Dsmp Analysis - Blog Posts

In love with your analysis and it got me thinking of my own. It’s my first so hhh plz be patient with me. Lol So here;

I think that cc!wilbur is setting up a more complicated conflict that involves more than just c!dream. He’s showing us more reactions to c!Wilbur’s change. He showed us c!Tommy who was apprehensive but still cares for him. c!Phil who forgave him entirely and maintains he did nothing really wrong. c!Ranboo who wasn’t affected too much so he gives c!wilbur forgiveness. And now we have cTubbo who forgave c!will but couldn’t trust him to join paradise like Tommy or Ranboo (I give up typing c! it’s all about the characters lol). So following that pattern, i feel like the realization that dream isn’t a good person will come with some others. Which I think are not just around Dream but, Niki, Jack, Quackity, etc. Everyone from or greatly affected by L’Manburg. I think that Revivebur might not receive forgiveness from everyone. I’m excited to see (and a little nervous cuz heh wilbur makes the feels incredibly real.) But the reactions to his change are each incredibly different and I think soon we’re going to see some sharp “fuck no”s to Wilbur asking for forgiveness.

But this begs the question- why is he the only one asking for it?? Why is he the one who everyone blames for L’Manburg’s destruction. Yes Dream has been imprisoned but Techno and Philza also destroyed L’Manburg. A place that was people’s home and not harming anyone. And I’m even more so directing this at the fans of dsmp. I find it incredibly interesting that at the first glance of finding a villain to hate- everyone clung to it. No one views philza or techno in the way they view wilbur. And arguably they did much worse than Wilbur! L’Manburg was rebuilt after Wilbur but there’s hardly any hope for that after Dream, Techno, and Phil blew it up. They’ve received no repercussions while wilbur received one of the worst fates i could imagine. It just doesn’t seem fair. And the thought that Wilbur views that as fair I think could change the more he learns about the past. The more he realizes exactly where he did mess up and does need to take blame- and where he doesn’t. I actually really enjoy the whole chat fuckin constantly saying “manipulation!!” as a meta thing. Because as wrong as they are- they are technically the voices inside Wilbur’s head. The ones constantly hating him and saying he was the villain. Idk just something interesting. (And pretty funny too cuz it couldn’t be intentional lol).

This is why I think that Wilbur isn’t the villain he convinced himself he was. He definitely messed up- that much is clear. And he was punished for it for 13 years!! (A long fucking time to live out your own personal hell). But in spite of that he was not a villain. The people around him were equally to blame for what happened- but he shouldered all of the blame. The line, “what if we’re the bad guys” isn’t just him saying “i’m going to make bad decisions”. It’s him saying that he is already being demonized and has decided that if he can’t stop being thought of as a villain- he’d embrace it. He decided to take the blame. To take all of the responsibility for L’Manburg’s destruction. But now, now it’s becoming clearer and clearer that that blame was horribly misplaced. He made a bad decision. But other characters got off scott free. Phil who wasn’t there for his son or didn’t want to talk him down from the panicked revelation of what he did. Dream who enabled all of Wilbur’s paranoia and fear driven actions. All the people around him saw his descent and pain and did nothing to help. They didn’t know what to do sure, but blaming him for his pain is an incredibly bad idea. And the effects on Wilbur were clear. He went for the bad decisions when he felt he could not ever be seen as anything more than a villain.

I feel like finally I’m understanding a whole lot more about Wilbur. Because beforehand everyone always was going on about how horrible he was but I never saw that?? I was always really confused because he never seemed horrible to me. He seemed sad and scared and angry. Those things don’t make a horrible person. They make a person in need of healing. Ha. Now I’m feeling very vindicated. A part of the theme of Wilbur seems to be, “bad choices do not make bad people”. And i agree. I think that sort of moral is really important for the internet culture too- in a surface way at least. I mean there are so many more layers though so I won’t reduce it to just that.

I’m really interested to see what will happen next because with all these conflicting and interwoven dynamics- the tension and conflict already being so ripe- i can only see this ending in some masterfully awesome way. Heh- leave it to cc!Wilbur to not only create something this rich with potential, but to utilize it in every perfect way.

the thing is like I'm so paranoid that this is all some massive ruse but like- it all lines up? everything wilbur says and does makes sense and is in character and it doesn't look like he's lying,, not in his mannerisms, nor what he's saying.

we knew he cared about l'manburg bc of the stare at the camarvan, we knew he didn't know about doomsday, his guilt over tommy makes sense, his guilt over tubbo makes sense, his nostalgia for l'manburg makes sense, his desire to be trusted makes sense. it all lines up with the reddit post too. it all lines up perfectly for a c!wilbur who's finally letting himself be a bit more honest, but cc!wilbur's also threading in some issues so masterfully.

cc!wilbur is setting up this massive caveat of "c!wilbur is getting better but he still views dream as his hero" and I am so excited to see how his attempt to redeem himself collides with that. he's relying on ranboo for validation, is still struggling with putting himself blocks above others (although he stepped down for tubbo today, which is improvement), the fireworks line was ominous, etc etc. but god does it feel good to be proven right.

personally i disagree with the "silence = admittance" that alot of people are preaching because given the power imbalance it feels like when someone in powers really furious at you and you know they wont believe you even if you say otherwise OR you wanna keep this as short and painless as possible so you keep your mouth shut so i still think the prison wasnt for ctommy

!!!!! literally !!!!! there is such an imbalance in power here and i think it’s unfair for c!dream’s silence to be used against him when no matter what he said would be taken the wrong way anyway. if he agreed?? c!sam could have gotten so angry he would have killed him. if he disagreed?? c!sam would have never believed him, and it could have gotten him killed again.

