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the-final-sif · 2 years

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So, Ponk needs to leave, and Sam is the only one who can watch Dream while he’s gone. There’s absolutely nothing that could go wrong with this plan, and Dream just needs to somehow convince Ranboo and Punz of that. He’s really not having much luck.

Ponk asked several times to make sure Dream was... well comfortable was a hell of an ask, but at the very least sure in his choice to let Sam watch over him.

The two of them managed to figure out the terms of what Sam could be told. Dream assented to Sam being told that he was having temporary balance and hearing issues related to the Warden’s sonic attack. It’s important to Dream that Ponk stress that this is all temporary. And that Dream is still capable of doing stuff himself if he needed to, it’s just that Ponk couldn’t ethically leave him alone as a doctor.

Ponk agrees to all of that, and tastefully doesn’t point out that there are risks of long term damage, and that Dream absolutely could not be left alone without the risk of that long term damage increasing.

Sam’s job will just be bringing specific food (no more soup, only things that Dream can eat on his own, and from a specific list of rabbit safe items which pointedly does not include potatoes) help with Dream getting over to the bathroom for at least a few days, and help administer the ear drops.

Ponk also gives Dream like three knives with special handles just in case, because like, yeah good mobility is great but a sharp knife swung wildly will still do a hell of a lot of damage to someone whose unarmored, which is a requirement for Sam to be anywhere near Ponk’s house. Sam has been told there are safeguards in place, but not given any more details to prevent attempts to circumvent them.

Ponk himself has heavily mixed feelings, but it’s the only real option they have since the only other person staying behind that he could even think to ask is Punz, and Ponk is sure that Punz would sell Dream out. He already did it once, clearly he’d do it again. Sam hasn’t sold Dream out despite already knowing where he is and at the very least that he wasn’t in great condition, so despite his apprehensions, Ponk makes the call to leave helping Dream up to him.

Ponk tells the rest of the server that he’s getting packed up to leave, and that Sam will be staying at his house to recover safely. Nobody should bother him since he needs lots of rest and is nervous about having other people around while his vision is still healing. Message ahead if they need to visit.

Ponk leaves that evening, hoping everything will be okay when he gets back. If nothing else, he’s got a special upgrade for his communicator that will allow for check ins every so often.

Meanwhile, Dream sits and stares at his communicator for about half an hour, trying to decide how to break the news to Punz and Ranboo who heard about Ponk going on the trip and were making suggestions for plans.

He considers lying, he really does, but if he says he’s unsupervised then they’ll want to come by and discover his lie.

So he decides to just say fuck it.

“slight change of plans. ponk has to go to the raid. cant really walk rn, or balance. will be better soon. sam already knew and on truce bc of hunters, offered to help while ponk has to leave. should only be for a week. safeguards in place. everything should be back to normal in two weeks. will resume contact at that point.”

He really wanted to just leave it there and refuse to respond to messages after that, but he knew that was liable to end very poorly.

It took about 10 seconds for punz to reply, followed directly by Ranboo.

“absolutely not.”

“^”

Dream started trying to type out a response, only for Punz to cut him off.

“i’m coming to get you.”

Fuck, no, they absolutely could not do this. Dream was fine. Nothing was going to go wrong.

“dont you dare, it’s fine, there’s safeguards and we’re on truce because of the hunter’s involvement. i won’t let him do anything. ponk gave me weapons and a few special potions. it’s totally under control. i did not go through pandora just for you to ruin your cover now.”

It was a low blow, but hopefully one that would get Punz to listen.

There was a long, long pause. Finally, Punz replied.

“you check in every day, twice a day. if you miss either check in, ranboo kills him and we get you to safety.”

Okay, thank god, Dream could work with this. He almost agreed right away, before pausing to consider feasibility.

“if i miss a checkin, ranboo can check my room at ponks. im sleeping a lot and tracking time is hard right now. theres no reason for me to be out of the room without checkin though. if one of you can sneak a tracker in here, i can stick it on my comm if that’ll convince you. if anything goes wrong, ill send a message for help.”

The message for help would be going to Foolish, not them, but Dream didn’t need to clarify that. It was a valid technicality. There was another pause, before finally he got the response he was hoping for.

“fine. ill drop off a tracker in a bit.”

A beat, and then another text followed.

“please be safe.”

It left a lump in Dream’s throat, it made all the anxiety about Sam being anywhere near him, let alone in charge of bringing him food and fuck, his knife wasn’t enough, this was such a stupid fucking idea-

For one singular, terrible moment, Dream almost caved. He reached out, wanting to send a message asking for Punz to come get him. To get him somewhere safe and far away from Sam, because he couldn’t do this again.

But his hands were shaking too much to type. Whether from his most recent damage or that from the prison, he couldn’t tell, but it reminded him of how much he’d already given up. He’d done so much to get to this point. He couldn’t waste everything now. It would be worth it in the end. When things were okay again.

He bit down the urge to ask for help like a child and instead focused on the rational. The logical. If Sam wanted to take him back to the prison or hurt him, he would’ve just called Quackity from the start. Not Ponk. He would’ve just told the server where Dream was before a bunch of people left.

Clearly, Sam felt indebted and like taking advantage of something the hunters had caused was unfair. Dream could use that for now, and once he was well enough to run, he would do so and then things would go back to exactly how they were before. Both of them could forget that anything ever happened here. It was invalid. Struck from the record.

So he took a deep breath and got himself under control. After a moment, he managed to steady his hands enough to type.

“i’ll be fine.“

With that, he shut off his communicator and flopped back on the bed. Exhausted as he repeated that one little phrase over and over again in his head, hoping to find a way to make it stop tasting like a lie.

#c!dream #dreblr #c!ponk #c!punz #staged duo #staged trio #c!ranboo #c!sam #c!awesamdude #apology cake au #sif writes #sif speaks #there will be more endersmile soon but not quite yet #theres a reason ranboo didn't keep replying #also great news sam pov again soon #and were getting closer to the name of the au #i say like a liar

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proudfreakmetarusonniku · 9 months

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uhhh I kinda went crazy with this. might edit it for ao3 in the morrow bc I love it that much. the allium duo joint exile fic

tw: abuse, kidnapping, injuries, suicidal ideation, self hate, manipulation, brainwashing, vomiting, ableism (either unintentional or solely as a manipulation tool), mutilation, starvation, possessive behaviour, obsession, threats

it's raining, when they’re exiled.

ranboo has his suit jacket pulled over his head and when droplets slip through to the tips of his claws he hisses and jitters. sometimes, it looks like he'll almost disappear and reappear, like the endermen he so resembled, but instead he falls to the ground with a pained screech, the calves of his feet burning on impact with the sodden ground where his skirt isn’t long enough to protect.

still gripping painfully onto tommy's arm, dream slowly walks back to where he fell, and hits him with the butt of his axe. the screech of pain is distorted, almost otherworldly, and it’d be terrifying if it wasn’t so fucking sad.

