naynay5155

[naynay5155]

Oooo, this is very good. I appreciate the response, and how civil it was on top of that. You bring up a lot of very good points, and I will concede that what I’ve written might not have been as well thought out as it could have been. Again, a lot has happened in this story, and given the issues regarding like... The pacing and scheduling of the streams, it can make it pretty hard to properly recall and remember something that happened literally almost half a year ago. My bad in that regard, I just genuinely don’t have the time to go back and watch two to three hour vods to remember every detail, there’s just genuinely too much there. 

Probably not a very good excuse, might even be a bit hypocritical given how a lot of my post was about a lack of proper sensitivity and research. I suppose writing this up in two hours at 10 am isn’t the best idea, sorry.

I do still stand by some things I said, and maybe that makes me a bit biased, but this is still extremely nice! I appreciate the perspective from someone who seems equally invested. I think we agree on a lot more things than might initially be assumed, and I’ll take the criticism in mind if I decide to do this again.

thanks!

C!Tommy’s Storyline With C!Dream Is A Very Concerning Depiction Of Abuse

Wild Title 

Okay, I’m sure that this probably isn’t too new information for anyone paying attention to the overall story of the DreamSMP, especially C!Tommy’s storyline, but I figured I’d give my two cents for this anyways. 

C!Tommy is an Abuse Victim who has gone through horrific stuff at the hands of C!Dream. This is not an arguable fact. regardless of if C!Dream had reasons for doing what he did, if C!Dream also later gets abused, or if ultimately the abuse portrayal could be considered in some ways flawed or unrealistic, that stuff doesn’t ultimately matter. Because we’ve seen what happened to C!Tommy during Exile, have seen the physical, emotional, and mental abuse he was put through. Just because they won’t call it Abuse doesn’t mean it isn’t Abuse.

Now, C!Tommy being an abuse victim is an interesting idea from a storytelling perspective. It has a lot of potential to lead to genuine character development, or to affect relationships and story beats in interesting ways. And it could be an interesting way to really say something about abuse and coping with it. 

And to an extent, an argument could be made that it has, though I’d argue the exact way those are handled in canon, but not the point. The point is, abuse is not just something that you get to gloss over. If you want to include themes of abuse in the story, a story you are making available to the public for millions to see, then there needs to be a clear and obvious message being portrayed with including abuse in the story. Preferably, that abuse is bad, and can have majorly negative effects on anyone, especially children. We don’t always get that lucky, but whatever. 

But, from my months of watching the story of the DreamSMP, and trust me I’ve been here a long while, I haven’t seen C!Tommy’s abuse being handled very… well. I could, of course, be wrong in some aspects, and maybe be misremembering stuff since this dumpster fire has been happening for a year now, and feel free to correct me or bring up more points if you know something I don’t. But, I still think that overall, I have a point of view that should be considered. 

So basically, C!Tommy is an abuse victim, right? this is easy to see, very obvious in the way he acts and behaves. Or… is it? 

Abuse is a complex topic and one that, in real life, presents itself in all sorts of forms. Many abuse victims were raised in unloving homes and ended up becoming more vulnerable to abuse later on in life as a result of that. Others never properly learned how to express emotions or turn people down and got taken advantage of. Others were abused from the start, and develop various ways of coping and dealing with that, even ways that they might not be fully conscious of themselves. Abuse is not a one-way street, it could hardly be considered a street at all given how diverse and differing the people who experience it end up developing into are. 

So I’m not saying that, if C!Tommy were a real person, that he isn’t “Being traumatized enough” or that “Why isn’t he more like what I expect him to be like?”. That is not what I’m saying at all.

What I am saying, is that C!Tommy is a fictional character who exists within a narrative, a story. And in a good story, consistency is half the battle. I, as the audience consuming the story, need to be able to look at C!Tommy and pick up on and understand the effects abuse has had on him. And these effects need to be consistent, otherwise, as an audience member, I’m going to get confused and start having questions about why he acts one way here but doesn’t somewhere else.

I also need to be able to clearly see and understand, by being given narrative stepping stones, if something is changing for his character.

As the saying goes, “Show don’t tell”. C!Tommy can’t just say he “Goes to Puffy for Therapy” offhandedly one time, as a means of handwaving away why he doesn’t really consistently act as traumatized as he used to even though it’s literally only been a few weeks, or months at most. To explain how he can jump back between being really sad and depressed about something, to joking about Women and Twitter. It seems weird if he’s able to just so seamlessly, so effortlessly, go back and forth. Almost as if he’s bouncing between OOC and IC, but that’s a whole other discussion. 

Sure, C!Tommy is representing real mental health issues, but he is, ultimately a Fictional Character existing in a story. I need to be given signs, proof, foreshadowing, to explain when he has certain reactions and behaviours in order to understand his character. And these need to be consistent, otherwise we get plotholes and general confusion.

I criticize the inconsistency and the offscreen handwaving because it’s generally not very good writing. It’s the same reason I disliked Eret’s basically off-screen-sort-of-redemption-arc. It’s the same reason people dislike it when Villains of previous seasons suddenly come back as fully reformed good guys for seemingly no reason. There is no arc, no development, no progress is shown to us. 

Because when you’re telling a story about a character having some major change or developing in some way, or having an important character trait, if I don’t see it on screen, then it didn’t happen. How am I supposed to root for C!Tommy’s progress, or understand what he’s doing to progress, if a never see his coping mechanisms? His therapy appointments? 

You can’t just say something, or inconsistently portray something, and expect me to jump through hoops to connect these nearly transparent dots that keep getting thrown around. 

Show don’t tell. Show me Tommy getting better, because otherwise you’re just telling me he made character development, and showing me this completely different character as proof. No, last I remembered C!Tommy was having panic attacks and yelling when C!Dream was even mentioned. You can’t tell me that a day later he can interact normally after days of being in the prison and a month of being dead.

Or, if you are gonna have him flip flop back and forth, don’t have it be so sudden and jarring, give an explanation. Is he faking being fine? Does he have memory issues? C!Tommy doesn’t read to me as the type who’s good at suppressing his emotions, he wears his heart on his sleeve. So you’re going to have to explain, clearly, in a way that isn’t ambiguous, what’s happening with C!Tommy here.

You’re not really saying anything about the abuse C!Tommy goes through, if all of that trauma is automatically wiped from the story when the writers get too lazy or too scared to keep it in. At best, you are showing abuse and trauma for the sole purpose of showing it, with no intention of properly dealing with and addressing it in the story. At worst, you are basically just doing torture porn. 

Pain, Hurt, Trauma for the sake of it. Not with any goal in mind. Just for the drama of it, or to hurt the audience. 

And then your audience is just supposed to take that content in uncritically, and they gain no true understanding of how abuse victims survive and cope after their traumatic treatment.

Exile Arc sure did a good job at making C!Tommy suffer. But as soon as that arc ended, a lot of the stuff that happened in it went completely glossed over and unaddressed for a long while. That might have been fine in the lead-up to Doomsday, since a lot of plot stuff had been going on and stopping to handle C!Tommy’s issues might (Might is heavily doubted cause it certainly isn’t impossible) mess with the pacing a bit. But then after Doomsday, there isn’t really any excuse to put it off. Because nothing was really happening for a good while, and nobody had anything to do plotwise. 

And this became even more true with C!Dream being locked in Prison. Nothing was really happening, so what was stopping the story from taking the time to properly discuss and deal with this stuff?

Well, nothing really. So, the Hotel Arc happened. And oh boy, was it a mess. 

So, C!Tommy being angry at C!Dream for the abuse and trauma he has suffered at Dream’s hand isn’t an issue. It’s an incredibly common thing for victims to feel angry at their abusers, and to even go so far as to wish for vengeance against them in some way. And that’s a totally valid and fine feeling. 