in a lose-lose situation where the only option you have is to remain silent in fear of death, you’re going to be silent. you’re not going to start explaining yourself: you’re going to shut up and go along with whatever the Person In Power says until you have a chance to get out.

c!dream isn’t going to start opening up and admitting his plans or talking properly with c!sam, who has done thus far an AWFUL job of protecting c!dream and being a Nice Warden. c!dream is honest in the moments he has power or gets cocky, and sometimes not even then — cc!dream’s ONLY description of him was:

“withholding feelings, withholding plans”

and you (not you anon lol) really think he’s gonna start spilling his feelings and plans to someone who has abused him…… You Wish lol

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

ive never really been one for rewrites (apart from like. ignoring the nuke finale. Also reviving cranboo. ok maybe a lil bit) but what i would have changed is the ending of the ghostbur arc because for me it could have been everything but by Not tying it properly it just. misses the mark a bit

now there's going to be a funny question: what rational reasons does he have for burning himself in lava? XD

there's nothing else to do obviously 🙄 it annoys the warden and getting a predictable reaction out of him is Useful :) and it's not like it does any real damage soooo. you see he's causing himself repeated pain for very well thought out reasons that he's completely thought through !! knowing how other people will react is Useful. and it shows how not fazed at all he is by pain which is also Useful. and yeah the answer is he's being very rational about it obviously even if it might look like he's not because he's showing sam that he's insane which is important to keeping up the ruse and again the pain doesn't mean anything. so yeah.

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

why do you think Dream told Sam 'all about exile'? obviously, this didn't lead to pleasant consequences for him

it's interesting, right? especially because--while exile wasn't exactly the most unknown thing at that time--it's far from the highlight of c!dream's Villain Actions in the majority of the dsmp population's collective consciousness, at this point. it's been about a month since c!tommy ran away from exile, and since then c!Dream has done Doomsday and then the staged finale. for someone like c!sam, it makes a lot more sense for c!dream to judge him as caring more about how Fran would've been taken as leverage in the disc vault, or how their old home together the community house was blown up by dream. while i have no doubts that c!sam would've interrogated c!dream about exile anyway, c!dream didn't have to tell him "all about it" in a way that had c!sam completely horrified within that first week. and frankly, no matter what cruelty c!sam might've already been up to, c!dream wasn't going to crack to the point of confessing anything he didn't want to confess over the course of like, five days in the very beginning of the prison arc.

so why does he? i'm sure he'd give you a whole host of rational reasons. c!tommy can't keep his mouth shut, obviously, so he assumed that c!tommy would spill the beans sooner or later. provoking c!sam from the getgo gives him a good idea of what to expect from the rest of his stay here, which will help him navigate the situation in an optimal way. mentioning c!tommy affects c!sam obviously, emotionally, which keeps him too off-balance to think about any logical inconsistencies in things like the staged finale and ever suspecting that c!dream wanted to be in the prison in the first place. if he's forthcoming about this Terrible Crime, then c!sam will be too focused on interrogating him about tommy to ask questions about the revive book, or vikkstar and lazar, or punz. and so on.

they're good enough reasons. valid reasons, sure. c!dream is very good at coming up with lists of rational reasons behind his actions, objective courses of actions that leave him firmly in control. c!dream also--in the process of the plan to put himself in the prison--dies at least five times, as far as we know of, and likely many more (if we are to believe that he did experiments on his own limbo pre-prison, which i think we Should, considering the circumstances, then he needed to lose his initial three lives to even test the revive book on him, not to mention however it was that he got another three lives in order to lose two in the staged finale) and starts swimming in the lava not even 24 hours into his imprisonment. just because a reason makes the most sense or is the most rational doesn't make it the real reason why c!dream does much of anything, which is something he never quite gets around to admitting to himself.

if i had to be accurate i think exile was not at all obsessive or systematic abuse, i genuinely think it was revenge gone wrong wait hear me out. we have proof that the whole cdream is obsessed with ctommy theory wasnt realistic or canon and if we take into account how weirdly cdream sometimes acted in exile with the whole letting tommy have fun with the trident etc we can kinda make paralels to similar stuff irl which is why i always looked at exile as revenge based bullying gone horribly wrong. like cdream really did act like a highschool bully and you know why it comes across like that? because both ctommy and cdream are hella young. a lot of people wanna make it more traumatic more abusive more horrific or gory or whatever but the simplest explanation is often the first one, it was all bullying. and i find it very very weird how people on the other side did not consider bullying bad enough for it to be taken seriously so they had to invent intestine cakes and whatever the fuck else just to consider exile "bad enough" to be taken seriously when bullying is already more than bad enough.

isolating the victim? check. aking them do something against their will? check. lying to them? check. pretending to be their friend? check. making them believe their other friends abandoned them? check check check.

also the way it was done, like really? literally the trope of no one coming to the party and victim sits alone feeling sad? what is this, a cartoon show about the power of friendship??

