𐔌 . ⋮ Im To Tired For This .ᐟ ֹ ₊

What is purgatory??

In season 5, a mod was introduced that PERMANENTLY banned players if they died- no revive beacons, no way back. Dread filled the air of the server as a graveyard appeared at spawn, which every day, grew bigger.............. Purgatory is a greyscale version of this place which Squiddo was sent to when she was chunkbanned at the end of season 5. Physically speaking, she's only actually been here once.

The sun spoke to Squiddo and questioned her morality- purgatory was a place in between the land of the living, some sort of heaven, and some sort of hell- so Squiddo had to justify her own actions as 'good' so she could move on to a better afterlife. But ultimately, the sun decided that she hadn't been good enough for salvation, but not bad enough to be damned, and left her in the greyscale graveyard. The sun is supposed to be some sort of almighty deity, god or something. Or maybe it's Squiddo's own guilt, but I wrote it imagining it was some sort of elusive godlike entity.

Ofc, this was just some thingymabob I made up to make the video easier to understand :P but yeah!

Either way, she was left trapped there. Sometimes echoes of things and people from the other sides blinked through, like glances of other players who had died, or a phone booth ringing from somewhere in the overworld.

So how did she get out...?

A phone both from the overworld echoed into purgatory, delivering a call from the very-alive Wemmbu. Squiddo learned that even though they'd all moved on somewhere better after their deaths, she was still welcomed, and therefore needed elsewhere. The better world was literally calling to her- and once she learned that, another godlike figure appeared in purgatory, in the form of a very handsome commissioner... Technically, as a president-elect, she still had a wish yet to claim: so she wished purgatory into oblivion, and was taken to season 6 of Lifesteal, where once again, she could try to prove herself as a good person.

But even though her body was free, her mind... was not😱😱😱😱😱🥶🥶🥶

In season 6, Squiddo accidentally sent somebody else to purgatory, and had to find a way to bring him out...

Bored, I tried to figure out what the biggest map was, and accidentally created a bomb that would crash the server once put into lava. Upon returning, I realised that the crash had somehow duped an item that I'd thrown on the floor. Excitedly, I told my team mate 4CVIT, and we headed to a nondescript swamp to dupe everything that we owned...

At first, it went perfectly- we double our hearts, our gear, our jewels, our EVERYTHING- but during another run, something went horribly wrong. After 4c broke the chest, instead of duping, the server began to lag- to our dismay, it wasn't crashing. We began to freak out as our framerates quickly plunged from the hundreds into single digits. We could barely move or see the terrain around us, and trapped underground, we quickly realised that if we didn't get out NOW... We were going to die down there. Unable to even see where I was going, I plunged into the pool to the left, and swam through both the darkness and the 1FPS footage into the light. With 4cvit right behind me, I equipped my elytra, and splashing in the open ocean, spammed as many fireworks as I could until I took off into the air. The server was dying. But through some miracle, all of a sudden, my frames jumped back to 60, and I was soaring through the air away from the swamp. I cheered gleefully as I escaped certain death with all the duped items in my inventory, but was met only with silence. When I turned around confused back to the swamp, my heart sunk...

my friend 4cvit wasn't behind me any more. he was nowhere to be seen. through sick luck, i'd gotten free, but the corruption had swallowed him whole. I got only a fleeting glimpse of the shore before the server collapsed on its self, and 4cvit was lost.

chunkbanned by my own creation.

This was the scariest moment EVER in minecraft for me, I WISH i had been recording!! ;u; why had i been able to escape, but not him?! It was so unfair!

even worse, every time he logged on, the server would crash. there was no saving him, no begging admins to undo it without them taking ALL of OUR hearts. i had to fix this myself. but how?

Throughout this time, Squiddo had nightmares of purgatory. She wasn't really there, but having had such a close brush with it, whenever she closed her eyes, she'd hear the ringing telephone that had brought her free from it- and envisioned a greyscale version of her home, or spawn, with the ringing exit and her lost friend just out of reach. But she didn't really know where 4cvit was. So to look for him, she had to tread out of bounds, into a vasty empty void. Every time she tried to reach out for him, her guilty memories of how she'd banished her friend would flash before her eyes, and she'd snap back to reality.

Eventually, somebody on the server started blaming Flamefrags for the lag, and using that as leverage, 4cvit was restored. immediately he wanted to get back to duping, but once again, it went wrong. nobody died, but after that, squiddo became genuinely frightened of her creation. it was TOO evil, even for her. a chunkban that once you're inside, you can never attempt to escape from, or else the whole server will crash? and she'd put her own best friend into it... wracked with shame and terror, she returned to dupe swamp, and filled in the whole place with stone. it would just have to be a particularly laggy part of the server that hopefully, everyone would avoid. but it didn't last.

the season ended with team FOCUS unleashing the corruption and it ending the server.

So what's this in season 7?

Having been to purgatory and back, and BARELY escaping it's grasp multiple times in season 6, Squiddo sometimes slips into visions of purgatory when she isn't focusing. (wait... focus...)

