#dsmp meta

[bronzetomatoes]

I feel insane when I see people complaining about the supposed fan woobification of cTommy, because like. Back in the day it was a common fandom opinion that Tommy was abusive and cruel and deserved any hurt he received for being a hateful two-timing bitch. We were BEGGING people not to treat him as a villain for his trauma response to being abused. There were people who thought Niki and Jack were right in trying to kill him (LITERALLY CANONICALLY MISPLACED ANGER ON THE SAFEST TARGET) like I feel like im going crazy when I see folks nowadays call him fanon's perfect angel who can do no wrong. You weren't with us in the trenches

#look anika's talking! #mcyt #tommyinnit #dsmp meta #anika famous moment

[quacktities]

I feel like the appeal of C! Quackbur (to me at least) is just how versatile it is as a ship and the range it has.

You want a subtle rivals to lovers, mutual pinning and longing but one of them is repressing his own feelings because he hates himself too much to let someone get attached to him ship dynamic with a political backdrop? You want longing gazes, knowing looks and the unspoken truth that, maybe, just maybe this relationship and understanding between them goes deeper than either of them let on or want to admit? BOOM. Lmanburg election arc Quackbur!

You want all of that but with more tension, high stakes, mental illness, a very "forbidden romance" vibe with an enemies that have been in love with eachother for a long time but can now finally be on the same side and possibly act on their feelings dynamic (but theyre doomed by the narrative so it was never going to work out. Or maybe it will, who knows. Maybe this time they find solace in eachother. Maybe this time Quackity stops him before its too late. Maybe this time it doesnt end in flames. Who knows. Its up to you really, if you keep telling the story over and over again, maybe this time they get their happy ending here and it doesnt have to be a tragedy. Your choice really). Pogtopia era C! Quackbur!

You want fucked up grief and angst and reminiscing on the past and being haunted by what could have been? You want seeing the spectre of your dead friend (if he was truly your old enemy, why does he feel like a past lover to you) and wondering if maybe he remembers everything you both went through the same way you do and if maybe his heart aches when he sees you the same way yours aches when you see him but you know he isn't the same and you'll never see the old verison of him ever again... but hes here... as a ghost.. and that has to be worth something right. (Is it a miracle you can still see him or are you forever being tormented by what you can never have?). BOOM, Butcher arc C! Quackity and Ghostbur (or Aftermath C! Quackbur as I call them)

You want all of that, but hey. What if we brought back the guy. What if it didn't have to end in death? What if they could reunite and speak again after everything? Would they even get along? You want the culmination of years of pinning, grief, hurt, and mutual obsession? Do they truly love each other, or have they fallen in love with the idealised verisons of each other they have in their own heads? Maybe this time, they'll actually get their shit together and talk. There really isn't anything stopping them now, other than themselves and each other. Maybe C! Quackity finally finds someone who respects him, is dedicated to him, and can engage with him on the same intellectual level in C! Wilbur. Maybe C! Wilbur finally finds someone who makes him feel human and can challenge him and his more self-destructive behaviours while still loving him in C! Quackity. Maybe this time, they get to understand each other, and they get to heal. Maybe this time, it's not too late, and sure, they dont have the healthiest relationship, but they're working on it, and they're okay for once. Just this once. Maybe. Or maybe you don't want that. Maybe it is too late for them. Maybe they'll never have what they once had, and they're both left with bitter hatred and longing for the past that grows weaker by the day as the rose tinted filter starts to fade. Maybe they make each other worse. Maybe the closest they ever get to being close to each other is by hurting each other. Maybe the only times they hold hands are when they're catching each other's bloody fists. Maybe they're both too far gone now. Maybe they've hurt each other too much to ever be vulnerable with each other. Maybe it's just too late for them. Maybe it was never meant to be. You want a joker card ship dynamic that can either end in healing and a happy ending or in an even more fucked up tragedy? Or both! Why not. BOOM. Post revival C! Quackbur

#i love them both and their unique history so much. i wish more people talked about the 'aftermath“ era and the lmanburg era #c! quackbur #c! Wilbur soot #c! Quackity #tnt duo #tntduo #dream smp #dsmp #mcyt #dsmp meta #??? maybe?? #analysis (???) kinda?? #i say a thing #can you tell im not normal #this ship genuinely changed my life

[swordfright]

Since we're talking c!Quackity...one of the interactions that fascinates me is the conversation between him, c!Wilbur, and c!Tommy when crimeboys visit Las Nevadas, because it contains this snippet of conversation:

This snippet comes in the middle of a larger conversation wherein Wilbur, more or less freshly revived, is grilling both Tommy and Q for details about how to get into the prison to see Dream. After this, the conversation moves on to navigating the visitation system. This snippet is framed within the context of Wilbur wanting to visit Dream, Tommy trying to convince him not to, and Quackity...? Well, okay, what is Quackity trying to do here? What's his goal in this conversation? He readily supplies Wilbur with info about the visitation and security systems (while Tommy actively withholds and obfuscates this info), so does that mean Q is trying to normalize his own visits by encouraging other people to visit? That's possible, but what interests me more is the question of, like, what the hell is going on here in a broader sense.

The simplest view of this conversation is that it's an argument between two people who are diametrically opposed, and Quackity is the third party here, a guy who doesn't seem particularly invested in either outcome. Which begs the question, why does he bring his own visits up at all? Q is the one who cuts in and mentions that he's been visiting Dream, which at this point isn't a secret on the server but it's also not something Q seems interested in discussing at length. The torture visits are something to be flaunted, not talked about. My assumption, given what we know about Q as a character, is that he's leveraging his experience with navigating Pandora in order to impress Wilbur. Information is something that can be negotiated, brokered, sold - so he's letting Wilbur know he has something Wilbur wants.

