Live your world...!

now, I wanna preface this by saying that I'm by no means an expert on niki's character. I've seen some of her streams and read up on her lore and kept up with the meta discussions but I'm by no means a niki main (not to any real fault of her own, time in the day is just limited and I've gotten inniter brainrot).

I will say, it's not hate so much as it is intense frustration at the loss of both focus and potential.

niki and jack joined the server just after the end of the original war for independence, and they meshed into l'manberg proper so fast and hard that a good chunk of the fandom didn't remember that they weren't there for the war in the first place. niki was already introduced under the context of her and wilbur already being friends (with wilbur giving her a personal tour on her first day), but they streamed Much more frequently then as well. sometimes every day depending on the streamer !

niki built the first flag l'manberg ever had large and proud, the same being emulated all the way up to l'manberg's l'manhole now. she befriended everyone, she ran for office with fundy. she Was a l'manbergian.

and then schlatt won the elections, and then wilbur and tommy were ran out of the country, and then fundy burned the flag that She'd built.

her strength wasn't in physical fighting, her strength was in her Will. she looked the manberg cabinet in the face and told them she hoped they starved, earning her a permanent spot on schlatt's shit list from go. she fought the pet wars along-side tommy (with him and for him, not unlike she had with fundy before the elections). during the festival she yelled over schlatt and a screaming crowd to tell techno He Had A Choice, that schlatt couldn't Make him kill tubbo. she picked up the pieces afterwards, promising two boys only barely younger than her that they'd get through it no matter what, as long as they stayed together. she lived through abuse and fear and stuck with what was most important to her. she fought along side the rest of pogtopia to kill schlatt, to win back her home, to win back her community.

and then it was gone. just like that, the person she's trusted took it all away when they were supposed to have already won. techno spawned in monsters and dream rained tnt where the initial explosion hadn't already touched.

niki never really bounced back from the 16th.

nobody did Really, but she never truly found her footing again. the l'manberg cabinet had an illusion of stability for a hot second there (with a plan to try to desperately clutch at what they had afraid that it'd be taken away), but niki didn't have People.

she was building an underground city to house people without a home. it was meant to protect people without boarders and without fear. but it was empty. the design slowly shifted to be less and less hospitable. she slept in a cage.

by the time of the green festival niki was angry and lost, she felt abandoned and directionless and nothing was okay and she Needed something to blame. and dream gave her that something in the form of tommy.

from dream's mouth, it was tommy that destroyed the community house, it was tommy that'd "pushed" dream into building the walls, it was tommy that'd been with technoblade, it was tommy that'd promised to be there for her, it was tommy that'd always been by wilbur's side.

she was angry and she had a scapegoat and someone once defined by her Faith and her Will couldn't Believe anymore. she rejected l'manberg, she rejected her home, she rejected her community.

this was, Soured a bit by the overall problems with doomsday as a lore event. but in isolation this is a very strong character moment.

it's also here that she started up team rocket with jack. the two have Strong parallels to each other, with both of them picking out tommy as a scapegoat for all the problems with the server in part because of people like dream and techno who Positioned him as the center, and in part because they felt abandoned and lonely and tommy was Important to them once.

moreover, they knew that they couldn't touch any of the doomsday trio. tommy was an Obtainable goal specifically because he Was vulnerable.

so in the space in between doomsday and the disc war finale jack and niki were trying to kill tommy. this was largely played as a joke, with the gag being that they'd always fail no matter how specific they were, meanwhile tommy picked up on the fact that they were acting Weird but not that they were trying to kill him.

this bit was very funny, it just unfortunately happened in the aftermath of doomsday when 4/5ths of the fandom were convinced that tommy was the devil incarnate. again, not jack and niki's fault that they decided to play sympathetic villains while the fandom was eating itself with discourse.

the cracks only started to show after the disc war finale.

niki and jack were both there during the disc war finale, and it makes sense that they were there for tubbo and that they were still Angry at tommy. but they were also there to hear dream admit that he'd lied about the community house, they were there to see how dream had been pulling the strings in the first place. the server latching onto the idea that tommy had been guilty in the first place was already absurd enough given the context of the green festival.

still, what pushed it over the edge was niki joining the syndicate.

going after tommy was supposed to be the Alternative to going after techno and dream, because they weren't Strong enough. it was techno and dream that'd taken their homes away, it was (in their minds) tommy that'd laid the foundations.

joining techno as an ally, in this context, is like lighting yourself on fire to spite the match.

which wouldn't have been a Problem inherently if niki's arc was about her realizing that. if she was supposed to realize that she was taking herself too far in the face of short sighted revenge and that she's have to pull back and reconcile if she wanted to be happy.

which is, Almost, her intended arc.

after tommy dies and gets revived she Does decide to settle in, she Does decide that it's time for her to be Happy. but it's with the syndicate. it's with the people directly responsible for the intensely traumatizing events that lead to her death spiral.

it wasn't with tommy or tubbo, who she had strong emotional ties to that lead back to the beginning she was longing for in the first place, and it wasn't even with jack who had ties to the same that she'd promised to join hands with in the present. it was with technoblade and phil, who stood above her home and bombed it. who took a sword and killed someone who used to be her best friend. who shot tubbo dead while she screamed that he had another choice.