exile was neither "not a big deal" nor "horror movie levels of abuse" it simply was a sad arc with themes that do hit too close to home for many. the psychological ramifications that came from it? whole nother issue that needs a seperate analysis because yes, bullying victims can and do develop paranoia and some of the other stuff ctommy exhibited but not all like the whole ctommy still being scared of cdream, following him obsessively even months after it was clear cdream wanted nothing to do with him anymore, etc did throw me off because thats not really regular bullying or even abuse victim behavior??? i digress

tldr exile was bad thats a fact but it wasnt SAW movie franchise levels of bad

sorry for the rant, wanted to get my lore thoughts out

tbf exile being 2 weeks of vengeful peer abuse, also known as bullying, is straight up just canon

the "obsession" take that we specifically had issue with had a lot of issues in the way that it very deliberately rewrote c!dream's entire character to explain ALL of his actions through an obsession with c!tommy. specifically, there was a lot of malice ascribed to him LONG before exile in order to say that c!dream basically wanted to do something like exile from the very beginning to c!tommy, but wasn't able to until exile happened because c!wilbur was protecting him or some other shit. that reading relied on the worst possible faith retelling of everything c!dream has ever done + a good amount of just straight up narrative rewriting to emphasize how young and innocent and vulnerable c!tommy is and how obsessive weird creepy stalker grown ass man who wanted c!tommy to himself c!dream apparently was from day one, a take that emphasizes exile as The End Goal of months of obsession instead of being in service to some other goal as is canon. that's the obsession take that was passed around quite frequently that we specifically took a lot of issue with.

on the other hand, c!tommy being c!dream's victim because c!dream disproportionately blames him and took all sorts of shit out on him and found a degree of vindictive pleasure in hurting him is literally just. canon? that's canon.

speaking of c!dream, man is so weird about exile in a way that i think is actually kind of delightful and hilarious to see. god forbid he admits he crossed a line, he'd rather give you a boss battle and lots of item and your discs back and two of his lives, that's-- that's fair, right?

absolute moron. just say you're sorry! well, i mean, he isn't sorry, to be fair, he definitely isn't, but surely that's better than squirming every time it gets brought up? how the hell did he survive c!sam's questioning he was being awkward about it even before the prison

oh, sure, if he can bring it up to use it as weapon, that's fine. except he also just kinda skirts around it. of all the awful shit this guy has done, bullying a teenager for two weeks is the one thing that gets him disconcerted. and of course it does, of course. king of making up reasons for everything and all he can give c!tommy in the finale is the stupid ass excuse of ermmmm ummmm welll but i could've revived you so that didn't matter-!

nice try, bro. took you two fucking years to come up with that one and you couldn't even do a better job at it. go on, speak up. tell us why you did all that. drop the excuses, tells us with your whole chest what the reasons for your behavior in exile are. go on. you know you got nothing my man, you know you can't bear looking at it in the face. little coward put himself in a torture box but can't handle guilt. and then he has the audacity to insist he was always a villain. you can't even handle the weight of your one unjustifiable sin because the idea of being responsible for this kid's suicide is something you can't stomach. oh c!dream, who are you even trying to fool? he had you the second he brought up that tower.

i know morality and c!dream can be a sticky subject especially bc of how like, unreliable this guy is when he talks abt himself, but as much as we repeat lines in daedalus i do think that it's worth remembering that his whole ... "oh evil is in the eye of the beholder" "everyone is the hero in their own story" "they're not excuses theyre reasons" "im evil but the ends justify the means" ETC of it all is like. self protective?

like no, c!dream isn't a character that is all that occupied with morality from the beginning, obviously. but at the same time this is also a character where the crux of the damn matter when c!tommy finally gets through to him is you know, no, dumbass, you aren't Just Irredeemable Evil you're an idiot asshole that chose to do shitty things and there are, in fact, other paths you can choose. this is also a character that has a whole breakdown on his own about the "thin line between good and evil" where he wrestles with his own morality and humanity in comparison to a fucking snake. this is a character that is SO FUCKING BOTHERED by c!sam's like, everything, c!quackity's sadism, c!wilbur confronting him over lmanburg (i'm a tourist. not a terrorist.) (like ,,,)

like no matter how much c!dream tries to beat his conscience into the ground, no matter how much he says that ohhh he's just evil look at his evil lair and evil speeches and evil villain plan to give warning before he attacks and evil giving people primes (what???), no matter how much he repeats the fact that ~the end justifies the means~ and it's all worth it in the end so the middle doesn't actually matter...uh, it kind of does matter to him. c!dream might've always been ruthless and a bit of a jerk and capable of a heck of a lot of damage, but he doesn't go into this on day one thinking that abusing a teenager is A-okay. he doesn't go into the damn end of this thinking that abusing a teenager is A-okay, for fuck's sake. when pushed to the wire all he could say to c!tommy is that he tortured him, because he deserved it, like that's at all about ends justifying means and goals and whatever. like that's not the same thing that his own torturer said to him just weeks ago, in those few minutes before he was sent running.

like yeah, part of this is for show. also the other evil ass guys on this server don't exactly go around adding "evil ___" in front of everything they do, do they? you don't see c!quackity calling his casino "EVIL CASINO !!!" or c!sam calling his bank "EVIL BANK!!!" (c!sam, of course, Isn't A Bad Guy) (well, that whole Thing is also self-protective, but you know) like /?? c!dream is Weird about morality and fixated on the whole evil villain whatever of it all in a way that is just too obvious for him to not care about morality nearly as much as he claims to.

I would almost say that c!Tommy became obsessed with c!Dream after staged finale because of his desire for closure. He wanted, desperately, an explanation for his pain. c!Dream, unfortunately, was not at a place emotionally to be able to give c!Tommy a real answer. You can tell that c!Tommy doesn’t fully buy the “I’m a monster, I’m a villain, everything I do comes from a place of evil” mask (ha) he puts on and it shows in when c!Tommy assigns him “homework” on the first day in the form of the Why book. c!Tommy never truly gave up on c!Dream, in my honest opinion, despite the pain he endured and the fear he held c!Tommy wanted to hear c!Dream out. The tragedy is that it just took c!Dream too long to actually confront himself and come to terms with what he really wanted.

