I was watching AvM 35 (Note Block Concert) with my little siblings and noticed that a bunch of characters from past seasons (mostly season 3) are in the audience. I'm not sure if anyone's pointed this out yet, so why not make an analysis post about it?
So welcome to
Note Block Concert: Audience Analysis
⬇ As the episode begins and Green takes his first bow, you can see that one or some of Blue's piglin friends were invited, there's a withered skeleton from Monster School, and a skeleton with an arm wrapped around... The Witch...? for some reason...??
(To be honest I wasn't expecting the gang to invite the Witch to their concert. Perhaps they made amends or something.)
And then - recognize those zombies in the back, behind the Witch? Those are none other than the singing zombies from AvM 29. (The baby zombie is barely visible but he's there with the rest of his buddies.)
A few more minutes into the episode, we can see that Reuben (Red's pig) was also invited. And he brought his family, a callback to "Piggy Love - and Actual Short," when he got married. (He apparently er, had more kids.)
Sitting in front of Reuben and his family we can also see a cow, a dog, a fox, and a sheep. I'm just theorizing here, but I think it's safe to say those are the same singing animals that Green met in Note Block Universe.
There are plenty more chameos that we can see in the episode that you might miss if you weren't paying attention, especially the quick scene cuts during the panic when the silverfish were invading the auditorium.
You can see Fletcher, one of the villagers in the Raid episode that Blue and Yellow befriended. I think it's safe to assume that Farmer and Fisher were invited as well.
Hey, look, there's the wandering trader and one of his beatboxing llamas that Green encountered in AvM 29. (I wonder why he invited him.)
And look, Red invited some Monster School buddies. Not to mention, the Yellow Team - Spider, Skellington, and Endie - are all sitting beside each other. I love that it implies that they're still best friends and are there to show Red their support.
Also a minute detail that Warden is here too, but he's not panicking because he can't see anything lol.
These parrots look familiar. ⬇
They could be the same birds that Red had from Texture Pack, which is a crazy callback. I could be wrong, but hey, it's just a theory.
Did I miss anything? If so please point them out hehe! Thanks <3
King Orange and Purple also made it, which everyone already knows. (I couldn't put another picture here sobs)
Anyway, those are some extremely quick, minor details and cameos, but I appreciate the attention to all of the episodes. Big W for Alan and the team.
Yes, you read that right. Purple and cherry blossoms. (Im so normal about it.)
I feel like this detail is extremely overlooked in Alan's series. While I see it a bit in fanart and fanfiction, I rarely see the fandom talking about it. Which isn't bad obviously.
But I think this tiny detail is and will be significant - especially after the release of AvM 37.
First: there's a pattern with Purple. And it's very consistent.
In all the seasons (not including Actual Shorts) involving Purple, there's a story to tell about a character who's lost so much, so much that she's trying her very hardest to gain whatever she's lost back again.
The consistent pattern I'm trying to point out is loving/gaining, losing, loving/gaining, losing, and so on.
First, she loved her parents. Then, she lost her parents. (Not just Orchid, keep in mind. She lost Navy too - permanently, as far as I can tell.)
Then, the Color Gang's (Green and Blue specifically) trust was gained. And quickly lost.
League of Legends came along. She gained the trust of the Color Gang again.
The events of AvM season three happened. She yet again lost the trust of the Color Gang. But then, they (the Color Gang, specifically, Green) gave her the best, most valuable gift one person give to the other - forgiveness. Therefore, she loved yet again and gained their love, trust, and respect, and even moved in with King.
Season five is happening now...who (but Alan and the team obviously) knows how this pattern could continue...
So, what does this have to do with cherry blossoms???
I did some research (wow yes I did research for a silly billy analysis post) about the meaning of cherry blossoms.
There's two sides to the flower - one positive, one negative. Here's the negative side:
"...Fleeting nature of life, beauty, and love... EASILY SHATTERING...."
Sounds awfully familiar.
And, here's the positive side.
"New beginnings, hope, and renewal...love, affection, and friendship..."
INTERESTING....
