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originemesis · 5 months

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"creation took 7 days; now watch me fuck it all up in one night"

canon divergent adam (+ side of abel ) / haz.b.in h.o.tel

21 + / mid-low activity / private

ordained and entertained by skeu

here are some cool people 😎 : @deathinfeathers , @voxistem , @lilitophidian , @cast-you-dxwn , @multipalz , @atomeyes + @sainticidal , @arachn0philia , @drraphaelmd

about // playlist // active headcanon // rules [beneath]

Caard-Esque:

Blog is 21+ for content concerns and mun is 25+ (an old) and will not interact with minors on this blog. minors should technically not follow me here either ~ so, don'tttttt...do that? thanks! if i catch you, you're yeeted to the shadow realm.

Do not follow this blog if you are sensitive to the sensitive topics related to this particular genre. I tag with "content word cw" for the extra wild stuff, but that's about it. adam literally has the highest swear/slur count in the show and he's only in 3 episodes, so be aware of that.

I tend to be private/selective as i get fairly overwhelmed with too much activity. i really get into plots though, and i'll spam the dash with some silly original dick chauvinism from time to time when ive fed my inner gremlins past midnight. That said, I do get easily overwhelmed when I'm following too many people and multi muse blogs in particular can exacerbate this feeling, so if I do not follow back - I might just not be in a good place to atm or I just don't see possible interactions btw our characters. It's nothing personal! ^^

This is a mutuals only interaction blog for my sanity (anons being fine). if i can see plots happening between us, i'll likely follow. but i get overwhelmed easily so please don't take it personally if i don't follow back or follow back right away.

I am not exclusive, but I prioritize my plotted threads and may have some mains/activity based off that as far as my main verse goes. But I will never be fully exclusive and i enjoy exploring different character dynamics. Also multiship is fine, but I am not exclusively here to ship or write suggestive content. My muses have always and will always require plotting and scene chemistry for me to consider writing ship material. In the case I do reblog shippy prompts still feel free to send in ofc! I'll see if I can make it work or not.

If I don't get a follow back within a week or two, if blogs i follow go inactive for up to 6-7 weeks, or if there's just no attempt on either of our ends to connect for an indefinite amount of time - i'll occasionally go through my list and soft block to clean things up. if we ever want to give it a go in the future, the option is there for us to re-follow and resume! i have in the past been made to feel like I'm walking on egg shells in rpcs regarding these matters and id rather avoid it here...im just here to chill, write and leave weird surprises in dms.

I don't like the feeling of being 'collected' so...if you are interacting with multiple of my muses, I ask you have a different dynamic for mine than them. This is just an act of courtesy I also extend to my rp partners. I interact more with folks that have a special relationship with my muse, so it's needed to deep dive into more interesting topics for me. I also do not interact w/ other of the same muse cuz I feel like I 'absorb' how others play him and I want to keep my version separated from that.

I know that Adam is a bad guy. He's insufferable and can push buttons- but I am not him and I dislike constantly feeling like I'm being barraged for his actions, especially since I consider him to be a heavily layered character that should not be shoe horned into a standard 'ok irredeemable and never allowed nice things' box. So- if you honestly hate this character please don't interact. I am here for exploring taboo topics and ways that a flawed character can make others think he's justified, betray them, make people feel COMPLICATED things... I also love torturing my muse and taking the piss out of him, so I don't need people moving in and tying to constantly put him down/ruin his current plots by being god modey or not at least asking me how we should proceed in a power dynamic, or relationships cuz you don't ship what I ship, or find my interactions with other characters 'toxic' and 'not allowed'...let me explore and enjoy what I like on my blog within reason and do talk with me on dms if you don't like how things are going with our muses and you wanna explore other routes. I love to plot and I am very reasonable.

This post/my rules and conditions are subject to change based on what I get up to on here.

#//o hi just making a trash gremlin to be rude on-#//extremely work in progress- subject to change based on canon development #hazbin hotel rp #helluva boss rp

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synapticjive · 4 months

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"Mask Off" Initial Thoughts

Okay, after marinating on all of this...

For context, I'm playing as a ruthless evil Durge, and it made sense in my RP to ascend Astarion. At some point well into Act 2, I was unable to persuade Astarion out of ascending. His choice to ascend locked in fairly early for me. Every time I challenged him, it defaulted to him making excuses and insisting that ascending was worthwhile, that I was worrying for nothing. He's naturally eager that I'm Bhaalspawn, and the "don't let him" dialogue felt very out-of-place considering how cold and detached we were becoming (don't ask me why, I'm still wrapping my head around this.)

The ascension was a welcomed change of pace, as was Durge's baptism. But regarding the mask...

Spawn Astarion does clearly read as someone who is deeply wounded and using performance/charm/sexuality as a way to manipulate others- for vengeance, for control, for power, for safety, and eventually with Tav/Durge, for intimacy. I do think he's always had a bloodlust and intense hatred for others that a) cross him and b) that he perceives as lesser than him- this is especially true if you think that his history as a magistrate and slaver (controversial) is canon. His past mistakes and/or problematic viewpoints are no way a justification for his experience of sexual abuse and trafficking, it just intensifies and complicates his recovery and relationship building. It explains why he uses Tav/Durge, but then when his sudden feelings are reciprocated, he can't let go.

I've had limited access to clips of spawn Astarion throughout Act 3, and I have no idea how he reacts to Tav/Durge. I saw some epilogue clips, just barely, and I can't conceive of how we even get to that point, considering how much pain he's in, how much ground we'd need to cover in getting him to that place of near acceptance and peace(-ish). I guess a lot goes down in those 6 months, huh?

I always thought A!A (granted, I love him, I love dark romances and awful villains) was just all of his growth locked in time and space, just completely coming to a grinding halt. I don't think that his progress with Tav/Durge is undone (if that was the case, he wouldn't love you anymore or even understand the purpose of you in his life). He's just raw in his anger, vitriol, using his power(s) to protect him from all of the pain and fear that he experienced. Power, wealth, and violence are what protect him now, not Tav/Durge. He doesn't "need" you, but he still wants to "own" you because he... loves you, sort-of. You're under his skin, and he can't let go, I think. Or maybe he still wants something from you, maybe subjugating you somehow amplifies his power fantasy, especially with someone he seems to control and can tolerate ("you're degrading yourself/he can do that.")

He's always had a power fantasy, he's always loved dom/sub dynamics (hinted at in the game,) and so far, as evil Durge, he's been treating my character well (she also doesn't want to leave, not yet anyway.)

I'm still waiting to finish this first playthrough before I have more conclusive thoughts. Preliminary: he's not masking his anger/his dark triad (lol) as AA, whereas he was desperately trying to as a spawn. He doesn't give a single fuck about how people feel about it once he ascends, it's just him and you and everyone beneath you both as far as he's concerned.

Sorry, lots of thoughts, y'all. I need to play an origin run & a spawn Astarion romance to get the full picture.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #ascended astarion #astarion ancunin #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 meta #astarion meta #lord astarion

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invested-in-your-future · 1 year

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What restrictions have you set for it?

Oh that one's easy.

Two sets of rules. First its the specific restriction of what I'd be using. Then things specific to V4 and onward that I swore I would never bring up or use.

The Basic set of Rules:

V1 - V3 stays the same - Everything from the first trailers till the end of V3, including the post-credits scenes, is still exactly the same. Even if its the subplots that did not work or I don't like. It is what it is, it happened the way it did. Build upon past mistakes instead of trying to "perfect" things.

Song Lyrics from the first three volumes stay - things being written still have to take into account the soundtrack lyrics (only from those specific volumes that stay), just like one would have done when theorycrafting back then.

Keep the overall "idea" of the setting mostly same as V1 through V3 - which means that its still "Somewhat contemporary" vibe of the setting and the setting is "somewhat grounded" (with exception for rule of cool) with things that could be considered "magical" being limited and ambiguous enough as to not break that suspension of disbelief. Which means the idea of magic is still limited to what's connected to "Maidens subplot". Remnant is a world built on science and myth and while there’s something in the root of it all, the best part about this setting for me was always the fact that there’s very clear limits to the world and world-building. It was the world where “magic” was a far-away fairytale that "might" have existed but majority of the world probably never was ever going to care about it or be impacted by it. It was a world after terrible strife and multiple very human very normal wars, where kingdoms were built on quite grounded and contemporary ideas with very human conflicts that sometimes might be influenced by something "out there", but would still wind up being about here and now.

Each of the leads has to have a character arc - In some cases like Blake, that would mean having to think up something new altogether. Would be weird for something called "RWBY" to have nothing on the said R, W, B and Y right? So whatever goes has to be focused on them. While other characters exist and can have stories and arcs, in the end of the day its their story and their journey first and foremost.

What would NOT be used:

Relic McGuffin Subplot - Because honestly? Its just all around ehhh and a very tired trope (ex: if you reviewed at least ten D&D RP sessions you would find something like that being used in more than half) and there already are enough things going wrong within the setting that I don't really get why they needed this? I guess it allowed the writers to basically just...not need to think up why characters are in one specific location or the other? And in some cases as a convenient exposition plot-device? And the story already has plot threads of powerful items/locations, there's no need to THIS. Also "let's go on the hunt for magic RPG Plot Items" is kind of...crass right after all the trauma and war and probably the most "grounded" end to a volume that was Fall of Beacon? So yeah, N O P E.

Salem's Evil Doom Council of Very Evil - again why does the story need this? Why does an Ancient Evil with an army of eldritch monsters at her disposal need a bunch of stereotypes? Why do we need another set of henchmen for Salem? And honestly? Whenever they would show up my brain would just start up playing the Bad Horse segment from Dr Horrible and...no. I literally expect bunch of background henchmen start singing "The evil league of evil is watching so beware" whenever Cinder's group reacts to anything there. More factions and interests in the world? Sure, but Salem does not need this and it kind of feels detrimental to how her side was portrayed in V3? The scary thing about the bad guys is not the numbers, its all the manipulation and planning that ends up working because of human nature.

A lot of V4 and onward characters - Kind of self explanatory, but since a lot of those characters are kind of one-time one-note appearances tied to specific subplots, there's not really any reason for them to be there anymore? And quite a few are kind of completely redundant. RWBY already has more than enough characters it forgets to use past their first appearance already. Doesn't mean no new or returning characters though. Just very likely not the RWBY-proper V4+ ones.

