My Protege AU Propaganda Continues

c!tommy's whole thing is that he unironically has some terrifying levels of being able to read people based on The Vibes while also like. literally being completely incapable of trusting his own instincts

Wings anyone?

I felt like painting something with owls and cats again and suddenly this idea popped up in my head.

Can we hear more about that theory?

it's less of a theory and more just derangement, and a specific angle of viewing the story. but smth i think that is crucial to how i see the story and something that i think is too-often deemphasized in the fandom, regardless of how much you buy into the derangement lmao, is that c!discduo is not...really a standalone relationship. i mean it is, but in just as many ways it isn't...and the reason why the finale and you know, an actual conversation between the two of them takes so long to get to is precisely because it was overshadowed by the third component of their whole deal. are you following? does this make sense? i dont know.

c!dream + c!tommy are one side of a triangle that supports quite literally everything abt their whole central conflict and narrative, with the third part being, well, c!wilbur. and the c!wilbur-c!tommy-c!dream of it all is quite understandably easy to miss, but it's also what i think leads to some of the most striking differences in c!dream and c!tommy interpretations, not to mention the story as a whole. c!wilbur's relationship with c!dream and c!tommy separately AND together is critical to the ways that the two characters develop and how their conflict evolves--i'd say that that's more just. canon, than a theory. but how far you extend that is where it kinda delves into different interpretations of canon, you know?

but it's just like ... when the whole fucking point of that last stream, the whole damn crux of it is when tommy says "i thought you were just a villain" and dream replies with "i am and i always have been" and the whole damn POINT is that these viewpoints were never true to begin with, when what dream throws to tommyinnit is a picture of lmanburg, when the shit that they have to dismantle to reach out at the end of the fucking world is the hero/villainisms that have DEFINED THEIR STORY independently AND together, it's like. look . when the story is like dismantling the literal source of their conflict and c!wilbur's fingerprints are all over the damn thing, it feels a Little reductive to see the conversation so consistently happen without even invoking his name, you know?

hey actually

punz being dream’s Actual right hand, more than sapnap and george ever were, retroactively gives meaning to punz being the one who took wilbur’s first two lives

instead of “and punz is also here” it’s dream trusting punz to take out the threat and enable wilbur’s eventual final death while he gives tommy his undivided attention

Palia by Jeremy Fenske

Pixel art by Romain Courtois

More of that protege AU whoops

>close up and extra

Town under the tree by huangyu

"lose everything to gain everything"? or was that something else