More Of That Protege AU Whoops

This is from chapter 68 of the Dream SMP fanfic Rewind by @a-non-ymouswriter.

I wanted to color this but I suddenly forgot how to draw. The words are an English translation of the Spanish translation of "Colors" the first opening of Code Geass (sorry if that sounds confusing). Some of the lyrics reminded me of the fanfic, so I had to do this.

I was going to draw Theo with his mask but I want it to be a little more meaningful looking at his face.

c!Dream always told himself he was objective, but he wasn't. He couldn't be. Perfect objectivity doesn't exist; there will always be biases and preconceived ideas about others, and these ideas threw Dream off more than I think he'd like to admit. He was wrong about Sam following their rules (he was wrong about Sam caring). But he was also wrong about Tommy, when he was so sure that Tommy only ever wanted to cause him harm.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ( ❀ ) ˙ ˖ 𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒖𝒓 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒔 ❜᭡

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… No, What Tommy Did Factually Was COMPLETELY Insignificant Compared To Dream

Tommy:

Caused chaos when he joined the server, but non maliciously. He wasn’t the only one to do so, however, and was often joined by other characters. He also wasn’t the first- Ponk’s tree had gotten attacked at one point before he even joined.

Killed Dream… along with Sapnap, which resulted in Tommy getting punished and Sapnap not even getting a slap on the wrist. Dream doesn’t even mention that Tommy didn’t do this alone, placing all the blame on Tommy when he wasn’t all to blame.

Engaged in the disc war.

Sold drugs with Wilbur- namely, these drugs were potions (so, not anything addictive or harmful), however he DID try and scam people with them, which is probably the greater crime here.

Helped found L’Manberg, out of a genuine belief in its peaceful nature and words over weapons and because he trusted Wilbur. Regardless of your thoughts on L’Manberg, at worst Tommy was naive here, not malicious. That doesn’t mean that Dream’s feelings over this are invalid, obviously, but it does mean absolutely no serious harm was intended.

Continued to engage in conflicts with Dream after L’Manberg was founded, though again this was clearly non-malicious- he and Dream genuinely were friends, and hung out together, and Tommy seemed to think they were in good fun.

Stole Spirit’s leather during one of these conflicts.

Accidentally burnt down George’s house trying to grief it with Ranboo. While he was technically VP, he had tried to turn down the role to avoid this exact situation.

Tried to use Spirit’s leather in an attempt to get Dream to leave him alone.

Tried to keep items in hidden chests in Exile- keep in mind, the fact there was a rule against this wasn’t communicated to Tommy until after he broke it, and most of what was in there was shit like pictures of Tubbo.

Left Exile- however, Tommy wasn’t even breaking the rules here, he wasn’t barred from Techno’s house.

Tried to fight back against Doomsday, though this amounted to nothing.

Killed him in the Disc Finale - something Dream had staged, so it’s unclear if this was even a slight or something Dream wanted.

Upon visiting him in prison, killing Pussboi (the prison cat- yes, that’s technically her name, Tommy calls her that and while Dream says he named her he never explicitly says what he did name her. It’s funny call her that more).

Doubting the Revive Book worked.

Indirectly being the one of the causes of his torture- however, this was because Dream murdered him, and Tommy was horrified visibly when Dream told him at Logstedshire, meaning this would be something ridiculously unfair to assign blame onto Tommy for.

Broke into his house with Wilbur, though Tommy didn’t realise that Dream lived there until much later and wanted to leave as soon as Dream showed up.

Trying and failing to kill Dream.

Trying and failing to kill Dream again. Well, technically he succeeded for like ten minutes, but still.

Committing murder suicide with Dream- this was out of a genuine belief it was the only way to save his friends.

Dream:

Stole Tommy’s discs as a punishment for Tommy stealing his stuff.

Engaged in the disc war, escalating much faster than Tommy did in a lot of ways, including downright stalking.

Built tunnels under Tommy’s base, something he was uncomfortable and surprised with.

Attacked L’Manberg, which regardless of whether it was right or not was incredibly distressing to Tommy.

Blew up Tommy’s house specifically.

Killed Tommy in the Final Control Room- this is canonically the event that gave Tommy PTSD. This was a war crime.

Killed Tommy again in a duel- one Tommy lost fair and square, and one suggested by Tommy. This, unlike the previous death, wasn’t a war crime as well.