The RWBY-proper version of Menagerie and the subplot there - Because honestly I have absolutely no idea what the writers thought when doing this considering how out of touch it feels. WF subplot is already very shaky and filled with unfortunate implications in the first three volumes already. There's absolutely no need for a season long subplot filled with padding that leads to Blake delivering the equivalent of a twitter rant about how "achshually marginalized communities are as bad as literal bigots because... uhhh... burning and looting". Not to mention the fact that they basically made Menagerie be literal equivalent of rich people resort with Blake's family owning a literal freaking castle. Like you literally could just not touch WF Subplot at all past V3 and it would end up being BETTER than what was there.

Salem and Ozpin backstory from V6 and everything connected to that - so yeah got to just kind of throw all of that away. Whoooooop. Gone. "Gods did it"? Gone. Ozpin's big secret that is supposed to make everyone angry but is kind of tamest most toothless revelation ever? Gone.

The Curing of PTSD via Fear of Rats. - I have already written pages upon pages about this with how extremely vile pretty much every aspect on how Yang's trauma is handled in V4 is so I won't repeat myself.

#rwby #rwby au #rwby meta stuff mine #rwde #is this rwde?#idk really

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angeart · 4 months

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ask game 12 &13!

yayy more questions! okay i'll start with 13 because it's simpler:

13.Any segment of your work that made you cry while writing it? (because it moved you deeply)

so. i cry easily. but i don't tend to cry while writing, i think? i don't have the greatest memory, so i can't be sure. i remember one time i cried while writing hmtb, but it wasn't because i was moved deeply jcnbjk (it was actually a mellow scene and i just. unexpectedly triggered an unpleasant memory, oops.)

in a way, i think it's easier to get emotional while working on RPs, actually. i might've cried at those in the past, mmh.

now, if you asked me when did i get anxious while writing. that's a whole another thing. i do deal with a lot of heavy emotions in writing, and, yeah. anyway, the answer is yesterday. (hmtb grian is doing perfectly well wdym-) (i had to stop writing after 8 sentences and take a break everything's fine-)

12.Funniest comment you've ever gotten in a piece of work?

this is a fun one! i don't think i have a favourite, i'm not the best with putting things on a scale and deciding that's the most this or that. add my bad memory into the mix, and about a year of writing a multichapter fic, and- well. but! i dug through and made a small collection of comments that amuse me! (there were many more, but i'm trying not to swarm you completely.)

i cannot tell you how much i appreciate and value the comments i get. i read every single one, and they matter a lot! they help me immensely and i am insanely grateful for them. <33

anyway, the collection of comments that make me giggle is under the line!

♥ please, consider this a love letter to all the commenters. ♥

Chocolate_Cake_Enthusiast on Chapter 3 of Elegy: ANGE UOU ARE THE SINGULAR SOURCE OF MY ANGST AND DEPRESSION (…) POOR GRIAN HE BETTER BE ALRIGHT OTHERWISE I WILL CHUCK A TENNIS BALL AT MY TOE

ghostpi on Chapter 7 of hmtb: TIS BUT A FLESH WOUND.

Eucalypta on Chapter 18 of hmtb: I forgot this had a ship tag so I was reading all previous chapters like: "what deep soulmates they are! Wait … Thats a bit gay. Well sometimes platonic love goes very dee- No thats definitely gay… What were the tags again?"

Tiand on Chapter 21 of hmtb: So- uh- Where can I send my therapy bill?

wimrow on Chapter 26 of hmtb: WOOOOO I DONT FEWL LIKE SOBBING WITJ THIS CHAPTER!!!!!! (this will absolutely change later on won’t it)

genderfluid_bitch on Chapter 29: *does a little jig* THE BABIES ARE HURTING AGAIN

Amabsis on Chapter 30 of hmtb: “Grian, are you okay?” NOBODY IS OKAY IMPULSESV!!!

Chat on Chapter 31 of hmtb: THATS A BRILLIANT WAY TO END A CHAPTER BUT OH MY FUCKERY ARE YOU CRUEL FOR IT.

peskytimes on Chapter 39 of hmtb: everytime i read this fic my mental state gets worse <33 /pos

Alcea_42 on Chapter 42 of hmtb: so sometimes 42 doesn't solve everything-

Holly_Loves_Reading on Chapter 46 of hmtb: Oh my god they’re so cute! Not even a little bit healthy, but so cute!

Pidgey05 on Chapter 47 of hmtb: Omg 200k words of pain and now finnally some fluff T^T it was so beautiful thank you author, for this gift 🤣

SongbirdQuela on Chapter 48 of hmtb: Everything’s going so well! Oh jee wiz I hope nothing goes incredibly wrong, boy would that be a rollercoaster, oh golly I can’t wait to see absolutely none of the characters doing anything self destructive!

Heartpaw on Chapter 48 of hmtb: “Did you two have a romp?” Says you. Your the one not wearing you own pants. Are you sure YOU didn’t have a romp

also have a kiss collection of you guys going insane <33

The_Pesky_Crow on Chapter 28 of hmtb: 12 Chapters from now, in a land far far away, the Grain kisses the Scar

Linkito on Chapter 41 of hmtb: I absolutely cannot believe that I binged this FORTY ONE chapter fic of A HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND WORDS and these idiots haven't kissed. Unbelievable. You're taking slow burn to a whole new level bless you and also I hate you LMAO

Bones_exe on Chapter 44 of hmtb: I'm going to be a crinkly old man by the time these two smooch huh?

Chocolate_Cake_Enthusiast on Chapter 44 of hmtb: JUST KISS ALREADY. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PLEASE JUST KISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Xanadu:Wynter on Chapter 45 of hmtb: PLEASE JUST ONE KISS

Bioluminescence on Chapter 45 of hmtb: I THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO KISS I WAS HOLDING MY BREATH AND THEN THEY DIDN'T this is honestly so predictable of you though smh

and some bonus screenshot stuff <3 (first two from elegy, the rest is hmtb)

(in the one below you can see a beautiful duality of comments /pos)

i hope that was fun. i had fun putting this together <3

love you guys!!

----- questions from >>this ask game<<

#ange answers #comments appreciation #seriously comments mean so much to me #thank youuuu #ange rambles #i can't help it sorryyyy kjcnbxk #feel free to come ask more stuff <3 #and yes link #your comment got featured #i love it #i love all of them

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typhoonvash · 1 year

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*sneakily steals this and runs*

SHIPPING INFO //ANSWER THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR MUSES SO PEOPLE KNOW HOW SHIPPING WORKS ON YOUR BLOG.

(I'm not tagged and I'm not taggin' anyone, I'm gonna slap a special tag on this and hold onto it for reference)

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?

Vashwood is my main ship, but i also really like Mashwood, Mash, and the polygon of vash/ww/meryl/milly.

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?

Well. First off. Vash is old as fuck. So jot that one down. Basically, for an 18-22 yr old I think mid to late twenties is fine. 23-25 is still babie to me but like, you do you as long as it's not predatory and weird. Over 25 I think is when I'm like "yeah date whoever you want." So it's really just based on the dynamic I guess.

Also stampede woowoo is weird because accelerated aging, so if you want to ship your s!woowoo with me please let me know that he's you know. ACTUALLY of age (I headcanon him to be at least 21).

HOW FAR DO STEAMY MOMENTS HAVE TO GO BEFORE THEY ARE CONSIDERED NSFW?

I think once the touching becomes touching is when I'll read more it. When you know they're hungry for each other, yeah? Or when you know it's about to go there.

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?

Selective to an extent. Canon relationships (in the case of Trigun, everything is platonic atm since nothing is confirmed but youuu knowww) exist and they make it easier for me to ship with you. If it's a rarepair or anything else, we have to build a foundation first and get to know each other before I trust you with my boy's heart. </3

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?

I'm open to most ships, healthy or unhealthy. The only hard stop for me is plantcest/knivesvash. I'm also a bit weird about shipping with Roberto? I dunno I see him more as a dad or drunkle as woowoo put it in the show. I don't know if this would even be an issue, but yeah.

I have a soft spot for the cross-universe ships too, like mix and match stampede/98/max. Vash/Vash (cross-universe/AU) is interesting to me, and I'm open to the idea, but I'm never gonna be the one to push it if that makes sense.

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?

Hey, if things happen in a thread and start going somewhere naturally, you're welcome to make a move. I'll read your rules to make sure it's okay if I make a move in the moment, but for the most part I'm more of a feels type of shipper.

If you want a thread to for certain go somewhere, then feel free to ask me! And I always appreciate you asking for permission anyway. I will probably say yes.

ARE YOU SHIP OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

I do love ships, but I also love strong platonic relationships with other muses too! Plus we can always friends to lovers slow burn it and torture everyone, so that's fun.

Anyway shipping is fun and cool. I'll also do breakups, fights, etc, anything that a relationship naturally goes through. I want it to be as realistic as possible.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?

Absolutely 100% vashwood. It's my favorite, I'm obsessed with it, but I really like the big four's dynamic as a whole. I loooove mashwood/mash as well, I think throwing stampede woowoo at stampede meryl is hilarious.

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?

Hi, I'm an idiot and I also have social anxiety. Me asking to ship something is as nerve-wracking as asking someone out (obviously, this comparison is not how I actually feel, I can separate ships from mun relationships don't worry).

You can either initiate it in RP, a meme, an ask, or shoot me a message. Vash will respond with... Vash Responses, so if you want a for certain answer then message me here or ask for my discord!

Also if there's anything here I didn't answer, again, feel free to message me. I am a silly lil idiot with social anxiety and sometimes I'm brave, but most times I'm sitting there cheering you on from the sidelines instead of actually participating. I'm trying to get better about it!!

#//ooc//#[puts this in my pocket]#[shipping rules]#i don't know if anyone wanted to see this but if you did here you go

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badheart · 2 years

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oh gosh, you now have ocs! so cool! Tell me what made you make them? your inspirstion? 🥰

shh don’t tell em *casually sneaked them onto my blog* these aren’t my first OC’s tho, but definitely ones, where I finally properly rp them 🥰 but also thx to my gf, and friend - cause if I didn’t have anyone to interact with, then they would just catch dust ahaha.

For some reason I am very interested in the Yakuza. And at this point I don’t remember fully why or how it happened. But I am also biased towards Japanese culture (but also others) cause my own is um... there ain’t much, or nothing really old that plays still a huge role nowadays.

Anyway, with that is the base set, basically the crime scene in Japan. And I really always wanted to interact with a police themed OC (but personally I have never spotted someone, except an detective in the past, who is sadly not active anymore), cause I like when two different sides clash, considering Kugo ain’t the most good person. And there is a series called Gi.ri/Haj.i on netflix, which was about a japanese detective, who had to find his yakuza brother in london, and it was very nice to see the culture differences, the stories of the side characters, anyway this series gave me lots of inspiring content. Jiro my yakuza, is even snatched out of the series, and now filled with hc’s. Jin my police oc, is heavily based on the protagonist.

