The world is ending, and Etho has someone he needs to save.
7466 words // minor violence/horror elements and canon last life deaths :) // ao3
a gift for the beloved prince @ranboocore for a server gift exchange given as targeted last life propaganda <3
—
Something is wrong. Etho’s head snaps around, holding his shield out towards the blazes as he looks behind him. There’s a tugging sensation in his gut, and something is terribly, horribly wrong. He freezes, holding his breath and tuning out the sounds of fire around him as he listens for any disturbance.
it’s waking up and realizing he’s not next to you but thinking that maybe he’s on a trip? he’s usually on a trip anyways, so it’s normal. and it’s not the empty bed, it’s the realizing the trip is never going to end.
it’s the standing up and seeing his slippers across the room. he always ran cold, you always ran warm. you want to feel if the slippers are as cold as he was, but it feels like sacrilege to touch anything that was his.
it’s opening the wardrobe and seeing a cloak left behind. he didn’t want to leave. he didn’t plan on leaving.
it’s walking into a silent, silent hallway and wondering if it will ever see life again.
it’s the passing glance at a room full of toys that he never saw his son in. and now he never will.
it’s thinking just a bit to hard about that cloak again while you’re eating breakfast. he didn’t want to leave.
it’s pretending that this is just an exceedingly long trip. maybe he’ll be back soon, you’d always thought. maybe this time he’ll stay a little longer, you’d always hoped.
it’s going about your day like everything’s normal, and then your ring hits against a part of the wall you were trying to build and it’s so so far from normal that you want to scream. but you don’t, because you’re visiting tommy and tommy is already dealing with so much. you want to know what, but you don’t think you could handle asking so instead you listen, blank eyes boring into a wall behind his head as you try to stop your ears from ringing with the sound of metal against obsidian and the ghost of a whispered voice.
it’s going home as the sun sets and making stir fry out of habit, looking at the amount you made too late and realizing you made too much. you feel a stinging pain with every word you write in the footnotes of a scribbled recipe, reminding yourself to cut the amount of each ingredient in half.
it’s the understanding that there’s no more of things once taken for granted. tomorrow is saturday, and he was always home by saturday because on saturday you had rice pudding together. and now you can’t stand the scent of it because it’s too much and you think you want to throw up thinking about the taste. it feels stupid.
it’s those “no mores” that haunt you. the scarf he’d been working on will always be three eighths of the way done, and the stitches in it will never get any cleaner. he’d been improving with each little centimeter, and now his progress will remain stagnant forever. no more knitting. no more days where you’d clip your nails together, and you think you might let them grown long until they break. the sound of cutting might just shatter your soul.
it’s the fact that you haven’t shed a single tear. not one. not until the door opens and you almost say his name and not until— oh. yes. not until you remember that he’s not the one at the door and he’s not going to run to you and lift you up and spin you around. not today, and not ever again. someone says hello and you barely hear it because you’re on the ground and you didn’t know your chest could hurt this bad without being physically stabbed through the heart with a burning sword or shot to death with fireworks.
it’s the fact that someone runs to you, face full of concern and you can’t hear them because your ears ring with his voice instead and you can’t see them because your eyes have gone blurry and you think it looks like his face but it’s not, oh it’s not it’s not it’s not. why did you have to lose him? why do you always lose? wouldn’t it have been better if you had been sacrificed three hundred and twelve (no. now it’s three hundred and thirteen) days ago? maybe then this wouldn’t have been drawn out for so long and losing now wouldn’t hurt quite so much. there would have been less to miss then.
it’s in the thought that maybe ranboo had the right idea in dying.
and it’s in the desire to join him.
but more than that, it’s getting up, wiping away tears and brushing off help.
it’s the need to move on while being forever haunted by those little, little things. the hoping and the slippers and the cloak and the silence and images of empty rooms and the echos of rings against half-built walls and imagined voices. the stir fry recipes and the rice pudding, the scarves and nail clipping.
the little things pin you in place with little needles, and you can’t move. you’re forever trapped by the memories of moments too small and a grief to big.
really, there’s not as much of a contradiction between “there’s not a day that i don’t think about dream and wish he could be out here” and promising to kill him if he ever escapes as there might first seem to be. it’s the difference between fantasy and reality and how at the end of it all, sapnap will choose reality. and his reality lies in his morals: if someone tried to kill another server member in cold blood, if they’re dangerous to anyone on the server, then they need to be locked up. at the server must be protected at all costs, and that’s not going to change for anyone. not even, as it turns out, dream.
in his fantasies though, he gets everything he wants. dream isn’t a dangerous villain he’s sworn to protect the server against, and all his friends are reunited. dream still cares about him as much as he does in return, and life is good.
but. he doesn’t operate on these fantasies, so he’ll kill dream if he ever escapes despite them.
this says a lot about c!sapnap. despite being an incredibly loyal character, his morals are more important to him than that loyalty. that’s what makes him so selfless: his morals are focused outward, and he’ll sacrifice even his closest friendships to maintain them. he values protection of the majority over anything else and will do anything to maintain it.
additionally, it says a lot about the other characters too, specifically c!george. this is not to say he doesn’t have morals, but they’re far, far less important to him than getting what he wants is. george is loyal to dream, and that loyalty drives a desire to save him, no matter how dangerous he supposedly is to the rest of the server. george, unlike sapnap, is selfish. they may love dream the exact same amount, but they have vastly different values. that’s why one of them wants desperately to free him and the other promised to kill him if that ever happened.
i did a uquiz by you and in the open question box of the last question, and all i did was ramble about birds and i was kinda sad at the idea that you might not see it so i want to send it here too, so, I really like birds, so I'm gonna talk about birds. Some birds have this thing called a preservation instinct were they hide all signs of sickness or an injury until they literally collapse. falcons have rather weak talons compared to other raptors, so they cant pick up things when they dive, 1/2
thank u so much for this holy shit i’m overjoyed by your bird facts tHANK U SM
Summary: It’s been five years, and Tubbo is still mourning his lost country. (a clingy duo fic)
Warnings: there’s a short argument, allusions to death and character death, grief (though it’s not horribly heavy, this is still a fic about grief and loss)
Word Count: 1710
AO3
There was a small hole in the glass floor that lay over a crater. The hole was small and jagged and hidden under an overhang of rock, but it was there and Tubbo had found it pretty easily when he’d walked over the crater the first year. He wasn’t one to miss little things like that.
i love the dsmp meta scene here on tumblr, i really do, but sometimes i wish some essays weren’t so… polarizing towards some fans? like, it’s not that there’s extreme wars or anything, but a lot of essays would start with “i can’t believe ___ fans believe” or “i don’t get why ___ fans believe” and it sucks. like, i know it’s probably not targeting me, but it sucks that we started putting boxes as to what kind of fans can believe what, and it creates such a polarizing aura. as if one type of fan can’t relate to or get along with another type of fan. and then it creates such a gap between one type of fans with another when, most of the time, there’s always a compromise we can make.
i get that we can be mad when a type of fan misunderstands or criticizes our favorite characters, but it doesn’t mean that the entire community that is a fan of a certain character is like that. the cycle of accusations and passive aggressiveness only perpetuates more of that same polarization until it feels like you have to fit in only one type of box. either you’re a dream fan, or a tommy or wilbur fan. either you’re a fundy fan, or a wilbur fan. either you’re a techno fan or a tommy fan. either you’re pro l’manberg completely, or against it entirely.
and, i dunno, i don’t want to say that i’m against biases- i just wanna say that you can have biases without hurting anyone else. rebuttals are fine as well! open discussion is fine! but when we get to a point where we negatively vague about a type of fan? or when we use passive aggressiveness to get our point across? it sucks. it really sucks to read, and it sucks to read more when i know people do mean well and have good points to make in their posts. i just wished that the essays feel more like actual objective essays, essays that feel inviting and intriguing and captivating, rather than it feel like you’re reading someone trying to reprimand another person
(i’m free to clarify anything i might’ve worded incorrectly if u send an ask! but yeah, not immensely mad, but it’s just a pattern i’ve noticed a lot lately)
Summary: It’s been five years, and Tubbo is still mourning his lost country. (a clingy duo fic)
Warnings: there’s a short argument, allusions to death and character death, grief (though it’s not horribly heavy, this is still a fic about grief and loss)
Word Count: 1710
AO3
There was a small hole in the glass floor that lay over a crater. The hole was small and jagged and hidden under an overhang of rock, but it was there and Tubbo had found it pretty easily when he’d walked over the crater the first year. He wasn’t one to miss little things like that.
