/dsmp /rp

worst dsmp take might be ppl comparing lmanburg to colonists

no the worst dsmp take is those same people calling a bunch of white (mainly american) people "indigenous" because they don't realize that appropriating racially charged language (using it Incorrectly) to paint their little minecraft guy as oppressed to win an argument online is, in fact, racist.

for the record:

dream, sapnap, and george where there first. they are not indigenous because they Also Traveled There. dream was not born there, there isn’t a culture that was developed over many generations that the other members of the dsmp are not a part of, because he showed up two to three months before tommy got there. he is not the “native population,” he is not Indigenous, he is a white guy that traveled to a land and then claimed all of it.

if we Were to use terms like “indigenous” in this context, then it’d be for mobs with a society, like villagers or piglins. but I’m going to hazard a guess and say that All of the discourse in the dream smp would be better off if we avoided language like that. it could not more clearly be charged language chosen specifically to demonize or valorize based entirely on the Real World History connected to those terms and not the events within the story. there is no productive conversation to be had within this framework, and everyone who’s not trying to insta-win an argument by shutting it down with scare-tactics knows that. either nobody’s a colonist or everyone’s a colonist and that’s not a conversation that I think we want to have.

and for the record Once Again, even disregarding all of that L’manberg Is Not An Example Of Colonization.

the l’manbergians Were Citizens Of The Dream Smp. they did not Invade the dream smp because they lived there. they were Meant To Be There. they were Contributing To the culture of the land that they lived In (tommy making church prime with dream, the Literal main religion of the region, and building the prime path for instance).

the l’manbergians didn’t Colonize, they Seceded. because they were Already citizens of the dream smp, but they claimed a section of land (land that had been Empty Forest, dream didn’t actually know where it was at first Because it’d been unoccupied by either mobs or other players) and declared that they were No Longer citizens of the dream smp and instead wanted to self-govern.

they did not travel to a culture that wasn’t their’s, claim it for themselves, and then either force the people that lived there Out or force them to abandon their original culture for the new one. what they took away from dream Was Their Own Citizenship. was Dream’s Ownership Over Them And Whatever They Built.

any conversation about the morality of this fact has to be made with the understanding of that. dream’s rejection of their independence wasn’t about the land, it was about maintaining ownership of the people on it. dream wasn’t trying to Stop colonization, he was trying Keep The L’manbergians Inside Of His Society (under his Rule).

like i know i talk about the c!wilbur of it all when it comes to discduo like a lot but. listen. exile might’ve been the point of no return for them that sort of made friendship no longer an option, but the exact moment they become enemies isn’t exile or the disc war or spirit speech or the duel. it’s quite fucking literally the exact moment tommy raises that crossbow at wilbur and dream steps between them.

“wilbur, hand me that tnt” “tommy, I’ll— I’ll have to step in” is the exact moment that takes discduo and defines their entire fucking story. that exact moment is why boundless sands has to exist for the discduo finale to even happen.

thinking abt scrapped lore again ...

Hi! I'm a bit confused by DreamXD's origin...so if you don't mind me asking, is DreamXD not he same as Dreamon? And was that not created for a demon/possessed arc involving Tubbo and Fundy? I know about the George/DreamXD lore stream but I don't really see how DreamXD's origin relates to George?

Oh, anon, oh lovely anon, hello, you have no idea how much serotonin this ask gives me-oh how I love xdnf. Just for an update on DreamXD, I would highly recommend watching these three streams because they're the ones that let us understand DreamXD's character the most, but if you want a more quick analysis, continue reading. 

Long story short my theory is that, and with peace and love it's been months so I might forget some things, think of DreamXD and the Dreamon as the angel and devil on c!Dream’s shoulders but he also has some of their power - remember that c!Dream can bring back people from the dead from a book he got somewhere - because maybe c!Dream sold his soul to the “devil” then when c!Fundy and c!Tubbo did the Dreamon ritual on c!Dream the theory is that pulled the Dreamon out of c!Dream and that angered the Dreamon that was pretty chill but now is manipulating other characters (including c!Dream? perhaps?) but also the Dreamon and DreamXD are separate characters in the same body that push each other around for dominance and DreamXD and c!Dream can’t remember when the Dreamon takes over their bodies. If that doesn’t make sense to you, sorry, we haven’t gotten much background and that’s mainly just my mind a-theorizing. 

But most of all what you must understand is DreamXD, the God of the server, the protector, with a Dreamon side for the flavor 🤙 is a simp for c!George (as all the "Dreamverse" characters are hmm-). 