“get up,” he hisses. “or i'll fucking kill you, and then-“

dream doesn’t have to finish his sentence. shakingly, ranboo gets onto their talons, wincing as they try and match the brutal pace dream immediately sets back on.

(he'd tried to save ranboo. he really had. he'd said it was all him, he lied, but ranboo had confessed, trying to get him out of this mess, and now he was in it too.)

(tommy wants to be sick.)

he’s not quite sure when and why things happen. they’re on a boat at one point, cramped and barely afloat. water sinks in and burns the bottom of ranboo's feet. there’s shouting after that. an explosion. a beach. tommy drags a shaking ranboo under a tree to keep the rain from falling on him. more shouting. more explosions. pain. blood on his collarbone. pain pain pain. blurring vision.

tommy drags himself under the tree and curls up next to ranboo and hopes he'll fucking bleed to death.

——

it rains far too much in logstedshire.

that is what tommy names it, the logs tell him too. they send their messages from the primes. maybe, if he listens, they'll accept him despite his sins.

he doubts it. he doesn’t deserve it.

he dug a den on the first day, for ranboo to hide under, but even the dirt under there grew too damp and after tending to burns all across his face, he'd spent what energy he had left with the aching scars and bruises and gnawing hunger in his gut to hang up a tent. it's only big enough for one of them, but that's okay. tommy doesn’t mind sleeping on the beach.

(it allows him to pretend maybe the tides will come in and he won’t wake up at all).

he pinches himself. dream wouldn’t like him having those thoughts.

honestly, tommy isn't sure what dream likes. it’s not like he and ranboo were stupid enough to break the rules- they’d learnt that painfully over the first week. it just seems like dream always favours the one of them, and who that was switched on a dime. one day, he'd bring ranboo chocolate (watching him like a hawk to prevent him giving any of it to tommy) and hit tommy for daring to look at him. another, he'd spend all day hanging out with tommy and shout at ranboo until he cried when he so much as said a word.

it was easy to resent ranboo, sometimes. when he got hugs and gifts and food and got to spend the day playing around instead of being forced to mine. but tommy remembers the times where dream extended that kindness to him and remembered how awful it made him feel when ranboo was being treated like shit. it was almost worse.

he just tries harder to be good. if he's good maybe he'll be able to get dream to stop. if dream likes them both maybe everything would be okay.

it never is.

——

when ranboo shows tommy his memory book for the first time, he really is sick.

which is annoying, because he'd only had scraps ranboo had hidden today, but fuck. it was bad.

tommy could recognise dream's handwriting from a mile away. even if he couldn’t, the pages blatantly ripped out would give the game away, along with what was in the book.

“my name is ranboo,” the first line read. “my home is logstedshire. my best friend dream keeps me and my friend tommy safe here. l'manberg kicked us out so dream is helping. if we follow dream's rules to protect us everything will be okay…”

ranboo rubs tommy's back, as gently as they can. “are you okay? are you sick? i'll ask dream for a potion.”

tommy shakes his head weakly. “no, it's…”

he can’t fucking break this spell for ranboo, though. his throat dries up when he tries. ranboo was always the happier of the two, excited in a way that was almost funny in each passing day. it was like ranboo had become the loud, excitable one and tommy had grown quieter and more distant.

and this was why. he didn’t have a fucking clue what was wrong, did he? he's happy because he thinks this is safe, thinks this is normal. and maybe it's selfish of tommy but prime he wishes he could live in that fantasy land where he doesn’t know it’s not normal for your best friend to hit you and starve you and never explain why. at least one of them should get to live that life.

“nowt. just hungry.”

ranboo furrows his brow in concern. “i'll be good today, then.”

tommy feels sicker at that. dream had started switching from his weird hot and cold game to being… nice. usually. it was weird, at first, but it was alright. dream was a good friend, even if he wasn’t as cool as ranboo. but the thing was, it was even worse when they actually fucked up.

they wouldn’t be hurt at all. dream wouldn’t change a thing with them. it was always the other who bore the full weight. no food, no privileges, any sort of thing they’d earned the right to keep taken away. if it was more serious, then they’d be hit, or shouted at, and dream still sometimes used the axe. they’d be abandoned to tend to themselves and do the tedious work of survival while the one who actually fucked up would have the guilt eat up at them as dream chatted like everything was normal.

ranboo forgot to make armour to destroy yesterday. a grievous enough sin, apparently, that now tommy's still smarting bruises.

he's not stupid. he knows that isn’t right. he likes dream, it’s better to have him as a friend than a jail or and he was pretty sure he was trying to help, but what dream does to them isn't okay.

but ranboo doesn’t need fo be burdened by that knowledge. they, at least, deserve happiness, even if it is fake.

——

ranboo moans in pain as tommy finishes up bandaging the stumps where his tails once lay.

he can still smell the enchantment on dream's axe, hanging in the air like pollen. it almost drowns out the stench of blood and the ash of the ruins around them. he’s not sure which is worse.

it’s all tommy's fault. it has to be. he tried to pretend like he could own things, and he knew ranboo would bear the brunt of that punishment. dream had just done what he always had done.

“it's okay, big man, it’s okay,” tommy tries to soothe, running fingers through the overgrown mop of hair that almost reached down to ranboo's waist. he just flinches more.

tommy just screwed everything up, didn’t he?

a week. that was what dream had said. he'd visit in a week, to watch them. until then, it was all tommy's responsibility to take care of ranboo, and he wasn’t sure he could. there was just so much blood.

he shudders, thinking about what dream will do to him if ranboo dies on them. being without his best friend was bad enough, but dream could make anything worse.

tommy sobs, trying to keep the tears from landing on ranboo's already scarred and tattered skin the best he can. he fails, and the faint smell of burning flesh joins the horrible mix and ranboo lets out another faint moan.

if dream could see him now. he'd always been there to watch over them, and what if when he came back to watch, there was only one of them left?

“well, watch me now,” tommy mumbles to the air. he was meant to be there to watch them.

watch them. watch them. that sits wrong. he's meant to be their friend, right?

“you were only here to watch us.”

tommy mouths it more than speaking it, but it feels like a proclamation. he was only there to watch them. just watch. he wasn’t their friend. he didn’t care about making them better. what he cares about is watching them.

and then what? would he even care if ranboo died?

would he kill him himself?

