#c! Wilbur apologists you always have such interesting takes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mcmactictac · 3 years

Text

You know what I’m seeing a lot of differing opinions about c!Wilbur from this stream but what I don’t see ANYONE talking about is the diamonds. At the end of the stream, when Wilbur added 2 of his own diamonds into the chest with the building materials?

Him blowing up the corner is not about destruction. Its so clearly rooted in fear. He wants to see if he can trust Ranboo, and this is the only way he knows how. He replaced the floor after, put all the materials back and added in the diamonds. You can interpret that however you want but it reads like he didn’t actually want to ruin it for me. He’s scared Ranboo is going to leave him, and he’s testing his loyalty the best way he can.

C! Wilburs trust issues are through the damn roof, and though I agree he doesn’t go about it in the healthiest way, it doesn’t feel like manipulation to me. It’s his own desperate attempt to see if he can trust that person. It isn’t about manipulating them to do what he wants, it’s about testing them so he knows if they’ll be there for him when he needs it.

He’s so clearly scared of himself too. He wants to change and he wants to be better but he’s still stuck in the same place he’s always been. He still believes he’s a bad person, he sees how everyone else looks at him with a feeling of fear. And even if he likes it, he also HATES it. Wilbur wants people to be scared of him so they can’t have power over him, and they can’t hurt him. He doesn’t want to intimidate others just because, it’s all a self defence mechanism to protect himself.

You see the way he pauses after Ranboo talks about him being a good person. He doesn’t believe it. No one else seems to believe it, so why should he? He doesn’t even think he deserves that possibility. You can see how thankful he is to have SOMEONE tell him he doesn’t have to be the monster everyone thinks he is. Wilbur NEEDS support from other people, but because of how emotionally closed off he is he never gets it. He always had the illusion of leadership, of having a plan, but it’s all spun into a big illusion to protect himself from the mental issues he refuses to address.

Wilbur closes off, Ranboo closes out. They’re more similar than people want to admit. It’s just so much harder to understand Wilbur because he closes in and puts up that really good illusion. But he’s still not ok. Look at how close he stood to that explosion today. He moved towards it, instead of backing away. He’s still holding on by threads, and he won’t be vulnerable enough with anyone to get help to pull himself back together again. It’s like watching a gifted kid burn out but they keep pushing, keep ignoring all of the things that make everything so much harder and they just focus their energy into one thing until they crash.

I really don’t believe c! Wilbur is a bad person. I think he’s scared, I think he’s made some bad choices, I think at some level he WANTS people to think he’s bad just as another way to protect himself. Wilbur needs healthy support, he needs someone to recognize what he’s gone through and how all of his actions have just been a cry for help that constantly goes unheard. He’s much more complicated than just a villain. No ones saying you have to excuse all of his actions, and he should be held accountable for many of them. But if you’re going to talk about him being a villain and manipulating other people, at least try and think about how he got there. Understanding where his motives REALLY come from has a huge change on who his character really is. There’s a healthy balance between “Wilbur is an irredeemable villain, and Wilbur has done nothing wrong ever because he had bad things happen to him so how he hurt other people doesn’t matter” and I wish we could find it more when we talk about his character.

#c! wilbur #wilbur soot #dsmp wilbur #alivebur #c! Wilbur sympathizer here #please stop making him something he’s not #c! Wilbur is not a bad person #he deserves sympathy too #just because his problems are internalized and harder to see does not mean that they aren’t there #c! Wilbur apologists you always have such interesting takes #dsmp lore #dsmp lore spoilers #dsmp ranboo #c! Wilbur kinnies you all deserve hugs

104 notes · View notes

snailsnfriends · 3 years

Text

The Importance of Word Choice and the Dream SMP

Recently, I saw a tweet that gained my interest about c!Tommy and c!Dream’s relationship and the replies got me thinking about something that I’ve taken notice of on here and on Twitter. This thing was the importance of word choice. Here’s the tweet I was talking about, which can be found here if you would like to see it and the replies for yourself.

Now, whether or not you personally agree with this take is irrelevant to the points I’m going to make, but it’s here for reference. Let’s begin!

The importance of word choice

As we are all aware, the Dream SMP is not real. It is all written and acted out. Everyone is part of a planned narrative, and none of the characters of the SMP are real, however, like other pieces of media, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t realistic elements to the SMP, just like any other piece of media you’ve ever consumed. In this case, it just so happens that the realistic elements of the SMP are mental illness and abuse.

So, why is word choice important here? Let’s do an exercise to help show the importance of word choice and what it may imply. Every time “c!Tommy” or “Tommy” is written here, replace it in your head with “the victim.” Do the same for Dream, but instead replace it with “the abuser.” We’ll also replace “exile” with “abuse.” Let’s start with this reply:

If we replace the words, here’s how this tweet would read: “i mean i agree with you but i also think some people need to realize that the victim kept provoking the abuser. they were both awful to each other and i think thats the whole problem” Let’s do it again with another example:

If we replace the words, here’s how this tweet would read: “the day when people realize that the abuser was willing to compromise and the only reason why the victim was even abused was bc he couldn’t keep his mouth shut is the day i finally feel peace” Let’s do it one more time:

If we replace the words, here’s how this tweet would read: “You do realize that the victim was given several chances and was originally just going to be put on probation but he fucked up that chance lmfao / i’m not saying he didn’t go through shit in abuse, blah blah blah but he was given chances and he decided to make shit worse for himself”

“Okay, sure, cool, but why does this matter? It’s just a Minecraft roleplay. You changed the words!”

But now that the words have been swapped, you can understand how poorly these takes are worded. When these character names are put into their relationship contexts, things become obvious. Instead of these being “c!Dream apologist hot takes,” they very clearly become victim blaming and abuse justification posts, stating that the victim had it coming. That they were given chances. That they deserved it. That they made it worse for themselves. I don't think I need to explain how horrible these statements are for you to understand the problem.

This is just a Minecraft roleplay, and this is just a story, but all stories have realistic elements, and when these realistic elements are mental illness and abuse, word choice is very important, because these things are real. There are real people who go through mental illness and abuse, and when c!Dream’s abusive tendencies and c!Tommy’s victimhood and trauma responses are textbook examples, you need to be very careful when discussing them, because they are bound to be relatable and they'll hit home for many people.

“Well, why do I need to be careful? Why does it matter?”

You need to be careful, because, as I said earlier, these things are real. There are real-life abuse victims who will see these responses. There are real-life people who relate to c!Tommy’s response to trauma. They will see people who are so willing to excuse or diminish abuse, and if they’re so willing to defend abusive fictional characters, how willing will they be to defend real ones? How susceptible are these people to abuse if they can’t make out the clear signs of it? Have they gaslighted others? Have they gaslighted themselves? How does this show their implicit biases? What message is this trying to send? What real-life implications do these posts have?

Everything you have ever read has been written that way for a reason. Every historical document, every textbook, every speech, every monologue, every piece of dialogue, every descriptive paragraph in a book, every news article, everything. This is exactly why word choice is important, because it implies intent and gives the text impact. You send a message through your words, so they are never empty. Whether it’s discussing the Dream SMP characters or listening to a president’s speech or reading a textbook given to you by your school, you should always try to be aware of what words are being used, why they’re being used, what emotion they’re trying to invoke in the reader, what message is trying to be conveyed, and what the words being used imply about the speaker or narrator. The entire beginning of one of the first big Dream SMP conflicts relied on words being used for battle instead of weapons because of their importance.

And with that, I’ll leave you with this:

“We don’t win wars with battles and with armour. We win wars with our words, Tommy. We’re starting a revolution, not a war.” - (Wilbur’s The Wall: 4:54, 29th July).

Word choice is important. Always think critically about the message you’re sending with your words. They have an impact, and they matter.

#dream smp #dream smp meta #tommyinnit #c!tommy #dreamwastaken #long post #abuse tw #victim blaming tw #word choice is cool look into it bros #snailtrail.slimes

1K notes · View notes

enigmaticvariation · 3 years

Text

I'm not sure how this will come off, but I haven't gotten any hate anons in a while and I feel like swinging a bat at a hornets nest today.

The thing I fundamentally don't understand about many people's mindsets here is:

Why do you feel the need to completely morally justify a character in order to like them?

Let me explain what I mean. I follow a very wide variety of people because I enjoy seeing their perspectives on various characters. I follow people who love c!dream and who hate him, people who love c!techno and who hate him and so on. I get a good indication on the popular fandom opinion of a lot of the characters. Something that is very prevalent in the majority of circles is the feeling of wanting to perfectly justify your favorite characters actions and prove that they were in the right.

This is where the apologism discourse comes in. So often I see arguments between different groups about which characters are in the right and which characters are more morally good than others. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this, I love reading people's interpretation of character motivation and I think morality is a very interesting subject.

However, what a lot of people don't seem to get is that morality isn't everything.

