God I Wish - Tumblr Posts
Does your fitted sheet always come untucked in the morning? Have you tried sleeping in the fins of a giant flounder instead?
girls flirt by explaining tolkienverse lore in its entirety to you
if this gets 100,000 notes then i, the worlds greatest space agency will personally shoot donald trump into the sun
Thinking about the intimacy of wearing another boys boxers as a pj set
coloured sketch sequence comm for anonymous(e)!
The woman who rides the train is the woman who gets her pussy eaten by another woman in the rain
Sometimes I like to imagine my favorite streamers playing ULTRAKILL. Especially RT Games
i feel like we’re in a coke bottle that an 8-year-old’s just shaken violently for their science project and the mentos are about to be dropped in
imagine if you loved yourself in the same way you loved another person; not caring about the flaws in the body or inside the mind, seeing the virtues even bigger, supporting, taking care. that would be a new level of self-esteem and another way to be indestructible
Advocating for palm kissing to be recognised as the highest form of physical intimacy
Matera, Italy is famous for the Sassi, small homes built into the rock that supports the city. The residents shared the space with their farm animals. They were lived in until the 1950s.
March 3, 2024
international cut your hair like your icon day how screwed are you
if you got to make one major alteration to the dsmp story, what would it be?
it's simple right
the major themes tying exile, the butcher army, bedrock bros, the green festival, doomsday, and the disc war finale can be split into two ideas:
1: the nature of revenge, and more broadly if lashing out at people is the right thing to do even when it's justified (or feels justified).
2: the choice between people and ideals.
technoblade lashed out at pogtopia during the 16th, effectively cutting ties with every relationship he'd made since he joined the server. he tried to threaten them into following his ideals, promised to come back and destroy them if crossed his beliefs again, and then he left.
and then he went into retirement. and then he opened up to philza about the voices, and how they encourage his violence but that he’s Trying to become a better person now. [Link] and the implication this was trying to set is clear isn’t it? he had time to sit on what happened, and he chose to try to live a different way.
and then there’s the butcher army. to be frank, they were a bunch of scared teenagers and young adults faced with a Real Direct Threat in the form of dream. a serial killer, mass murderer, and abuser who was already dead set on destroying and controlling them but was having fun drawing it out for a Game. they weren’t wrong to be scared, they weren’t wrong to be paranoid, because the monster that they were afraid of was real. they did, however, Make A Mistake.
the narrative framing for the butcher army is not a favorable one, despite the fact that we can understand Why they were afraid of technoblade. they knew how powerful he was, they knew he was angry with them, and the last thing he’d done was threaten them. (and that’s not even to mention the red festival, the pit, things that they would’ve taken personally). but they were still choosing Murder in a bid for power.
power isn’t inherently moral or immoral. to make positive change you need power, to protect yourself you need power, to undo a corrupt system or power structure you need power. but having a Nobel Reason doesn’t inherently mean that the Ends justify the Means. and that’s what we’re supposed to take away from the butcher army. they were justified to take action but the action they took was the wrong one and they were going to pay the price for it.
this theme of revenge, of the ends justifying the means, is brought in to the narrative Directly from techno:
"The only thing that works in this world is that you treat others as they treat you. Those that have treated me with kindness, I will repay that kindness tenfold. And those that treat me with injustice! That use me, that hunt me down, and hurt my friends! I shall repay that injustice a thousand times over." [End quote]
in response to the butcher army techno chooses violence, chooses Revenge, again. which is a regression from where he was before. which makes sense, that change was tenuous and new. he was still obviously paranoid just like the butcher army was (with his stockpile of weapons, potions, gapples, and withers. prepared for the end of the world in his supposed life of peace). and in this decision we come to tommy.
tommy has, of course, been victimized by dream at this point. he's been abused and isolated and broken down. dream hasn't just been trying to hurt him, he's been trying to grind down his Fundamental Beliefs. through it all tommy's still been trying to hold on to the idea that things can be Fixed. that if he can get back his discs (the things that dream himself claimed gave him control over him and his friends [Link]) that he could have leverage over dream and Save everyone. Save himself. go back home to his friends.