Summary: It’s been five years, and Tubbo is still mourning his lost country. (a clingy duo fic)
Warnings: there’s a short argument, allusions to death and character death, grief (though it’s not horribly heavy, this is still a fic about grief and loss)
Word Count: 1710
AO3
There was a small hole in the glass floor that lay over a crater. The hole was small and jagged and hidden under an overhang of rock, but it was there and Tubbo had found it pretty easily when he’d walked over the crater the first year. He wasn’t one to miss little things like that.
He’d wondered as he’d approached if he’d be able to slip past the sharpened edges of the glass without cutting himself, but he needn’t have worried. After the first three years, he’d mostly stopped growing and had remained almost as small as he’d been during— during it. He slipped past the glass and into the crater easily.
Sliding down the cliff face with an arm raised and a careful hand dragging over the rocks as he passed, he landed safely on the same ledge he’d landed on for the past five years. He followed the trail of footprints that had remained branded in the dust and ash down a few more meters of rock to get closer to the bottom of the crater. Once his feet hit bedrock, he spotted the boulder he’d sat on every year prior and settled himself on top of it.
Tubbo looked up, up, up at the sky and saw it still covered in traces of night. He took a deep breath of the trapped air and waited for the sun to rise.
Briefly, Tubbo was distracted by the sound of someone walking over the glass, but after reminding himself of the overhang of rock above him, he assured himself that no one would be able to see him all the way down here unless they already knew where he’d be. Reassured by that, his gaze returned to the crater, prepared to wait at least an hour for the winter sunlight to reach him down there.
He’d been considering the red vines that still crawled all along the bedrock floor when he heard noise above him again. Frowning, Tubbo stood up from his boulder and stepped out from beneath the overhang of rock. He scanned the glass above him, looking for any sign that someone he knew was out and about at this hour. He nearly called out a curious ‘hello?’ out of habit before he remembered that he didn’t really want to talk to anyone this morning and stayed silent, watching warily for movement instead.
Not a moment later, Tubbo heard a quiet yelp and watched as a few pebbles tumbled down the cliff and landed at his feet. Unable to stop himself this time, he called out, “You alright?”
This caused another, louder yelp followed by another, larger waterfall of rocks to cascade down the cliff. There was a moment of silence as the person above him presumably caught their breath. Tubbo watched as a hand forming a thumbs-up gesture stuck out over the ledge. “Yep,” came a weak voice in reply after the moment had passed.
Tubbo frowned, recognition ringing immediately through his mind. “Tommy?”
A head replaced the hand. “Tubbo?”
“I didn’t know you knew about this way to get into the crater.”
“I didn’t! I just found it today.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
There’s another pause as Tommy and Tubbo just stare at each other before Tommy speaks again. “How’d you get down?”
“I slid.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, I did! I did! All the way ‘til the ledge, at least, then I followed the path I made earlier. There are footprints.”
Tommy shook his head and pulled back from the ledge. A second later, Tubbo watched as a figure fell towards him, a bucket of water gripped in his hands. There was a splash, and Tommy was standing next to him, unharmed but for the fact that his shoes and the hems of his pants were soaked through. “My way’s better,” he claimed before Tubbo could even properly say hello.
“Sure.”
“The path though—you’ve been here before?”
“Every year.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Tubbo shrugged, walking back over to his boulder, landing hard against it. “Didn’t want to.”
“I was there too, you know. I miss it as well. I mean, that’s why I’m here now, innit?”
“It’s not the same,” Tubbo said quietly, staring down at his folded hands.
“Well, no, it is.”
Tubbo looked up sharply, his eyes full of something cold and hard. “It’s fucking not! It wasn’t your country that got blown up, was it?”
Tommy recoiled. “I mean, guess not, but—”
“Then it’s not the same.”
Tommy went quiet for a moment before responding. “It wasn’t your fault though. It was mine.”
Tubbo just laughed. “No it wasn’t.”
“Without me though, Techno never would have—”
“Trust me,” Tubbo cut him off with a scoff, “they’d have razed this place to the ground even if you’d done everything right.”
“But—”
“It was never about you, Tommy. It was the fact that we were a government, and under my leadership, we were still seen as oppressors.”
They both let the silence hang heavy in the air.
“You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, really, but Tubbo nodded anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know. It’s alright. I’m… more pissy today anyway. Another reason I prefer to just be alone these mornings.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
Tommy sat down on the ground next to Tubbo’s boulder. “D’you… want to talk about it or something?”
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
They both went quiet again, but Tubbo could see from the look on Tommy’s face that he wanted to keep talking. Sighing, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Can I?”
Tubbo shrugged. “I offered, didn’t I?”
“Right. Yeah. You did.”
“Right.”
“Okay it’s just that— I don’t know. I just miss it. A lot. I miss the feeling we had, being a part of something, and I miss when it was easier to just… be.”
“I don’t think you really miss L’manburg then. Or, well, New L’manburg. I think you just miss when you didn’t think you had to save the world.”
“Do you not miss it?”
“Well, no, I didn’t say that, but it was— it was more than what you said. It was protection and safety, and at least for my New L’manburg, I wanted it to be somewhere where we didn’t have to worry about dying all the time. I miss that feeling. And losing that feels like— it almost feels like losing a parent or something, I don’t know. The type of grief is similar at least, I think. I’ve never lost a parent though, so like… yeah, I’ve got no clue.”
“No, yeah. I’ve never lost a parent either, not really, but… like. I know what you mean. Wilbur… he was similar to that, at least. And losing him November 16th was like that for me. Losing L’manburg, though, that was like losing a home, losing a place I could call my own. I wasn’t— I didn’t have anywhere like that after—” he gestured to the destruction in front of them— “after this.”
“I guess this place was just different for us, then.”
“Yeah.”
Tubbo had to take a long breath before he was confident his voice would be steady again. “And like— today is bad, and that day was worse than I could genuinely ever say, but… I get it, I guess. I know why they’d want to destroy it. But it still— like, it still, uh—”
“Hurts?”
“Mhm. For both of us. All of us, probably.”
They lapsed into silence, looking up at the sky again, and Tubbo slid off from his boulder, sitting beside Tommy and pressing their shoulders together. “It’s been five years now,” he said softly, “and I’m still not over it. Still makes my chest ache a little bit every year.”
“I don’t think this is ever gonna be something that you’re gonna just. Get over.”
