#lmk if you have any suggestions | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

supernovaa-remnant · 2 months

Text

L’manberg, Nationalism, and c!Dream

Okay, I know it’s been done to death, but I’ve been reading Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities for a class which talks about nationalism as an imagined community, so nationalism has been on my mind. And, of course, my mind’s natural progression was to start thinking about L’manberg and nationalism again. So, without further ado, here’s my post on L’manberg, Nationalism, and how that played a role in c!Dream’s story arc.

(Also, I haven’t written an essay in ages, and I haven’t done analysis in ages, so please cut me some slack lol)

It’s under the cut because this is a very, very long post (3.2k words long, in fact). (you can also read it on google docs if you'd prefer).

What is Nationalism?

To start this all, we need to take a moment to step away from Minecraft roleplay to actually talk about nationalism itself. Since I know most of you are here to hear about the Minecraft roleplay aspect, I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, but it is very important for context. I’ll bold (and color) the main points if you just want to read those before skipping down to the L’manberg section, but you’re more than welcome to read all of this.

To understand nationalism, you need to understand a bit about how it came to be, which requires a bit of knowledge about the transition from pre-modern to modern times. In general, this transition is often thought to have occurred in the mid-18th century during the Age of Enlightenment and during the time when a lot of revolutions were taking place, such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution. But it’s important to note that there isn’t really such a clear cut line of when this transition from pre-modern to modern times happened, and, in many ways, this change is still occurring to this day.

The most important aspect of this change to think about in the context of this post is in terms of religion, though I will also briefly talk about the shift from dynastic rule to democracy. I want to start off by briefly talking about this because, in many ways, nationalism has taken on the role that religion held in pre-modern times. (Side note: this isn’t to say nationalism replaced religion, but the widespread role of religion in people’s lives today is different than it was in, say, the 14th century).

In pre-modern times, religion gave people a sense of belonging, and this idea of belonging is something I’ll come back to, but, for now, you should know that nationalism gives a similar sense of belonging. I won’t get into too much detail about why Anderson specifically says this is a sense of belonging to an imagined community, but it basically comes down to the fact that you’ll never know everyone in your community (whether that be religious or national), but you still feel a sense of belonging to the collective.

“Okay, Stella, very interesting, but you still haven’t defined nationalism.” Alright, alright, I’ll define nationalism, which requires me to define a nation. In Anderson’s words, from page 6 of Imagined Communities, “it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” I want you to take a note specifically of it being inherently limited and file that away for later.

I said I was going to briefly discuss the shift from dynastic rule to democracy, so I’ll do that now. So, a couple things about these dynastic rules with centralized power: firstly, it was believed that the monarchs had some sort of divine right to rule from God (see how this ties into religion?), and, secondly, a lot of borders were less defined the further you got from the centralized powers. Obviously, with the shift from pre-modern to modern times, both of these things changed, bringing the idea of giving power to the people, and also bringing more concrete borders.

Anyway, moving on. Nations are imagined as inherently limited because no one imagines one nation as encompassing all of humanity. Yes, in modern times borders are very concrete and defined, but it goes beyond that—in a person’s mind, nations are limited because there are always people who do not belong to the nation. It’s not often thought about, but with a sense of belonging comes exclusion. The entire concept of belonging comes from the idea of being with people who are similar to you, and this implies the existence of people who are so dissimilar that you don’t belong with them, and, thus, they don’t belong with you. It can easily become a double edged sword, I think; there is comfort in belonging to a collective, but it can be all too easy to fall into an “us vs them” mentality, which is going to be an important point moving forward.

So, how does this all relate to a Minecraft Roleplay?

L’manberg and Nationalism

Onto the fun stuff! Minecraft Roleplay! Obviously, L’manberg is a nation, so I’m sure you can already see how nationalism is going to play a role, but let’s get into it. First, though, I’d like to give a minor disclaimer that not everything is going to fit perfectly simply on account of the fact that the DSMP takes place in a very sparsely inhabited world, and, honestly, that alone makes governmental structures of any kind really interesting to look at, but I digress since it’s not the point of this post. (It also means that nationalism as talked about in this post isn’t really an imagined community like Anderson claims it is. From a meta standpoint, you could say this sense of nationalism actually leaked into the audience itself, but in the story it’s not really an imagined community).

