Characters / William Strife

William Strife

The creator of the channel and everyone's favorite corporate evil overlord. William Strife is mostly known for two things, his time at the Yogscast which he unfortunately, parted from on bad terms, and his well-researched guides. With a cult following from both his guides and his characters, Strife is known for an entertaining but well thought out and educated time in both his speech and content. As a person and creator he's rather kind and generous as well, being a vocal supporter of queer rights and for wearing whatever makes you happy no matter what gender it's associated with. Strife tolerates no hate and cares deeply for his community. A nerd, a caring creator on both Youtube and Twitch, rather funny, and well-read, Strife truly has it all.

However his main persona Strife of Strife Solutions from Minecraft is a different story, a capitalist and borderline anime villain at times, Strife presents a hilarious parody of the classic CEO, or as he calls it 'Corporate Evil Overlord,' types like Elon Musk. With plenty of shade being thrown at such topics like false labels on products, money-making schemes, and just the terrible way people in the one percent treat their employees presented with wit and intelligence, it's no surprise the character is incredibly popular in his fandom.

Tropes:

• Addiction-Powered: Strife’s Minecraft persona claims this about their snorting of Redstone
• Aggressive Submissive: If his streams with Tev, his girlfriend, are to be believed!
• Bad Boss: Not only does his Minecraft Persona kick around his interns, he even sent one to a mine after spilling a drink on him! At least he gives some form of dental.
• Because I'm Good At It: Strife and his solutions.
• Berserk Button: Strife hates dogs, as he once said that there's been several times dogs have attacked him for no reason. It's to the point where he admitted that when he came across Dogmeat in Fallout 4, his first reaction was to literally Shoot the Dog.
  • Played for laughs with his reactions to magic and inefficiency.
• Bio-Augmentation: Minecraft Strife splices his DNA with other monsters within Minecraft to gain powers like flight.
• Can't Take Criticism: His Minecraft persona does not like being doubted or seen as incapable, it’s the best way to manipulate him.
• Catchphrase: Potty Mouth Magics
• Competition Freak: Strife does not like to lose, even at small pointless things.
• Complexity Addiction: Strife likes to make everything complicated, even his plans. This bites him in the ass several times, most notably when he doesn’t have a gun yet for a dragon fight because he hasn’t gotten the contract to produce them for the government yet.
• Control Freak: His Minecraft persona doesn’t like to be controlled and refuses to take any chance at letting someone else control him.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: His Minecraft persona.
• Crazy-Prepared: Strife likes to think he is at least.
• The Cynic: Strife’s Minecraft persona can have a very dark dog eat dog view of the world at times.
• Dark Is Evil: Strife when it comes to his Minecraft persona as he has a preference for darker color palettes involving maroon and black when it comes to himself
• Dark Is Not Evil: Irl Strife still enjoys darker color palettes but he’s very sweet.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not one to really leave well enough alone on something he deems ridiculous.
• Determinator: Strife does not stop, no matter how batshit the task, he will succeed and insult you the entire time.
• Devil in Plain Sight: He doesn’t really hide his conniving more diabolic nature at all.
• Didn't Think This Through: See any of the times he underestimates people like Parvis.
• Disproportionate Retribution: His go-to response to getting pranked or otherwise mistreated in game? Murdering them to the unimpressed reaction of his prankee.
• Does Not Like Magic: His Minecraft persona really really just does not like magic, at all. It gets to the point where it's actually pretty comical just how much he sneers at people who in his eyes degrade themselves down to use it.
• Drama Queen: Very dramatic when things go slightly wrong, once even crying out to god to ask why he had been burdened with Parvis
• Dreadful Musician: Claims to be one.
• Drunk with Power: His Minecraft character abuses anyone he deems under him on a whim.
• Embodiment of Vice: Greed with his persona
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: His Minecraft persona really struggles to show affection and praise to other people.
• Eskimos Aren't Real While more of a thing on his Twitch Streams, if something that exists without a doubt within Strife's lore, like vampires, clashes with his persona's world view, he will go straight into denial faster then you can say 'Solutions.'
• Even Evil Has Standards: Strife really doesn’t like the Well of Suffering Parvis creates and makes a disclaimer that it’s not endorsed by Strife Solutions.
• Evil Genius: He’s quite intelligent, able to tamper with his own genetic code or send files to people declaring the exact amount of blocks he’ll need for a project, he uses these powers for evil.
• Evil Is Hammy: You can count on Strife to start maniacally cackling and giving dramatic monologues while doing minor crimes.
• Expospeak Gag: Strife constantly overcomplicates his speech and when someone else simplifies it into layman's terms, he tends to get a bit pouty about it.
  Tevela: So you're selling toilet paper at an inflated price during a shortage?
  Will: Well that's not fair. I don't like it when you put my genius in such simple terms!
• Green Thumb: Strife is quite skilled at growing things in games, whether it be delving into magical crops or planting sunflowers to liven up an evil base.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: When he was in the Yogscast he was one of the only members who weren't very obviously quirky, and thus his ability at games isn't overshadowed.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Strife seems quite gleeful about such fascinating topics like marketing, profit margins, efficiency. or other businessmen's activities.
• Ironic Name: The person with the last name of Strife, is going to be selling you solutions.
• Irony: Despite being vocally against magic, he is often forced to use it at least a bit simply due to how Minecraft mods work.
• I Work Alone: Said word for word by his Minecraft persona about being forced to tolerate people like Parvis.
• Jerk With A Heartof Gold: Despite his persona’s cross CEO bluster, his first instinct in a situation is to help by quickly fixing up lighting issues and creating useful tools for someone else without even being asked.
• Karma Houdini: Despite his many Minecraft crimes against humanity he at the end of the day always seems to win with no punishment for the horrible actions he does or says he has done
• Kill It with Fire: His reaction to Witchery's Mandrakes.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: He absolutely adores cats.
• The Leader: He is the CEO of Strife Solutions after all.
• Lean and Mean: IRL Strife is quite a bean pole and his Minecraft persona is definitely mean, though the fandom may convince you he’s a lot shorter than he actually is.