You’re hurting, you’re scared, you’re in pain. I get that. When we’re hurting, we don’t always act rationally or healthily.

But, ultimately, that rage, and hurt, and want for vengeance is not a healthy thing to hold onto. In many circumstances with an abuse victim wanting to inflict pain back on their abuser, we run into various problems. 

For one, getting vengeance on your abuser is quite frequently going to give you more emotional pain than it will fulfilment. Especially if you are young, or are letting this want for vengeance take over your entire livelihood. It does you no good ultimately, to attempt to bring pain to the person who hurt you, because not only will you often be unsuccessful, you frequently won’t find emotional healing and stability in that. 

(The only exception to this rule being if ignoring them or moving on from them isn’t an option for you right now.)

Actions have consequences, and if you invest more time in that person who hurt you, then you have no time to work on yourself or the relationships around you. You have no time to heal, and this can become self-destructive.

Spending time around an abuser, as a victim, is in all likelihood just going to upset you more. You’re retraumatizing yourself by spending time around them, and as you make attempts to give them their comeuppance, you could possibly end up internalizing the methods they used on you, and just end up perpetuating the cycle of abuse again. 

And even if you have no problem with doing that to this particular person, consider how fully internalizing these abusive behaviours could affect your friends or family. Frequently, even when they don’t mean to, abuse victims can internalize the things that they went through and then use those same behaviours against people in their life later on. Being shitty to your support system because of what you went through isn’t a good move, for you or them.

Basically just, an Abuse Victim has more to gain from working on themselves while finding ways to heal and overcome their trauma and abuse, than they do spending their time and energy on the abuser. Its frequently unhealthy, distressing, and self-destructive to indulge in that too much.

(Of course, I don’t speak for everyone, but from what iIve looked into and seen, this is the healthiest method of actually healing from your abuse. That doesn’t mean you just… leave your abuser alone and never address or talk about what they did, you don’t let them get away with it, of course not. It just means you don’t waste your mental well being and time obsessing over someone, especially someone who has hurt you so much.

You deserve better than that. You deserve to heal.)

Now, let’s get back to C!Tommy. 

C!Tommy, instead of finding a proper means of coping with his issues (proper therapy, diagnosis for his issues, forming and maintaining healthy support systems, focusing on things he loves, etc) is shown to repeatedly focus back on C!Dream. When he was making Big Innit Hotel, it did seem like he was to an extent finding ways to cope with his shit. He was still kinda shitty and his hotel was not exactly made and run by the most morally great standards, though I suppose I can’t expect too much when he is a very traumatized teen and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. 

But, ultimately, this all fell apart when he got locked in Pandora’s Vault with C!Dream. Arguably, it was already falling apart the moment he decided to keep pursuing C!Dream even when he was locked up.

See, the thing is, C!Tommy can never just… have trauma. Having trauma that he can healthily and methodically work through is something that for him as a Character, is basically impossible. His character is an angry one, one built on spite and childishness, and who holds the mantle, unfortunately, of “Spunky Male Protagonist In A YA Novel”. So, his mental health issues can never just be a struggle he has to cope with, especially not when the DreamSMP can never seem to have anything between “A lot is happening right now omg” or “Literally nothing is happening and nobody is playing on the server at all omg”.

Instead, his issues have to be seen as a battle, and they fuel the narrative of the story. Him having been abused by C!Dream cannot just exist as a thing that he as a person has to work through slowly with the help of others around him. It has to be seen as this Epic Triumph Against Evil, another battle of Tommyinnit VS Dream on the DreamSMP, a classic Villain versus Hero fight.

This, of course, isn’t too great. By C!Tommy’s abuse plotline being framed in this manner, it makes it so that C!Tommy is constantly obsessing over his abuser and recklessly throwing himself into dangerous and triggering situations is some attempt at an “Epic Battle With Evil”, rather than this being treated like the self-harm it actually is. And yes, it is self-harm, a form of it. 

C!Tommy uses his trauma and issues as fuel for the story, making it so that its impossible for him to truly progress and a character, and the moment he does start growing, he has to get retraumatized again so he goes right back to where he was.

C!Tommy does not become a better person when he’s around C!Dream, nor does he find any form of fulfilment in being around him. He gets shaky and panicky at just the sight of him. He regularly has violent and explosive outbursts at just the mention of him. When C!Dream talks to him, he gets nervous and basically can’t help but listen due to conditioning he still listens to. 

When C!Tommy went to go visit C!Dream the first time in Pandora’s Vault, he brought with him stacks of TnT. He did it because he wanted to mimic what C!Dream had done to him in Exile, where he would take all of C!Tommy’s newly gained items and blow them up underground for dramatic effect. 

C!Dream did this for control over C!Tommy, to manipulate him, for his suffering.

And C!Tommy wanted to do this to C!Dream, because he was feeling vindictive. 

When C!Tommy got into the prison, he mocked C!Dream, hit him repeatedly, and tried to boss him around. He made him write ridiculous books and verbally berated the man. He did this in a feeble attempt to gain some feeling of control over C!Dream. This, evidently, did not work. At best his success was momentary. And this sense of achievement he gained was gained through projecting his abuse trauma onto someone else.

He repeated the cycle. 

After he got brought back from the dead and let out of the prison, he was much much worse. C!Tommy was now paranoid, anxious, constantly thinking about C!Dream, and had his mindset solely on getting revenge on him, by killing him. 

It got so bad, he ended up doing lacklustre “Exposure Therapy” to help himself not panic when he went into Pandora’s Vault to kill C!Dream. It got so bad he dragged C!Tubbo and C!Ranboo into this, putting them in danger and putting more pressure on another two teenagers’ shoulders. 

It got so bad, that Ghostbur died, C!Sam closed off even more, and C!Wilbur came back. 

Objectively, C!Tommy leaving C!Dream alone would be the better thing for everyone. And yet he keeps repeating the cycle. Because C!Tommy is not meant to grow, learn and heal. He is made to suffer. 

The problem is not so much showing an unhealthy depiction of a mentally ill or traumatized person. Because trauma and mental illness and the effects of abuse are not always pretty, and they shouldn’t always have to be portrayed and pretty or sympathetic to be accurate. 

It becomes a problem when you get this depiction of C!Tommy’s coping being presented uncritically to an audience of a lot of underaged and young people. 

Nobody in canon, whether they be adults or fellow teens, has ever tried to question C!Tommy’s methods for coping. C!Ranboo and C!Tubbo just limply went along with his plans for Exposure Therapy with no consideration of if this was a good idea. No adults really offer to genuinely step in and help C!Tommy deal with his shit, and the ones that do leave him or get corrupted in some way, often leaving him with more trauma as they do. 

C!Puffy’s therapy methods are dubious at best, and the most we ever see of her actually helping C!Tommy is her humouring his toxic behaviours, and C!Tommy making offhanded mentions to vague therapists appointments we never see. 

C!Technoblade stopped giving a shit as soon as C!Tommy walked off the screen. C!Wilbur was dead, and now that he isn’t he certainly isn’t helping C!Tommy. C!Phil isn’t C!Tommy’s dad and has no obligation to do anything for him as a result. C!Ranboo has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. C!Tubbo is too busy repressing his own trauma to help C!Tommy with his. C!Sam is being ruled by the prison and C!Quackity. C!Quackity has become an Ancap. 

Nobody in this story is a reliable or trusted person to C!Tommy, who could properly tell him his methods are unhealthy and give him better alternatives. And as a result, nobody is able to tell the audience that C!Tommy is wrong 

Unreliable Narrators are only effective when the narrative in some way has their unreliableness pointed out or proven to the audience. If you go into a story with the assumption that everybody watching will be able to see past C!Tommy’s POV and not take him at face value, then you are naive. Especially when this fandom is made up of many teens and children. 