So, in short: Cherry blossoms are very relevent and significant to Purple's character. In fact, they have nearly everything to do with Purple's character.
She loves. She loses. Loves again...loses once more.
New beginnings. Fleeting...love. Hope. Easily shattered.
Then I figured, that's why she's trying so hard to be a good friend, especially in AvM 37. She can't bear to lose the first people who have ever shown her true forgiveness and love.
and then, AS IF THE SYMBOLISM COULDN'T GET WORSE - where exactly did Yellow settle on putting their base in AvM 37??
Hey guys, I was rewatching AvM and I have a question: does anyone else feel like Purple is younger than the other stick figures? I ask this because I feel “odd” about his attitude compared with the CG, as if he was still a kid. But before starting I want to point that this idea not only is due to Purple’s behaviour, I see this too because sometimes he looks a few inches shorter than the color gang. Now we can start:
In the “Villangers” episode he seems to be very fast into jumping in conclusions, in this episode he jailed Blue and Green for trading with the villagers and thinking he got replaced. While this is a traumatic response the fact that the decision was to jail them shows that he was having a bad time with learning how to deal with his emotions, something that in fiction gets relationed with teenangers and troubled kids tropes to show that they are troubled. To reinforce this idea: before we were given Purple’s past this scene seemed like a trantum from a brat, or, a kid with no emotional control and full of impulses.
In the next episode the way he resigned to give back the dragon’s egg. I don’t feel like it was genuine at all (specially with all the traumatic stuff), but felt more like a scolded kid that learned a lesson by force and has to live with it now. With this in mind, we can see that at this point Purple still kept some of the kindness his mother showed to him, but was slowly sliping into his “dark side”. This changes in behaviour and creation of personality are usually related to teenanger years and characters due to the importance of this life phase in the molding of the future adults. In narrative levels we should point that this struggle between selfishness and kindness attitude are often related to teen characters that will either grow out of it and mature or become antagonists in the future.
All his attitude in the AvLoL short. What can I say about this? I’m not going to center on the “he hacked and ate the champions’ data to win” stuff because this, from my perspective, can be saw as a massive tantrum without the context of ep 29. Rather I want to point that while this was a tantum, it came from a very emotionally wounded child that recently lost a chance to see a father that didn’t cared about him due to high expectations and lack of appreciation in the “trying” part, of course he was bitter and angry with the gang, specially given that he wasn’t cool-headed. After this I want to point that he did a very novice (and stupid) thing: instead of destroying the gang’s tower he rushed to protect his tower, losing the game, showing again that while he is still cunning and sneaky he still had a lot to learn and it showed that he was childish prideful and reckless, not able to make priorities or sense with his actions. The second thing I want to point in this is the sore loser attitude: this attitude is often associated with kids; he also sits down with the head hidden in his knees, posture that is associated with childish behaviour too, reinforcing this “toxic child player” profile of the character and the gang has to comfort him after this.
In “The witch”, when he tells the gang what he wants to do with them he is very excited and starts to move his arms like crazy, and being honest, after the other sad points I want to say that this is very childish in a cute way. In “parkour” the way he laughs at the gang’s panick after Yellow falling and returning and the way he shows the gang that it was a “safe” environment seems like a kid showing older people that they don’t need to worry. Later, in the same episode, King headpats him like a child and he seems very happy, an interaction usually showed between an older and younger character and in this case is a way to manipulate him with affection, usually a toxic trait that is often showed when a kid is being manipulated by toxic adults (keep in mind that before ep 29 and 30 we thought king was a psycho). Purple also claps in exciment at King’s plan, like a kid celebrating a good idea they had or a plan that they really like and want to do.
In “the ultimate weapon” episode we can see that when he tries to take the staff he really looks like throwing a tantrum in a very “I want to have it too” way, another behaviour that is often relationated to childish behaviour, specially from kids that are often seen as selfish, troubled or that lack social skills/ettiquete. In the real-time version we can see that while TSC and King were fighting Purple was in fear and having a mental breakdown. How he expressed this?: By curling up against the wall with head against the knees and hands covering his head, then grabs his head and hits it with his hands. This is used in fiction to show scared kids in a very dangerous situation.