You can like or dislike whatever character you want regardless of their morality or if they're "in the right". I saw a post that once said "In terms of liking characters, I can excuse murder but I draw the line at that character being annoying." This is a very valid take! Character enjoyment should have nothing to do with that character's morality and everything to do with your personal taste and judgement.

I'll give you an outside example so I don't get a bunch of people raining hellfire down on me.

One of my favorite books is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It is a story that opens with a group of college kids murdering one of their classmates and the story that ensues is the explanation of what led them down that path. It explains their actions, but it doesn't justify them. You're not supposed to justify them or think they're in the right. The protagonists are privileged, pretentious and manipulative and you're not meant to romanticize their actions in any way, rather to understand how certain mindsets and aspects of society can lead regular people down horrible paths.

You can like C!Dream without trying to justify child abuse.

You can like C!Techno without trying to justify blowing up a country and killing many of the inhabitants.

You can like C!Sam without trying to justify torture.

You can apply this to almost every character, they've all done things wrong and you can still like them without acting as if they're in the right.

"Oh, but Vin, you're a C!Wilbur apologist! You're always reblogging stuff about why he was justified!"

When did I or anyone I reblogged from ever say he was justified? He sure as hell wasn't! He was a neglectful father, a horrible friend, and he blew up a country. These are all canonical facts and I do not want to undermine them. What I do try to do it understand how he got there, and where he could go from here. The thing about him, (and many other characters) is that he was a good person who went down a corrupt path, (a corruption arc.) He started as a pacifist who wanted freedom from a society he found unjust and ended up destroying the free society he created. His arc is fundamentally about the clash between his ideologies and morals versus his need for control and fear of failure and how it eventually broke him. To try and justify his actions undermines his arc.

That is the case with many characters.

Trying to fully justify them and acting like they're completely in the right undermines their character arc.

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

#dream smp meta #dream smp #dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis #mcyt analysis #mcyt #analysis #meta #dreamwastaken #technoblade #awesamdude #wilbur soot #the secret history

323 notes · View notes

kateis-cakeis · 3 years

Text

Hey fellow c!Wilbur enjoyers, sympathisers, and apologists. This one is for you, after tonight's wonderful stream.

So first off, Alivebur is a dream apologist despite knowing the exile. But, the reason for this apologism has not changed. He's his hero still, for reasons we knew before.

Yes, Alivebur knows about the exile, but he also said multiple times he would have killed Dream, disembowelled him even. Because ultimately as we saw, Alivebur is still firmly aligning himself with Tommy. Alivebur also seems frustrated that he could see what was happening but was unable to do anything, which explains why he went all in explaining what he would have done. Because he's thought about it, likely a whole lot.

Yet, he seems to have this vision that he would have ended up in the prison because Dream would have been dead. I don't know what that says for what he would have done afterwards, but what it implies is that at least to some degree, if he had been alive, he would have still seen himself as the bad guy.

But he seems to be out of that mindset now, it seems.

We also got conformation of an idea I've had for ages, that he never would have let the exile happen due to like, you know, sticking it to the man being his thing, apparently. Which is new, but not surprising the more I think about it. I mean, the drug empire was a thing once.

However, what that ideology does show is that Alivebur ultimately could press the button back in the past because he was always more connected to the values of L'Manberg than he ever was to the land. And that was the point! That it had become what he had created it to be against, so that's even more confirmed now.

We also got confirmation that the letters were for Phil's benefit that he was doing good and not spiralling, which is what we all expected, but it's nice to have that. And his vow not to lie! Now that's interesting, because Ghostbur once said he never wanted to lie too, so you know, that's a nice little connection.

And of course, we got Alivebur apologising to people, which is good to see. He knows he did bad, and that's good to see him recognise that because, you know, it's promising.

Like I honestly don't think we have to be that worried. Yeah, sure, it seems like at least in a narrative point of view, he's gonna be taking up the antagonist role still, but Alivebur himself seems to think he's just doing his thing.

Especially with that thing about Dream being in the prison, and him being out of it. Yes he said a few sus things, and yes he seemed to contradict himself a bit, but honestly? I think this is still a win for us.

We have Alivebur back, in a new way, a different way, and I don't think we have too much to worry about, so far.

#dream smp #alivebur #wilbur soot #dream smp analysis #yeah okay so i will be getting the quotes soon #but most of all i think so far #this is still a win #i really do #i mean just having alivebur back is a win #just having him alive is a win #just like he said :P

254 notes · View notes

balillee · 3 years

Text

my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

#dream smp #dsmp #esclaposhitpost

79 notes · View notes

solena2 · 3 years

Text

So.

Tommy isn’t Theseus. Every time I see Techno’s analogy about Tommy being Theseus brought up I’m filled with endless rage and I’ve DECIDED!

That it’s about time I explained just why it’s so objectively incorrect.

First: a bit of backstory on Theseus, because I doubt many of you actually know much about him beyond what Techno said in his “so you want to be a hero” speech, which left out a lot of relevant details.

Theseus was a demigod with two fathers and one mother. His fathers were king Aegeus of Athens and the sea god Poseidon, and his mother was Aethra, Aegeus’ wife. Aethra raised Theseus on her own, far from Athens to avoid him being assassinated.

Aegeus left him nothing but a sword with the Athenian crest and a pair of sandals, buried under a rock so no one else could get them.

When Theseus came of age, he took the sword and sandals and headed up to Athens, slaying various monsters along the way. (It pains me to abbreviate it that much, but Techno left out everything before the Minotaur so it won’t help me much in debunking his analogy.)

Once he got to Athens, he met up with his dad, chased out his stepmom Medea, (yes, that Medea) and killed some people. Then comes the relevant part.

Crete had won a war against Athens a while back, and because of this, every seven years Athens was forced to send 14 tributes to be killed by the Minotaur. (Yes, this inspired the Hunger Games)

Theseus decided he’d volunteer and kill the Minotaur, thus ending the tribute system for good and getting one over on Athens. He promised his dad that if he won, he’d come back in a ship with white sails, as opposed to the standard mourning black that signified the death of the tributes.

So he went to Crete, met king Minos and his daughters Ariadne and Phaedra, and got sent into the labyrinth. Ariadne gave him a magic ball of string that kept him from getting lost, allowing him to find the Minotaur and then safely get out afterwards, providing he could kill it.

He killed it, led his other 13 tributes out, and sailed back home. On the way, Athena told him to leave Ariadne stranded on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, so he immediately did so, because Theseus was an asshole.

He got home, his dad committed suicide because Theseus forgot the white sails and his dad assumed he’d died, Theseus became king and married Phaedra, and then the fun began, because again, Theseus was an asshole.

First, he cheated on Phaedra with Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, so she left and took the kids. Next, he and his other asshole friend Pirithous decided to kidnap themselves some new wives. Theseus decided on Helen of Troy, who was a child at the time, and Pirithous decided on Persephone, which resulted in both him and Theseus getting stuck in the Underworld for a while due to pissing off Hades.

Once he got back up, he killed his son for fucking his wife, which is messed up on many levels, and then left Athens because his people were rightfully not super okay with that.

Then he goes and meets Lycomedes, who throws him off a cliff.

Next, let’s talk about Techno’s speech a bit.

He starts off by accusing Tommy of being a power hungry dictator (paraphrased), before asking him if he wants to be a hero.

Then, he provides what is apparently the archetypal example of heroism, something often associated with selflessness, kindness, and generally giving at least one singular solitary fuck about other people.

Theseus! Heroic hero who does heroic things, like, uhhh *checks notes* cheating on his wife, kidnapping children with plans to forcefully marry them, leaving people alone on tiny islands with no supplies, killing his kid, etc. etc...

So we’re off to a great start.

Then, he gives a short summary of Theseus’ life and times! He skips the first part of his life completely, which is hilarious to me because it’s the only time Theseus ever did anything actually heroic or selfless, and gets straight to the meat!

“Let me tell you a story, Tommy. A story of a man called Theseus. His country was in danger, he sent himself forward! Into enemy lines. He slayed the Minotaur! And saved his city. You know what they did to him, Tommy? They exiled him. He died in disgrace, despised by his people. That’s what happens to heroes, Tommy.”

-Technoblade

So first off, he doesn’t mention... really anything other than the Minotaur and the exile, which is leaving out a lot of relevant details, like why Theseus was exiled. (You know, killing his son in cold blood?)

Second, he doesn’t give details in general. Not that he should’ve given a full telling, or anything, but I’m always surprised by the shortness of this speech when I go back and listen to it. He pretty much just gives the barest bones of an argument and expects his audience to take it at face value. (Which they do, but it’s still bad practice)

From the more accurate (if still brief) summary if Theseus’ life I’ve just given, I’m sure you can see why this might be more than a bit dubious, as an analogy. Given cc!Technoblade is literally an English major, and doubtless knows significantly more about the myth than I do, I’d imagine this was never intended to be taken at face value.