I only know C!Tommy’s methods are unhealthy because I care way too much and do my research. A vast majority of the world doesn’t have the same understanding and education on these topics, especially not children and teenagers. A good chunk of people, especially neurodivergent and mentally ill people, could very well take the story at face value and automatically assume that what Tommy’s doing is actually a good coping mechanism because they don’t know any better.

There is no clarification or safety net for preventing misinterpretation. And being of the opinion that “Well, they should know better than to trust a bunch of Minecraft Youtubers for this stuff” or “We can’t expect them to be psychologists! You expect too much” is just… not helping. 

Because I shouldn’t have to explain why children and teenagers, especially those that are using these people to cope, are not always going to make level-headed and common-sense decisions. They will be influenced by these Content Creators, whether we think it’s “Stupid” or not. 

And I can say with certainty that, while yes, this might be a bit much to expect from a bunch of British/American white guys who play Minecraft to handle, may I also point out that nobody fucking made them put this stuff in the story. There are ways to write a story without stepping outside of your realm of true understanding. Nobody begged these MCYTs to go and make torture porn for a 16 year old, nobody asked them to touch on topics they have no fucking clue about. 

They put that in themselves. And we have the right to point out the problems and flaws in it, and criticize them for not handling this stuff better. 

You don’t start applying for a job you don’t meet the requirements for. You don’t start an expensive project you can’t finish. 

You don’t include elements in a story you aren’t willing to fully go through with and address in a proper and sensitive way. 

#long post #dreamsmp roleplay #dream smp critical #dreamsmp #debate #was worried this might be moremeanspirited #happy to see it wasn't like that at all #very talented writer!

[naynay5155]

Sometimes I despise C!Tommy, god. Sometimes I remember how shitty of a person he is in canon and I just wanna implode. Because he never really gets punished for regularly being a shitty person.

The punishments he goes through are never because of his bad actions. He never gets it pointed out to him how was and still is, lowkey abusing C!Tubbo. He never gets called out on the general anti-socialness he displays around pretty much everyone. He never gets called out for his frequent mistreatment of Jack or Niki or Fundy. He just... gets away with that.

The "punishments" he does get are never because he's being an asshole and because he needs to become a better person. They are just straight up abuse at the hands of serveral trusted adults in his life. And this abuse doesn't actually help him anyway because it's abuse of course it wouldn't.

So, when he gets put through bad shit, and anyone has anything to say in regards to him being really shitty as a person, the fandom won't understand, because C!Tommy has the Halo Effect after a full year of gaining so many shields.

The First shield is the fact that he's the protagonist in a Action & Adventure story, making it so that the audience automatically wants to root for him.

The Second shield is that he is framed as being the underdog, and has been from the start. This is as a result of the roleplay originally starting as basically a Hamilton Parody, where C!Tommy was framed as this "Spunky and larger than life eager young man". And he still is veiwed like that by the audidence, even when he's grown past that and arguably doesn't count as being and underdog anymore.

The Third shield is him being played by a 16 to 17 year old Minecraft Youtuber, which gives people the excuse to play the age card to handwave all his actions. If Tommy, who is playing him, is 16 or 17, than to a lot of people that's all the reason they need to assume C!Tommy is also 16 to 17. And I can't say I blame them, the timeline is nonexistent.

The Fourth shield is the fact that he is the most popular Content Creator in the entire series, due to the viewer count he gets, the dedicated audience of young people, and the regular spotlight the writing gives him. He is, 100%, the most popular character, with only maybe like, C!Ranboo and C!Wilbur and C!Techno beating him out of that. That is like, three out of the 30+ who canonically exist on the server. When you can pull 630,000 Live Viewers on Twitch.tv of all places over Minecraft, you are fucking huge. That creates a very loyal fanbase.

The Fifth shield is him being an abuse victim. Similar to him because mostly seen in the fandom as a minor and as a result getting away with a lot, C!Tommy being an Abuse Victim and Mentally Ill coded makes it so that his shitty actions can be handwaved away. No matter how severe his shittiness is, or what exactly has happened you can just say, "Well, he's clearly traumatized cut him some slack!" This can be done even when Tommy hasn't properly taken it upon himself to play C!Tommy as traumatized consistently.

The Sixth shield is also, arguably, the fact that C!Tommy is portrayed as a Straight, White, Cis Man. You cannot tell me that if C!Tommy was canonically a girl, that the gaming community wouldn't have dogpiled on her and made fun of her and called her annoying for no reason. Not with the way Niki is treated. The character gets given so much more importance and respect in comparison to some other people, like Eret, Niki, Ponk. And I don't think that's just a coincidence.

The Seventh shield, is that CC!Tommy's entire brand is being funny. To the point where it leaks into his roleplay portrayal, and means that a lot of the shitty things that C!Tommy does end up being framed through the lens of humour. Which means the impact and effect of his bad actions do not hold weight and are taken way less seriously than when something happens to C!Tommy himself. There is a reason why most people don't think much of C!Jack Manifold because being basically just a clown to be mocked.

All this stuff prevents a lot of very obvious stuff in this roleplay from getting talked about. So many people would rather focus on headcanons and made up lore, that when the time actually comes to point the finger at C!Tommy and say "Hey, this guy is a bad person," so many people get confused or up in arms because they weren't thinking that C!Tommy being a bad person was possible.

When it gets to the point where you have people thinking C!Tommy and Ghostbur were totally friends with no issues at all, you know you have a problem. Because C!Tommy canonically treated Ghostbur like shit and was not really treating him well at all. C!Tommy regularly trigger and upset Ghostbur, blaming him for the actions of C!Wilbur even when he knew it was pointless and hurt him. He hung around him a lot, but its obvious he clung to Ghostbur as a way to still maintain the memories of "Good Wilbur" rather than because Ghostbur was good on his own merits. He would regularly guilt trip him, and seemed completely indifferent to how his actions and words hurt Ghostbur for a long while.

This is not good, there were a lotta problems there, and they should be addressed as the problems they are, otherwise you miss out on proper understanding of C!Tommy's character.

And this misinterpretation of Tommy's character is as much a fault of the writing of the DreamSMP as it is the biased Fandom's.

Because how are the audience supposed to know that C!Tommy isn't really a good person, when he never faces narrative consequences, his issues are never handled and talked about, he gets away with everything, and we're too busy focusing on the "Worse" people, like C!Wilbur and C!Dream, to actually talk about C!Tommy?

#dream smp critical #dsmp critical #negative #negativity #dreamsmp #dream smp #dreamsmp roleplay #what the hell dreamsmp writers #c!tommy #criticism #critical dsmp

[naynay5155]

C!Tommy’s Storyline With C!Dream Is A Very Concerning Depiction Of Abuse

Wild Title 

Okay, I’m sure that this probably isn’t too new information for anyone paying attention to the overall story of the DreamSMP, especially C!Tommy’s storyline, but I figured I’d give my two cents for this anyways. 

C!Tommy is an Abuse Victim who has gone through horrific stuff at the hands of C!Dream. This is not an arguable fact. regardless of if C!Dream had reasons for doing what he did, if C!Dream also later gets abused, or if ultimately the abuse portrayal could be considered in some ways flawed or unrealistic, that stuff doesn’t ultimately matter. Because we’ve seen what happened to C!Tommy during Exile, have seen the physical, emotional, and mental abuse he was put through. Just because they won’t call it Abuse doesn’t mean it isn’t Abuse.

Now, C!Tommy being an abuse victim is an interesting idea from a storytelling perspective. It has a lot of potential to lead to genuine character development, or to affect relationships and story beats in interesting ways. And it could be an interesting way to really say something about abuse and coping with it. 

