#i am not rlly good at putting all my thoughts there at once sorryyy

[madmaddyenby]

/dsmp /rp (all talking about characters that content creators roleplay as on the dream smp, not content creators in real life)

ive been thinking this since ive been rewatching the exile arc, n i saw someone talk abt a bad take he saw regarding the "lightheartedness" in the exile arc, so im gonna write an essay on it now

i think one of the things that rlly hit hard abt the exile arc is that it wasnt like . 24/7 bad shit yknow? like it makes it feel super realistic. like, c!dream and c!tommy would make stupid jokes together! but then in the next minute c!tommy could show a sign of being suicidal, or c!dream would start doing something hurtful. abuse isnt rlly. constantly apparent? sometimes abusers will joke around with you, youll joke around with them, you can have a funny conversation about a story with them, whatever. they are still an abuser, your abuser, and it like, this being in the exile arc shown with c!dream and c!tommy joking around makes it just feel so much more accurate to abusive situations

it also shows like. c!dream being more "friendly" to c!tommy so he can get c!tommy to view him as a friend more. for example, during the stream "Tommy Is So Lonely in Exile with Dream" after spending the whole day hanging out and joking around, tommy says how since he and dream had bonded a lot that day (joking around, hanging out in general , i think this is right b4 c!tommy starts to clump the taking armour stuff with bonding :() that c!dream could listen to the gifted disc from c!lazar with tommy and lazar, because c!tommy trusted him now that they had bonded.

a example of something that was a funny "bit" is the phone that c!tommy made! it was a funny haha, until you like. realize that c!dream had been joking about c tommy being depressed, sad, and lonely right in front of his face right after having purposefully Made him depressed, sad, and lonely from abusing him. its fucked up!!

a lot of funny bits during the exile arc are like there, mainly where its c!tommy coping with depression n stuff.

another thing that goes into that "light heartedness" is how either right before or after asking tommy to put his stuff in the pit, he'd ask how he was doing and go right into joking. for example, during the "Tommy Speaks to Mexican Dream in Exile" stream there was a part basically right when c!dream joined call where c!tommy saw a skeleton horse in a tree and was loudly confused/exited abt it, showed c!dream it, dream said it was cool than instantly moved on to digging a hole .

whiplash from lighthearted moments like that, to c!dream abusing c!tommy is one of the things that made breaking c!tommy down Work bc it confused c!tommy to the point where he just thought of the abuse (the whole armour put thing) as bonding . which just makes the whole exile arc feel more real.

like, these things that are supposed to be lighthearted and funny bits play into making the exile arc even Less light hearted once you think about them from beyond "haha funny". there are really so many more examples i can show with this, the whole beach party aftermath with c!dream and c!tommy just hanging out . the whole cdream stopping ctommy from seeing the christmas tree thing, that one time that c!sapnap came to visit with c!dream there, c!tommy saying that he had to finish the "how to sex" book before he died, the entirety of the mexican dream visiting stream, etc etc

so no, the exile arc wasnt rlly . light hearted? most of the stuff that was "light hearted" in the end made it overall less lighthearted, was c!dream trying to "bond" with c!tommy so he would view cdream has his only friend, or c!tommy coping with humor. also theres so many things that were made out to be "funny" by c!dream, things that were Not funny like taking c!tommy armour.

add anything to this if youd like !!

#dream smp #tommyinnit #c!dream #c!dream neg #c!tommy #c!tommy hurt #exile arc #meta #dream smp meta #sorry if this doesnt make sense wrote most of this at the good old time of 4 am #abuse tw #suicide mention #i am not rlly good at putting all my thoughts there at once sorryyy