mmhm

i wouldn't say c!tommy's ummm obsession post-staged finale purely comes from that point in time or for that reason exclusively, but i think that the why of it all very much follows c!tommy doggedly every step of the way even when he's trying not to think about it. like, that was his friend, and all of a sudden he became someone unrecognizable, and tommy never gets a half decent reason why. c!tommy is...always kind of fixated on c!dream? like, from the beginning really, hence the "it's just you and me against dream" that echoes throughout the story long before exile is even a thing--it's just he started off a lot more sure about all of the pieces in this equation (himself) (tubbo) (the discs) (dream) and then is left at the end of it all staring at all of the pieces that have somehow become something completely different over the course of a few years. why can't it just be simple again. i miss when it was simple.

but yeah, for sure, c!tommy is one of the few people on this server that does go hey, what the fuck, doesn't that hurt? why are you doing this, that's insane, what? give me a reason. give me an actual reason. and c!tommy is also the place where c!dream stumbles, over and over again, to give a reason worth listening to--of course c!tommy thinks c!dream is obsessed with him, it's the only damn thing c!dream will tell him.

there's plenty on the c!tommy side that is also just, coping with everything by pushing it onto c!dream, which is kind of a mutual deal of theirs. hence the screaming past each other during that one stream in the finale and like, the nonsense that was you can't just tell other people they cant go into your land !!!! like that wasn't what lmanburg did. and c!tommy doesn't even want to kill c!dream when he's imprisoned until c!wilbur scares the shit out of him in limbo and he decides that there's no option--and that mission to Kill Dream follows them into the finale. but yeah, mixed into alluvthat is for sure a desire to know why things with dream went to hell

honestly i do think cdream blamed ctommy on a lot of his problems bc it has easier than see the nuance in what happened to him and his actions on exile weren't bc of obssesion with ctommy but more of a taking out his anger with him. And it's interesting how both cdream and ctommy blame each other in ruin each other lifes Instead of seeing the nuance and the other people in their lifes that contributed to that happening

this but also

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

Master List for my own sanity (I will try to update it regularly):

Stream analysis:

Overly Long Analysis of c!Tommy and c!Dream dynamic in season 1

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Exile arc Part 1 -  Part 2 -  Part 3 -  Part 4 -  Part 5 -  Part 6 - Part 7 [completed]

Analysis of the Nether portal scene

A rant about Season 2 Finale

Overly Long Analysis of Tommy’s first prison visit

Overly Long Analysis of Tommy’s second prison visit (quotes with an Addition and another Addition)

Overly Long Analysis of the death and revival streams

An analysis of “Tommy’s plan to kill Dream” Part 1 and Part 2

Analysis of Foolish first death stream

Analisys of Wilbur’s and Tommy’s streams from the 05/05/21

An analysis of Foolish’s and Tommy’s conversation

Comprehensive analysis of the Custody Battle stream

Overly long analysis of Wilbur and Ranboo build the burger van

Overly long analysis of Wilbur’s stream of the 1 year anniversary of L'Manburg

Overly long analysis of Dream’s jailbreak Sunday Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Extra analysis:

A rant about Freedom in the smp (c!Techno critical)

An analysis of c!Wilbur (this one is quite critical)

A rant on how c!Dream assigns c!Tommy added value

A theory on the reason for c!Dream’s obsession for c!Tommy

A random collection of handy Dream SMP Quotes

Did Tommy betray Techno? a rant

Not Comprehensive List of c!Dream’s Obsessive Behaviour

Headcanons and aus:

Tailor!Tommy headcanons (fluff)

Bench Trio Headcanons (angst)

Possible scenarios of Wilbur coming back (crack)

Dream smp bad end au (angst)

Dream smp Fantasy au (fluff)

God!Tommy and God!Wilbur AU (crack)

Superhero AU and Alternate Superhero AU (crack)

Undertale AU (angst? fluff? both??)

Protective Ranboo hc (angst)

Protective Tubbo HCs (fluff? Kinda?)

Alternate AUs meet up? Sort of?  (crack)

Flowerboy!Tommy HCs (fluff)

Citizen’s Newspaper AU part 1 -  part 2

God!Tommy and God!Tubbo AU (made with @ladycatland)

Platonic Soulmates AU (Bee Duo’s case - Crime Boys’ case - Part 2) (angst)

Tommy gets all the mobs! (crack/fluff)

Protege AU (angst)

Immortal Tommy + Superhero AU (angst/crack)

Dsmp x DLsmp AU (mostly angst)

Stray AU

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LINK with all the informations on the tags I use

the fact c!tommy said he felt like a fucking pet in exile of all things always breaks my heart. like, he also described himself as a toy and a puppet but for some reason that one just always fucks me up the most. i guess bc it really shows that his insistence that c!dream hates him is a desperate survival mechanism? like, you don’t hate a pet. it’s obviously an incredibly fucked up demeaning and dehumanising way to treat a person, but it’s not a way you treat someone you hate. because, like, obviously c!dream doesn’t hate c!tommy. he's got very complicated thoughts on him, but he doesn’t hate him, even if he hates and resents parts of him.

and like, deep down, c!tommy knows that? he gets c!dream a whole lot more than he lets on, and he knows that c!dream on some level sees him as a friend, even if that’s in an incredibly unhealthy and abusive way. but he has to convince himself that c!dream hates him. because if c!dream doesn’t hate him, then what’s the point of even struggling against his conditioning and trying to heal? c!tommy is desperate for friendship and validation, and he feels abandoned by everyone else. if he lets himself ever believe that c!dream will ever provide him that stability and affection he desperately longs for, he'd fall back into his exile mindset so quickly, because he doesn’t care if he’s tortured or hurt- he openly acknowledges that exile was torturous to him even when he’s still struggling with seeing c!dream as a benevolent friend in bedrock bros- because he thinks he deserves it. he just doesn’t want to be alone.