“ranboo.” tommy hisses. “can you stand?”

“tommy?” ranboo slurs, eyes half open.

“ranboo! fuckin'- this is important, okay?”

“i- i think so-“

“okay, then this is what you’re going to do, big man. there’s a cabin through the snow that way.” tommy points vaguely in the direction of techno's place. “there’s more bandages there than i have. i want you to run there, as fast as you can, and not look back.”

“but-“

“i don’t know how to do this,” tommy admits. “i've dealt with shit before but never like this. if you have those supplies you'll at least have a chance of surviving. now go, before you die.”

“but dream-“

tommy's throat constricts. “i'll explain. he'll understand. he's our friend, right?”

ranboo nods, before stumbling up to his feet, limping across the ruins towards the vague direction of the tundra. tommy whispers a silent prayer to the primes that he’ll make it. that at least one of them will survive.

ranboo deserves it more than him, at least.

——

dream, unfortunately, did not kill tommy. if only he’d be that merciful.

he pretends it’s mercy. he pretends to be concerned and he treats tommy with condescending kindness until he doesn’t. then, tommy sometimes swears he does die, but when he's better dream is even more smothering and the cycle continues.

he’s not stupid. tommy knows why he does it. he wanted two pawns, and if he lost one he'd do anything to keep the other. nothing personal.

it's easier to see it like that, at least. it's hard, sometimes. but it's easier.

dream does not call the room he’s in a cell, but it is. it’s in a prison, and he's locked in most of the day. the baby-blue wallpaper and fuzzy carpet he'd installed hadn’t changed that, nor had swapping out the sparse furniture for a million blankets and decor more suitable for someone half tommy's age. he almost misses the dark obsidian and lava- at least that didn’t treat him like a child.

because even if sixteen was a child- he could admit to that now, because ranboo was certainly just a child- what tommy had gone through had undoubtedly aged him out of that.

they train, sometimes. on days where dream doesn’t panic when tommy has so much as a paper cut, or on days when he's not beating tommy's head into the wall. sometimes, tommy helps repair dream's endless supply of cloaks. sometimes, he cleans blood off of dream's weapons and tries not to think about how it got there.

(sometimes it’s his, and that’s easier.)

dream, in almost paternal tones, calls tommy his protege. under his breath, tommy calls himself a glorified servant.

every day, his thoughts drift to ranboo. his kind smile, the scars that ran jagged lines over his entire body, how absurd he looked in his half-ripped suit and tiara, trying to keep his hair in an orderly braid and failing miserably. dream would help sometimes, if it was a good day. dream insists on braiding tommy's hair the same way now, and tommy almost wonders if he misses him too before he reminds himself that dream does not care for either of them at all, because the alternative is worse.

(either way, it’s clear tommy would be the favourite. dream says as much, saying how thankful he is that tommy is the one that stayed because he was far more fun and ranboo was boring. tommy reminds himself it’s a lie and it makes him feel less sick.)

maybe ranboo is dead. part of him hopes he is. that way, he was free. the primes would surely guide his way, and he'd be granted the happiness he deserved. fuck, even if they didn’t, there couldn’t be anything worse than this.

could there?

——

tommy doesn’t know how long he spends in the prison before dream decides to take him out on his “first mission.”

which is a meeting. of fucking course it is. because tommy’s mission has always to be a glorified page, hasn’t it.

tommy skims his fingers over the waters edge absently as dream rows. maybe they’re leaving the server. maybe if they didn’t tommy could make his own escape. if he sank to the bottom it’d be deep enough no one could save him in time, if he were to jump. and if dream didn't constantly shift from looking at the ocean to tommy, clearly aware of the same possibility.

dream always got so fucking mad if he tried to die and failed, so it was best to make sure that the opportunity wouldn’t fail.

they stop too quickly to have gone far. idly, tommy wonders how far they must be from-

logstedshire.

the ruins lie there, same as always. tommy hadn’t noticed how bloodstained those ruins are until now, red and green.

the skeletal remains of two tails still lay on the floor, undisrupted.

“what the fuck.” tommy says under his breath. “what the fuck.”

“aww, didn’t you like the surprise?” dream laughs, and tommy immediately prepares for the worst. “chill out, i'm kidding. you act like i'm gonna kill you. we're obviously not here for this, we're going to see techno.”

tommy feels an equal amount of hope and fear bloom in his chest at that. techno's cabin was this way. and if it was, then maybe…

suddenly determined, tommy walks as quickly as he can, trying to match dream's confident strides even with the limp in his leg. he can barely feel the humid awfulness of logstedshire shift into the equally awful ice of the tundra, all caught up in his thoughts.

maybe there would be a grave. or maybe ranboo would open the door, or he'd be in the cabin, because surely techno would take him in. he'd be wearing a cleaner suit, and he'd have cut his hair back to shoulder length. they liked it long, actually, so maybe they’d keep it. they’d be smiling, like always, and they’d greet him with a hug. “tommy, it’s been so long!” they’d say. and, he hoped, they’d add “i realised dream was a fucking bitch” and tell techno to punch his lights out.

or maybe there would be no hints at what happened. but tommy can hope, even if he really shouldn’t.

when they get to the house, techno's already standing outside, waiting. “i dunno why you had'ta keep me waitin’ this-“ he says, cutting himself off once his eyes drift to- “tommy?”

“i told you it was important, right?” dream laughs.

“he's dead.”

“prime, no. he's… he wasn’t well, y’know. not in that place. so i found somewhere better for him, and started helping when i couldn’t before.” dream shrugs. “of course, that’d be illegal even though it was the right thing to do, so i kept it quiet. don’t go telling l’manberg, though, or they’ll have my head for not killing him myself or something.”

liar. liar liar liar. tommy wants to scream the truth to the world, but dream wraps his arm around his shoulders tight and squeezes his bruises, a reminder to stay quiet and be good. so he nods.

techno growls. “i knew they were bad, but…”

“it’s okay. i just thought maybe tommy needed a change of scenery, y’know? he's… he's fragile, after everything. he’s not well, y’know, physically or mentally. so he might say some weird stuff, but i knew you'd be able to handle that.”

techno snorted. “yeah, i got my hands full with ranboo-“

“ranboo? ranboo's here?”

he was alive. he is alive. tommy feels more sick than he ever has in his life and he’s not sure if it’s from excitement or fear.

“oh yeah, you two were in exile together, weren’t you? c'mon, he's in the livin-“

tommy pushes himself free of dream's grasp, excited to finally see his friend, practically his brother, again for the first time in- months, maybe. he could never even be sure. time felt like it dragged too long to tell.

bursting through the door, tommy sees them. he won’t miss them for the world. their hair's different, in a ponytail, and they're dressed in much more casual clothes than they’d normally be caught dead in, but he could recognise that face anywhere.

