#mcsm posting

[roguefort-cookie]

They're all in a polycule my dad is John Telltale and he told me so. Jesse has -100 charisma

Sorry abt my shitty handwriting 😔

Bonus

[ccliffjumperr]

[roguefort-cookie]

[roguefort-cookie]

I need to kiss Petra and Lukas NOW!!!!!!!! -Jesse, probably.

[ccliffjumperr]

My joke headcanon for where Romeo was during the witherstorm arc was that he was taking a nap and when the formidi-bomb went off it woke him up and he was watching the events of episode 4 like

[ccliffjumperr]

I'm not done talking about Romeo yet, sorry.

I don't think his redemption (as in "he realized what he did was wrong" not "he made up for every horrible thing he did", i should find a better word for this) was "out of nowhere". I think that that talk with Jesse on the roof was what started to change his mind about stuff. "Next time" he really would try to be a better person... but he's still going to bedrock over this world. Because why bother trying to fix things that he messed up when he could just have a new fresh start?

So when he lost his powers, he knew he was defeated and there was no point in trying to win. Since he isn't so stubborn about being the one in control now, he could think more about what Jesse said to him, and what he had done and why it was wrong. And why he needed to fix it.

Of course at first he wanted to run from his problems by staying in Terminal Space. Many people that he's hurt would celebrate his death, so this is what he deserves, right? No. This still isn't the right thing to do.

If Jesse chooses to take him with them, he realizes that he shouldn't die to avoid facing the consequences of his actions. So either he escapes from Terminal Space with the others and decides to make an effort to help people he's hurt and make up for what he's done, or he sacrifices himself not to die, but to save Jesse and their friends.

So TLDR- him changing his mind wasn't as immediate as it looks at first glance, Romeo just needed to get past his stubbornness and need to be in control to fully realize that even if he was going to make an effort to be a better person, he shouldn't bedrock over everything just to hide his mistakes from himself.

[ccliffjumperr]

He’s my favorite character, so it’s predictable that I was gonna talk about Lukas eventually. I played early season one episodes and season 2 episodes back to back, so it was really interesting to see how much his character had changed! So here are some Lukas related miscellaneous rambles under the cut. Warning, it’s a very long ramble.

(Disclaimer: A lot of the rambles are thoughts that would be from Lukas’ perspective, so if it sounds like I’m actually saying everything is his fault or something similar, I’m not, unless I explicitly say that. I’m just saying that that is how it feels to him)

First, let’s talk about his bravery and blaming himself.

In the very, very beginning, he’s really just some guy. Everyone (except Petra) is just some guy. They don’t know how deal with an event as devastating as the Witherstorm. So I can’t blame Lukas for freezing up. But he can.

He already feels bad about it in episodes 1 and 2- despite him getting defensive when Axel gets mad at him, he really does blame himself for what happened. He thinks he deserves to be left out in the rain, he thinks he deserves to not have anything to eat (too bad because I always give him the cookie).

Maybe he can keep trying. He can make up for his cowardice from before. He’s trying! He really is trying! If Jesse falls into the endermen pit (I did that because I wanted to see what would happen) he jumps down to help them. But then immediately runs away screaming when the endermen get aggressive.

Him blaming himself gets even worse when Petra (I’ve always saved her) comes back. Yes, he’s happy that she’s alive and okay, but then... we get to episode 3. Lukas knows there’s something wrong, if you watch him in the background of some of the scenes, you can see him looking at Jesse and Petra with suspicion. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he knows there’s something. And if anything bad happened to Petra, he believes it’s his fault. More on this later.

If Jesse tells him about the withersickness, it may ease some of the worry of not knowing what’s wrong- but now he knows Petra really is dying.

And it’s his fault.

