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 >:)
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!
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