And there was also the big desire to write more about mature / adult themes, which I don’t get to explore all with Kugo, and my friends were luckily interested too. With Jiro I can explore the gang-life or finally a more bad guy, also a toxic relationship with his ex-gf. Then there is Jin, who is overworked, a family man, but honestly close to a divorce, not every marriage is meant for forever, but neither him or his wife has fully accepted it yet. Also some police work, with which I can bug all my mutuals who play crime-themed muses. Futaba is another bias, I finally get to rp a tall woman haha, but also another cop, but this time corrupt (aka exploring also the many bad sides of the police), she is also bit of a way of coping with everything going on, as I also explore war, and political topics with her, since she is very interested in that stuff and can hold some extreme opinions.

Anyway I got myself a bunch of flawed muses, which hold many bad but also good sides, it is a nice mix I missed seeing in the rpc, since a lot don’t explore dark themes beyond death. It offers so much to explore, but also an unholy amount of research...

I can give an example (with Kugo), how far my interest goes with more realistic topics. Ofc I don’t expect a Shonen Manga to point out those kind of consequences (for that I have rp), but not many realize that Ichigo basically killed a human being, and while Kugo had manipulated his family and all through his friend’s help, is it still justified to take his life? Why not prison, why not just a good ass-kicking? Ideally Ichigo should have called the police, and let them handle Kugo, but he took himself the right to judge himself - committing a crime as well, which was not even fully self-defense (ofc no easy case with the supernatural parts), but Kugo originally just wanted to leave, but Ichigo insisted on getting his powers back, and revenge (after getting his powers from the Shinigami). And even when Tsukishima died, Ichigo kept going, even though there was no more any reason to fight Kugo, his family & friends were free from Tsuki’s powers.

Ichigo really became a killer / murderer in this moment, even though no one was really harmed of his friends (just total emotional roller coaster, which ofc is not okay either, not trying to deny this here) In our world this would have meant court and everything, and then there is also Ginjo’s family, who in canon is maybe still alive or not, either way... damn. One can question the morals, the possible consequences (or lack of) quite a lot here, and I find that very interesting and love to confront other muses with it. After all, Kugo’s world still plays in our modern one, and ofc there are laws in their country, which Ichigo ignored.

I am biased, since Tite offered only a little bit about the possible turmoil in Ichigo’s mind or what his friends possibly think of him after this event, ... fuck I sure would not take it easy if my friend murdered another human being. But again yeah SHONEN MANGA... no expectations asdfgh.

But it is definitely nice that I can touch on those topics in rp. 👀

#╳ ——「 ooc.」#╳ ——「 query.」#illholy #😭 lettin me talk bout my bbys

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oil-and-water-rp · 2 years

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• Page Rules •

———————————

• No god modding. Straight forward, common etiquette!

• Organization. Whenever tagging this account or leaving an ask, please specify (in whichever way you see fit) who your thread is addressed to, if it was NOT already previously spoken about. Just makes things simpler and saves me the time of asking.

• Headcanons. Most of my muses are LGBT+, it is my personal choice (and I think it makes sense anyways, seeing as heteronormativity does not exist in the canon universe). Do not get hateful with me about it, or try to force me to RP another way. Kind of goes along with god modding.

• 20+. I do not write adult topics with minors, period. However if the thread doesn’t involve things like NSFW or drugs, I don’t mind to write with you. Please let me know up front if you’re a minor so we can discuss appropriate story concepts!

• Tumblr/Discord. I haven’t RPed on Discord yet but I’m noticing that many of the current blogs running are, and I don’t mind to give it a try! I currently main on Tumblr though.

• Any length works. Sometimes I don’t feel like writing paragraphs at a time, and sometimes I’m brimming with ideas that need explicit detail. I’m not a stickler for reply length.

• OC/AU friendly. I’ve made many OCs in the past and adore a well written one! My muses can interact with just about anyone from any universe, I don’t have strict rules on it. Considering Hextech’s power of teleportation, who knows what could happen…

• No forced shipping. Multishipping. If I like your character I’m always down to discuss a potential romantic relationship/thread between muses. That being said, if the muses in our thread do get together, don’t expect me not to write romance/smut with anyone else!

• NSFW. I am open to writing smutty threads. It of course needs to be discussed beforehand, and I reserve the right to decline a situation I’m not comfortable with. Nothing relating to children/ageplay, incest, animals or anything else illegal.

• Password. Whenever you reach out to me to write (if I don’t reach out first), I’ll ask for a password. If you’ve read this far, the password is Piltover’s Finest 🖤

**rules will be updated as I go!**

#RP blog #blog rules #rule post

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making-a-killing · 6 months

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"The K in hippocratic oath stands for Kimiko, now please stop questioning the syringe of fluid in ny hand. I promise it's good for you."

Character details:

Letter: K

Code name: Kimura

True name: Kimiko Kujo

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: 17

Birthdate: March 21

Orientation: Bisexual

Home country: Japan

Likes: lizards, microbiology, helping people she deems "worthy"

Dislikes: horror films, minimalist decor, "difficult persons"

Extra: K arrived at Wammys fairly young and had been pursuing a medical career prior to the L program. Her parents were both doctors and died in a lab accident while working on a top secret infectious disease program. K had been given extensive private schooling and was far above any other child her age. Subsequently, Mr. Wammy, who had been good friends with her parents, brought her to Wammys House so she could continue her studies. K genuinely believes in the Wammys House system and L program, even though she is not at all considered a proper successor. Brilliant and loyal as she may be she is headstrong in her sense of justice and should never be left alone in a lab.

Appearance:

Hair color: Light brown, long and straight, often kept in a tight bun or pony tail but occasionally let down

Eye color: Black

Skin tone: Warm beige

Height: 5'7 (170cm)

Weight: 120-130lbs (54-59kg)

Fashion sense: Extremely formal. Usually wears black or white and rarely dresses in color but typically wears muted blues or greens. Often wears her lab coat around during busy weeks.

Extra: Sometimes wears a small peice of jewelry, but nothing to flashy. Her appearance is fairly sterile overall.

(=Rules under cut=)

Mun:

The man behind the muse is @artificial-ascension

That's my main personal blog and everything about me is in the pinned post. If you don't feel like going there:

Michael

He/they

My other rp blog is @fairweather-fangs I made a separate blog for my other muse because I like theming my blogs

Activity:

I am very active on Tumblr and try to be here

If I have alot of asks or RPs going on at once it may take a while to get to all of them, but trust me I do see everything.

I may get writers block for some things but I will try to get around to everything.

I'm very open about what I'm working on so if you have questions or concerns feel free to message me. If for whatever reason I will not be responding to your ask/response I will inform you

I'm in the Eastern U.S. but may be active anywhere from 5am (my time) at the earliest to 3am at th latest. (I have a terrible sleep schedule) However I am mich less likely to be writing or responding super late or super early. I may also be late to things if I'm away from my phone because I do that sometimes

Rules:

I don't mind most things, if you feel like you need permission to do something to K I almost certainly don't care

K often goes by Kimiko and her full name is probably available if you dig enough. If you're character is willing to find it they're free to use her real name.

NSFW is very much allowed but I require you to be 18+ for sexual material. Otherwise go crazy.

I don't like writing much... you wouldn't be able to tell because I'm quite long winded...

Really just try and not speak for K. That's my job, also I may do so on my other rp blog, but most K will go here.

And also don't be a dick. I try to be friendly but I don't fuck with any sort of bigotry in or out of character. And don't be rude to me I'll block you. I came here to have fun.

Trigger warnings: Comically absurd medical malpractice?? There's not alot here, pretty much just the average edgy wammys rp here.

Rules and warnings to be expanded upon as things come up. I'm new here.

#hello hello #there's way more K material to work with than F #F is loosely based of the L Change the World guy #K is. kimiko kujo. and the book actually have her something of a back story

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ofstarsandskies · 1 year

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7, 17, 29?

send a number for me to talk about one of the following topics! || @unborderedreflection

7 -- DNIs in Rules || 17 -- Fanon Interpretations || 29 -- Blocking

OutOfCanonShips;;

Hoo boi, this turned into a big word/semi-rant sandwich. I'll do the more positive one outside the Read More, but the Kika Soap Box ones, I'll do under Read More.

17: Fanon Interpretations

Fanon interpretations are something I think should stay an open season list that should be respected (but not adopted) on both ends, especially in the roleplay community.

Do you think this character reads as someone with a certain mental condition? Go ahead! I do that with Ludger, who I read as somewhat socially anxious on account of him being a semi-silent protagonist. Or perhaps you think an ending could continue one way or the other? Awesome, share that! Make it an AU! Expanding on canon, even if it's just off the rails, is something that should be widespread welcome.

That said, you have to be ready to accept that not everyone reads something as you do. While I read Ludger as socially anxious, if someone disagrees, it's not my place to force them to change their mind. Discussing why you interpret canon a certain way can be fun and maybe along the way someone can support that interpretation. But if someone doesn't agree, then that's fine. How I read Ludger isn't more "correct" than yours.

HOWEVER, HERE'S THE BIG BUT FOR RPs: in the RP sphere, here's where you have roll with another's interpretation. RPs are all about exploring canon in a way someone finds fun; if you follow/start a thread, you've made a silent agreement to accept their version. Do you have to believe it's the "right" way? Not at all! But when interacting with X/Y/Z, it's to be treated as the rule.

7: DNIs in rules

I think the concept of DNIs isn't bad; if there's a fandom you just don't want to get into, better you say that than let a potential partner see your blog and you're just not interested from the get-go. Or if you're not into NSFW-centric blogs, by all means let people know! HOWEVER, some of the DNIs I've seen now don't feel more like a performance piece/shout box than their intended purpose.

I'd say the worst offender of this type is "Basic DNI rules apply." I'm sorry mate, but that is a nothing sandwich. What exactly do you consider the "Basics"? Where do you personally draw the line? Would, say, the joke thread I did where Ludger said he had a wet dream with Julius because he thought "Wet Dream" meant a dream about pools be too far? Or is it fine because it's a misunderstanding? Blanket words/labels that require your partner to try and do the math is grounds to just not bother.

In short, I think DNIs are a good idea on paper! But how some folks use them... they're not very helpful to and/or actively hinder a potential partner.

29: Blocking

Kika soap box time: for those who believe blocking is a sign of admitting defeat, allow me to say that's exactly how bullies get you to suffer.

