schneefink

I'm currently procrastinating on a bunch of stuff so I finally cleaned up my notes on the various DSMP finales.

Wilbur did a whole goodbye series, I already posted about the last part, and also about Quackity's Las Nevadas finale.


The Egg Returns
(This is part two of the finale and I didn't watch the first part but I read a summary.)
That was great! Of course if your enemy is something that can brainwash people you suspect everyone – I loved how in the end everyone wanted the same thing and yet they all killed each other. Antfrost killing CPK and Hannah trying to kill Eryn were particularly effective betrayals right when it looked like communication might work after all. I was so glad that Bad managed to convince Eryn not to try to talk to the Egg – and then Egg!Puffy killed Eryn, and revealed that this time it was Skeppy who was helping the Egg, to save Bad after mercy-killing him hadn't worked well enough to free him from the Egg's influence. But Bad didn’t keep his promise to Skeppy to stay away from the Egg because he wanted to save his friend, and, well… It's a beautiful tragedy. (I wonder what exactly happened between them between Skeppy killing Bad and Puffy's birthday party?)
Ponk and Sam killed each other, too, and I'm barely at all familiar with their history with each other.
Production-wise, cc!Bad said he was inspired by Quackity's streams and that was very obvious. I rolled my eyes at some of the shader choices tbh, but some other moments like flashing between the normal and the vine-infested surroundings were very cool.


awesamdude and BoomerNA lore finale ft. Philza
That was cool! Pre-recorded lore again, also using some flashbacks from the Egg lore finale stream. I loved all the ancient backstory, like that Sam and Phil (who still had wings back then!) used to be friends and Sam built a machine that let him control multiple clone bodies and thought that meant he could stay with Phil and instead Phil said it goes against the natural order of things and demanded he destroy it. And then later Sam gets attached to one of his bodies and loses all memories that it wasn't his only life, and Phil finds and visits his original body in stasis and says goodbye to his old friend, and mentions he found new companions, and that if Sam starts body-hopping again Phil will not hold back against him. !!!
And that Boomer, who I hadn't really noticed much before, worked with Sam, and gets visions of the future, cool. While trying to flee the red vines he finds Sam's original body and revives it, years after Sam's long-time body got killed by Ponk. And Sam found frog statues a long time ago that look like the frog statues Boomer remembers from back home, and Boomer opens a portal and jumps in because he thinks his parents might be there. It looks like an end portal!!
(accompanying thought about Sam&Phil that I liked here - also, right before that scene on that stream, Phil saying that he'll be there for Tommy if he's desperate for help but in general he prefers to stay out of things, I have Thoughts.)


Discduo/Tommy&Tubbo&Dream&Punz&Jack finale:
Part I: One Last Time
The last person Tommy spoke with was Wilbur, uh, that was a while ago.
Tommy sent Tubbo a letter to Snowchester on high-quality paper with a wax seal, made Tubbo feel appreciated xD
The Wall of Tommy! I haven't seen this before. A picture of a disk, one of the early L'Manberg squad (?), one of Phil, one of Henry, I missed the others.
Tommy keeps calling him Toby instead of Tubbo, heh.
Tubbo says that showing mercy is what makes them different from Dream, uh…
Tubbo didn't even know yet that Wilbur is gone! To fucking Utah.
Tommy and Tubbo now both don't think the unnatural powers of revival are a good thing (chat complaining about Ranboo still being dead and they don't even mention him ^^)
Tommy and Tubbo co-presidents of a forest nation, such a nice dream. Tubbo asks for a promise that things will be simpler, Tommy pinky promises, but, uh… Tommy promises a cottage on the moon and Tubbo wants to go to L'Moonberg xD Interesting that Tommy is still so focused on the idea of a nation – makes sense though, he just wants to have a place to feel safe. While Tubbo doesn't seem that interested – he's been president, he has his own place, it wasn't necessarily that great – but he goes along with it for Tommy. Tubbo is so loyal. And Tommy is so insecure that he keeps asking Tubbo if he's with him.
Tommy is so clearly still hurt by Wilbur leaving.
Tubbo about killing Dream: "We could always just nuke him."
Tommy got addicted to invisibility, not being in the spotlight, not being targeted… it makes sense :( But isn't exactly healthy in the long run, he mentions crashing/being more manic during the day. Tubbo is very concerned and later makes him promise not to take them tomorrow.
Tommy even got into potato farming, it reminds him of Pogtopia, and despite the danger, those time were kinda poggers, hanging out with Wilbur and Techno farming potatoes all night…
Yeeeah, Tommy definitely didn't come to watch Tubbo in Snowchester while invisible, nope
Tommy watched the explosion of Las Nevadas while invisible, while Tubbo doesn't even know yet that it's been destroyed. He really was very isolated in Snowchester, wasn't he? Until he was invited to Puffy's party.
Tommy's been training in PVP, but the best equipment he's got is iron? So he asks Tubbo for materials, to procure in one day, no pressure.
Tommy doesn't want to be the bad guy but he's backed into a corner and doesn't see another choice. Whatever he does, Dream will come after him. (Dream threatened him with unending torment (to kill him and bring him back and kill him and bring him back…), every time I remember that scene, whew.) They're not kids anymore.
Tommy goes to speak to Wilbur at the shrine ;-;
Tommy says Tubbo's life is the most important thing to him, which is so fascinating to contrast with how Tommy is the one to drag him into danger to fight Dream together. Tommy wants Tubbo to be alive and ideally safe but he also needs him; personal theory: he's aware and it makes him feel like shit.
And Phil shows up! Who just occasionally comes here to think about Wil! And misses him all the time. And says Utah is pretty cold this time of the year, he should take a jacket ;_; (So Phil is familiar with Utah…)
Tommy says that sometimes Wilbur was a real piece of shit, and Phil says Wilbur made mistakes and got lost along the way but Phil feels like he found his way back.
Tommy apologizes that he stopped coming to Phil for advice and Phil says it's fine, he was there to help if Tommy needed him. Tommy says he was scared but isn't anymore and Phil says that's great to hear.
Phil was carrying around a gift for Tommy just in case he bumped into him, after not seeing him for months, aww. A fully enchanted netherite chestplate with Thorns, and an enchanted golden apple, nice. He wants Tommy to be safe. And Tommy says he will be, but.