Over and over again, c!Techno proves himself to be an unreliable narrator, and over and over again, the fandom at large takes his word as gospel.

Now, as far as a more in depth argument for Tommy as Theseus goes, I will attempt to debunk that as well, because there are some genuinely good points to be made.

First of all, most people make Dream out to be the Minotaur. Given the time this speech was made, I imagine Schlatt was the intended target of that, but with latter events in mind, Dream does make much more sense.

I’d say this is honestly pretty fair, but I don’t think Tommy takes the role of Theseus in that narrative. I’d argue he’s much more analogous to the role of Ariadne, giving the tools required to defeat Dream but ultimately not doing so through his own power, but because someone chose to take those tools and make use of them. This also provides the very interesting characterization of Punz as Theseus, which is an incredibly unique take that I hope some a Punz enthusiast does something with, because I don’t know enough about his lore to make a good analysis on that.

The idea of Schlatt as the Minotaur, as was probably intended by Techno at the time, makes much more sense, though I still think other characters fit the role better. Firstly, Schlatt wasn’t killed, he died of a heart attack, and if someone had killed him I think it’s more likely to have been Wilbur or Techno who did it than Tommy, as Tommy was still very hopeful and idealistic at the time, at least compared to his character now. You could posit Tommy as Ariadne again in this situation, given he was the one to mastermind the final charge, and though I think Tommy as Ariadne is an idea that’s worth further exploration, I’d say Fundy futs the Ariadne role here much better, with him giving the spy’s diary before being effectively shunned and left out in the cold by both Pogtopia and Manburg, much like Ariadne was abandoned in the original myth.

I’d posit the Theseus in this scenario as Techno, Wilbur, or possibly Philza, as they were the ones to actually kill things in the 16th, though Techno and Wilbur’s killings were more in the metaphorical sense, taking the second life of L’manburg.

As for the exile, Tommy exile was alike to that of Theseus only in concept. Both were sent from their kingdoms for a crime, resulting in a falling out with someone close to them, and had a precarious relationship with heights while they were gone, but that’s about where the similarities end and even then they’re superficial.

First of all, Tommy’s exile was far more because Dream was looking for an excuse to do it than because briefing actually means anything on the SMP, given how Dream had been griefing bases and blaming Tommy for it for a while before it went down. (Fun fact, Bad and Skeppy were going to burn one of his discs over this, but one of them got sick so they had to cancel the stream.)

Theseus’ exile, on the other hand, was entirely deserved, especially when you consider how serious a crime killing family was in Ancient Greek culture. It was pretty much the biggest no-no in existence, and I’m almost surprised he wasn’t just straight up executed for it.

Second, Tommy’s falling out with Tubbo was almost entirely due to outside forces, (Dream) rather than because anything Tommy had done. Though Tommy’s cavalierness towards the trial and attempts to threaten Dream with Spirit doubtless didn’t help things, Dream surrounding L’manburg in obsidian walls and threatening them to exile Tommy was entirely his own choice, and not something that can be pinned on Tommy, no matter what the apologists may say.

Meanwhile, Theseus’ falling out with Phaedra had begun long before his exile with him cheating on her. Him killing his son was merely the last in a long line of dominos to completely destroy their relationship.

Last, Tommy nearly killing himself is very different from Theseus being pushed off a cliff. Tommy’s near suicide was the direct result of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of c!Dream for what was canonically, I believe, several months? (Correct me if I’m wrong on that one.) Tommy almost jumping off a pillar because he was deliberately isolated from his support systems is nothing like Theseus being killed because he was a cocky asshole who thought he was god.

So that’s why I don’t think Tommy is anything like Theseus, and why I’m filled with endless rage by the completely uncritical acceptance of this parallel, but it’s not the whole reason it pisses me off.

It also pisses me off because, as stated earlier, cc!Techno is an English major. He knew what he was doing with this. The fandom’s insistence on refusing to acknowledge his character as an unreliable narrator is, in my opinion, acting as a massive kneecap to what could be a great analysis of how he thinks.

Specifically: why does c!Technoblade think Tommy is like Theseus?

Of all the Greek heroes to pick, why that one? Was it just the tantalizing opportunity to parallel Schlatt with a horned monster, or was it because c!Techno has some genuine in-character reason to think this myth specifically applies to Tommy.

Now, we all know people in the SMP have a habit of analogizing Wilbur and Tommy. The assumption Tommy wanted to be president, the belief that Tommy nominated Tubbo directly, the belief that he was intentionally deceiving Techno about Pogtopia’s intentions regarding Manburg... all of these stem from Wilbur. There are more cases of this, of course, but several analyses have been done in the subject already, and this is long enough without more padding.

So why does Techno think Tommy is Theseus? Well, it’s simple, isn’t it?

Wilbur is Theseus.

To be continued, because this is already too long and my brain hurts.

#original post #dream smp #dream smp analysis #technoblade #tommyinnit #technoblade critical #(i guess. honestly I didn’t say much about techno himself in this but just to be safe)#dsmp #dsmp analysis #dream smp meta #dsmp meta #my writing #can you tell i don’t like Theseus much #hated to leave out his early life stuff because it’s genuinely super interesting but it wasn’t really relevant so I had to cut it :(#if you want a more detailed description of Theseus I’d recommend the rick riordan book on Greek heroes #it’s not the most scholarly work but it gives the bare bones of the myths in an accessible way that doesn’t take an English degree to read #call me a fake nerd if you want but I like the humor and digestibility #there are typos in this post and I Do Not Care

119 notes · View notes

ruby-whistler · 3 years

Note

You've probably talked about this kinda thing before (I'm willing to hunt down the post if so), but I'm pretty new to your blog and I'm curious; what makes you like c!Dream so much? Other than, like, his potential - or the skill that went into writing him - I mean specifically as a character, what causes you to sympathize with him as opposed to others like Wilbur or Quackity?

If it's personal you obviously don't have to answer! I've just read tons of posts like that from c!Tommy apologists and I realized I'd never read one from the other side of things (so to speak) and I think you present your ideas and stuff rly well :p

Alright, I’ve made a couple of replies like this, but this one is going in the masterpost to later link it to people - thank you for your interest, and I hope you don’t mind this one being a bit detailed.

Initially, on more of an emotional level, the answer to that question would be Dr3. It was how I got into Dream apologism, it justified my compassion for the character, and made me feel more comfortable where the rest of the fandom was overwhelmingly negative.

The c!Dream that people portray seems unsympathetic, and pretty fitting on the surface - a relentless manipulative villain with an insatiate thirst for power who threw away his friends in order to gain control over others for the sake of being on top.

Until you actually look into canon, and do some analysis, and realize that's,,, rather far from the truth.

See, the thing about c!Dream is, that he's a person much like anyone else in the story. He's not a "villain" or some morally black character only because of his actions. It's all about context, which doesn't excuse actions, but it might explain them and make an impact on the way we view the character himself.

In this fandom, people usually look at him, and then throw both accurate characterization and any of that context out the window.

Because power, and hurting people, and chaos isn't his goal or his motive. It's a means to an end. Everything is a means to the end to this character, including himself, which I find fascinating.

Is it wrong to do? Yes. Will it get him closer to his goals? Yes? Then he's going to do it, no matter who gets hurt in the process. No matter if he gets hurt in the process.

And this ruthlessness is not inspired by cruelty, this efficiency isn't out of enjoyment. It's out of genuine attachment and perhaps even desperation, but that's difficult to get into.

He's had such a downward spiral into doing continuously worse things - and for what? For control? For power? No, he never cared about that in the first place, why would he start now?

Do you know what he did care about?

His friends. The server. The people he feels responsible for.

c!Dream's goals have never been selfish at all, no matter how much people try to paint it that way. His ends were always for others - considering how likely the theory that he got himself locked up on purpose is, that enforces the sentiment even more.

If he didn't care about the server, why would he fight against L'Manberg and then list his reasons for it always as reasons "we" had? He pretty much never used "I" when talking about it, I know because I counted it.

If he didn't care about the people, why would he stand against Schlatt - despite understandably still despising L'Manberg - and actively support them in getting their country back when he could've just left them alone? Schlatt wasn't hurting him. Wilbur taking a tiny piece of land wasn't threatening him.

Manberg was threatening the server's peace, which is why he fought against it. L'Manberg threatened (and ruined) the server's relative peace and unity, which is why he fought against it.

It was never him fighting to control the server, it was him fighting for the server and the people in it, even if he ended up hurting them in the process, and that's pretty clear from analysing his motives before the second season.

And yeah, his thinking is flawed, I noticed - but cc!Dream has confirmed his goal in the end is for everyone to get along and, well, stop hurting each other, as well as him having an "ends justify the means" mentality.

And I guess that silent realization of - hell, he cares - was what drew me to have such a strong attachment towards the character.