And to an extent, an argument could be made that it has, though I’d argue the exact way those are handled in canon, but not the point. The point is, abuse is not just something that you get to gloss over. If you want to include themes of abuse in the story, a story you are making available to the public for millions to see, then there needs to be a clear and obvious message being portrayed with including abuse in the story. Preferably, that abuse is bad, and can have majorly negative effects on anyone, especially children. We don’t always get that lucky, but whatever. 

But, from my months of watching the story of the DreamSMP, and trust me I’ve been here a long while, I haven’t seen C!Tommy’s abuse being handled very... well. I could, of course, be wrong in some aspects, and maybe be misremembering stuff since this dumpster fire has been happening for a year now, and feel free to correct me or bring up more points if you know something I don’t. But, I still think that overall, I have a point of view that should be considered. 

So basically, C!Tommy is an abuse victim, right? this is easy to see, very obvious in the way he acts and behaves. Or... is it? 

Abuse is a complex topic and one that, in real life, presents itself in all sorts of forms. Many abuse victims were raised in unloving homes and ended up becoming more vulnerable to abuse later on in life as a result of that. Others never properly learned how to express emotions or turn people down and got taken advantage of. Others were abused from the start, and develop various ways of coping and dealing with that, even ways that they might not be fully conscious of themselves. Abuse is not a one-way street, it could hardly be considered a street at all given how diverse and differing the people who experience it end up developing into are. 

So I’m not saying that, if C!Tommy were a real person, that he isn’t “Being traumatized enough” or that “Why isn’t he more like what I expect him to be like?”. That is not what I’m saying at all.

What I am saying, is that C!Tommy is a fictional character who exists within a narrative, a story. And in a good story, consistency is half the battle. I, as the audience consuming the story, need to be able to look at C!Tommy and pick up on and understand the effects abuse has had on him. And these effects need to be consistent, otherwise, as an audience member, I’m going to get confused and start having questions about why he acts one way here but doesn’t somewhere else.

I also need to be able to clearly see and understand, by being given narrative stepping stones, if something is changing for his character.

As the saying goes, “Show don’t tell”. C!Tommy can’t just say he “Goes to Puffy for Therapy” offhandedly one time, as a means of handwaving away why he doesn’t really consistently act as traumatized as he used to even though it’s literally only been a few weeks, or months at most. To explain how he can jump back between being really sad and depressed about something, to joking about Women and Twitter. It seems weird if he’s able to just so seamlessly, so effortlessly, go back and forth. Almost as if he’s bouncing between OOC and IC, but that’s a whole other discussion. 

Sure, C!Tommy is representing real mental health issues, but he is, ultimately a Fictional Character existing in a story. I need to be given signs, proof, foreshadowing, to explain when he has certain reactions and behaviours in order to understand his character. And these need to be consistent, otherwise we get plotholes and general confusion.

I criticize the inconsistency and the offscreen handwaving because it’s generally not very good writing. It’s the same reason I disliked Eret’s basically off-screen-sort-of-redemption-arc. It’s the same reason people dislike it when Villains of previous seasons suddenly come back as fully reformed good guys for seemingly no reason. There is no arc, no development, no progress is shown to us. 

Because when you’re telling a story about a character having some major change or developing in some way, or having an important character trait, if I don’t see it on screen, then it didn’t happen. How am I supposed to root for C!Tommy’s progress, or understand what he’s doing to progress, if a never see his coping mechanisms? His therapy appointments? 

You can’t just say something, or inconsistently portray something, and expect me to jump through hoops to connect these nearly transparent dots that keep getting thrown around. 

Show don’t tell. Show me Tommy getting better, because otherwise you’re just telling me he made character development, and showing me this completely different character as proof. No, last I remembered C!Tommy was having panic attacks and yelling when C!Dream was even mentioned. You can’t tell me that a day later he can interact normally after days of being in the prison and a month of being dead.

Or, if you are gonna have him flip flop back and forth, don’t have it be so sudden and jarring, give an explanation. Is he faking being fine? Does he have memory issues? C!Tommy doesn’t read to me as the type who’s good at suppressing his emotions, he wears his heart on his sleeve. So you’re going to have to explain, clearly, in a way that isn’t ambiguous, what’s happening with C!Tommy here.

You’re not really saying anything about the abuse C!Tommy goes through, if all of that trauma is automatically wiped from the story when the writers get too lazy or too scared to keep it in. At best, you are showing abuse and trauma for the sole purpose of showing it, with no intention of properly dealing with and addressing it in the story. At worst, you are basically just doing torture porn. 

Pain, Hurt, Trauma for the sake of it. Not with any goal in mind. Just for the drama of it, or to hurt the audience. 

And then your audience is just supposed to take that content in uncritically, and they gain no true understanding of how abuse victims survive and cope after their traumatic treatment.

Exile Arc sure did a good job at making C!Tommy suffer. But as soon as that arc ended, a lot of the stuff that happened in it went completely glossed over and unaddressed for a long while. That might have been fine in the lead-up to Doomsday, since a lot of plot stuff had been going on and stopping to handle C!Tommy’s issues might (Might is heavily doubted cause it certainly isn’t impossible) mess with the pacing a bit. But then after Doomsday, there isn’t really any excuse to put it off. Because nothing was really happening for a good while, and nobody had anything to do plotwise. 

And this became even more true with C!Dream being locked in Prison. Nothing was really happening, so what was stopping the story from taking the time to properly discuss and deal with this stuff?

Well, nothing really. So, the Hotel Arc happened. And oh boy, was it a mess. 

So, C!Tommy being angry at C!Dream for the abuse and trauma he has suffered at Dream’s hand isn’t an issue. It’s an incredibly common thing for victims to feel angry at their abusers, and to even go so far as to wish for vengeance against them in some way. And that’s a totally valid and fine feeling. 

You’re hurting, you’re scared, you’re in pain. I get that. When we’re hurting, we don’t always act rationally or healthily.

But, ultimately, that rage, and hurt, and want for vengeance is not a healthy thing to hold onto. In many circumstances with an abuse victim wanting to inflict pain back on their abuser, we run into various problems. 

For one, getting vengeance on your abuser is quite frequently going to give you more emotional pain than it will fulfilment. Especially if you are young, or are letting this want for vengeance take over your entire livelihood. It does you no good ultimately, to attempt to bring pain to the person who hurt you, because not only will you often be unsuccessful, you frequently won’t find emotional healing and stability in that. 

(The only exception to this rule being if ignoring them or moving on from them isn’t an option for you right now.)

Actions have consequences, and if you invest more time in that person who hurt you, then you have no time to work on yourself or the relationships around you. You have no time to heal, and this can become self-destructive.

Spending time around an abuser, as a victim, is in all likelihood just going to upset you more. You’re retraumatizing yourself by spending time around them, and as you make attempts to give them their comeuppance, you could possibly end up internalizing the methods they used on you, and just end up perpetuating the cycle of abuse again. 

And even if you have no problem with doing that to this particular person, consider how fully internalizing these abusive behaviours could affect your friends or family. Frequently, even when they don’t mean to, abuse victims can internalize the things that they went through and then use those same behaviours against people in their life later on. Being shitty to your support system because of what you went through isn’t a good move, for you or them.

Basically just, an Abuse Victim has more to gain from working on themselves while finding ways to heal and overcome their trauma and abuse, than they do spending their time and energy on the abuser. Its frequently unhealthy, distressing, and self-destructive to indulge in that too much.

(Of course, I don’t speak for everyone, but from what iIve looked into and seen, this is the healthiest method of actually healing from your abuse. That doesn’t mean you just... leave your abuser alone and never address or talk about what they did, you don’t let them get away with it, of course not. It just means you don’t waste your mental well being and time obsessing over someone, especially someone who has hurt you so much.

You deserve better than that. You deserve to heal.)

Now, let’s get back to C!Tommy. 