• The Mentor: To Parvis after he was forced upon him through a called in debt.
• Misplaced Sorrow: After getting separated from Parvis at the end of Solutions in Chaos, Strife was very distressed but not be the loss of his apprentice, but instead by the loss of the free labor he applied.
• Moral Myopia: His Minecraft persona often commits atrocities against other people but gets very offended when people are rude or mean to him.
• Morality Chain: For Alex Parvis. Half the reason for teaching him Blood Magic is Parvis will probably cause serious trouble if he tries to learn alone.
• Motor Mouth: More prevalent in his older videos, where he summed up tons of information in under 10 minutes. This video, where Strife covers Vampirism in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in its entirety, is a good example.
• Mr. Exposition: His "designated role", given his number of tutorials. Invoked in his Minecraft tutorial introductions, when he notes the lack of an official, up-to-date tutorial.
• Mr. Fanservice: Him at his Twitch Chat through very thot like behavior.
• Mysterious Past: His Minecraft persona apparently went to college with Lewis Brindley and Sips, owes Lewis "a favour" of some kind (leading to him getting roped into teaching Alex Parvis Minecraft). He also appears to have dabbled in Blood Magic... Though information about his time there is sparse and he has teased having more information about it, but as it involves Sips he would need to hear back from him about if he can use it.
• Nervous Wreck: He really doesn’t like it when things don’t go according to plan.
• Neutral No Longer: While he claims neutrality when talking to most people, he very clearly allied himself with Parvis when he began helping his apprentice avoid capture and improve his magic despite his own distaste for it.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Can’t turn down a challenge.
• Obviously Evil: His Minecraft persona is seen only in the evilest of color palettes, red and black. Within two minutes of talking to him as well, his evil tendencies are quite obvious.
• Odd Couple: With Parvis in Solutions In Chaos.
• Old Shame: What happened in college stays in college.
• Only Sane Man: While normally played straight, when he is with Tevela the trope is Averted revealing how not sane Strife actually is, with him only looking as such in the past by being compared to people such as manic blood mages.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Played for laughs about his Minecraft persona but never about overly serious topics, instead focusing on his distaste for nature, how he likes to kick his unpaid interns, and other capitalism crimes.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Strife has no time for gender roles in clothing, having been seen many times in dresses, corsets, wigs, virgin killers, and more. Though he draws the line at makeup.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue Oni to Alex Parv's Blue, as he's more down-to-earth and focused, whereas Parv is more over the top. However the oni is reversed when he is around Tevela, instead, his eccentric innovative nature provides the Red Oni to Tev’s calmer more old fashioned Blue
• Rich Bitch: Strife has quite a tidy sum of cash and he uses it for purely selfish reasons and ridicules everyone else.
• Rich Genius: Strife is incredibly smart, his intense ability to problem solve is even his main business model.
• Robosexual: Strife is so well known for this he even has a mug that says so.
• Scam Religion: Strife runs one of these through the Church of Strife
• Screams Like a Little Girl: He doesn't really handle horror well, especially Slenderman.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Being back into doing Blood Magic for the first time since college gives him a mental breakdown that basically boils down to this.
• The Scrooge: Really really likes money.
• Sexy Santa Dress: He's worn this on his Minecraft skin at least once, hopefully, we'll get to see it again someday.
• Skewed Priorities: Tends to focus on the small picture by making a big deal out of things like lost resources whenever anything bad happens.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While he talks a big business game and says he has a lot of renown, in reality not many people recognize Strife Solutions and he wasn’t exactly rolling in jobs.
• Space Elves: While not technically canon, it is wide fandom belief that Strife's Minecraft persona to be some form of this, likely one that glows, thanks to his time at the Yogscast.
• The Stoic: A bit more straight to the point, although he's Not So Above It All. He's definitely lightened up since joining the Yogscast. These days however in both skits on his channel and shenanigans on Twitch it may even be Averted by this point
• Straight Man: More serious than the others in the Yogscast and more people he collabs with.
• Smug Snake: Bastard Ceo
• Team Mom: Despite his gruff tsundere nature, he tends to make sure those he is working with are okay, well stocked, and stay reasonably safe even if he complains the whole time, unless of course he thinks it’s funny or they deserve it.
• The Tease: His Twitch Streams are full of this
• Teleportation: Strife seems to have a fondness for it, whether it be using the staff of travelling or filling his bases with connected portals.
• Took a Level in Badass: From his persona augmenting his body with genetic enhancements to make himself even harder to kill to taking on several Wither's on once, Strife is very good at what he does.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Parvis is this to Strife, while Strife was never a saint, Parvis' descent into darkness drags Strife down to depths even he has never gone before.
• Troll: While often on the receiving end, Strife is also well known for his pranks.
• Tsundere: His persona rarely shows his appreciation and will deny any affection for someone as he does everything for them.
• The Unfettered: His persona sees nothing wrong with committing anything from bribery to murder to get what he wants
• Useless Accessory: Has anyone ever actually seen Strife use his practically trademark at this point sunglasses as actual sunglasses??
• Vitriolic Best Buds: His persona when interacting with Parvis, as he claims to hate him but Parvis very clearly has him wrapped around his fingers.
• Weather Manipulation: One of his guns was able to change the weather in Minecraft
• We Sell Everything: Strife Solutions, his most recent product? Toilet Paper.
• When He Smiles: Well, when he laughs. It's rare but fantastic.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Strife happily wears clothing more traditionally feminine like corsets, fancy chokers, or dresses and encourages his fandom to wear whatever makes them happy. He actively fights against stereotypes around clothing and gender and is just here to have fun wearing pretty clothes.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes??:
  • Claims to be acrophobic. This fear is apparently bad enough that it stresses him out to encounter high places in-game as well as real life.
  Will (Playing Fallout 3): It's just disconcerting, I can see through the walls of the elevator.
  • Also has a fear of hospitals
• Workaholic: Tends to spend a lot of time working when it comes to both his videos and Strife Solutions.