Here's the thing: blocking is supposed to be the "I don't see us interacting well" button. Can it be used maliciously? Indeed, just like all things can be. But if someone tries to convince you that "Blocking me means I'm right!", do not give in; if you feel you should block, do it.

The reframing of blocking = admitting defeat is a way for bullies to still "win" after they get ignored. After all, bullying's all about hurting the target; if the targets ignores it, well damn, there goes the proof they hurt them. So how do they still win? Easy, convince themselves that blocking is the coward's way out. So then, they always "win"-- if you don't block, they can still hurt you; if you block, "SEE, I KNEW THEY WERE A WIMP".

So how do you, the target, win? Simple: you still block them. They might take it as a victory, but what matters is making your space on the interwebs one you're comfortable in.

#unborderedreflection #OutOfCanonShips;;#[Ewps the word sandwich.]#[Thanks for being my cherished enabler]

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overthinkingfandom · 3 years

Text

Cards on the Table - Breaking down the tactics in L'manburg Independence

/rp /dsmp

Much has been said in the fandom about L'manburg's independence. It is, after all, arguably the most important moment in DSMP's history, as the rest of the story wouldn't have existed without it.

In light of the recent anniversary of it, yes I know I’m late, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and add something to the discussion surrounding it. However, as the morality of the situation has been discussed to death I'll be taking a slightly different approach to it.

Due to the nature of the DSMP's medium, the story has many unique quirks. One of those quirks is how realistic the tactics used in the story's portrayal of politics are. The independence conflict is a great example of it. While on the surface things seem to be rather simplistic in nature, there's a lot more going on that’s less obvious.

Both Wilbur and Dream are brilliant politicians who get to show both their strengths and weaknesses in dealing with an equally skilled opponent in this encounter. There’s actually quite a bit to go into, despite their interactions being so short.

When most people think about the L'manburg's independence, they think about the moment the declaration has been written up and the subsequent declaration of war. While this moment is certainly iconic, it's not really all that impactful in the grand scheme of things. Both declarations are the culmination of decisions that have been made beforehand. It's the moment when those decisions were made that really influenced things.

Conveniently, Wilbur and Dream only hold a single conversation about L'manburg before the declarations are drawn up, so we don’t need to look far in order to figure out where those decisions were formed.

Wilbur has been working on L’manburg, collecting materials and building the wall surrounding it, for almost an hour when he spots Dream lurking. “Get [Dream] into the VC, I need to talk with him. He’s the leader of the other nation, I think we need to have a congress.” (52:44)

Dream: “Hello?”

Wilbur: “Hello Dream. Welcome to our great nation of L’manburg.”

Dream: “L’manburg?”

Wilbur: “Yes. We are seceding from Dream SMP. This is our own server now. This area, just this part [between the walls of L’manburg], is our server.”

Wilbur doesn’t waste any time before getting right down to business and talking about the matter at hand. However, the way he speaks about it here and in the rest of the conversation is fairly interesting. Wilbur is talking about L’manburg as if it’s something which already exists. They are seceding. This is their land. This conversation is merely a courtesy to give Dream a formal notice of their separation.

Yet, a bit later Wilbur shows he knows they need Dream’s acknowledgement in order for L’manburg to be its own entity. Independence is not a concrete thing that can just be taken or created on one person’s whim, after all. It only exists when the people with power agree it exists.

Wilbur: “Dream, basically all we want from you is just acknowledgement that we are an independent nation now. That’s all we need.” (56:20)

So if Wilbur knows they aren’t independent yet, why is he talking like that?

It’s because he’s using a salesman technique called an Assumptive Close. Instead of posing it as a question and putting the choice of agreeing or disagreeing in Dream’s hands, Wilbur acts as if it’s already true and leaves the burden of challenging his claims on Dream’s shoulders. He even moves on to ask secondary questions on how Dream feels about having embassies in his land (and notably he frames it as a question, unlike how he frames the topic of L’manburg’s independence) as if L’manburg is already a political entity.

Wilbur: “Dream, I’ve got a proposition for you. How do you feel about having Tommy’s land being an embassy? Like it’s an enclave in your own land.” (59:01)

Wilbur’s use of this technique has an interesting side effect in that it signals to Dream Wilbur is taking a non-compromising position in this negotiation. In essence saying “L’manburg is independent, take it or leave it.”

A non-compromising position is the game theory term for when someone goes, "I'm going to do that, this is going to happen and nothing can dissuade me from this course of action." It's a strong tactic which forces everyone to react to that person's position, reducing the others' options into a binary of either accepting that position or rejecting it.

This is a very common tactic and various manifestations of it can be seen all over history and media. From Martin Luther who refused to recant or compromise with his famous words of “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise” to groups who cultivate a "with us or against us" mentality to heroic characters who say they would die before giving in to whatever Evil the story focuses on.

This is the situation Dream is facing here. He can either accept Wilbur's assertion that L'manburg is an independent entity by either encouraging them or even doing nothing, or he can reject Wilbur's assertion by acting against it.

As we all know, he ended up choosing the second option but what were his considerations for doing so?

For that we would need to know what his goal was here, something we don't really get a sense of from his conversation with Wilbur. However, he ends up stating what it was in a later conversation with Skeppy.

(Emphasis added by me and wasn’t part of the original dialogue.)

“Everyone can build wherever they want. [L’manburg] just decided to say that they get to determine where they can build and we can’t and we said well no, you can’t do that. And that’s what the whole war was over.” (31:44)

“[L’manburg] can’t tell us that we can’t go in their land. That’s all we wanted to say. That they’re not independent, they are a part of the Dream Team SMP. They’re just a delusional, small part." (34:26)

Dream lies a lot, so just because he says something doesn't mean it's necessarily true. However, this seems to be genuine. Dream has no problem telling Skeppy “we burned down their houses and blew up the whole land.” (32:36) later on in the conversation, so we can rule out that he's trying to paint himself in a better light, and there aren't really any other reasons for him to lie to Skeppy here about this.

When looking at Dream's options with his goal we can see the choice is pretty much a no-brainer.

Accepting is a total lose scenario for him. Not only will it fail to fulfill his goals, it would actively encourage the sort of behavior he doesn't want to happen, as Wilbur would set a precedent that so long as someone insisted hard enough and implied Dream is a bad person he would fold in negotiations and give them what they want.

Rejecting gets him far closer to his goal of railing against L’manburg’s exclusion. Going to war means he has to invest much more effort and resources into his reaction than if he just accepted as well as deal with the risks any war has, however the sheer difference in ability between Dream's side and Wilbur's side make the risk minimal.

Going to a war he’s pretty sure he can win VS encouraging the sort of thing he disapproves of, isn’t really a hard choice.

This is actually the result of a mistake on Wilbur's part. CC!Wilbur called his character naive (37:49) and he's not wrong. Wilbur has a tendency to act as he wishes and not take into account that people might disagree or retaliate. We see it with him saying they could just ignore the Americans (1:51:17) or during the elections when he told Quackity his scheme and got blindsided by Quackity deciding to run against him.

Historically, non-compromising positions worked best when the person who used it made sure rejection would be more costly than acceptance in one way or the other. In essence, narrowing down the options for others even more and leaving them only with acceptance.

Wilbur may have managed to wipe off the table all other options and put pressure on Dream to accept with his use of Assumptive Close, but he didn't do anything to prevent Dream from rejecting. In fact, it seems like Wilbur didn't even consider it as a valid possibility as he outright dismissed it when Dream brought it up as an option.

Dream: “What happens if the rest of the server decides to take over your land?”

Wilbur: “They can’t. It’s literally not how servers- Dream you’re supposed to be smart man, that’s not how servers work. You can’t just take over another person’s server.” (54:33)

But, you may be asking, if it was better for Dream to go to war against L'manburg rather than grant them independence, why did he end up giving into their desire for independence in the war? Wouldn't it have been better if he just saved everyone the trouble and gave it to them when they asked for it the first time? Or maybe Dream’s obsession with Tommy and his discs is just that strong?

We can find the answer to all those questions at Punz’ video where he shows the behind the scenes of the independence war, including some of the planning which went into it from the Dream Team’s side of the war. Specifically, this quote:

Dream: “[The L’manburgians] are never gonna give up. So then in the end the resolution will probably just be, we won but they can think whatever they want, we’re just going to ignore them because they’re essentially like- You want to think you’re independent? You’re not, you’re still part of the SMP, but if you want to think you’re independent, you can.” (9:04)

“They’re never gonna give up.”

Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter, as this is what Dream thinks and so this is what dictates his actions. Perhaps he’s overestimating his opponents here, or maybe he’s talking about how even if L’manburg is defeated this time they would try again for independence in the future. In either case, it’s clear Dream thinks the best case scenario for him - completely preventing people from fighting for L'manburg's independence - is impossible.

So, he tries for the second best case. If he can’t prevent L’manburg, he’s going to allow it but only under Dream’s terms. That’s what his “they can think whatever they want” line is all about. He intends on giving them token independence here, something which would satisfy them but wouldn't pose a real threat. Which is exactly what he ends up offering them during the bow duel.

Dream: “Let me just clarify: if you win, we grant L’Manburg independence.”

Tommy: “Alright.”

Dream: “But we recognize it still as a part of the Dream Team SMP.”

Wilbur: “That’s fine, that’s a fine condition.” (40:54)

The token independence thing didn’t work out so well for him. L'manburg quickly grew to be seen as an entity separate from Greater Dream SMP by everyone, and so Dream was forced to concede and treat it as one as well.

However, despite this part of his plan failing, overall the independence war was a glowing success for Dream.

By giving L'manburg independence after winning the war, Dream sent a very clear message. L'manburg only gets to be independent so long as they stay on Dream's good side. If they don't adhere to the terms Dream sets out for them? He can and will kick their asses, as the war so aptly demonstrated.

This message is received loud and clear. During his entire presidency Wilbur went out of his way to treat Dream with respect and try not to piss him off. Something he clearly demonstrates a number of times, like when he asked if he should call Dream “king Dream” (59:08) or during the railway skirmish (24:16).

In fact, it can be argued that this message lasted all the way up to Tubbo's presidency. Unlike Quackity, who was perfectly fine with starting a fight with Dream, Tubbo knew first hand what a war against Dream looks like. He knew that they could not win a war against him, especially in their weakened state at the time, and that influenced his decision.

As Dream once said: "L'manburg can be independent but it can't be free."

#dsmp analysis #c!dream #c!wilbur #strategist c!dream #dreblr #dsmp #analysis #game theory stuff

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ruby-whistler · 3 years

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Why c!Dream should (and probably will be) redeemed

Hi! I’m bad with intros. You’ve read the title, so, let’s start with the definitions.

