It doesn’t matter how your love feels anymore
< please tell me how to think and how to be>
DEAR READER

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@sevsevermore
It doesn’t matter how your love feels anymore
< please tell me how to think and how to be>
yayaya lunar eclipse
When it comes to how Stormz brings up Mugms request to him about picking up the gold gem, you have to understand that it’s more metaphorical than actually 100%. Stormz bringing up Mugms request towards him is more of a stepping stone and a way to convey his growth and actual clearance on his goals, it is not something he is actively gunning for nor is it an actual concrete goal on achieving that.
This request is how Stormz grounds himself on the account of his instability. In the Golden Harvest book that Mugm shows Stormz, his unstable traits are commentated on. The actual goal entrusted upon him to destroy the server matters less than the fact that it was entrusted upon him despite the fact that Mugm knew Stormz very well at that point, and knew how impulsive he was.
Stormz understands his instability very well, and he understands that that is why so many of relations had burned off. He uses this to ground himself so he can be deserving of the trust he is given, so that people can trust him and not have it flipped on their head. He cares about other peoples’ assessment of him, he has brought it up multiple times (both kantje in the past, mugm now) and he wants to work on that point.
Stormz understands the fear that Dumb has of his impulsiveness, and he doesn’t take it badly, because at this point Stormz knows. He highlights upon that fact multiple times.
The gold gem request is used to work on that instability/impulsiveness of his, when dumb asks him what he will do if he gets it, that isn’t Dumb talking about that specific future, it’s them explaining to Stormz that they need him to pick a goal and stick with it, not switch at the last minute. This request is conveyed by using the Mugm request as a stepping stool.
This is also connected to the fact that Stormz has started to accurately and healthily process his past, in this case especially Total Eclipse. Stormz is able to acknowledge his wrongs and mistakes, he is able to accept the affect that it had on him and not view it in a light that is extreme. (Ie; it was completely good, it was completely bad.)
Stormz is using this moment as a focal point to establish a stable sense of identity and build that from the ground up, because he’s not going to be able to do it all by himself. The same way Dumb helped Stormz let go of the past (the stabshot) Stormz is using the request to start off with a clear cut goal that he won’t switch up on, and so he can hold onto that and allow himself to basically practice on a dream that isn’t set in stone or even realistic at all.
This is why he compares Dumb and himself to Entropy - because out of all the relationships he was clued in on or knew, entropy was one of the healthiest and using that to build himself and his relation with Dumb up is what's leading to the development happening in a positive light
more prophet as an eldrich horror for shits and giggles
Refractions of…? ꩜ Reflections of [————]
purpose & penitence
mugm as the ultrakill soundtrack cover
bunnies ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎
you know me, you know how I work
sources:
lies about sea creatures - Ada Limón // you are tired (I think) - E.E Cummings // Wikipedia desire definition // meanwhile - Richard Siken // torn up road - Richard Siken // Intermezzo - Sally Rooney // the illiad - Homer // this is Minecraft’s most feared player - DragonMC // https:/ vm.tiktok.com/
you know me, you know how I work
sources:
lies about sea creatures - Ada Limón // you are tired (I think) - E.E Cummings // Wikipedia desire definition // meanwhile - Richard Siken // torn up road - Richard Siken // Intermezzo - Sally Rooney // the illiad - Homer // this is Minecraft’s most feared player - DragonMC // https:/ vm.tiktok.com/
you know me, you know how I work
sources:
lies about sea creatures - Ada Limón // you are tired (I think) - E.E Cummings // Wikipedia desire definition // meanwhile - Richard Siken // torn up road - Richard Siken // Intermezzo - Sally Rooney // the illiad - Homer // this is Minecraft’s most feared player - DragonMC // https:/ vm.tiktok.com/
showing everyone my entry for the dumbisdumb art contest since its ended ^_^
Crosstalk. (technically CCI but that doesnt sound as cool)
this is another big fat spoiler warning hello blissers you cannot read this one either
(this post is a companion post to eli's lostsignal post :D shoutout eli)
the dramatic irony in stormz comparing quakitus to mugm today is like. insane to me how viscerally potent it is while being completely unintentional on stormz's end (bliss smp the most scripted unscripted server godbless never change). stormz intends the comparison entirely positively, it's meant to affirm that he acknowledges quakitus's feelings about torchblossom as Being Fair by using mugm (someone who he respects immensely) as a reference point—"the way you [quakitus] feel about TB is the same way mugm feels about TE. you're just like mugm."