Part II: Duel of the Fates
I watched this the next day but I was completely unspoiled for this, which was great. Usually I'm too impatient.
Ooh, Tommy is stacked now. Full netherite armor, stacks of golden apples and carrots, two totems… His helmet is called "Blessing"
The ruins of L'Manberg do kinda look nice. But L'Moonberg will be great. "To the end of the earth."
They're arguing about exile again ^^ Tommy claims he would have rebuilt George's house, Tubbo says he wouldn't have, Tommy eventually agrees
Sam Nook has been waiting for Tommy for months, and Tommy now tells him to leave and live his own life. Sam Nook understands the "leaving" part, not sure he understands the "living" part, I'm slightly worried. He says he'll find a good place to meet Tommy again, so maybe!
(Tommy suggesting Sam Nook go to the nether, or the end – the end?? From this server?)
To get morale up after that Tommy and Tubbo start singing, first "We used to rule the world," then they quickly stop and switch to CaptainSparklez' Revenge xD Unfortunately they're not in sync, but still cool.
Tubbo telling Tommy that he locked Sam into the prison and it wasn't his proudest moment
Vines and dripstone in the prison, creepy
They actually did it! They killed Dream! Aaah I'm so glad I wasn't spoiled for this, I kept expecting Dream to kill Tubbo but no :D Ooh that was a great dramatic fight. Tommy panicked so much he locked them in the cell!
Aww, Tommy is so relieved and happy and unburdened now that Dream is dead.
They talk to BBH and Sam – Tommy wants Sam on their side, but I think Tubbo alone would definitely not have approached him because of what he did to Michael and Ranboo (even though they seem to be ignoring Ranboo's existence rn.)
Tommy wants to talk to Phil but first they went to Punz, they think Punz is on their side… *bites nails* Okay they know Punz is a mercenary (I was surprised Tommy didn't see Punz fighting alongside Dream at Las Nevadas!) but Tommy thought he wasn't their enemy and was open to being on their side at least, and he wanted to share the news with everyone and Punz was right there and a reminder of the last time they defeated Dream… Bad luck.
Punz: "A nation's never gone right on this server." Not wrong!
Punz has a copy of the revival book and brought Dream back :(((
Poor Tommy, holy shit. He is just absolutely panicking. And Tubbo. Trapped on top of the tower…
Cliffhanger!!!
Cc!Tommy is a good actor.