In this essay, we are considering the popularized definition of “redemption” instead of the classical one, which is, as per the Oxford Dictionary, “the act of saving or state of being saved from the power of evil; the act of redeeming.” That’s not however the way the word is used in fandom and media.

/dsmp /rp

The definition of redemption I’ll be working with in this essay is not forgiveness by the people who c!Dream has hurt, nor is it removing himself entirely from his past actions, but moreso the decision to change for the better and abandon destructive mindsets for himself and others.

A “redemption” in a narrative sense would be circumstances and a character arc that would allow that kind of healing and betterment.

I’d like to start this off by the fact that being “irredeemable”, in this sense, also doesn’t exist; redemption is a thing of conditions and choice, not of being allowed by someone else. You can’t gatekeep healing from people who seek it, just to be clear, and that even goes for people who have done terrible things.

Since I understand there is a lot of concern for c!Dream’s past actions, here is a post from people who are much more fit than me to speak on the matter, about the way in which they see a possible c!Dream redemption arc.

Another disclaimer, I am not going to be considering c!Dream only from the perspective of c!Tommy in this essay. c!Dream appears in other people’s perspectives and he himself has his own, unseen perspective. As a character, he is an individual person in his own right rather than just the antagonist of c!Tommy’s story, and so I do not have much concern for their narratives intertwining too much should this writing choice occur.

I’d also like to note that redemption is, in this sense, always a positive thing for everyone involved - someone who’s been prone to doing bad things in the past deciding not to do them anymore and try to change, or just simply heal enough to consider it, isn’t going to have a long-term negative effect in any of the characters, but rather the other way around. Healing is an unlimited resource, and the victims do not have to heal first for the person who hurt them to consider being better.

Here’s a well-written thread on Twitter that elaborates a bit to finish off this point, and let’s move on to actually talking about redemption in the context of the Dream SMP, and c!Dream specifically.

Why a c!Dream redemption arc is not only a good writing choice, but in this case the only good writing choice;

c!Dream, as we all know, has been subject to mental and physical abuse to the point of straight up torture by both c!Sam and c!Quackity (to different extents). He has been in indescribable amounts of suffering for the past 74 days at the time this essay will be published. That is six and something times the duration of the entire exile arc in canon.

Whatever the interpretation of his words in prison is, what is undeniable is first of all the fact his mental stability is absolutely crushed at this point, second that no human being could possibly ever deserve to undergo this, and third, his stay in the prison is showing off his humanity and making him out to be sympathetic.

Now, consider this; how would it feel if c!Tommy died at the end of the exile arc? Empty, there would be no catharsis to such an end, especially because of all of the hurt he’d gone through. Objectively, a bad writing choice.

Let’s compare, narratively of course, this situation to the prison arc. Even though I would never say one of them is “better” or “worse” than the other, since both are terrible and undeserved, c!Dream’s current state checks off all of the boxes that would make his death unsatisfying in the storyline; even if people want him gone, there would still be the dissatisfaction at the current build-up and why they even did it in the first place (it really wasn’t necessary to anyone else’s story to make him out as a victim, and yet they did) if they were planning to kill him off anyways. And since the prison arc is naturally meant to induce sympathy, even from an angst perspective it would simply not make sense within the themes and writing of the plot.

So, c!Dream can’t die, and he also can’t stay in the prison forever - the build-up must lead to something, which is logically a breakout. Great… what now?

Well, the Dream SMP prides itself in accurate representation of trauma and mental instability, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream who have pulled it off incredibly during the exile arc.

Now, undoubtedly, after the prison, c!Dream is going to be just terribly traumatized- considering the writers’ past creative decisions, would it make sense for him to play the role of a dangerous, heartless villain in other people’s stories, while completely ignoring the logical fallout of what he’s been through?

In my mind, no. The most possible result is that cc!Dream is going to rightfully portray someone who’s been hurt so much he is broken, scared and tortured into submissions over months of agony and slowly stripping away of his agency, his dignity, his humanity. And that is… not going to be pretty, nor is he going to be in any way the same as before.

After everything, I’d be surprised if he can properly look at shears without shaking. That’s not villain behaviour, that’s the behaviour of someone who needs help.

Which leads me to another point, which is relatability. Believe me or not, there are people out there who heavily relate to c!Dream because they have been through things that allow them to see themselves in the character - abandonment, mental illness, etc. - or who have had destructive mindsets they have struggled to let go of in the past.

To them, as well as to the viewer, redeeming c!Dream could actually be a very good example, showcasing that anyone who has done bad things or has been hurt in the past can learn that it is possible to be better, to move on, to not be stuck in a loop but to actively seek help and then use that support to find the path to healing.

Making c!Dream a better person, who in a way, wins over his past, over his trauma, over the hurt he’s caused, and manages to actually get better… is inspiring, in a sense. It shows that you can abandon unhealthy mindsets, you can find a support group of people who care about you, you can make your life better simply by deciding to be better and then sticking to that, no matter how difficult the process.

This is why I believe that redeeming c!Dream would not be bad writing, but quite the opposite, and that the prison arc is an obvious set-up. Alright, but how does that work with the character? How could someone so widely hated mentally improve in such a seemingly violent and terrible environment? Would it even make sense within the context of c!Dream’s character so far? Well,

Why c!Dream has the capacity for healing and the Dream SMP the ability to provide it;

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that through c!Dream’s entire spiral he wasn’t ever directly given a chance to change. He was regarded as someone to defeat in order to accomplish a happy ending, or as someone who needed to be removed in order to achieve power on the SMP. Ever since the 16th, which is when the corruption of the character is the most obvious, there have been no attempts to reach out or to help him. I do not blame the characters for this - I am simply pointing out that since it has never happened before, we do not know how he would respond, and that, after everything he’s been through, any bit of kindness or compassion towards him will be a new concept he will have to learn to deal with somehow.

This point is especially driven home by the fact that both c!Quackity and c!Sam would often tell him he is a monster who deserves nothing but to suffer, and that what he’s going through is never going to amount to all the hurt he’s caused - basically removing any possibility for ever getting better (because by this logic, he doesn’t deserve support, and he doesn’t deserve to get better) from his line of sight.

He also hasn’t had a support system since shortly after the 16th, when his friends left him over c!George’s dethronement and made no effort to mend their relationship afterwards. c!Dream isn’t used to having allies and people on his side, but to being hated; again, wouldn’t that mean positive reinforcement could very well be all he needs to make the choice?

His bad mindsets - attachments are weakness, ends always justify the means, people will consider you a bad person no matter what you do - have been continuously proven right by his environment, even in prison. Any kind of subversion, plus an explanation as to why they are wrong, could be of great help to c!Dream.

Just another disclaimer; I do not believe c!Dream would change thanks to the treatment in prison, but rather despite it. His mental stability is non-existent at that point, and in order to get better he needs genuine emotional support from the people around him as well as to heal before he can redeem himself.

Alright, but… c!Dream has hurt a lot of people. Who would be fit to help him?

Let’s start off with the worst option and why it’s impossible the writers would even attempt this; c!Tommy.

c!Tommy has no responsibility to help or ever forgive c!Dream - not to say he could. The two, as it is, would drag each other down instead of helping in any capacity, and only make matters worse. The two of them shouldn’t even interact in the best case scenario - the best thing for both of them would be if they got enough healing and support individually that they could live around each other and not get their trauma or toxic habits triggered when interacting for whatever purpose of the plot.

So, if not c!Tommy (and c!Tubbo neither by extension), who could redeem c!Dream?

Well, he can’t do it on his own for sure. Being in nature with animals is nice, but further isolation from other people would merely help with the prison trauma, not with the state of his tendencies when interacting with others. He, once again, needs positive reinforcement from other people for him to heal properly.

There are two main options for this in my mind, and then there’s a few individuals he could also find comfort in, including people from both groups or those unaligned.

1) Kinoko Kingdom

From the people of this new country, c!Dream has never negatively interacted with c!Karl before, he has never hurt c!George and he hasn’t directly harmed c!Sapnap. Although the relationship with his old friend group could be difficult to rekindle, none of them have grudges against him that are too personal, and they have been canonically close friends since the beginning of the SMP, so it would be very much possible to rebuild burnt bridges. They’d be familiar, and with the addition of c!Karl they could be a good source of comfort for c!Dream after he either breaks out or is released from prison - just gotta convince c!Sapnap not to kill him first.

2) The Syndicate

From the Syndicate, c!Dream has never directly interacted with c!Nikki, and from what I know of her character she never seemed to be very affected by his actions - even doing his work for him when he was planning to burn down the L’Mantree. c!Techno is an ally who doesn’t have anything against him, and as for c!Ranboo, here is why I believe c!Dream being in the Syndicate could be positively influential on his character arc as well;

c!Ranboo and c!Philza have had a conversation about change, during which c!Ranboo made it clear he thinks everyone can change except for c!Dream; who, in his mind, is “too deep down the rabbit hole”. c!Philza replied that he thinks anyone can change if given enough time.

… you see what I’m getting at?

c!Dream has been implied to be an ally to c!Ranboo’s enderwalk state (or the state when he has access to his full memory), and hence would most likely not behave negatively towards him at all. While it might make it more difficult for c!Ranboo to deal with his own issues, it might also give him more motivation to get to the bottom of it as well, especially since he now has access to the person who, presumably, started this all. While this is going on, c!Dream would show himself in a much different light than c!Ranboo sees himin, which could lead to confusion, realization of the flaws in his own logic, and hence, positive character development.

Here’s a great post about why c!Techno as a character could be a great asset in c!Dream’s healing process & redemption, and why there is not much need to worry about him not knowing or finding out about c!Dream’s actions.

Of Kinoko Kingdom and the Syndicate, as far as I know, neither c!Tommy nor c!Tubbo have ever been directly involved with these groups, nor are they planning to.

Another important point to make is that, while c!Tommy needs to be kept away from c!Dream in order to heal properly, the same goes for c!Quackity and c!Sam in c!Dream’s case. While c!Quackity has high chances to interact with either Kinoko Kingdom or the Syndicate in the future, there’s an even higher chance, in that situation, that c!Dream would be offered protection, which is also important; there is no healing from trauma without the knowledge of safety, to some degree.

So, this was an essay as to why I think c!Dream’s recovery and redemption (one needs to come before the other, naturally) is not only extremely possible but also could be pulled off well and have a positive impact on both the characters, and the audience.