The DSMP starts out as a world with no borders and no governmental structures of any kind—it starts with no nations. Rather, the DSMP in itself is a cohesive community to which everyone belongs. It’s not a community like nationalism, nor is it a community like religion, nor is it an imagined community in any way. As previously stated, the DSMP is a sparsely populated world, and, at least at the start, everyone knows each other or knows of each other as an individual. This sense of belonging is more akin to a group of friends than anything else, which I think makes the introduction of nationalism especially interesting.

c!Wilbur. What a guy, am I right? He shows up to the server, and he brings with him capitalism and the idea of monopolizing resources—there’s an interesting post to be made about that, I’m sure, but not the point of this one—and, most importantly, he brings with him the concept of a nation. He’s putting up borders, putting up walls, and essentially dividing a place that used to be united, citing L’manberg as an independent country, which is does not include everyone in the server (it’s limited), and which is separate from the DSMP and essentially is its “own server” (it’s sovereign). Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s ✨nationalism✨

I’ve seen posts talking about the fact that L’manberg was specifically satirizing nationalism, and though, despite my efforts, I couldn’t find these posts (if anyone has them please send them to me! I’d love to re-read them and link them in this post), I do think it’s true. I think there’s a lot to be said about L’manberg from a narrative and meta standpoint, and I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that c!Wilbur was always written as a villain in the story (and not just during the Pogtopia arc, despite popular belief), but I can’t get into it all in this post. So, what I do want to do is come back to the concept of belonging and how that always comes with exclusion, and I want to talk about the “us vs them” mentality.

The reason I say L’manberg is satirizing nationalism is because it takes these facets of nationalism to the extreme. It’s not just a place made to give people a sense of belonging which in turn creates exclusion; L’manberg is a xenophobic nation, and I would go as far to say that its founding was based more on exclusion than inclusion. That is to say, the exclusive aspect was not just an unfortunate yet inevitable side effect of creating a nation. From the very start, L’manberg was founded on the exclusion of non-Europeons, and, more specifically, the exclusion of Americans. Sapnap actually originally wanted to join, but he was denied because he’s American. L’manberg wasn’t ever some place accepting of anyone who came to it, and it wasn’t a place to be free from tyranny, but let’s get into the idea of L’manberg going against tyranny.

The “us vs them” mentality is already extremely dangerous and something to be wary of, and it’s something I think we should constantly be checking ourselves on, but L’manberg takes that to a further extreme. I don’t want you to think this point is completely separate from the point I made before, because they do very much connect to each other and are intertwined. Nations are limited. This means there will always be people who don’t belong to any given nation. Obviously, in this case, members of the greater DSMP do not belong to L’manberg. (I think it’s also helpful to remember that c!Wilbur specifically didn’t allow dual-citizenship; c!Tubbo initially wanted to be a citizen of both the greater DSMP and L’manberg, but that wasn’t allowed, so in the end he became a citizen of only L’manberg).

But, this wasn’t just a case of the greater DSMP being separate from L’manberg. No, they were tyrants that L’manberg was escaping from. c!Dream was a tyrant that L’manberg was fighting against. It’s taking the “us vs them” mentality to an extreme of “we are the righteous good guys fighting against oppression and tyranny, and they are the tyrants trying to oppress us.” It sure sounds like a noble cause—and you can always count on c!Wilbur to spout pretty words that convince people to play on his terms—but is that really the case? In a place that previously had no nations and no real defined hierarchy of power, how could tyranny exist? As I said before, the DSMP previously was more like a group of friends living in a commune than anything else, and tyranny doesn’t really seem applicable in that context, does it? This is c!Wilbur spinning a narrative that is going to continue to affect the SMP all the way to the very end, and it’s also what places c!Dream and c!Tommy on opposite sides from the very beginning, by establishing that extreme “us vs them” mentality.

