#foreverplayerg

Because here’s the thing. The whole reason these people have been removed from the series is to reduce their reach to hurt both the collective audience and their peer creators, and with that comes a decision to cut them from the narrative completely so that they don’t gain even a little of that notoriety and power back through association.

And so if they choose to completely retcon them out- as a lot of the community has chosen to do- I totally get that. In a lot of ways it’s the right choice- story and history be damned. At the end of the day nothing in a silly Minecraft story is important as real people’s lives, and I think (hope) all of the creators and writers left on QSMP seem to agree with that.

But… I also recognize that they have- to differing degrees- been part of HUGE parts of the QSMP story, both overall and in different characters lives, and unless we all collectively erase like 60% of the series so far, they will continue to be there in the history.

Like, on the lesser impact side, you have Wilbur, one of the original train-riding islanders, an original member of the Death Family, originally the only father of Talullah. He may been so absent that it became a running joke on the server, but if you cut every mention of him completely, Tallulah’s story and growth over the past year disintegrate underneath her. Tallulah was very specifically an only child of a single father, dealing with the constant feeling of loneliness in his absence, growing disillusioned with the world as he broke his promises and never came back for her, but also growing closer to her family as she learned what constant care and nurturing actually looks like through Phil. I’m all for her being fully adopted by Death Family now and taking more and more traits from Phil and Missa, but that new identity as part of their family is the conclusion of her story, not the beginning. While Missa is away a lot of time, he’s not absent in a way that’s fair or fitting to impose her story on to him.

Really the only choice is to disregard everything from the beginning and basically retcon her story entirely, or take the story as it is and let Wilbur be there. Although now the story has still changed a little with his removal because now he’s a deadbeat who made empty promises and couldn’t bring himself to do more than play house for a couple weeks and be possessive and toxic when he came back one time when she was missing- which feels like a pretty honest interpretation given what we know now.

But then there’s Forever. One of the Favela Five, a major face in and winner of the long series election arc, the face and President of both the islanders and Federation, one of the main characters in the Happy Pills/Eggs Missing arc, and one of the original parents of Richarlyson. He isn’t just a part of the QSMP history, he’s heavily intertwined with most of the server story between the early days and the Purgatory arc. Even interpersonally, he was deeply involved with Badboyhalo, Cellbit, Pac and to an extent Philza, and that’s just who I remember off the top of my head.

Where as Wilbur is only able to be found in the details in the little house he built for his daughter and the memories of the family she built, Forever’s influence is everywhere you look in the old parts of the server- his face on the Federation building, his projects littered around the spawn and his base and the Favela, the Favela it self built next to a man-made ocean he carved out of the landscape (if I remember correctly). I don’t want to overstate this and imply that he’s the most important character of the server or something because he’s definitely not, but it is true that as president he was deeply involved in and invested in the stories happening around him and removing him completely from history takes a lot of that history with him.

And choosing whether or not to remove his character is even harder than Wilbur’s because his character on the server was genuinely a good person. He was caring, charismatic, ambitious and visionary, he was both a leader and friend to a lot of the characters (and creators really), and in the end his character simply died trying to do what was right for his family.

I don’t know, I don’t really want their stories to stay relevant to the QSMP. Maybe I’m overthinking their relevance. Maybe the creators will continue to just ignore it. Maybe when we get the writers back and they’re properly paid for their work they’ll have the creative energy needed to rework their histories in a satisfying way without them- that’s what I hope at least.