“ranboo!” tommy scoops ranboo into a warm hug, barely noticing how they remain limp. “oh, prime, i missed you so much-“

“do i know you?” ranboo squeaks, and tommy's heart breaks.

“ranboo, it’s me! we were in exile together, remember-“

“i'm sorry. i'm really sorry. but i- i don’t remember a thing.”

oh. of fucking course. because he didn’t have the memory book, he must have forgotten everything by the time he’d healed enough to really be cognisant again. tommy scans his face for the slightest hint of recognition, but there’s none.

tommy must be a fucking bitch, because he bursts into tears then and there.

“i'm sorry! i'm sorry!” ranboo cries out, desperately trying to find a way to salvage the situation, and tommy keeps sobbing. and sobbing, and sobbing. the floor falls underneath him, and he curls up, shaking, like a fucking pussy.

he didn’t even cry this hard when dream was at his worst. but the idea of ranboo not knowing who he was, his only friend, the only person who ever cared for him no longer being able to… it was stupid, but that must be his breaking point, he guesses. like a fucking idiot, that makes him cry harder.

“i'm so so sorry about this,” tommy vaguely hears dream say, “he's not mentally well, is there a spare room i can help him calm down in?”

“yeah, there’s one upstairs.”

tommy barely registers as he's lifted up like a child, carried away from ranboo, but he does when he hears dream whisper harshly in his ear.

“tommy, if you fuck this up i'm never letting you out again. ever. smile and play nice and act like l'manberg ruined your life, or you'll wish i'd let you die.”

tommy nods, still sobbing.

“and dry your eyes. you’re making me look bad. stop acting like an abused puppy, i practically spoil you.”

tommy tries to stop, but the tears refuse to stop, even as he tries to dry them with his hands desperately. dream's voice softens as he ruffles tommy's hair affectionately. “look, i know it’s tough, but this is for you and ranboo, y’know? if i'm able to make things right, you can be friends again. i'll make sure he remembers you, tommy. i know how to fix it, just let me, okay?”

tommy nods, finally managing to go from hysterical tears to a more reasonable level of crying.

“that’s good enough. just smile and pretend everything’s fine, okay? i'll even let you listen to your discs for a while when we get home if you’re good. and remember it’s for ranboo too.”

it hurts tommy's face to force a grin, hurts his heart to try and think of how to pretend to play along with dream's story and throw his home under the bus. but tommy isn’t stupid. he doesn’t believe dream’s bullshit, but he knows what he’s implying. behave and ranboo won’t get hurt.

that, at least, is a comfortingly familiar game to play.

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if-loki-was-a-fox · 9 months

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Here's some Exile AU Peer Pressure Duo rambling bc I haven't said any of this on Tumblr yet — CW for references to abuse, manipulation, trauma, and general unhealthy relationship and Exile Arc stuff

(as always, thank you to @proudfreakmetarusonniku for helping me come up with this AU and a lot of this stuff specifically)

So when exile!Dream discovers exile!Tommy's attempt to hide stuff from him and blows up Logstedshire, he also chops of exile!Ranboo's tail to make the punishment even greater.

e!Tommy, finally realizing that e!Dream isn't their friend (something e!Ranboo still doesn't realize btw) and being unable to properly take care of e!Ranboo's injuries, tells e!Ranboo to run and find e!Techno's cabin, hoping that e!Techno will take care of e!Ranboo and e!Dream won't care enough about losing only on of them to go after e!Ranboo.

So e!Ranboo is badly injured and just generally not doing great after ages in exile, losing their tail, and then running through the tundra in old tattered cloths, so after they pass out on e!Techno's porch they're unconscious/barley conscious for days while e!Techno (and probably e!Phil too) nurse them back to health.

e!Ranboo has no real memories of L'Manburg and hasn't for a while at this point, and by the time they recover from their injuries they don't remember a whole lot about Exile either (esp not with how traumatic the whole thing was). They do however, still have a lot of conditioning left over and a very messed up view on what friendship looks like thanks to what e!Dream taught them. (e!Ranboo absolutely starts trying to figure out what e!Techno wants and likes and doing that and only that to avoid punishment as soon as they wake up, given that they think that's just how relationships work)

So in canon DSMP c!Ranboo has a tendency to use gifts as their main friendship gesture (see, giving c!Timmy alliums, giving c!EmDuo gifts their first or second day in the tundra, and giving c!Techno the ax). This is exacerbated with exile!Ranboo.

For as long as e!Ranboo can remember, one of his two best friends would come by every couple days and take all the stuff he made in the meantime. As such, e!Ranboo thinks they don't deserve to own things and that it's a normal give up all their stuff to e!Techno, the actual owner of all their things. e!Ranboo basically repeats the "put your items in the hole" by giving e!Techno their stuff frequently and getting anxious when they have stuff for too long, something e!Techno doesn't initially pick up on and recognize as abnormal or a trauma thing (he's just overwhelmed by the excessive "affection" and unsure how to emotionally process it).

(One day, e!Techno makes a comment on this behavior and e!Ranboo reacts badly thinking they did something wrong, which is when e!Techno finally realizes that this is Not Normal.)

Also, an important context on e!Techno's part: e!Techno is initially very oblivious to e!Ranboo's trauma, but even as he starts to slowly uncover stuff about e!Ranboo's trauma and abuse, he assumes it comes from L'Manburg, given that L'Manburg is, in his eyes, the Corrupt Evil Government that exiled e!Ranboo and e!Tommy (innocent kids) and tried to execute e!Techno in front of e!Philza. On top of that, what little e!Ranboo does remember of Exile is that e!Dream was his friend, so why would e!Techno ever even consider that e!Dream abused them?

(anyways, if you couldn't tell already, this is very much an Angst/Horror type of AU. e!Techno here is very well set up to side fully with e!Dream against L'Manburg and generally be easily manipulated by him on an ongoing basis. There's a non-zero chance this AU ends with e!Dream getting his really messed up Big Happy Family that he so wants.)