C!Tommy, instead of finding a proper means of coping with his issues (proper therapy, diagnosis for his issues, forming and maintaining healthy support systems, focusing on things he loves, etc) is shown to repeatedly focus back on C!Dream. When he was making Big Innit Hotel, it did seem like he was to an extent finding ways to cope with his shit. He was still kinda shitty and his hotel was not exactly made and run by the most morally great standards, though I suppose I can’t expect too much when he is a very traumatized teen and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. 

But, ultimately, this all fell apart when he got locked in Pandora’s Vault with C!Dream. Arguably, it was already falling apart the moment he decided to keep pursuing C!Dream even when he was locked up.

See, the thing is, C!Tommy can never just… have trauma. Having trauma that he can healthily and methodically work through is something that for him as a Character, is basically impossible. His character is an angry one, one built on spite and childishness, and who holds the mantle, unfortunately, of “Spunky Male Protagonist In A YA Novel”. So, his mental health issues can never just be a struggle he has to cope with, especially not when the DreamSMP can never seem to have anything between “A lot is happening right now omg” or “Literally nothing is happening and nobody is playing on the server at all omg”.

Instead, his issues have to be seen as a battle, and they fuel the narrative of the story. Him having been abused by C!Dream cannot just exist as a thing that he as a person has to work through slowly with the help of others around him. It has to be seen as this Epic Triumph Against Evil, another battle of Tommyinnit VS Dream on the DreamSMP, a classic Villain versus Hero fight.

This, of course, isn’t too great. By C!Tommy’s abuse plotline being framed in this manner, it makes it so that C!Tommy is constantly obsessing over his abuser and recklessly throwing himself into dangerous and triggering situations is some attempt at an “Epic Battle With Evil”, rather than this being treated like the self-harm it actually is. And yes, it is self-harm, a form of it. 

C!Tommy uses his trauma and issues as fuel for the story, making it so that its impossible for him to truly progress and a character, and the moment he does start growing, he has to get retraumatized again so he goes right back to where he was.

C!Tommy does not become a better person when he’s around C!Dream, nor does he find any form of fulfilment in being around him. He gets shaky and panicky at just the sight of him. He regularly has violent and explosive outbursts at just the mention of him. When C!Dream talks to him, he gets nervous and basically can’t help but listen due to conditioning he still listens to. 

When C!Tommy went to go visit C!Dream the first time in Pandora’s Vault, he brought with him stacks of TnT. He did it because he wanted to mimic what C!Dream had done to him in Exile, where he would take all of C!Tommy’s newly gained items and blow them up underground for dramatic effect. 

C!Dream did this for control over C!Tommy, to manipulate him, for his suffering.

And C!Tommy wanted to do this to C!Dream, because he was feeling vindictive. 

When C!Tommy got into the prison, he mocked C!Dream, hit him repeatedly, and tried to boss him around. He made him write ridiculous books and verbally berated the man. He did this in a feeble attempt to gain some feeling of control over C!Dream. This, evidently, did not work. At best his success was momentary. And this sense of achievement he gained was gained through projecting his abuse trauma onto someone else.

He repeated the cycle. 

After he got brought back from the dead and let out of the prison, he was much much worse. C!Tommy was now paranoid, anxious, constantly thinking about C!Dream, and had his mindset solely on getting revenge on him, by killing him. 

It got so bad, he ended up doing lacklustre “Exposure Therapy” to help himself not panic when he went into Pandora’s Vault to kill C!Dream. It got so bad he dragged C!Tubbo and C!Ranboo into this, putting them in danger and putting more pressure on another two teenagers’ shoulders. 

It got so bad, that Ghostbur died, C!Sam closed off even more, and C!Wilbur came back. 

Objectively, C!Tommy leaving C!Dream alone would be the better thing for everyone. And yet he keeps repeating the cycle. Because C!Tommy is not meant to grow, learn and heal. He is made to suffer. 

The problem is not so much showing an unhealthy depiction of a mentally ill or traumatized person. Because trauma and mental illness and the effects of abuse are not always pretty, and they shouldn’t always have to be portrayed and pretty or sympathetic to be accurate. 

It becomes a problem when you get this depiction of C!Tommy’s coping being presented uncritically to an audience of a lot of underaged and young people. 

Nobody in canon, whether they be adults or fellow teens, has ever tried to question C!Tommy’s methods for coping. C!Ranboo and C!Tubbo just limply went along with his plans for Exposure Therapy with no consideration of if this was a good idea. No adults really offer to genuinely step in and help C!Tommy deal with his shit, and the ones that do leave him or get corrupted in some way, often leaving him with more trauma as they do. 

C!Puffy’s therapy methods are dubious at best, and the most we ever see of her actually helping C!Tommy is her humouring his toxic behaviours, and C!Tommy making offhanded mentions to vague therapists appointments we never see. 

C!Technoblade stopped giving a shit as soon as C!Tommy walked off the screen. C!Wilbur was dead, and now that he isn’t he certainly isn’t helping C!Tommy. C!Phil isn’t C!Tommy’s dad and has no obligation to do anything for him as a result. C!Ranboo has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. C!Tubbo is too busy repressing his own trauma to help C!Tommy with his. C!Sam is being ruled by the prison and C!Quackity. C!Quackity has become an Ancap. 

Nobody in this story is a reliable or trusted person to C!Tommy, who could properly tell him his methods are unhealthy and give him better alternatives. And as a result, nobody is able to tell the audience that C!Tommy is wrong 

Unreliable Narrators are only effective when the narrative in some way has their unreliableness pointed out or proven to the audience. If you go into a story with the assumption that everybody watching will be able to see past C!Tommy’s POV and not take him at face value, then you are naive. Especially when this fandom is made up of many teens and children. 

I only know C!Tommy’s methods are unhealthy because I care way too much and do my research. A vast majority of the world doesn’t have the same understanding and education on these topics, especially not children and teenagers. A good chunk of people, especially neurodivergent and mentally ill people, could very well take the story at face value and automatically assume that what Tommy’s doing is actually a good coping mechanism because they don’t know any better.

There is no clarification or safety net for preventing misinterpretation. And being of the opinion that “Well, they should know better than to trust a bunch of Minecraft Youtubers for this stuff” or “We can’t expect them to be psychologists! You expect too much” is just… not helping. 

Because I shouldn’t have to explain why children and teenagers, especially those that are using these people to cope, are not always going to make level-headed and common-sense decisions. They will be influenced by these Content Creators, whether we think it’s “Stupid” or not. 

And I can say with certainty that, while yes, this might be a bit much to expect from a bunch of British/American white guys who play Minecraft to handle, may I also point out that nobody fucking made them put this stuff in the story. There are ways to write a story without stepping outside of your realm of true understanding. Nobody begged these MCYTs to go and make torture porn for a 16 year old, nobody asked them to touch on topics they have no fucking clue about. 

They put that in themselves. And we have the right to point out the problems and flaws in it, and criticize them for not handling this stuff better. 

You don’t start applying for a job you don’t meet the requirements for. You don’t start an expensive project you can’t finish. 

You don’t include elements in a story you aren’t willing to fully go through with and address in a proper and sensitive way. 

#hope this makes sense #dreamsmp roleplay #dream smp critical #dreamsmp #dream smp #character analysis #c!tommy #c!dream #tw abuse discussion #tw abuse #negativity #dsmp critical #critical dsmp

[naynay5155]

Normal HS fans: Kankri is just meant to be a parody of obnoxious 2014-era Tumblr SJ bloggers, it's not that deep

Neurodivergent HS fans who saw themselves in Kankri and have projected their experiences being ND onto him to create a fully realized, nuanced version of Kankri in their head:

[naynay5155]

Dave: god i miss the days when you could show up to a strangers farm and hed say

Beta!Jake: Whats your name boy? 