(Oh, it should also be noted that the “us vs them” mentality very often leads to the dehumanization of the other side, so keep that in mind for when we get to c!Dream).

(Also there’s something to be said about the L’manberg revolution being heavily based on Hamilton, which is based on the American Revolution, which was a very key part of the transition from pre-modern to modern times and how that relates to nationalism, but this post is already getting long enough).

So, yeah, L’manberg was satirizing nationalism. And, ultimately, L’manberg was never good for the server as a whole.

c!Dream and Nationalism, even in the wake of L’manberg

Ough. c!Dream… :( oh he really did walk the path laid out for him by c!Wilbur to the very end, didn’t he?

Listen, everything c!Dream does on the server is ultimately tied back to the founding of L’manberg, and, in turn, to the introduction of nationalism to the server. One of c!Dream’s primary goals is unity (or, specifically, the unity and simplicity of the server from pre-L’manberg times), and this is antithetical to nationalism, or, at least, to the extreme form of nationalism that L’manberg brought. Because nationalism brought division, and division brought conflict, and conflict brought death (specifically canon deaths). And, well, we all know how much death is a motivator for c!Dream.

(Also, there is something to be said about the start of nationalism and nations on the server not being framed as a good thing in the narrative, how it was satirizing and criticizing the concept of nationalism, and there’s something to be said about how the narrative agrees with the group of anarchists—the Syndicate—who push against the idea of nations. But, well, that’s also a post for another day).

Now, obviously, unity is not c!Dream’s only motivation—actually, I think we’d all agree that the thing that motivated c!Dream the most was fear. But, a lot of this fear does tie back to L’manberg and the narrative built by c!Wilbur. So, let’s for a moment take a look at how this narrative affected other people’s perceptions of c!Dream.

Remember how I said the “us vs them” mentality often leads to dehumanization? Well, well, well. Listen, this is dreblr. The dehumanization of c!Dream has been talked about to death, but that’s because it’s always relevant to his character!! And I’m here to say that this dehumanization started all the way back during the L’manberg revolution when c!Wilbur labeled c!Dream a tyrant. Obviously the dehumanization of c!Dream is incredibly apparent with the revive book and in Pandora’s Vault, but this is not a post about the box, unfortunately (I’m sorry—I know we all love the box here 💔).

c!Dream’s dehumanization started the moment he was labeled as a tyrant and the moment he was labeled as the “enemy.” He became the “them” in the “us vs them” mentality that was adopted by L’manberg. He’s the oppressor they need to defeat, and he’s the monster that needs to be slain. And this is important because this never went away. Even after L’manberg was gone, the concept of nations and the concept of “us vs them,” never went away! c!Dream was still the enemy that needed to be killed! And, over the course of time when L’manberg was still around, c!Dream lost pretty much everyone. Everyone was turning against him, people were using attachments against him, and people wanted to kill him (New L’manberg was planning to execute him under the false pretense of a peaceful celebration!). And, yes, he did plenty of bad things during this time (namely exile), but I think we should also remember that most people did not know about what happened during exile at this time. They wanted to kill him because he was powerful and dangerous, and he wasn’t with them so he was against them because that’s the narrative L’manberg created—if they’re not with us, they’re against us.

Everyone was against him, and he was spiraling (pushed further by the existence of the revive book) to the point that he commissioned the build of a giant, obsidian, inescapable prison and he locked himself in there with the hope that it would protect him and save his life. (☹️) Obviously that didn’t work like he’d hoped, but… well…

As I said before: none of this stuff went away even after L’manberg was gone. The concept of nationalism didn’t magically disappear from the server just because L’manberg was destroyed. Nations kept popping up. The server kept splitting itself into more pieces and factions, and it all became so convoluted. I think it’s important to remember the population of the SMP—they don’t really have enough people to make functioning governments, yet they keep trying to make nations, anyway. They’re following L’manberg’s footsteps. They’re chasing this concept of nationalism.