#ranboo exile au #exiled ranboo au #also to clarify my characterkzation of e!Dream is heavily based on Metaru's characterization of c!Dream #manipulation #manipulation tw #abuse #abuse tw #trauma #cdream #endersmile duo #peer pressure duo #cranboo #ranboo #ctechno #technoblade #rambling about blorbos

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theenderwalker · 2 years

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Ranboo’s Relationships (and how they change between states) An exploration and an explanation of Ranboo’s People Skills

“TommyInnit is to the Enderwalk State as Dream is to Ranboo’s Waking State”

Wait, what? Stick with me here--I promise I’ll explain exactly what that means, and why it matters. I’m gonna spend some time looking at the differences between Ranboo’s “awake” and enderwalking states, and then the similarities, and how this impacts his social dynamics in either state. (spoiler alert, it’s almost entirely differences within or because of social dynamics!) From this, I’ll explore exactly how his opinions of people tend to stay the same between states, despite the differences in relationships (and why those differences are deliberate). And then, we can look at the exceptions to this--that is to say, Tommy and Dream-- and why those exceptions are significant.

TLDR AT THE END – WC: 5431

Differences-

One of the major points of conversation when it comes to Ranboo is just how his Enderwalk state acts and feels, how different he is from “awake” Ranboo, and what circumstances caused those differences between states. Philosophies range wildly, because of just how little we’ve seen of Ranboo enderwalking, but I genuinely don’t think he’s very different from “awake” Ranboo at all.

The key differences come down to a few specific ideas:

Ranboo can’t talk to people or form meaningful relationships while enderwalking. This is not because of any psychological or emotional differences, it’s out of necessity. Neither awake nor enderwalking Ranboo want people to find out about the enderwalk’s existence, for one because it would make people distrust him/is linked to people finding out about the Crimes He’s Done, and for the other because it would compromise his ability to work with Dream, and pursue his goals.

If someone were to ask Ranboo about something he had told them/a conversation they had had while Enderwalking, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out Something was up very quickly. There’s a couple distinct examples of this that I’ll explore more later.

Ranboo is arguably more forward/goal driven, which is at least in part driven by his partnership with Dream, and in part driven by the idea that he doesn’t have to reconcile with the social repercussions of being forward in pursuing his goals, because the WHOLE POINT of the Enderwalk state in this situation is not being perceived.

He has a weird relationship with his idea of self, and struggles to reconcile his actions in the enderwalk/while awake as his own, in both directions. This isn’t so much of a difference as it is a thing that makes the states distinct. We haven’t seen exactly how he feels about this while Enderwalking, but his waking opinion of the Enderwalk state has changed over time as he comes closer to realizing it’s all just him.

The most specifically different opinions of people are actually.. Quite limited. It’s Dream, which is obvious, and Tommy. This is something that gets lost when we draw harsh divisions between awake and the enderwalk state--we don’t really think about how his goals line up with his general opinion of people, and from there, how Tommy Specifically doesn’t fit that mold. His goals in the enderwalk are still with the best interests of the people as a whole in mind, just. With a bit more of a “the ends justify the means” approach.

Most of these key differences are specifically situational--they’re the result of the circumstances the Enderwalk functions within, of keeping his existence secret. They’re the distinction between Ranboo existing within and without social frameworks. And the exception, the namesake of this post, is specifically his dynamics with Dream (who he hates while “awake”), and his dynamics with Tommy (who he repeatedly indirectly threatens and puts in danger while enderwalking). His different interactions with people are specifically rooted in the situational distinctions as noted above. Except for Dream and Tommy.

Those are actually the product of a key similarity between states--the result of wanting to stop conflict, needing somewhere to pin that conflict, and a propensity for avoiding the actual root of the issue (the systems that perpetuate conflict in the first place).

Similarities-

These fundamental similarities between states are also important to understanding Ranboo as a whole character, simply because without them it’s easy to lose sight of why he does what he does while Enderwalking, and write him off as exclusively being manipulated, not understanding what he does, or (god forbid) even not having control over his own actions.

The cores of these similarities are:

His overarching “goal”--This is something that’s seen by quite a bit of cross-referencing specific moments. Nominally, he wants to stop conflict ahead of anything else. The ways he goes about this are specifically defined by the social contexts he works within in each state, as I alluded to earlier, but it is ideologically consistent between the states.

The most clear examples of this are Ranboo, awake, echoing Dream’s “one happy family” rhetoric while talking about wanting to stop conflict, his response to his own question of “what am I?” (I am someone who stops conflict…,) and the plan board, which Ranboo wrote while awake, including “figure out how to stop conflict”, and then changed while Enderwalking, leaving it mostly empty, but “stop conflict” remained.

His general care for people, when he can connect with them and see them as a whole person, and as a product of their circumstances.

This is a touch more of an extrapolation on my part, but something about how willing he was to work with Wilbur after vehemently insisting he was a villain, as soon as he actually talked to him doesn’t exactly parallel but runs adjacent to the idea of him deciding to work with Dream upon recognizing they share a goal, even though Ranboo was in L’manberg, amongst people who on principle disliked Dream.

The generalized idea that he knows better than other people--it comes from a place of goodwill, but is still one of his deepest rooted flaws.

Working with Dream in general is an expression of this sentiment, but it’s something we see while he’s “awake” too, in his response to Tommy’s death (calling others hypocrites for not doing anything while simultaneously also not doing anything (which is another idea I’ll talk more about later!)), his speech before Doomsday (and general reception of others post-doomsday, like Fundy), among other moments.

He’s really not as different as he seems, when it comes down to it. The vast majority of the differences noted above are specifically the result of his social contexts, moreso than any actual difference in personality.

Relationships/Interactions-

Outside of these two lists, I think a lot of the perceived differences are specifically mischaracterized as a difference in motivation or a difference in opinion. He is seen as being much quieter, or antisocial, or disliking people more generally than he actually does because he doesn’t interact with them. This is less of an outright indicator of disdain than it is a strategic decision. He doesn’t talk to people because having interactions & forming dynamics with them distinct from his waking relationships would make it glaringly apparent that the two distinct states exist outside of simply Ranboo’s memory loss, which would be understandably bad when his ability to act relies on people not knowing about his partnership with Dream, or that he has a separate “state” to begin with.

To corroborate this idea, we have to look at the concrete examples we have of him interacting with people while Enderwalking, how the interactions frame his relationships with them, and why. The examples that come to mind are Sam, Foolish, and Philza.

While we haven’t seen Ranboo interact with Sam while Enderwalking on stream, as far as we can tell, its one of the dynamics we’ve gotten the most information about. Essentially, we know that Ranboo visited the prison at the very least three times (Ranboo visited the most, Tommy visited twice, we know of at least two confirmed times, etc), and it’s implied he was visiting regularly--if not daily. We know that Sam was friendly and familiar with Ranboo when he visited while awake, and we know that until Ranboo visited while awake he had no suspicion of any weirdness or difference going on. In the prison nightmare, Sam expressed the same friendliness towards Ranboo we see at the start of his waking visit a couple days later. At the very least, before there was any suspicion, the two had an amicable dynamic indistinguishable from their dynamic while Ranboo was “awake”, in his enderwalk.