In the “note block universe” there is a theory that the rythm types used can be readed as an introduction to Purple’s introspection. Is also interesting that the first rythm we see is a very childish song sang by talking animals, tropes very used in animation; animation is a very stigmatized media due to “is for kids” stereotype, but if this “theory” is something really took in mind in the production of the episode then the stereotype is used to point that Purple is still a kid, which just makes his story more heartbreaking than what alredy is. But despite the heartbreaking stuff it makes the hug between him and Green as something really beatiful and heartwarming, like a big brother comforting and cheering his little sibling.
In “The king” when he shows King his capacities and abilities he waves his arms and points at himself to get his attention and approval, his hole body screaming “look at me, I’m very good! Did I impressed you? Did you liked it?”, very common in kids that try to prove themselves to adults. When King suffers his introspection we see Gold turning into Purple as he started to see Purple as a new adopted child, idea reinforced by the flashbacks we get during the blast scene. When he is trapped in that black space we can see him crying with his “head on knees” stance again. And when he gets adopted by king we can see some childish exciment, in the credits this new family are in the same park King and Gold used to go in the past, which ends the parallelism of a hurted father adopting someone that ressembled his kid.
In the shorts we can see more of Purple being a kid by doing things like offering King a cookie as a surprise, inviting him to skate while spinning in a very “Lets do something cool” way and waving hands in exciment while King chuckles at this. In the “piggie love” short he is the only one that reacts like a kid: he covers his eyes with both hands to not see what’s going on.
After pointing all of this I would say that I believe Purple is even younger than the color gang. This leaves us with a character that had to met his father’s expectations as a very young kid and suffered an abandoment, then he had to bury his mother a few years later (I headcannon that he was probably even younger than his actual age) and had to grow up very fast to survive completly alone in a world where he didn’t had any support and ended up turning into a sneaky backstabber with emotional troubles and no control over impulses due to lack of guiadance and the trauma scars, which is just heartbreaking for anyone to go thru. At the end he ended up getting acepted and adopted by people that cares about him, but the fact that this painful story repeats itself is way too common in our society and makes it more sadder, but also serves to move us and remember that we have to make our part too.
How Can AvM Be Canon Within AvM? (Analysis/Headcanon)
Alright, so it's been, what, two, two and a half weeks since The King came out and downright imploded the fandom? There's so much going on during every second and every little detail counts. There've been revelations of Mango and Purple's narrative foiling, of what Mango's backstory means for the ages of the rest of the cast, and of what this means for the Beckerverse at large.
However, one odd little loose end continues to nag at a lot of us, it seems.
How is it possible for the original AvM video to exist within the continuity of the AvM "Shorts"?
I've seen a lot of speculation about whether in-universe Alan just has his screen recorder on all the time or not, and what this means for the apparent father figure to the very sticks in the video. Are the videos like vlogs in-universe? Do the sticks know they're being watched by millions of strangers?
I'd like to think I've figured it out. See, a post like this almost could have been made months ago, back when Green first saw Mango's explanation of the plan to Purple…except we didn't have one key factor then that we do now.
And that key factor…
…is Herobrine.
Lemme explain.
See, a lot of pieces of the puzzle fall into place once you work out Herobrine's whole deal. For context, in the original AvM video, he possesses Red and forces them to battle the rest of the Color Gang for seemingly no reason. When he next appears in Monster School, he's…
…a teacher?
Now, I'm not going to talk too much about the ins and outs of Monster School- that's not a canon I'm familiar with. What I am familiar with, though, is the previous Animation Vs. videos. Why on earth would a Minecraft cryptid who, by all appearances, should have a grudge against ROYGB…not have a grudge?
I mean, you've seen him in action.
If Red wasn't an unexpected-but-welcome visitor, we would have known. Instead, we got Herobrine making Red come to class. Almost like saying "Get in here- you might actually learn something."