“Yeah, I know. I still— I still try.”
“If it helps, I can tell you do a lot to keep it alive still. It’s nice. Makes me miss it less, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You were the one who made New L’manburg all the good things it was, so even though it’s gone, it’s still… you. You know?”
“Not really.”
“Well, it’s the truth. I wish I could be that for you.”
“I don’t think anyone could be what New L’manburg was to me. It’s not the sort of thing that could be replicated, even if we tried again.”
Tommy sighed. “I know. I still want to help you miss it less.”
Tubbo went quiet, but what he wanted to say was that mourning alone had hurt so fucking much and that Tommy just being here had helped more than anything else ever had. He didn’t say that, but he asked, “Would you come down here with me next year too?”
“For year six?”
Tubbo nodded.
“Of course, Tubbs.”
“Thanks. The sunrise is boring without anyone to see it with.”
They were both fully aware that’s not why Tubbo wanted to bring Tommy along, but that went without saying. So they didn’t say it, and the truth lay between them, forever unsaid.
“Winter sunrises are my least favorite,” Tubbo commented, forcing the air around them to feel light again.
“Yeah, they’re real ugly, aren’t they?”
“The light’s so watery. Kinda sucks that they didn’t destroy the country a few months later, you know? It would’ve been nicer to watch the sunrise then.”
“We’ll have to mention that to Techno next time he’s dead set on destroying a country, yeah?”
“Oh, for sure.”
“This sunrise doesn’t even have the decency to be that much later in the day. It’s still so early for such a boring experience.”
“Yeah,” Tubbo laughed, glancing over at Tommy with a smile. “Yeah.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they watched in silence as the sun rose over the edge of the crater, marking an official five years since one of the worst days of their lives. Quietly, Tommy pulled a bottle of champagne from beneath his jacket. He popped the cork and raised it in Tubbo’s direction. “Here’s to one more year.” He took a sip and held it out in offering.
Tubbo took the bottle into his hand and took a sip of his own. “To one more year,” he repeated.
a lot of people seem to have the attitude "he should've just let them had what they wanted!" when it comes to technoblade and dream both going against l'manberg, and absolutely no offense, but that seems... so awfully naive to me?
[ /dsmp /rp | the other reason why l'manberg deserved to fall ]
it looks like people automatically assume "what they wanted" was good, and that everything would've been fine if it wasn't for techno and dream being in the way. so let's look at what the leaders they fought against actually wanted, shall we?
let's start at the beginning, then.
wilbur (all names in this essay refer to the characters) made l'manberg after he failed to take control of the economy by making a capitalist empire based on lies, rumors and theft.
we're starting off strong, i see.
he referred to tommy as someone to mould or build upon multiple times, saying he is naive and calling it a good thing, even mentioning people like tubbo or fundy as the "a lot of tommyinnits" he could use take advantage of for his plans. these were people who were the most useful in terms of being hardworking and passionate, and arguably the most easily manipulated.
...cool. this still doesn't tell us what he wanted to do with l'manberg, but it gives us a sense of this guy's moral compass and honesty.
wilbur, to his soldiers at least, says that he made l'manberg for freedom and protection. ...freedom to steal from people? protection from... everyone except the guy who wants to exploit them?
yeah no, i'm not trusting anything he says.
let's turn to what wilbur said out of character about the motives with which wilbur the character created l'manberg.
"you could create something that you believe is worth having power over, and because you want to have power over it, everyone else will believe it's important, even though it's not." [ link ]
...alright, well that sorts out that question i suppose.
wilbur after his revival says that l'manberg was a "useful tool" that did what it was supposed to do; it divided. since naturally i'm not going to take his words at face value if it would kill me, let's turn back to what wilbur was actually saying and doing back when he made l'manberg, because maybe his memory has just faded, right?
*rewatching the vod* is he. is he quoting tr*mp's speech about building a wall and "making the mexicans pay for it" while being openly xenophobic towards the people who originally lived in the lands and building a giant wall?
ooo boy. cc!wilbur knew what he was doing, wasn't he?
see, if you rewatch the vods and look at them as satire on american propaganda (including the hamilton references) everything starts to fall into place.
but hey, l'manberg changed, right? it grew into something more than that initial quest for glory... right? i mean, the l'manberg government wasn't even corrupt up until schlatt's reign, right?
*laughs* no.
let's fast-forward.
l'manberg... hadn't done much after the revolution. it was just a safe space, but not really. people are living just as they did before, and neither wilbur nor l'manberg really changed much.
wilbur doesn't like that, and that is clear from what happens next.
Wilbur: “Tommy, we need power.”
Tommy: “Yeah?”
Wilbur: “I’ve tried – I spoke to Fundy and Tubbo yesterday, I told them how I didn’t like the civil war they were having, you know the fights that were going on.”
Tommy: “Yeah, that huge war in our name, yeah.”
Wilbur: “I told them I wasn’t happy with it, I told them to stop. Do you remember when you started getting angry at Dream, and I tried to control you, and you ignored me? …Yeah. See, this is the thing. Tommy, I…I led the revolution, right, but the issue is, is that I sort of became the de facto President, but no one listens to me. No one cares about mine – or your – power. No one cares! To us, we may be in anarchy, you know?”
alright, so a) wilbur dislikes anarchy, that's a good thing to remember for later, b) he's pissed off that people aren't listening to him (and tommy, but he definitely just added that on to make him care about the subject) and he can't "control" them c) he sees more power as a solution. well... maybe he just doesn't want people to fight, right? he's talking about a civil war he couldn't stop, after all.
Wilbur: “We can either, Tommy, right – we can either become a dictatorship, okay…we can just suddenly decide, ‘right, we’re in charge,’ and we just start – we start asserting our dominance. Now the key thing to being a dictator, is we need to control the center of power…so we get an army going –”
Tommy: “What is the center of power? Is it like some cube, or like an orb?”
Wilbur: “The army! The army! The banks, you know? We take control of those, and then people will do exactly as we say, right? That’s the dictatorship route, right. The other route is the democracy route. Now, this route’s gonna be slightly harder, but I have a plan. So I was thinking…what better way of making people believe that you’re in charge than by having them vote for you, right?”
so, wilbur was thinking of getting "an army going" to "control the center of power" and to "take control" of "the banks". he saw this as a valid solution to people not bending to his authority.
then he turned to election fraud instead, which he puts as straight-up manipulation of his people into believing he isn't a dictator.
...what. i'm not going to praise him for that decision, that's not even the bare minimum - he's still being a prick and showing just how much he actually doesn't care about what the "people he claims to care about" (cc!wilbur's words again) want.
but let's get back to the point; so, according to all of the current evidence, what did wilbur want?
wilbur wanted glory, power and division, to be able to enforce his authority and take control of his people.