Ironically enough, we have less of a frame of reference of how Sam and Ranboo interacted while Ranboo wasn’t enderwalking before that dynamic was complicated by virtue of Ranboo not knowing he had been talking to Sam while enderwalking. However, Ranboo was given a tour of the prison before it was finished, and as far as I can gather they had at least a passing positive dynamic that seems to be consistent between states.

Foolish is a fun one to look at here because we have seen Ranboo interact with Foolish while enderwalking on stream, AND Ranboo’s dynamics with him aren’t exclusively friendship in either state. In the waking state, Ranboo commissioned Foolish to build the mansion for him. And he ripped him off, functioning on an ambiguous promise that he would pay him more later, that he did not follow up on. He essentially took advantage of Foolish’s kindness and naivete. He was friendly, sure, but it’s a business relationship and he made a deal with Foolish that he gets much more out of than Foolish did. By extension, our onscreen interaction of Ranboo and Foolish while Ranboo is enderwalking is the Shulker Box deal, wherein Foolish ascribes the cost of a threat against him to the box--a risk that notably does not carry over to Ranboo when he has possession of it--and Ranboo talks his way into getting an open-ended favor from a GOD, with one limitation. This favor is granted because of the risk Foolish ascribes to ownership of the shulker box. Ranboo doesn’t suffer this risk owning it--and in getting official ownership of the box AND the deal, he gets a lot more out of the deal than Foolish does, even though Foolish assuages his own anxieties linked to ownership of the shulker box.

I had originally been examining this to show that Ranboo was treating Foolish differently than how he would while “awake”, but upon looking back at the implications of the Mansion project, it really does all line up--the shulker deal was just more of a strategic move, as guided by the lessons. The actual character dynamics, and Ranboo choosing to take advantage of Foolish’s, well.. foolishness to get more out of a deal than he puts into it, is a consistency in Ranboo’s character, not something unique to the enderwalk state.

Phil is another fun case, because he’s probably the closest anyone has come to finding out about the Enderwalk state existing, just by way of observation, and Ranboo has had to do damage control, ultimately defusing Phil’s suspicions (in that direction, mostly due to just how much Phil trusts Ranboo). Most importantly, though, Ranboo has talked directly to Phil while enderwalking--in chat.

“Don’t mind me Phil! Just working on some stuff!” “I just remembered you probably wouldn’t understand Ender, well this is certainly awkward!”

“Very far away! I am just mining :]”

The most interesting thing about these interactions, aside from the fact that he’s speaking in Ender (before realizing that this was probably a bad idea), is just how similar his voice is to Ranboo’s, and the friendliness he expresses. Before Ranboo stops interacting with anyone except people it’s advantageous and semi-safe to talk to (Foolish, notably), he has the exact same fondness for Phil while “awake” and while Enderwalking. We also have an ooc confirmation that Ranboo would not hurt Tubbo or Michael while Enderwalking, implying that he does not actively dislike either of them. While we don’t know his thoughts exactly, this insight implies that his overall care carries over, even though he doesn’t have the same relationship (by virtue of it not being necessarily safe to talk to Tubbo while Enderwalking, for reasons listed above.)

The Exceptions-

So we’ve laid down a baseline for why Ranboo has different relationships with people between states, how this doesn’t necessarily mean he thinks differently of them or dislikes them in one state or the other… but then there’s the exceptions: Dream, who he hates while “awake” but works with while he Enderwalks, and Tommy, who he is on good terms with, even arguably friends with while “awake”, but has repeatedly put into danger and targeted specifically while Enderwalking.

DREAM

Dream is probably the reason why people think Ranboo has wildly different opinions of people. I think it’s easy to get that impression when you think about how Ranboo seems to only regularly interact with Dream while enderwalking, and consider being friends with Dream as mutually exclusive from liking other people, since Dream was, through December and January, distancing himself from others, cutting off those relationships, and actively antagonizing some others. But then, you have to keep in mind the goal, and how that overlaps between states. It’s one of Ranboo’s greatest consistencies.

His dislike of Dream while “awake” is distinct because it is an exception from people not sides. While he tends to give individual people the benefit of the doubt, and professes to not want sides, he also insists that everyone should be united “against dream”, essentially insinuating (in January, at least), that Dream was the root of all the problems on the server. He was vitriolic towards Dream, considering the possibility of outright killing him, and generally Dream was the exception to most of his ideologies that centered the goodness of people and the fact that no one is inherently evil--essentially, his belief that people can change.

I think Ranboo’s opinions on Dream are very much informed by his circumstances. He joins the server and is immediately recruited into L’manberg. Exile happens, which Ranboo has no context for the external motivations for, only what he can see in front of him, and this is the first impressions of Dream Ranboo gets. He then sees the butcher army, and exile from Tommy’s POV. He’s introduced into a group that immediately shows him all the ways in which Dream is the root of their problems, and none of the context of why. Whether or not you think they’re right is irrelevant here--these ideas firmly impacted “awake” Ranboo’s perceptions of Dream. Combined with the fact that while “awake”, Ranboo has never gotten the opportunity to talk to Dream, this all adds up to explaining how Dream functions as the exception, and why Ranboo is okay with him while enderwalking.

That is to say--the circumstances surrounding Dream and Ranboo’s partnership are very… up in the air. However, when we look at the patterns of how Ranboo interacts with people, he’s infinitely more likely to empathize with someone when he can talk to them, which he does in the enderwalk state.We don’t know exactly when they started working together, but I think there’s a strong parallel between Dream cutting his attachments to further his goals, and arguably to protect himself, and Ranboo, while enderwalking, intentionally keeping himself distanced from everyone, aside from specific strategic moments. This lends itself to my preferred interpretation of the Green Festival for Ranboo, being an agreement to try to cut Ranboo’s ties, to make people distrust him so he could help Dream easier, and hurt himself and others less in the process.

Additionally, the circumstances of their shared goals and Ranboo’s propensity for singling out one person as the root of all problems make it easy to see how they would work together--with two different perspectives to approach it from. One approach would be, of course, the idea of turning everyone against Dream--which was Dream’s own plan, too. The other, though, is the idea of Ranboo framing Tommy as the root of problems on the server. Neither of these perspectives are limited by state, either, as they ultimately all serve Ranboo’s bigger goal: we just see him act towards both ideas more in the Enderwalk state. This also lines up with Dream’s actions, Ranboo’s actions while he was still working with Dream, and Ranboo’s actions after Dream was put into the prison, as well. It leads to a lot of really interesting parallel themes and specific moments.

