Again: I feel disappointed about how we never got to see what she did to be trusted with her weapons. What exactly did she do to get them back? What did she do to earn back some trust? Admittedly, Zuko kinda did a similar thing, what with how he helped out in the destruction of Ba Sing Se and killing the Avatar, but he was always second questioning himself. We didn’t get to see that with Emerald because I guess seeing our main characters sit around a house talking was more important I guess. It took Zuko several episodes to earn the entire group’s trust. Emerald takes only like one. Maybe one and a half if I’m being generous.

Volumes 4 and 5 would have been really great places for Emerald to start having doubts about what she did. But all it takes is just… That?

I do appreciate that Yang is still openly distrustful of her though. But I kinda hate how she’s angry for the wrong reasons. Emerald is apparently responsible for her losing her arm. Instead of being angry at her for ruining her reputation,  being part of the reason Beacon fell, or playing a hand in getting Penny 1.0 and Pyrrha killed, it’s… Because of the arm… Which Emerald barely participated in.

I’m not against it. If anything, I was all for it, but I really would have liked to have seen their trek from the remains of the whale to the mansion, and to see what Emerald did to be trusted with her weapons.

From techno’s discord messages, as well as a few quotes here and there, we can gather that the intent of techno’s character during the red festival was as follows: -unwarned about Wilbur’s ‘B-plot’, Techno goes to the festival under schlatt’s invitation and uses it as a reconaissance mission, to know the enemy better.

-Tubbo actively tells wilbur to activates the B-plot.

-during the speech, tubbo gets cornered and he is asked to go on stage. He gets nervous as things don’t go to plan.

-He tries to delay it, thinking Wilbur has a plan to get them out of here. He doesn’t. 

-Techno possibly feels betrayed or used (which is a feeling that could lead on to nov 16th), and has to go along with schlatt as the crowd and the president pressure him, some of them having netherite armor, possibly ready to attack if he doesn’t listen which would out him as a spy too. 

-He executes Tubbo, feeling regret and anger towards wilbur and tommy for not helping him, and now has to confront one or both of the two over the incident. 

Alright! That’s a base line for what techno probably has in head. Some good stuff in here, some nice intent. 

HOWEVER, let’s compare it to the execution. And I’m gonna be using Techno’s video:

-Asides from fundy, he is the only one wearing armor. (and fundy takes it off once he gets to the party) and later on punz.

-Tubbo did not say the code until Schlatt pressed on it. “Got anything else you wanna add? Is there anything else on the speech?” (meaning schlatt read the thing beforehand)

-Techno realizes they’ve been compromised way earlier he is asked to get on the stage. 

-Niki was crying as she realized. Niki was clearly against the idea.

-Actively calls schlatt ‘mister president.” 

(-seems to have been redconned, but apparently schlatt knew techno so that’s that.)

-”WAIT!” “WHAT??” “Schlatt, it’s a festival man.” “YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO TUBBO”. The whole crowd was against the execution. 

-”Schlatt, he’s trapped, I think it’s good enough.” Quackity WAS AGAINST IT AS WELL. 

(-also his little “wait, techno you’re gonna...?”) 

-”I’m being subjected to mild ammount of peer pressure, tubbo.” 

-man BURSTS OUT LAUGHING right after. 

-Man fucking penta killed the whole crowd. 

-then LEFT right after starting the mayhem, leaving everyone to go after TOMMY

-”Tommy’s on his own!” 

-(Wilbur calls him “the blade” and he calls back in a friendly manner.) 

-”You think you can destroy manberg without me?” 

-laughs in tommy’s face as he’s angry. 

-”Onto a new day, a new plot, to destroy manberg.” 

----

So a few things here: 

-Techno, from this video, indeed didn’t seem to know about Wilbur’s plot. And he does try to ask him about it once at pogtopia. However, he then says that final quote, which implies he was in on the plan to destroy manberg on the festival. Contradictory statements, and we don’t know which one is true. 

-Tubbo not saying the code until pressured makes the execution contradict the intent. However, it’s the execution that matters, and therefore tubbo didn’t try to kill techno. 

-Techno listens to every of schlatt’s commands, which could be to not be outted as spy if... he was part of the country. And also didn’t already broke the rule of ‘no armor’ beforehand. The main pressure seems to come from schlatt. No other member encourages the president’s actions. 

-the regret and conflicted feelings are.... innexistant. And so is his loyalty. c!Techno’s a great fan of “I WOULD HAVE FOUGHT THEM ALL FOR YOU!” yet when Tommy, his ally, pops in to takes the remains of tubbo. He just.... leaves. He willingly abandons them.

-Never apologizes to tubbo afterward or check if he’s doing alright/ready to continue the revolution. Instead, he focusses on beating tommy in the pit. (though cheered on and a bit pressed by Wilbur.) 

Final thoughts:

On one hand we all had hopes, and god it could have been everything but like- I WISH I could just avoid techno lore but when he’s so determined to be in my fav’s stories, it’s just a pain. Like that’s such a emerald duo specific problem.

 Like if you don’t want awesamdude lore, that’s fine, it doesn’t change a lot of other’s POV, instead explaining stuff about him. Same goes with ponk! if you’re not a fan of their lore (idk why but hypotetics) you can ignore their story. That was one fo the strenghts of season 1 imo, even if you don’t care about certain character, the main plot is still followable, you can ignore what you don’t want in your consuption and not miss on the more important part of the story. 

But with techno?? He will be in the center of the plot whether you like it or not and that’s all there will be of him. Any solo part is him being ooc which, sure, makes for some light hearted comedy and a cool inclusion, but story wise that means that this pig is never challenging his thoughts, we can NEVER get an insight to how he thinks. There are CRUMBS of development and insight, like when he passes the safe heaven and states “I wish something like that existed”, but compared to all the waffling we got that’s not enough. That’s not enough.

And like the thing is I don’t know why I even got my hopes up. Every single scene with techno is written like piss. The story keep bending over backwards just so Techno doesn’t appear an antagonist to anyone. Not even the people he actively wronged multiple times. At this point it’s just hilarious how much retcon they had to do to avoid conflict like seriously-

The worst part is those rewrites are only present when techno has to interact with those characters! like Tubbo is still traumatized by his execution and has been rendered self sacrificial to a worrying degree because of everything he lost. Lost BECAUSE OF techno, yet because a stream requires them to team up, and because for some reason we’re not allowed to have conflict in a techno stream, tubbo is fine with him except for a brief moment. But this stream is over and tubbo is back to being this scarred, broken yet unmovable character. It just keeps happening, and I don’t see the appeal. Sure, if you want a sitcom, you’ll be served, but the dsmp, despite all its hilarious moments, is still a story with heavy themes. 

And then there’s the whole Eret redemption part which I’ll express very simply: Eret’s crimes are fucking NOTHING in comparaison to Techno’s. And that’s without touching on their motives. Eret’s biggest crime is the betrayal of L’manberg during the war for independance. And their path towards redemption and regret is not only far more compelling that anything c!techno has done, but also shows a development and a character growth that I can only applaud. 

And not only DID techno betray l’manberg too (on nov 16th) (so by that logic alone he should be held as accountable as Eret still is) BUT he destroyed the land a second time, ACTIVELY helping Dream, broke him out of prison, executed Tubbo under Schlatt’s commands,  and that’s just at the top of my head. So why can he get off scott free? Meta wise, because they have written it so c!techno cannot have a conflict where he’s even partially in the wrong.