It feels like he’s done NOTHING to help the team. Yeah, he may have given them an extra slimeball, but that was something small. He got himself trapped in the basement and had to be rescued by Jesse, inconveniencing everyone. He froze up when Petra needed his help. Sure, he did help fortify the base, but it wasn’t just him it was also Axel/Olivia. He ran away like a coward when he and Jesse were in the endermen pit. And he’s been arguing with everything Jesse or the others have said this whole time.

But depending on the dialogue options, Jesse can tell him “if you think that, then this is your chance to make up for it!” and they’re right. He’s being a burden by moping around feeling sorry for himself, he can do better. He can help.

However, being told that doesn’t make everything good and happy again. Because Lukas still does think it was all his fault. He just stops talking about it. So what he does instead is try and put other’s needs before his own. He can take care of himself after he makes sure everyone else is alright.

That’ll be brought up again later, but I’m gonna wrap up this segment with talking about episode 4.

Lukas does step up. He’s a lot braver now. He distracts the Witherstorm, trying to get all of its attention on him. That’s a lot! Especially compared to how terrified he was back in episode 1! And it isn’t like he just suddenly snapped and became braver, it happened over the course of the last few episodes. He helped build things in the path of the Witherstorm in episode 3, he led people through the End (depending on the player choices), he wanted to go out alone to find his friends, etc.

While it may not have started that way, Lukas is brave.

The next segment is Lukas’ way to cope with these stressful situations.

Lukas was the leader in his previous group, it’s what he’s used to. And when a situation feels out of control, he tries to take that control back. Unfortunately for him, Jesse is the protagonist. So he is not getting that control, and that’s stressing him out even more! This is very apparent in episode 3.

So many stressful and horrible things have been happening to him.

He nearly dies in a mob grinder. Axel keeps falling on him (which is a joke, but it still hurts and is still frustrating to him), and even after offering to help him up, Axel either gets distracted or lets him slip and fall back down. Petra is hiding things from him. It feels like he’s doing nothing for the team. Now he’s in the End! With endermen! Which he hates! Nothing is going according to plan, but maybe if he can just see the amulet, he can fix it... but Jesse won’t let him. He keeps arguing with them instead. This journey feels hopeless. They’ve come all this way, and Soren’s been building some weird wool world. And now he’s taking out all this anger and frustration on everyone else.

Jumping forward a few episodes, we can see a little bit of this during the portal arc! But not the same way. Instead, Lukas is coping by writing down everything he encounters, trying to make sense of it. It feels like getting control back in a very out of control situation.

And jumping even further ahead to Season 2 Episode 5, how does he deal with “Jesse”? By once again taking control of the situation, this time by making a new group.

Lukas is a good leader.

Next up- his relationship with his friends.

In Season 1 Episode 1, Lukas mentions that it’s great to see a team that gets along so well. Axel asks if he’s jealous, and Lukas quickly responds that he’s not. I think he is. Lukas may be the leader, but he and Aiden don’t really agree on things that much and argue about it a lot (Gil and Maya just follow whoever I don’t think they argue). But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about them. They’re still his friends, and he’s still going to do everything he can to try and save them from the Witherstorm.

How does he get rewarded for that? By getting kicked out of the group- or at least that’s what happened according to Aiden. If you asked Lukas, he’d say he left.

This isn’t the Aiden ramble, so I won’t derail by talking about him. But I do have thoughts about him too.

Lukas doesn’t want to lose more friends, so if Jesse parted on bad terms with him in the last episode, he goes to apologize to them. Apologize to them. When they were the one who was being so awful to him. I have watched this scene and he does try and make it sound like there were errors on both ends, it still feels like he’s putting the blame on himself yet again.

Luckily, I’ve never been mean to him so I don’t get this scene! Instead, he’s already Jesse’s friend.

And then right away, he’s gotta face his old friends. What he wasn’t expecting was for Aiden to straight up be ready to actually kill him! There was no hesitation when he shoved him over the edge of Sky City.

....I’m glad he got better friends.