...this is what people are saying dream shouldn't have stood up against in his land and "left them alone". that is what people are saying he should've "let wilbur have" in the home he worked to protect and build for the people he cared about - and keep in mind the dream smp was pretty much an anarchy back then.
this was willbur's intentions, and the first instinct of a lot of people was to paint dream as the tyrant. that just doesn't sit right with me, i'll be honest with you.
what about techno, then?
well, new l'manberg was ruled by tubbo, who was only doing his best - truly doing his best to turn wilbur's lies into a reality. no corruption, no conflict, only a home.
but tubbo was not ever actually in charge, was he?
let's talk about post-16th quackity.
i remember the second tubbo livestream i ever saw live was him rebuilding the crater; putting up grass blocks over the top, with quackity and fundy helping him out. it was when quackity first proposed the idea of getting rid of techno.
tubbo didn't want conflict, and he disagreed at first because it went against his ideals and his morals.
that didn't pan out well for him - and i think that's enough evidence quackity was pulling the strings of the cabinet, if you take into consideration the propaganda, riling up, and overall vengefulness that we suddenly seemed to be working with.
quackity's words didn't speak louder than his actions, but they are still interesting to note; "bring this country to power" being a common theme in his motivation for getting techno and dream "out of the way".
so quackity wanted power as well, and this desire only grew as it was taken further from his reach, but ever since the 16th, it has been very prominent in the way he instructed the new l'manberg government.
techno, the local anarchist who fought (only) oppressive governments that hurt people, was supposed to not do doomsday and "leave l'manberg alone", while what quackity wanted was nothing else than to turn l'manberg back into a tool of power and control.
i'm beginning to see a pattern here.
i am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, really; but the constant glorification of a revolution leader who did everything for his own power and benefit, and a "secretary" that committed multiple war crimes and literally harmed and manipulated innocents in his quest for power; plus the instantaneous villainization of those who stood as obstacles in their path, is a bit too much even for this fandom's standards, even for me.
i get wilbur and quackity are both silver-tongued bastards able to shift the narrative in their favor, but the grudges people will hold against characters that fight against them and the measures to which they'll reach in order to defend them is wild.
it's not as easy as "they should've let l'manberg be". the people leading l'manberg were far from innocent and had sinister intentions.
while i agree that the idea that technoblade and dream “should’ve just let them have what they wanted!” is naive, i disagree entirely with the reasoning you have behind it. technoblade and dream shouldn’t have “just let them have what they wanted” because it wouldn’t be true to their characters and wouldn’t make sense with the storyline, not because l’manburg was in one way or another an evil country and in fact, that’s what i disagree with most. neither l’manburg nor nlm were as sinister as you make them out to be, especially when you consider their citizens.
i can agree with the fact that wilbur didn’t necessarily have the pure, idealistic intentions that a lot of the fandom seems to assume characterize the founding of l’manburg, but at the same time, i can’t get behind the idea that this makes l’manburg evil in some way. there were, after all, still other people in l’manburg, and they did believe in the idea of l’manburg that wilbur presented to the world, no matter how untrue you believe that idea to be. they would not have fought and died for a country they didn’t believe in, and they did not believe in a country that wasn’t the idealistic version of l’manburg. as you said, when tubbo was given leadership, he tried to embody that ideal l’manburg and he would not have done that if he hadn’t on some level at the very least hoped for its existence and seen even a small part of it in wilbur’s l’manburg.
it’s not even just the fact that the country was made up of people besides wilbur, it’s also the fact that wilbur was not l’manburg. the argument that a country should be destroyed because of a leader and founder that was barely involved in its day to day life seems flimsy to me, especially when his more corrupt views of the country didn’t influence the views of those living in it. aside from big events, wilbur was barely on the server and that’s how events like the civil war you mentioned could even have happened: because wilbur wasn’t there and couldn’t get involved until he was there later.
basically: wilbur may have been the leader and founder and he may have been as corrupt as they come, but he did not corrupt the country as a whole and his citizens still believed in the idealism he presented. and personally, i don’t think that makes it deserving of destruction.
and as for nlm and your points about quackity?
in my opinion, you’ve completely misunderstood his character. quackity has never wanted power for power’s sake. not once. every single time he’s sought power or control, he’s had an underlying reason for it and in nlm, that reason was the protection of the country and its (albeit few) citizens. i’m not going to say that because he had a reasonable motivation, every action he took to achieve what he wanted is excusable, but it’s at least more understandable than the idea that he’s merely a power hungry asshole when he’s so much more than that.
there’s a reason, after all, that quackity went after the people who he saw as the most powerful on the server. and while yes, the surface level reason was so nlm would instead be the most powerful force, quackity has also historically seen how power is something intrinsically linked with protection. nlm would not be safe if there were more powerful people out there, especially not when those people also happened to have a history of destroying countries and saw nlm as easy to destroy. quackity wanted nlm to be powerful so it could be protected.
additionally, nlm didn’t? oppress anyone? or hurt its citizens? the best argument against my statement that i can think of is the butcher army, but the only person who was really pulled into that entirely against his will was ranboo and no offense to him, but at this point he would not have said no to anyone. fundy and tubbo though, they were there for nov 16 and while neither would necessarily turn to violence as their first choice, you can’t say they didn’t want some form of retribution for what techno did. quackity may have riled them up, but he didn’t force them to change what they felt about technoblade.
either way though, even if you disagree with my thoughts on the butcher army, the overall point still stands that nlm, and by extent, quackity, had their citizens best interests at heart. every single action that was taken was for them and their protection, even if it wasn’t done in what you might think is the best way. quackity may have taken risks and he may have been more of a president than tubbo, but he never caused nlm to be oppressive. no matter who was running it, nlm always valued its citizens above all else and any risks that were taken were taken so that they could all one day be safe.
of course, this situation still isn’t as simple as black and white. l’manburg and nlm may not have been entirely evil and sinister, but it still wasn’t truly the utopia it’s thought to be by parts of this fandom. that doesn’t mean, however, that l’manburg or nlm deserved to be destroyed to atone for their sins or something. the fact that they were was a result of technoblade and dream having their own autonomy, not the result either country being somehow more evil than previously assumed.
tldr, i agree with the ‘thesis’ (for lack of a better word) of your post op, but i disagree strongly with all the reasons you gave.
alright this took me a while but i was having a brief burnout back then, either way let me just look over this and give my thoughts now that i finally feel like it. also somebody please tell the mods at @/dsmpanalysis to not reblog unfinished debates i love y'all but i've already seen it give multiple people anxiety. /nm
it definitely wouldn't make sense for their characters, because the two stand for unity & peace and freedom & anarchy respectively and l'manberg strictly opposes both of those.
glad we could agree on that one. /lh
the citizens were also the victims of the system. the fact that they weren't bad people doesn't make the system any more sinister.
these people killed and died and grinded and suffered for a country that was only going to bring war and division for everyone. they were losing everything because c!wilbur made a country for the sake of getting power for himself or to piss off his enemies, and convinced them that they were on the right side of history. this is exactly what makes l'manberg such a tragedy and definitely an evil system.
they believed in an idealized version of l'manberg that didn't actually exist, then proceeded to fight and die for it. they died and fought for nothing because they thought l'manberg was important for them.