#dreblr #dream smp #c!dream #c!dream sympathetic #c!quackity neg #c!sam neg #dsmp analysis #tw torture #tw abuse #long post #i really should start writing longer essays #i need more material #anyways #hope y'all liked this #just joining the debate #:]

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dreamteamspace · 3 years

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They really went there huh

/rp (good lord I rly hyperfixated on this essay huh)

torture tw, abuse tw, manipulation tw, gaslighting tw

So the Dream SMP built a character, once maybe morally gray, who slipped straight into villany with little to no desire to change, and willing to cause a LOT of pain to get his way. Despite this, he doesn’t question what he does enough to stop, justifying his actions with a good intent that doesn’t come close to justifying what he’s done.

C!Dream is unremorseful of what he’s done, he’s quite literally manipulated and gaslit (like actually, not in the way everyone keeps throwing the word around) c!Tommy, almost drove him to take his last life- like, jesus christ. That’s not even to mention blowing up L’Manburg three times, encouraging c!Wilbur, wanting the discs JUST to have power over c!Tommy, etc.

SO, he gets thrown in a box for it so he doesn’t hurt anybody anymore, making his own hubris his downfall (narrative consequence my beloved). This leads us to a good finale - the bad guy, the person who’s caused objectively the most pain and destruction, is now unable to do so anymore, taken down by the person whom he tried to weaken. It is also revealed he was planning on blackmailing and threatening pretty much everyone, but now everyone gets their stuff back.

Good, right?

Especially for the finale, yeah! The message of the finale is good, c!Tommy manages to escape his abuser with nothing more but his clothes on his back and fights his way back to c!Tubbo and his home.

He doesn’t let his trauma (which is still very present!) let him become a terrible person (arguably the way that c!Dream DID let his frustrations make him a terrible person, c!Tommy, despite bearing quite a heavy weight, recognizes when he begins to turn that way and actively works against it).

It shows that while alone, c!Tubbo and c!Tommy were outfought by Dream, but because c!Tommy went the length to ask for help (which he didn’t even really seem to be relying on actually showing up), he wins! It truly is a good message.

C!Tommy escapes his abuser and manipulator, refuses and fights his trauma to not become someone he doesn’t want to be, and defeats his abuser by asking for help and receiving it, even more than he thought he’d get. He refuses to play c!Dream’s “game”, refuses till the very last moment to let c!Tubbo die, to surrender and say goodbye to him.

So, great! Good finale! C!Dream The Villain is boxed like a fish in a prison of, quite literally, his own making. It sent a good message to people. C!Tommy wasn’t expected to forgive him and did, in fact, axe him down twice, causing c!Dream to finally fall from his high horse.

Most media would stop at this point, say the villain is now defeated and never show them again, or have them come back another one or two seasons later, escaped and seemingly unharmed and worse than ever.

Alternatively, there’s a throwaway line, (or, in good media, a genuine, reasonable backstory, complete with remorse and bad role models and complicated situations), that allows the villain to be redeemed.

In GOOD redemption arcs (See: Zuko from avatar tbh), the villain was already never quite as heartless, or stressed their good intent, or felt remorse for what they felt they “had to do”. Then, ideally, the villain takes a looooong time adjusting their habits, regretting their actions and changing until they’re considered redeemed.

Not on the Dream SMP, though.

They don’t stop at c!Dream’s defeat.

He doesn’t dissapear off-screen and is never spoken of again. His life continues on, everyone’s does, just like it would in reality. He doesn’t magically want to become a better person, far from it. So no redemption. But he doesn’t dissapear, either.

They go on to, slowly, stress how awful the conditions in Pandora’s Vault are. c!Bad says c!Dream should be imprisoned, but at least at slightly better conditions. We’re in very VERY morally gray territorry here. Nobody says c!Dream is a good person, of course not, but even c!Bad - who knows Dream was planning on keeping c!Skeppy in a cage to control him with - goes, “yeah, he should stay boxed, but does he really need to like... suffer suffer?”

Still, c!Dream seems to be kindof inconsistent in his behavior. Is he faking his pain? Is he not? His actions don’t fully make sense for either take. He acts differently to each person, but at the same time some things he does don’t make sense if he were just fishing for pity.

Then c!Sam admits to trying (and thinking he succeeded) to “break Dream’s will”, to quite literally starving him for weeks.

Okay, so now we’re a step further. C!Dream is now suffering even more, although already boxed and unable to hurt anyone. Pandora’s Vault is one thing, but now c!Sam just seems to be out for revenge and nothing more. Instead of spending his time with c!Tommy, he spends his time pickaxing(?) c!Dream.

C!Sam isn’t an angel, and we should all know that by now. He does what he thinks is right, but he’s deeper than that, all characters on the DSMP are.

He cares deeply for the Badlands, and would always choose them above anybody else. He’s a capitalist. He built the prison because it would benefit the Badlands resource-wise, despite knowing Dream would probably use it on his enemies, and it was no secret that ALL members of L’Manburg, especially c!Tommy, are his enemies. C!Sam, undoubtedly, knew that. He still built it.

Arguably, he didn’t know about c!Dream’s attachment obsession at the time, but the point still stands.

People have already latched onto the untold story happening between c!Dream and c!Sam, and frankly, we barely know enough about it. Does c!Sam torture him regularly? Do they talk? Does c!Dream try to verbally fight back? CAN he fight back? We don’t know! We’ve gotten proof for both, between c!Sam saying that c!Dream is terrifying even in prison and c!Dream going silent to go on strike. We don’t have enough of an idea how bad or how good it truly is.

So the people who prefer to humanize c!Dream and explore morality imagine c!Sam to downright torture him, people that prefer to see c!Dream as nothing but evil due to his actions imagine prison on the DSMP to not be equivalent to real life prison, and thus nowhere near as torturous as people are making it out to be.

Now all that is thrown out the window as c!Quackity quite literally tortures him.

So now the internet is faced with a question that, judging by some of the impulsive reactions *cough cough* celebrating torture *cough*, it didn’t turn out to be ready for.

Tell me.

How far do we go?

C!Dream hurt a LOT of people. He did a lot of things that caused irreparable damage. Now what? Do we torture him forever? Why? Because he deserves it? How do we determine that without comparing one kind of pain to another?

It’s custom and kindof generally respectful not to compare people’s pain too accurately, because different things vary greatly in severity depending on the person that experiences them.

At what point do we say he’s suffered enough without comparing exile to the prison?

And if we DO compare, does that even make the question easier to answer?

And if he’s never suffered enough ever, killing them would be a mercy...

At what point has a person done enough damage that they “deserve” to die? What if someone only did half of the things c!Dream did. But if c!Dream gets infinite punishment, and half of infinity is still infinity, do they ALSO deserve endless suffering?

Do you think every person that did something you can’t emphasize with deserves to suffer for eternity and die?

I’m not saying we SHOULD emphasize with c!Dream. He did things we cannot justify, that NOTHING can justify. He did things that were, by their nature, unjustified.

I’m also not saying anybody should forgive him. I think it’s a GOOD thing that c!Tommy doesn’t want nor is narratively pushed to forgive c!Dream.

But c!Dream doesn’t need c!Tommy’s forgiveness to be... a person.

There’s a saying that I’m sure you know, that goes “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”, because there’s things you wouldn’t want any human being to experience. Not because you like them, not cause you think they’re right, but because they’re human.

And perhaps this is my personal opinion, but I don’t think c!Dream being a bad person justifies dehumanizing him, because then we get into an area where someone needs to meet criteria just to be human.

I met someone once, whom, because of outside circumstances I knew I probably wouldn’t meet again. We’d been getting along just fine for people who just met, and were both getting into an interesting discussion about morality. They kept insisting upon something I kept refuting, so they said they needed to get something off their chest.

They proceeded to tell me that they had, years ago, while a teen, manipulated someone in a relationship, pushed boundaries and tried to convince them to do things they didn’t really want to do to get what they wanted.

They cried, while telling me, too terrified to tell anybody they know, terrified nobody would ever speak to them again, insanely regretful of their actions. They didn’t know whether to go back and apologize or just stay as far away as humanly possible, didn’t know which one the right thing to do is.

It had been years, by then, and I talked them through it. I said that what they did was bad, and there’s no going around that. But I also said what I saw, which is someone who would never do something like that ever again. I saw a human being. Someone who regrets a mistake they did and now, after enough time has passed, would do anything to make it undone.

Someone who is too terrified to be close to anybody in fear that they would do it again. I don’t remember if they already went to therapy or not, but it was definitly on the table, or in the near future.

They asked me how I could possibly even keep talking to them after they told me all that. They implied they felt like some kind of monster despite literally chocking back tears, firmly convinced they don’t deserve to be close to anybody in their life ever again.

I never swerved from the fact that what they did was wrong, and harmful. But I also told them they’re human. The universe isn’t keeping score. They want to be a better person now, and they were never going to learn how if they never let themselves be close to anybody.

I told them to seek therapy, and to slowly, carefully, try. Assured them that the fact that they regret it so strongly will at least help them in not falling back into the same pattern, and if they do, they can learn to recognize that.

They thanked me after the conversation, genuinely, especially for the fact that I didn’t sugarcoat what happened, because I know otherwise it would’ve felt like I was lying, like I was just sparing their feelings. I wasn’t. I was thinking about how to make sure they get to live without hurting anybody.

As per the circumstances, we didn’t speak again after that, which we knew basicly from the very start.

I still think about that conversation a lot.

Do you think they should’ve been locked up for life after it happened, instead?

Do you think this real human being, that I spoke to, that took years to realize their mistake - and never would have realized it if they hadn’t had the time to, if they’d been killed right afterwards - deserves to suffer forever?

Let me tell you something, from someone who’s been in more than one abusive situation: People that hurt you are human.

That doesn’t mean you have to forgive them. That doesn’t mean you have to like them. That doesn’t mean you have to make an effort to understand them. That doesn’t mean you need to go anywhere near them ever again.

You can hate them. You can be angry at them. You can (and should) go as far away from them as possible, and/or defend yourself.

But that doesn’t mean you have to dehumanize them.

You’re allowed to hate and dislike people that are human, because you’re human, especially if they hurt you. That’s how life is.

And to go back to my original point - c!Quackity torturing c!Dream is not something that should be celebrated.

There’s a difference between necessary measures (locking c!Dream up so he doesn’t hurt anyone), and torturing people for fun.

It’s not right. It’s never going to be right, and do not justify literal torture on human beings, and do not make someone lower-than-human to justify torturing them.

Taking revenge on someone for what they did tenfold is romanticized, I know, but I promise you it’s not actually as cool as it sounds.