and That's where the problems truly set in. not because she's irredeemable or because she can never reconcile, but because her arc is being "resolved" in a way that makes absolutely no god damn sense.

she was friends with tommy, she tried to kill him Multiple Times, she laughed when she learned that he was dead, she helped the syndicate investigate tubbo (who thinks that tommy is dead even if She doesn't believe it), she has never owned up to any of this.

she's not mad at tommy anymore, she's let that go, but she's never Talked to him. she's never owned up to trying to kill him, she's never even properly broken off her deal with Jack, who she Knows is still trying to kill tommy (or rather, that's what she Thinks. that's what jack likes to tell himself too).

so she's just been sitting here, stagnating. not able to address any of the emotional beats of her character because she's trying to find community and a new sense of purpose in the absolute wrong place for it.

was joining up with techno bad? yeah. was helping dream escape from prison even though she knows for a fact that he's a murderer whose orchestrated the downfall of her home and antagonized the people that she loved over a Favor that wasn't even Hers because she didn't want to "betray" techno even worse? Absolutely.

when you're at the point where Ranboo does more to try to put his foot down about a confrontation between two sides then you have a problem. even if ranboo was brushed off the fact is he still tried to Tell techno that he didn't think they should be helping dream.

and we have to ask where her character is supposed to go from here. she's angry at wilbur, she's never apologized to tommy, she hasn't even tried to Connect with anyone outside of the syndicate except for two conversations with jack, ranboo is a Ghost, and the person who once looked a dictator in the face and told them to Starve when she had nothing couldn't look her own ally in the face and say they shouldn't break the serial killer out of jail while she was in full netherite.

her character has Stagnated because she's in the wrong Place and there's no sign of where she'll be able to go from here.

C!Niki's arc isn't trying to put her foot down like C!Ranboo or trying to become more confrontational or anything. And while I would love to see that direction for her character, I feel like you missed the reason she joined up with C!Techno and the Syndicate in the first place.

As seen with Bear SMP, C!Niki is a character who's witnessed communities fall apart again and again. It is important to note that this is NOT an arc involving C!Tommy so maybe look away from Inniter POV for a moment as I explain the revelations we had of her in that storyline.

In Bear SMP, it is revealed that before theDream SMP, C!Niki was part of another community known as the Perfect SMP, and when stuff happened in the past that led to it falling apart, she left, abandoning her friend, Bear, there and finding solace in a new person who promised her a safehaven, and a brand new start... C!Wilbur.

Which is inportant because we now know what C!Niki seeks, she needs support and people who encourages her, gives her comfort, which is why she ended up in the Syndicate.

Fast forward to her witnessing the fall of LManberg and seeing yet another country she was promised happiness in shattered and C!Niki grew disillusioned but still sticking to LManberg. But we are already seeing the cracks show when C!Fundy convinced her to build Dry Waters with him. C!Niki is already losing faith in LManberg as the thing C!Wilbur promised her was and is already drifting apart from it.

Which led to her going against C!Tommy.

It is important to note her biases here too. When Bear SMP fell apart, she didn't exactly had anybody to blame, when LManberg first fell she was at least anle to blame C!Wilbur as a way to cope but that became hard to do when he's dead, so her witnessing C!Tommy about to prank George which accidentally cause his house to burn down ended up clouding her judgement further.

And she lashed out, if LManberg is doomed then she will burn it herself, and that's the point she lost hope for a stable community in it that she is now left rattled and alone, unable to cope with it all.

So then the Rocket Duo arc happened and that's still her still lashing out until... Ok I might be wrong ehre because it's been a while but I believe at this point of the continuity she did ended up realizing her faults and walked away from the SMP, returning to Bear SMP in order to reconnect with C!Bear who she heard was going through his own recovery from the trauma of their past, and her wanting to fix what happened then. Promising never to abandon him again...

I won't go into detail on how that exactly ended since there were some behind the scenes issues with BSMP that caused it to be prematurely cancelled so I'm just gonna talk about how it ended and try to fill in the blanks there. Take note that this might not be canon because of said cancellation but I have to try and guess what happened in between for continuity's sake.

But Bear SMP ended how it started, empty, and seemingly something bad happened again that caused Bear to do as he did before and reset his server, or at least hopped into a new world, in his futile efforts of trying to makes things perfect. You may watch that ending in Bearbubb's channel on youtube.

So what happened to C!Niki then? What happened to "I will never abandon you again"?

Well, it fell apart once again and she ended up leaving her homeworld one last time, back to the DSMP where she is once again left lost, purposeless, and once again, realizing she needed people. She is somebody who craved companionship, which she lost with Jack, she lost with LManberg, and for the last time, she lost with Bear.

So what now?

Enter Techno.

For the first time in a while somebody reached out to her and promised her companionship she's been craving, and she jumped to it. I mean why wouldn't she? She fundamentally agreed with Techno that governments are bad after witnessing 3 of them fall apart before her eyes. She is in need of anybody, somebody, to reach out to her the same way Wilbur did. And when Techno came forward and promised her this with no strings attached... she took it.