but, of course, with quakitus's having secret of being Actually Evil or whatever he instead derives his own joy and amusement out of being compared to mugm, because in their extremely warped mindset mugm is the ultimate example of The Controller.
to quakitus, reputation is a tool to be used in service of Gaining More Control, and mugm's influence and reputation precedes all (something something black hole), therefore, he has Control over the entire server. like, hey, even the person controlled her during gilded—that being wyll—falls under mugm's control now (DISCLAIMER: this is completely untrue and more of q's awesome self-rationalization of her Controller/Controlled binary view on people, with her warped view on bonds and friendship he is unable to conceptualize people being Actual Equals in a dynamic)
so, by being compared to mugm, that signals to quakitus that they're doing something right. they're Winning. q even explicitly says that they want to be in mugm's position and functionally replace him come s4
however. there is another layer of irony to this. because quakitus is Dead Fucking Wrong about mugm (as per usual tbh). despite quakitus seeing him as a Controller who has Won due to q projecting his own views onto mugm's position, ironically, mugm is one of the people on the server with the least control over his situation. mugm doesn't view his reputation as a tool, it's closer to an obstacle, an inhibitor, a prison. his Main Struggle on the server is to create a legacy for himself that actually feels like himself, the weight of the sheer influence that mugm has on the server collapses in on itself and makes it so mugm has nearly no say in how he is ultimately seen by the masses.
but quakitus themself has no qualms about being two-faced, as being seen as something they're not. again, to them it's just another asset to be utilized. quakitus's position as a more 'people pleaser'-type provides her a kind of fluidity in social maneuvering that mugm's solidified role as The Villain completely lacks in comparison, and I think it's that difference that's a big reason for the stark difference in experiences that they each have despite their actually remarkably similar mindsets otherwise. and whether or not quakitus will get to learn how it actually feels in the seat of the most powerful, I guess we can only wait to see in s4 ^_^
MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING. I KNOW BLISS MEMBERS DON’T REALLY ABIDE BY THOSE SORTS OF THINGS BUT IM ASKING NICELY AND SERIOUSLY TO PERHAPS NOT CLICK ON THIS ONE PLEASE THANK YOU :3
I want to sort of use Stormz’s comment towards Quakitus from yesterday’s stream—“You’re just like Mugm”—to bring up how, like, he’s right but not in the way anybody in the scene actually thinks. Q and Mugm are genuinely very compelling foils because of how extremely similar they are, but both characters are too biased by their own perspective to identify how (that is not a complaint, it actually really adds to this moment). The rest of this post will be sort of divorced from the context that comment was made in, but I feel like talking about the truth in it before discussing it in actuality (that is, discussing the irony of it. post about that here shoutout solis) is interesting in of itself.
I think the ways they’re similar can be read on a surface level: preoccupied with control and power, prescriptive judgements of the nature of other people and of the world around them. There are of course others (that I feel like I would derail this post by talking about). But in regards to those surface level observations, I actually don’t think that’s what makes them truly similar. The way I think they’re similar is specifically because both of their worldviews are efforts to give their suffering and trauma meaning. It’s extremely difficult to face the fact that you might’ve been or are currently being badly hurt with ultimately no grander recompense, so it’s very common for people to try to derive some lesson or purpose out of pain. Most often this is also a form of trying to avoid re-encountering that pain or trauma by warping the rest of the world around it—either to compensate for or avoid acknowledging the existence of that trauma (sometimes both simultaneously, by normalizing/genericizing it). Both Quakitus’s categorization of relationships into Controller and Controlled and Mugm’s understanding of the world as a holy stage in which his role serves the highest purpose are forms of this.
But, like, before we talk about how those mindsets actually accomplish their goals as coping mechanisms we have to understand what they’re coping For. And it kind of happens that those are also extremely similar, in that Q and Mugm are both attempting to rationalize retraumatization (the initial trauma being violent and/or sudden abandonment) under different contexts.
For Mugm:
Wyll’s betrayal in S2’s finale—which lead to emotional and physical humiliation from having to fight the entire server essentially alone— was heavily traumatic for Mugm and he compensated for it in S3 by changing the way he approached teams. He creates an identity centered around servitude and usefulness rather than self-centered domination to make sure a betrayal of that magnitude would never happen again. Obviously, Nezo’s betrayal happens despite all his effort, and it’s a betrayal where Mugm is deliberately singled out and excised for performing role-servitude Too Well (and later his entire time in that team would be recontextualized as him being dehumanized and taken advantage of).