This is classic Q behavior right up until the end, where he gets oddly touchy about the torture being brought up. This moment has always struck me as weird, especially considering the handful of other times Quackity doesn't care whether people know (the conversation he has with George comes to mind, as well as the path he asks Foolish to build.) So there are three possibilities here:

that Q is bothered by Tommy saying the quiet part out loud;

that Q has only just found out about Wilbur's gratitude to Dream in the last 5 minutes (literally) and doesn't want to give Wilbur a reason to oppose him right now;

there's something about Tommy specifically knowing about and acknowledging the torture that rubs Q the wrong way.

Personally, I don't see option #2 as viable, given that Wilbur and Quackity are already beefing over how close to Las Nevadas Wilbur can build stuff. That's part of the reason Wilbur is here in the first place: to execute some chernobyl-grade negging. It's not world-ending beef, but given the propensity for mid-tier beef to turn into world-ending beef on this server, it's not nothing. Point is, Quackity and Wilbur have already been at odds with each other for this entire episode. Is Quackity less likely to tolerate conflict involving Dream? Absolutely, but I don't think avoiding such a conflict is his primary reason for acting the way he does here.

My current theory is that it's a combination of #1 and #3 - Quackity seemingly enjoys implying that he's been torturing Dream, but rarely talks about it outright unless it's with Sam. I can't think of many examples of him discussing the torture openly with other characters. I think it's not a stretch to say he enjoys the power of suggestion, he likes making people wonder, he likes making people scared, but he's not really prepared for someone to bring it up so boldly and directly the way Tommy does here. As for why this bothers him, my best guess is that the torture is actually kind of...difficult to talk about with people who aren't directly involved (i.e. Sam and Dream.) It's an incredibly demanding habit that takes up much of Quackity's time and energy, not to mention it's insanely intimate. Like I just don't think it's a stretch to say that Q probably just straight-up doesn't know how to talk about it in a way that's upfront, rather than gloating or flaunting or vaguely implying. Another reason it's likely difficult is that, based on the interactions we've seen, Q probably isn't used to other people bringing it up at all. Tommy's remark catches him off-guard in a very literal way.

The "Don't say that, not even as a joke," really gets me though, because it's such a defensive thing to say, coming from a guy who up until now has been very clear about how little interest he has in defending the indefensible. Is this comment a sign of remorse on Quackity's part? Fuck no, but I do think it's an admission of something. Keep in mind that Quackity's mannerisms when speaking to Tommy are almost identical to the way he speaks to c!Slime. This is evident in a number of streams from the Las Nevadas era, but especially this one: Quackity's tone of voice, language, demeanor, all of it is calculated to evoke the same kind of mentor-mentee relationship he has with Slime. And it makes sense - at this junction in the story, Q views Tommy as someone who's young and impressionable and fucks up a lot, someone who could use Q's advice, someone who's easy to manipulate.

If I were to hedge a bet, I'd say the primary reason Quackity reacts to the torture comment with defensiveness in this scene is because Tommy's remark reminds him that he needs to stay in control of the narrative. I think this is why Q brings up his visits (not the torture, but the visits) earlier in the conversation: "Tommy, you know about this, right?" He's testing Tommy to see how much he knows, and is taken aback when Tommy is prepared to bring up the nasty stuff. Q can walk around with Dream's blood on his shirt all he likes, but once the story's out, it's out - Quackity will no longer have control over who knows and, more importantly, what they think. If anything, this moment is a fleeting but noticeable admission of Quackity's insecurities surrounding the torture in specific. If he's going to properly manage his alliances, he would do well to maintain control of info surrounding, uh, how he spends his time.

#c!quackity #dream smp #dsmp meta #c!tommy #long post

[waddei]

i feel like we're too hung up on the whole Utah thing, like it doesn't fucking matter that it's Utah, c!Wilbur is going back to where he was raised and where he lived before the SMP

the Utah bit is just supposed to be funny but the implications are genuine, he's going back to his roots wherever that is

#dream smp #wilbur soot #dsmp meta

[superkitten-poison]

i understand how it can kinda seem like eret's own mistakes were glossed over in this stream but i also do think that's just because. eret already dealt with that. he regretted his betrayal almost immediately, he went against dream and joined pogtopia's side in November 16th, he built a museum to honor the past centering The Caravan and left a note written "I'm sorry" in the replica of the final control room. he understood people's grievances, apologized, and continued to be nothing but kind to them (almost adopting fundy, letting tommy use the museum for therapy, helping tubbo get michael back). the point isn't if what he did was better or worse than what wilbur did, it's that he's been putting in the work for years now to make up for that, while the best wilbur could do was give a quick apology and leave (no matter the reason). so yeah, i think eret definitely has the right to lecture wilbur abt this

#dream smp #dsmp #dream smp meta #dsmp meta #dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis #yeah im putting the whoe shabang of tags leave me alone #c!eret #eret #wilbur soot #c!wilbur

[warcoaxed]

do you guys ever think about how the butcher army guillotine was designed by cctechno & ccphilza. like the in lore implications of this always stay in my head. i like to think it was originally designed in the smp earth era for military use. do you think philza saw that guillotine from his house and felt his heart sink because they built it to ensure that there would be no survivors. do you think about how morbid it is to await your execution in a machine you designed and originally constructed with your own two hands?