At this point her longing was filled and she has lost much of her drive to hurt those who wronged her. She still hates C!Dream but her need to maintain her new safehaven in the Syndicate came first now knowing how her other factions went in the past, despite Techno encouraging her further to speak her mind. And as for C!Tommy, I do believe she owes a reconciliation arc with him but I can't blame CC!Wilbur and CC!Tommy for not focusing on the RP anymore, that is neither them nor CC!Niki's fault, which is why I tried to avoid an Inniter's perspective on this and look at her only as a person.

And then her confrontation with C!Jack happened which explained a lot on her mental point at this point in the story

She let Dream out because she justified it is to save Ranboo, she is no longer interested in playing the politics game of the server and is disinterested in what C!Dream is gonna do moving forward, and fundamentally, C!Niki only wants to create a safehaven for herself first and foremost now instead of relying just on Techno for it.

She carries the Syndicate members as her most important companions now, willing to justify it for the sake of Ranboo and Techno. She's still Niki and knowing everything, none of this is out of character for her knowing now what's she went through and what she is holding the most important. You can see that even in her conversation with Jack that she was torn about helping Dream too, but she is just too loyal to her new friends now to go against it.

And that's why I say you shouldn't look things in a Tommy Centric perspective because let's be real here, the closest we are ever probably gonna get with a reconciliation with her and Tommy is if CC!Wilbur involves her in his apology arc. Which we don't know if that's happening soon.

And again, you misunderstood why she helped Techno and even forgot about her TALKING with Jack about why she even did this. Jack isn't even trying to kill Tommy anymore and you would know that if you checked out his and hers last talk! She had convinced him to settle down with her and mentioned that despite Jack leaving (and thus also the main reason she couldn't seek companionship with him is cause he's canonically left the SMP at that point) she forgives and understand him.

What is she doing now?

She made an entire secret city that btw, if folks paid attention because nobody in the fanbase seems to talk about this, SHE MADE EVEN DURING THE LMANBERG TUBBO ERA, specificlaly as a Safehaven for people who wishes to be uninvolved in this conflict and to just find sollace wherever. She was already disillusioned about LManberg so losing it isn't traumatizing to her anymore.cause she burned it down herself.

If LManberg can't be that for her, if Bear SMP or Perfect SMP can't be that for her then she will create her own safe place for her and her closest friends. And while that does not finish her arc with Tommy, it does seem like despite a not completely satisfying conclusion... is a better enough end for her conflicts as it finally gives her a semblance of closure. And sometimes that is enough. She is in a place where she is about to heal, and she is giving Jack this as well despite being hurt with him leaving, because this time, she's willing to forgive.

And all of this WITHOUT INVOLVING TOMMY.

And that's what I'm trying to say here, people dismissing arcs because it doesn't involve Tommy. And what's funny is I'm not even a Niki main, I just took note of everything happening and this is what I got. It makes sense because she's her own character, she doesn't need to fully resolve her arc with Tommy and Wilbur (though I'd appreciate that, but schedule issues) and it is incredibly insulting to see her as only a Techno sidechsracter when C!TECHNO HIMSELF WAS TRYING TO GET HER TO SPEAK HER MIND, constantly asking her if she was ok with the Dream Breakout (which she said she was torn with but she wanted to prioritize Ranboo). And yeah, none of this involves C!Tommy but is clearly communicated for anybody who checks her out and NOT JUST THE FANON TALK ABOUT HER!

So where does she go from here?

I have a couple of ideas. Besides actually talking to C!Wilbur which is still something I wish they'd do, or hell, saying sorry to Tommy because she herself agrees that she is wrong in regards to that... There's always more to do with her underground city. There's also unresolved conflict with Fundy and Puffy. Hell, she could have a character arc where she hesitates following Techno because they were forced to do something fundamentally drastic, and that could be interesting. Why doesn't she have her own arc? Well not everybody wants to pull a Ranboo, and that should be fine.

Bottomline, I just really dislike centering eberything on Tommy, and I desperately needed somebody to point this out without just seeing it in Tommy's story you know? A full understanding of C!Niki without ties to Crimeboys, and this fanbase lacks that. I am not saying Inniters are bad or whatever, but trying to judge another person's writing when you yourself agreed you haven't watched it yourself is... Bad. I'm sorry but it is.

It's the same as folks misunderstanding the Exile arc because they never watched the VODs. I am NOT saying you should watch every single DSMP stream cause that would be insane, I'm just saying, before you judge somebody's writing actually... you know, watch her VODs and get a better picture of it without being biased for your main. Again, I don't even main Niki, she's not even a favorite of mine (I main mostly C!Quackity, and he BARELY has any big interactions with her) and even I managed to get all this.

What does it take to teach a bee to use tools? A little time, a good teacher and an enticing incentive. Read more here: http://to.pbs.org/2mpRUAz

And then I’m puzzled at all the Neil Why’s, and realise that this was me in the Wayback Long-ago.

At least I’m consistent.

@territorialoak​ I hope you don’t mind me adding your tags here, that story is just too good and I’m Obsessed