For Quakitus:
Team Friendship is of course an elephant in the room, but I’m kind of reluctant to talk about it until videos come out because we don’t know the precise ways Q coped with Silva leaving the team or what exactly happened afterward. I did want to mention it because Team Friendship is important background for her. But I actually wanted to focus on Team Mesa as sort of an origin point. You can see in her Dragon Games video how much emotional stock she placed in this team (as opposed to Team Friendship whose goals Q didn’t seem actively invested in during its time nor afterward). Mesa really seems like the first team he genuinely identified with, to the extent that he kind of came across as “team lead.” Of course, Mesa ended with both Nezo and Nufuli betraying for Brotherhood in relatively quick succession, instilling deep trust issues and insecurity in their abilities within a team. So Quakitus compensates for this by, for lack of better vocabulary, becoming a follower. They go along with what Wyll wants because doing their own thing got them punished with betrayal and they don’t trust that it won’t repeat, so they do the opposite in an effort to prevent that. Yet like Nezo with Mugm, Wyll betrays anyway and deliberately singles her out as the reason why Gilded falls apart and faults the identity she adopted as a coping mechanism. Alrey would later echo this sentiment, becoming yet another unexpected abandonment.
Both of these are instances of Mugm and Quakitus attempting to cope with their trauma by rationalizing it as a product of themselves, yet being suddenly thrust into the exact same position again even having adapted to avoid that. What this did is teach them they essentially have no control over whether they are hurt or not. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Which is why their mindsets become so expansive and entrenched in their identities—they are accomodating for the perceived contradictions in the “reason” why they were traumatized. I also think it’s notable that both Quakitus and Mugm’s retraumatization involves disparagment of their identity and an assessment of their worth—Quakitus in terms of her relationships and Mugm in terms of his humanity, which is where they differ and what determines the focus of their defensive worldviews.
Quakitus’s mindset causes her to understand the world through lenses of control, where people exist to be useful—The Controlled—and power involves both being able to persuade people into being used and being able to discard someone once they’re useless—The Controller. This rationalizes the circumstances of her abandonments, where she explains Mesa’s betrayals in terms of not being persuasive enough for people to stay (he was a weak Controller) and Wyll’s betrayal in terms of not being useful enough to avoid being discarded (he was an inadequate Controlled).
In her mind, the way to avoid being hurt again is therefore to become the Ultimate Controller. The Ultimate Controller has no risk of being discarded and people seek them out to be controlled by. Quakitus accomplishes both through her recently-contextualized “persona”—he acts nice and kind and moral to attract people toward him, and the fact that it is an act and he supposedly doesn’t truly care allows him to, ideally, be unaffected in the case people don’t stay. Her suffering is given meaning in that it taught her something, and now she is able to be safe and exercise power (attaining mythics and then throwing them away) because of it.
Mugm’s mindset heavily revolves around dehumanization and coping with his own, after Brotherhood was recontextualized for him. I have a separate post about how normalizing his trauma by dehumanizing the rest of the world alongside himself lets him avoid thinking about the specificity of his trauma, but it also saves his ego from the idea that there was something uniquely and categorically wrong about him that caused Nezo’s betrayal (and the subsequent conflicts afterward). In his mind the only difference between him and anyone else is that he is Performing His Role (which has shifted from Protector back again to Villain) better than them. It’s crucial to understand that he doesn’t see the world in terms of evil and good, only this role and performance idea where success and perseverence determines worth.
This idea is only further reinforced by outside factors other people like Wyll and Mani, the latter of which introduces another crucial element that shapes his later worldview—which is the idea of higher purpose. That there’s some divine purpose to certain types of role-performances and those who are good at it are “deserving” as opposed to failure, which is sin. Mugm’s role becomes the most esteemed—the thing that keeps Bliss alive. With nobody to end the server, there will be no new cycle. Bliss will rot and die. Therefore, his suffering is given meaning in that it was and is in pursuit of serving Bliss Itself—a purpose he enjoys fulfilling, literally given to him by the divine.