no okay but ctommys addiction to invis potions is just so heartbreaking. one of the loudest characters, someone who always craved attention and interaction from other people, impossible to miss and always loud-vibrant-in your face, growing addicted to not being seen? do you fucking understand what that means. he HATED being ignored so much, he wilted away when he was put in isolation, but he got so used to being rejected and diminished and turned away from that he got addicted to being invisible. because it was safer. im going to walk into the ocean like he did

I do think about how Tommy's fanon design kept the green handkerchief, while Tubbo very rarely has his post-New L'manberg. And how often people see Tubbo in Tommy's shadow, when upon Tommy's death, Tubbo had his husband and child and his country, when at the thought of losing Tubbo, Tommy couldn't imagine who he'd be without him. Exile for Tubbo meant all of NLM with no Tommy, exile for Tommy meant no one at all, and a chest full of photos of Tubbo. "I feel like I always saw you as a sort of sidekick" and Tommy kept his handkerchief and Tubbo lost his compass

OKAY so what ive been thinking about for ages is ctommy and being soft vs quiet . because i feel like it's one of those things in his fandom characterisation that sparks the most debate and in my opinion theres a huge difference between the two but i keep seeing people mix them together.

ctommy is soft but he's not quiet, and to disregard either of those things is what makes him less believable in fanworks imo

because on one hand, of course he's not quiet, that's the most obvious and i think one of the most commonly accepted qualms that we have with general fan interpretations of him. he doesn't just lie down and take shit, he's always committed to being an annoying shit, he's straight up rude so often, and even just. vocally. man's loud as fuck. i think that's pretty easy to establish .

but then what i find is that sometimes we veer into the other opposite, by completely denying that ctommy is also very soft sometimes. and by this i don't mean he turns into strawberry shortcake or starts being polite or whatever, but it's the fact that he's not just crass and rude. he's very considerate a lot of the time, he just shows it. uh. in his Own Way let's say. he cares for animals so so much, he's always so apologetic when he thinks he's hurt one of them, for fuck's sake he sung to the FLOWERS. he's very soft with nature, with things he's attached to, with things he perceives as weaker than him and needing protection.

the complexity of ctommy and what makes him so hard to grasp is that he's loud, he's brash, he is NOT a perfect quiet victim who suffers in silence, he asks for help, he's rude, he steals stuff, he's annoying as shit; but he's also soft, and incredibly empathetic, and he has no shame in showing that softness for animals or nature or his friends.

ctommy, and this is very much because cctommy himself acts like that a lot, is constantly vacillating between someone with the maturity of a thirteen year old boy who shouts and swears and pretends not to give a shit, and a boy who will stop everything he's doing to look at the sky or a flower or an animal (which does contrast his stereotypical rude teenager persona, because lots of aforementioned thirteen year old boys Would be embarrassed or whatever to do that).

he does BOTH. he's not just quiet and nice and sad and lonely; but he's not just rude and loud and """uncaring""" (if there is one thing ctommy is not i think we can all agree its UNCARING).

and i think this is why a lot of debates around "woobifying" ctommy (who remembers the july 2021 trenches . the butterfly clips.) tend to point any ctommy design that portrays him as soft, cozy, or even leaning into his feminine side as the be-all end-all of reducing his character.

in reality i think that misses the mark a bit because while there IS something to be said for sure about people turning ctommy into Blonde Anime Child #249824 and stripping him of his Very Vibrant character, i don't think that putting him in butterfly clips and skirts erases him in the same way. i think he could very much lean into that kind of thing . as long as he's still flipping off the camera we're all good

TLDR : fans strip ctommy of his loud-and-annoying persona but in avoiding that some forget that he's a character who's not afraid to be soft

So while I’m all for drawing the conversation away from legality, trauma, innocence, bashing c!Tommy in the name of c!Dream lol….etc. I did basically write this essay about c!Tommy first and someone asked me to share, so I shall. @poisedava this is for you. ;) <3

Here’s the thing and this is important - it does not go both ways. If c!Tommy wants to be considered an innocent ‘child’, a teenager, a minor, who is too young and naive to know that what he does is wrong and how that hurts people and has consequences then he doesn’t just get to act like an adult and start wars, serve as a government official, build nations, torture, steal, murder, enslave, commit terrorism, blackmail, assassinate…etc and face no repercussions because ‘he didn’t know better.’ If you want to act like an adult then you’ll be treated as such.

Now I don’t believe that we should view the dsmp in the realm of irl crimes, since there is no legal system or set of rules in place in the dsmp (besides the ones c!Dream set and everyone breaks of course), but if ya’ll are going to say c!Dream deserves prison because of his ‘crimes’ and write off c!Tommy’s actions as less because he is a minor then I will look at it, especially because the term ‘minor’ is connected to the legal system of our world and that is where we are deriving this perceived innocence.

On that note, there are crimes in many countries that even if you’re a minor or a child you can be tried as an adult for reasons like a severe crime (for example first degree murder) and/or if it is a repeated offense despite disciplinary actions. In this case, both apply, as many of the things listed above are repeated abhorrent offenses. Secondly, the definition of ‘minor’ and the age of becoming an adult, while typically set at 18 is not universal. In Scotland for instance, 16 is the legal age of adulthood, which is how old c!Tommy was when he joined the smp.