TOMMY

I’ve established all the ways Ranboo’s opinions of others stay the same between his “waking” and enderwalk states, and explored why his relationships themselves are different. From there, I’ve explored how Dream breaks that mold, and why--which brings me to the whole point of why I wrote this post in the first place. Tommy doesn’t fit this mold, in very specific and deliberate ways. If it were only things done while Dream was still working directly with Ranboo, it would be easy to brush off these distinctions as simply Ranboo following Dream’s plans, but there's at least one major incident of Ranboo endangering Tommy while enderwalking completely independent of any input from Dream.

The specific moments that make me think Ranboo views Tommy negatively while Enderwalking are:

The destruction of the community house--and the fact that it was destroyed with the intent of framing it on Tommy. This is probably the loosest one here, but I’ll come back to it later--it’s definitely relevant, even if it was Dream’s plan in the first place.

When the note was left telling Tommy where his discs were, establishing the date and time of the Final Disc Confrontation was going to be, Tommy’s house had also been completely destroyed, replaced with netherrack, and set aflame. This was gently implied to be Ranboo, as onstream that same night, several stacks of netherrack and an almost broken flint and steel were in his chest, organized. There were also 3 stacks in his inventory. He commented on the fact that he never organizes his chests, and didn’t know how that got there, intentionally drawing attention to it but not outright making the connection. Which he does…. a lot. Again, this one could have been Dream’s idea, but it was never addressed as such and while it’s almost certain Dream had Ranboo leave the note, the flair could have been either one of their ideas. (side note: this was the same day Foolish joined the server, and the griefing was leaked in the background of his first stream before Tommy had a chance to see it, then later entirely repaired before ranboo streamed that night, so he never saw it on fire on stream.)

It’s been heavily implied EXPLICITLY CONFIRMED Ranboo was the one who set off the TNT that trapped Tommy in the prison. This one is the kicker, honestly, because there’s no way this was on Dream’s instruction, and even if it was, Ranboo had every opportunity to just… not do it once Dream was in the prison, if he didn’t think this was a beneficial course of action. A potential thought process here is the idea that since conflict didn’t stop when Dream was put into the prison, and Tommy had been the other “source” (and, depending on which ideas you ascribe to, the person intended to be in the prison in the first place)--so Ranboo decided to continue trying to stop conflict at the “source” (a single person), so, putting Tommy in the prison.

Ranboo’s “awake” response to Tommy’s imprisonment and death is also notable. I go more into depth about it here, but TLDR: this is when Ranboo gets the “he is in control of me” message, and proceeds to not only ignore any suspicious circumstances around his.. potential involvement in the TNT at the prison, but also spends the whole week distracted, and then when Tommy dies wonders why he didn’t/couldn’t do anything to help him. Essentially, this fits the pattern of several other times Ranboo has interfered with his own ability to do something that would get in the way of executing his plans (most notably, trying to tell Sam about the community house outside the prison). If this is indeed the case here, Ranboo, in his Enderwalk state, believed that if he were to find out he were responsible in his “awake” state, it could be nigh disastrous.

This essentially implies that in his Enderwalk state, Ranboo believed that interfering with this in one way or another would be bad. This could be trying to get Tommy out interfering with why he locked Tommy in in the first place, or participating in any sort of investigation could reveal his role in setting off the TNT.

I honestly feel like either or both of these are widely applicable to the situation. Either way, it makes Tommy being locked in the prison feel like a deliberate and independent decision made by Ranboo while enderwalking--supporting this idea of action opposed to Tommy specifically.

(I feel the need to clarify that this idea regarding Ranboo’s response to Tommy’s time in the prison is one I have held since March, and was not a new idea formulated to fit the concept I’m presenting in this analysis.)

These establish Tommy as Ranboo’s most explicitly and distinctly negative relationship in the Enderwalk state. But why..?

I’ve referenced in passing the idea of the “root of conflict on the server”, mostly in reference to Dream from the perspective of “awake” Ranboo. But I’ve also referenced it about Tommy, sort of implying a conclusion I’ve danced around: Ranboo while enderwalking sees Tommy as a major cause of the conflict on the server.

Above, I’ve outlined the major evidence to why I think he thinks this. But I haven’t outlined how he would have come to that conclusion, or why it doesn’t carry over into his “waking” state. Why does he feel so differently, despite having more (if not all) of his memories at his disposal? His negativity towards Dream makes sense because he doesn’t have the whole picture, he hasn’t talked to Dream while “awake”, and he gained most of his information about Dream from L’manbergians, who were decidedly biased against him. I think there’s several potential answers to this question, but any solid answer to “why” requires information we just don’t have about the early days of Ranboo on the server: how and when he started working with Dream, and what he did while enderwalking before we knew what enderwalking was.

The strongest impulse I have here is the Exile Trial.

Let me lay the scene: You’ve just joined this server full of people you have never met and know very little, if nothing about. You do not know their history, conflicts, interpersonal relations, nothing. One of these new people convinces you to help him grief a house. After doing this, Dream, who you have been told is a Bad Guy, reacts very poorly, putting you and the guy who just tricked you into committing a crime that is apparently a BIG DEAL on trial. He ends up taking the fall for you, when you cite your poor memory (which you do have but has not made you forget doing this) to escape taking blame. Over the next couple days, Dream and the nation this guy was apparently the Vice President of negotiate how to react to this--whether Tommy should be put on probation, made to do community service, or even be exiled. And through this, this guy is being a huge dick. He’s being inflammatory, starting fights, yelling at Dream, etc. This continues even after everyone has come to and finalized a decision, which hinges on Tommy not being an asshole (which he has been through the whole meeting). But not even 5 minutes after the meeting, he’s already throwing a fit at Dream again, leading to exile, proposed as the last option during the meeting, being back on the table. And let me remind you, you have no idea of their past, you don’t know why he’s being like this, just that he’s only aggravating the issue, and actively making things worse for himself by antagonizing Dream. Oh! And that guy’s house you griefed together? THE KING! THAT WAS THE KING! And Tommy knew that! Dream, who you’ve been told is a bad dude, and also messed with you when you first joined (killing you twice, but not doing anything with lasting consequences), is maybe overreacting, but again. You don’t have any context to why he’s reacting the way he is.

Ranboo takes a neutral stance here, painting both Dream and Tommy in a negative light in the meeting notes (titled Agreement 2/12). He still doesn’t have the full context. He’s seen Dream overreacting to the house being griefed, and he’s seen Tommy go out of his way to get under Dream’s skin, even to his own detriment. He thinks Tommy can’t be selfish, because he took the fall for him, but he also recognizes Tommy’s intentionally inflammatory tendencies.