Now that both of these worldviews are fully developed and entrenched, and neither of these characters are exactly being subjected to such severe stress anymore, they’re able to develop actual concrete goals in accordance to their now-stable mindsets. Quakitus’s motivations as of now are primarily her own fun even at the expense of others (she has fun with the mythics, she has fun manipulating people to act how she wants, and then feel safe in knowing she can throw both away when they aren’t fun anymore), while Mugm’s still revolve almost entirely around performance (he wants a massive, exciting finale with real challenge rather than a simple, boring stomp that nobody will care about afterward). Though both are definitely hedonistic, Quakitus believes the world exists to serve her, while Mugm believes he exists to serve the world.
When looked at through the lens of Bliss being a commentary on it’s own medium as an artform, these two can be interpreted as two different philosophies on art itself—where the end-point Quakitus’s mindset posits that art is for the artist to enjoy making, while Mugm’s mindset posits that art is for the audience to enjoy seeing. And I think that sort of dynamic wouldn’t be nearly as compelling if they weren’t as similar as they are.
Don't read this one if you are a bliss member I am SERIOUS THIS TIME!!!!!!!!!! I MEAN IT!!!!!!!!! pretty please :D but like fr I'm actually serious
I Do think quakitus is being completely truthful about intentionally manipulating people to gain friendships and have people rely solely on her because she can only conceptualize herself as being wanted if she is The Only Option Left, that mindset being basically the logical conclusion of the trust and abandonment issues caused by repeated betrayal trauma. HOWEVER: I think quakitus conflating this with them having "never cared about anyone [since gilded breakup]" during the speech to sans is a Coping Mechanism (post-q stream edit: or an intimidation tactic I guess? I still think my interpretation I wrote down yesterday is more interesting so I'm rolling with it unless I get bashed over the head for it later SORRY)
it's a coping mechanism to both emotionally distance himself from people, (being emotional, being sentimental, q believes those traits have no use in a world like bliss, or atleast have no use to Him. so she (tries to) cut off those traits) and to rationalize their actions within their own black/white mindset—you are either a Good Person or a Bad Person, and more importantly, you are either The Controller or The Controlled.
and to be Affected by the actions of others, in this case specifically the actions of silva, that is the direct opposite of what he wants. in their black/white mindset there is very little room if not none at all for any exceptions, so admitting that silva has Any sort of power over q's actions, no matter how small, would mean that she does not have the ultimate authority over silva that she would prefer to have. and q is extremely preoccupied with asserting himself as The Controller—'control' being the main thing that quakitus is seeking at the core of it all—which is why he says he doesn't care about ANYONE, including silva.
this is going to be a Liiitttle bit of a tangent but I see a lot of ppl hung up on this specific point so. I don't believe this is really False but I don't think this is fully True either (letting sans go at this point from a purely logical strategic standpoint is kinda. Bad? so it shows q does prioritize 'keeping' silva to some extent.) but to be clear, this is #MyPersonalTake on "Is Quakitus Lying About Not Caring?": I don't think it matters!!!!!!!!! :D
quakitus being "not genuine" for all this time doesn't really necessarily discount any bonds that she has on the server and I think it's a little bit reductive to say it does. like. um. ok I can't figure out a way to word this 'objectively' so personal anecdote: I consider myself to be someone with low empathy and doesn't really "naturally" care about people, so I have to consciously on purpose put in Effort to care about people. and I keep friendships because I Like Attention. that's just kinda how my brain works? and this is Basically the same way I view quakitus's character conceptualizing "care". what's the difference between lines of code and chemicals in a brain? where does the 'human' end, and where does the 'robot' begin in a cyborg? if a robot becomes indistinguishable from a human, does its origins still matter? (the 'isolating somebody until they have nobody but quakitus left' part is still fucked up tho that's like the actual. like. evil bad villain action LMFAO) (ok back to the control thesis)
also, considering that q says that the origin point of this mindset was Gilded Breakup, which is about as close to a canonical Traumatic Event as one can get, I think gilded breakup just kinda. broke. something in her head. and all the "lying", all the "manipulation", whatever you want to call it, it's all ultimately a trauma response to that event. the lesson that quakitus learned on that day was that useless things are to be thrown away by powerful people. the only way to prevent being left is to become the person who can leave. what makes you powerful isn't to have a hoard of mythics, but to have the ability to discard them once you're done Having Fun. power isn't strength, power is control.
eclipsed or smth