DreamXD’s lore is intertwined with c!George because George was the first on the server and DreamXD fell in love with these little mushroom guy that was kind to animals and poured water over trees that were on fire and was sweet to all the people on his server and DreamXD loved George because George is love. And DreamXD saw George and his best friend c!Dream have fun and exploring the world together and he saw George become king and Dream as his loyal knight and he saw c!Dream going down the wrong path and winding up in prison and he saw how this hurt George and saw how he missed Dream so much and so DreamXD made himself into the best visual replica that he could of George’s friend Dream and he comes to George in a dream and he sees the light in George’s eyes and the smile on his face again. But then George realizes DreamXD’s powers creative mode and George wants this power, he wants Dream back he wants strength but as you saw in the video above, that comes with a price and the price is being DreamXD’s friend forever. It’s an easy price for George, because it’s Dream DreamXD.  

But are the Dreamon and DreamXD the same person? The thing is I think yes. I think DreamXD is a god with a temper. He’s layered. I think the Dreamon side - shows himself to everyone, because as we saw in the DreamXD stream DreamXD kept running up to people and say he was going to eat their souls, etc. so George had to teach him how to be “human” - and the DreamXD side only speaks to George - because he has a “welcoming presence”, because he was the first on the server, because DreamXD loves George because George is love. Notice how when George says DreamXD is scaring him, the Dreamon disappears and DreamXD shows up because he doesn’t want to scare George, George is love and all DreamXD wants is his acceptance, his love, his “friendship” and in return DreamXD offers him a friend, a protector, someone who’s there for him the way Dream always was. 

Art by Ramazan Kazaliev

Consider: he’s just a lil guy

been thinking about post-prison c!dream again and i feel like ... characterizations of him after pandora smtimes can lean vindictive. and it's not like there's no proof for this being the case, lol, this man has quite a few angry speeches post-prison about getting his Revenge! and such, and obviously has Feelings about the whole being left to rot and be tortured thing. that being said, i think it's worth pointing out how what a character thinks they believe and what their actions show can have some...pretty apparent discrepancies, and i think that c!dream's stated desires to take his revenge as well as a "us against them, you're either with me or against me" viewpoint of the server as a whole don't necessarily match up with his behavior post-prison

for one, i think it's worth pointing out how often c!dream's anger in these cases is obviously emotional to the point of incoherence--it's often been stated that his speech in the logstedshire chase scene screams of projection in the midst of a panic attack, which, i mean? yeah? he's making assumptions about what c!tommy thinks and basically repeating what c!quackity said in that cell almost word for word and making the kill-and-revive-you-over-and-over-and-over threat that he definitely wasn't going to go through with (though, is kind of interesting retrospectively considering we know that he literally did that to himself). then there's his rant to c!sam in daedalus one which literally includes his threatening c!sam with c!quackity, a claim so absurd that c!sam himself points it out as making no sense. and then there's his speech with c!quackity where he says he's going to torture...las nevadas? as in, the country? dream that's. dream it's a country. it can't feel pain. dream.

in this, a clear pattern is established where a lot of these angry threats are...bluffs. hot air. even if c!dream is genuine when he makes these threats, they're really not plausible (like, uh, please tell me how youre gonna convince quackity to torture sam for you king.) and it's not like c!dream doesn't have a pattern of being A Whole Lotta Bark when you have him in a position where he feels cornered, either. but with this, there's a precedent that's established where c!dream's threats, particularly threats where he's literally just listing shit out like that, should be taken with a grain of salt. less evidence of true plans and more an attempt to bare his teeth at you until you back the fuck away.

of course, this in itself isn't enough to claim that all of his claims of more vindictive actions should be dismissed. that being said, across the board, when you look at c!dream's actual actions post-prison...well, the amount of actual revenge this guy gets is. very small. very small. in fact, contrary to what one might think due to his paranoia and the huge breach of trust that had happened as a result of the prison, c!dream actually seems quite willing to establish connections with other people--friendly interactions, even alliances to a certain degree. looking at the following list of interactions w/ people post-prison:

He immediately gives the axe of peace to c!Techno in Snowchester after they part ways at the Arctic Commune--though the lack of favors between them indicates that there's no real explicit reason to call on each other in the immediate future, he does show very clearly that their parting has made himself unwilling to cooperate with c!Techno at all.

