SHOULD HAVE BEEN A LIGHTNING BOLT

mochi • adult • I like spreadsheets and scott smajor

[lorefulgood]

Mochi, 90s kid, mcyt (side)blog. also @achillessulks ✨

about this blog:

mostly life series but sometimes other stuff (empires one and two, xlife, 100 hours of hardcore, witchcraft, vampires, bannerfall, increasingly mcc, etc.)

I don’t watch hermitcraft! please don’t expect me to know things about hermitcraft!!

you may have heard of me from selective editing.

yes I started the “scott is Literally nice” thing. as far as I’m concerned, all flower husbands is toxic. at heart I am a jimmy solidarity stan blog.

I am NOT val lorefulevil and I have opinions on everything ever

I also like les misérables and the iliad.

AO3 is here

FYI: if you’ve sent me an ask and I haven’t responded yet, that’s most likely because I decided I had to do stupid amounts of research by watching and/or reading a bunch of stuff first. if you’re patient I’ll get to it eventually.

some words from my friends:

lastly, a blog thesis:

[lorefulgood]

ngl I do still kinda think it’s awesome that scott goldsmith got away with all that

[lorefulgood]

that man killed people! he hunted them down and assaulted them and killed them and ate them, turned them into vampires without sparing a thought for whether they wanted it. in fact, if they wanted it, he wouldn’t give it to them, because he preferred when they fought back and he could overpower them. he both emotionally and physically abused his fledgelings and openly admitted to enjoying tormenting the human residents of oakhurst. he coerced apo into consenting to him assaulting her. and then he manipulated the majority of town into believing he wasn’t that bad and had changed his ways and should be allowed to walk away unharmed. and he did! he got away with it! they let him go!

and isn’t that great? the ending of vsmp mirrors real-world examples of powerful men who get away with abuse and assault and anything they want really, just because people think they’re more likable than their victims. doesn’t that make you want to die? isn’t it just soooo fun?

[lorefulgood]

ngl I do still kinda think it’s awesome that scott goldsmith got away with all that

[lorefulgood]

oh im sure

[lorefulgood]

sorry? excuse me?

[lorefulgood]

sure

[lorefulgood]

sorry? excuse me?

[lorefulgood]

oh hey cutie we have soooo much in common. for one: never in my LIFE did I think you would get that either!!

[lorefulgood]

ykw maybe I do understand why people think I don’t like scott. because I don’t like scott. currently.

[lorefulgood]

I shouldn’t say things when I’m still mad because I’m being unfair but there’s an evil within me that makes it extremely tempting. what an event! what interesting changes to the games that the players didn’t know about. how interesting, to watch everyone’s morale. and look at those indivs! #mystreamer! well no, sorry, not #mystreamer; my streamer got 30th, I’m talking about that other guy that I can’t get rid of. that no one can get rid of. that’s the problem. did you know he’s unbenchable? I mean, who could bench him? usually you get benched if you cheat, if you get too many wins, if you outperform, if your teams are op, and so on. y’know, to even it out. is it still fun if no one can stop him from winning? sorry, that’s not the right phrasing, what I mean to say is, is it fun if he can’t stop winning? and it is undeserved, to be clear; he’s not better than everyone else, he just controls the event. it really is just because he’s unbenchable. his winrate isn’t even that good, he just plays in every mcc ever. and why wouldn’t he! it’s his event! what can anyone do to stop him? tell him no? don’t be naïve. you know how he is about being told no.

[lorefulgood]

putting together a beautiful compilation

[lorefulgood]

divorce compilation

[lorefulgood]

putting together a beautiful compilation

[lorefulgood]

[as if emerging from underwater] fuck. I need to rewatch last life. I miss my terrible early scottpearl when they were always together because pearl had no other friends. I miss that unhealthy codependence. scott always wants an all-consuming relationship but he’s never had one more successful than pearl because in pearl he found someone who was strong enough to fight on his behalf but malleable enough to give him what he needed to get ahead. I miss that transactional affection. that moment where pearl gives him a life and scott immediately crouches at her to say I love you so much, you’re my best friend and I love you so much is never going to leave me

[lorefulgood]

beyond the “jimmy’s no use to me” comment when scott’s seeking out an ally with lives to spare, I don’t think scott would have intentionally compared pearl to jimmy—during last life, that is; he certainly has in later seasons—but in many ways his relationship with her was an “improvement.” pearl has power she can give him. pearl listens: when scott says build it this way, she builds it this way; when scott says go there, she goes there; when scott says kill joel for me, she kills joel for him. they’re always together. they have their own secret code. pearl is, in some ways, scott’s most successful and productive and useful relationship. he got everything he wanted out of her, from the companionship to the multiple lives she gave him to the convenient motivation bolstering his win. he won! what more could he want?

[lorefulgood]

if you asked scott whether he thought he and cleo were married in double life he’d be like ew no I’m gay we’re just besties. if you asked cleo whether she thought she and scott were married in double life she’d laugh in your face. but the answer’s yes, isn’t it? soulmates and marriage are the same thing for both of them.