So thinking about him forcing himself to do all this terrible stuff - about him being stuck powerless inside a cell, hurt over and over again - about just how desperate he must've been, alternatively, how ready to sacrifice himself he must've been back at the Finale.

If you recontextualize the story from c!Dream's perspective, it all falls into this picture of someone who wanted to protect people more than anything, and who cared more than anyone, and ended up losing everything, not entirely by his own fault, but because of the cycle of violence he was actively trying to stop.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Dream is incredibly selfless both in his overarching goals, and in his smaller more immediate ones. He will, more often than not, put himself in a disadvantageous situation if it means his friends or allies aren’t caught in the crossfire or harmed.

His relationship with his friends - Punz, George and Sapnap specifically - is incredibly tragic. He wanted to protect Punz, he showed genuine concern about him, he was willing to have one less person on his side just so that people wouldn't target him.

He wanted to protect George, but he hurt him in the process, because he was too caught up in being in the right, and Sapnap was distraught thanks to Tommy telling him that Dream doesn't care about him, and Quackity who despised Dream was there to fan the flames, so they fell apart rather easily.

He wanted to protect the cat, and he failed.

He wanted to protect Techno, stand up to Quackity, and he failed.

If you think about it, he failed to protect everyone miserably.

Alright before I break down sobbing incoherently - as you can probably see, my sympathy towards c!Dream doesn't come from him being a good person to any degree, more from just incredible amounts of sadness.

You see, c!Dream is a very reserved character, and he puts up the "cruel scary villain" front on purpose, and he doesn't talk about his emotions on purpose. However what we see of him is pretty much enough to classify him as a rather tragic character.

Most of his actions, with enough context, shift the way I think about the character in a more positive direction only because if I like the way a character is written, it's going to bleed into my feelings for the character himself. Ruthless villains are my jam. A character being fun to analyse and too complex to complicate further is pretty much the only thing I need to become attached.

Did I mention the prison arc yet? I cannot see a character suffering and not be sympathetic, I don't think that's a thing with me. Healing arc potential, isn't it?

A lot of people also relate to the character on a deeply personal level! Trauma responses such as cutting people off and emotionally isolating yourself, trying to regain control of your environment or to get back the past, some people even relate to,, what's being done to him during the prison arc. There's definitely some amount of projection going on, but I'd say I only do it to a degree where when I'm depressed I'll start relentlessly posting about a healing arc.

It's just hard to see a villain with good intentions hurt and alone, even if he's done terrible things, and not feel some amount of empathy. Most people don't care to see him that way, but my blog's mostly a place for those who do.

Anyways, here are some essays to check out perhaps if you've read this far that elaborate on some of the points further-

[ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ]

- and here's an explanation like this from a fellow Dream apologist. Might be useful to get multiple perspectives on the subject. Feel free to also send asks if you have any questions! That's what I'm here for.

#dream smp #c!dream #dreblr #my asks #angeloncewas #long post #thanks for the question! :]

135 notes · View notes

24-guy · 3 years

Text

Let's talk broad terms.

(disclaimer. The CCs will be marked with the tag "cc!" If it's the character, I will be just calling them by their name.

Eg , "cc!dream" is the content creator, "dream" is the character.)

Tw//: I think manipulation? There's talk of using attachments against both characters and the viewers so, just be careful if you're weary of that.

The dream smp lore is, in it's simplest form, a lot of fun by a group of creative people with their own writing styles and opinions.

cc!Wilbur's influence can easily be seen in the Hamilton-esque political story that was l'manberg.

cc!Dream's mystery carries on into his character, where we don't see his side of things that happen. We don't know his views or opinions.

Even both cc and c foolish's naivety towards the lore can be interpreted into how his character jumps into conflicts he may not completely understand. Though I have little to no doubt that cc!Foolish is aware of what he is doing.

cc!Ranboo really is beginning to let his liking of horror take over his character and as a horror enjoyer for years before the smp, I am all for it.

cc!tubbo puts his lack of enthusiasm into his character so much he's literally always doing semi-lore and nobody realises.

But that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about.

I wanted to talk about the server as a whole and the attachments within it.

Not to the characters but to us. The viewers.

See. Dream said he could use attachments to control Tommy. And we got mad at him for it. Rightfully so. He has done some messed up stuff that pits us against him.

But my question is why.

Think about it.

Dream is a bad person because he did blank to blank.

It's because he did something to someone we, as the audience, have attachment to.

Say you watch.. tommy. You watch from tommy's point of view. He's a good character. He's the main person you watch.

You watch through the entire exile arc and you understand his trauma. You put yourself onto this character. You sympathize.

You are going to hate dream.

Say now you watch... I don't know. Foolish. You only ever watch foolish. You have no idea what is going on with anything to do with dream. You only know tommy died or something when he was in prison with dream.

You aren't going to feel as bad, are you? You could think "oh. Tommy is known for being a trouble maker, he might have deserved it."

It's all about perspective and who you watch mainly.

Let's take another example, awesamdude.

I'll admit. I used to be an awesamdude apologist. But then he stopped streaming his pov of events and I got less forgiving because I began seeing him doing things that I thought was wrong.

Dream himself doesn't stream his point of view. He is a mystery to even the viewers of the story.

In it's simplest form maybe it's so the viewers don't spoil anything for other creator's.

But we can read into this as cc!dream stopping us from getting this attachment to his character. cc!Dream is not stupid. He knows what he is doing.

Imagine how many more dream apologists there would be if he streamed his pov. Where he could monologue and talk about why he's doing all of this.

It's this position of attachments that I think gives even technoblade, the guy who aided in two of the three l'manberg destructions, a good guy side. We can see his downtime where he has his friends. We saw his birthday party where he was having fun. We saw his retirement. We gained attachments through him.

Attachments are powerful even to the viewers.

We are all going to be more upset if someone like... I don't know... Enderchest dies, for the ranboo viewers. Or Steve for the techno viewers, or Michael for beeduo viewers. Even if any of those are accidents via stray creeper or something.

We are going to be a lot more sad at those rather than like... A random chicken tommy kills when looking for food.

Dream wasn't kidding when he said he can control tommy through attachments.

Saying that in itself is using the viewer's attachments against them!

It's putting tommy in a position of weakness, and the chat get angry, sad, confused. They feel things that they shouldn't do at a block game.

It all comes down to attachments and the masterful way they're written into the lore of the dream smp. Chat forms attachments quickly. Everyone on the server knows this. It's whether they're willing to use that or not that makes an interesting writing decision.

#dsmp #dream smp #dsmp theory #dream smp theory #dsmp analysis #dream smp analysis #dreamwastaken #ranboo #tommyinnit #tubbo #awesamdude #wilbur soot #foolish g #long post #tw manipulation #i think #just in case

106 notes · View notes

darlington-v · 3 years

Note

I know different interpretations of a work are generally enriching and cool... but c!dream villan interpretations is like how to tell me you only watch Tommy without saying you only watch tommy.... which would be fine but its not a great place to be making statements about the whole nature of the dsmp lol

Wild speculation, but sometimes I wonder if like, because the dsmp didn't really start as a narrative, and a lot of fans don't nessecarily enter it expecting a narrative, but then there is one and the fandom is really discourse heavy and everyone is sort of excpeted to have an opinion while maybe not expecting to form one from the begining or not having a ton of experience with narrative in a way that would "expect" them to have an opinion or not take things at face value??, I don't know if I explained that well at all... and I don't really even think thats right nessecarily... but like wow sometimes some of the takes about power and government and villany...

Honestly, it makes sense!!!

I think something interesting is like.... looking at how animatics have shaped the like tone and culture of the fandom essentially. Like, an interesting fact that I didn't really fully grasp until SUPER recently is like...

c!Wilbur out the gate admits he is manipulating c!Tommy. Like his first youtube video on the Dream SMP he admits his goal is to manipulate c!Tommy and people like c!Tommy into helping him achieve a potion ("drug") empire to monopolize on potions because there were a lot of people on the server who like to min-max, which is to put all of your effort into this one specific skill essentially. so like... i know minecraft doesnt have a skill tree but if it did, it would be putting all your points into that one specific branch of a skill tree. So he wanted to exploit the labor of all the TommyInnits to.... maintain a Potion Empire.

THIS IS A LONG POST BC I GOT CARRIED AWAY SO BUCKLE UP

And I don't think a lot of the fandom who joined later on knows this. I certainly didn't until like a week or so ago? Like... I knew c!Wilbur had been manipulative from the start because I'm a mod of (shameless self promo incoming) @dsmpanalysis and we have a lot of different POVs in that mod team and discord and we talk about it really frequently. I joined the fandom as someone who was really big on L'manburg ESPECIALLY crimeboys, and have turned into.... *gestures vaguely to my blog*

And ngl I owe a lot of it to @1-michibiki-1 in terms of c!Dream "Apologism" but all of the mods there have expanded my thoughts and views on the storylines of this narrative.