But looking beyond legally speaking, I for one hardly consider 16 to be a child or an innocent naive minor in the first place. At 16 I could legally drive and drove me and my sister to school. I made sure people had what they needed to keep things from falling apart, whether that’s helping with grocery shopping, making dinner, running errands, helping with homework, making lunches… etc. I hardly think someone who drives is a child unable to face consequences like speedings, drinking and driving… etc. On the topic of age I would also like to highlight that the gap is like 5 years, which all things considered is not a very big gap, not to mention one of the reasons young people are considered irresponsible and given a bit of slack is because until the age of 25 your brain is still developing, and as c!Dream was also under the age of 25 that also applies to him and a huge portion of the server.

But being young doesn’t give you a free pass to do whatever you want and then complain about the consequences. You don’t get to just run a red light and kill kids crossing the road and claim innocence because you are a new driver. Because you are young, because you were distracted, because you were just trying to change the song and didn’t see them, because you didn't mean to. You are still responsible for killing people.

And if you don't want to be responsible, if you want to be treated like a child, then stay a child. But as a child you are not considered mature enough to know what is right from wrong, which is where guidance from guardians comes in. Children (really generally speaking), don’t know better, which is why they get grounded, spanked, their mouths washed out with soap, forced to write lines, get things taken away, time out, scolding… etc - punished. They are not free and independent to do what they like. Now obviously, when it comes to the dsmp there are really no such guardians or parents in charge of the minors, but the point still stands, if you do not understand your actions are wrong then someone should teach you and (whether you or not you agree with that) that is often through punishment.

Under that guise, c!Dream taking away c!Tommy’s discs for starting wars and breaking the rules and murdering him, is a form of parenting. (You can argue with whether you consider it good parenting… but that's not really the point). Even further, Exile then could be considered a more extreme form of time out and/or grounding, which is extreme because the violations are extreme. If you steal a cookie you are forced to go to your room for a bit, if you burn down the king’s house then you get exiled from the land. In Exile, he is forced to lose items which could be considered revoking privileges and getting his belongings taken away (like if your parents ever took your phone for a week). Hell, even hitting him with the axe could be seen as a super extreme spanking for not complying with his punishment. Now am I staying that makes it justified? Am I saying those were ok things to happen? Am I saying c!Tommy deserved being treated like that? No. Not really, I am just simply pointing out that in a world where the crime isn’t spray painting a building but burning said building down in an act of terrorism it almost makes sense in a twisted way that the punishments are more severe to fit the infraction.

(I would also like to point out that c!Phil has a moment with c!Tommy where he forced him to smelt stone and then destroy it over and over again and isn’t that kinda what c!Dream was doing in Exile?… just saying, not to say the behavior is right, just something I noticed and thought was interesting.) And the reason why the act of losing items is important is because a huge part of his character arc is surrounded by the value of objects and treating people like he treats objects. It was a big moment of deliberation for him to give up the discs for c!Tubbo’s life. Do you even realize how screwed up that is? A person over an object. But the thing is, somehow in c!Tommy’s mind those two things were synonymous, he was never there for c!Tubbo when c!Tubbo needed someone to have his back. When c!Tubbo goes to get revenge for his missing child and dead husband, he teams up with his literal worst enemies the people who took his canonical lives. Where was c!Tommy?… But whenever c!Tommy needed c!Tubbo to go after c!Dream or support him even with the things c!Tubbo disagreed with, he’s there. Honestly, he’s less of a best friend and more of a sword. The dsmp completes c!Tommy’s character arc by him giving up the discs for c!Tubbo’s life and to for once listen to c!Dream. His character arc, put very very simply, was valuing and treating people as people instead of things.

So the - it’s understandable, it’s less bad than what c!Dream did because he’s young and didn’t know better - is just not reasonable to me. Exile being used as justification isn’t really valid either. Ok so for a week, yea he was abused, he lost his things, people didn’t visit him, sure some were tricked into not visiting him, c!Dream took all of his items over and over, c!Dream hurt him when he did not comply, sure c!Tommy was suicidal as a result. But ya know, when no one else could be bothered to show up, c!Dream came by everyday. Plus abuse on the server is like scuffed so I hardly hold Exile as a gold standard for trauma like y’all I don’t know if I need to make a complication of how many times on the dsmp people hit each other with axes and hurt eachother or force eachother to comply or something. Or if I need to make a list of everytime c!Tommy has done worse even before Exile, but yeeeesh. Like don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Exile was deserved, I don’t think anyone deserves abuse. Period. But on the scale of the dsmp and considering how many people he hurt and the circumstances that got him there, I find it hard to feel for him. And that’s coming from someone who (before medication) used to have panic attacks multiple times a week, who has been bullied, who has been isolated, who has been abandoned and betrayed by my best friends, who has been so so lonely, who has been suicidal, and who was a nasty person as a result of being hurt. So I get it, I really do. But to me it doesn’t really matter much, it doesn’t make him the hero, or redeemed, or innocence, or any more likable, especially when so many other characters on the dsmp have similar instances on their arcs.

And if we want to compare, c!Tommy’s ‘crimes’ to c!Dream’s because he’s ‘just as bad,’ the thing is, I’m not so sure that’s true, for many reasons. One of which is that c!Dream has really only ever reacted. Over and over he gets pushed into reacting, but usually he gives people a way out and he tries to do the better thing at first, but eventually after failing he turns towards the latter. While on the other hand, c!Tommy continues to provoke, over and over and over. Look no further than the finale where he shows up to the prison to assassinate c!Dream, after c!Dream literally hasn’t done anything to him since the prison break (unless you count c!Tommy and c!Wilbur breaking in… which again - provoke). And there really is no such transformation for c!Tommy, he doesn’t start off trying to do the right thing at all, which also brings us to motivation… which continues to baffle me, what is c!Tommy’s motivation? Because if it’s truly to have a home and be happy with his friends then why does he constantly do things that would jeopardize that?

