Baby Steps

Ooooo okay overall thoughts on what Tommy did on stream today? As someone who’s been around for a while I’d love to hear your thoughts :)

Anon, you have sparked a ramble because I love talking about meta shit like this. Be warned and also thank you >:)

So...

Remember this?

And this?

And this?

One thing that makes Dream SMP alive is the constant change. Nothing is permanent, nothing is sacred. As much as it hurt, the New L'manburg Festival's impact came from seeing the Community House, which everyone thought for so long surely couldn't be destroyed, in ruins.

Even before then! It was strange to see the old Community House everyone loved go when Dream, Sapnap and George remodeled it after the Reddit post.

But, you know Quackity's second Las Nevadas stream? Do you remember what made that flashback scene so, so impactful when you first saw it?

The fact that, before anything else gave away that it was a flashback, before you saw the black walls of L'manburg cluing you in, you saw this:

Nothing in those pictures looks like it does today. The instant you see that, you know it’s the past. And when you finally saw the walls, it was all the more impactful from that build-up.

Where Purpled's Walmart once stood, Puffy's Targay stood next. Jack Manifold's Tesco in the sky above it was destroyed a long time ago. And now there's room for something else.

Where Fundy's Socializing Club once stood, Ponk's essential oils shop stood. And now there's room for something else.

The Community House has been blown up multiple times. Even Dream's bedroom underneath it was taken out in the explosion from Fundy's prank.

Where Skeppy's house once stood, Bad and Skeppy's mansion now stands.

Tommy's house has changed faces so many times, it hasn't been the original since July of last year.

You can't just carbon date the SMP by which version of Tommy's house you see, or what the I <3 ANDREA sign reads -- you can do that for the whole thing.

Ponk's casino was built on land that used to be taken up by Sam's little castle from when he rejoined the server after his hiatus.

Eret's museum had room made for it by taking down an old frame of a build that was never finished.

The original Camarvan, as iconic as it was, was taken down only a few days after the L'manburg War!

Eret's entire tower -- yes, this tower

was completely destroyed, top to bottom. Entirely demolished. (Thanks, Fundy)

There are a few cases where it definitely hurts. Alyssa's house is the last remnant of the lake area from the early days, one of the very few builds from that time still standing. Wilbur's ball house is the one remaining marker we have of his time on the server from before L'manburg. Those, I think, I would be genuinely sad to see go. The ones where they’re the only remnant of that time, y’know?

But the gingerbread house? That's only been here since December, man, and it takes up so much room. Targay's only been there since November and it had already replaced another build before it. This is a lot more room to build, some much-needed change on the Prime Path tbh.

I was sad to see the CRY sign go a while back purely because it made angsty lore 10x funnier with it in the background, but it's gone now and that's that.

Besides, we'll always have builds somewhere on the server that remain from the old times. Whether it's the escape tunnel to Pogtopia that managed to survive Doomsday, or Techno's old base, or Dream's grave marker for his parrot who died on his journey home with Spirit that still stands, somewhere out there in the ice spikes, waiting for someone to come across it someday.

I mean, this isn't even to mention the sentimental items. 

Spirit's leather is fake. The original was destroyed. For all we know, Tommy's discs are just two of the many decoys that circulated around throughout the saga with no way to tell the real ones apart. Hell, Tommy got attached to the fucking decoy discs back in the day and Tubbo scolded him for that lmao. They got rid of those eventually though. 

This probably all plays a big part in why attachment and legacy are such big themes of DSMP's story. People get attached to things, people get nostalgic, people care about things, but everything in the story has to be let go of at one point or another. It's a balance.

So, time for some summer cleaning!

*tips hat* m’laria

Lumity

Sketchy thingies

so that episode huh!

listen people are starting to realize tumblr isn’t dead we all need to be as cringe as possible for the next few months, it’s vital to our survival

Holy Trinity

hey guys! let’s talk about something called narrative distance. 

you’ve probably heard of it before! narrative distance is the degree of separation between the reader and the narrator or character in the story. first person vs. third person is a good way to show narrative distance: consider how “I stomped inside, the pavement burning the soles of my feet, my wet hair sticking to the back of my sweaty neck, so hot my skin felt like it was melting” feels compared to the more impersonal “Jack stormed in, his face flushed with heat”. 

now let’s be incredibly pretentious and translate narrative distance to minecraft roleplay. in this sense, a regular ranboo semi-lore stream where we watch c!ranboo spill all his deepest fears while recounting his thought process would be the equivalent of first person. there is very little distance between c!ranboo and the viewer. we get to see and hear and know everything c!ranboo sees and hears and knows, and if he doesn’t know something, we don’t know it either. 

a tftsmp stream would be the equivalent of third person: we see c!karl in brief segments where he doesn’t reveal any inner thoughts or conflict, and the more edited and produced format means we’re separated from the character himself and the normally first-person minecraft experience. we aren’t seeing the world through his eyes, we’re watching his life from a bird’s eye view. 

narrative distance can affect how we view characters and how sympathetic we are towards them. for example, during the exile arc, the viewers are firmly in c!tommy’s shoes, seeing everything that happens to him, hearing all his thoughts, living his life in the first person perspective nonstop for two weeks. we’re so incredibly close to c!tommy that c!dream’s arrival feels like a jumpscare. for contrast, when c!quackity’s torture of c!dream is mentioned or shown, it’s sanitized by production value, editing, montages, discretion cuts, and music overlaid on top. when the viewers get to see the characters interacting, they cut in after the gruesome bits are over, and it’s at most a ten minute snippet that’s not from the perspective of the victim. 

although c!dream is the victim in this situation, it’s harder to see him as such and feel sympathetic, because it’s so very impersonal. the torture is more a word-of-god concept than an actual scene, because we never see it. we get very little idea of its effects, and on top of that, c!dream doesn’t even have a perspective to watch. compare to c!tommy, whose abuse was laid out in gritty detail, and whose cc has painstakingly acted out the lingering trauma in every stream since– which happen to be mainly in an unedited slice-of-life style. and we can connect that to the difficulty in viewing c!dream sympathetically as well: we as viewers were very close to a storyline where c!dream was a villain, and very separate from the storyline where he’s a victim. which impression of the character do you think would be stronger?

narrative distance contributes to how we view villains. c!schlatt is gleefully hated, a static but well-rounded character that we don’t feel any sympathy for. the viewers are distanced from him because he doesn’t have a perspective and only shows up for plot-related events on others’ streams or for comedy bits. nobody tries to look into his motivations and nobody’s sad when he dies. we’re not close to him, we don’t understand him, and we don’t need to.  

then there’s c!quackity, who we watch go from a regular funnyman to an idealistic politician to a ruthless but caring advisor to a manipulative asshole focused on power. we walk in his shoes for every step of the way, we see his motivations and fears and inner thoughts, and we feel sympathy. and then he starts to distance himself, starts to edit and produce his streams and only show certain scenes without any emotional vulnerability, and starts acting as a villain. it’s kind of genius because he’s adding narrative distance while his character becomes harder to sympathize for. but we can still understand the character and feel pity for him, because we as viewers have lived his life and we know who he is and what he ultimately wants and needs. 

narrative distance. it’s pretty cool. 

Hopefully I don’t have to do it again..

And I know it’s not everyone but we should still address this/nm

I found out how to color manga pages