And while he's pretty insistent that Red sticks around for class, as visibly Not A Mob as Red is, he's also a pretty chill teacher, all things considered.
At least, until his students are endangered.
Now, how does this characterization of Herobrine mesh with that from the original AvM, when the characterization for everybody else is so rock-solid that we're able to associate Minecraft proficiencies with stick figures who are visually indistinguishable save by color?
Simple: it doesn't.
Now, I'm not saying we've got two Herobrines running around, I'm saying that the Herobrine we meet in Monster School is, as it were, Beckerverse Herobrine's natural state.
The original AvM was an acting gig.
I'd even go so far as to suggest that almost all the "Animation Vs" videos that aren't AvM "Shorts" were planned out in-universe, and there's a simple way to tell which ones would have been planned and which ones weren't.
Does it happen on Alan's desktop (or an expansion of it)? It was most likely planned.
This goes for Vs. Youtube, Vs. Mario, Vs. Arcade Games, and Vs. Minecraft. An argument could even be made for AvM S1E1- The Rediscovery.
It does not go for Vs. League of Legends.
(Don't worry, I'll be coming back to Herobrine later. I'm not through with him yet.)
Now, Vs. League of Legends, while originally teased at the end of Vs. Minecraft, does not actually pick up from where Vs. Minecraft left off. It takes place sometime after season 1 of the AvM shorts, and it takes place within League itself.
It also features Purple.
I won't go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that the bit of character development we get here does seem to translate directly to the Parkour episode of AvM S3- in the previous AvM short with Purple in it, the rainbow squad leaves on less-than-friendly terms with Purple, what with Blue and Green being left to fall to their deaths and Purple being tossed in Minecraft jail, and all. In Vs. League, however, we get a good, old-fashioned stick fight between ROYGB and Purple, and it would be expected for the two sides to part as frustrated acquaintances at best…
…and then they go for another round, this time switching up who the 'villain' is and getting Purple to play with them.
Then, in Parkour, Purple uses this newfound trust to get them into the parkour trap. (And I could yell (hyperfixation) about Purple here, too, but I'm trying to focus purely on the meta right now so skdjskdjdk)
See, season 1 of AvM originally takes place on Alan's PC, but it does take a detour through the Nether and out through multiple different Minecraft worlds before the sticks finally get back.
Season 2, short as it is, takes place entirely on the desktop. (Or desktop-adjacent, in the case of the Lucky Blocks episode. Even in that trippy Lucky Block Dimension, the sticks can still influence the desktop directly.)
Season 3…well.
Season 3 takes us out of Alan's PC right from the get-go, and while there is a brief return or two before the end, it's still a direct continuation of what's been happening on the other side of the portal.
And what a happening it's been!
We've got the squad being split up multiple times, we've got a looming threat on the verge of deleting Minecraft, and we've even got a brief detour through somebody else's copy of the game.
But how does all this mesh together?
Well, like I said, if my theory is correct, the Animation Vs. videos (minus Vs. LoL) were all staged, at least to some degree. That means that, for all intents and purposes, Herobrine's original possession of Red was planned out beforehand and given the green light.
Maybe some of the other AvM videos were too, maybe they weren't. Unless we see them within the context of new AvM videos themselves, I don't think we'll ever know for sure.
But the videos that follow the sticks off the desktop are almost certainly videos that just don't exist in the Beckerverse. If in-universe Alan has a screen recorder trained on his desktop for funsies, he likely doesn't send his digicameras to follow the sticks around as they leave to do who-knows-what.
So what does this mean for the father figure to our favorite stick figures?
I propose that the Animation Vs. videos that could have been filmed using just Alan's screen recorder were, while videos that involve the sticks leaving to go who-knows-where weren't. The build battles, the first two music-related episodes, the first rollercoaster video, those were all done with at least the knowledge that what they were doing was being recorded. (I personally like to think in-universe Alan runs any "hey remember this? let's make it a video!" ideas past the sticks before uploading, but that's just me.)