but he's also fallen into a pattern of lashing out and snapping, pushing people away because he's afraid that they'll hurt him if he doesn't hurt them first. it's understandable considering the extreme abuse and stress he's under, and yet it's the seeds for something truly ugly to sprout.
when techno asks him to help him destroy l'manberg tommy says no. he says no because that's his Home, because he doesn't want to hurt tubbo, because his goal is to Get Back What He Had Before. which he certainly can't do if it's all burned to the ground.
but technoblade knows that tommy's been hurt, he doesn't know the details but he's aware that he was pushed out of his country by the very people that hurt techno (people that tommy thought he could trust) and in that he feels that tommy can understand betrayal the way that he does. he thinks he can make tommy understand Anger and Revenge the way that he does.
and so he lies. he tells tommy that he'll help him reach his goal (which to technoblade is only the discs, but to tommy is His Friends) and in return they'll just cause a little trouble together. but in the back end techno wants to nurture that element of violence that he knows is there in tommy (knows from the other side of the pit). he wants to acclimate tommy to the idea that revenge will make him happy, that revenge will fix everything.
throughout the bedrock bros arc there's this sense of growing tragedy. because there's this sense that these are people who could be exactly what the other needs, and yet there's this collision course for a fundamental difference between them. tommy brings techno out of his own head, he breathes Life into techno's little cottage and makes it feel lived in and cozy. tommy loves his friends Earnestly and Fiercely in a way that someone like techno (someone whose so sensitive to betrayal) would be grounded by and take comfort in.
likewise, techno is the stability that tommy desperately needed after exile, after he was taken apart by dream's abuse and before he was ready to even Understand what it was that'd happened to him. he was allowed to be Himself for the first time in a long time, he was allowed to feel Safe, he was allowed to Break Down with a gentle hand and gentle words to guide him.
and yet techno was lying to him, and yet techno was encouraging him to lash out, and yet techno was trying to convince him (although unknowingly) that dream had been right. that everyone tommy had thought had been his friends had hurt him and were bad people. but while dream had framed it as if tommy was the problem, as if nobody wanted him because there was something Wrong with him (sapping away his spirit), techno had tried to convince him that he should be Angry. that hurting them More than they'd hurt him would fix it.
This nearly comes to a head the day before the green festival, when techno finally feels as if he's in the position to come clean about all of it [Link]. and you can See that line of tension pulling tommy. tommy who kept himself alive with the hope that he could go home, tommy whose found himself again and felt Safe again with techno, tommy whose been walking that line between self hatred and self righteous anger since exile, tommy who at the core of it all just wants to be happy.
techno doesn't present l'manberg's destruction as a choice, it's going to happen whether tommy is there or not. but if tommy comes with him, if tommy Chooses Revenge, Chooses Violence, then he can have techno's friendship. then he can have his happiness.
tommy says yes. he says yes not because he really believes in it (he tries to make techno understand that l'manberg is Home just after saying it), but because he wants so desperately to believe that somebody cares about him. this is chekov's gun cocked.
and then we have the green festival. we have dream framing tommy to get his hands on the disc in tubbo's enderchest (to get his hands on tommy's freedom, on his friends, on his chance at normalcy) and tommy can't stand not to step in. techno follows him, techno stands up for him, because he has Faith in tommy.
tubbo doesn't understand. tubbo doesn't understand the value that dream put on the discs, he doesn't understand what happened in exile, he doesn't understand what's at stake. tommy tries to make him understand, he tries to tell him that they can still fix what's broken between them, and tubbo says that it's too late.
and tommy snaps.
this is when the green festival turns into a fight, this is when tommy chooses Anger over Hurt exactly like techno taught him to. and he's losing through most of it, but that doesn't matter because every ounce of frustration he's felt at being left behind comes pouring out of his mouth, and what lands is Ugly.