...how exactly does that make it better?
they thought l'manberg stood for ideals that were good and meant to protect them - well they were wrong! l'manberg hurt so many people. just because it gave some people a drive after taking everything else from them doesn't make it not an evil country.
i am not bashing the group of people here in the slightest. i am saying the system itself, that started the cycle of violence that hurts people to this day, should not have been 'left alone'.
wilbur was not l'manberg, but wilbur created l'manberg to be a tool of power. as soon as it stopped being one for him, he destroyed it. then quackity took control of it, to also use it as a tool of power. it never got reformed because it was inherently going to bring corruption and division into the server and it did just that, three times over.
l'manberg didn't "deserve" to be destroyed for doing nothing, i agree! however, it never deserved to exist in the first place, and so i believe c!dream was right in fighting against it initially.
also, just because it was fine for a moment before wilbur came back to try and take control of its citizens by becoming a dictator doesn't make it any less of a problem. a ticking time bomb at best.
the only time when l'manberg didn't hurt people was when l'manberg didn't matter at all, when people didn't care about it at all, when it or its leaders didn't influence people, just like you said. makes you wonder whether it being created was a good thing in the first place.
the reason why l'manberg wasn't ruining the server for the few short periods of time that it didn't is because it wasn't working as intended. as soon as it got back into business, things went to hell very quickly.
hence, it should've been destroyed, as a system that didn't aid the individuals, but only caused harm.
as for new l'manberg.
i do not believe c!quackity wanted power for power's sake, however i disagree that he cared about l'manberg. in my mind, he wanted l'manberg alive so that he could have power, not power so that he could protect l'manberg.
his want for power came from a place of desire to bring change, even positive change, i don't deny that.
however, his motivation for attempting murder on his country's behalf according to canon was power and revenge, which makes enacting such actions as a governmental unit automatically corrupt, no matter what he wanted said power for.
if it was for protection, that would just be another case of people hurting others to protect a country that didn't matter at all, which wouldn't make it any less evil - but in this situation, it was the butcher army that was corrupt majorly because of quackity who would rather have power than peace (and he knew c!techno was in retirement).
nlm was absolutely oppressive and i am getting a bit frustrated at this point because of just how awful it actually was.
this is a brief explanation of the way it treated its citizens and here is the "for power" schtick as well as all of them knowing very well c!techno was in retirement.
"had a history of destroying countries" l'manberg was the only country that anyone was interested in and that wasn't destroyed by either c!dream nor c!techno. they went after them because they stood against the country (for good reasons) and were powerful. they were a threat to the cabinet's power, not safety.
if c!quackity wanted it to be protected, his first instinct wouldn't be trying to get revenge on someone who barely did any damage. saying they were doing it for protection was only to convince them the execution was necessary. he convinced them techno was a threat. they didn't want to hunt him until he made them - i watched the vod where he first proposed the idea live, and i know how much tubbo was against it at first.
new l'manberg was an oppressive and violent government, towards its citizens and people outside of it, with quackity being insistent on instigating wars and fights despite tubbo only wanting peace and safety. this was not done in their "best interest", it was done in l'manberg's, and that was only to make it more powerful. hunting down individuals in order to do that cannot be framed as good.
nothing is black as white, but oppressive tyrannical systems based on dividing people and causing conflict that hurt people should be destroyed, actually. c!techno and c!dream did have their own autonomy, and they did the right thing.
ok so to start, i am coincidentally one of the mods for dsmpanalysis, so thanks to you and an ask we received a bit after i saw this, we’re now aware of the concerns you’ve brought up, and we’re all very grateful that you’ve done so :) /gen. at this point, a mod post regarding your concerns is up (link) since we were able to discuss that way faster than i was able to write this, and this post will be reblogged again (with just your addition above unless you want to add more after this) if you’re good w that. aside from that, i am genuinely sorry if the blog posting my addition before you were able to respond caused any anxiety, and hopefully we’re able to prevent anything like that from happening again in the future.
onto the actual post now tho: looking back at what i wrote and reading your response to it, at this point i definitely agree more with what you said about l’manburg and nlm than what i did lmao (cut bc this post is already so long)
since i wrote that post, i’ve had several conversations with some of my friends about l’manburg and some of the misconceptions we’ve had surrounding it, especially around it as a system. personally, i viewed it less as a country and a corrupt system and more as a group of people who happened to acquire a certain amount of power and control, which made my opinions of it much different, and i think that’s where a lot of my previous disagreement lay (and that’s honestly where i think a lot of disagreements about l’manburg stem from: viewing it as more of a found family that happened to have some authority placed upon it vs viewing it as a system that was corrupt from the start when in reality, it has aspects of both, but that’s not really the point here lol).
more to the point though, yes, i agree with you. l’manburg did become a system that took advantage of the idealism of its citizens from the very beginning, whether any of those citizens realized it or not, and that’s a system that absolutely deserves to be destroyed. i only pause at saying l’manburg deserved to be destroyed because the destruction of that system also had to come at the cost of ripping apart friendships and destroying something that so many people did feel was a safe haven and a place that they loved.
and as for nlm, i will say that i wasn’t aware of the full extent of what the butcher army knew, so thank you for those clips /gen and i’m really not sure how i forgot philza was a part of nlm at the beginning while i was writing that,, but i did apparently so, that’s my bad.
i do think we’ll have to agree to disagree on c!quackity’s motivations though, because even after all that, i still do believe wholeheartedly that his desire for power was simultaneously a desire for protection, misguided and twisted though it was. the way i see it, power was synonymous with protection for him, so whenever he went after power he was at the same time seeking protection, even if the lengths he went to were extreme. techno and dream being a threat to the cabinet’s power would in quackity’s eyes also mean that techno and dream were a threat to the cabinet’s safety.
(and this is less relevant, but they do actually have a history of destroying countries (or. technically country, singular, but i couldn’t get that to sound gramatically correct): dream was the very first person to blow up l’manburg back in the original revolution, rigging the country with tnt underground and causing it all to explode (around this timestamp). and though wilbur was the one to initially blowup l’manburg on the 16th, techno did set withers on everyone afterwards and continue to destroy what was left of the nation with tnt once the action had died down, also making it very clear that he would kill anyone who tried to make a new government (“there will be no new governments today” + the withers before this clip and the tnt and mentions of killing the members of tubbo’s l’manburg after this clip in the vod). personally, i think that plus their obvious support of the destruction of l’manburg is enough reason for quackity to at least be suspicious that they’d do something like this again.)
i also believe that quackity and tubbo’s views on what would make nlm safe were very, very different, which is why they clashed so heavily. they both wanted what was best for the cabinet and nlm, their ideas of what was best were just almost completely opposite to each other. and while i agree that you can’t frame quackity’s way of seeking power as good, at the same time you can’t frame it as an action taken without any reasoning deeper than ‘he wanted power’ when quackity’s entire character is basically an exploration of why he would want power. in this case, power was a tool quackity wanted to wield that would allow nlm to achieve peace and safety, the same way pacifism served as a tool for tubbo to reach the same ends.
all that’s more of an argument about quackity’s character than one about nlm though, so. back to nlm now, where the point i made about l’manburg still stands. yet again, i wrote my previous response viewing nlm more as a group of people quackity (and tubbo) wanted to protect rather than as a system that abused its current power to gain more, and, just like with l’manburg, now i don’t entirely agree with that view.
so yes, looking back at what i wrote last time and seeing what you wrote this time, you’re right, techno and dream did do the right thing in destroying a corrupt system. despite that, i still believe the final destruction of l’manburg was a tragedy at the same time because l’manburg was always more than just a system. it was also a group of people who had come together and managed to create something they cared about, and if you consider both of those ideas, no ending for l’manburg could ever be entirely good or entirely bad.
I don't know who needs to hear this but c!dream has never manipulated c!sapnap or c!george. The "I don't give a fuck about Spirit" speech and c!George's dethronement scene is not an example of manipulation, no matter how hard you want it to be
honestly, the dethronement scene is an example of manipulation but not in the way people think. c!george used guilt tripping and social pressure to remove power from c!dream in that scene, something c!george has a pattern of doing to get his way (just look at the multiple instances of emotional manipulation he employs with XD, he's doing the same thing here). c!george may not be a manipulator, but he is still pretty manipulative.
c!dream honest to god had no power in that entire exchage and the social dynamic was completely skewed in c!george's favor, who was making sure it stayed that way. and c!george's feelings may have been genuine, but c!dream was perfectly justified in calling out his behavior for what it was: an overdramatic act specifically intended to get people to pity him. it was a power play.