#dreamwastaken #quackity #awesamdude #dream smp #dream smp analysis #dreamteamspace speaks #negativity #fandom critical #its finished and Im finally free #c!Dream #c!Quackity crit #c!Quackity critial

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lazyliars · 3 years

Text

The Quackity Meta: Justice without the Blindfold

[Anonymous asks: (DSMP) Somebody talk to me about Quackity and Eret’s character. I wanna talk about what Quackity’s views on power are with what he’s planning to do with Sam along with whatever he saw in the egg. I wanna talk about why Eret thinks reviving Wilbur is the best option for the sever to lead and their views on what a leader should be with them being the king of the Dream SMP. I wanna talk about Quackity planning to create a casino for the server to rise to the top. What does it mean to be king?]

[/rp. All mentions of dream smp members should be assumed as referencing the character, not the cc, unless specifically stated otherwise.]

At the heart of every conflict, if you look closely enough, you will find a similarity. Two contrasting ideals will reveal their own likeness, in the stage they play out their war – they both fight for the same result; to be known and followed and asserted, and in this they are the same. There would be no conflict if both sides shared nothing in common.

Lets talk about Quackity.

We'll gloss over a good deal of Quackity's history to get to the meat of this discussion, which involves Technoblade. But there are a a few lesser known facts about Quackity's early days on the server that are relevant to the discussion, like that Quackity joined the server because of Tommy.

Namely, he joined for The Cartel, a short-lived organization comprised of him, Tommy, Tubbo and Jack Manifold, and their aims of obtaining power over the entire server by getting a monopoly on one object, the Phantom Membrane.

(Trivia: This is why Technoblade had to strike a deal with Tommy for the membranes – Phantoms are turned off on the Dream SMP now, so their monopoly actually ended up working. (Un)fortunately, Tommy traded nearly his whole supply for the priceless act of... making Techno scream really loud and talk in a funny voice. Worth it.)

However, Tommy's interest in the Cartel waned almost immediately, to Quackity's frustration. Tommy was constantly busy with his Vice Presidential duties in L'manberg. Quackity wasn't entirely left out, and he helped Tommy on multiple occaisions, but this was back in Wilbur's L'manberg, where non-europeans were strictly banned.

Quackity would slowly come to resent Tommy for this over time. He joined the server to be with him, took his side in nearly every conflict, including the ones that were L'manberg-oriented, and yet he wasn't allowed to be a citizen of his friend's own nation.

The resentment would reach a boiling point when Quackity discovered Wilbur's bid to consolidate power by running a sham election – with a one party system. Quackity challenged him, formed Swag 2020, and the rest is history...

The takeaway here is that from the start, Quackity has been shunted aside by people in power – Tommy, Wilbur, and then later, Schlatt. This wouldn't prevent him from executing his own immoral power grabs, but that trait – the distaste for people with power holding it over him, is one that would stick around, and become even more prominent later... Quackity has more reason than most to hate tyranny.

But “Tyranny” Is a word thrown around on the SMP often enough, that it's probably up there with “betrayal” and “pop-off” in total wordcount. But few use it more commonly, or more persuasively, than Quackity and Technoblade.

This begs the question: what is Tyranny in a M/inec/raft role play, and why do Quackity and Technoblade both detest it so much while still hating each other?

Well, after a moderate amount of research, I have discovered the following:

Tyranny is complicated.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

...No, but really. Tyranny is very old concept. The words originates in, you guessed it, Ancient Greece, but conceptually, the idea goes waaaay back.

Now, that last thing I wanna do is give anyone a history lesson. I'd suck at it and I haven't done that much research. But the takeaway here is that “Tyranny” has come to be defined in fairly vague terms. We'll look at a few different ones in reference to the SMP.

Oxford dictionary defines a Tyrant as: A cruel and oppressive ruler. / a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way. / (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

Lets look at the first and last definitions: A cruel and oppressive ruler; (especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

By these definitions, one could call Quackity tyrannical during his term as Tubbo's VP. He exercises the power granted to him as a government official to spearhead an operation to execute a man without trial. He violently invades the home of a citizen and then puts said man on house arrest, and to subdue the target of this operation he threatens a pet (-a vague but ostensibly severe criminal act in the terms of m/inec/raft specifically-) and then reveals to Techno that the reason he's doing this actually has nothing to do with the crime Techno was accused of, and it is instead a ploy to consolidate power.

Quackity is leveraging his position in the government to amass power, and using that power to harm individuals (Philza and Techno,) in process. As an added bonus, his position in that government came from usurping Schlatt, a legitimately elected official. Thus, Quackity is a Tyrant.

But there, in Schlatt's government is where things get complicated.

Quackity had some power in Schlatt's government. Not the same kind as he did in New L'manberg, but arguably a more unrestrained form – Quackity could basically do whatever he wanted, as long as it pleased Schlatt. In New L'manberg, Quackity needed to convince not only Tubbo, but the rest of the cabinet whenever he wanted to initiate a new project. New L'manberg, while still maintaining a ruling class, had a far more equal distribution of power than Manberg did. It was still democratic.

And while we're on the topic of Quackity as Schlatt's VP, Quackity had almost instant regret the day of the election. He was undermining Schlatt from the start, questioning him, trying to stop Tubbo from breaking the signs that read “if you break this sign, you hate your viewers” and freeing Niki when Schlatt trapped her in Jack Manifold's house and then whispering at her to run.

Quackity only fell into step with Schlatt in the aftermath of Election day, when he saw a major desire fulfilled; the tearing down of L'manberg's walls. These walls were a symbol of L'manberg's isolationist roots that prevented Quackity from joining in the first place. It was one of his biggest promises whilst campaigning.

From this point on, up until the festival, Quackity would be in support of Schlatt. The things he did try to push back on would be downplayed and ignored, if not scorned. This period of time is difficult to pick apart where Quackity's personal morals and ideals begin, and Schlatt's influence ends. The steadily worsening abusive dynamic between them doesn't help this vagueness, either.

I point this out because I've seen people conflate Quackity's abuse at the hands of Schlatt, and his willingness to participate in Schlatt's rule as being of the same root; implying that Quackity only followed Schlatt because he was in an abusive relationship with him, when the reality is far more complicated. Yes, their relationship was a major factor in Quackity's actions, but downplaying his ambition and willingness to accept Schlatt's Tyranny when it helped him realize his own goals does a disservice to the nuance of Manberg-era Quackity.

What all of this points to is an individual who has a strong, some might say defining sense of Justice, yet also a susceptibility to Temptation. Quackity’s experiences with disenfranchisement by Wilbur and Tommy, coupled with his Dark horse victory in the election paints him in a sympathetic, even heroic light. But the way he slowly relinquished more and more power to Schlatt, and ended up indulging in the fruits of tyrannical gains when they proved they could get him what he wanted.

...

So, back to the question... Is Quackity a tyrant?

The answer to that question is a solid “mmmmaaaybe??”

It comes back to what you consider Tyranny. Quackity has never held complete power – he has always, always been scrapping and struggling and fighting to get a foothold in the machinations of the truly powerful, like Dream and Wilbur. He's very much an underdog story.

On the other hand, the times that Quackity has held positions of power, he's done some questionable shit. People like to forget that, while he was deeply disturbed by it, he wasn't exactly against Tubbo's execution at the festival. Putting Phil on house arrest and executing Techno without trial also count against him.

Like most things on the SMP, it's just complicated. Quackity's motivations run deep and aren't always obvious. He doesn't seem to want to hurt people just for the sake of hurting them, or use his power in arbitrary ways, but when he can personally justify it, the sacrifice of his moral integrity gets severe sometimes.

What it looks like is that more than anything else, Quackity wants control, and to never, ever lose his own autonomy. That is also why he despises Technoblade.

...And here we are at the Technoblade part of this meta, AKA the MASSIVE BULK OF THIS ANALYSIS. Which you can read HERE, because it’s too long to fit in just this one post.

#Dream SMP #Quackity #Tommyinnit #Wilbur Soot #Jschlatt #Technoblade #Dream smp analysis #lazytext #long post

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stellocchia · 3 years

Text

Today I’m departing from my normal analysis content to bring you all an Overly Long Analysis of Foolish’s lore!

Why? Because I love him dearly and that was literally the best thing that came out of the Red Banquet...

Am I late to this? Yes, but, you know... better late then never, am I right?

As always from here on out I will be talking about the character in the rp unless stated otherwise

Sadly, Foolish does not have a vod channel, so the only link I can provide here is the twitch link: Death? - Dream SMP (LORE)

The stream starts with Foolish’s death scene at the Red Banquet. To be more exact, during Puffy’s and Ant’s discussion.

Now, it’s important to give a bit of context to all of this:

The Red Banquet was a trap organized by the Eggpire to kill anyone who ever opposed it (and Hbomb... which is fair). After a bunch of uno reverse scenes it looks like the Eggpire is winning and, at first, they call up Eret to be executed. Foolish opposes this by trying to summon lightning once again to destory the Egg, but this fails and Foolish is put on the chopping block instead. Puffy loudly opposes this as Foolish is her son (aopted or just son-figure? I’m not sure) and her and Ant get into a discussion about this where Ant blames her for everything that happened because she left the Eggpire, while she debates that, no, their actions are their own responsability and she was trying to do her best all the while Foolish tries to reassure Puffy that, indeed, it isn’t her fault. The debate then gets cut short by Ant executing Foolish.

Screen cuts to black and we hear the distorted voice of the Egg before Foolish comes back inside the green light of his beacon in his pyramid.

Now, I think that one of the most interesting things about this stream was the great weight given to the death, despite it being Foolish’s first one, but also the idea of Foolish, who is a God of life, formerly God of death, coming to the realization that even he is not immune to death and coming to the slow realization that he is now scared. In fact, he is terrified of dying, but that’s not all. He is also scared of the Egg and scared of going back to what he once was. Of course I’ll be talking more in depth about it, but this are the general themes of the stream: coming to terms with mortality, coming to terms with fears and confronting his past.

His first reactions to being back are confusion and then denial:

“Wha...? No... was that...? Is- did I...? Did I d...?” and right after “No. No no no no no. I’m immortal. No no no no no"

Also, cool description of death: “It felt different, it was- I- I felt something, I was- I was somewhere, but it was- it was nowhere it was... it was dark but it wasn’t just nothing”

After his moment of disorientation is over Foolish remembers about the Baqnuet and immediately starts wondering what happened there and wether the other partecipants were still alive. His musings though get interrupted by the Egg who starts talking once again to him, this time though the Egg’s voice is not distorted, which could indicate the link between them getting stronger after part of Foolish’s life force went to feed the Egg.

“Where are you? I know that voice!” “I am in your mind” “No. No no no...” “I am in your soul” “No! no no no no. This is- this is just tricks, games. This is... something new” “It is not a dream” “Is this- is this the Egg?”