Obviously this affected everyone’s lives, but it really did ruin c!Dream’s life. The introduction of nationalism is what causes c!Dream’s life to essentially start falling apart. I don’t want to rehash stuff that’s already been said a lot in dreblr, so there’s a lot about c!Dream’s motivations and story that I’m not including, but I want to bring our attention to a certain line c!Dream said in the finale streams: “Why can’t things be simple again?”

Because things were simple before all this! It was a group of friends making a home!! They built the community center because the server was meant to be a cohesive community of friends. There was never a need for nations or governments! It was just a group of friends making a home together! And then it all became so convoluted, and there were nations when there didn’t need to be any, and people were being divided into sides and being divided into “us” and “them,” and it was so irrevocably different from what the server started as. And I don’t think c!Dream ever really figured out how to accept that it was irrevocable :( and even he himself was blindsided by the story crafted by L’manberg and by c!Wilbur, to the point that he didn’t even fully understand his own goals! Because he (and everyone else) got so used to nationalism on the server and factions and conflicts and “us” vs “them,” that he didn’t even realize he just wanted things to go back to how they were :( oughhhh c!dreamie :((

Sorry to devolve into emotions at the end of this, but it’s not an academic paper, so I think you should cut me some slack. It’s just :( “I don’t ever want to be alone” because with nationalism comes exclusion and it eventually brought c!Dream to a point where he was so, so alone and :( He makes me so sad </3

Anyway, the reason the DSMP didn’t end with c!Dream dead at c!Tommy’s hands is because that was never the point of the story—that was the narrative L’manberg was trying to spin, but that was never what the story was actually about. It took up until the very end for them to break free from the story of L’manberg.

(And, it’s been mentioned many times before, but there’s a reason this was never able to happen until c!Wilbur was removed from the narrative. c!Dream and c!Wilbur and c!Tommy are absolutely crucial in each other’s character arcs, and you can’t really understand any of the duo relationships without considering the third (says the person guilty of writing c!Dreambur fanworks without always thinking about c!Tommy lmao, but hey at least it’s not analysis, right?) but that’s also a post for another day).

I never really know how to conclude things. I’m kind of worried I’m forgetting stuff, and I apologize if I did forget stuff, but I’ve been working on this for, like, 4 and a half hours and am getting tired lmao. But my main points are that L’manberg was satirizing and criticizing nationalism, that the concept of nationalism stuck with the SMP until the very end, and that the concept of nationalism from the beginning set up c!Dream to be the villain (and, really, this is largely in part because L’manberg from the beginning set up c!Dream to be a villain, and I don’t think you can feasibly separate L’manberg from nationalism). Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk! Feel free to ask questions and discuss further, and I will do my best to respond lol.

#dreblr #dsmp analysis #dsmp meta #l'manberg critical #oh I don't know how to tag this 🧍‍♀️#I think this is probably good but if you have any suggestions for tags to add please lmk o7 #anyway spent like 5 hours on this lmao putting my time to good use obviously

57 notes · View notes

eyeoftheaxolotl · 1 month

Text

tmagp corkboard grand tour

So I'm gonna just throw out my corkboard here. I made it with Twine, which is a very good tool for making interactive stories and also happens to have just what I need for a corkboard. What follows is my attempt to categorize every statement in TMAGP thus far (currently up to and including Episode 14), including statements that were only mentioned in passing, while resorting to Smirke's 14+ as little as possible. I'm excited to share what I've got so far; let's get right into it.

THE LEGEND

Here is what each color means. These colors will be used consistently for the entire corkboard.

[IMAGE ID: A series of squares. First square: THE CORKBOARD. BOTTOM CAPTION. Second square: Orange = NOT a talker (i.e. not voiced by Chester/Norris/Augustus). Third square: Yellow = the statement was only mentioned. Fourth square: Green = Chester read the statement. Fifth square: Purple = Norris read the statement. Sixth square: Red = Augustus read the statement. Seventh square: Blue = category/link marker (not a statement). Eighth square: No color and has equals sign means avatar/item/location link. END ID.]