She still knows that she HAS to be GOOD. But finding the cracks in the universe and turning them into canyons is in her nature. So she is riddled with guilt, trying her best to be an ordinary player, knowing full well that in season 6, she had given in. It had cost her her friend, and months of her time, but it had been so FUN. So nightmares of purgatory, and voices commanding her to be good, consume her... But it's been so long, and so much has changed, so the nightmares have become distorted.

Lost in her own guilt laden mind, she wanders into a church and confesses her wrongdoings. Two heavenly voices command her to behave- a green one and a blue one. I thought, what would a heavenly entity be in Minecraft? I'd used the sun before, but there's no sun here; so instead, I went with the two voices in the Minecraft end credits poem, the ones that talk about the player as if it's a humble creature... It makes sense that they'd be gods or something. So, Squiddo has dreams about them talking to her.

In the mindscape, she has nightmares not just of a church, but about her own past self- the one that lead her to becoming trapped in purgatory originally- she reviles that person, swears she will change, not make the same mistakes. She.. will... be ... better... right!?

Well, she tries, but she's miserable. She dreams of her home, greyed out like purgatory, her own paranoid thoughts plastered across the walls, trapping her inside. At this point, she's almost gotten used to it, like it's a second home to her. Maybe she dreams of purgatory often... The last time we saw it, she clipped out of the bounds of her home, and found the heavenly voices speaking to her again, telling her to wake up and face reality.

Ultimately, whatever deities there are in purgatory, they want good for the world as a whole. The one in season 5 is entirely neutral on Squiddo, but the ones in season 7 sincerely want to help her. Even though it's not really purgatory, it's just in her mind, I don't think she's imagining their voices. Having grazed purgatory so frequently, I think she can just kind of tap into it now. Maybe someday she'll even be able to fully appear there...

Purgatory is Squiddo's least favourite thing in the world, because when she's there, she's TRULY helpless. It's the last place she wants to be... I don't wanna be chunkbanned!!!!!!

At the end of the day, it's just a cool way to visualise 'inner struggles' and 'you got banned'; I made purgatory so that viewers who are thinking "wait, why didn't squiddo just do this?" could have their questions answered. and then the nightmares as a cool way to show guilt/grief/paranoia but in video form! so it's fun to think about, but it isn't actually canon to lifesteal, so don't take it tooooo seriously xD

For the uninitiated, artist SMP was a 2020-2021 'lore' server filled with dream SMP fanartists all of whom had never touched pvp in their life. not a soul on that server had a villager trading hall, if you'd asked what one even was, you'd be met with confusion. The pinnacle of our technology was a manual tree farm. if you wanted enchanted gear, you got an enchanting table and guessed how many books it needed. That was all. That was perfectly fine, it was normal. Spawn was adorned with pride flags, rollercoasters and wholesome cottages- i don't think "traps" ever crossed anyone's mind, even though we were all supposed to be at war. if you wanted to fight, you spam clicked with your sword until the enemy ran away. that's all I knew going into lifesteal. I'd loved that server.

So, being thrown head first into the deepest end of the world's deadliest infinity pool, I was very confused and very out of place. i didn't know what lifesteal meant because I had never seen a lifesteal video! i didn't know what was right, what was wrong, what was expected, what had already been done. and you can see that in my base.

it's not even a "base"! It's my home- I had a bedroom, a kitchen, a GUEST BEDROOM just in case my crush ever wanted to stay over, and a dining room with a fireplace and table, just in case anybody ever wanted to come over for dinner. and, writing that out, it sounds crazy! why would anybody ever want to come over for dinner!? on lifesteal!? but I didn't know! to me, or, to lss5 squiddo, it was completely ordinary, because it was all she knew. the only storage was a set of unorganised double chests by the front door- the only reason nobody ever found this base was because nobody wants to hunt for bases on a server without a world border and only 25 players. But I didn't know!

the floor is a fish tank filled with tropical fish. a rainbow pride flag hangs above the dining room entrance. a cobweb clings to the ceiling, not because of a fight, but because it's meant to show that squiddo hasn't dusted there yet. I used to run around with Sildur's Vibrant shaders on, purely because the colours made me happy! I was certainly the only lifestealer that played with those! the only functionality this base held was a singular brewing stand, which it's self was purely decorative- it was only filled with water bottles.

She keeps framed photos of her loved ones next to her bed. allays roam about because she thinks they're cute. and this whole base- this whole home- it's not entirely original. fresh out of asmp, when I was faced with the task of making a base... I recalled my favourite place to be on artist smp.

This isn't my season 5 base, it's a secret underground bunker from artist smp! i wasn't allowed in it, but when nobody was online, I would run around it in secret because i loved being there so much. I went into the backup save file of the map and took these photos for inspiration; squiddo's season 5 base was her happy place from artist smp. and the dining table- it's the exact same one from her artist smp home. a place where it was completely reasonable for your enemies to come over for dinner.