So, at first Foolish is still in denial, he recognizes the voice as he’s spoken with the Egg in the past, but he doesn’t admit that that’s who he is talking with until the Egg points out that everything that Foolish is experiencing is real. Which is interesting because, up until that moment, he was also fully in denial about his death and only start questioning that afterwards.

“Call me what you want, I have many names as you know but you’ve forgotten” “What do you mean? What do you mean? No no no no, I never heard of you before, wasn’t that long ago that I first met you. You’re something new, something that I’ve never met before”

Now, before jumping the gun and saying that Foolish is yet another member of the amnesiac gang, we have to remember that Foolish has: 1) lived a really long life and probably seen lots of things, forgetting something is normal and 2) Foolish seems to do an active effort to repress anything having to do with his past as a Totem of Death. The second one is what I want to focus on because the Egg seems to have known Foolish back when he was still covering that role, as it’ll be mentioned later. It is also possible that when Foolish and the Egg first met the Egg wasn’t in this form (after all we know that it does have another form) and Foolish simply fails to realize that the 2 are the same thing.

“I’m an ancient one, even more ancient then you”

We did have some idea of this with both “The Masquerade” and “The Village That Went Mad” from tftsmp alluding to it (the second one mostly through Ponk’s lore), but now we’ve had the confirmation that the Egg is indeed something that has existed for a long time (how powerful that makes it is debatable considering how the story has framed it thus far).

“I’m not afraid of you! Even after all that I’m still... not afraid”

Denial seems to be Foolish’s first response to anything new he experiences. I’m sure someone smarter then me could draw some interesting parallels to Tubbo here, but that’s not me!

“Afraid... you are truly Foolish if you thought you were stronger then me... you should be afraid” “Maybe... maybe I had it wrong. Maybe I thought I was stronger... but I’m still here!”

The confident facade is starting to crumble, although he has yet to accept the fact that he has in fact died or that he may be truly afraid, some doubts are starting to creep in.

“Foolish, when we met you said you feared nothing, but now I can sense your fear Foolish” “No no” “You fear death itself” “No!” “Don’t you~?”

The taunting continues and more of the facade keeps crumbling. It seems for once that the Egg is in fact capable of manipulation (which I started to doubt as it failed to corrupt most people it came in contact with). The Egg seems to know what are Foolish’s weak points at the very least.

“I know who you are, even though you have forgotten something of what you are”

After this premise Foolish challenges the Egg to tell him something only he would know. So first of all the Egg brings up Foolish’s secret room and ‘what he keeps in there’ and, at first, Foolish’s ponts out that the Egg could be lying, but then realizes that it is, in fact, in his head and starts to find a way to get rid of it. Later the Egg picks this up again revealing that it knows about the deal with Ranboo to try and stop Foolish from getting rid of it.

“You still think like you’re gonna get me to join your side? It’s not gonna happen!”

And here we get Foolish’s refusal and the actual motive for why the Egg is even talking to him in the first place. The Egg tries to convince him to join it by harping on that Foolish how he is now is “weak” and tries to convince him to go back to how he was before, when he was a Totem of Death. But, as I said, Foolish actively despises his past and he doesn’t bend to the promises of power because, as a matter of fact, he tried that already and it didn’t work for him. Foolish has no interest in power (he still desperately searches for control though) which is actually quite unique for a Dsmp character...

“I’ve tried ‘power’ in the past and it doesn’t work! It doesn’t work! You can’t just use overwhelming force, it works for... short-term at best” (...) “I can’t control the actions of the world through overwhelming power, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t”

(Wish the dumbasses from Doomsday would learn this...)

Either way Foolish explains that strenght, power and violence didn’t work for him in the past because they simply can’t work. Not long term at least. All the while building provides him with a sense of control over his own creations satisfying both his desire for control and his desire to create.

“Deep down you miss the power you once held. Go back to being a Totem of Death and together we can rule and create peace. Peace is what you want, right Foolish?” “Yes but it doesn’t work that way! It doesn’t work that way! It’ll never work that way...”

After a few moments of hesitation their conversation draws to a close with Foolish bathing himself in the water from Church Prime, with a honestly iconinc line: “You know, and I mean this in the most polite way possible, go to Hell”. This is also when the facade he’s had to somewhat keep up until now completely crumbles. Suddenly he realizes that he is too late to help anyone and doesn’t even know if anyone is still alive at all. He also starts confronting the fact that he died and the implication of this being that he is mortal. He also confronts the fact that he is scared.

“Did I really die?” “Why am I afraid of it?” “How can I live such a long life and be afraid of it to end?” “I don’t see beauty in mortality” “I can’t die, can I?” “Even if I could die, why am I so afraid?” “The answers... I just want answers!”

He doesn’t find answers to his panic induced questions but, then again, he is not supposed to. Death doesn’t have a meaning, it’s just a function of life, nothing lasts forever. The same goes with fear. Even if in this case it is far from

inexplicable for him to be afraid of the Egg or of dying (as one was the direct cause of the other in his case), fear is still an emotion. Emotions aren’t rational by definition. Basically what I’m saying is that there aren’t always answers to be had. Sometimes questions are meant to remain as such and that’s what makes them meaningful.

“Every time I thought I knew the Egg, every time I though I understood, I never had it right? Was I arrogant about it the whole time?”

He also seems to have developed a level of paranoia about the Egg, wondering how much it knew, how many people knew about his stuff, if he is safe anywhere or if the Egg was right about him and what he wanted. He also starts questioning his own perception of reality and wondering if the Banquet itself was just an illusion created by the Egg.

It’s also interesting that Foolish remains of the opinion that no-one in the Eggpire is at fault. No matter what happens to him he still sees the Egg as a sort of infection and all those under it’s control as victims just as much as anyone else the Egg harms.

(Also the sun is used once more as a simbol of hope, though Foolish describes it as “cruel” because it disappears)

The stream ends with Foolish promising to himself that he’ll figure things out. Though, as I said before, sometimes the point of a question is to not have an answer.

#foolish__gamers #the egg #the crimson #dream smp #red banquet #character analysis #long post #my post #foolish my beloved <3 #this stream was amazing!#and I'll be honest I have not seen enough people talking about it...#like even if the red banquet was a bit underwhelming this one was top tier!#I highly suggest watching it for anyone who hasn't yet #it's like 30 minutes anyway

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bitchesgate3 · 3 years

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Boss, I’m STRUGGLING!!! I’m currently in the middle of trying to romance our Great and Beloved Lae’zel™ for the first time, but I feel like I’m missing a ton of cutscenes and dialogue 🥺😭 Do you happen to have/know of any guides on how to get All The Content for her? I know I have to be mean, but I feel like I’m missing/skipping things on accident!

I got you – don’t you worry. I’ll make you one right now with alllllll the fine details.

In BG3, there’s approval and there’s content. Picking and choosing from my Lae’zel approval guide will certainly lead you to her romance scene, and it might be more straight forward for your first run. But you’ll have a richer experience if you focus on content. For general advice for getting companion content, see my other guide here, although it is slightly out of date for patch 5. Like that guide, I will avoid spoilers as much as possible below.

For Lae’zel specifically, the simplest answer on how to get her content is to prioritize her. And it’s as meta as it sounds. 😏 I will also say that the following advice is slightly tailored to offer scenes in a way that make her the most sociable and give off vibes she is warming up to you. If you prefer to rp a bit more love/hate, then you may be able to follow the general guide linked above alone. The following advice is a bit min-maxy, but if you want to get everything, here’s how to do it:

1) Camp Twice before reaching the Grove. You can only get these two camp scenes before reaching the Grove. I usually camp after recruiting Lae’zel and then camp before or after taking out the chapel looters.

2) Talk to her first in camp scenes. The order you talk to your companions decides how much or how little they say to you in some scenes, so you might as well be consistent. You can test this out on Camp Night 1 in particular. This also means that even if another companion has an (!) exclamation mark over their head, you pass them over. It is fun to headcanon why she’s calmer if you talk to her first and extremely agitated if you talk to her after others on that camp night.

3) Recruit Gale After Camp Night 2. Gale’s Mirror Image scene plays on Camp Night 2 if you have him recruited. If you do not have him, instead you will get an “Inspection” scene from Lae’zel discussing symptoms and the tadpole voice. There’s no approval in this scene, but as a Lae’zel fan you will probably prefer it to Gale’s.

4) Recruit Astarion After Camp Night 3. After dealing with Zorru, Astarion will have a camp night scene where he is staring at the stars. If you try to talk to Lae’zel first, she will have nothing to say (which may be a bug). But if you talk to her after Astarion, she will have her own star gazing scene where she gets caught up longing for home. It’s a scene you don’t want to miss. However, if you do not have Astarion recruited, you will be able to immediately talk to Lae’zel, and there is a change in how the scene begins and ends that emphasizes her homesickness. This would be another instance where talking to her first offers a bit more.

5) Follow her Lead. Step back to offer support. Let her take charge. Whatever you want to call it, if you are interested in getting her romance scene, you are gonna want to make sure that some things play out the way she wants them to. That means you’re going to want to do her questline: pursue Zorru, pursue the creche, and encounter the Gith Patrol. If you usurp control from her in the Gith Patrol scene, she will consider it betrayal and not offer you an intimate invitation later. I assume this goes the same for the Zorru scene. I also assume that if you do not pursue her questline at all, she will deny you as well. Give her control and ride the waves.

6) Get the Raphael Scene Early. If you do not do the Nettie, Priestess Gut, or Hag before the Gith Patrol, Lae’zel’s camp scene after will be overridden by the Raphael scene. You do not want to miss Lae'zel's camp scene after the patrol, as it is as far as we get in her plotline in EA. So do one of the 3 scenes above to ensure it doesn’t conflict.

7) Use the Tadpole to get the Two Dreams. Yes she is adamant about not using the tadpole, but I believe the Lae’zel scenes from them are CRUCIAL to getting deeper insight into her character. You get to see just how much she clings to protocol, how much she is devoted to her queen, as well as what Tav’s role might be in getting her to think outside the box.

8) Lae’zel also has a Reaction. My last advice to utterly maximize Lae’zel content is to realize that any time a companions has an (!) exclamation mark above their head after an event, there is also a reaction scene for Lae’zel as well. To ensure that you see her reaction scenes, you simply have to dismiss your other party members before triggering the scene. One of my favorite reactions is the one after speaking to Sazza.

And that’s it! Hope this helps you better please the Queen. 😉

#i guess i just love min maxing tbh #yes this is how i play every patch lol #response #long post #text #Lae'zel #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 game info #ask

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