he knows the exact moment that he takes it too far. an entire crowd of people has stopped.
he's at a threshold. if he stands his ground, if he takes that step forward, he's going to cut off a relationship he's probably not getting back. he's going to hurt someone important to him irreparably.
and he can't do it. he doesn't Want to do it. because at the heart of everything he just wants to be happy with his friends again. he wants to go home. People are his home.
and this is what's often missed: this is the moment techno was presented with the Same choice.
do you choose revenge, do you choose anger, do you choose the satisfaction at lashing out over hurt, do you choose Ideology. or do you choose people, or do you choose relationships, or do you keep that bridge connected.
in canon techno chose the former, and this causes problems.
see, the narrative wants us to know that tommy made the Right choice. choosing revenge would've only made him unhappier, would've only made him worse, and he knew it.
across the board, the narrative of dream smp as a whole wants us to Know that revenge isn't the answer. that Violence isn't the answer. tommy choosing people saved him in the disc war finale, it's continued to save him from dream in the future. it's the precedent that was set with the butcher army, a lesson that quackity would fully learn with las nevadas.
Slime: "Is it worth it? I've been watching for a long time, one person lashes out and the other does, until they're both gone. From what I've seen, it feels like people don't stop taking that revenge. Is it ever worth it?"
Quackity: "No. No it's not." [End quote]
we Know that from a narrative standpoint tommy made the right choice, and yet what comes after doesn't support that.
techno chose revenge over connections, over people, and he won. he lost those connections and that choice was easy for him, he never Mourned them. he immediately replaced that void in his life with someone else, he'd successfully crushed everyone else to the point that he wouldn't be approached again until nearly a year later, and even then that person would fail and ultimately have to accept that trying to get that revenge against him wasn't worth it.
revenge, anger, violence. it all worked out for him, he got exactly what he wanted and the consequences of it didn't touch him. and that leaves something Strange in the atmosphere doesn't it?
because tommy still loves him. he wanted technoblade to choose him, and he still cares about him knowing that he didn't. because tommy never Stopped loving fiercely and completely. tommy never Stopped being loyal. and yet he was crushed. and yet doomsday was what it was.
in the aftermath of the green festival, in the lead in to doomsday, And in the aftermath of doomsday tommy understands that techno was hurt, Felt for the fact that techno was hurt, and yet couldn't understand what techno was doing to him. couldn't understand why someone who was supposed to care about him would do this. and the narrative doesn't know either.
their relationship has been in this murky area of never being able to move forward, and yet feeling like it's supposed to. because there's this elephant in the room beyond the threshold where their relationship lies.
and it's strange now, with him and tommy existing so Near to each other, as if there was supposed to be a reconciliation by this point that just never happened. this Gap.
my change?
techno chooses tommy.
he doesn't stop being angry, he doesn't Choose l'manberg. but that relationship he built with tommy, that Trust and Loyalty, he realizes that he wants that more than he wants revenge.
dream wages doomsday alone. it doesn't save l'manberg, it doesn't give them back what they've lost, but something is Different. when phil offers ranboo a home it's Different.
tommy visits techno before the disc war finale, and techno lets him in willingly. they don't really talk, not like they need to yet, but techno knows that wherever tommy's going now is going to be dangerous.
and dream, who chose Anger, who chose Blood, who chose Violence and Control and Ideology above Attachment, above People. he stands alone as people pour in to save two scared children. as Technoblade stands behind the relationship he chose.
That's the difference that unifies the themes the story is trying to tell us. That's the difference that gives tommy and techno's relationship somewhere to go, that gives Techno an in to build More relationships naturally, a place for him to Be a home for other people.
I can't tell you how long I have desperately wanted this, and seeing the way that characters have just kind of, Forgotten that their relationships with techno don't exist anymore so they can hang out with him in canon has just. made me understand this gutting of techno's character connections even less.