Part III: No Way Home
I watched this one live, and the background music for the starting screen was the music for "Dawn of the 16th," asödlkfjasld fuck you Tommy
Dream is such a manipulative asshole, shit, saying that the two of them attacked him out of the blue while he was just minding his own business, never mind how often he threatened to come after Tommy. Fortunately this time Tommy is much better at looking through his bullshit.
"Dream you can't play god." "Why not?" He and Punz plan to live forever, but that means they have to kill everyone else on the server because they resurrected too many people. Big villain monologue coming up. They just want to ~understand how everything works! That's why they need to live forever, to have enough time to figure it out! Well, that, and Punz says he wants power. (I wonder how the canonically semi-immortals on the server, Phil and Foolish, would react to that… Well I know Phil would absolutely hate it, but I don't know Foolish enough.)
Very intriguing about the ~metaphysics of the server. Dream talks about the End like Tommy couldn't possibly know it, when Tommy has mentioned it to Sam Nook just a few hours ago (tbf that might have been a mistake, or he might have been talking about a mythical place.) Dream also talks like they don't know how people arrive on this server, but the characters have pre-server backstories so they should know how they came here? Dream also talks about wanting to find out the reason for the three deaths system.
Finally the reveal that the disc finale was staged by Dream and Punz, the reveal of the horrible fate of Vikkstar and Lazarbeam, and the reveal that Dream had been mind-controlling Ranboo. (Though I'm not 100% convinced that he's telling the truth on that one. Maybe partially, idk.)
I knew/strongly suspected there would be another scene where one of Tommy and Tubbo "has" to die and they have to decide who.
Cc!Tommy got so emotional he had to leave the room!
Of course there would be bloopers xD
Tommy sacrificed the discs to save Tubbo and he doesn't regret it exactly, but the loss of the discs hits him so hard, they symbolized so much. And he lost everything else too, like the book Wilbur gave him.
Noo, Tommy is now back to thinking everything was his fault >.<
The missing nuke! Never missing after all!
Uuugh one of the things I dislike about the Tommy&Tubbo dynamic is that it always ends up looking like Tubbo is the sidekick because Tommy often steamrolls him both in conversation and in plans. To be fair Tommy said he'd consider another plan if Tubbo had one and Tubbo didn't, but still. I really hope that Tubbo ends up having a big role in the final part with a lot of agency, to balance it out.
Tommy talked about one person would have to stay and distract Dream and Punz and Tubbo immediately thought it would be him…
When Tommy talked about how he'd have to stay chat was spamming "stasis chamber," which might work but only if they get the timing exactly right, which would be really risky, and I don't think Tommy wants to risk anything. He's resigned to his death, and at this point attempting to hope just seems pointless. (They even bring it up in the next episode, that it wouldn't work.) He asks Tubbo to tell their stories after he's gone! Them sitting on the bench but there's no music playing ;_;
Aaaah I had so many thoughts and feelings after this but no time to think about them because MCC was right afterwards, that's just… whoa, whiplash. I went back and added more notes afterwards. (I might have missed some details because I occasionally took off my headphones to silently scream for a bit.)

Part IV: The Last Stream (Tommy PoV) & The End (Tubbo PoV)
…wait, Jack did what?? xD
Tubbo's starting screen music is "we used to rule the world" ösdlkfjsd
Nooo now Tubbo too thinks this is all their fault for killing Dream
Tommy wants Tubbo to be sad for him for one year
"You're gonna press that goddamn button…" "I think it might be a lever but still."
Tubbo is taking the bench and the jukebox asöldkfjaäsdk
Their goodbye!
Around this point was where I stopped being able to take notes. I was watching Tommy and Tubbo at the same time which made both PoVs a lot better, Tubbo's had even more urgency and you were constantly reminded that Tommy was just trying to stall.

I find it hard to say how sincere Tommy was in his conversation with Dream because he had to keep him interested, had to keep Dream focused on him no matter what it took. And then, after Dream killed him and sent him to limbo again and brought him back – it's hard not to take anything Tommy says with a massive grain of salt because he's alone in front of the person he's fucking terrified of and he's definitely not thinking clearly. If apologizing to Dream means Dream won't keep hurting him, he'll do it, and if appealing to Dream's inner goodness means Dream keeps talking to him instead of either attacking him or leaving, he'll do it. And on some level Tommy wants it to be true, Tommy wants things to be simple too, he wants it to be true that they can have a conversation and once he figures out what Dream wants he can convince Dream to stop being evil, of course he's going to jump on it when that seems to be what's happening. He wants to believe it so bad especially when he's in a situation where he's actively being threatened by Dream.
And I say "seems to be" because Dream is a master manipulator. Not saying he can't be sincere but he literally just killed Tommy and brought him back to prove a fucking point in a frustrating discussion. Even if he's being sincere in that moment, which I think he is at least to some degree, I don't believe for a second that he wouldn't change his mind again later.
(Also, saying "I'm sorry" can mean a lot of things, including "I'm sorry it had to come to this, I'm sorry I had to do this, but I don't regret it.")