My application consisted of like largely essays about like... how I think Dream was the villain but he was meant to be the villain because you don't get any insight into his character WHICH.... IS A FAIR ASSUMPTION AT FIRST GLANCE. People are easily villainized when you cannot get a glimpse into their thought process. It's easy to dwindle someone down into this flat character and starting out I knew Dream didn't stream the SMP on purpose.

And I personally came to the conclusion of "Oh! So Dream is supposed to be the villain." However as the story continued and I learned more about what Dream went through I began to realize that... it's more than likely a form of a red herring. My opinions on this were immediately solidified when I watched Ranboo's 2 MIL stream because both Ranboo AND Dream agree on enjoying red herrings.

There have been MANY times were Dream has said that c!Dream is a complex character and he's not a wholly evil guy and there have been times where the narrative has honestly just proved that.

Anyways, what's important though was that... I learned most of this from other people who were more focused on c!Dream rather than myself. Eventually I shifted from c!Tommy to c!Ranboo and c!Techno after c!Tommy betrayed c!Techno and I began to realize.... everything I learned before hopping in wasn't exactly what it seemed.

Part of this is because I'm older, I heavily identify with c!Techno's sense of loyalty and philosophies on government, but I especially identify with the anguish c!Techno voiced in... a lot of lore but especially the lore around Doomsday.

I'm not 16 anymore. I don't always feel wronged by adults, or older people in my case, whenever they absolutely have done something wrong by me, but I do feel wronged by my close friends. I also felt like c!Tommy's sense of loyalty didn't line up with mine after what felt like him constantly flip-flopping and refusing to understand c!Techno's morals on government didn't line up with his.

In short, it was easier to identify with Tommy in these animatics versus in the actual stream content because c!Tommy is played by a 16 year old. I'm not a teenager and my line of thinking doesn't entirely line up with people that age anymore. It's harder to place myself in the same shoes of someone's OC who is played closer to their actual age, because I'm not that age.

Regardless, I was still on the c!Dream is a villain train. I wasn't ever like... c!Dream is repulsive I hate him, but I was like omg hot villain lad go brrr.

Even when the first like... mellohi, panic room, Ranboo lore stream popped up I thought "Oh! c!Ranboo corruption arc?"

And I was excited because I really wanted this shy, nervous character to turn into villain buddies with his good pal c!Dream. I'm a total sucker for villains and corruption arcs and all that good shit.

SO I STARTED GETTING REALLY INTERESTED IN ENDERSMILE. I'VE BEEN ON ENDERSMILE SQUAD OUT THE GATE. NOT THE SAME WAY I AM NOW, BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED THEM TO TEAM UP.

So... upon not really keeping up with c!Dream and being relatively??? indifferent? I don't think I started arguments on c!Dream back then, but I might have. But I remember like... starting to participate more whenever c!Dream came up and looking more into Dream's character BUT ESPECIALLY TALKING WITH OUR SERVER'S C!DREAM SPECIALIST MICHI ABOUT DREAM A LOT MORE.

And because Michi has been a watcher since day one and was a DTeam fan rather than a SBI fan, she was able to provide me with more information on how the server worked pre-Tommy but especially pre-Wilbur.

Now, you could definitely argue well Michi probably has clear bias but it made sense to me when I looked back on how the storyline had been constructed and was going along, and everyone in the server talks a lot about our own biases and how we want people to maybe not lean so hard on them. Michi would also provide like anecdotes on what had happened and I'm sure links were probably provided at one point but the point was I felt like Michi had no reason to lie or manipulate how the story was told and if she did, eventually someone would have pointed it out because... Group of like... right now it's around 20 or more analysts but I don't remember how many at the time there were. POINT BEING, WE'VE ALL GOT POINTS TO PROVE AND IN MY EXPERIENCE NOT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN SHY TO PROVE THEM.

So if anyone ever had any differing opinions they would be talked about and we literally had and still have discussions.

REGARDLESS.... I DIDN'T FACT CHECK IN DEPTH BECAUSE I THOUGHT PEER REVIEW WAS ENOUGH WHEN YOU HAVE LIKE HOURS UPON HOURS OF STREAMS TO WATCH.

Anyways. Eventually I started paying closer attention and looking more into c!Dream lore but only recently have I started to triple check before speaking about c!Wilbur lore because I know everyone has biases and while I did trust everyone's thoughts and analysis in the discord, whenever I make essays I typically like it to be largely air tight and if theres a mistake, I want it to be because I forgot not because I just trusted what was said. Plus, I wanted to get down to the specifics of how Wilbur had always started with manipulation on the mind.

SO I WATCHED HIS FIRST VIDEO ON THE DREAM SMP.

AND WHAT I WAS NOT BY ANY MEANS EXPECTING WAS WILBUR TO SAY WORD FOR WORD, VERBATIM,

"SO WHY DON'T I START AN INDUSTRY WHERE I USE THE TOMMYINNITS OF THE WORLD TO WORK FOR ME, TO CREATE THINGS THAT THE MIN-MAXERS OF THE WORLD WILL WANT."

Like... this is in no way an attempt to like hardcore villainize c!Wilbur like everyone does Dream, it's just more so to like REALLY outline how far off a lot of fandom interpretation of c!Wilbur is....

Because of SBI focused animatics.

Now, when I joined I watched A LOT of animatics that really highlighted like... Wilbur being this self-loathing JD-esque, "I destroyed it because I had to because the world was against me because no one loved us, Tommy" type of character. At least... that's what it came across as.

And it definitely highlighted the fact that Tommy was a victim, which he is. He is undoubtedly a victim and no not even any dream apologist can change my mind otherwise. Tommy, despite being an instigator sometimes, didn't deserve the abuse he received.

But these animatics never shown the fact that c!Wilbur started L'manburg as a shady ploy to exploit people like c!Tommy and vilify c!Dream so he could have power.

And that was easy because Dream and Tommy had wars before. They had spars and pranks and here's the plan to take back my disks and here's the plan to out smart the thieving little child etc etc.

And all of the animatics I watched never mentioned this. Neither did the recaps though. The recaps gave the events flat out, there didn't sound like there was bias, and honestly I don't really know if there was rather than like... a lack of nuance. And it's hard to provide a recap with that much nuance in a short period of time for a youtube video, to be perfectly fair.

However, this creates a perfect formula for entirely rewriting the history of a server. c!Wilbur quite literally fucking succeeded TO A META LEVEL. He slandered and ran smear campaigns against Dream and like he even does that with Sapnap in the beginning. But what's crazy is that it transferred over into the meta! Most of this fandom understands Wilbur as a victim of mental illness, and yeah maybe? He definitely wasn't mentally well by the end of pogtopia, but he never started out with honorable intentions. L'manburg was never a victim, only its citizens. The TommyInnits of the world.

I just think it's like... such an interesting case study. Because this is like... an opinion like shared by at least half of the fandom, but the vilifying of c!Dream is shared by MOST of the fandom I would argue. Which is like even more crazy for me because that was c!Wilbur's goal!!!

LIKE I GO INSANE WHEN I THINK OF THIS BECAUSE HIS REACH IS JUST TOO POWERFUL. HE'S NOT EVEN ENTIRELY REAL, JUST A MANIPULATIVE PERSONA OF SOME BRITISH GUY.

And I mean... maybe people who have watched Wilbur's video on the SMP still maintain this idea that Wilbur wasn't always the bad guy, but honestly... I wouldn't be surprised if their introduction was still an animatic. Like bias is hard to check and I'm not going to lie I could have sworn I watched both Wilbur's AND Tommy's video on the SMP in the beginning and yet I STILL was a ride or die for tragic yet on some level still honorable Wilbur and a resilient Tommy.

Like... upon watching Wilbur's first video... possibly again I was surprised because I thought I did watch it like right before I even started watching the streams and yet I was still so invested in c!Wilbur as this tortured anti-hero.

It took 6 months of... not being in an echo chamber, full of multiple different people of different ages, different stream POVS, and people who joined the fandom at different points in time.

IDK IF THIS WAS EVEN ENTIRELY RELEVANT IT JUST FELT TANGENTIALLY RELEVANT AND THIS WAS SOMETHING I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR A HOT MINUTE AFTER LIKE WATCHING WILBUR'S FIRST VIDEO AGAIN.

TLDR;

SBI CENTRIC ANIMATICS HAD A LASTING AFFECT ON THIS FANDOM AS IT'S HARD TO GO BACK AND ACTUALLY CHECK THE NARRATIVE FOR SOLID FACTS FOR YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION BASED ON THE FACT THAT THIS NARRATIVE SPANS OVER HUNDREDS OF HOURS WORTH OF TWITCH STREAMS.

