point and say if you think he’s here!

Edit: ^ my OG post sounds like a condemnation of tragedies which it SUPER isn't. Catharsis is wonderful and important!!

This is however coming from someone who tends to find tragedies unhelpful, but follows a lot of people who love tragedies and posts about tragedies.

I think like- all the talk about and posting like a 'I love characters that can't out run their fate, I love stories where we already know the ending, I love stories where the are doomed' and 'b The narrative is trying to kill me' and 'the narrative loves me so much I'm dying to it' and c 'stories where the tragedy is the character cannot escape the story they're in 'ect, on tumblr dot com. Are response or rephrasing of like... those big questions at the bottom of it all. The ones we never really solve

this is a redraw of them vv

SMP Earth Technoblade

This is part of my series (which now actually technically counts as a series) of Technoblade character designs. I’m gonna put the first one (Hypixel Skyblock Techno) under the cut for comparison.

I feel like Antarctic Empire Techno has big WWI vibes so I went with a WWI officer uniform (specifically a cavalry officer, even though this is the one series here he never uses a horse (AFAIK) but I just wanted an excuse to include a chestplate.) I debated so long whether to do a fighter pilot outfit or a full on imperial portrait thing, but decided that this was a good compromise.

And swords!

Okay okay okay, I know swords are the 1.8 weapon and all, but the fact that he still favoured the sword even though it’s “purely ornamental“ and made it work with the new combat mechanics is worth noting. Switching between the axe for disabling shields and the sword for actually delivering damage.

Specifically he would use a fully enchanted sword over a fully enchanted axe, because the sword is faster and you can get almost twice as many hits with a sword as you can with an axe, which adds up when you have enchants (which even up the difference between the two weapons) and even more so if you have strength. He would still prefer an unenchanted axe over an unenchanted sword though because the axe’s base damage is so much higher.

Of course the thing with taking advantage of the sword’s higher speed is that you have to be able to pull that off to benefit from it. Techno obviously can, but I feel like this would not work out well for a lot of less experienced players. Being able to hit quickly doesn’t help if you can’t hit consistently.

I think this is like the whole argument for the newer PVP system, that axes are supposed to be slow but precise and effective while swords are supposed to be fast and have a sweeping attack but deal less damage per hit so there would be some actual variety in the combat and you could choose which one you prefer. The problem is that I don’t think it was properly balanced for PVP. Swords make sense against mobs, but against another player... idk.

Techno was such a strategist with 1.16 weapons and mechanics like no one else. He made op rockets and killed like 10 players with the crossbow, used a trident + slow falling potions to carpet bomb people with rockets, used his clout to get tons lucky blocks to get full diamond armor, divebombed with an elytra and crit from a fire aspect I sword, circled around a pillar to regain hearts, used trigonometry to do more damage, and put strength and invis pots on tons of dogs like name you a streamer. He was always outnumbered/had the odds against him but that never seemed to be a deterrent for him b/c he made sure to plan his attacks with that in mind. He was literally a one man army.

i will remember him claiming the monopoly sound was too loud for him to hear wilbur when he spoke of techno staying up all night to comfort him when he was sick. i will remember him taking the time to add watermarks for his artists when they themselves forgot. i will remember niki and sophie saying how he always somehow made sure they never felt excluded or neglected and how he would hate it, it would embarrass him when they spoke of his kindness publicly. i will remember him personally dming ponk to thank them for sending a 45-minute video of someone feeding hotdogs to raccoons in chat and timestamping his favorite part. i will remember his love for the people who created for him, how he would keep his mentions on for everyone before his fanart tag was formed and would just scroll and scroll to make sure not to miss any art someone made for him. i will remember half his friends and peers having some kind of a story of him reaching out to them during tough days, reassuring them, believing in them, making them feel loved.

True to form, I didn’t start with any of his current videos at the time, but back with his c. 2016 bedwars and skywars videos. And…

OK, I had essentially never been on youtube before that, not more than a couple times a year. I knew it existed, obviously (I didn’t know twitch existed). But the last time I’d had any significant contact with the online gaming community was Gamergate. That was my reference for what to expect from men talking about video games online: gleeful harassment and a competitive community so toxic it needed a specific word for calling a SWAT team on someone who made you mad.

I knew Techno wasn’t like that, of course. That’s a fringe group of the loudest assholes, I wouldn’t assume any random person would be like that. Anyways my friend had been watching him for a while, so he had to be a decent person.

Still, binging his old videos… in the back of my mind, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was so competitive. He was so perfectionist. Even when he was insisting on playing Skywars as casually as he could, I halfway expected that eventually he’d snap at a teammate who made a mistake, and I’d stop feeling comfortable watching him.

Then I started watching his MC Championship streams, in backwards order. MINECRAFT CHAMPIONSHIP w/ Ph1lza, Nihachu & Eret. And I got to Ace Race. And I started getting nervous. It was exactly the situation I didn’t want to see him in. Battling for first place, he was lapping his own teammates and upset with himself for every mistake that he made. And Nihachu, especially, was struggling. The best I was hoping for was that he’d quietly ignore it.

But he didn’t. He went back and he helped her. And he encouraged his teammates. He helped her figure out the path. He was sympathetic about how confusing she found it, and he didn’t get impatient when she made the same mistake over and over. He cheered her accomplishments even when they were far different from his own. He cheered her accomplishments even when they were losing him the tournament.

And not only that, the entire tournament did! Players from every team started encouraging Niki as she struggled to finish.

I cried, y’all. I cried.

I know it’s going to sound stupid and old-fashioned to those of you who’ve been in the community longer, but the last time I was in online gaming communities was 2014. I didn’t think I was going to rejoin it and find a community where teammates supported each other. I didn’t think women could be bad without getting singled out for it.