I think this is the key branching off point between “Enderwalk” and “waking” Ranboo’s opinions of people. He has been stuck into the middle of this situation, with no context, and his ultimate opinions on the situation rely heavily on who he talks to when. When around the L’manbergians, he pities Tommy, believes he doesn’t deserve exile, but also empathizes with Tubbo’s decision to exile Tommy for the good of the nation. Y’know, to stop conflict. It’s really easy to see, then, how that translates to a hypothetical conversation with Dream, around the start of exile. Here, Dream would explain that he wants to exile Tommy because this troublemaking is a pattern of behaviors that are disruptive to the peace of the server. Or he would point out that Tommy was trying to get him in trouble too, or Ranboo would, in this conversation, make that realization himself. Either way, he would come to the conclusion that Tommy is a vast part of why these conflicts happen in the first place. This frankly isn’t a stretch, given Ranboo’s limited perspective, even if it isn’t entirely true on a larger scale.

We do need to take into consideration the meta perspective that the Enderwalk did not exist yet and so this logic would be applied retroactively, but because of how the Enderwalk was canonized, Dream and Ranboo had a working relationship before it was conceptualized, so this has to be applied retroactively, it just becomes a question of how far back? This answer above is what makes the most sense to me, though it’s certainly not the only option.

THE PARALLEL

TommyInnit is to the Enderwalk State as Dream is to Ranboo’s Waking State

Given Ranboo’s consistencies in social interactions, the distinctions he makes with Tommy and Dream, and how those still fit into his broader patterns of behavior, I don’t think this is a stretch. Time and time again Ranboo singles out Tommy, time and time again he singles out Dream. Both of these strikingly different opinions between states are informed by Ranboo’s overarching goal, and who he gets his information and perspective from. The parallels are STRIKING.

With a defined (potential) divergence point, and the open ended possibility for countless more over the next weeks on the SMP, this dichotomy as Tommy and Dream as foils specifically around Ranboo emerges. It allows us to further codify patterns in Ranboo’s behaviors as reflective of this parallel, and lets us explore some strikingly similar moments from a new angle.

Consider George’s house and the Community house. Consider Tommy enlisting Ranboo’s help in destroying it, in order to get back at Dream and try to get his disc back. Consider Dream enlisting Ranboo’s help in destroying it in order to frame Tommy, to get the disc from Tubbo. Ranboo gets caught up in the middle: he’s on trial for the griefing, he’s being exposed as a traitor. He has to talk his way out of it, has to convince people he didn’t grief Tommy’s house (and if he did, he didn’t remember it), he has to convince people of “people not sides”, that he never betrayed them. Both times, there’s a moment where it would be so easy for Tommy or Dream to make him the scapegoat, to rat him out, to throw him under the bus, and both times they don’t. And Tommy is exiled, and Dream is put in the prison, and Ranboo just barely escapes this fate, by Tommy and Dream both taking the fall. In the moments after the Green festival, Ranboo is adamant that “Dream is the reason”. And early on, after the exile trial, after his second day on the server, he could see that Tommy is a troublemaker, he could realize that Tommy was trying to drag him down with him. No matter how true either these sentiments actually are, they situationally parallel each other incredibly, and they fit the social frameworks Ranboo has built since joining the server.

I made a post vaguely outlining a potential parallel between Ranboo visiting Tommy in exile and Dream in the prison ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶s̶ like a year ago, and then didn’t think much of it past that, but I think it’s incredibly apt here. It switches the “states” involved--Ranboo (presumably) visits Tommy while “waking” and he visits Dream while enderwalking--but it highlights the other end of this parallel: his kinship with, and pity for each person respectively.

When Ranboo is in the panic room after Doomsday, during one of his spirals, after insisting Dream is the reason, he makes a comment that it’s “all just happening again”. People are choosing sides, conflict is ramping up, and he’s pinpointed the center of the conflict, the one person who is to blame for everything happening. But the way he uses “again” refers to something happening beforehand--this same situation happening beforehand. I can’t help but to think of the exile trial here. A house has been destroyed, that he had a part in destroying. He’s managed to get out of it unscathed, but conflict is brewing, and he can pinpoint one person at it’s core. The options are either neutralizing said center of conflict, or letting it continue escalating. Of course, it’s nowhere near this simple, but in exiling Tommy you could say that war with L’manberg was avoided. And later, when Dream is the reason, the battle is not avoided. The parallels are striking, and this could definitely be what Ranboo was referring to by “again”.

What it is, in both instances, is an exception to the core of Ranboo’s moral system, a single person blamed for everything. A single person that a side must be created against. It’s a betrayal of “people not sides”, it’s “everyone here against Dream”. It’s singling out one person as the root of the problem, rather than tackling the systems that perpetuate the conflict over and over again. It’s a flawed worldview, and like everything about him it seems to contradict itself but when you dig a little deeper, and look at why Ranboo acts how he does, the contradiction makes sense. These contradictions and hypocrisies are core to Ranboo’s character, and they’re a huge part of what makes him so interesting. Even the things that make him hypocritical, that seem to break from his moral framework, parallel between states. There’s still so many things we don’t know about Ranboo, but breaking down the things we do know gives us a pretty good idea about what may be yet to come.

TLDR:

-Ranboo doesn’t actually have different opinions of most people while enderwalking versus not, and the vast majority of the discrepancies between states can be explained by social context and Ranboo’s extreme compartmentalization. -There are two distinct exceptions to this: Tommy, who Ranboo is friends with outside of the enderwalk, but antagonistic towards while enderwalking, and Dream, who Ranboo claims is the root of all conflict on the server while “awake”, but works with towards a common goal while enderwalking. -There are infinitely many possibilities for how Ranboo and Dream’s partnership began, but they are necessarily rooted in Ranboo gaining information he does not otherwise have, and a connection with Dream characteristic of his propensity for sympathizing with people as soon as he actually talks to them, rather than get information about them secondhand. -When Tommy and Dream are analyzed as the exceptions, some interesting thematic parallels between Ranboo’s interactions with each of them emerge.

#i initially wrote this essay through the month of october 2021.#im just now posting it for a variety of reasons but #i do want to thank my friends who have helped me keep the conversation going and ultimately inspired me to actually post this #an analysis essay that is essentially my magnum opus #and is integral to my understanding of cranboo as a character and how he functions #dsmp #dsmp ranboo #dsmp tommy #dsmp dream #endersmile #alliumduo #allium duo #ranboo #tommyinnit #dream smp #cranboo #ctommy #cdream

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