#asks #anon #dream smp #dsmp #dsmp analysis #dream smp analysis #dsmp meta #dream smp meta #my analysis #long post

80 notes · View notes

mcmactictac · 3 years

Text

Tubbo lore my absolute beloved

His acting gets overlooked so often I genuinely believe he’s one of the best when he wants to be. My heart was BREAKING for him today’s stream. Since he hasn’t done lore in a while it’s a little harder to get a read on where his character is at but I’m providing my thoughts anyways

-first of all the SUIT. Man knew what he was doing picking that. The way it represents so many things, everything he had and everything he lost. Some of his best memories and some of the worst? He has so many emotions tied to that suit the same way he does with L’manberg. Him choosing it was a subtle thing I loved to see today.

-the parallels between him and Wilbur both starting by singing the anthem? Mhm I would love to see some people talk about that I’m sure there’s some really interesting stuff there if anyone sees or makes it please send it to me

-the way he’s finally standing up for himself! Like he forgives Wilbur but he doesn’t trust him. He talked about how he used to give away trust so easily and you can see he’s grown guarded, more closed off and forced to protect himself (especially with the nukes but that’s a whole other thing to unpack) I see so many c!Tommy defenders and not nearly enough c! Tubbo defenders. You guys are literally defending the same thing, just in different formats. Tubbo has had so much trauma for ages, especially since the schlatt administration and he’s basically been alone for all of it. After exile Tommy at least had Techno and Phil for a bit, but who did Tubbo have? Quackity? That would only serve to make things worse. And as much as I love his dynamic with ranboo, we all know they lie about most of their problems and refuse to be honest with each other

-how we got that GENUINE EMOTION today! The way you could hear his voice shaking, how he was clearly starting to cry again at the end? I love when he really tries to act, I’m always reminded how good he is

-mhm don’t you worry I am going to talk about that Tubbo and Ranboo conversation at the end and how it ties back to my previous point. You can tell Ranboo knew Tubbo wasn’t ok. I mean it was CLEAR. The way he used the soft tone and the hushed voices. And despite being a wreck, Tubbo pushes him away again. Like Wilbur, he struggles to be open about ANY of his emotions, hiding them, pushing them down to not let people know the true impact. (If we wanted to tie this back to the prison lore stream after tommy dies and how dismissive Tubbo was of that just to be fun and angsty we totally could. Not letting people know who’s important or what’s important, making sure no one has any power over him? Tommy was so clearly his one weakness for so long, so if he acts dismissive when he dies then he seems to have none. I’m aware this was not the intention but I like to be fun and angsty <3 ) ANYWAYS. Watching Tubbo push him away as Wilbur calls him? Yeah, tell me that didn’t feel like him being left all over again. This is not the first time someone close to him (cough cough, Tommy) has been gone with Wilbur and left him alone. He can already see it happening, so he pushes Ranboo away before he gets close, before he can show that weakness again. I’m sure he probably resents Wilbur a bit for “taking ranboo” away from him too.

-TUBBO_ THANK YOU FOR GIVING US MORE ANGST. Canonizing nightmares of his execution and of the 16th?? Oh I am SO excited to see the art and animatics that come from that. I love how it addresses the fact Tubbo went through a serious amount of trauma and really should have problems from it. Like yes let’s address that we don’t just leave that untouched.

Anyways Tubbo’s character is incredibly interesting and deserves more hype like there’s so much going on there. Even if it isn’t super lore heavy the POSSIBILITIES just given the small bits of angst we get? The growth is very interesting to watch and I find it fascinating to see how people respond differently to Tubbo, tommy and Wilbur reacting to their mental health.

Hot take! /s. None of them are villains. All of them made bad choices because of their mental problems and trauma, and all of them are struggling and don’t want to be stuck like this. If you’re an apologist for one of the three of them but not the others than like. I’m curious why /gen. It’s very similar situations, they just react to situations differently. I don’t know I just find it interesting how people can be so supportive of one and hate the other so much. They all made mistakes and no one is asking you to forgive them. Just keep it in mind when referring to their characters and their actions.

Mhm that’s all tangent over for now :)

#c! tubbo #tubbo live #tubbo underscore #dsmp tubbo #tubbo lore #tommy and tubbo #tubbo and ranboo #tubbo and Wilbur #bee duo #tubbo has so much trauma and I’m tired of us ignoring it #his character is so interesting hype him up more #dsmp #dream smp #dsmp lore #dsmp lore spoilers #Wilbur lore #c! Wilbur lore stream #c! Wilbur #clingy duo

54 notes · View notes

rnelodyy · 3 years

Text

C!Dream, the status quo, and why conflict is okay sometimes.

In this fandom, there is a lot of talk about conflict, who causes it, who avoids it, who is to blame for it, et cetera. An argument often heard from c!Dream apologists to justify his abysmal treatment of L’Manburg in general and c!Tommy in specific is “He was just trying to stop people causing conflict! He was protecting the server by stopping these conflict-causing maniacs!”

And it’s not hard to see where they get this idea from, because c!Dream repeats this sentiment a lot, from his “happy family” speech, to the speech during the final disc war about how c!Tommy causes constant conflict, to the fact that he always portrays himself as a reasonable authority figure trying to calm down these feral creatures always fighting with one another (and we’ll get to that idea…).

My reasoning for explaining how c!Dream’s worldview is deeply flawed may be a bit controversial, so I decided to write this essay to explore the following idea:

Sometimes, conflict is good actually.

(all /dsmp /rp, names refer to characters, not content creators)

Conflict, in itself, is morally neutral. It’s the context surrounding the conflict that allows us to ascribe morality to it. This fact makes this topic a LOT harder to discuss, because morality is subjective. What I’m writing here is all my own opinion, you may agree or disagree on some points, I just ask that you read it through and please don’t start shit over this.

Anyway, the context. It’s dependent on a number of factors.

Justification. Why was the conflict started?

Intent. What is the desired outcome for either party?

Proportionality. If the conflict is started out of revenge or punishment, is it proportionate to the wrong committed?

Power Dynamic. Is the person on the receiving end more, less, or equally as powerful as the person starting the conflict?

For example, let’s compare the L’Manburg War for Independence with the intervention during the Final Disc War.

Justification:

Dream declared war on L’Manburg because he saw them as traitors, and the land they occupied as rightfully his. Therefore, them making a country of their own where his rules didn’t apply was a violation of the status quo he wanted to uphold.

Punz and the others intervened because they didn’t want Dream to kill Tommy and/or Tubbo, and were tired of his constant meddling in their affairs.

Intent:

Dream’s intent was to attack L’Manburg until they surrendered, no matter how much hurt he’d cause or how many lives he’d take.

Punz and the other’s intent was to stop Dream from killing Tommy and Tubbo, and stop whatever plan he had to keep the server under control.

Proportionality:

L’Manburg declared independence in response to brutal violence as retribution for clumsy attempts at crime, on land nobody except Wilbur was using, were explicitly pacifistic and invited Dream to make an embassy in their land to discuss trade. Dream responded by declaring war, destroying their land, luring them into a trap and killing them, and continuing to beat them down until they surrendered.

Punz and the others intervened after Dream dragged two teenagers out into the wilderness to fight him, with little chance of them ever returning. This was after months of Dream’s meddling in conflicts he had nothing to do with, trying to control people’s actions, ripping Tommy away from his home and abusing him in secret and, in the end, destroying the place most synonymous with freedom from his rule. They intervened by getting Tommy and Tubbo to safety, letting Tommy (the kid who arguably suffered the most at Dream’s hands) take his items and beat him to death twice, then locking him up in prison.

Power Dynamic:

L’Manburg was significantly less powerful than Dream and his goons, with less skilled fighters and heavily inferior gear. They held their position fairly okay at the start, but after the Final Control Room, they were basically defenseless against Dream’s assault.

Dream had always had unprecedented power on the server. He’s leveled entire countries, crowns and dethrones kings when he feels like it, overruled the decision of a court of law, and in the end, had Tommy and Tubbo completely at his mercy before the intervention. Even beating Dream was seen as such an insurmountable task that it took fourteen people (excluding Clingyduo) to take him down.

The thing about conflict, even violent conflict, is that it’s not always negative. If your sister is being abused by her boyfriend and refuses to report it out of fear, you’re gonna be hard-pressed to find someone unable to sympathize with you if you go over to his house and break his nose.

What is a defining feature of conflict, is that it disrupts the status quo.

That’s not to say that some characters are always disruptors and others always preservers of the status quo. For example, during the Disc War, Tommy is the one trying to preserve and Dream the one trying to disrupt (the status quo being: Tommy owns the discs), and during the L’Manburg War for Independence, Tommy and Wilbur are disrupting while Dream is preserving (the status quo being: Dream has absolute power and the entire server needs to follow his rules).

It’s ALSO not to say that this disruption is always bad, because sometimes, the status quo fucking sucks, and throwing it on its head is the right thing to do. Overthrowing Schlatt is seen by everyone on the SMP and pretty much every fan as morally correct, as while Schlatt being president was the status quo, it meant he was ruling as a dictator, exiling his political opponents, imprisoning and heavily taxing dissenters, being verbally and physically abusive to his cabinet members, and forcing a guest at his festival to execute a sixteen year-old boy for spying for the political opponent he exiled.