[lorefulgood]

well it was clearly a bit of an oversimplification due to being a four-sentence post, and the phrase “he’d be like” implies he might not actually use that precise phrasing, no? what I’m actually getting at in my semi-serious joke post is that, if you asked him a personally revealing question about his relationship to one of the people he loves most, he would panic and deflect to avoid admitting any vulnerability.

furthermore: scott is persistently incapable of admitting his actual emotions for people—even with cleo, considering he edited out most of the conversations between the two of them in double life where he was being more whiny or jealous or resentful, especially in regards to pearl (ex-soulmate) or jimmy (ex-husband). whenever scott does compare his relationships, he usually does it in a joking way intended to lampshade his true feelings so people don’t pry at what he’s experiencing. he hates being seen as vulnerable, especially in public, and especially when it’s about something that could be used to hurt him.

for comparison: he didn’t even acknowledge he and jimmy were married until four episodes in. pretty much every time he’s referenced fh after third life or tried to make jimmy admit he still wants him he has to highlight it so it seems like a joke, like something he’s doing for jimmy’s sake instead of his own, like he wouldn’t even be thinking about it if jimmy weren’t the one bothering him. and then he handles the rejection very normally (fake-crying in f5 after jimmy doesn’t say love you back; that sort of thing). for comparison: he decided pearl must be romantically interested in him (despite the fact that he’s gay) although she never said she was and in fact said she specifically wasn’t, and he spent a significant portion of double life focused on transforming the narrative of their relationship to make it seem like pearl was obsessed with him, in part because he couldn’t stand the idea of being rejected.

[lorefulgood]

it’s fine dw 😭 if anything I should be proud that my followers are trained to sniff out potentially inaccurate scott smajor dialogue. and he did say during the hc10 world tour that he’d marry cleo!

[lorefulgood]

if you asked scott whether he thought he and cleo were married in double life he’d be like ew no I’m gay we’re just besties. if you asked cleo whether she thought she and scott were married in double life she’d laugh in your face. but the answer’s yes, isn’t it? soulmates and marriage are the same thing for both of them.

[lorefulgood]

well it was clearly a bit of an oversimplification due to being a four-sentence post, and the phrase “he’d be like” implies he might not actually use that precise phrasing, no? what I’m actually getting at in my semi-serious joke post is that, if you asked him a personally revealing question about his relationship to one of the people he loves most, he would panic and deflect to avoid admitting any vulnerability.

furthermore: scott is persistently incapable of admitting his actual emotions for people—even with cleo, considering he edited out most of the conversations between the two of them in double life where he was being more whiny or jealous or resentful, especially in regards to pearl (ex-soulmate) or jimmy (ex-husband). whenever scott does compare his relationships, he usually does it in a joking way intended to lampshade his true feelings so people don’t pry at what he’s experiencing. he hates being seen as vulnerable, especially in public, and especially when it’s about something that could be used to hurt him.

for comparison: he didn’t even acknowledge he and jimmy were married until four episodes in. pretty much every time he’s referenced fh after third life or tried to make jimmy admit he still wants him he has to highlight it so it seems like a joke, like something he’s doing for jimmy’s sake instead of his own, like he wouldn’t even be thinking about it if jimmy weren’t the one bothering him. and then he handles the rejection very normally (fake-crying in f5 after jimmy doesn’t say love you back; that sort of thing). for comparison: he decided pearl must be romantically interested in him (despite the fact that he’s gay) although she never said she was and in fact said she specifically wasn’t, and he spent a significant portion of double life focused on transforming the narrative of their relationship to make it seem like pearl was obsessed with him, in part because he couldn’t stand the idea of being rejected.

[lorefulgood]

if you asked scott whether he thought he and cleo were married in double life he’d be like ew no I’m gay we’re just besties. if you asked cleo whether she thought she and scott were married in double life she’d laugh in your face. but the answer’s yes, isn’t it? soulmates and marriage are the same thing for both of them.

[lorefulgood]

one of my absolute favourite moments of double life is in ep 3 when scott’s having an argument with pearl about being reckless and starts to say, “yeah, but if I die, you die, cl—like—pearl.”

[lorefulgood]

the reason cleo and scott work so well is because they both view relationships as absolutes and they can both give everything to each other. they can see each other at their worst and still love each other. scott decided his relationship with jimmy in third life was a marriage and applied that same label both to grian and scar and to cleo and bdubs, and grian balked at it but cleo accepted it without issue; later, in double life, cleo specifically told bdubs they were divorced, and implied that a soulmate relationship was equivalent to marriage. meanwhile scott views all his relationships as requiring the same level of commitment; he repeatedly compares jimmy (husband) and pearl (soulmate), and refers to all his former teammates as exes: pearl, cleo, martyn, and jimmy, all of them. where scott and cleo differ is in their sense of obligation and their feelings of guilt. cleo wouldn’t betray a teammate, but scott has no issue with the concept—although he usually either won’t do it or will ensure that the rules allow for it. scott doesn’t place much value in sentimentality, but cleo cares deeply for symbolic gestures. it’s fun when they have those rare moments of misalignment, namely because they’re in lockstep almost all of the time.

[lorefulgood]

Kind of random but what are your thoughts on typology systems like mbti, enneagram, carl jung, ocean etc?

I used to really like the enneagram and tried to sort every character I came across with it + use it to help me write. But now I don't know, because most of the time the characters don't fit at all in my opinion. It's useful for figuring out a part of someone's psyche but not fully, and I'm starting to lean towards not using them in the slightest, because I feel like I'm putting a character in a box

I’ve not ever found that sort of categorisation helpful for me personally when trying to understand characters—whether in relation to writing fanfiction or original fiction. taxonomy (<- using this term facetiously I promise) of this variety will be by nature imperfect at best, because no one is only one thing all the time; personality types can change in response to varying stimuli and varying levels of intentionality. people do contradictory things all the time, and trying to understand someone by gesturing at labels as explanatory will, in my experience, always fall short of really getting into the heart of things.

what I’ve personally found more helpful in understanding fictional characters is to observe their canonical responses to situations and note how they behave when confronted with certain types of information. this sounds like really basic advice so apologies if it isn’t helpful but it’s more useful, for me, to start with the canon behaviour and write down descriptions than to start with a label and try to fit canon behaviour into it. by design you are putting someone in a box when you sort them like this; ultimately it’s up to you whether such compartmentalisation is a useful step in understanding a character or whether it limits them to the lines you’ve drawn around them.