Continued to engage in conflict with Tommy after L’Manberg was founded. Again, the two of them remained friends during this time, so this also was presumably not intended as anything specifically harmful.

Gave Wilbur TNT on his self destructive path, though it’s likely this didn’t end up affecting too much.

Betraying Pogtopia for the revive book, when Tommy trusted him and thought of him as a friend.

Framed Tommy for griefings he didn’t do in the weeks leading up to Exile, and while the exact reasoning is obviously unclear in hindsight it seems likely that it was to get Tommy exiled no matter what- he had plans for it explicitly after all.

Built walls around L’Manberg and threatened Tommy and Tubbo. He also said he didn’t care about anything but control over Tommy (and then by proxy the server), and regardless of whether Dream was telling the truth that doesn’t change the mental impact it might have.

While Tubbo obviously was the one who got Tommy exiled, Dream deliberately pushed him into it and later would tell Tommy that he was the one who did that.

What he did do was himself exile Tommy from the Greater Dream SMP, leaving him stuck only in the wilderness.

Blew up Tommy’s summer house and made him watch.

Forced Tommy to give up and destroy his items.

Hit Tommy with weaponry until he cooperated. This nearly killed him on several occasions, and Tommy explicitly called it very painful.

Would constantly insist that Tommy’s feelings that he expressed weren’t real, and he was just exaggerating (for instance, insisting that he was just messing around when he said he hated him).

Insulted and berated Tommy on several occasions, to the point of distress.

Insisted he and Tommy were friends, despite Tommy being uncomfortable with it, and conditioning Tommy into believing it through love-bombing and isolation.

Deliberately lying about how his friends didn’t care about him to keep him isolated and dependant, and making him feel like any visitors were just there to gawp at him.

Hit Tommy with his fists whenever he displeased him, to the point Tommy stopped reacting to it at all (Tommy in later streams would confirm this was almost certainly intended to be physical abuse, and not just general Minecraft body language).

Kept the rules Tommy had to follow inconsistent and didn’t ever fully explain them to Tommy, leading to him getting punished for things he didn’t even realise he wasn’t meant to do (or was).

Forced Tommy to hear his friends having fun in the Greater Dream SMP seeing the Christmas tree while he was forbidden from even looking under pain of death.

Showed no concern to Tommy self harming or barely eating, and only seemed to be upset by him attempting suicide because it’d interrupt his conditioning.

Gave Tommy meaningless gifts often in an attempt to lovebomb him, something  that has lead to Tommy interpreting gifts as a sign of aggression later on.

Forced Tommy to destroy his own stuff on occasion, under threat of further physical abuse.

Conditioned Tommy into seeing a lack of abusive behaviours as something deserving of thanks.

Let Tommy throw a party, then deliberately sabotaged the invites so Tommy would think he was alone, and spent the evening alternating between lovebombing him and telling him no one cared about him (except, implicitly, himself).

Killed Mexican Dream in front of Tommy for seemingly no reason other than him interrupting his manipulation and abuse.

Tried to gaslight Tommy into believing Mexican Dream died of an overdose, and tried to convince Drista that Tommy murdered him.

Conditioned Tommy into seeing certain parts of the abuse as bonding rituals he should be thankful for.

Did all of the above in an attempt to force Tommy to help him in some way- in hindsight, it seems likely that this involved the experiments with the revive book some way.

When finding Tommy had hidden chests, threatening to leave him alone despite him being Tommy’s only human source of contact at this point and banning him from the Nether, something he had no authority over.

Refused to let Tommy apologise and try and fix things in favour of punishing him.

Destroyed everything Tommy had built, leaving him with little food and nowhere to sleep, and making him watch.

Killing Mushroom Henry, the only other living being Tommy had with him, and making him watch.

Forcing Tommy to give up everything- including innocent items such as his pictures of Tubbo- and blowing them up, making him watch.

Repeatedly hunting down and watching Tommy after he left to Techno’s, despite the fact Tommy wasn’t breaking the rules of exile nor was Dream actually in charge of enforcing them.

Mocking Tommy at the community house and using him as a scapegoat.

Blowing up Tommy’s home, which he’d explicitly tell Tommy was because it entertained him (again, regardless of whether this was true it has the same effect on Tommy’s psyche).