He's treating this conflict like there are no stakes - and there are none for him, but there definitely are for Quackity and Las Nevadas.
If the Ranboo and Tubbo miscalculate this conflict and lose the Cookie Outpost - they lose a build. They lose something they've worked hard on. And it sucks.
But if Quackity miscalculates this conflict? He stands to lose everything.
He has repeatedly stated that Las Nevadas is everything to him. It's his proverbial (and potentially literal) last chance, and he said that if it dies, he does too.
So while the it's true, he's overreacting to a perceived threat, he's almost certainly aware that it's an overreaction, but he has no other options; he can't afford to be wrong.
If there's a 99% chance that the box has an apple, and a 1% chance it has a bomb, Quackity has to operate on the idea that it's a bomb, because even if it's extremely unlikely, he won't survive the bomb.
And to be clear, he is not the only one who felt threatened by the outpost. Foolish, Purpled and Fundy all seemed to be intimidated by it, and considering that Las Nevadas is all they have left too, it makes sense that they would be defensive. The scale of what each member of Las Nevadas has to lose is breathtaking.
And yes, it's sad that Ranboo can't make cookies, but again, the stakes for him are nothing. He is sad about not being allowed to build his farm out further. He is sad they misinterpreted his actions and that he couldn't make it better by just talking it out.
But Las Nevadas doesn't have a barrel of totems and powerful friends to fall back on if things go south. This is it for them. If they fuck up, it's over.
Kindness, open-heartedness, understanding? Those are luxuries on the Dream SMP. Luxuries Ranboo can indulge in happily.
Quackity cannot. Purpled cannot. Fundy cannot. Foolish recently learned what happens when you try to extend a kindness when you don't have the power to pull it back if those you're offering it to abuse it.
a lot of people seem to have the attitude "he should've just let them had what they wanted!" when it comes to technoblade and dream both going against l'manberg, and absolutely no offense, but that seems... so awfully naive to me?
[ /dsmp /rp | the other reason why l'manberg deserved to fall ]
it looks like people automatically assume "what they wanted" was good, and that everything would've been fine if it wasn't for techno and dream being in the way. so let's look at what the leaders they fought against actually wanted, shall we?
let's start at the beginning, then.
wilbur (all names in this essay refer to the characters) made l'manberg after he failed to take control of the economy by making a capitalist empire based on lies, rumors and theft.
we're starting off strong, i see.
he referred to tommy as someone to mould or build upon multiple times, saying he is naive and calling it a good thing, even mentioning people like tubbo or fundy as the "a lot of tommyinnits" he could use take advantage of for his plans. these were people who were the most useful in terms of being hardworking and passionate, and arguably the most easily manipulated.
...cool. this still doesn't tell us what he wanted to do with l'manberg, but it gives us a sense of this guy's moral compass and honesty.
wilbur, to his soldiers at least, says that he made l'manberg for freedom and protection. ...freedom to steal from people? protection from... everyone except the guy who wants to exploit them?
yeah no, i'm not trusting anything he says.
let's turn to what wilbur said out of character about the motives with which wilbur the character created l'manberg.
"you could create something that you believe is worth having power over, and because you want to have power over it, everyone else will believe it's important, even though it's not." [ link ]
...alright, well that sorts out that question i suppose.
wilbur after his revival says that l'manberg was a "useful tool" that did what it was supposed to do; it divided. since naturally i'm not going to take his words at face value if it would kill me, let's turn back to what wilbur was actually saying and doing back when he made l'manberg, because maybe his memory has just faded, right?
*rewatching the vod* is he. is he quoting tr*mp's speech about building a wall and "making the mexicans pay for it" while being openly xenophobic towards the people who originally lived in the lands and building a giant wall?
ooo boy. cc!wilbur knew what he was doing, wasn't he?
see, if you rewatch the vods and look at them as satire on american propaganda (including the hamilton references) everything starts to fall into place.
but hey, l'manberg changed, right? it grew into something more than that initial quest for glory... right? i mean, the l'manberg government wasn't even corrupt up until schlatt's reign, right?
*laughs* no.
let's fast-forward.
l'manberg... hadn't done much after the revolution. it was just a safe space, but not really. people are living just as they did before, and neither wilbur nor l'manberg really changed much.
wilbur doesn't like that, and that is clear from what happens next.
Wilbur: “Tommy, we need power.”
Tommy: “Yeah?”
Wilbur: “I’ve tried – I spoke to Fundy and Tubbo yesterday, I told them how I didn’t like the civil war they were having, you know the fights that were going on.”
Tommy: “Yeah, that huge war in our name, yeah.”
Wilbur: “I told them I wasn’t happy with it, I told them to stop. Do you remember when you started getting angry at Dream, and I tried to control you, and you ignored me? …Yeah. See, this is the thing. Tommy, I…I led the revolution, right, but the issue is, is that I sort of became the de facto President, but no one listens to me. No one cares about mine – or your – power. No one cares! To us, we may be in anarchy, you know?”
alright, so a) wilbur dislikes anarchy, that's a good thing to remember for later, b) he's pissed off that people aren't listening to him (and tommy, but he definitely just added that on to make him care about the subject) and he can't "control" them c) he sees more power as a solution. well... maybe he just doesn't want people to fight, right? he's talking about a civil war he couldn't stop, after all.
Wilbur: “We can either, Tommy, right – we can either become a dictatorship, okay…we can just suddenly decide, ‘right, we’re in charge,’ and we just start – we start asserting our dominance. Now the key thing to being a dictator, is we need to control the center of power…so we get an army going –”
Tommy: “What is the center of power? Is it like some cube, or like an orb?”
Wilbur: “The army! The army! The banks, you know? We take control of those, and then people will do exactly as we say, right? That’s the dictatorship route, right. The other route is the democracy route. Now, this route’s gonna be slightly harder, but I have a plan. So I was thinking…what better way of making people believe that you’re in charge than by having them vote for you, right?”
so, wilbur was thinking of getting "an army going" to "control the center of power" and to "take control" of "the banks". he saw this as a valid solution to people not bending to his authority.
then he turned to election fraud instead, which he puts as straight-up manipulation of his people into believing he isn't a dictator.
...what. i'm not going to praise him for that decision, that's not even the bare minimum - he's still being a prick and showing just how much he actually doesn't care about what the "people he claims to care about" (cc!wilbur's words again) want.
but let's get back to the point; so, according to all of the current evidence, what did wilbur want?
wilbur wanted glory, power and division, to be able to enforce his authority and take control of his people.