#dsmp meta #kav thinks #like. its so crazy to me. they designed that shit. #theyre so old and theyve done terrible things

[a-moth-called-mof]

Me rambling about the fandom atmosphere during November 16th:

With November 16th hitting the corner, I thought now would be a good time to finally post this post that's been in my drafts forever

I genuinely am of the personal belief that November 16th is one of those things where you had to have been there to fully appreciate and experience it at least in my opinion. I feel like the tense atmosphere leading up to the actual event is something that is not widely talked about in the fandom. A brief reminder for the fans that are new here or that missed the stream where the November 16th War was announced: during stream C! Dream revealed that there was a traitor hiding amongst Pogtopia and said it was someone that you wouldn't expect. This one line lead to multiple fan theories going around the fandom ranging from plausible to very far fetched. The fandom turned into one big game of Among Us and EVERYONE was a suspect.

Here's an old post of my mine that I think does a good job showing the mentality of most fans going into November 16th:

There were so many theories and speculations leading up to it and you genuinely had to be there to see everyone's different theories about who the traitor would be and the couple aus I saw come out of it. It made it so that when the event did happen, no one in the fandom knew who trust and NEITHER DID THE CHARACTERS. It was amazing watching characters debate whether or not to trust eachother live. It made it feel like any discoveries or possible leads that were made were realised by the character and the fandom at the same time, especially love that one scene where C! Tubbo and C! Quackity decide they sort of trust eachother and talk about who they don't trust. I distinctly remembering switching between povs and watching the dashboard lose their shit and how current character mains would be like "OH [CHARACTER] IS ACTING SO SUSPICIOUS :0" or just liveblog whatever characters were doing and it was a really fun way of keeping up with most of the characters even if I couldn't physically watch all their povs at once

This is less about the atmosphere but more something I feel like people don't talk about enough: Phil wasn't on the Dream SMP before November 16th and we had no concrete indication he would be there. There were a lot of fan theories and headcanons about him joining and I remember seeing all the art of him joining on November 16th and at the time thinking "Oh that's really cool but I doubt they'll actually do it" SO I CAN'T DESCRIBE THE SHEER EMOTIONS I FELT WHEN HE JOINED?

I honestly still don't think I'll ever forget watching C! Wilbur press the button and watching everything go to shit at once after such a tense buildup. Whenever I tell my irl friends I once stayed up till 5am on a school night to watch a live minecraft roleplay event, most of them joke or express (VERY UNDERSTANDABLE) concern but I honestly don't regret a thing. I'd do it 30 times over just to experience that again and watch my dashboard go apeshit. November 16th will always be one of my favourite events in any media ever.

#ME? FINALLY POSTING THIS? MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK #dream smp #dsmp #November 16th #wilbur soot #philza min3craft #mcyt #mof speaks #retrospective or whatever #is this a #dsmp meta #post now?

[quicksandblock]

Eret is the first person (other than Quackity and kind of Tommy) who’s taken Wilbur’s stated desire to make up for things and become a better person seriously.

She appreciated Wilbur’s apology, but she didn’t accept it alone like everyone else has. She demanded more than an apology. She demanded a commitment to change. Which is what Wilbur has been saying he wants to do this whole time! And she’s the only one who’s taken it seriously and said outright what she thinks it will take for Wilbur to achieve this.

She demands more because she believes in Wilbur. She respects Wilbur. She believes Wilbur is capable of doing the work needed to change. And Wilbur rose to the challenge, because now he has someone expecting more of him than just apologizing and running away. Now he has someone who sincerely, truly expects him to make things right. And that’s what he needs.

#talk #dsmp #dsmp meta #my meta #wilbur soot #eret #and now I am late to work

[supernovaa-remnant]

L’manberg, Nationalism, and c!Dream

Okay, I know it’s been done to death, but I’ve been reading Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities for a class which talks about nationalism as an imagined community, so nationalism has been on my mind. And, of course, my mind’s natural progression was to start thinking about L’manberg and nationalism again. So, without further ado, here’s my post on L’manberg, Nationalism, and how that played a role in c!Dream’s story arc. 

(Also, I haven’t written an essay in ages, and I haven’t done analysis in ages, so please cut me some slack lol)

It’s under the cut because this is a very, very long post (3.2k words long, in fact). (you can also read it on google docs if you'd prefer).

What is Nationalism?

To start this all, we need to take a moment to step away from Minecraft roleplay to actually talk about nationalism itself. Since I know most of you are here to hear about the Minecraft roleplay aspect, I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, but it is very important for context. I’ll bold (and color) the main points if you just want to read those before skipping down to the L’manberg section, but you’re more than welcome to read all of this. 

To understand nationalism, you need to understand a bit about how it came to be, which requires a bit of knowledge about the transition from pre-modern to modern times. In general, this transition is often thought to have occurred in the mid-18th century during the Age of Enlightenment and during the time when a lot of revolutions were taking place, such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution. But it’s important to note that there isn’t really such a clear cut line of when this transition from pre-modern to modern times happened, and, in many ways, this change is still occurring to this day.

The most important aspect of this change to think about in the context of this post is in terms of religion, though I will also briefly talk about the shift from dynastic rule to democracy. I want to start off by briefly talking about this because, in many ways, nationalism has taken on the role that religion held in pre-modern times. (Side note: this isn’t to say nationalism replaced religion, but the widespread role of religion in people’s lives today is different than it was in, say, the 14th century). 

In pre-modern times, religion gave people a sense of belonging, and this idea of belonging is something I’ll come back to, but, for now, you should know that nationalism gives a similar sense of belonging. I won’t get into too much detail about why Anderson specifically says this is a sense of belonging to an imagined community, but it basically comes down to the fact that you’ll never know everyone in your community (whether that be religious or national), but you still feel a sense of belonging to the collective.

