HEROES WERE DEAD FROM THE START

(a short little twt essay analyzing the themes of morality and selfishness in dreamsmp because it IS a literary text now fuck you)

"You wanna be a hero so bad? then DIE like one!"

during the finale of the first season of the smp, technoblade delivers this damning line to tommyinnit, just before unleashing mass destruction on to the remains of manberg.

Its a pretty cool line but it feels strangely out of

place. Because while everyone considers tommyinnit the 'protagonist' of the main plotline, if you view his actions objectively, he's a pretty terrible guy. He constantly destroys and steals and insults people, and never seems to care about anyone but himself and his discs.

Today's stream really solidified that, and if you still believe that tommy didn't deserve what happened, then he has definitely got you wrapped into HIS side of the story.
But while the themes i've opened with make sense, i'd like to introduce a new theme that i think will

take precedence over all others in this new season of the smp.

Perspective.

If tommy WAS the protagonist, then it would be pointless to watch anyone elses stream, or to care more about people that aren't him. but we do, and it is through the power of switching perspectives

that we, the viewer have, we are able to piece together the narrative on our own. Its why it takes so fuckin long to recap the smp to someone who wants in on it.
I think the ccs are realizing this too. Tommy constantly asserts himself as the GOOD GUY, SELFLESS and REASONABLE.

because we are suspending our disbelief and immersing ourselves, we come to believe it, maybe only because we shoved ourselves into his boots. Likewise, if you only watched Fundys stream, you would be under the impression that eret abandoned fundy.

but. that isn't true at all, and you would KNOW this because you watched erets stream too, or read his twitter account.
Perspective is power in this story, especially when we're stuck in this western ideology of good vs bad.
Ever notice how Dream doesn't stream? He might not

be doing it intentionally, but it is multitudes easier to villainize someone who doesn't have that loud of a voice, because we only ever see dream from the eyes of everyone else. I mean, he's doing this for his friend, right? Which brings us to the question and the answer.

Who is the hero of the smp? Who is Theseus, destined for a lonely end?

Nobody.

Nobody is theseus, because the very concept of a hero is flawed, and is only centered around individuals of the past, in HISTORY and HISTORY is largely reliant on PERSPECTIVE.

the winner tells the story. Theseus might have been exiled, but the people who told his story loved him, and so they put him on a pedestal for generations to come.

The Dream SMP is based largely in the present, so we watch a story unfold and pick our own heroes.

Heroes.... aren't real. Which is why to die a hero, is to die delusional. I believe THIS was technoblade's point, not to emphasize that a good deed would always be repayed with malice, but to show tommy that he was stuck in his own narrative, one where HE was the hero who SAVED

everyone. Morality is grey, there is no black and white here. Governments don't start good and turn bad. They are both, at all times, but they will always try to project themselves as good instead of how they are. Anarchy is simple, and how people interpret it is up to them.

(this part is self indulgent just imagine the essay ends here tbh)

this is why i think amidst all of this, the badlands will emerge. The badlands don't have a leader, a protagonist or a narrative they're trying to construct for themselves. There is no power system. They don't

let things escalate, they're great at communicating and i cannot name a single time where any course of action they took didn't make sense. They didn't take a specific side of the war, because they recognized that a war is a war, and both sides of the war were fucked from the

start! this is just me pushing my : everyone follow after the badlands agenda but shhhhh

anyways thank you for coming to my ted talk