Dave: and youd take off your hat and hold it to your chest to better let him see your face and reply

Dave: why i aint got none sir on account of my mammy passed on before she could give me one

Dave: and hed tell you hes real damn sorry to hear that and ask what he can do you for

Dave: and youd tell him that you cant read nor even write neither but youre mighty good with horses and can mend them fallen fence posts what you saw on your way in and wont ask for nothing much more than a hot meal and a warm barn to sleep in

Dave: and hed keep his wife and daughters inside but send his boy who aint got married yet even though his mama tells him he needs a woman out with a lantern and some stew at night

Dave: and the two of youd get to talkin and he’d throw you his flask to take a swig from and watch you drinkin from it while he leant against the door frame

Dave: and when he finally got called back on up to the house again hed take a sip from it too real slowlike like it werent the whiskey what he were tryna savour

Rose: You see, you don’t get posts like this on Twitter.

[naynay5155]

tell us your favorite things about Gamzee

Hoooo boy, okay! Some of my favorite things about Gamzee Makara:

1. How sweet and supportive he is to his friends

He even roleplays with Equius even though it makes him uncomfortable

And he watches out for Karkat and tries to be a good moirail even when he’s under the influence of Lil Cal

2. He’s constantly amazed by the most mundane things, like carbonation

3. He’s just got so much positive energy, he clearly loves to make people laugh

look at his cute little dance

4. His name translates to dimple which is the cutest shit I’ve ever heard

5. He’s so gentle – when he’s not under the influence of Lil Call

You can always tell when it’s him speaking because when he does the VaCilLiAtInG tExT lIkE tHiS

This part right here just broke my heart. He’s just a gentle guy who doesn’t want to fight anyone why does everything think he was lying here when he’s using his ReAl VoIcE instead of the Lil Cal voice???

6. Even under Lil Cal’s influence, he seems to be struggling for his agency

And in his moments of lucidity (brought on, I believe, by Karkat’s conciliating touch) Gamzee clearly hates himself

7. Hussie clearly doesn’t love him, abandoning him just like Goatdad did, and so I feel obligated to STEP UP

On top of stripping Gamzee of his agency and turning him into that stupid character who talks funny, Hussie both metaphorically and literally fridges him! Even Bro Strider gets more sympathy by getting a redemption arc through Dirk, even tho Bro Strider and Gamzee’s crimes are the same! Because they were possessed by the same evil doll!

Something that is confirmed in Bro Strider’s case, but never mentioned in correlation to Gamzee!

The text straight up acknowledges that the only reason Dirk turned out different from Bro is because his version of Lil Cal was unhaunted!

And Vriska even fucking teases the audience with this knowledge!

But sure Hussie, let’s just never acknowledge Gamzee’s innocence

So few people will love this boy the way he deserves to be loved and that’s why I’m loving him TEN TIMES the normal amount, to make for everyone else who is too thickheaded to see the TRUTH

In summation,

Thank you for asking!!

[naynay5155]

things that i am mad about with the whole tommy being ressurected thing

c!tubbo is never going to emotionally recover from this. this is the second time he has thought his best friend was dead and mourned him. he’s never going to be able to like,,, properly process death again.

cc!niki and c!niki were sidelined again. her computer was having some issues so she wasn’t able to stream, but i know she cares about her character, so i’m assuming that she wanted to have her character (whose entire arc rn is Kill Tommy) to have some sort of reaction to his death, but NOOOOO WE ARE IGNORING HER AGAIN 

nothing makes sense!! what the hell!! how do you resurrect someone with no supplies or canonical powers or anything?? i thought resurrections in the smp were going to be something closer to do with like,, the law of equivalent exchange??? what the hell is this??? 

i didn’t watch any of the eggpire streams yet (BC I WAS WAITING FOR THE WEEKEND TO CATCH UP ON VODS I MISSED BUT THEY COULDN’T EVEN WAIT FOR THAT) but apparently tommy dying moved them into the final stage?? NOW WHAT ARE THEY GONNA DO??

several characters had very emotional and heartbreaking scenes about trying to process tommy’s death (sam, puffy, ranboo, even tubbo and jack were all stunned and in pain) and now it’s all just,,, pushed to the side? this is such shit writing. if you’re gonna put as much emphasis as has been on death and dying in this world, then you gotta keep it consistent

it’s just another example of cc!techno being right. he said in like,, december/november that everything was speeding up bc dream and tommy started writing, and now it’s all literally gone to shit. fuck you i guess if you don’t stream dream smp daily (unless you’re tommy) bc if you don’t, you will either have to do a completely surprise stream, or miss out on major plot happening (this happened with niki, phil, and a lot of other people)

it showcases how shit their communication clearly is right now. if tubbo didn’t even know this was about to happen, then no one else could’ve. like,,, tubbo is tommy’s best friend. in roleplay and irl. so either tommy dying was completely spontaneous (which would be shit for so many reasons, you don’t treat the death of a major character like that) or it was not told to anyone that it was going to happen (which i already said why that’s bad)

[naynay5155]

Some mild expansion on my last post cause I could see how it might be a bit unclear why exactly its a problem.

C!Tommy being in denial is fine. That makes sense in fact, given his characterization and all he's gone through, it makes sense he has issues with confronting his real problems head on. It makes sense he never tells anyone that he almost took his own life, or talks about it much. And nobody knows what actually happened to him, at least as far as we know (excluding maybe Sam), so it makes sense nobody ever goes to him like "you good dude?"

What I'm more complaining about, is that it has been months, and it's not just that c!Tommy has never actually talked about it or told anyone about it or tried to deal with it. It's that /literally it hasn't even been brought up or alluded to in canon, even ooc/. Which isn't good, obviously, because it comes across like the writers are ignoring it.

When writing mental illness and mental health issues in general, I'm of the opinion that if you're gonna put that shit in there, you gotta actually address it and deal with it, or risk spreading a terrible message. By not having even mild mentions of what Tommy went though, or explaining, or showing any kind of honest progression in a realistic way, it could end up treating it like it's okay to just... forget about that stuff and never talk about it again because you've "Overcome it". Which is not good. Suicide is not something we should be treating like something to gloss over or never talk about. They should be canonically addressing this and actually bringing this up, because that shit happens irl, and its an extremely senstive topic to just gloss over. They bring up literally everything else Tommy went through too. The manipulation, the blowing up of his home and stuff, the isolation. But never the suicide. Not once, have they actually addressed that that happened. And it makes it seem like the writers are looking for any excuse to just forget it and drop it, because they touched upon a topic that they were not at all prepared to deal with, but can't take it back, and so now they just want us to forget.

If this were a book, they could have internal monologues or maybe poetic mentions of what happened. If this were a movie, they'd be able to manipulate the camera and use pre-written dialogue and tone to convey that this happened, and has lingering effects. And sure, you may think just because it's a Minecraft Roleplay it'd be "impossible" to actually handle that stuff, and that I'm asking for too much. But bitch, no. Ranboo does an amazing job with that stuff, he does a wonderful job conveying his character being in denial and being anxious and having problems. And while I'm unsure what direction he'll go when it comes to actually dealing with those issues, at least he's acknowledging them. That is leaps and bounds more than has happened with half the shit that went down with c!Tommy in exile.

Given the way it's going right now, they could have it so that c!Tommy could live in denial until the story ends. And that's obviously not good, that sends a concerning ass message and is very worrying. It has been months, and they haven't even fully alluded to c!Tommy being suicidal in exile, and as far as we know, they don't plan to deal with it as of yet. Which is irresponsible. Especially given how Tommy is locked up with Dream now, and it might go all down hill from there.

I'm not mad because I don't understand what c!Tommy is going through. I'm mad because I know that them not bringing this up for nearly four months now is a conscious choice on the part of the writers, and I've seen no proof that they'll properly handle this sensitive topic that they dropped in a lot of people's laps with no warning. They bring up everything else, and yet, not the Suicide Attempt. That's fucking gross.