The whole Disc Finale, regardless of being staged, was intentionally intensely traumatic and distressing for Tommy. He was threatened with a return to the same abuse he was under before, and forced to say goodbye to his friend in Tubbo’s mock execution.

Had Tommy trapped in the prison with him, something that caused him intense distress, and declared it was going to be like exile- essentially, threatening to abuse him again.

Murdering him for a third time because he questioned the Revive Book, despite Tommy begging for him to stop, in his own words to prove a point.

Leaving Tommy in Limbo- something he knows from personal experience is distressing- for the equivalent of two months. (This, effectively, means that Dream used it as another punishment method in his abuse!)

Needled Tommy on information he already knew, seemingly just to distress him further, and asked Tommy to basically become his personal experiment- regardless of whether this was a genuine attempt to get Tommy to join the revival experiments and become essentially a God with him or not, it still greatly distressed Tommy.

Revived Wilbur, something he knew deeply distressed and would be torture for Tommy regardless of whether the intentions were to do so or it was just a byproduct.

Almost immediately after breaking out of prison, going to physically and psychologically torment a terrified Tommy.

Threatening Tommy with not only repeated killing and revival- something Tommy feared more than anything- but also with making him immortal SOLELY to torture for eternity, leading to Tommy to feel like (and I directly quote) his toy, puppet, and plaything.

Psychologically torturing Tommy by putting a disc of his torment under his house and trapping him there, along with leaving threatening signs.

Destroying his discs- they were fake, but Dream didn’t know that. This was, however, to prevent Wilbur from committing suicide again.

“Sparing” Clingyduo only because they desperately begged only to force them into a twisted experiment where one of them had to sacrifice themselves. While this only resulted in the destruction of the discs, Dream couldn’t know that.

Threatened to kill everyone on the server- it’s unclear if this was true or not, since this contradicts what he says later on (which I’ll get to), but this broke Tommy completely and left him suicidal again.

Laughed at Tommy talking about his attempted suicide.

Continued to torture Tommy even during the final stream- killing and reviving him, and then downright dismissing his agony immediately after.

Continued to blame Tommy for everything up until his very last moments, and never actually apologising once.

Potentially completely lied about his motive and plans to change. Making the server immortal like he suggested in this stream contradicts what he said in the previous one, where that would destroy the End and the server itself so he needed to kill everyone to balance it out, so in one stream or the other he had to be lying.

(The only things listed here is what effected each other, but I think it’d be unfair to bring in anything else. What Tommy and Dream did to, like, Jack Manifold or someone doesn’t effect the other’s feelings on them)

Dream’s list also has a lot of ““probably’s”” just because on most cases we haven’t gotten a direct explanation of why they did it like in Tommy’s case, or they’re in an unreliable circumstance, which unfortunately makes his exact motives unclear. We know broad strokes, but not every reasoning like we do with Tommy in a lot of cases. This isn’t something I can fix without even more wild speculation, sorry!

As you can see, while Tommy isn’t perfect, what Dream did to him is the equivalent of hitting someone who slaps you in the face with a hammer, and then insisting it was their fault and continuing to hit them with said hammer while they try to apologise. Dream is an unreliable narrator himself, and needs a scapegoat to explain how him driving away all his friends couldn’t possibly be his fault (I might make something expanding on this later).

The tragedy isn’t that Tommy and Dream were equally bad for each other. The tragedy is that Dream is so lost at this point he can’t see the difference. His attempts at making the server closer lead to him losing sight of what was okay, leading to him seeing torture as equivalent to being a troublemaker, and this means his plans were ultimately futile because who would want to be friends with someone like that?

The closure Tommy got wasn’t that he was bad too, or that Dream was misunderstood. Hell, it wasn’t even that Dream wasn’t a villain, not exactly. It’s that he was a pathetic man instead of a God. One with immature and childish goals who blamed others for his own faults. Dream was a human, a fucked up one, and not some sort of unstoppable force that would haunt him forever.

And, most importantly, it was proof that he didn’t deserve what happened to him. Because, y’know, doing all this in the name of not wanting to be alone is completely insane and unjustifiable. Hell, it’s proof that makes his exile and the repeated threats of immortality worse, because if that was the exact intention behind them, it fully means that Dream didn’t even do this out of hatred, despite his claims to the contrary, and how could any pain caused be justified then?