Blue and Green leaving for the Nether the first time and ending up on Purple's Macbook, and everything that comes directly of it? That happens "off-camera" and probably isn't uploaded to in-universe Youtube.
The events of S3 as a whole, taking place almost entirely off of Alan's PC, wouldn't have been recorded, either.
Which brings us back to Herobrine. His first appearance, his acting gig, was definitely on Alan's desktop. In this context, it'd be like if you managed to successfully get Bigfoot to shoot a video with you- you shoot the video, you bid Bigfoot farewell, and you never expect to run into him again.
Except Red did.
When Herobrine sees Red in the halls, his first instinct is not to tell Red to get lost, the way it would be if he'd recognized Red and left ROYGB on bad terms. He squints at Red- and I would bet money that he does recognize them, because how many stick figures would a Minecraft Creepypasta brought to life even know?- and invites Red to class.
That's not something you do with somebody you dislike, especially when kids you care about, your students, are on the line and you've got the means to protect them.
Now, we know from Monster School and The King that Herobrine is perfectly capable of what we saw in the original AvM, but that he's also capable of so much more. The Doylist explanation is just that Alan and the crew came up with more abilities to show off after growing their skills for years on end.
The Watsonian explanation is that, well, in a scripted video, Herobrine didn't need to pull out all the stops. The original AvM was plenty entertaining as it was, and the sticks are durable enough to do things, like, say, brawl with each other in a website without end. If the first AvM was scripted, who's to say they were even really endangered?
(The AvA videos and the actually-short shorts…kinda hurt my brain to think about in this context. So I won't. At least, not yet.)
But they were definitely endangered in The King, and when Herobrine is in danger of getting pulled into the staff, nobody moves…
…except for Red.
Red was possessed in the seemingly-scripted original AvM video and, if they'd had a bad experience with being possessed for a video, they likely wouldn't have brought attention to themself right at this moment. If they hadn't, they might have beaten themself up over not doing so later, but their first thought in the moment wouldn't be to get closer.
But it was. They did.
And we all know what happened next.
We know that plot points from the original AvM are still true in-universe, scripted though the video may be.
Herobrine's abilities...
...the power of the Minecraft icon...
...that's all stuff that comes back later on.
Which brings us to the Mango man himself and the moment that's breaking all of our brains.
In-universe, if the only videos that exist are the ones that take place solely on or around one guy's desktop, who's to say stick figures in the interspace believe that anything that happens in them could be real? They don't go on that guy's PC. As evidenced by the Minecraft booth from Mango's backstory, they need a whole Star Trek holodeck-on-steroids setup to even get into Minecraft without using Minecraft mechanics directly, and this likely goes for other games as well.
Mango, however, was desperate enough to turn to Minecraft myths for his revenge plan. He's already considering things outside the box- who's to say he can't get the Minecraft icon from wherever the ROYGB sticks are?
So when he puts up his posters declaring that he wants to find the sticks who most people probably consider to be actors, who else would respond than the one stick we on the outside have seen before, the one stick who knows that the videos may be scripted but the abilities are certainly real?
When Purple sees Mango's Minecraft basement, they're looking around in awe, sure, but given that the use of Minecraft mechanics seems to be restricted outside of Minecraft, to the point that Mango needed to make a shady alleyway deal to get his hands on a command block…well, I'd be surprised too.
But they recognize the Nether portal for what it is, and they don't hesitate to follow Mango through.
There's probably a lot to be said regarding Purple's motivations at this point- given the assumption that Vs. LoL happened off-camera, for Purple to then turn around and lure the sticks into the parkour trap for Mango…there's something more going on there, there's gotta be. Something that might have been expanded on in a musical number, perhaps?
however this post took several hours of thinking to do and the better part of a day to make legible for tumblr, and i wound up passing out at one point, so i think i'm done for now wodjskdkd. i'd like to think i've at least clarified which videos would be available in-universe and why.
now if anybody needs me, i'm gonna go rewatch s3 and cry again :',D
I was watching Alan Becker AvM and I have the need to talk about the fact/detail that Purple compensates his lack of raw force with brains and cunning. Hell, I think this cunning is a trait underrated by the fandom; we know and talk of his backstabber tendencies, his treacherous side, his ambitions and now his daddy issues, but I don’t see too much people talking about how smart he is
I mean:
—Slips his way to a computer and becomes the ruler of a village, a ruler loved enough that his subjects made a statue of him. Also the fact that he knew about the ender dragon egg and how to avoid an enderman attack, which would allow him to fight without risking to suffer an attack from them. This means that collecting the ender eyes was more likely stealling them since if they didn’t sensed him they never knew what killed them.