#dream smp critical #dsmp critical #negative #negativity #critical dsmp #critcal dsmp #dsmpblr #dsmp #dsmp tommy #tw sucidal ideation #tw sucidal thoughts

[naynay5155]

The most recent Tommy stream is wild honestly.

In a lot of ways, it hits so close to the actual point, conveys a lot of complex issues really well, deals with them rather maturely. But is also very much... misses the mark in several instances.

Probably the most egregious problem with it all though, is the blatant retconning of Tommy's suicidal spiral. Which is honestly, quite gross.

When Tommy brings up why he hates Dream, why he isn't innocent like people believe and why he can't be around him and wants to be done with him, be doesn't bring up the fact that by Dream putting him in exile and treating him so poorly, it nearly led to Tommy taking his own life. He brings up nearly everything else. The conditioning, the way he was lied to, him almost killing Tubbo, him blowing up his things. But he never brings up the way he became suicidal, the way he humiliated Tubbo in front of a crowd, the way he was actively hunting him down after he ran away to Techno. The last two things are mild honestly in comparison to my gripes with the first.

Honestly, at this point, I'm starting to think that they... want us to forget that Tommy canonically almost killed himself, without saying we should forget that Tommy canonically almost killed himself.

Which is, actually very gross and bad. And honestly, what the fuck. Dream? Wilbur? Tommy? Any of the writers of this storyline and people involved in that stuff? Literally what the fuck. You don't just get to drop such an important and sensitive plotline like that, while having it go on for as long as it did while being as graphic as it was, without any trigger warnings and actually way too much detail put into it. Literally what the hell.

Honestly, we should be calling out the writers for this shit. Because genuinely this is just, terrible. This is just as bad as the Fundy situation honestly, this is not okay. They do not get to just... not address that. This is not good or in any way okay and it's honestly really upsetting to see them so blatantly /not talk about it/ even when it's so obvious he should be talking or at least referencing it.

#dream smp critical #dsmp critical #negative #negativity #dsmpblr #dsmp #dreamsmp roleplay #dreamsmp #dream smp #serious post #this is actually terrible #what the hell dreamsmp writers #you cant just do that #critical dsmp #tw sucidal ideation #tw sucidal thoughts #tw talks of sucide and sucidal tendencies

[naynay5155]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm you know, actually, the relationship c!TubboInnit have is so unhealthy and toxic, how has nobody addressed that shit, and how the story handles all of that so poorly.

Could make a whole essay about how c!Tubbo is literally an abuse victim, and how c!Tommy's treatment of him has effected him a lot, and how even if it hasn't, it's not at all a healthy portrayal of a good relationship and should be addressed as being toxic in the storyline to make it clear to the audience that this isn't okay.

I could go on for hours about how c!Tommy has consistently degraded, undermined, killed, stolen from, and generally mistreated c!Tubbo. Including the time he claimed he was less important than music discs (and if you wanna claimed he changed him mind and gotten better, I'm telling you, he hasn't, his current stream have proven that on multiple levels, as have the writing itself), implied c!Tubbo would be at fault if he was depressed and vying to commit suicide, and consistently has gotten mad at the idea of c!Tubbo for having other responsibilities other than being c!Tommy's friend and sidekick.

I would talk about how c!Tubbo has gone through just as much shit as c!Tommy, has suffered just as much, and has been objectively a much better person than c!Tommy ever has, and yet the narrative punishes him, and pushes him to the side.

And it would be great, but sadly I'm lazy as fuck, so I'll simply have to wait for those bursts of energy when ranting to friends on discord.

Curious? Mayhaps I'll make another post, or maybe you can just join the discord server:

https://discord.gg/bcDPXXah2G

We talk, we rant. Is fun. Would be nice to have more people in order to get more perspectives.

Hehahaha, cheep advertisement, the best tactic

#dsmpblr #dream smp critical #dsmp critical #totally not advertisment #also am very lowkey mad #will be fun to rant about this shit more #not that I havent already gone off on the server #fun times fun times #negativity #negative #critcal dsmp #criticism

[naynay5155]

c!Tommy is a bad protagonist.

Not even just a character of bad morality, I genuinely think that the role he fills in the story is unfit, and does not at all work for him. He holds back the story more than he does progress it. He makes decisions that lack critical thinking and make logical sense. He never grows, or learns, or ever truly outsmarts or gets a leg up on someone. He never earns his achievements, and never works for the things he gets. The story moves him more than he moves the story, and when he does move the story it's at the determent of something else (exposition, logical sense, plotholes, character development, pacing, set up, continunity). He is consistently a one note character, who would function better as comedic relief than an actually good, story driving, clever, and interesting to watch protagonist. Just because he's interesting to watch on stream, or is heavily involved in a lot of the main plot, does not make him a good protagonist.

And he has been like this since the beginning. Don't let some of the decent story decisions in the first L'manburgian War make it seem like Tommy is, or ever has been, a good protagonist. He has not. Which is a problem.

This is a group roleplay, they probably shouldn't have a protagonist anyways. That is just asking for inequality in screentime and a difference in character development. But, if they really must have a main character, the writers have to actually make him a functionally good one. And I'm a firm believer that they haven't. Some of that might also be on irl Tommy. He is not a roleplayer, that is obvious to me, so how would he know what it takes to make a compelling and actually well written protagonist in a Hero's Journey, Coming of Age story? Not many people on the writing team seem to actually put much thought into it as well. So, with little direction and guidance from the people behind the scenes, we have c!Tommy, who acts as an ineffective protagonist. It's disappointing, especially since he has a lot of potential. But the flaws in the writing have been showing through for me for months now, and it's not surprising that so many people are frustrated with Tommy's character, the lack of development of other characters, the self centered plotline, the potholes, and the wackiness of the story. Because to me, one of the main reasons we have all of these problems is because Tommy is a Bad Protagonist.

#dream smp critical #dream smp #critcal dsmp #dsmp critical #dsmp #c!tommy #analysis #dreamsmp #dreamsmp roleplay #sigh #you hate to see it #negative #negativity

[naynay5155]

Is nobody ever gonna address how genuinely shit and unfit the death system in this roleplay is, or do I just have to sit here crying the entire time. Literally, why. They could have done anything, something that actually made sense given the fact that they're roleplaying in minecraft, something that didn't ultimately boil down to ranking your importance in the story, something that could actually aid and shape and change the world around them and the characters. But no instead Wilbur was just like "The strikes and you're out, but also add ghosts, that can somehow be revived" and now I'm sobbing because it's so... bad and inconsistent and makes no sense and is confusing and just...

#all i know is pain #as a roleplayer and storywriter #this shit hurts so badly #no thoughts brain empty #is apparently the mood in the writing room #dream smp critical #critcal dsmp #dsmp critical #dsmp #dream smp #rp #minecraft roleplay #roleplay

[naynay5155]

Rant incoming, wee woo wee woo

Okay so:

I highkey despise the way that mental health and mental health issues are discussed and dealt with in the DreamSMP. And maybe I'm a bit biased and shit, but I've been thinking about it a lot, and come to the conclusion that they really just, do not know how to write mentally ill characters, trauma, or people who are a bit fucked up without in some way sending an ableist or confusing message.

For example:

Tommy Constantly Flip Flops Between Having Trauma From Dream's Gaslighting And Manipulation, And Joking Around Carelessly And Being Generally Non-Effected

That's not to say that someone who is depressed or traumatized has to "act traumatized" or "be depressed" all the time. But there needs to be a certain level of... I suppose consistency when it comes to this stuff, especially when trying to tell a story that deals with mental health. When writing characters who have gone through shit, acting is your best friend, and the little things can really add to and go to elevate a person's character. Instead of having Tommy have moments (that aren't directly related to Dream, and don't necessarily get triggered by an explicit mention of Dream or his past) is important to proving to the audience that he has, in fact, gone through shit. I've seen and spoken with plenty of people who seem to think that Tommy's jovial or out of place behaviour is a Coping Mechanism. Which is totally fine to think. But let me say this:

Not once has it ever been shown, implied, or explicitly stated, that what Tommy does is a coping mechanism.

