Technoblade never dies

[schneefink]

A few days ago I heard that Technoblade died. I had no idea who he was but when I learned that he was a very popular Minecraft streamer I decided to check out a few of his videos. I started with the Potato Wars: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I enjoyed them, so I watched a few others and enjoyed those too, and then I started watching his Dream SMP videos.

If you had told me a month ago I would so quickly get invested in a semi-improvised roleplaying series played in Minecraft, I would have – okay I would have believed it because I know I can get interested in the weirdest things but I would have pre-emptively laughed at myself. I was very peripherally aware that it was a big fandom but never even considered watching it before now, among other things because canon is huge and spread out over by this point many hundred videos from more than a dozen different perspectives following multiple storylines. (Also the first I heard about Dream, who owns the server, was the story of how he was caught cheating in a speedrun and then denied it for ages. Which was also when I found out that Minecraft speedrunning is very popular, or that the game even has a win condition.) Where to even begin!

Well now I had an entry point and apparently that was all it took. I started watching Technoblade's streams, and then I started watching some of TommyInnit's highlight videos in-between, and read/watched a little about the plot up til then (I also have a lot of spoilers because at first I thought I'd just watch some highlights and it wouldn't matter. …yeah.)
The last thing I watched was The Fall of Manburg. About half of Techno's streams were just him grinding and talking to himself/chat, nice background watching/listening. About a third were very exciting plot events, and the rest were interactions with individual others. I've been having a great time! I love Techno's sense of humor, I love the dramatic moments and the politics and the betrayals, and I enjoy most of the crack in-between. It is OTT/silly sometimes, I especially roll my eyes at Tommy a lot (though I understand his annoyance at Techno openly focusing on his viewer numbers in the middle of RP sometimes), but there are also so many hilarious moments. Getting to see events from different perspectives makes the plot harder to follow but is also often very cool; I know there's a lot I'm missing from other players' perspectives, I'll probably check them out eventually but I also want to continue with the plot and there's only so many hours in the day.

Dramatic events: The Red Festival! Highlights from Technoblade (entire stream), Highlights from TommyInnit.
Favorite parts: Techno trying to convince the partygoers to talk about state secrets, and the different perspectives of Techno killing Tubbo.
SAD-ist animatic The Fall featuring mostly the build-up but also some scenes from the Red Festival. (Second in a series, the first one being War.) The animatics are absolutely amazing, and only get even better later on (I'm amused when players mention the animatics in the game.)

Things that happened after this:
On Tommy's channel Techno had a great entrance, and later Tommy and Techno acquire themselves a "mandatory volunteer" – that one made me laugh out loud several times

The Fall of Manburg: The Revolution
I loved that Technoblade from the very beginning said that he's an anarchist with the goal to overthrow government, and at the beginning of this stream the others from the rebellion even ask him "what happens once we've successfully overthrown the old government and establish a new government" and he says "let's burn that bridge when we get to it" and then they all just move past it… great foreshadowing.
The secret vault reveal! "I am ready for revolution boys!" (And getting robbed in the process too, heh.) "We've got the Blade!" JSchlatt dying of a heart attack after being cornered was weirdly anticlimactic, but that's because the real climax was still to come. Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo completing their coup while Techno watches and Dream provokes him and offers to form team chaos and to back him, and then Techno, feeling used and betrayed, decides to kill everyone who tries to form a new government. "To set up a new government right in front of an anarchist – I can only say that I almost admire the audacity." (from the highlights/commentary.) I might not agree with his opinion but at least he's very consistent with it ^^ Nice speech to Tommy, too. Then finishing the destruction of L'Manberg that Wilbur (!), who was in working together with Dream (!) started… (Wilbur even pretty much confessed to being the traitor earlier but nobody even seemed to notice *g*)
I wonder who canonically died during this massacre. Tommy is still standing around there afterwards, awkward… (Tommy's PoV of the whole thing.)
And then the silly fight to "overthrow George" the next day *facepalm* and then just hanging out, which actually makes for a nice aftershow and balance ^^
Not rn because I want to continue with the plot, but eventually I really want to see more of Wilbur's PoV of this. He was clearly no longer thinking clearly, but to what extent? He told Techno that he agrees with him about anarchy and knew Techno was in the audience but he still made first Tommy and then Tubbo president, did he not anticipate how this would go?
(Also, now I want the AU where Tommy and Tubbo realize that founding a new government in front of an anarchist is, uh, risky, so they don't – bet Dream would not be happy about a potential peaceful resolution…)
Of course, SAD-ist's animatic is fantastic: Dawn of 16th. And I know there are other great animatics but I try to avoid them for now because of potential spoilers.

I have no idea how long I'll stay interested, maybe I will have forgotten all about it next week, but for now I really look forward to watching more of Technoblade's videos. His death (at only 23) is a tragedy, fuck cancer. He would have made so many jokes about how many views and subscribers he got after his death.