For obvious reasons, most statements we know of are talkers, so I marked out in orange any that are NOT. This includes both statements that were explicitly not talkers (both of the mentioned statements, as I'll discuss) AND statements that are voiced, but not by Chester/Norris/Augustus (for example, Needles' statement is just a recording of a telephone conversation, so the fact that you can hear it has nothing to do with the phenomenon of the computers talking. In other words, you can hear it because it's an audio recording, not because of FR3-D1 being spooky.)

Since it can be hard for me to remember the contents of an episode based just on name or episode number, I used memorable quotes from each episode to identify them, as well as the episode they are from.

Let's start with:

THE UNSORTABLES

[IMAGE ID: two squares with no links. First square is marked purple and says ""some of him": TMAGP 1". Second square is marked orange and yellow and says ""dolls, watching or dolls, human skin?": TMAGP 1". END ID.]

Both of these are from TMAGP 1 (First Shift), but other than that I cannot find a way to link them with the rest, or even with each other. "Some of him" is a statement in which someone's deceased partner(?) apparently persists as a zombie. "Dolls, watching or dolls, human skin" is the question Alice asks Sam about his very first statement — which was not "some of him", but a non-talker statement:

[IMAGE ID: Script. SAM: Fine. Sorry. Okay, so… [Pause.] This is—

ALICE: Yeah, they’re all like that. At least this one is short, nice easy start for you. So, once you’ve read it, you get out the binder – [She slaps an enormous ring binder on the desk and starts paging through it.] ALICE: And look up whatever’s mentioned most in the case. Looking at this one, we go to “D” and… Sam, eyes on me now. We go to “D” and, right, would you say this is more “Dolls-comma-watching,” or “Dolls-comma-human skin”? SAM: (a bit shell-shocked) I – Uh – I mean – I guess the human skin bit is only implied, so… both?" END ID.]

So, we know there's dolls involved, they are watching someone, and they are implied (though not explicitly stated) to have human skin. We know it's an email, and we know it's not a talker (the room is quiet as Sam reads it himself). That's it — hence the difficulty in sorting.

Next up:

THE ANTI-CONNECTION

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The top square, purple: "absence despite presence, an architectural hunger. TMAGP 8." The bottom square, green: "it's all for a good cause! TMAGP 7." Both squares are linked to a blue square that reads "uhhhhh. whatever they are, they cancel out." END ID.]

I call this an anti-connection because the "connection" is that they're opposites. "Architectural hunger" (8) is a statement about wanting and not having. It describes hunger in both the literal and metaphorical senses. "Good cause" (7) is a statement about NOT wanting, and yet HAVING too much. This is why I say that, although I don't know what entities these statements deal with, I do think they oppose each other. It's also part of why I've had trouble linking them to anything besides each other.

NATURE + TRANSFORMATION

[IMAGE ID: Four squares. The top left square, green: "snakes, thousands of them....TMAGP 14." The center left square, purple: "the sun is bright, my roots run deep....TMAGP 3." The bottom left square, orange and yellow: "my skin turned into butterflies. TMAGP 7." These three are all connected to the fourth square, blue: "nature + transformation". END ID.]

First, in case you've forgotten, here's the source of "my skin turned into butterflies" (7):

[IMAGE ID: Script. ALICE: And we're not bothered by the whole "my skin turned into butterflies" case?

CELIA: Nah. Can't say butterflies really scare me. Besides, I'm guessing all the cases are a bit "off" and that's why we're assessing them. END ID.]

As a side note, we know this isn't a talker because it's a bit later that Celia brings those up:

[IMAGE ID: Script. CELIA: You mentioned some might get read out by the computer. Is there anything different about those ones? END ID.]

We only know two things about this statement. It's not a talker, and it involves someone's skin turning into butterflies. Surprisingly, that last part alone is enough to link it pretty strongly with "the sun is bright, my roots run deep...." (3), in which an entire person turns into a tree. Skin turning into beautiful insects and people turning into beautiful trees — it reminds me of Corruption in a way that feels almost anti-Corruption, if that makes any sense. Transformation, but not in a way that disgusts.