Punz is self-evident--he speaks with his ally and reaffirms that the plan is still on track (a plan made before the negative effects that prison had on his. uh .everything)

The aforementioned conflict with c!Tommy, where he makes a lot of threats in ways that seem like a pretty damn deliberate mirror of c!Quackity and makes no effort to follow through on, particularly in tems of the killing-and-reviving shit and keeping tommy in exile and whatever else he was saying there

The interaction with Sapnap, where he is clearly gauging c!Sapnap's reaction and flees shortly after things appear to grow in hostility, once again making overtures at a threat that he will never follow up on (even considering he could very easily follow Sapnap to find Kinoko and could as such attack it quite simply even with just, a couple flint & steels tbh)

An interaction with Eryn where he makes no effort to be hostile at any point, hiding behind his shield and then exchanging items when Eryn offers them. The entire time, c!Dream's actions are defensive and purposefully nonthreatening and at no point does he attempt to engage a fight--even when not asked for payment, he gives a valuable item in exchange. Clearly more an attempt to be friendly than any outright hostility, though he is also obviously wary.

Daedalus also quite self-explanatory--again, it should be emphasized that letting Sam go in any capacity with any lives is explicitly an act of mercy. Left alone, Sam would have died in the prison for good; he set his spawn in the prison, a fact Dream would've known when he escorted him out. He makes a lot of threats, including some that are quiet incoherent, and at the end he kills Sam once and then escorts him out of the prison grounds alive. Interestingly enough, conversations in Daedalus also seem pretty explicitly from a perspective of trying to get c!Sam to understand him in some respects--like, c!Dream isn't seeking division here. Even in consideration of the fact that he needed to get the keycards, c!Dream's continued emphasis on trying to get c!Sam to see him is...interesting, in view of how much of what went wrong being explicitly because of c!Sam's betrayal.

He warns Bad and Skeppy away from the prison shortly after beginning to reside there on a permanent basis. He gives them quite a sum of gifts (iirc, a block of netherite and a totem of undying) despite firing arrows at them; even though he has a reason to be aggressive towards c!Bad as one of the prison guards (something both c!Bad and c!Skeppy point out) he makes no effort to kill them and outright gives them valuable items while warning them to stay away from the prison

scrapped lore, whenever it was meant to happen, was an obvious "revenge" attempt against quackity...which goes, badly. a clue into the State that he was in in terms of his revenge quests. also, whatever interaction he has with c!wilbur later, obviously c!Wilbur doesn't end up worse for wear physically from it.

In inconsolable differences, c!Dream is more preoccupied with keeping a "feeling" of power over c!Wilbur over taking outright control over the room and therefore complies with c!Wilbur's orders. He does attack, but despite having more than the necessary means to kill both c!Wilbur and c!Tommy while he's there, does not do so. Neither does he manage to keep them trapped in the prison, something that he absolutely could've done if he so chose. Instead, he values a (imaginary) symbol of his continued alliance with c!Wilbur over any kind of hostile action, imprisonment, or killing of either person (and explicitly values c!Wilbur's life over just about everything, there.)

In his interaction with c!Foolish, he's outright trying to get c!Foolish to consider him beyond what other people have said about him. He's trying to establish some form of an alliance and offers...well, quite a lot in order to have one (in order to have a five minute warning of c!Quackity's location. like, he's putting himself in c!Foolish's service quite explicitly here, offering to become his hitman or bodyguard). He's obviously wary, but also obviously trying to be friendly and largely interacts with c!Foolish by trying to establish a rapport, not by trying to threaten him into something or attack him in any way. Even with c!Sam, the amount of outright threatening behavior from c!Dream isn't all that large--mostly, he's being petty? You could make an argument about c!Dream's vague threat to c!Sam's island, but clearly Sam loses no lives from Dream in any interaction they might have after they leave the summer home.

I consider the whole interaction with c!Aimsey canon bc literally everyone was playing as their characters there--c!Dream outright goes out of his way to try and protect a total stranger here with no obvious personal benefit. He literally inserts himself into the conflict to try and prevent c!Aimsey's death, which is kinda wild for someone to do as someone who allegedly wants people to die on the server. He attacks (and even kills c!George) c!snf here, but it's all in a scene where they get distracted from their whole "blowing shit up" moment because they want to chase c!Dream, and c!Dream specifically uses very little melee combat here--a lot of ranged stuff, which is far from his specific specialty. Further, there's a scene in this fight where c!Dream is acting entirely defensively, backed up against a wall with his shield in front of him as c!snf attack, and at the end he just runs away--all behavior that doesn't seem to be about killing anyone or profiting from anyone's deaths in any way.