—Manipulated Green and Blue by making them co-dragons once he found out their potential as rivals and stairs to his goal. He drags them into fighting the ender dragon, limiting to observe and wait until he could steal the egg. And even if the plan had a little turn he still obtained the egg. I have to say that when he obtained his elytra he was searching for any trap until he was secure it wasn’t any (it kinda backfires, but also noted he ignored the chest to go for the elytra)
—In AvLoL he hacked the game programing, that required some brains. When he got caught and his clones destroyed; did he engaged on a fight knowing he is physically weak? Yes, but first he obtained all the champion’s powers by eating their data. Second was shocked when he did it. And why to battle a fight with a moral code if it means a clear lose? He just went onto the most pragmatic and smart decission there (also, it’s seems that the baron responded to its own code)
—He manipulates the gang into falling into a trap. Maybe planned by King Orange and citating tv tropes “It seems thanks to the videos that they knew about their competitive tendencies, always getting more intense when some competition happens”. So the fact is that they still didn’t trusted him if AvLoL is cannon, yet they fell in the trap is impressive and shows his charisma and ability to easy win others’ trust while exploting their flaws.
—How do you fight the Second Comming, the succesor of The Choosen One and one of his friends that is the one that throws himself to battle with no fear? How can you steal one of their most valuable treasures in the PC while they are watching you? Only pretend that you aren’t up to nothing and try to approach the minecraft cube. If you have to battle against them don’t engage into a battle; just use the environment and a few punches at your favor. This sequence for me is fascinating, Purple, after trying to fight SC and Red unsuccessfully just goes into a more aggresive strategy for someone like him: he just threw a few punches to confuse and keep them away from him, used the start menu to make the strongest back off and while they got up and lunged he only sliped towards the cube from the menu while jumping off into the portal. The cube was his target, engaging in a fight would had made him fail since he isn’t strong enough, so he just used his brains to slip out while accomplishing his mission. And it worked at least until the scene where Red was following him with the Piglin kid and his hoglin.
Purple is very smart and cunning and it makes sense since he had to be on his own, he was the one caring for his mother in a hostile world, his father made clear he is physically weak and when “Orchid” died he had to travel, maybe from PC to PC and maybe the internet (and if it’s true this means he had to escape from foes stronger and more dangerous than him, also the chaos of TCO and TDL going on. It would be worst if he comes from the internet since he would had lived it as a child, hardly a teen); all alone, being a weak fighter and only his brains to protect him and helping him to survive.
But let’s remember that he has ambition and determination, so this three traits combined let him slip and escape from dangerous situations and, in consequence survive. He probably learned skills not only from his father, but also from observing his surroundings and elements in it, analyzing the best ways to use them in practical means rather than just throw himself into some “epic stickman fight”. Jokes on “Indigo”, his son became stronger in his own way.
Sadly Purple doesn’t seems to see this due to his dad influence and his flaw of trusting and willness to impress authority figures by proving himself to be strong and useful, with addition of his own poor self-steem he didn’t had time or will to improve this side of himself until reaching a peek point in any positive way; maybe he sees his cunning as a fiendish flaw product of his past, abandonment, loneliness and need to survive in a world that would had teared him alive if he didn’t used it in the way he did. If the series continue after this season I hope to see him getting closer to the stick gang, as they are willing to accept him as how he is and maybe help him realize that his brains aren’t a flaw, but something wonderful and then teaching and letting him improve and become stronger in his own unique, fascinating way.