(Tbh I'm baffled how many fans seem to take their conversation here at face value. Wishful thinking, perhaps? Also, Tommy saying he understands Dream and even apologizing for some things he himself did absolutely does not mean that he forgives him for anything. You can understand why someone did something terrible and yet not forgive them, how is that a hard concept to grasp.)

In the meantime Tubbo discovered Jack had found the nuke. Tubbo explains to him that they need to kill Tommy for the good of the server and Jack is all for it!, and keeps encouraging Tubbo to flick the lever while Tubbo hesitates. Watching Tommy stall at the same time was so stressful! Finally Tubbo does it and then Jack admits that he changed the destination of the nuke to Tommy's base to kill Tommy, only to now find out that this might save Tommy's life. Except Tubbo freaks out because the nuke was unstable and with what Jack changed it'll most likely blow up a lot more than originally intended. But Tommy is still alive for now, so Tubbo runs to help him, and drags Jack with him. They make it into the prison, but not to where Tommy and Dream and Punz are… and are blown up by the nuke. The Incident, as cc!Tommy said it would be called.

Aand… apparent server reset? Tommy has no gear and starts to punch a tree, he doesn't appear to recognize either Dream or Tubbo, and he asks Dream to build a base with him and Dream asks if he wants to be friends.

Sooo. I guess we'll have to wait and see what this means? I really hope it's not complete amnesia, especially not for everyone. That would mean the characters we've come to know are effectively dead. (In addition to those who already died in e.g. the Egglore finale.) And so many of them didn't get a good ending. Like Tommy! It would be very sad.
Gradual memory recovery could be very interesting though, but not that easy to pull off. We'll see! I'm… maybe not entirely optimistic, but at least not pessimistic either. As a finale to everything this part of the storyline wouldn't have a satisfying ending, but it's a good season finale – and, well, if season 2 ends up never happened it's the same like with every other unexpectedly cancelled show. (Though, interestingly, I've seen barely any post-finale fic since then.)

Cc!Dream said on Twitter afterwards that the Incident takes place at the same time as the Egg hatching. Hmm. And Boomer and Sam's lore shows them in the future still in the same world, so either that's a "doomed timeline," something like that, or some people ended up in a different world after the Incident, or the effect had a limited radius. Hmmm.

On a meta level, I think this might be the first time we saw Dream take off his helmet since cc!Dream changed the skin to include the crown in Techno's honor, and ngl in-universe that looks weird. Tommy didn't say anything, I assume the plan is for everyone to just ignore it.
Cc!Tubbo was very emotional after the stream and talked about what a privilege it's been the past two years; cc!Tommy was mostly hyper xD


Syndicate lore finale, Phil PoV
Short version: I loved this.
Phil being alone at his and Techno's base and looking after the animals, saying he misses Techno (cc!Phil clearly choked up when attempting to talk about him.) He doesn't seem to be doing that well… He mentions that Tommy had a plan and didn't want to include him, probably for the better because he would probably mess something up. Ranboo's ghost also hasn't been around in a while.
And then Niki shows up and they bake together! And Phil starts hearing a voice telling him to run and thinks he's started imagining things and that he's going crazy, but then Kristin shows up!
I loved that Phil's wife, the goddess of death, got her husband and his friends out before the "Incident" – I suspect it's more about the Egg than the nuke, because the nuke I think a goddess could stop, but either way. Even ghost!Connor and his sheep Rosie! And, as seen in a short clip posted on Twitter, Ranboo and Michael are safe in the nether.
That was such a nice ending, as hopeful as one could have wished for, considering. Techno is definitely going to join them in the End later *nods*
Both cc!Phil and cc!Niki said afterwards they're not going to join DSMP season 2, at least not at first, and one of their reasons is that the amnesia storyline would mean that they couldn't remember and honor Techno the way they would want to.

In one of Philza's later hardcore streams he said he planned to talk about how originally Phil planned for his Syndicate name to be "Daedalus" and Techno suggested "Zephyrus" instead, I have many feelings about this, about how Daedalus is a name intimately connected to hybris and someone who got his own son killed and Techno instead suggested the name of the god of the gentle west wind and bringer of spring (who nevertheless should not be crossed), aösldkfj THEM.

(In another stream Philza mentioned that the whole "best buddies/friendship emeralds/etc." thing was originally meant to make it even more painful when, according to cc!Techno's plan, Phil would betray him. But they scrapped that idea because it would have made cc!Phil sad. Very glad! Techno was such a troll.)