“Okay, Stella, very interesting, but you still haven’t defined nationalism.” Alright, alright, I’ll define nationalism, which requires me to define a nation. In Anderson’s words, from page 6 of Imagined Communities, “it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” I want you to take a note specifically of it being inherently limited and file that away for later. 

I said I was going to briefly discuss the shift from dynastic rule to democracy, so I’ll do that now. So, a couple things about these dynastic rules with centralized power: firstly, it was believed that the monarchs had some sort of divine right to rule from God (see how this ties into religion?), and, secondly, a lot of borders were less defined the further you got from the centralized powers. Obviously, with the shift from pre-modern to modern times, both of these things changed, bringing the idea of giving power to the people, and also bringing more concrete borders.

Anyway, moving on. Nations are imagined as inherently limited because no one imagines one nation as encompassing all of humanity. Yes, in modern times borders are very concrete and defined, but it goes beyond that—in a person’s mind, nations are limited because there are always people who do not belong to the nation. It’s not often thought about, but with a sense of belonging comes exclusion. The entire concept of belonging comes from the idea of being with people who are similar to you, and this implies the existence of people who are so dissimilar that you don’t belong with them, and, thus, they don’t belong with you. It can easily become a double edged sword, I think; there is comfort in belonging to a collective, but it can be all too easy to fall into an “us vs them” mentality, which is going to be an important point moving forward.

So, how does this all relate to a Minecraft Roleplay?

L’manberg and Nationalism

Onto the fun stuff! Minecraft Roleplay! Obviously, L’manberg is a nation, so I’m sure you can already see how nationalism is going to play a role, but let’s get into it. First, though, I’d like to give a minor disclaimer that not everything is going to fit perfectly simply on account of the fact that the DSMP takes place in a very sparsely inhabited world, and, honestly, that alone makes governmental structures of any kind really interesting to look at, but I digress since it’s not the point of this post. (It also means that nationalism as talked about in this post isn’t really an imagined community like Anderson claims it is. From a meta standpoint, you could say this sense of nationalism actually leaked into the audience itself, but in the story it’s not really an imagined community).

The DSMP starts out as a world with no borders and no governmental structures of any kind—it starts with no nations. Rather, the DSMP in itself is a cohesive community to which everyone belongs. It’s not a community like nationalism, nor is it a community like religion, nor is it an imagined community in any way. As previously stated, the DSMP is a sparsely populated world, and, at least at the start, everyone knows each other or knows of each other as an individual. This sense of belonging is more akin to a group of friends than anything else, which I think makes the introduction of nationalism especially interesting. 

c!Wilbur. What a guy, am I right? He shows up to the server, and he brings with him capitalism and the idea of monopolizing resources—there’s an interesting post to be made about that, I’m sure, but not the point of this one—and, most importantly, he brings with him the concept of a nation. He’s putting up borders, putting up walls, and essentially dividing a place that used to be united, citing L’manberg as an independent country, which is does not include everyone in the server (it’s limited), and which is separate from the DSMP and essentially is its “own server” (it’s sovereign). Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s ✨nationalism✨

I’ve seen posts talking about the fact that L’manberg was specifically satirizing nationalism, and though, despite my efforts, I couldn’t find these posts (if anyone has them please send them to me! I’d love to re-read them and link them in this post), I do think it’s true. I think there’s a lot to be said about L’manberg from a narrative and meta standpoint, and I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that c!Wilbur was always written as a villain in the story (and not just during the Pogtopia arc, despite popular belief), but I can’t get into it all in this post. So, what I do want to do is come back to the concept of belonging and how that always comes with exclusion, and I want to talk about the “us vs them” mentality.

The reason I say L’manberg is satirizing nationalism is because it takes these facets of nationalism to the extreme. It’s not just a place made to give people a sense of belonging which in turn creates exclusion; L’manberg is a xenophobic nation, and I would go as far to say that its founding was based more on exclusion than inclusion. That is to say, the exclusive aspect was not just an unfortunate yet inevitable side effect of creating a nation. From the very start, L’manberg was founded on the exclusion of non-Europeons, and, more specifically, the exclusion of Americans. Sapnap actually originally wanted to join, but he was denied because he’s American. L’manberg wasn’t ever some place accepting of anyone who came to it, and it wasn’t a place to be free from tyranny, but let’s get into the idea of L’manberg going against tyranny. 

The “us vs them” mentality is already extremely dangerous and something to be wary of, and it’s something I think we should constantly be checking ourselves on, but L’manberg takes that to a further extreme. I don’t want you to think this point is completely separate from the point I made before, because they do very much connect to each other and are intertwined. Nations are limited. This means there will always be people who don’t belong to any given nation. Obviously, in this case, members of the greater DSMP do not belong to L’manberg. (I think it’s also helpful to remember that c!Wilbur specifically didn’t allow dual-citizenship; c!Tubbo initially wanted to be a citizen of both the greater DSMP and L’manberg, but that wasn’t allowed, so in the end he became a citizen of only L’manberg).

But, this wasn’t just a case of the greater DSMP being separate from L’manberg. No, they were tyrants that L’manberg was escaping from. c!Dream was a tyrant that L’manberg was fighting against. It’s taking the “us vs them” mentality to an extreme of “we are the righteous good guys fighting against oppression and tyranny, and they are the tyrants trying to oppress us.” It sure sounds like a noble cause—and you can always count on c!Wilbur to spout pretty words that convince people to play on his terms—but is that really the case? In a place that previously had no nations and no real defined hierarchy of power, how could tyranny exist? As I said before, the DSMP previously was more like a group of friends living in a commune than anything else, and tyranny doesn’t really seem applicable in that context, does it? This is c!Wilbur spinning a narrative that is going to continue to affect the SMP all the way to the very end, and it’s also what places c!Dream and c!Tommy on opposite sides from the very beginning, by establishing that extreme “us vs them” mentality.