So, you want me to feel bad for and root for someone - who often worked against their own stated motivation, who did drugs, tortured people, started wars, killed, enslaved, destroyed, used, stole, was sexist, xenophobic, disrespectful and constantly talked over people, who didn’t even have his friend’s back more importantly his best friend’s, c!Tubbo’s, back who continued to risk his life for c!Tommy’s schemes - because what? He is a minor? Because he was abused and suicidal after facing the consquences of his own actions? Because we get his pov? Because he declared himself the hero? Because c!Dream personally targeted him for no reason - because he’s so innocent and was no threat to c!Dream… after he literally KILLED HIM multiple times with much less armor, then with no armor at all (in one of the first streams)? …..…. Like heh?

Ah nah you’re so right… c!Dream definitely deserved prison - He killed c!Tommy after all!… in a war, where he was given a chance to surrender or face no mercy… in a fair dual, where he set the terms… in prison, where he provoked c!Dream, killed the cat c!Dream admitted to caring about all after c!Dream had been no doubt going insane from being isolated in prison for months already… I mean… come on, in no way do I see any of those as specifically targeting c!Tommy (don’t even get me started on the finale where he mentions Spirit just to piss c!Dream off).

And ya know, after saying all of that, I would even go as far as to say that c!Tommy is not a hero, nor even an anti-hero, since he is neither selfless, noble or full of goodness, which are some of the more fundamental qualities. In fact, Theseus, who c!Techno calls c!Tommy, is a Greek hero who in the beginning becomes infamous because he slays many savage murderers and monsters on his way to Athens. But I ask you, what savagery has c!Tommy stopped? What noble feats has he done for the sake of the safety of people?… He may be a protagonist, but honestly I don’t think he qualifies as a hero. Sure, both c!Dream and c!Techno’s reference Theseus, but they are really more highlighting the end of his life. Overall, I don’t think hero (even a flawed Greek one) is an adequate description for him. Perhaps anti-villain would be more fitting, a villain with some heroic traits?… I mean his most heroic moments are probably the duel, willing to fight in doomsday with or without help, and willing to be nuked, but like eh… the first two were over a piece of land, a country. It wasn’t about protecting people. I mean in both of those he was part of provoking the conflict in the first place, so is it heroic to help in a conflict that you helped cause? And in the last one, I mean it is the end of his arc so anti-villain technically still works for having a good selfless heroic moment at the end ;) ……

DSMP ANALYSISBLR AWARDS WINNERS!

At long last, the winners have been declared! With 57 total nomination forms and 381 total final vote submissions, here are the results! Equal congrats to all the winners, runner-ups, and nominees who didn’t make it into the final vote, your work is highly appreciated among the fans so give all yourselves a pat on the back!

Below the cut are the winners, show them some love! ( and to the winners themselves, feel free to use this as bragging rights whenever your authority is questioned ;) )

{I was unable to properly format images of the full % charts, so if you want to see a specific one just send me an ask and I’ll gladly screenshot & share it.}

Czytaj dalej

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.

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

yeah like cdream is someone who is not very good talking and has problems with communication, he never was someone that made other characthers want to follow him and stuff and sometimes was a dick but the thing it's how people just used him being reserved to talk over him and stripping him out of his autonomy and humanity and treating him like less than a animal

like ... to be fair to people, dream was dogshit at communicating for like, a lot of the server. he really didn't let anyone on that things bothered him until pressed, and then when pressed framed things in practical objective ways that made him come off more authoritative than bothered by the way he was treated. really, honestly, it's not even until like, around the exile conflict where he's communicating at all abt his feelings and by then he's also lying half the time and purposefully crafting a dishonest mask of himself to project towards people to make them think that he's a crazy murderous person that has to be locked away? and also was losing his whole mind.

even if we look at stuff like, lmanburg, isn't it telling that the only people he's talking about being bothered by lmanburg to is ... like, skeppy. or being upset abt his houses being bulldozed and griefed to sapnap and george. he's not really made it a habit of communicating to other people, especially the people that are doing the things that are bothering him, that he's you know. got an issue with it? and when he does do that communication it's like, stuff like "give me back the things you stole immediately. or i kill your pets" ASKFJLAS like

like, and even then, right, c!dream still had quite a lot of friendly interactions with people on the server? i wouldn't say he was all around hated early on--but he was seen as someone kind of unpredictable, kind of Weird As Hell, kind of morally eeeeh with lmanburg's influence on his reputation. He was the big bad in lmanburg but mostly he was just, a guy that was around and could sometimes give you lots of shit and could sometimes be kind of a dick. like it's just--there's a lot w/ c!dream where people did stuff that freaked him out not really meaning to, because there's a sort of trophy-like nature attributed to THEEE dream, and then c!dream didn't exactly communicate either and would sometimes play into people's assumptions there, but overall the balance of it all was sustainable and people generally were able to interact peacably (or at least, solve their disputes so they wouldn't be permanent issues) until manberg/pogtopia up to november 16th really had everything get really serious for everyone in a short period of time. between the revive book's effects on c!dream's, everything, and the way that manberg/pogtopia is really the nail in the coffin for his reputation (and you know, a natural consequence of his guy not telling anyone shit except for apparently like the people he absolutely shouldn't have been telling shit? and also literally DIED???) and just everyone being a mess after the whole debacle, things just...snowballed out of control in a way that they couldn't really re-settle back to being normal the way they had before

im rewatching the dsmp from the beginning bc i just had saw the more later vod lore streams and i find something interesting about cdream. In the start he's a person who always look for beign undertod, when ctommy is being a troublemaker he's always trying to explain ctommy the rules, killing him also but always saying why and what ctommy has to do stop causing troubles. In conflicts he's a mediator and in later arcs we saw him trying to make people see what he sees and listen to him. I think one of the things cdream wanted the most wasn't being liked but being undertod. He wanted to people to actually see why he's doing things and listen to him. I think that's why he was willing to talk to ctommy in the end. I like to think as cdream as a mediator who no one listened his yells and took cards in the matter and ended up being part of the wars

mmhm mmhm--as he himself grapples with in the snake speech, right. it's not really about just the idea of oh, he's evil, people see him as evil, but the fact that he's not afforded the humanity that people seem willing to give a snake--that he got sidelined as pure evil, his motivations replaced, his voice cut out of the story. the whole snake speech is about this idea that no one ever asked why, which does tie in neatly with how quickly things come crumbling down when someone actually does.