LN5, threats similarly nonsensical, and he dips as soon as things start going south. For all of his seeming confidence, he's not the one that continues the chase in an attempt to kill c!Quackity, and the fight evidently freaks him out considering how he ends up not realizing he's being stalked by c!Tommy and then hides in the prison for a solid while (while still being stalked by c!Tommy)

Despite apparently wanting them to decide who to die in the saw trap (which had a premise that is frankly, quite hard to believe), c!clingy are given the exact items that could've facilitated their escape. He certainly could've killed both or one at any point in time, even if he wanted a message to be spread to the server (something easily done with one guy)--instead, he monologues at them, then conveniently leaves so that they can get away (and they could've with the literal items he gave them if tommy didn't burn their food.) When c!Tommy returns the following day, c!Dream makes it clear he expected both of them to have gotten out

Despite being clearly unable to stand c!Tommy, blaming him for most if not all of his problems on the server, and outright saying to c!Tommy that c!Tommy would never agree to help him (after they had a shouting match literally one day ago), gives quite the sales pitch to get c!Tommy on the same page as them.

I'm probably missing stuff, but you get my point--even when presented golden opportunities to kill off a player post-prison, c!Dream doesn't take it. He outright spares c!Sam when he could've easily died from the Revengers' tactic. When meeting with strangers, he prioritizes establishing a friendly rapport with them through things like gifts over, in his distrust, treating them badly so that they're scared of him and therefore don't fuck with him yadayada. His behavior, instead of exuding an aura of anger and vengeance and vying for destruction, tends to send a message of trying to be outright unthreatening, please-don't-attack-me. He's not going everywhere holding his big fuck off axe, he's seeing a new person and ducking behind his shield.

Oftentimes, I feel like this quote is pulled or paraphrased from No Way Home to show how c!Dream has become distrusting of people, vindictive, post-prison

And if that means we have to kill everybody— and ev— everybody that doesn't wanna go along with what me and Punz have to say? Everyone that doesn't want to figure it out? Then, fine! You can be simple-minded and you can die simple-minded. But! If you wanna actually know what's going on in this world, and you wanna fix it, and make it the best that we can be, and live forever? Then they can join us.

And while I'm not saying we should dismiss the whole quote as just being disingenous bluffing, I think when taken into the context of post-prison c!Dream's actions (or, well, c!Dream's actions as a whole) as well as his actions in the finale itself (such as his appealing to c!Tommy in the next stream), rather than putting the emphasis on the idea of "everyone who disagrees with me should die," c!Dream seems far more preoccupied with the idea of trying to find people who are willing to work with him to "fix" everything. People who will help him make it so that they can "live forever"--a desire he expresses in the fourth finale stream as well.

like, it's not to say that c!dream isn't vengeful. he is. i mean, i'd say moreso than vengeful, he's angry--just like how a lot of his overtures at friendliness are so deeply rooted in fear. the prison made him angry and the prison made him scared, and the anger has to be repurposed into revenge because revenge is power that he certainly didn't have when he was on his knees begging for mercy. but far from being closed off and unwilling to work with other people post-prison due to his experiences in Pandora (which. would make sense. i mean. like, he was left in there, and tortured, and betrayed. anger and revenge and a general distrust towards everyone and a desire to destroy a world that condemned him would be very easy to understand in this scenario), i'd say c!dream's interactions with people post-prison scream of a general lack of a desire to actually go through with killing people. hell, he even revives c!tommy--c!tommy! who just killed him! who c!dream outright blames for like, basically ruining his life! when revivals are literally apparently destabilizing the universe!--shortly after killing him. generally, he meets people who are dealing with him aggressively with a desire to flee moreso than with murderous intent (in genuine finale 2, for example, this guy was sure more focused on running the fuck away than he was on killing either of c!clingy), and even moreso deals with other people on the server by acting defensively and even in a manner that seems deliberately designed to get them to be more willing to work with him, or at least deal with him in a friendly way. despite his paranoia and how deeply pandora cut as a betrayal and his obvious wariness towards all people as a result (there's hardly a single interaction on the list above, after all, that doesn't have c!dream's obvious fear of people leaking all over the damn carpet), he seems to be much more focused on the idea of finding possible allies than he is on the idea of killing everyone possible.

which, i mean, makes sense. as he himself states:

irl manhunt time! (ft. a very special ender dragon)

without layout;

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

Art by Juluurkhan Khalgaev