All this is to say, I think there's definitely some kind of entity dealing with nature and transformation. I think that same entity could also be linked with today's statement, "snakes, thousands of them...." (14), hence the link between all three.

TRANSFORMATION....and just that

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, blue: "nature + transformation". The right square, orange: "the artist becomes the canvas! TMAGP 2." Both are linked to the center square, blue: "transformation". END ID.]

If we drop nature as a prerequisite for the last group, then "the artist becomes the canvas!" (2) joins the last group under the shared ground of "transformation". I'm not personally willing to drop "nature + transformation" as a combined category given this much evidence for it, but it does give me somewhere to stick Ink5oul besides....

THE TATTOO ONES (or just the Ink5oul ones)

[IMAGE ID: Four squares. The left square, orange: "the artist becomes the canvas! TMAGP 2." The right square, green: "it belongs to the deep. TMAGP 11." Each of these is linked to both of the squares in the center. The upper center square, colorless with equals: "inksoul". The lower center square, blue: "tattoos". END ID.]

With only two statements about tattoos (both of which feature Ink5oul) and only two statements about Ink5oul (both of which feature tattoos), it's hard to say if the most proper link between these two is their relation to tattoos or to Ink5oul. I do think whatever Ink5oul serves (if anything!) was in conflict with "The Deep" (or whatever it is) over whose domain the tattooed sailor falls under. It feels a lot like when Mike Crew says the Lichtenberg figure belongs to The Vast, even though The Spiral was trying to claim it. "it belongs to the deep" (11) has another link, but we'll get back to that later.

It's time for the second major branch, starting with far the most solid link in the whole corkboard, for what should be obvious reasons:

THE BONZO ONES

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, orange: "Mr. Bonzo was meant to be funny, make people laugh! TMAGP 10." The right square, purple: "he wants to stay, he wants to play! TMAGP 12." Both of these squares are connected to the third, colorless with equals: "bonzo". END ID.]

Yeah. These are just....the Bonzo statements. The statements about Mr. Bonzo. The statements that deal specifically with Mr. Bonzo. Not much else to say.

GORE

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, colorless with equals: "bonzo". The right square, red: "feed my violin, nephew....TMAGP 4.". Both of these are connected to the third square, blue: "gore". END ID.]

Again, straightforward. The violin statement and the second of the Bonzo statements both involve straight-up gore as a primary element — ripping and tearing limbs, blood everywhere, etc. Since this seems to be what Bonzo does in general, I linked Bonzo himself with this theme. Smirke might call it Slaughter, and I can't say I'd really disagree with him, especially with the next link in the list.

COMPELLING GROUPS OF PEOPLE

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The top square, red: "feed my violin, nephew. TMAGP 4." The bottom square, purple: "he wants to stay, he wants to play! TMAGP 12." Both of these are connected to the center square, blue: "compelling groups of people. NOT like Eye; just causing people to do something." END ID.]

Compelling people (not in an Eye way, but in the general sense of causing groups of people to do something) seems to be a common theme of both of the goriest statements. An entity that deals in both gore and commanding of large numbers....I'll admit, it does sound a lot like Slaughter. However, the main goal of this board is to find a pantheon outside of Smirke's 14+, so that's the most I'll say about that for now. It is, however, definitely worth noting.

On to the third major branch, starting with another strong link:

GAMBLING

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, green: "two dee six. TMAGP 9." The right square, orange: "potential insider trading. TMAGP 13." Both are connected to the center square, blue: "gambling". END ID.]

Both of these statements have very similar themes about gambling and loss of control. They both raise the question of how much you're really in control when it comes to gambling, and they both deal with how much you stand to lose from it.

This is why I think there's some entity dealing in gambling and loss of control. If I were using Smirke's 14+, I'd call it Web, but it's not really about someone else controlling you — it's about you losing the control you could have hypothetically had otherwise. Dice guy isn't forced to handle the dice, nor is bank guy forced to use the app. Nobody asks dice guy to roll those dice one last time at the end of "two dee six" (9), nor does anyone ask bank guy to mangle himself beyond recognition in the hopes of a major turnout at the end of "potential insider trading" (13). It seems like nothing is controlling them except their respective gambling habits.