/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.

thinking abt scrapped lore again ...

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:

/dsmp /rp

Thinking again about how Dream's trust in other people got irrevocably torn down throughout the prison arc. How even after all the blackmailing and all the murder attempts, Dream had expected people to be fair and play by the rules. To keep their word, just like he always did.

But then Sam almost immediately deviated from the prison protocol. He isolated and starved Dream, he let a torturer in and trapped Dream's one chance of escape in the cell with him. Sapnap threatened to kill him if he ever got out. And it got to the point where Dream believed that Techno, one of his only allies, would not even come back for him.

When he was finally free, Dream decided that the only option left was to kill everyone who was against him and Punz. Otherwise, he thought the others would "force" them to revive whoever they killed. It wouldn't surprise me if he imagined that this "forcing to revive" would likely entail torture. He had already seen how far some people were willing to go for the power of revival, after all.

No longer would Dream give people the benefit of the doubt. No longer would he trust them to treat him fairly, to see him as a person. Either they sided with him, or they died.

Guys, I figured out- the whole hero vs. villain thing with c!Technoblade, and how it relates to Bedrock Bros (an unoffical essay)

So, the whole reason I made this blog was because of this realization I came to a few months back and need the fandom to know. This is all from the mythology class I took, focusing on Classical mythology. Also, I’m not up to date on lore. 

So, the big debate in the fandom (I don’t know how strong it still is, but I know that people were talking about this at some point) is if c!Technoblade is a hero or villain. And that got me thinking. There are strong arguements for both, but I really couldn’t come to a decison. Then, I was in my Mythology class, studying the Iliad and Greek warrior culture, and things were starting to sound really familiar. We all know that Techno is a major nerd when it comes it Greek mythology, and the pieces started coming together. 

So, a the qualifications to be a Greek hero are things like loyalty, strength, courage keeping promises, contempt towards inferiors, and the like. There is absolutly no need for them to be good people or moral individuals. In fact, they usually aren’t in the slightest. But they still are heroes in the eyes of the Greeks, despite not mathching up with our western ideals of what makes up a hero. 

There are also three pillars to Greek warrior culture. I’ll include all of the relevant class notes at the bottom for added clarity, but in summary, it’s basically 1: being the best- physically and in the way they can give persuasive speeches. This is displayed by a great speech or a murderous rampage. 2: Honor through gains and spoils and 3: glory and fame that continues thoughout time, through skill or eloquence. Starting to sound familiar?

Techno has his English major speeches and kills crowds of people (ex. the festival after he kills Tubbo). I could go on a whole thing about the Axe of Peace and Carl the horse as a manifestation of geras (the ultimate prize a warrior can have), which is a big part of the second pillar. He’s big on his clout and image, and while this is just something that he seems to have absorbed into his overall image, you can see the lean in during lore. 

This can explain some events that seem to contradict the heroic model that we expect. All of the times he says he was betrayed and destroys L’manburg seems like a villainous thing to do- but Greek heroes stick to their principles, no matter how illogical or unreasonable the results of their actions are. Succumbing to peer pressure? They would sacrifice anything to keep up their image as a powerful warrior. 

Nothing shows this better than things like the favor to Dream. A Greek hero always keeps their promises and stays loyal. And a lot of this seems contradictory, or frustrating. And it is. But it’s a different culture from a different time. (Trust me, I love the Iliad, but reading it can be so painful at times). Put yourself into a Greek heroes shoes, and a lot of these villainous actions can be justified by their code and culture. 

A great way to compare our Western hero culture with the Greek hero culture is by comparing the actions of c!Tommy with c!Technoblade. Tommy could be seen as a representation of a Western heroics. He wants to do the right thing, stay loyal to his friends and country, and get justice. He’s generally forgiving (we do have to keep in mind that this is Tommy, and he is a teenage boy). We can generally look at his actions and agree with them, in some way. 

After exile, his interests align with Technoblade’s for a bit, though it falls apart. He goes back to Tubbo, which Techno sees as a betrayal by his Greek culture POV, while Tommy sees this as a logical progession. Also, Tommy sees the destruction of L’manburg as a betrayal, while Techno sees it as a logical progression. Their respective veiws of the world are too different for them to be able to work together. Bedrock bros, in this regard, were never meant to be. 

Comparing the two of them is a great model for Western v. Greek hero culture. Now, this is just a theory. But if you look at the actions that don’t seem to align with logic and compare it to the warrior culture I’ve discussed, it hits too many points, in my opinion, for it to be coincidental. Personally, I think that these similarities are on purpouse, and that Technoblade is planning out the canonical actions of his character based on these base ideas. 

I don’t know if anyone else has made this connection, but here you go. Also, it would be really embaressing if someone actually said this, and I wrote a whole essay on something that’s already been confirmed and is common knowledge. I’ve barely scratched the surface, I can’t cover everything from a full college class in a Tumblr post, but I’ll add the class notes that relate. If you made it to down here, have a golden star. Thanks!