Comments

[isis]

You watched all this over A FEW DAYS?! Wow.

(I watched about half of Potato Wars 1. It was funny! But I completely know nothing about Minecraft(?) and so I think a lot of it was unintelligible. I did watch the last video that his father made for him a while back.)

[schneefink]

*shuffles awkwardly*
Most of it at increased speed and while doing other things! I only stayed up way too late once, and that was only indirectly related.

[melannen]

Welcome to the hole I silently fell down about six months ago!

...I decided to start watching the Dream SMP vods straight through unabridged in order though, so I'm still not up to the point where Technoblade even joins. I watched all his other videos though! (Which means that I then had to watch a whole bunch of Philza's SMP Earth streams and lots of MCC. And now I've started watching Hermitcraft and Double Life thanks to hermitcraft.)

Technoblade's death is so sad though, especially since I came in right with his announcement that he'd licked the cancer six months ago. :( He's a massive loss for the fandom.

[schneefink]

*shakes hand* Seems to be a very deep hole!

I do want to go back and watch the early parts eventually! There's just a lot of it. I also watched one episode of SMP Earth (the one about conquering the world) and I definitely want to watch those too.

There's so much of the Dream SMP I'm resisting the urge to check out other Minecraft Youtube content and I'm mostly successful - at least for now...

Techno's goodbye video was sad when I first watched it, and even more so when I watched it again after I knew more about who he was. Death doesn't discriminate.

[melannen]

I would not recommend starting from the beginning. So many 8-hour streams! So much! Also the early SMP streams were the Dream Team's very first streams, and some of them are just *excruciating*, especially now that I've gotten used to watching some actual good streamers.

I stuck it out mostly because I was also just getting into *playing* Minecraft, and learning a lot from the long non-rp streams about just what you can do and how other people play. (Before that I had never even made a sword!) I should probably at least go to watching highlights vids instead of streams now, but I've gotten stubborn (And now I kind of want to drag out my last chance to see new Technoblade content ;_; ) But it is very neat to get to know the streamers as they get to know each other, before there's much RP. And also I am super spoiled from reading all the fanfic, and yet I'd had no idea from fic that the root of the conflict that's going to become l'Manberg was almost certainly Dream attempting to stop Tubbo from introducing slavery and genocide to the server (which is to say, villager trafficking and infinite mob farms.) I've since tried to follow other SMPs (including SMP Earth) that allow slavery and genocide and while I can see why the players want them I'm afraid I side with Dream on that! :P

But anyway yes, you're wise to have started watching in a more reasonable way.

Technoblade's conquering the world video is definitely the best part of SMP Earth and I don't know if you really need to watch the rest unless you either want to write Antarctic Empire fanfic or really want to get sucked further into non-Dream SMP mcyt. I was at least a little bit reasonable there and only watched Techno and Phil's streams!

(Double Life is really good though and if you do want to get to know some of the best non-DSMP folks it's a great starting place! It's a brand new, deliberately limited server where everybody gets three lives, and the first two lives are normal but when your on your third life you go homicidal. This is the third season, but the twist the third season is everybody has a soulmate assigned by fate that they share their health bar with, how was I supposed to turn down people putting themselves in a soulmate wargames AU on purpose, and it's so good. And it's only fourteen hours of new content a week to keep up with.)

[schneefink]

I'd had no idea from fic that the root of the conflict that's going to become l'Manberg was almost certainly Dream attempting to stop Tubbo from introducing slavery and genocide to the server (which is to say, villager trafficking and infinite mob farms.)
I had no idea! Clearly I should watch at least highlights of the early streams eventually. I read some fic and the best I could guess was that they were fighting about some music discs at first, idk, but this is much more interesting.

There also doesn't seem to be one generally agreed-upon fanon on how to treat game mechanics in fic, or how to treat characters' past adventures in other servers, which for some characters makes a huge difference in characterization.
...not that I'm planning to write fic. Too early for that.

I never played Minecraft and so I have absolutely no idea about things like how expensive certain things are to acquire/build or how strong/expensive specific equipment is. I am slowly learning things about a game I have no intention of playing, and if I ever start I will probably find out that my knowledge is extremely eclectic and likely useless early on ^^

(And now I kind of want to drag out my last chance to see new Technoblade content ;_; )
Understandable. He has 39 multi-hour DSMP livestreams, so you still have a lot of content to look forward to :)

the twist the third season is everybody has a soulmate assigned by fate that they share their health bar with, how was I supposed to turn down people putting themselves in a soulmate wargames AU on purpose, and it's so good
Intriguing. Are the seasons connected? Not that I have the time to watch something else right now, but one day...