(Oh, it should also be noted that the “us vs them” mentality very often leads to the dehumanization of the other side, so keep that in mind for when we get to c!Dream). 

(Also there’s something to be said about the L’manberg revolution being heavily based on Hamilton, which is based on the American Revolution, which was a very key part of the transition from pre-modern to modern times and how that relates to nationalism, but this post is already getting long enough).

So, yeah, L’manberg was satirizing nationalism. And, ultimately, L’manberg was never good for the server as a whole.

c!Dream and Nationalism, even in the wake of L’manberg

Ough. c!Dream… :( oh he really did walk the path laid out for him by c!Wilbur to the very end, didn’t he?

Listen, everything c!Dream does on the server is ultimately tied back to the founding of L’manberg, and, in turn, to the introduction of nationalism to the server. One of c!Dream’s primary goals is unity (or, specifically, the unity and simplicity of the server from pre-L’manberg times), and this is antithetical to nationalism, or, at least, to the extreme form of nationalism that L’manberg brought. Because nationalism brought division, and division brought conflict, and conflict brought death (specifically canon deaths). And, well, we all know how much death is a motivator for c!Dream.

(Also, there is something to be said about the start of nationalism and nations on the server not being framed as a good thing in the narrative, how it was satirizing and criticizing the concept of nationalism, and there’s something to be said about how the narrative agrees with the group of anarchists—the Syndicate—who push against the idea of nations. But, well, that’s also a post for another day). 

Now, obviously, unity is not c!Dream’s only motivation—actually, I think we’d all agree that the thing that motivated c!Dream the most was fear. But, a lot of this fear does tie back to L’manberg and the narrative built by c!Wilbur. So, let’s for a moment take a look at how this narrative affected other people’s perceptions of c!Dream.

Remember how I said the “us vs them” mentality often leads to dehumanization? Well, well, well. Listen, this is dreblr. The dehumanization of c!Dream has been talked about to death, but that’s because it’s always relevant to his character!! And I’m here to say that this dehumanization started all the way back during the L’manberg revolution when c!Wilbur labeled c!Dream a tyrant. Obviously the dehumanization of c!Dream is incredibly apparent with the revive book and in Pandora’s Vault, but this is not a post about the box, unfortunately (I’m sorry—I know we all love the box here 💔).

c!Dream’s dehumanization started the moment he was labeled as a tyrant and the moment he was labeled as the “enemy.” He became the “them” in the “us vs them” mentality that was adopted by L’manberg. He’s the oppressor they need to defeat, and he’s the monster that needs to be slain. And this is important because this never went away. Even after L’manberg was gone, the concept of nations and the concept of “us vs them,” never went away! c!Dream was still the enemy that needed to be killed! And, over the course of time when L’manberg was still around, c!Dream lost pretty much everyone. Everyone was turning against him, people were using attachments against him, and people wanted to kill him (New L’manberg was planning to execute him under the false pretense of a peaceful celebration!). And, yes, he did plenty of bad things during this time (namely exile), but I think we should also remember that most people did not know about what happened during exile at this time. They wanted to kill him because he was powerful and dangerous, and he wasn’t with them so he was against them because that’s the narrative L’manberg created—if they’re not with us, they’re against us.

Everyone was against him, and he was spiraling (pushed further by the existence of the revive book) to the point that he commissioned the build of a giant, obsidian, inescapable prison and he locked himself in there with the hope that it would protect him and save his life. (☹️) Obviously that didn’t work like he’d hoped, but… well… 

As I said before: none of this stuff went away even after L’manberg was gone. The concept of nationalism didn’t magically disappear from the server just because L’manberg was destroyed. Nations kept popping up. The server kept splitting itself into more pieces and factions, and it all became so convoluted. I think it’s important to remember the population of the SMP—they don’t really have enough people to make functioning governments, yet they keep trying to make nations, anyway. They’re following L’manberg’s footsteps. They’re chasing this concept of nationalism.

Obviously this affected everyone’s lives, but it really did ruin c!Dream’s life. The introduction of nationalism is what causes c!Dream’s life to essentially start falling apart. I don’t want to rehash stuff that’s already been said a lot in dreblr, so there’s a lot about c!Dream’s motivations and story that I’m not including, but I want to bring our attention to a certain line c!Dream said in the finale streams: “Why can’t things be simple again?”

Because things were simple before all this! It was a group of friends making a home!! They built the community center because the server was meant to be a cohesive community of friends. There was never a need for nations or governments! It was just a group of friends making a home together! And then it all became so convoluted, and there were nations when there didn’t need to be any, and people were being divided into sides and being divided into “us” and “them,” and it was so irrevocably different from what the server started as. And I don’t think c!Dream ever really figured out how to accept that it was irrevocable :( and even he himself was blindsided by the story crafted by L’manberg and by c!Wilbur, to the point that he didn’t even fully understand his own goals! Because he (and everyone else) got so used to nationalism on the server and factions and conflicts and “us” vs “them,” that he didn’t even realize he just wanted things to go back to how they were :( oughhhh c!dreamie :((

Sorry to devolve into emotions at the end of this, but it’s not an academic paper, so I think you should cut me some slack. It’s just :( “I don’t ever want to be alone” because with nationalism comes exclusion and it eventually brought c!Dream to a point where he was so, so alone and :( He makes me so sad </3

Anyway, the reason the DSMP didn’t end with c!Dream dead at c!Tommy’s hands is because that was never the point of the story—that was the narrative L’manberg was trying to spin, but that was never what the story was actually about. It took up until the very end for them to break free from the story of L’manberg.