Conflict being a genuinely good force of societal change isn’t usually brought up in the fandom though, at least not consciously. A lot of people, both on the server and IRL, see conflict only as a source of hurt and pain, and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible.

And here’s where Dream differs from someone like Ranboo. Because while both Dream and Ranboo operate on the assumption that all conflict is bad all the time, Ranboo shows this by becoming conflict-avoidant to the extreme, to the point where he refuses to pick sides in pretty much any conflict, no matter how obviously good or evil one side is. Meanwhile, Dream shows this by becoming controlling to the extreme. Mitigating conflict isn’t enough, he needs to control everything to prevent all conflict ever.

In Ranboo’s case, this is less due to ideology and more due to personality. Ranboo is a deeply anxious person, and hates being in the middle of fights. He’s also… not very self-critical? He has issues with self-worth, but he very rarely takes a look in the mirror to inspect what it actually is he believes and says, making him very gullible and convinced of his own righteousness. But while that’s a VERY interesting character trait, Ranboo’s conflict-avoidance doesn’t make him a very good character to examine in the context of conflict and what it means.

So let’s look at Dream. Because, despite claiming to want to stop conflict, Dream CONSTANTLY starts conflicts or escalates existing ones. The L’Manburg War for Independence could’ve been entirely avoided if Dream hadn’t lashed out so heavily at a nation of pacifists who made their own area to avoid violence from authorities. As I explored in my George Vod Analysis, the griefing of George’s house would’ve been a lighthearted dispute between two people if Dream hadn’t taken over the entire thing and turned it into one of the biggest diplomatic crises in the server’s history. Mexican L’Manburg hadn’t even existed for an hour before Dream came by to kill its residents and destroy its land.

So why is Dream so focused on stopping conflict, despite constantly starting it himself? Why is THAT his hill to die on?

Simple. Dream wants to prevent disruptions to the status quo. That status quo being “Dream is the one in power and everyone has to listen to him.”

But you can’t say that out loud. If you say “everyone needs to listen to me otherwise it’s not fair”, you sound like a whiny five year-old at best, and a tyrant at worst. So, instead of saying that, Dream says “I just want to prevent conflict, keep the server peaceful.”

Remember what I said about one party being the disruptor and another being the preserver? Well, Dream’s status in the early days of the server is almost always preserver of the status quo. The only times he’s the disruptor is if disrupting that status quo serves to strengthen the status quo of him being in power. For example: Stealing Tommy’s discs is a disruption of the “Tommy’s discs are his and his alone” status quo, but strengthens the “Dream is the most powerful dude on the server” status quo, because the discs give him power over Tommy.

By fighting L’Manburg, he was trying to preserve the status quo, because having a government on the server meant he no longer had absolute power. Hell, REALLY early on, he decided to kill George and burn all his stuff because George had full diamond while everyone else was still running around in iron armor.

However, after L’Manburg’s independence, Dream’s focus shifted. Instead of preserving the status quo, he’d disrupt it in order to return to the status quo as HE wanted it, with no nations, and himself at the top.

But again, that wouldn’t look good. Making yourself the undisputed ruler of the entire server is not good for optics, so instead, Dream hides behind the excuse that he’s just trying to stop conflict, or seeking retribution for slights against his nation.

By this point, Tommy, the only person who CONSTANTLY refuses to bow to his demands, becomes his scapegoat. Tommy is loud, enjoys chaos and getting on people’s nerves, and causes, admittedly, a LOT of conflict. Lighthearted, non-serious conflict with very little actual consequences, but conflict nonetheless. It’s not hard for him to start smearing Tommy’s name, painting him as this feral child at fault for every conflict ever, mostly because a lot of people already believed something like that to be true.

The idea that Tommy is uniquely destructive or chaotic is complete bullshit. Tommy is definitely on the more chaotic side, but he’s not that much more chaotic or destructive than your average server member, he’s just really loud and annoying about it, which makes the things he DOES do stick out more. But Dream, especially during the Exile Conflict, continuously pushed the idea that Tommy is the only one creating conflict on the server, that Tommy is responsible for all conflict ever, and that without Tommy, everyone would be at peace.

And at some point… Dream started believing this himself.

His speech during the Final Disc War illustrates this perfectly. He tells Tommy that ever since he joined, there’s been nothing but war and terrorism and conflict, and that those originated from the attachments Tommy brought to the server. That, by cutting off his own attachments, exploiting everyone else’s, and getting rid of Tommy, he could restore the old status quo, before L’Manburg, before Tommy, when everything was peaceful and no conflict existed. Except, Tommy is too fun to fuck with, so instead of killing him, Dream was going to lock Tommy up in Pandora’s Vault, probably for the rest of his life, to continue breaking him.

This is a prime example of Dream falling for his own bullshit.

First of all, Tommy didn’t cause all those wars, he was actually on the receiving end of most of them. A vast majority of the wars and terrorism Tommy got caught up in were actually started by Dream, or Dream was actively helping the guy who started it.

Second, Tommy didn’t bring the concept of attachment to the server. He gets very attached to things, true, but attachment is a very basic part of the human condition. Even Dream, the guy openly shunning all attachment, isn't immune to it, in the end, he’s attached to the server as a whole, and Tommy, who he gave almost biblical importance in his narrative. Like Tommy said, if you have no attachment to things, why does anything matter at all?

Third, getting rid of Tommy and controlling the entire server with their attachments… that wouldn’t have restored the status quo, because the status quo exactly as Dream envisioned it never existed. He’s not chasing a past that was ruined by Tommy, he’s chasing an idealized fairytale version of the past where everyone was friends and frolicked around in the fields and there was never any conflict, before Tommy came along and ruined everything. Before Tommy joined, there was a SHIT ton of conflict, from minor disputes over theft, to the above-mentioned incident where Dream destroyed George’s stuff, to the lemon tree conflicts that wound up being taken to court!

Except, even this idea of Dream wanting to restore an idealized, made-up past is only partially true. What Dream is looking to return to and uphold is a world where he was the only authority and nobody questioned him. The status quo he wants to return to, no matter how much he denies it, is the one where everyone was at his mercy and he could do whatever he wanted without impunity. However, because he’s convinced himself that conflict is the issue, not disobedience, even if his plan succeeded, he’d have to keep the entire server in a chokehold to get them to follow his ideal plan.

Because conflict is inevitable. Anywhere where there’s two or more people sharing a space, you’re going to run into conflict at some point. People will have disagreements, they will fight, they will have miscommunications, they will have a bad day or accident and antagonize someone else.

Resolving these issues through conflict, whether it’s verbal, physical or legal, will result in a healthier community in the long run, because people’s pent-up frustrations will get an outlet, and people will try to hash out compromises or accommodations based on the reactions they get. It’s not always the ideal solution, but it’s better than just sitting everyone down, telling them to play nice, and smacking them over the back of the head as soon as they start complaining.

But conflict threatens the status quo. And as Dream involves himself in more and more conflict, they increasingly start threatening HIS status quo. So in order to maintain his status quo, conflict needs to be stomped out as soon as it crops up, no matter how minor it is.

So, now to paint a timeline through this lens.

Dream started off as the ultimate power on the server, able to do whatever he wanted without consequence. Tommy joined and threatened that status quo, but he was just one guy, so keeping him away and occupied wasn’t too hard. It was fun, even.

Then L’Manburg came, and posed the first substantial threat to Dream’s rule. Dream tried crushing this rebellion before it had a chance to take root, but in the end, Tommy traded his discs (the things Dream was using to control him) for L’Manburg’s independence. The status quo changed, L’Manburg was here to stay.

However, L’Manburg still posed a threat to Dream’s rule, so manipulating events to destroy it became Dream’s next priority. He supported Schlatt during the election in the hope he’d destabilize the nation, then sided with Pogtopia in secret to help overthrow the government, then helped Wilbur with the TNT to blow L’Manburg sky high, then betrayed Pogtopia for Schlatt’s side for the revival book. When Pogtopia won, Dream was egging Techno on through whispers to try to get him to go ape shit, so with Techno’s withers and Wilbur’s TNT, L’Manburg was gone, and the old status quo had been restored.

Except it hadn’t been. L’Manburg was rebuilt, with Tubbo at the helm this time, and a new status quo was put in place, with L’Manburg still there and still a threat. However, with Wilbur’s death, Tommy was left almost completely unprotected, and Dream took his chance to get Tommy thrown out of the country, hoping to get his biggest threat out of the way, as well as being able to sink his claws into the L’Manburg Cabinet.

Dream isolated Tommy in exile and tried to break him to the point where he wouldn’t put up any resistance. During this time, he also commissioned the prison, which he claimed to only be for the most dangerous members of the server, but is a pretty transparent attempt to enforce his rule by making a place where he can stick anyone who disobeys him. The server is slipping more and more out of his control, with more factions popping up and more people outright defying him, so like any dictator, he takes harsher and harsher measures to stay on top.