Lydia "Tevela"

Strife's girlfriend and a powerhouse, she's incredibly involved in the fandom and her mere presence and charisma have gathered her an army of her own fans. While currently not in many of his videos yet, her reception is strong when she is. Most often seen on Strife's Twitch channel, she loves a good dirty joke and all things gothic and vampiric.

While normally in duos Strife plays the straight man to the chaos, Tevela's calm dominating energy and snark reveals just how batshit Strife and his personas are when it's not being overshadowed by someone else. With her vampiric persona and counterpart to Strife of Strife Solutions, Tevela's really sank her fangs into the community for all the better.Her Twitter can be found here.

Tropes:

• Action Fashionista: Tevela will kick your ass wearing a corset that she made.
• Action Girl: A powerful archer vampire who has no fear matching wits with or confronting Strife, I wouldn’t underestimate her.
• The Ageless: Said to be older then Strife but looks around his age if not younger
• Beware the Nice Ones: Just because Tevela is more polite and courteous then Strife doesn’t change the fact she’s a vampire who salivates over the mention of virgin blood.
• Daywalking Vampire: She shows no ill effect to sunlight to confused comments of Strife.
• Deadpan Snarker: To Strife's more, interesting, capitalistic ventures.
• Didn't Think This Through: Going to Strife to ask for toilet paper during the shortage knowing full well the kind of person he is and having to sit through several sales pitches.
• The Dragon: While ready and willing to call Strife out on his BS she is protective of him and willing to listen to him.
• Experience Entitlement: Thinks that because she’s older then Strife, that her blood gathering methods will be more effective than his.
• Frozen Fashion Sense: Tevela’s persona's manner of dress seems a bit outdated, this correlates with her actual real-life interest in fashion history and her clothing making skills, especially around corsets.
• Girlish Pigtails: Tev is very known for her characters giant pigtails, they look good on her
• Immortality Bisexuality: Tevela is very bi, and as a vampire definitely going to be around for quite some time.
• Only Sane Man: Only Tevela seems to realize just how unhinged Strife gets.
• Our Vampires Are Different: While not yet known how different, she at least doesn’t burn in sunlight
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue Oni to Strife's Red, being a lot more calm and old fashioned in her methods compared to the more energetic Strife's innovation and cocky nature.
• The Tease: Tevela loooves to tease Strife, and her adoring fans.
• Took a Level in Badass: A powerful archer and fighter in of herself along with being a vampire.
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: She has a coffin that she indeed sleeps within.