - the destruction of Manburg - he purposefully mirrors Eret’s “It was never meant to be”, thus returning to the first moment he realised that good and evil weren’t quite so black and white.
but Wilbur’s not the only one: all of the original L’Manburg boys struggle with trust nowadays, and all of them have strayed from the vanilla perception of morality that the L’Manburg revolution represented. Fundy’s very existence conflates Wilbur and L’Manburg into one being; Fundy is the first child of L’Manburg, and thus is Wilbur’s son. as he grows to acknowledge Wilbur’s flaws as a father, then, he’s also rejecting L’Manburg. he’s revealing, retroactively, that the perfect L’Manburg from the early days never existed, or could only exist in the simplified perspective of a child. Tubbo, meanwhile, is the third president of L’Manburg, and Wilbur has already lampshaded the fact that things don’t usually go so well for the president. Tubbo has begun to make dubious decisions in the name of his country, the power leading him towards increasingly out of character actions. he’s (arguably) turning into the very tyrannical ruler the anthem condemned, making weapons a bigger and bigger part of the supposedly peaceful nation. and Tommy, the one who secured L’Manburg’s independence. he was the protagonist, the force for good. he was supposed to be the paragon of what L’Manburg stood for, giving up his selfish desires (the discs) for the good of the nation. now, he’s prioritising those discs over everything. he’s been exiled from L’Manburg, unable to align with their morality anymore, and is working alongside their number 1 enemy in pursuit of his goals.
even Eret themself, after a brief attempt at redemption arc, has embraced their place of power despite it putting him at odds with the ‘friends’ he tried to prioritise on November 16th.
look, moral of the story is that Eret’s betrayal began the steer the story away from the typical good vs bad narrative it initially mirrored; began the turn away from Hamilton, to the slightly more morally grey Heathers, to bloody Greek mythology (home to some of the most morally complex stories around). it shattered the characters’ perception of the world around them and what they fought for, and resulted in all of them turning away from the idealistic L’Manburg they once fought to establish. it even made them realise that said idealistic L’Manburg may have never existed in the first place. that’s why Eret’s betrayal continues to be such a prominent feature in fan material, and the most memorable part of the Revolution; it changed something fundamentally in the moral framework of the narrative, and broke something that can never truly be fixed
[video by dhtoomey. caption: Breaking news, short kings)
Puppet history x ghost files crossover where Shane and Ryan are investigating the puppet history set except whenever Shane leaves the set the professor appears and when Shane gets back the professor disappears, Shane doesn't believe in the professor and the professor doesn't believe in Shane and both are driving Ryan insane as usual
wait, does techno know jack is alive?
because on doomsday he took what he knew as jacks last canon life. and they havent interacted since then.
like imagine this guy challenges you to a duel after you destroy a country and hes annoying so you kill him and then later you find out that was his last life. oh well guess hes dead now. THEN a few weeks later you hear a knock at your door AND HES STANDING THERE ALIVE??? and then he asks you to help him kill this kid who lived in your house for like a week and a half.
basically i want this to happen
tw// suicide
(want to note that this is about the CHARACTERS on dream smp, not any of the actual creators. the fact that anyone feels strongly about this proves that these people are telling a good story. I am also not genuinely angry/upset at any fan, even though this rant may seem like I am. I promise it's all good; this is just silly little minecraft roleplay and not something to be genuinely upset over).
i think the fact that people feel sympathy for c!dream is very interesting, especially considering the fact that many people seemed to feel absolutely no sympathy for c!tommy.
dream is a manipulative motherfucker on purpose. that's his job as a complex villain, and he's doing it very well. he's acting all sad and dejected over losing his friends and items (even though he previously stated that he never cared about any of those things) to make tommy feel bad for him. he's doing it to pull at tommy's heartstrings, but not just tommy's. dream is also trying to guilt trip chat. to make the viewers feel bad for him. to sympathize with him, even though he's in no way deserving of that sympathy. there are pleanty of things I can list that dream has done wrong, but one, I believe, is most important: dream abused tommy so badly that he considered suicide.
how could one possibly feel even an ounce of sympathy for someone who drove another person, a CHILD, to off themselves? dream hurt tommy so badly that being dead seemed like a better option. a way out. how fucking sickening is that?
tommy has fucked up on many occasions, no doubt about that. but to say that the punishments he's received fit the crimes he's commited is completely untrue. no matter what you've done, you don't deserve death, and you CERTAINLY do not deserve to be beaten down to the point where death seems like a better alternative to being alive.
unlike tommy, dream is an unfeeling character. he cares about nothing other than himself. he had pleanty of opportunities to be a better person. he could've learned from his experiences and grown from them. but he didn't. he never did, because he doesn't care. tommy, especially as of late, knows that he's messed up, and is learning from that. he's apologizing, acknowledging his mistakes, and making an effort to be a better person.
unlike tommy, dreams crimes do fit this punishment. he deserves to be in that prison, and he deserves to feel bad, if he truly does. he should. that's the point.
this kind of sympathy that I've been seeing float around in tommy's chat today and generally online baffles me. where was this sympathy when tommy was exiled? when he described how poorly he was doing? when he physically looked worse? when he was having visions of tubbo? when he was so irrational that he rejected help from ranboo, the only person who visited him? when he almost killed himself on multiple occasions?
was it "too hard" to sympathize with tommy because of his brash nature, which is normal for a kid his age?
or was tommy "too hard" to sympathize with because he displayed, and continues to display the "ugly" symptoms of mental illness and abuse?
dreams tone and word choices are deliberate. don't let this facade blind you from the character dream really is.
currently crying because techno literally has to deal with thousands of voices in his head everyday, the majority of them being violent but yet he still puts aside energy to be kind despite that he didnt have to be. like he didnt have to trust philza enough to come out of his netherite shell, he didnt have to forgive tommy and lie for him in the face of a god, he didnt have to protect wilbur even though hes already dead, he didnt have to let ranboo help him even if hes supposedly one of the enimies because when youve got voices telling you to kill everyone around you, people would understand if he wasnt considerate or wasnt in the right state of mind to care about people. but despite all of that, technoblade cares. and i think that above his combat skills or his patience, thats what makes him strong.
Jane Austen really said ‘I respect the “I can fix him” movement but that’s just not me. He’ll fix himself if knows what’s good for him’ and that’s why her works are still calling the shots today.