Tommy escapes exile, and while Dream is keeping tabs on him, he can’t directly control him anymore. So, to prevent Tommy from returning to L’Manburg and stopping his plans at disrupting the status quo, he blows up the community house, frames Tommy for it, and goes to Tubbo to demand Tommy’s disc, the only reason destroying L’Manburg was disadvantageous for him. Tommy jumps in to defend himself and takes L’Manburg’s side, but in the end, Dream takes both the discs, then destroys L’Manburg with Techno.

By this point, the status quo Dream wanted to craft is almost complete. L’Manburg is gone, there are no other major factions threatening his rule, and he’s pretty much set a precedent for what happens to dissenters. All he needs to do now is get rid of Tommy.

Except he can’t kill him. Over time, Dream has become obsessed with Tommy, to the point where he’s started seeing Tommy as the lynchpin of the server that everyone else gravitates around. Tommy is almost a living MacGuffin: he brings chaos and attachment which gives him power, but in the right hands, that power can be harnessed to create order.

(This is absolute nonsense of course, Tommy is just A Guy, his presence itself doesn’t create chaos, and controlling him doesn’t mean controlling the entire server because a lot of people just plain don’t give a shit.)

So instead of killing him, Dream tries to put him in prison. He even outright says that he wants to finish what he started in exile, this time with even tighter control and no possibility for escape.

He goes to kill Tubbo for multiple reasons: Tubbo is no longer useful to him, Tubbo can be used as leverage to keep Tommy compliant in prison (the possibility to revive someone’s best friend is a pretty valuable bargaining chip), and Tubbo would absolutely raise hell if Dream threw his best friend in jail for no reason.

If Dream had gotten his way, he’d be able to blackmail everyone on the server into compliance. Tommy, his scapegoat, would’ve been in prison, so now without a scapegoat, he could’ve probably gone one of two ways.

He could’ve created a new scapegoat to blame all new conflict on. Quackity would’ve been a good candidate, he’s VEHEMENTLY anti-Dream, and would’ve had no qualms about starting shit with him. Whether it was with El Rapids or with Las Nevadas, Quackity would’ve been the biggest anti-Dream voice in Tommy’s absence. So c!Dream would keep Quackity around, blaming him for everything that goes wrong… Until Quackity would get too uppity and either gets murdered or put in jail with Tommy, and the cycle repeats until either people rise up, or everyone who isn’t completely subservient is in prison.

Or, he could’ve cracked down EVEN HARDER on conflict. Anyone creating a new nation gets stomped into the dirt, anyone fighting over resources gets murdered, anyone squabbling over griefed property gets thrown in prison for weeks at a time, all the while their property and pets that they care about more than anything else get dangled in front of their noses. Anyone who’s ever read any more than five pages about the dynamics of dictatorships can see that this kind of repression is basically ASKING for revolution, especially since Dream has shunned all friendships at this point and his only ally is only there because Dream pays him.

(this is all speculation, we don’t know what would’ve actually happened, dont yell at me)

The status quo Dream is trying to return to never existed, and the one he creates in the process isn’t sustainable. Stopping every conflict ever is completely unsustainable and detrimental to the larger community, which Dream knows, because he uses conflict CONSTANTLY to get his way, while still presenting himself as a peacekeeper. What he’s really against is disruptions of the status quo, because the status quo allows him to do whatever he wants and control the server as much as he wants.

Conflict isn’t inherently bad. Some conflicts are harmless, some are necessary disruptions of the status quo. Conflict itself is morally neutral, and trying to prevent all conflict ever leads into some… iffy territory. Remember when Ranboo yelled at the L’Manburgians for participating in conflict the day before Doomsday?

Anyway. Please examine situations with more nuance than “conflict bad”, it’ll make for much better analysis. Trust me. /nm

#dream smp #dsmp analysis #dsmp meta #dreamwastaken #c!dream #idk if this made any sense at all #i feel like i just slapped a buncha stuff in a google doc and completely bullshitted a conclusion from it #but anyway #just something to think abt i guess

48 notes · View notes

prismartist · 3 years

Text

/rp

okay. if the c!tommy apologists and c!dream haters come after me for this, then so be it.

tommy shouldn’t kill dream. not just because of basic moral decency, but also because, from an outsider perspective, he quite literally has no reason to. because really, it will just do no good to anyone, including tommy.

(uh please keep in mind this is /nm, even if it doesn’t seem like it lmao i’m just a bit sassy for some reason)

tommy’s belief that he should get rid of dream comes from a mix of paranoia resulting from his trauma and the hero complex that was instilled in him since forever. he’s looking through an extremely muddled and biased lens. he’s convinced dream is going to break out when in reality, dream is fucking powerless! he may be unhinged and he may be dangerous, but he can’t do shit in the prison. he has no one to use the revival knowledge on, and they have stated time and time again that it is literally impossible for him to break out without assistance. and if any of y’all start to mention enderboo, let me remind you that the theory of enderboo being manipulated by dream isn’t canon. even if it was, you would think that he would have gotten out by now because really, dream would want to get out asap, yet he’s been in there for three months now.

and about what i said about dream not being able to get out unless with help? it’s actually quite possible that, in entering pandora’s vault, tommy might accidentally let him out.

(there are wilbur parallels here! would you look at that! hey remember the last time wilbur gave in to his paranoia and ended up hurting a lot of people? hope that doesn’t happen again ahahah-)

also, doesn’t tommy realize that he’s deteriorating his own mental health in trying to achieve this? i mean that should be obvious the moment he tried exposure therapy. he always thinks he has to confront dream to make things even when he really doesn’t. like he reaaaallly doesn’t. he’s trying to keep up his hero complex even when it fucks him over. remember the last time he tried confronting dream? that didn’t work out so well now did it?

not to mention, tommy is just giving dream power but stubbornly facing him over and over again. because he keeps getting beat up! he keeps giving dream something to play with! and that’s been the case the entire time!! there’s a reason dream only ever targets tommy, and only tommy.

riffing off that, tommy thinks dream will hurt everyone on the server when that’s kind of misguided as well?? dream’s main priority has always been keeping tommy in line. anytime he targets anything else, it’s because he sees them as extensions of tommy. l’manburg, the discs, tubbo. even if dream does get out, even if he resurrects wilbur, it’ll just be because he’ll be after tommy. which, yeah that’s terrible for tommy, but he’s not endangering the entirety of the server.

“so what do you suggest we do about dream?” nothing! you can do nothing!! i mean quackity’s already doing a pretty damn good job of beating him up (even though he really shouldn’t) or you can give him some therapy perhaps?? someone unbiased to talk to?? just don’t send in the clearly traumatized 16-year-old to do the work himself!! he’s in no position to kill anyone, much less face his abuser.

also there’s the argument that killing anyone no matter what is unlawful but for some reason y’all don’t seem to take that as seriously as the other points. which, fine, i’m not going to try convincing y’all otherwise, i’m just going to say that there’s a weird dissonance in saying tommy’s murder isn’t justifiable while dream’s possible one is, when both are results of trauma build-up, muddled points of view and a strong belief that the victim is the cause of all their problems. but one is more correct than the other ig (/s).

also can we stop. othering abusers and treating them as irredeemable? there’s a good post that explains this in depth but basically targeting abusers doesn’t help anything because it’s not actually tackling the root of the problem, that is, the system that molded them into abusers, and so just by punishing the abusers themselves and making them worse that doesn’t help to prevent other abusers and dehumanizes them.

now i’m not saying it’s not understandable why tommy thinks these things. it is! as i said, it’s a result of his upbringing thinking that violence is the only solution to your problems as well as the hero complex forced upon him. plus the obvious trauma caused by dream and co. i’m just saying that he’s making a big mistake by targeting dream when he’s posing no threat at the moment. also murder is problematic.

now the only reason why i would like for tommy to confront dream and attempt to murder him is that it would be an interesting storyline, and it would be extremely intriguing to see tommy’s train of thought while he executes his plan. but in-lore, i don’t think it’s going to be a positive experience in any way shape or form. he’s just endangering himself and dream rather than protecting everyone else. and i wouldn’t want dream to die from a meta standpoint; i feel like that’d be a waste of his character, that we weren’t able to see his pov before he gets ousted out of the storyline for good. especially since he’s the one who started the server.

TL;DR tommy shouldn’t murder dream, not only is it not supposed to be justifiable but facing him would probably have serious consequences on his mental health.

#tommyinnit #dreamwastaken #dream smp #mcyt #dream smp analysis #dsmp analysis #dsmp #c!tommy critical #unintelligible rants #long post #cursing #tommy apologists come @ me i dare you #but be gentle also im fragile #murder mention tw #abuse mention tw

64 notes · View notes