Tommy and Dream are not equal in terms of suffering. Not even close. But they’re human, and time and again Tommy has tried to appeal to the part of him that doesn’t deny it. He can acknowledge where he fucked up and try to fix it… and that’s the difference between him and Dream. That’s why his list is so much smaller. And that’s why it was always too late.

Little Red Riding Hood

Been working on my c!Dream design!

i feel like ,,, like we talk a lot about how fear-motivated c!dream's actions are, yeah, because you know c!dream is consistently paranoid as fuck and So Much of why he's like that is because he's too scared to think straight and doing batshit insane shit as a result, but at the same time i think that his ... awareness? of this? can be vastly overestimated. c!dream doesn't like being afraid. c!dream is historically Really Fucking Bad at admitting or acknowledging when he's actually terrified of a situation, because that means he's lost control of it. if he's Worried about a situation he's still ahead of it, if he's Cautious or making preparations or getting things in line to make sure that those closest to him don't get in the line of fire he's still retained a degree of control, but all of that isn't quite the same as admitting he's doing anything because he's scared out of his mind, because scared out of his mind isn't exactly a state that c!dream likes to be in.

and this is why c!dream is so adamant on transactional relationships with anyone that he perceives as having a modicum of real power, because being useful to powerful people makes him less of a target because they need something from him. this is why he is so desperate to convince himself that he's on top when it comes to sam, when it comes to quackity, when it comes to wilbur, and he's saying all of this hidden inside his own hell after hiding there for months having barely confronted c!quackity before getting the hell out of dodge. this is why he scrambles to make sure to show that he's not indebted to technoblade and why he puts himself in foolish's service within minutes of meeting him and why a fucking feeling of power against an unarmed man he could've locked in a box with him with a press of a button was enough to get him to shut up and obey no matter how damn unsubstantiated that feeling ended up being because he couldn't bear to lose it, even just within his own head

and so you know, when c!dream calls c!tommy the one thing out of his control as a motivation for exile during the same time he had to fight off multiple coups explicitly with the desire to do away with him so that theyd be able to "rule the server," like. look. c!dream is just so fucking far from a reliable narrator. i'm sure he could give me an itemized list of how c!tommy has ruined his life, i'm sure he can say all these things about how c!tommy causes chaos and causes problems and doesn't listen to anyone, i'm sure he can go on and on and on about how it'd be a different story if c!tommy just listened to him for once. but let's be real, here--as much as he's convinced himself that he's trying to get control of the one thing out of his control, what's closer to reality is that c!tommy was the one thing he did feel like he could control (hello, the discs) when literally everything else wasn't

Medieval Environment by Yura Gvozdenko

if any of this could be accurate or not tbh im too sleepy to care rn (ha funny joke rabble)

/dsmp /rp

Rewatching VODs again and it's sad to see how at the start of his imprisonment, Dream was trying so hard to downplay the prison's conditions and stay optimistic about them.

During Tommy's first visit, he says to Tommy, "It's not too bad, right? I can write and I can read and they bring me food." He talks about the new game he can play with his clock.

When Bad visits, Dream admits that Sam sometimes gives him less food when he burns his clock, but that he's not starving because he "[has] potatoes." He says that Sam is "treating [him] amazing" and that he's fine when Bad asks him if he's okay.

Tommy visits him again a month after the first visit, and by then Dream's attitude has changed entirely. Tommy says he's been suffering from success, and Dream replies, "Me too. Except for without the success part, just suffering." Then when Quackity visits him the first time and asks how he's been, Dream only says, "I've been."

Later after Techno gets locked up with Dream, he no longer attempts to downplay anything. Techno jokingly complains about Dream not being positive, and Dream can only think of saying, "Since you've been in here, I haven't been tortured. So I'll give you that much, that's been better." He tells Techno how there's absolutely nothing to do in the cell and how he's been eating nothing but "raw, disgusting potatoes" for the past months.  

Dream did his best to convince himself and others that everything would be fine, that he could deal with the prison's conditions. He tells Sam that he thought the prisoner (himself) "would be fine with potatoes, would be fine with not seeing the courtyard." That he didn't realize how bad it would be. But the longer his imprisonment lasted, the harder it became to deal with it. Dream tries one last time to ask Sam for better food and to see the courtyard and then is forced to give up, trapped behind glass and with no hope of ever getting out.