[melannen]

I don't think it's ever stated outright! There were some fights over the disc (and I think more coming) but they were clearly more just Dream and Tommy messing around and showing off. The first point where he actually tries to exert his authority over the server is when he destroys Tubbo and Sapnap's captive villagers and bans the other players from finishing a setup where he can get infinite iron by murdering golems. (If you only know Dream SMP, those are two pretty standard ways for advanced players to get access to basically infinite resources, which as well as requiring you to do things like murder innocents in lava, really changes how the game plays.) I don't know if it's ever stated outright, but within a week from there, Wilbur joins the server and the roots of the rebellion are laid. (That's right about where I am in catchup right now. Only a couple hundred more hours of vods until L'Manberg declares independence /o\ )

The thing with Minecraft is that everybody plays differently - I mostly play in peaceful mode, which means there's no combat or monsters and you never need food, so I just explore a randomly generated world nobody's ever seen before, build things, and collect plants and animals. I've never even been to the Nether. My friend Blue has been playing for years and never even built a base, she only wanders around exploring (but she does play with zombies and skeletons and stuff turned on.) There's also a mode where all you do is build, you have infinite resources and a completely flat world. Streamers do all kinds of different stuff! If you watch Technoblade's older videos, he'd never really played unmodded Minecraft for years before SMP earth - he was playing on Hypixel which has a bunch of minigames that use Minecraft mechanics to do all kinds of other stuff.

Anyway it's $30 one-time fee and if you're at all interested it's worth it especially since I'm totally going to figure out how to start a Dreamwidth SMP someday although it will eat your time even worse than watching DSMP will.

Double Life is pretty stand-alone! It's not full-IC roleplay like some of DSMP so they sometimes reference stuff they do elsewhere, but nobody can follow everything in mcyt, and every season is a fresh start on a new world. The fanon is that when they agree to join one of the Third Life worlds they get voluntary amnesia for the duration. (If you want to watch streamers doing something more like standard gameplay it's good too, since they start on a brand-new world with nothing built or established yet and have to begin with the basics.)

[schneefink]

I think I remember it being mentioned in a video I watched that one could farm basically infinite spiders, and also a place where villagers were basically kept in cages (though there is a small chance I am mixing it up with a non-DSMP video I watched) - so that was originally not allowed? Interesting. I can see how that would significantly change ressource allocation.
One thing I find especially interesting about earlier in the timeline is Dream, because later on he seems like a chaotic evil supervillain and I don't think he started out that way? And it's still his server... But maybe I'll find out more about that in later streams too, idk.

I used to think Minecraft was basically Lego, and later that it was Lego but with zombies. I'm not ruling out playing it eventually but right now I a) have little time to play games because I'm watching so many videos, and b) have so many other games I want to play first... Still no time machine *sighs*

I put Double Life s3 on my list of things to watch :)

[waterfall8484]

O hi, I might use this excellent writeup to get more into the ~lore~ myself, I've only ever seen some of SADist's animations and the highlights from the revolution/Wilbur's blowup. And the Potato Wars have been on my 'to watch' list for like a year.

I didn't really know Technoblade that well either but he was in Minecraft Championship Pride 2021 with Grian from Hermitcraft, Wilbur and Solidaritygaming and it was an absolute hoot! Not only some wildly unexpected things that happened along the way, but also the chemistry between all four was great. If you want more things to watch I definitely recommend it!

(Also, mind if I friend you?)

[schneefink]

Well I'm glad you find it interesting because I've already written 2k about the next couple of episodes ^^ I would post it but I keep thinking of more things to say and then I get distracted by the next video.

Thanks for the link, I will definitely check that out :) I'm so torn between watching more of Techno's DSMP streams, other people's DSMP streams, and Techno's other streams, and there's never enough time.

Not at all, hi!

[waterfall8484]

Nice! I really appreciate getting summaries, because there's no way I have time to watch so many streams haha. Never enough time is the curse and blessing of livestreaming and endless YouTube content I guess, I know how you feel!

[schneefink]

I thought Critical Role was bad! That is just 3-5 hours per week! Clearly I knew nothing.

[nonesensed]

I've been following along with the Dream SMP fandom vicariously through my sister, as it's her main fandom right now, which is how I heard of Techno's death. It's always awful when people die that young and he's clearly had a huge impact on a lot of people - fuck cancer indeed!

Though having been aware of the fandom for months, I must admit I'm still struggling with grasping what Dream SMP even is, plot-wise. Despite my sister trying to explain it and many other helpful summaries, this just keeps going over my heads ^_^' But I've seen plenty of wonderful animatics and PMVs from the fandom!

[schneefink]

To be fair, the plot is fairly convoluted! A relatively short video summary I found is this series by EvanMcGaming, which unsurprisingly includes a lot of "meanwhile X and Y had happened" ^^. As the story progresses things do get harder and harder to keep track off because there are more and more characters... I'm not even halfway through, and I heard rumors new content is coming soon.

[nonesensed]

It does seem a complex canon! Thank you for the link <3 I love listening to my friends and sister tell me about their fandoms, whether I'm into them myself or not, but I've had a hard time following exactly what Dream SMP is, other than in the vaguest sense. Having a summary to start from will do wonders for my understanding, I'm sure :)