(And, it’s been mentioned many times before, but there’s a reason this was never able to happen until c!Wilbur was removed from the narrative. c!Dream and c!Wilbur and c!Tommy are absolutely crucial in each other’s character arcs, and you can’t really understand any of the duo relationships without considering the third (says the person guilty of writing c!Dreambur fanworks without always thinking about c!Tommy lmao, but hey at least it’s not analysis, right?) but that’s also a post for another day).

I never really know how to conclude things. I’m kind of worried I’m forgetting stuff, and I apologize if I did forget stuff, but I’ve been working on this for, like, 4 and a half hours and am getting tired lmao. But my main points are that L’manberg was satirizing and criticizing nationalism, that the concept of nationalism stuck with the SMP until the very end, and that the concept of nationalism from the beginning set up c!Dream to be the villain (and, really, this is largely in part because L’manberg from the beginning set up c!Dream to be a villain, and I don’t think you can feasibly separate L’manberg from nationalism). Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk! Feel free to ask questions and discuss further, and I will do my best to respond lol.

#dreblr #dsmp analysis #dsmp meta #l'manberg critical #oh I don't know how to tag this 🧍‍♀️ #I think this is probably good but if you have any suggestions for tags to add please lmk o7 #anyway spent like 5 hours on this lmao putting my time to good use obviously

[thespoonisvictory]

I Ramble About The Ending For A Long Time

ok hello i am insane yes yes 

however when else are you going to see me write c!crime meta

what’s important first off is that the emotional core of the story is still there. that’s the only reason why this works for me. this was a story about two bored brothers who make a story that turns into a nation together, and under that it’s about communication and loyalty and the strain mental illness places on a relationship and underneath even that it’s a story about two streamers in a pandemic who wanted content and to make each other laugh. 

that is never undermined or taken less than 100% seriously; it’s the emotional core of the whole thing. as wild as it gets and as bold choices are made, both wilburs love both tommys and vice versa. 

it’s a similar story with the line at the end: “I never did quite forgive myself” isn’t undermined, isn’t played for laughs. The argument c!crime have is incredibly well done and people will write actual analysis about that so you should go read it, but the gist of it is that c!crime are what they’ve always been: more than a bit unhealthy, perpetually arguing, but never quite willing to give up on each other.

with that being said, I felt like that was what I wanted out of the finale achieved. now to get into the wild parts.

the interesting part for me is how c!wilbur’s insane mindset is, for the first time, actually challenged and beat.

we’ve been saying for months that one of c!wilbur’s biggest issues is that his paranoia manifests in believing he is in a story, that there are roles like heroes and villains, that he has to play his part and there is nothing he can do about it. he’s his own self-fulfilling prophecy, he takes himself incredibly seriously, and most importantly, he is aware of the audience.

and nothing could break that. everyone around wilbur confirmed to his narrative, letting his vague statements that were clearly a narrative foreshadowing to suicide slip by. he’s getting swallowed up again by his own story, he is the one putting chekov’s gun on the wall, never quite saying something, but implying just enough that he was willing it into reality.

(he does the same thing in season 1, remember? he tells everyone he’s going to press the button enough times that by the end he feels like he has to because he’s foreshadowed it, because it’s who he is now. eret said it was never meant to be and thus it wasn’t. if you’re in an improv rp and you know it, speaking things is enough to make them real.)

and it almost works again! he almost follows the exact same trajectory of self-deprecation and sealing his fate. except. tommy’s not taking it this time.

tommy, having gone through everything he’s gone through, finally gets to win this. he looks the entire force of wilbur’s simultaneously self-aggrandizing and deprecating mindset dead in the eye and says tell me what you’re fucking talking about. 

he says the words! he looks at wilbur and says we’ve both been in this story before, I know what you’re doing, I know who you are and what this is and I’m not going to let it happen again. tell me, are you going to kill yourself? he enters into wilbur’s spiral and says this can’t be redemption if you still won’t be honest with me and you can’t leave without apologizing. 

he gets right to the core, no subtext, with all the blunt honesty he’s ever had, and c!wilbur, worn down from fighting and apologizing and the exhaustion of it all, finally gives in. he stops lying. 

his backstory was never cool. he was a gas station attendee, never any sort of leader before coming to the smp, and his jacket was just another uniform. he isn’t even european. he somehow sailed here from a landlocked state, because why not. this is Not the type of backstory for the type of person he’s trying to build himself up to be, this isn’t the fit for the genre at all! 

but insanely, impossibly, it’s true. it’s canon. just like the fish fucking and the fridge mom and everything else. it is ridiculous! and with that, it’s the realization that wilbur’s story has always been a serious character with serious feelings in ridiculous circumstance. his very real suicide was attempted via looney-tunes-esque sticks of dynamite in a pile, his ghost talks in a high-pitched voice and gives out blue dye. none of this undermines the seriousness of c!wilbur’s feelings, but it does undermine how he views himself as some great evil out of Game of Thrones. 

he died and got revived by a book! his depression fort was named pogtopia! he has always existed just under the threshold of ridiculousness by just how seriously he takes it all, how seriously everyone takes it. 

and c!tommy has always loved the person under the narrative he paints, and that’s why, at the end of it all, he can get through to him. tommy knows the story, he loves parts of it (l’manburg, the family, etc), but he doesn’t love this part, and for once, he gets to choose. he pushes and pushes and says you love me enough to not shy away from this, I am banking on you loving me enough not to push me away again, and he’s completely right! he breaks the cycle by being the same kid he’s always been.

and so wilbur’s end is ridiculous. it’s absurd, but it’s not him killing himself again. it’s not drenched in the belief that everything he made should be destroyed, but full of callbacks and nods to who he was. he never did quite forgive himself, but he’s not looking to the audience for forgiveness anymore, either. 

there are no more looks into the camera, and the book he gives for tommy is for his eyes alone, unlike every other speech like apology we’ve seen so far. he says things that the audience won’t reach. he invites us, one last time, to look upon his works and despair, to tell us that nothing remains. but he is still there, even if there is no story to watch. he is not part of a story anymore. the cameras are cut, and he survived. he is nothing more than himself. 