In my opinion, Lukas is like me where he’ll make big threats but he won’t follow through with them. Like how I kept talking about wanting to kill Aiden but when I had the chance to push him off the edge, I couldn’t do it. I brought him with me (imo pushing him over the edge is the best option because Jesse is purposely making it so he can’t die by putting him in the water). And later Lukas says “I hope they put them in a deep hole, surround it with lava, and then-”. Again, he makes big threats. But would he actually follow through with them? He holds a grudge for sure, but I think he easily forgives too (he’ll apologize to Jesse if they parted on bad terms with him after all).

But now, he has better friends. Friends who really do care about him. In Episode 6, Petra gets really defensive over him. Jesse throws aside the Redstone Heart just to save him in Episode 7 (if he was the one chipped at the end). Ivor agrees to help Cassie Rose guard the closet he’s locked in so that he can make sure he’ll be okay. Jesse does everything they can to get him and Ivor/Petra out of the mines in Episode 8.

And Lukas cares just as much about them. Fighting as hard as he can against PAMA so that he doesn’t kill Jesse (if he was the one still chipped at the end). Saving Ivor/Petra in Episode 8 (even if that didn’t go so well). Going to Beacontown to help Jesse fight the Colossus in Season 2. And of course, how worried he was about Petra in the first half of Season 1.

Lukas is a good friend.

Finally, his habit of putting other’s needs above his own.

He was always like this, but it was never really that obvious until the Witherstorm. It was from the guilt he felt about not doing anything to help Petra, and then she got hurt.

From now on, he’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.

In Episode 5, he does admit that he’s hurt, but I think he’s hiding the severity of how badly his arm got hurt. As soon as Jesse and Isa are looking away, he looks like he’s in a lot more pain than he had said before (or at least in my opinion. Everyone being blocks does make it harder to tell).

In Episode 7 it’s a lot more obvious (if he’s unchipped at the very end), when Jesse brings up PAMA as they follow Harper, Lukas looks upset, and Jesse apologizes. He quickly says “it’s alright, I’m fine!”

I don’t think he’s fine!! But he didn’t want Jesse to worry. I don’t think he was fine immediately after PAMA’s death as well, but again, he didn’t want Jesse or any of his friends to worry about him.

Jesse also has the oppurtunity to ask him if he’s okay throughout the portal arc, and I don’t think he’s responding with the complete truth every time.

To him, it’s fine if he lies. Now there’s less stress, right??

(There are likely more moments in Season 2, but I have only played through that once and cannot recall the episodes as well as I can with Season 1)

This post was trying to focus on both his strengths and his flaws, because that’s what makes a good character. It did kind of mention his flaws more, but that’s because it’s a topic that’s easier to analyze, haha. Hopefully he can learn to deal with his issues with blaming himself and putting others needs above his own one day.

Yes, it did get a bit rambly, but hey, that’s to be expected with my posts! I just hope it didn’t get too repetitive. I think Lukas is very neat :)

And I think that’s a wrap to this post!! I was gonna add more at the end, but I ran out of time!! And I did not feel like waiting hours to post it because typing long posts on mobile is annoying. Maybe I’ll come back and add some edits later.

If you wanna see more analysis like this, please do shoot me an ask! It’s hard to narrow down one topic to talk about sometimes. And I like talking about mcsm with people.

[ccliffjumperr]

I said I’d post more episode 7 thoughts eventually. Well that time is now! Long post about speculation/interpretation/explanation/headcanons on what chipping is like under the cut.

I have decided to politely look away from how chipping is done, as the machine doesn’t really... make sense. The box goes over the front of your head, but the chip is on the back. So unless the box is actually going over people’s entire heads or it’s grabbing there face, I have no clue how that works.

Moving on!

Getting chipped feels like a heavy punch to the back of your head except that punch has knives. And it’s the kind of hit that makes your whole head hurt, even your eyes.