...this is what people are saying dream shouldn't have stood up against in his land and "left them alone". that is what people are saying he should've "let wilbur have" in the home he worked to protect and build for the people he cared about - and keep in mind the dream smp was pretty much an anarchy back then.
this was willbur's intentions, and the first instinct of a lot of people was to paint dream as the tyrant. that just doesn't sit right with me, i'll be honest with you.
what about techno, then?
well, new l'manberg was ruled by tubbo, who was only doing his best - truly doing his best to turn wilbur's lies into a reality. no corruption, no conflict, only a home.
but tubbo was not ever actually in charge, was he?
let's talk about post-16th quackity.
i remember the second tubbo livestream i ever saw live was him rebuilding the crater; putting up grass blocks over the top, with quackity and fundy helping him out. it was when quackity first proposed the idea of getting rid of techno.
tubbo didn't want conflict, and he disagreed at first because it went against his ideals and his morals.
that didn't pan out well for him - and i think that's enough evidence quackity was pulling the strings of the cabinet, if you take into consideration the propaganda, riling up, and overall vengefulness that we suddenly seemed to be working with.
quackity's words didn't speak louder than his actions, but they are still interesting to note; "bring this country to power" being a common theme in his motivation for getting techno and dream "out of the way".
so quackity wanted power as well, and this desire only grew as it was taken further from his reach, but ever since the 16th, it has been very prominent in the way he instructed the new l'manberg government.
techno, the local anarchist who fought (only) oppressive governments that hurt people, was supposed to not do doomsday and "leave l'manberg alone", while what quackity wanted was nothing else than to turn l'manberg back into a tool of power and control.
i'm beginning to see a pattern here.
i am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, really; but the constant glorification of a revolution leader who did everything for his own power and benefit, and a "secretary" that committed multiple war crimes and literally harmed and manipulated innocents in his quest for power; plus the instantaneous villainization of those who stood as obstacles in their path, is a bit too much even for this fandom's standards, even for me.
i get wilbur and quackity are both silver-tongued bastards able to shift the narrative in their favor, but the grudges people will hold against characters that fight against them and the measures to which they'll reach in order to defend them is wild.
it's not as easy as "they should've let l'manberg be". the people leading l'manberg were far from innocent and had sinister intentions.
while i agree that the idea that technoblade and dream “should’ve just let them have what they wanted!” is naive, i disagree entirely with the reasoning you have behind it. technoblade and dream shouldn’t have “just let them have what they wanted” because it wouldn’t be true to their characters and wouldn’t make sense with the storyline, not because l’manburg was in one way or another an evil country and in fact, that’s what i disagree with most. neither l’manburg nor nlm were as sinister as you make them out to be, especially when you consider their citizens.
i can agree with the fact that wilbur didn’t necessarily have the pure, idealistic intentions that a lot of the fandom seems to assume characterize the founding of l’manburg, but at the same time, i can’t get behind the idea that this makes l’manburg evil in some way. there were, after all, still other people in l’manburg, and they did believe in the idea of l’manburg that wilbur presented to the world, no matter how untrue you believe that idea to be. they would not have fought and died for a country they didn’t believe in, and they did not believe in a country that wasn’t the idealistic version of l’manburg. as you said, when tubbo was given leadership, he tried to embody that ideal l’manburg and he would not have done that if he hadn’t on some level at the very least hoped for its existence and seen even a small part of it in wilbur’s l’manburg.
it’s not even just the fact that the country was made up of people besides wilbur, it’s also the fact that wilbur was not l’manburg. the argument that a country should be destroyed because of a leader and founder that was barely involved in its day to day life seems flimsy to me, especially when his more corrupt views of the country didn’t influence the views of those living in it. aside from big events, wilbur was barely on the server and that’s how events like the civil war you mentioned could even have happened: because wilbur wasn’t there and couldn’t get involved until he was there later.
basically: wilbur may have been the leader and founder and he may have been as corrupt as they come, but he did not corrupt the country as a whole and his citizens still believed in the idealism he presented. and personally, i don’t think that makes it deserving of destruction.
and as for nlm and your points about quackity?
in my opinion, you’ve completely misunderstood his character. quackity has never wanted power for power’s sake. not once. every single time he’s sought power or control, he’s had an underlying reason for it and in nlm, that reason was the protection of the country and its (albeit few) citizens. i’m not going to say that because he had a reasonable motivation, every action he took to achieve what he wanted is excusable, but it’s at least more understandable than the idea that he’s merely a power hungry asshole when he’s so much more than that.
there’s a reason, after all, that quackity went after the people who he saw as the most powerful on the server. and while yes, the surface level reason was so nlm would instead be the most powerful force, quackity has also historically seen how power is something intrinsically linked with protection. nlm would not be safe if there were more powerful people out there, especially not when those people also happened to have a history of destroying countries and saw nlm as easy to destroy. quackity wanted nlm to be powerful so it could be protected.
additionally, nlm didn’t? oppress anyone? or hurt its citizens? the best argument against my statement that i can think of is the butcher army, but the only person who was really pulled into that entirely against his will was ranboo and no offense to him, but at this point he would not have said no to anyone. fundy and tubbo though, they were there for nov 16 and while neither would necessarily turn to violence as their first choice, you can’t say they didn’t want some form of retribution for what techno did. quackity may have riled them up, but he didn’t force them to change what they felt about technoblade.
either way though, even if you disagree with my thoughts on the butcher army, the overall point still stands that nlm, and by extent, quackity, had their citizens best interests at heart. every single action that was taken was for them and their protection, even if it wasn’t done in what you might think is the best way. quackity may have taken risks and he may have been more of a president than tubbo, but he never caused nlm to be oppressive. no matter who was running it, nlm always valued its citizens above all else and any risks that were taken were taken so that they could all one day be safe.
of course, this situation still isn’t as simple as black and white. l’manburg and nlm may not have been entirely evil and sinister, but it still wasn’t truly the utopia it’s thought to be by parts of this fandom. that doesn’t mean, however, that l’manburg or nlm deserved to be destroyed to atone for their sins or something. the fact that they were was a result of technoblade and dream having their own autonomy, not the result either country being somehow more evil than previously assumed.
tldr, i agree with the ‘thesis’ (for lack of a better word) of your post op, but i disagree strongly with all the reasons you gave.
Like, it’s a military settlement, of course. And whether Tubbo admits it or not it was built with the specific purpose of provoking Las Nevadas. Why?
Tubbo used to be a pretty peaceful character, what happened there? Like, even with Snowchester and the nukes it was mostly a defensive thing, and that seemed a pretty natural evolution for his character.
But this? He didn’t even have any prior bad blood against Quackity, so were did this come from?
This is not even about “Good guys vs Bad guys” because there are no good guys in this scenario. It’s just another pissing context for power, only this one kinda had no real build up?
I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now honestly. Like, I didn’t like it at first and I still widely dislike it right now. Like, I don’t know if it’s clear right now, but c!Tubbo, mister “I exiled my best friend to avoid conflict” might as well have just declared war with his little threat and very obvious military outpost.
I just, I don’t get it. It feels like a very forced development. Like, VERY FORCED. It’s like they didn’t know how to re-introduce Tubbo to the plot because he kinda faded in the background so they brought him back as a character that doesn’t really have much to do with how he was before…
And I’m not even getting started with Ranboo because, quite frankly, I never have any idea of what’s going on with him. This is probably in character for him and good for him for finding a spine, so good for him! Or not good for him if it’s out of character. Whatever.
I actually have a completely different opinion here.
I think something like that is entirely in character.
c!Tubbo knows Big Q, not only through working together in the JSchlatt Administration but also because Big Q was quite literally his vice president during New L'Manberg, and I think it’s clear that c!Quackity is, politically seen, a very much possible threat
c!Tubbo said himself that he believes theres more to Lad Nevadas than you can see, I honest to God think he feels at least SLIGHTLY threatent or scared by it.
So now, there’s a new nation, with several people joining, AND it’s lead by c!Quackity
The obvious action is very simply said: observe. And that’s what c!Tubbo’s doing. He made an outpost and stays out of what he believes to be part of Las Nevadas and observes for any suspicious behavior.