#wilbur soot #tommyinnit #dsmp meta #dsmp analysis #dear god I have so many thoughts about thi #I love taking things too seriously #suicide tw

[moltengoldveins]

is it better for the themes of the story for Tubbo to be monstrous or human?

Like. Is he just a boy. Is he just a boy? He’s got small hands for his age. They’re soft. His eyes are greyish-blue, nothing too special. His hair is brown. He hasn’t got freckles. He’s five-foot-four and he’s got flat feet and a gap in his teeth and a fire in his soul, but he’s so so normal. And they break him. Bit by precious bit they treat him like an animal, a creature, a monster, and that is what he becomes. The people watch in horror as Schlatt takes this kid and makes him cower, and eventually they start seeing horns on his head that aren’t there. What about Snowchester? What if he’s human then? What if he’s building bombs and hiding scars and waking up every morning to screw a prosthetic into his missing wrist, and he’s still just a boy. He’s still small. He’s got a boar of a son. He’s got an Unknown Thing of a husband. He’s got a droid for an assistant and a pair of gods for enemies and he is Just A Boy.

That might not be the worst, though. What if, instead, he was something else from the get-go? Does Tommy find a kid, cloved-feet and thick hands and the soft hint of what will one day be a wall of muscle and bone? Does he have nubs growing from his brow, hidden in long thick shaggy hair Does his upper lip split? Are his pupils distorted? Was he always the mirror image of the man who’d break him, who he’d become? Was the ram in his blood, before L’manberg breathed? Did anyone know? Did they guess, did they assume? Did people treat Tubbo with kindness only because Tommy insisted on it? Did he loose that, the day Schlatt took the his throne? Did people turn on a dime, did they whisper that ‘they’d always known there was something off about that thing’? Does he hold onto the last vestiges of his kindness, his empathy, his ‘humanity,’ in spite of the humans around him? Does he loose that, when Ranboo dies?

is the story warning us that even the most innocent of children can be made unrecognizable with enough suffering? Or is it warning us to love what is not the same as us, lest we drive it to become what we fear it already is?

#Mcyt #dsmp meta #dsmp analysis #tubbo #dsmp tubbo #It’s crying over fictional characters o’clock

[bronzetomatoes]

"What am I without you?"

"Yourself"

Okay so is it that he can live on without him? That he'll heal eventually and it's not worth both of their lives to save him? That he'll still be himself? Is it they've been kept apart so long and been through as much separated as they had been together? That they're no longer what they once were, that they were made into people apart from one another, that they're no longer two halves of a whole, but forced to adapt into whole units on their own without the other to lean on? That he's himself without Tubbo because, gradually, since the first exile, he had had to be in order to survive? Is it that Tommy's different around Tubbo, in any positive, negative, neutral, grounded, insane way that it may be? That he's a different person not in just in Tubbo's company, but as effect of having him in his life? That without him, he wouldn't be the same, and without Tubbo would he finally revert back to himself?

What is Tommy without Tubbo? Functional? What is Tommy without Tubbo? Changed? What is Tommy without Tubbo? A stranger?

#look anika's talking! #mcyt #tommyinnit #tubbo #i need to go to BEDDDD bro #dsmp meta

[swordfright]

A thing i want to add to some of the really good c!Quackity meta recently: one of the things that makes him nuanced and at times sympathetic despite his Obvious Villainy (propensity for violence, selfish ambition, mania, tendency to develop one-sided obsessions, and the chronic insecurity that feeds into all these behaviors) is that, at least in my view, he’s clearly enamored with the idea of the good person he could be if he was willing to put in the work to be that guy.

What is the c!Slime training montage, if not a monument to the version of himself Q wants to be remembered as? The version of himself he presents to characters like Slime, Tommy, even Sam on rare occasions, is the Quackity he wants to go down in history, the version of himself he wants to have been. The issue is that he’s seemingly not even remotely interested in actually behaving like that version of himself. The legacy monologue (and honestly huge chunks of the LN series) is so revealing because it’s an act. Q is crafting the story of himself, but he’s all tell and no show - because showing would require him to, yknow, change his behavior.

#these thoughts aren’t terribly well phrased bc i should’ve gone to bed hours ago #but there’s a specific c!Q moment that lived in my brain rent-free #one of his weirdest conversations w c!Tommy #i might make a post about it #but it’s bedtime now lol #c!quackity #dsmp meta

[lmanburg]

there has GOT to be more c!wilbur analysis that covers the uniquely older sibling experience of the battle between believing you are not meant to be anyone’s role model and the selfish desire for your younger siblings to depend on you. the sick and twisted cognitive dissonance between knowing you are a deeply flawed human being who will never live up to the expectations impressed on you, and the wild animal that wants to believe you are strong enough, good enough, to hide your brother in your arms, shield him from the world, even though you both know the hole in your chest will let the shrapnel fly through you and into his eyes. you look up at your little brother and he is the sun and you want to bask in his warmth, you want to run to the shade, you want to pluck him from the sky and hide him in your hands even when you know it would burn you from the inside out and he wouldn’t feel safe anyways. you can’t apologize to your brother because that betrays the façade, speaks the unspoken, but you have to, because he deserves it, because you’re not really that much older than him anyways and he knows it. you’re not his parent but sometimes you feel like it anyways, when you haven’t done anything to earn it. you want to be needed, but can’t bring yourself to believe it when you are. so of course you run away to utah. of course you do.

