Hey, apologies if this is rude or invasive, but i've noticed that a lot of the creators on the dsmp seem to have a lot of confusion about the lore of the server. And the go to in that case often seems to be to... ask fans?? That just seems like such a bad practice. As a fan myself involved in discourse, fans are bound to be very biased and prone to misinformation, especially on twitter, so that seems like it could muddle things more, potentially. Don't you guys have like.... a discussion/question channel in your discord? Any character bios to look to? Can't everyone just ask their fellow members for clarification on that stuff, surely getting it from the source is more reliable?
Of course, I don't have any inside knowledge, so this may be stepping over the line, maybe everyone's just too busy to be reached all the time or something, but this is just something that has confused me for a long time.
(Not aiming this at you, btw, i respect you so much as a creator, you're just the only one i could think of as available to ask this :') also, as a side note, imo it would be very cool if characters got involved with your character more if they're curious of all that's happened, since you're literally the historian of the server, lol, but that's just me being wishful. Sorry if this was too long, thank you for your time and all you do, have a good day ^^)
[Long post ahead! Sorry! tl;dr at bottom] The issue with creating lore on the Dream SMP is that everyone has to be a main and interesting character. Unlike regular media where you can have background characters who get little screen time and that's absolutely fine. Since the DSMP is so exclusive, everyone who is part of it wants to have a character with an interesting and engaging backstory and character points. As a result, stories aren't so much "planned" they are more of a negotiation so that everyone involved can have their moment which makes planning VERY challenging.
It is also unfortunately generally a process that is heavily managed by those with the largest audiences. If content is planned with all the people guaranteed to get at least 100,000 viewers on Twitch, everyone involved is going to benefit more. So it makes sense from a logistical side, it also helps create more of a sense of having "main characters" which helps with ease of story writing, but that does leave people with lower average viewers more on the sidelines of the lore and unable to develop their characters unless they start trying to do stuff outside of the "main lore".
We do have a #script-plans channel in the discord, but that is talked in only about once per month nowadays. Outside of that, most lore is planned in DMs and group chats and as a result, a lot of people are left out. For example, before the whole Pogtopia war, I really wanted my character to have some sort of redemption arc for my betrayal in the style of Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. However, since I was never involved in the preparation and planning of this event, this never ended up happening, so it kind of had to be rushed before the war which I felt was unsatisfying. There was also a time where someone else referenced my character in some of their lore without talking to me about it first and I only found out about it because I saw "Eret" trending on Twitter.
There are so many lore ideas that I've had that I thought could be really interesting, for example, I thought that it could be interesting to suggest that when I tried to revive Wilbur back in January 2021, it caused some sort of rift in the spirit realm that caused The Egg's Bloodvines to start spreading like wild fire. This whole connection could have then been explored more in future lore and really would have brought The Egg plot closer to the "main story" imo. Like imagine trying to reverse engineer the bloodvines to understand the spirit world and reverse death that way or something! But no one but Puffy seemed remotely interested, so nothing happened with that. I'm not the only one who's had ideas like this just get no attention unfortunately.
I do miss the early days of the DSMP lore where the majority of it was improv. For example, the entire L'manberg side was unaware of my betrayal before I actually betrayed them. All their reactions were genuine surprise and betrayal! After that, plans became a lot more pre-written and people started being unable to get involved for fear of messing up the pre-written script. The whole Saving Michael situation from a few days ago was the first instance of actual improv driving the story of the SMP that I've seen and been a part of in a VERY long time! It was fun, though stressful, it reminded me of the early SMP again where if someone had the drive, they could get involved and make their character engaging without worrying about stepping on other people's toes with pre-written lore and plans. I hope I can turn this into a more interesting story piece, but no one has contacted me about Michael so far.
There is also lore that happens on the server that a lot of us just aren't aware of for the reasons mentioned above, but there are also about 40 of us in the server, so we can't keep track of everyone. This is why we ask our viewers as the "hive mind" of chat can generally tell us the correct answer even if there are a few people with wrong info.
In general, interesting lore is very challenging to do on the SMP, especially if you want to get any where near the "main lore" that most people are actually interested in. I hope to think that a lot of this isn't just exclusion, but it definitely feels like that at times and I know it has alienated a lot of creators from participating in or wanting to participate in lore at all which is incredibly unfortunate as a lot of these characters have SO MUCH potential!
Overall, I do wish creating lore on the SMP was more open and democratic, unfortunately, it's just a massive challenge as soon as you want to start actually planning it. This is unlike any other form of media, the characters are actual people and you can watch the story from all of their perspectives. All of these people and characters have to interact and drive the story in ways that don't clash and are interesting and then be able to walk away from the action and continue their own individual story and motives. Imagine a TV show where EVERY character has their own spin of series, everyone from the main "hero" character to the janitor, it's so hard to manage. This causes things to move SO SLOWLY as it's impossible to keep track of all this information at such a scale.
Anyway, that's my piece. I'm sure other creators have their own takes on this situation, but this has been my experience. Hope this helps people understand why lore can be slow to produce but also why some characters don't get the screentime you hope they'd get. I love the SMP and everyone on it, it's done so much for me, but eventually you get to a point of wondering whether working on lore is even worth spending the time on if you're not sure if people will actually want to work with your ideas. I definitely want to do more lore and lore streams, but developing stories that are interesting and actually work towards some sort of goal rather than just people existing and doing things is a big challenge. Sorry for such a long post! Thanks for the question and I hope this gives some understanding of the inner workings of the server. I hope no one finds this upsetting either, sometimes things just work out like this. Please don't attack anyone over this either!
tl;dr Lore is hard to plan because everyone wants to be an interesting character and the majority of planning doesn't happen in the server so most people don't know what future plans are. That's my perspective at least.
pixelskylines
origamiaround