It was also said in the beginning that the Outpost wasn’t supposed to be as visible as it is, it just kinda turned out that way and since people are now aware of it it makes no sense to hide it now.
He doesn’t want war, he wants to observe a completely new country run by a very much politically experienced man that very well could pose a threat in the future.
It just feels contrived. Like, why would he think that Quackity posed a threat to him? What made him believe that?
Like, I get what you’re saying, and it’s true that Quackity can be a threat, but why would he have been a threat to Tubbo? He never even hinted to that! And Las Nevadas is as far from Snowchester as near spawn places can be.
Also, again, it doesn’t matter if Tubbo says that the outpost is meant for observation only, because that’s not what it comes off as. It’s a military settlement purposefully made by the border of Las Nevadas that Tubbo fully intends to expand and that he openly threatened to nuke Las Nevadas for. That comes off as a declaration of war at worst and a very hostile approach at best!
Like, that’s extremely aggressive behaviour. As in: Quackity wasn’t a threat to him at all before, but he sure became one now because Tubbo made himself a threat.
I think Tubbo has ample cause to view Quackity as a potential threat. Not necessarily to him specifically, but to anyone who might end up in the way of his goals.
Tubbo has worked with Quackity for a long time and he has a lot of experience telling him just how volatile and ambitious Quackity can be. He mentioned the most relevant incidents himself: Tubbo’s own execution, the Butcher Army, his push to execute Ranboo. All of those were incidents where someone was not necessarily a direct threat to Quackity - and even if they were, could have easily been dealt with in a less extreme and violent way - and Quackity threw all his weight into taking the nuclear option.
He wasn’t the instigator of Tubbo’s execution, but he didn’t even attempt to stop it, because he saw maintaining his position with Schlatt as more important than saving Tubbo’s life. Techno hadn’t been seen in a long time (in-universe months?) and Quackity singlehandedly pushed all his allies into helping him make a preemptive strike that, as far as any of them knew, may not have even been necessary. And at the first hint that Ranboo might pose a threat to New L’Manburg (the metaphorical horse that Quackity had bet everything on), Quackity came to Tubbo demanding his execution and nothing less.
Quackity doesn’t do small goals - he sets his ambitions impossibly high, and then throws everything he has into reaching them anyway. And the moment those interests are threatened, he strikes back with every resource at his disposal, aiming to wipe out the threat in one decisive blow. He will use anything he can, including his friends, allies, and even enemies, and act regardless of his previous relationship with anyone involved.
Even if Tubbo didn’t have all that past personal history with Quackity, being used and sacrificed for his goals, he’s familiar enough with his MO to know two things: one, Quackity’s ambition is not going to be confined just to Las Nevadas. Tubbo may not be able to guess at the specifics, but he can definitely guess that he has designs on the rest of the server one way or another. And two, anyone could potentially end up on his enemies list. Anyone who gets in Quackity’s way will become a target, whether they do it intentionally or not. And as the current leader of a small but established (and wealthy) polity and the person who (I’m pretty sure) has held more political offices than anyone else on the server, Tubbo is very likely to find himself ending up in Quackity’s way.
And Tubbo “nuclear deterrent” Underscore’s reaction to this information is very in character. He’s not going to wait around to be pulled under the wheels of the server’s politics again. He’s going to establish himself as someone not to be fucked with in Quackity’s eyes. He’s going to make a show of power directly at Quackity’s doorstep and he’s going to make sure Quackity knows just how thoroughly he can defend it. It is very aggressive behavior, but Tubbo has learned that the only defense is a strong offense. The only universal language is violence, and Tubbo doesn’t like speaking that language, but he is fluent. He sees a conflict with Quackity as inevitable, so he’s going to try to make sure that conflict never breaks out into open violence by making himself too dangerous for Quackity to touch.
yeah, tubbos actually been like this for a while. when techno came by snowchester, he told him straight up about the nukes. because he wanted to make his strength clear.
tubbo is not about to be made small again… he’s putting all his effort into making himself seem bigger and more threatening. because he’s learned his lesson about being walked over.
the outpost is absolutely in character. tubbo defends himself by being intimidating. quackity has already expressed interest in hurting people when tubbo didnt want it to happen, like said quackity has often made decisions that ended up hurting tubbo or ended up with tubbo doing something he didnt want to do, butcher army being the biggest example of such
also it feels weird to diminish tubbo as. someone who faded into the background and *thats* why he built the outpost? this wasnt planned whatsoever. its not a plot to bring tubbo back into the story, tubbo just…. wanted to do this. because he. likes having fun with the story KFSJSN not everything is this Big Plan, tubbos character has never been a planned one. exile was him making a suggestion while playing stardew valley, the nukes was because he got nostalgic over a nuke mod, the outpost is because he wants to keep track of las nevadas
cc!tubbo has always done improv, thats all it is. c!tubbo also just. is not the most peaceful character out there. he doesnt like *unnecessary* conflict, but even since the start hes kind of, always been like this? hes the same dude that spawn trapped tommy for killing a bee, hes just more paranoid now
and as such, the outpost is a show of *how* paranoid hes gotten. quackity disappears off the radar for *months* after one of their last convos being quackity trying to get tubbo to choose violence against someone tubbo didnt want to hurt, and now hes back and hes made an entire country with giant builds and a clear gambling capitalistic theme. he is a threat, whether to tubbo specifically or not, and tubbo wants to keep an eye on it because its a threat and tubbo doesnt like it
the paranoia and threatening aura has always been apart of tubbos character, its just been getting worse and worse, by effect of dream, techno, phil, wilbur, quackity, tons of people, tubbos homes have been destroyed over and over again. quackitys now the biggest threat, and tubbo doesnt want people to get hurt, so he keeps an eye on the threat. its not out of character, its tubbo being paranoid and impulsive because those parts of his character have been fed into over the course of the dream smp
hell, quackity comparing it to lmanburg only makes it more obvious that this is in line with tubbo, *because tubbo was a founder of lmanburg*, and now hes showing a similar energy. building near others because they feel threatening and putting up walls to defend himself because his shit has gotten destroyed over and over and he doesnt want this to be another destroyed build
to see tubbo as a peaceful character that fades into the background and has no reason to show suspicion of people that have hurt him and pushed him to hurt others is a major disservice to his character. hes not. he just isnt. he doesnt like conflict, but that doesnt mean hes just going to let it happen? its weird to think that itd be in character for tubbo to just. sit in snowchester and not get involved at all, to assume its out of character for tubbo to get involved when the only arc tubbo hasnt been a big part of was the egg arc, and even then tubbo interacted with it
i think the only reason i’m not more sympathetic to tubbo in this situation when normally i’m very biased towards c!tubbo is the fact that this was not originally built as a harmless “cookie outpost.” it was built to watch over las nevadas because tubbo saw it as a threat. and that makes sense! i get that, and it’s perfectly understandable. it’s a fantastic character choice, and i love it, in fact.
where my bias towards c!tubbo stops, however, is when his whole argument is based on the idea that he poses no threat to las nevadas when the very idea of keeping watch over them is threatening, and quackity was absolutely right in assuming that. tubbo’s argument, therefore, felt very weak to me because it was based on what i can only see as a lie and quackity was validated in my eyes in feeling threatened by it, even if he didn’t outright say that.
the whole argument was made of careful word choices where neither of them outright said what they wanted. tubbo wants to continue to keep an eye on las nevadas, and quackity wants the perceived threat removed. that’s what it boils down to, and that’s why quackity’s argument holds more weight to me. it was never really about borders.
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