Im Thinking About How C!phil, Techno, And Dream Did Something Even Worse On Doomsday Than Just Destroying

i’m thinking about how c!phil, techno, and dream did something even worse on doomsday than just destroying a country and killing a person.

they destroyed their history. phil very well knew there was a library. hell, it was targeted. 

every book. the declaration of independence. diaries. reports on l’manburg’s growth. everything written about the hardship they suffered, about it’s beginnings, about who and what and why things happened. gone. 

eret has a museum but he doesn’t have written records. 

they destroyed the history that could prevent things from happening again. they destroyed the accounts of how l’manburg started small, doing no real harm. they destroyed it, now everything about that place spreads from word of mouth, but only the loudest of voices are listened to. 

and the loudest voices call it an evil country which fed into corruption. they call it a corrupt no good place, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

and the people who know the truth, are so beaten down and tired to say otherwise. 

the future will not know what truly happened to l’manburg, what it stood for, who was involved since the beginning, what really happened. 

and we know this, we see the history books in the future within the glass walls of mizu. there’s almost nothing left, just twisted tales from spoken word.

au where dazai is still in the pm but somehow has met the entire ada and somehow charmed them (look the agency has strange standards) so they're all actively trying to get him to change sides

featuring fukuzawa lowkey bragging about being a better father figure i mean boss than mori

ranpo inviting him for chess matches so dazai knows he'll have an intellect buddy at the ada

them putting up his picture on their employee wall portrait thingie (lucy poe and karl are also there)

junichiro trying to bribe him with video games awkwardly

naomi trying to blackmail him (you know she would)

yosano inviting him for trash talking sessions and girl nights (they talk shit about mori mostly)

kenji gifting him fruits veggies and the occasional cow to show goodwill

kunikida regularly checking in on him and mailing him pros of joining the ada and employee benefits

atsushi at some point just taking his hand and bringing him to work

also atsushi just telling dazai to come hang out a little earlier than they can actually meet so he's forced to be at the office

yosano trying to convince kunikida to "seduce" him; ranpo flat out telling dazai why he'd prefer it here

them bribing him with food

fukuzawa openly being kind and welcoming to him; kyouka considering kidnapping him when she herself leaves

kyouka sending him regular notes about how much happier she is to convince him

haruno offering to let him pet mii-chan; kenji reassuring him they want to be his friend; junichiro offering murder; atsushi offering to feed him (he already lowkey does)

anyway

dazai thinks they're just messing with him at first - then he thinks they want his ability which fair - now he's just confused

IM LYSANDER BUT WE GENDERBENT IT THAT IM A GIRL SO IM LYSANDRA

I GOT MY CAST LIST FOR MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

where can I find the clip???

cheering at the death of discduo btw

was anyone going to tell me that niki's birthday party, c!quackity officially betraying c!schlatt, c!quackity asking c!techno on a date and c!karlnapity getting together all happened in the same week because what the FUCK happened to c!quackity's love life that week

c!techno and his role in the story of the dsmp

**disclaimer: this is the longest analysis i've ever written and i'm so sorry

in the animation 'Ozymandias', sad-ist gives c!techno the role of the traveler from the poem, the one who saw the fall of ozymandias and is thus recounting it. and this is something that has stuck with me for awhile because of how fitting it is for his character.

part one: c!techno is a clear outsider to the dsmp

there's other characters, of course, that aren't 'from' the dream smp in their canon. i'd say a good amount of them fall into that category but with c!techno, there was a clear call to action for him that led him to the dream smp. he came for a reason, for a purpose. techno comes with outside experiences that obviously influence the way he approaches events and people.