Other than in joking contexts before stream, moments of debatable canonicity, or when Tommy wants to make an off handed joke to play into his persona for Twitch/Youtube, as far as memory servers, not once has it been properly established within the narrative that what Tommy does is an intentional coping mechanism. As a result, it comes across more as an attempt by Tommy to make content for the server. When he jokes about selling Foot, or makes references to his Snapchat streaks, he's doing that to be funny, to create content, to be entertaining. Not because he put thought into his actual character to do this so that it seemed like an unhealth coping mechanism, it's to be funny. He acts just like he did in the beginning of the server, when he was in L'manburg. And the times where he does show signs of trauma or being effected by past events do exist, but let me say this:

A. Tommy has gone through a lot more than just Dream's manipulation, and despite this he only seems to be effected specifically by the stuff Dream has put him through, rather than literally anything else he has gone through, which is a lot. It paints his trauma as inconsistent, and makes it seem like he only has PTSD and Panic Attacks due to Dream, even though it would make logical sense for him to be upset, or at least effected by Wilbur, explosions, murder, fireworks, crossbows, Technoblade as a whole, Philza etc etc. But up until the Exile Arc, the biggest reference we've gotten to trauma from past events is jokes about Tubbo having PTSD and... vaguely alluded to mixed feelings about Ghostbur.

B. He instantaneously gets over basically all of his trauma and worries in literally a day. Arguably, he does it as a whole, in a combined time of like, fifteen minutes. He goes to his old home, and after literally just standing there, he no longer feels like he's gonna have a panic attack when in this area. There is no visible mental process, there is no showing of actual character development. He doesn't even have much of a realization that what happened to him doesn't have to define him, and he can grow past that. He instead basically just... sets out that day to "Conquer his fears". Trauma is not a fear of spiders, those are not and never have been an equivalent. Treating them like they are, like it's that simple, is insensitive. You don't just go to the place you experienced trauma in and feel better in five minutes, and if you do, usually there is something else going on here. But you need to actually explain that to the audience, because we are not mind readers, and not everyone is gonna over analyze the story just to understand something that barely even matters in the long run. You also are not really able to just... get over trauma. It's not that easy, even if many wish it was. It's not like getting the flu, trauma has ripple effects and will likely linger in a persons life for the entirety of it. Not only is this so remarkably fast passed, and actually a egregious misrepresentation over how trauma is resolved and how people get over it, but it seems more like a way to allow Tommy to stop acting like he's having a panic attack every time he's here than an actual effort to have the character has a positive change.

The other instance of this, is his confrontation with Dream while sneaking out of L'manburg with Techno. He stands up to Dream (and I could go on for hours about why this whole scene is highkey kinda bullshit), backs down a bit when threatened, Technk stands up for him then alludes to betrayal, and then the scene ends and Tommy has somehow come to the conclusion that he has overcome his fear of Dream and is now his own man. Which is... bizarre to say the least. Both because, that is not a good representation of how people get over and recover from their manipulators and gaslighting, along with my previous points about the pacing and how it is never that easy, but also because it just... it kinda also had the potential to be used in a much better way. They could have gone about it any other way, having Tommy recover and grow and be reassured slowly over time, instead of, in an instant making the jump to fully recovered and totally all good. That could actually have been good to see for his character, but... no we don't get that.

C. Nobody in the actual narrative, not Technoblade, not Ph1lza, not even Tommy himself, properly describes or acknowledges that what Tommy has is actual depression, that he was suicidal, that he was gaslit, that what he went through wasn't just "Run of the mill manipulation" that it was a genuine abuse. Tommy never tells anyone what fully went down, he never actually says he's having panic attacks, and nobody bothers to ask, be concerned, or actually explain it to him (if it didn't make sense for Tommy as a character to know what he was going through). Any possible non verbal explanation for what he was doing being coping is never used, and no terminology is ever used to describe his experience other than just "Manipulation". What Tommy went through is more accurate to call Verbal, Emotional, and Mental Abuse, Gaslighting, Suicidal Tendencies and an attempt on his own Life. And they should call it that, for the sake of clarity for the audience. But instead, they keep it very vague, not actually explaining it or implying that this is a coping mechanism. And if they do, oh boy, they kinda fucked it up ngl.

Now you may wonder, why is it important to clarify? To be a bit obvious? To make it known? Well, it's important for the sake of proper representation of mental illness/mental health related topics. It's important to make it known that Tommy has trauma that won't just go away in a day, that what he's going through is hard, to properly called Dream abusive and clarify that Tommy's way of acting is him coping. Because fiction reflects reality, and in order to not risk spreading the wrong message, or doing a lackluster job, you need to be clear. It's important for the people who go through similar stuff to see, in order to feel validated and included. But most of all, it's important for the people who might not know about this specific stuff, so they can be informed and have their mind changed.

Think about it like this. Even if you, as either a Neuro-divergent person, or maybe just someone educated on mental health related topics and symptoms, can see and infer that what Tommy is doing is unhealthy, can other people? If other people who don't have much background knowledge on this stuff, can't tell, then the story has failed fundamentally to actually have a proper conversation about coping mechanisms and how unhealthy they can be. If a dedicated reader or a casual fan can't get the idea or understand that Tommy is being self destructive and is coping in an unhealthy way, have you really informed anyone of the actual problem with his behaviour or character?

This can also be an issue narratively. By having nobody acknowledge what Tommy is going through, it makes those characters seem tactless, careless, like they either have no clue or could care less about what Tommy is going through. It makes Philza's rhetoric and being kind and knowing better seem empty, because who is he to say anything about teaching people a lesson when he can't even recognize when his son is a traumatized abuse victim? It makes Tommy seem completely tone deaf to exactly how impacted he should be, and doesn't make him look good when he tries to act like he's been utterly destroyed by Dream's manipulation, when not five minutes earlier, he was joking about how many wives he has. (It also makes the guilt tripping of other characters seem especially scummy, but that's a whole other rant for another time).

So basically what I'm saying is... shits fucked I guess.

This is a mess lmao, but I'm just kinda mad. And there are probably a lot better examples of the lackluster mental health representation, and I could probably explain my point a lot better some other way, but hopefully this makes sense.

#negative #dream smp #dream smp critical #dsmp critical #criticism #critcal dsmp #damn. they kind shit at writing and roleplay can you beleive it #shits wild luv #can you believe the ableism and the bad writing of mental health issues #rp #roleplay #minecraft roleplay

[naynay5155]

Garou: So then I got kicked out of the dojo because apparently I’m “disastrous” and “reckless” and “Garou.” The last one’s just my name, but you should’ve heard his tone.

[naynay5155]

based off this stupid joke from the office i couldnt stop thinking about  😂

[naynay5155]

So is Lukanoir a thing?

Cause I had an idea where Chat noir saves Luka and Luka develops a crush on the cat. Wearing a Chat noir ring on his finger, Chat noir guitar pick. And when ladybug gives Luka the snake miraculous, Viperion just starts hitting on Chat noir.

Chat noir was expecting another rival for Ladybug, but this threw him and Ladybug through a loop.

[naynay5155]

Luka: Jules I’m in a dilemma.

Juleka: What’s wrong?

Luka: I’m in love with 2 people.

Juleka: Two? I know one of them is Marinette.

Luka: She is wonderful. She is so kind and her intentions are as clear as a music note.

Juleka: So who is the other one?

Luka: Chat noir.

Juleka: (Confused) Why are you in love with Chat noir?

Luka: He has got such a sweet ass.