#cwilbur #c!wilbur #cwilbur meta #c!wilbur meta #dsmp meta #dsmp #ccrimeboys #ccrimeboys meta #(dodges accusations of projection really badly they hit me square in the head and i pass out)

[peninkwrites]

Thinking about Wilbur haunting the narrative. His absence felt so. abstract. Which is ironic considering his ghost was there as a constant reminder, but Wilbur not being there wasn't felt like a missing loved one, not to me, at least it wasn't talked about as such, but just. the hole he left (literal, figurative, whatever) and the people who loved him and their desperate attempts to fill it. They didn't talk about Wilbur very much, did they? Not in the grand scheme of things. Wilbur's loudest existence was in "If I can't be the next schlatt, you can't be the next wilbur." Ghostbur existed to be made separate from Wilbur. And talking about the Other doesn't mean talking about the Original.

in exile, Tommy had ghostbur, and it is through the contrast of what we as an audience think Wilbur would have done that we actually see him. Tommy doesn't talk about him. Tubbo doesn't talk about him (save telling ghostbur they didn't need to give Wilbur a grave because ghostbur is there) or there's fundy shouting his grief at GHOSTBUR. Talking about how GHOSTBUR is acting now, not what Wilbur left him with. Everything Wilbur left them with remains constantly at the fringes of the narrative, it is haunting them, but in such strange, intangible ways. I don't think another medium could have shown this type of grief, because cc!Wilbur was still there, behind Ghostbur. So in a medium where character and actor blur and blend, the only part being grieved was the character. Wilbur as a piece of the narrative is what was lost. Later, as Tommy, Tubbo, and co. grew as writers that grief became more tangible and human, but at first the only part of c!Wilbur that died was his place as an active piece of the narrative, and his lack of place ended up impacting the world as loudly just by being a black hole rather than a star.

#this is nothing. im just feeling insane. #dsmp meta #spilled penink #greatest hits #c!wilbur #wilbur soot

[theenderwalker]

hai!! im just curious on what your take is on c!ranboos enderwalk. thats a bit vague actually . like i mean what did you view it as? cus i know some people see it as morally grey, a different part of them entirely, etc. sorry if that doesnt make sense i just havent heard many people's opinion on it lol

ok this is a big and difficult question because ultimately we don’t have a conclusive answer in canon . so i’m gonna synthesize how i interpret what we do know.

i firmly believe that ranboo’s enderwalk state is, well, just ranboo. i think it’s a matter of what memories he has access to at a given point in time, how he acts on those memories, and it’s not nearly as black and white and ‘enderwalking’ and ‘not’.

there are things he knows, and doesn’t know that he knows, things he’s done that he doesn’t remember, and critically, he has relationships with people that he does not know about. it’s not as simple as enderwalking off-stream and not onstream, because we have examples of him acting on information he doesn’t usually have onstream and he has forgotten things he did while fully aware and not under duress (the shulker box deal with foolish, which he didn’t remember later when asked about it during the lessons stream).

it’s implied in some places that it’s a cyclical thing (in the arg, one of the pages refers to ‘the enderwalkers’ as ‘circadian’ (referring to circadian rhythms/sleep cycles)<-i think this is still sort of speculation but people tested it with the font layered over the crossed out section and it fit, arg also deals strongly with the clock motif, clock ticking and stopwatch as teasers for the arg, etc) though its also able to be triggered manually through strong emotions, pain, and fear. (splash water bottle, dream smile). Z claims uncertainly that it may be genetic, and their writings imply that ranboo isn't the only one though there's no suggestions as to where these other enderwalkers may be.

it oftentime feels like while he's enderwalking he has access to more memories--though it might simply be different memories. he for sure has access to more information about his past (eg. he remembers ender entirely sometimes, while most of the times we see him on screen he's in the process of relearning it, or is at least much more subtle about knowing it.) At times he acts on fully subconscious memories, like when he built the cobblestone end city over l'manhole without realizing exactly what it was or why.

what i think is most important to this understanding though, is that he is SO consistent in what he wants and believes. the things that change are who he knows and associates with, and what he remembers. but ultimately, he has the same goal. he just acts on it differently. people not sides, stopping conflict, being a mediator, ‘one happy family’. these ideas are something he consistently believes in all the time. it’s the context that changes, whether he’s working with dream on the community house, or with tommy and tubbo to kill dream, or wilbur and hitting on 16, he is willing to take extreme measures to pursue these goals.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: i don’t believe the purple eyes enderwalk trope is strictly diegetic. we know for a fact that ranboo is visibly indistinguishable while enderwalking and not, as we have seen him ‘enderwalk’ on other people’s streams, and he has interacted with people ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the state without them recognizing any difference. (cphil, cfoolish, and cawesamdude as some notable examples)

TLDR: It's just Ranboo, with more, or different, or all of his memories.

(link is to a clip of c!ranboo saying as much based on the information he had at the time)

#cranboo #dsmp ranboo #dsmp #dsmp meta #dsmp analysis