'don't you see what's happening here, don't you see history repeating itself?' techno asks on nov. 16th and that's interesting to me because his experience with dream smp history, at that point, is very limited.

the obvious explanation is that he's referring to what he was told about the elections and what came before but from a character standpoint it's very easy to read it as something he's seen before. before he joined pogtopia, before the dream smp.

what's interesting about this is how well it fits with cc!techno's roleplay style and his character's story, giving him this role of the traveler, as someone who watches the downfall of an empire.

but is that the only role c!techno fills in the unconventional story of the dream smp? let's talk about that!

part two: c!techno as the albatross & the butcher army as the ancient mariner(s)

so let me take a sidebar to move away from shelley's 'ozymandias' and talk about coleridge's 'rime of the ancient mariner'.

there's plenty of more in-depth analysis of this poem but i want to focus on the idea of the albatross as a helpful guide until it was shot down by the sailor who thought it was the cause of their troubles only to learn that its death was the harbinger of even greater destruction.

c!techno came to the dream smp as someone who intended to help. his goal was to help his allies overthrow a corrupt government and techno put a lot into doing so; farming potatoes for hours, aiding c!tommy in a smaller skirmish, grinding for gear for his allies. through miscommunication and a level of deception by c!wilbur (who lied not just to techno but tommy, tubbo, and niki), techno thought they were on the same page. he believed when c!wilbur said that he was on board with 'this anarchy thing' that they had the same goals so he led them to a victory that they wouldn't have achieved if he wasn't there.

so after the failure of the nov. 16th wither destruction that came on the heels of c!wilbur's tnt explosions, c!techno travels away from l'manberg and enters a self-imposed exile and retirement from violence. he wanted a 'safe haven' and had decided that being alone was the only way to achieve that.

but the butcher army hunts him down and executes him, kidnapping his horse, and hurting his best friend in the process.

c!techno says, "those that have treated me with kindness, i will repay that kindness tenfold- and those, that treat me with injustice! that used me. that hunt me down. that hurt my FRIENDS... i shall repay that injustice a thousand times over."

and he fulfills that. his execution at the hands of the butcher army is what heralds the destruction of new l'manberg.

so we have an outside force that was called in to aide and after a betrayal became the harbinger of destruction.

does this section have anything to do with the rest of this essay? i don't know! but i feel it's important to note.

part three: the traveler from an antique land

during 'the visitor' stream, c!techno tells c!quackity that he's traveled all over the rest of the world and knows things that could threaten quackity's 'empire'.

there's two things to take away from this.

one, that c!techno does fall into the role of the traveler and going back to the opening of this post and the first point, placing him as the traveler from 'ozymandias' makes a lot of sense. he's seen this sort of thing before, seen things that could cause whatever empire quackity has to fall.

and two, techno is familiar with the sort of person who carves power and control. he knows the drive of someone who could become ozymandias-like, thinking power and an empire is a legacy that will last when techno has seen that in the end, it'll be broken and covered in dust.

considering that it's been implied that they hypixel skyblock revolution against dante is canon to the dream smp, i think that's a pretty fair assumption. c!techno has been there. he has done this before.

part four: cc!techno & meta commentary

so we can see that c!techno fits into a few roles within the story of the dream smp. that of the traveler and outside point of view and that of some sort of albatross.

what i like about this is the idea that cc!techno's style of role-play with his fourth wall breaking and meta commentary meshes almost perfectly with these roles for his character.

he knows things, he's seen things, he can comment on and predict things because of all this information. that fourth wall breaking is as if the character is imparting information from other worlds that he's traveled and other things he's experienced.

techno can act as this almost outside source or narrator-like presence to both us as the audience and other characters. he gives us information that we wouldn't normally have from the canon text by virtue of his insights that come from his travels and he acts as a sort of guide or warning to other characters through his experience and beliefs or ideals.

the theseus speech is an example of this. much like the traveler in 'ozymandias', c!techno is telling us a story of what can and will happen to those that sacrifice themselves for a country that can't love them and will turn its back on them when it becomes convenient. he's acting as a traveler imparting wisdom through a story and as a warning of things to come, cc!techno playing on that bit of fourth wall breaking to bring in greek mythology and predict the exile arc.

it's not out of character or something that doesn't fit into the story or the style of the story but a role that has a clear purpose that both the character of techno and cc!techno fills wonderfully.