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The first step to understanding the way the world works is this: you are not in control. You are never in control, and you never have been.
Your name is Wilbur Soot and you are the president of a nation that was built on drugs and blood and other illegalities and war crimes. Your name is Wilbur Soot and your brothers and son fought with every breath of their being for this land, and still they nearly lost it. Your name is Wilbur Soot and you are playing host to the spirit of L’Manberg, because she’s chosen you, hasn’t she? She chose you the moment you decided to declare independence.
Your name is Wilbur Soot and you will not be L’Manberg’s host for long, because how long is it before you decide you want to be in control? How long is it before you refuse to learn the lessons that L’Manberg is trying to teach you? You want power. You want fame, recognition. You want something that the rest of the world isn’t willing to give you.
Your name is Wilbur Soot, and you are being exiled from your home, and as you do so, the spirit of L’Manberg leaves your body and seeks out a new host. It’s no matter. You’ll be playing host to a spirit of a new land soon enough, a land that calls itself Pogtopia, and this land will not leave you when you leave it.
Your name is Wilbur Soot and you’re going crazy, maybe, and your younger brother looks at you in fear when you talk, and you wear a trench coat that you haven’t worn in a long time. Your last nation was forged in blood; this one will end in it. This nation will end (not with a bang but with a whimper) and its spirit will remain in you for a long, long time. You will die and be reborn and still Pogtopia will live on with you, because it’s chosen you, hasn’t it, to be its host. Empty caverns covered in buttons that lead to nothing to represent the fact that sure, you have a beating heart, but the empty space between your ribs tries to tell you otherwise.
The second step to understanding the way the world works is this: even if you love your children, you will still have to send them off to war.
Your name is Tubbo Underscore and when your brothers leave L’Manberg a part of you does too. Your name is Tubbo Underscore and the void left by the exiled is filled by the spirit of L’Manberg. Your name is Tubbo Underscore and you do not want to be the soldier, the spy, the rebel, the president, but if these are the roles L’Manberg lays out for you, you suppose you will play them.
Your name is Tubbo Underscore and you’re thinking that the thing they don’t tell you about being the president is the thrumming of the city under your lungs. Every breath you take is filled with every word uttered, every step taken, every block placed. You take one step and every member of your nation echoes it. You speak and they listen, and they speak and you listen, to all of them at once, because this is your city and she is inhabiting your body and there is nothing you can do to change this fact.
Your name is Tubbo Underscore and you’re thinking that you’re sick of war. You’re sick of exile. You’re sick of being forced to choose between friends and countries, between your different homes. Because you have built a home in L’Manberg and you have built homes in your friends’ hearts, and you do not want to have to pick between them. But you must, and so you do, and you choose peace over chaos, life over death, and they destroy your city anyways.
Your name is Tubbo Underscore and you feel it as L’Manberg is blown to bits, you feel every explosion and every TNT that falls and every piece of land that’s sent straight to bedrock. You’ve already died to explosions once, fireworks that went off against your skin in a brilliant burst of light, your outsides scarred by the experience. Now you’ll have scars on the inside to match.
Your name is Tubbo Underscore and you don’t know when you reject the spirit of L’Manberg from your body, but you do, and slowly, a new one is allowed to enter. She calls herself Snowchester and she’s softer than L’Manberg, not forged in blood but in love, in the careful precision of a builder, not quite a nation but something sweeter. She is the one where you find your husband, your son, and you think maybe you can build a life at peace here. If anyone deserves it, you think, it’s you.
The third rule to understanding the way the world works is this: it doesn’t matter who you are. When your time comes, you will fall all the same.
Your name is Niki Nihachu and you join L’Manberg because it’s where your friends are, and because they need you. Your name is Niki Nihachu and you refuse to be forced into the roles they want you to play; instead, you play them because you choose to. Your name is Niki Nihachu and you are soft around the edges not because of who you are, but because it’s what they need, and you are used to doing what people need.
Your name is Niki Nihachu and you are not soft around the edges, not really. You’re all flint and steel, and you’d burn this nation down yourself if you had the chance, for all the pain she’s caused. You’ll settle with spitting into the food of the president, borderline poisoning him, hoping the alcohol gets to him before your friends do, because he deserves a death that’s similar to the way he lived.
Your name is Niki Nihachu and you burn down L’Mantree as one final act of defiance, because this land has done nothing but take, even when all anyone has ever done is give. You salute and speak the words of the traitor, because that’s how it always goes, isn’t it? It was never meant to be? Maybe this was. Maybe this right here- you burning down this tree- maybe this was meant to be. The boy who can never remember is watching you, he’s staring at you, and you wonder if he’ll remember this.