On artist smp, since it was a 'lore' server, it was pretty ordinary for the admins to intervene and just start Adding Stuff like powers. so when that began in season 5, it wasn't out of place for me at all. I didn't realise that for most people, the white house flying around or wemmbu being immortal was quite weird... when lifesteallord started levitating in creative mode in my base, it was just another day! that happened all the time on artist smp! and when the end times came, and wemmbu got super powers and infinite hearts- fighting back seemed obvious for a million reasons, one of them being because... that's exactly what happened on artist smp, too.

Bill "ohnoheshere" Black was the servers antagonist. we'd been great friends, but through some lore shenanigans, he also ended up with infinite hearts and explosion powers. does this sound familiar... anyway, through pure bad luck, I also ended up with that suite, and had to fight him. so when it happened on lifesteal, lss5 squiddo didn't see anything odd about it because it was all she knew; i didn't know it would make people upset, i'd only ever known it to be something fun- something people got exited to witness, to be part of. but lifesteal was different...

throughout season 5, she still learned what lifesteal was. even if outside of her own base, she caught glimpses of the real world. how nobody would slow down to help her, how nobody would hesitate to kill her, how other peoples homes seemed to be a lot different to hers. how this server seemed to be a lot less carefree than what she knew. how angry people were to witness something that had been encouraged and even forced upon her before. so then comes around season 6...

The FOCUS base is very different to the season 5 home.

It's long, mined out hallways are decorated with wood and logs. Farms fill the walls and a villager trading hall is the primary feature. this time, she's teamed with two people who care about her- it's a home and the hearth is warm. the dinner table is still set, but this time only for three people. it was built by 4cvit primarily, and so is both functional and easy on the eyes- but the bright colours, the knick-knacks, and most certainly the shaderpacks, are gone. Asides from in... the bedroom.

looking back, why did this base even have a bedroom? bases don't need one, and your respawn point should be well hidden. but a quick left-turn from the dining room meeting room reveals a room entirely different from the rest of the base. it's green, orange and blue- themed after the teammates colours- the walls are adorned with plant life, candles hang warm and bright in the air, a writing desk sits nestled in the corner of the room, paired with a hanging sign that reads "FOCUS 4 EVERRR'. the walls are decorated with the powerpuff girls, except for 4cvit, who is squirtle, because he didn't want to be a powerpuff girl. Once again, it holds no functionality whatsoever- but that spark of joy and whimsy that squiddo learned from artist smp, although now a little more buried, a little dimmer than before, is still there. there isn't a doorway on the overworld leading straight to it and it isn't the whole base, but squiddo wanted somewhere cozy where her and her team mates could feel safe. not just a base, but a home. it's small, comfortable. it's very reminiscent of artist smp, a world she maybe belongs in but can never go back to. but on this season... squiddo is crushed, and she learns the truth of this server.

there is no ashswag to win over. there is no superpowered wemmbu to defeat. it's just blood forever :P

after FOCUS is forced to disband by the end of the world- and although they disband as best friends- squiddo is once again, alone. she understands lifesteal more now. you don't have dinner parties with your friends. if you want to survive, you have to think fast- you have to be the best of the best. you have to have a reason to be kept alive or you won't be for much longer. people don't like it when you fly, they don't like it when you do magic tricks, they don't like it when you surprise them with impossible things. it scares them, it unnerves them, it ruins their fun. squiddo understands this. she understands that she is scum. and she becomes very very sad with the world... the home which she grew up in is gone forever, the placed she carved out for herself cannot exist any more, and now she must beg to be kept alive.

enter season 7

all of her frames of reference are gone. wemmbu, ashswag, 4cvit- they are nowhere to be seen. and the naivety that she could survive on love alone is all but diminished. and yet... she still tries!

The VLC base has functionality. A trading hall, an XP farm, a turtle farm for turtle master potions (which squiddo has now learned the importance of, the hard way) but before anything, squiddo got straight to work decorating it, desperate to have somewhere that felt safe- like home. no doubt yearning for the comfort of the long-since vanished season 5 base, back when everything used to feel normal. crystals sparkled on the walls and leaves tumbled from the ceiling, and a happy ghast drifted through the halls. she might have even turned on shaders, once.

and she is punished for it. Team Apocalypse finds it on the day of her wedding, and blows it up while she is at the altar. her pet happy ghast is slain. she hadn't even spoken to them before. and so she runs away...

and she runs, and she runs, and she runs, looking for somewhere new to call home for now. she adorns her shield with a sunflower, sews a floral pattern onto her cardigan and builds a giant sunflower at spawn; trying to convince herself and the world that she is still happy, still has that joyous spark from before, but it's gone. she understands the world now and she does not belong in it. the dream of having a comfortable, warm, cozy base was stupid. the dream of living somewhere colourful and bright was naiive and impossible, long gone. she runs and she runs and she never looks back because without love, no place will ever feel like home. she won't be safe anywhere; she'll never frame photos of her loved ones by her bed, she'll never fill her home with pets, she'll never light a rainbow of candles and she'll never get the time to finish decorating before it's found and she's killed. and she will never have that dinner party with her enemies. why would you do any of those things on lifesteal?