AN ASIDE: THE INSTITUTE ONES

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, green: "two dee six. TMAGP 9." The right square, green: "canaries should stay above ground. TMAGP 1." Both are connected to the center square, blue: "magnus institute". END ID.]

Not sure if it's worth noting given there's only two of them (three if you count the brief mention of Institute rejection letters in "snakes, thousands of them...." (14)), but if I had a nickel for every statement that deals with the Magnus Institute and is voiced by Chester....anyway.

SELF-SABOTAGE FOR SELF-GAIN

[IMAGE ID: Four squares. The top left square, orange: "the artist becomes the canvas! TMAGP 2." The center left square, red: "feed my violin, nephew....TMAGP 4." The bottom left square, orange: "potential insider trading". All three are connected to the right square, blue: "hurting oneself to get a desired result". END ID.]

The violinist's (4) initial use of his own blood to feed the instrument that would bring him such glory feels like a pretty solid parallel to the "insider trading" (13) guy's use of his own destruction to cash out. And the artist (2) digs into a lot of her own image in order to achieve "perfection". (I should clarify, while the statement-giver in TMAGP 2 does explicitly say she never wanted to hurt herself, TMAGP 2 definitely has a strong SH theme, which is why I grouped it in with the other two. Feel free to disagree!)

On to the fourth of the main branches, in which I link Tumblr's favorite with (in my personal opinion) the most "eh" statement we've got:

FOR WANT OF FEAR

[IMAGE ID: Three squares. The left square, green: "Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. TMAGP 5." The right square, orange: "it's not sadism or masochism....TMAGP 6." Both are linked to the center square, blue: "explicitly about wanting fear". END ID.]

Tom (the statement-giver in 5) calls it his fixation; Needles calls it a source of satisfaction. Either way, it's at least worth noting that these are the only statements so far where fear is the goal. Tom wants something that'll really scare him, ignoring basically all signs of danger just to get a good thrill; Needles wants to drink the fear off of someone, anyone, and he even takes it to a 999 operator for want of dessert.

The final link is more based on a somewhat popular Tumblr theory than anything, but I do think it's definitely worth pointing out:

WARNINGS FOR SAM?

[IMAGE ID: Four squares. The top left square, green: "it belongs to the deep. TMAGP 11." The center right square, green: "Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. TMAGP 5." The bottom left square, green: "canaries should stay above ground. TMAGP 1." All three are connected to the center left square, blue: "could be read as a cautionary tale for Sam specifically". END ID.]

This is based on the theory (lmk if you know who first posed it!) that a lot of what Chester presents to Sam is a warning about what happens when you mess around with things you don't understand. In "it belongs to the deep" (11), we see someone driven to madness by their discovery. In the cases of both Voyeur (5) and RedCanary (1), someone goes missing (see: the classification of the Voyeur case being "Disappearance (undetermined)") after a reckless chain of discovery and exploration. This could be seen as a warning to Samama Khalid himself, who is very clearly messing around with things he doesn't understand and would probably be better off not exploring. I do think this theory holds a lot of water, which is why I bring it up despite not really being a "category".

And, finally:

THE BIG PICTURE

[IMAGE ID: An image of every one of the squares and connections made in this post, now shown in their entirety as a complete map. END ID.]

In all honesty, I think we need more episodes to determine what's what. However, I was definitely excited to get my theories out there, which is why I made this post! Thank you so much for coming all this way with me, it makes me really happy! I would appreciate a reblog, but as always, that's your choice. Send me an ask if you wanna talk theories :)

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp speculation #axolspeaks #eyeoftheaxolotl #PLEASE lmk if you have suggestions for either the corkboard or the image ids #i hope i formatted the ids well but if theres any difficulty or anything thatd make them easier to use #reach out!!!!#preferably thru asks

22 notes · View notes