Your name is Niki Nihachu and you aren’t sure when the spirit of L’Manberg chooses you as its host, or how, or why, but it does. And you walk over glass and stare down at the land that used to be and you can feel her, deep in your belly and in the tips of your fingers, aching to be rebuilt. And you know that she has chosen you because you are strong, because you will not rebuild, you will not make the same mistake as those that came before you. There are three lives in this world, and L’Manberg is no exception. Her spirit will live on in you. You won’t fall because of it. You’ll rise.
The fourth rule to understanding the way the world works is this: the night and the day are not so different. Order and chaos are the same thing when you look at them closely.
Your name is Technoblade and you are sick of this. Your name is Technoblade and you are not a god, but they think you are, and who are you to deny them? Your name is Technoblade and you know that governments hurt, so you start something that isn’t quite a government but perhaps its cousin, and you deem it good enough, and you start collecting the ones you know will help you.
Your name is Technoblade and the Syndicate is not a nation, but it is a land, it is a place, it is a people, and therefore its spirit needs a host. It chooses you, the founder, for reasons you don’t care to determine. All you know is that as long as you live, the Syndicate will live. It doesn’t matter if you’re imprisoned or executed or what have you. The Syndicate will live on as long as you breathe.
Your name is Technoblade and you owe someone a favor. You don’t particularly like this someone, but you don’t have any problems with them, either. You suppose you’re indifferent. You’re indifferent to most things, these days; the commune, the demigods, the new nations cropping up out of dust in an attempt to become something more. You have bigger things to be worrying about, like the fact that you think your friends are planning a party for your birthday, and you’re not sure how to feel about that. It’s been a long time since the Blood God had a birthday party.
Your name is Technoblade and when you are trapped in Pandora’s Vault, you can feel the spirit of the Syndicate raging in you. It wants blood, it wants to scrape raw hands against obsidian stone until it breaks, it wants the voices in your head to shut up so that it can be the loudest one. But in the end, you listen to all of them equally, and so when the Syndicate screams for blood along with all the other voices, you listen just the same.
The fifth rule to understanding the way the world works is this: too many good people are lost to the throes of power, and all you have to do is hope you don’t become one of them.
Your name is Bad Boy Halo and the lure of the Egg is too strong to resist. The Badlands are already living inside you but maybe they can coexist with the Eggpire. You know, in the end, that it will tear you apart, but the Egg’s sweet songs are so tempting, and the Badlands refuse to leave. Someday you’ll fall just like everyone that came before you, and you can only hope that there will be someone there to pick up your pieces and carry on your legacy.
Your name is Karl Jacobs and you are playing host to too many lands at once- the In-Between, the Other Side, Kinoko Kingdom. They are not at war with each other, rather, they sing sweet songs about memories and time and you don’t know how to stop listening. In Kinoko, at least, with your husband by your side, you’re able to sleep. You forget sometimes that sleeping never leads to good things. Look at the fox. Look at the mushrooms’ king.
Your name is Quackity and you used to want to host the spirit of L’Manberg until you saw how it tore the presidents apart. You played host to El Rapids, for a bit, until you tore that spirit apart, and it still lives inside you, only locked away in a place where even you can’t reach. Now you host Las Nevadas, bright and brilliant, and you think that if no one else will let you into their family, you’ll build your own. You don’t care how you get it. People never do.
The sixth rule to understanding the way the world works is this: nothing and everything you do will make a difference.
Your name is Dream.
Your name is Dream, and you open your eyes, and you take your first breath. Your name is Dream, and you were sleeping in this earth for a long, long time. Your name is Dream and you are the air, the sea, the fires, the End. Your name is Dream and you are host to the whole world, you are host to something so much greater than yourself.
Your name is Dream and you name the world after yourself anyways, because that’s what they’re all expecting. Your name is Dream and you take your first steps and you breathe your last breath and you sink into the very ground and then you rise and do it all over again. Your name is Dream and this is your world, your land, and it is not the spirit inhabiting you so much as you are the spirit inhabiting it.
Your name is Dream and you walk across the lands and something shivers in your wake, and you invite your friends here, your brother here, your lover here, to share with them something new, something grand, something completely and utterly divine. Your name is Dream and you are insatiable, unstoppable, you are apathetic and you care too much.
Your name is Dream and you do not let the lands touch your loved ones. You send the mushrooms’ king to sleep so that he is not touched by war. You send your brother off to the time traveller so he is not hurt by your actions. You lock yourself away in the Vault so that they don’t need to fear that which they don’t know.
Your name is Dream. You do not know how many more lands there will be, but you will be there for all of them. You are the world and the world is you, and you don’t think that’s ever going to change.
Good. You like it that way.