Nothing you do from now on is out of your own will. Even your thoughts are being controlled. A person whose chipped does know what’s going on, but they wont perceive it or process it. All they can think of is to follow orders. Fighting back doesn’t work (in most situations) except to let you be more aware of the situation besides “Do what PAMA is telling you to.” Being chipped also makes it so no one gets tired. And PAMA doesn’t feel the injuries that people would get, so it keeps pushing people to keep moving or fighting when they really shouldn’t be. It just isn’t useful to be hurt. But with PAMA’s help, no one will be out of commission because of injuries again!

When a person gets unchipped, that’s when the memories of what happened hit.

Unchipping by water leaves the worst injuries- that thing was inside a person’s head, it’ll leave a mark! And this is the worst one. The water breaks the chip, and the chip’s response to that is to shock whatever is trying to break it. It can’t find anything, so it just shocks the person instead. The force of the shock and the chip breaking is what gets it to pop off.

So, let’s add that together; being electrocuted, the constant dull headache from the chip, the memories and thoughts hitting like a truck, your body suddenly realizing that it’s in control again, all that is enough to make a person extremely fatigued and out of it.

Also, PAMA being able to download a person’s memories can go both ways- kind of. The human isn’t downloading anything, just perceiving. Like what Petra (I’ve always unchipped Petra first so I’ll be using her as an example) said, she said she remembered the redstone spires. And she remembered they were important. Petra wouldn’t have known they were important unless she knew from PAMA.

Now, moving onto the final battle of episode 7. Once the Redstone Heart is pulled out a little bit, Lukas (like I mentioned with Petra, he’s always been the one still chipped here) starts to get control back. The first time that he appears to be hurt by this wasn’t on purpose, it was just that the forced severing of that connection did hurt. The second time, when he gets electrocuted, that was on purpose to try and make it easier for PAMA to keep control. Now Lukas actually has a chance of succeeding in fighting for control!

If being chipped was already a headache, this is even worse. PAMA is now 100% concentrated on trying to control Lukas so that it can kill Jesse. You heard him, he said his head felt like it was on fire. Kind of like... an overheating computer! He is in so much pain yet he manages to stay in control enough to hold onto to the ledge.

And then... unchipping because of PAMA dying. So like. You know that feeling when you suddenly get jumpscared? The whole shock that runs through your body? The variation that actually kinda hurts? That's what the citizens of Crown Mesa felt before all blacking out for a few seconds. The chips didn’t pop out like the did with the water unchipping, everyone had to pull them out themselves.

It wasn’t that simple for Lukas, however. Remember how I said PAMA was 100% concentrated on him? The connection with the rest of Crown Mesa being severed was like breaking a small string. But the connection with Lukas being severed was like cutting a thick rope. Yeah, I don’t wanna keep saying “it hurt” over and over again, I won’t repeat myself.

And this part is just speculation, but I noticed that when PAMA flat lined, pama-as-lukas screamed after that. Which gave me and my friend the idea that in the last few seconds as a desperate attempt to survive, PAMA tried to upload itself into Lukas’ chip. It didn’t work.

So combining all of those things I mentioned as well as getting hurt while fighting Jesse (they tried their best not to hurt him) no wonder Lukas went unconscious instead of just blacking out.

Kind of an abrupt way to end this but uh. Yeah!

I feel like a lot of people gloss over the fact that both Lukas and Petra had redstone take over their minds for awhile. Like, come on, that’s gotta have some long lasting effects, both physical and psychological. And with the latter, I don’t think either of them are gonna admit that. (You can even see it at the end of episode 7 if Jesse brings up PAMA and Lukas looks upset, and they apologize and Lukas quickly goes ‘it’s fine!’. He is not fine but he is hiding it. Especially because I picked the ‘this is all my fault!’ dialogue option earlier, he doesn’t want Jesse to blame themself again :( okay I’m getting off topic I can talk about the characters themselves in another post. This was supposed to be about chipping!)