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Fandom: Dream SMP Rating: Teen and Up Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Characters: Technoblade, Dream, Philza Status: complete Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, AU - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Caretaking, Platonic Affection, full tags contain spoilers

Summary:

Bamboos could die but the joints will stay Flowers could fall but the fragrance will linger - shao ye techno and dream aren't friends. they said it themselves. and then techno walks into a trap, surprised to find horrors he couldn't imagine and, even more impossibly, friendship. but that friendship is tested outside the prison, by techno's grief and dream's plan. can it survive? techno isn't sure but he has help.

link to fic

hi! i wrote a fic for the @dreblr-gen-big-bang! i hope everyone enjoys it. i want to thank @milder-manners for the amazing art that's in the fic and the banner for this post! <3 please check out their post here for the art in full size!

also please check out @mmumia's art! it's absolutely wonderful! click here to see it!

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Why do I feel like based on the security reset card and the secret books Dream gave Techno in prison, that the Revival Books were literally just books titled Revival Book that said, “revival book” inside….

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lol so much for sbi

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Truuuue… it’s so silly. :D Though to be fair, he is also a man of his word and has been underestimated, so to take his threats seriously isn’t the most unreasonable thing in general, but as you said it’s also ridiculous to take serious the wild things he says that are impossible, nonsensical, or unreasonable.

I think perhaps one of the reasons people do though is because of fear. That emotion clouds their judgment and Dream has done things they thought were insane before or more impossible and so perhaps it becomes that much harder to tell. I mean a lot of people question where Dream got all the obsidian for the walls around L’manberg and Wilbur in the first war completely dismisses Dream’s threat to blow it up “You don’t have the power or capacity to blow up L’manberg.” [26:46] minutes before his whole nation is blown to smithereens. Then there is like the staged finale fight where Tommy and Tubbo at first are under the impression it was a closer battle until Dream reveals he has xp bottles, potions, god apples and stuff… Dream is scary and a force to be reckoned with, to underestimate him is to end up with your country obliterated. And I’d almost say for as may times as people foolishly take his wild threats seriously, there are times when they haven’t and the result was devastating.

It’s not a surprise people take his threats seriously even if contextually it is ridiculous. Because Dream is a liar but he is also a man of his word, who abides by deals fairly and isn’t afraid to take extreme action.

However what people forget, perhaps in their fear, is that Dream is also calculated and logical and wouldn’t do something impossible or that doesn’t make sense. He’s not going to kidnap a baby to threaten and then kill Ranboo to get a prisoner to return to a cell when the prisoner doesn’t even care about Ranboo, cuz that doesn’t make sense. So, context is important to be able to tell the difference between threatening to put Skeppy in a cage and build an obsidian wall around your country. As with most things, it takes skill to be about to tell the difference between his bark and bite, a skill clearly many people don’t possess. And as you said it is perhaps one of the most fun things about him, that he can threaten to do impossible or implausible things and people take him seriously. :)

my favorite thing about c!dream is he says things that are clearly meant to be vague threats that he doesn't intend to follow through on or are impossible to follow through on and everyone, including the fandom, will take that at face value as if this guy doesn't have a long history of saying things like that.

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Well would you look at that?… Dream bringing up the prison as a means to deal with someone misbehaving… hmm

Like I’d search for the essays where I talked about this, but I can’t be bothered, consider this some proof though. :)

Oh wait nvm lol that’s why I made indexes, here:

🔹 Multiple reasons to commission a prison? ⬩ ⬩ ⬩

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yeah I think even though c!Tommy had a lot of visitors in exile, its all undermined because he still felt lonely and c!Dream had told him that people were only visiting him to see the place and encouraged c!Tommy to see the gifts as pity gifts but its a nice comparison you made regardless I think comparing the physical torment both faced it would be interesting, c!tommys was more spaced out and emotional based + the hits he took from cdreams weapons, c!dreams was daily and more extreme

[context]

{wrote this answer awhile ago, and was going to add to it a comparison of Exile and prison emotional and physical abuse data but due to recent events I’m finding it hard to watch exile streams so that analysis has been put on hold, but figured I could still post this answer.}

Look I'm not saying Dream isn't a good manipulator, because he certainly is, but from Day 1 even before Dream shows up to visit, Tommy is already moping and calling people's gifts pity gifts and stuff (like in that post the clip of Bad happens before Dream shows up for the first time). In fact, the more I rewatch Exile the more I wonder what would have happened if it had been someone else in Tommy's shoes? Would the situation seem as screwed up if the person was more resistant to the abuse and not falling apart on their own. Is that why there are people who see Dream as deserving of prison, and Exile as more emotionally damaging? I don't know, it's just a thought, is it Dream’s nonchalance that cuts into people's pity and empathy?...

It's actually something I've thought about a lot in the last year, because there is almost always something going wrong in my life and so I've kinda adapted this "is what it is" "this is fine" "I tried what more can I do" attitude of letting things roll off and just dealing with it and turning it into a funny story (sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying). It was actually highlighted a few weeks ago when my coworker was trying to stress to me how awful and cold it would be if my heat were to go out this winter. And I was like - "I am beyond aware, I lost my heat, hot water, and internet during a snow storm last year so I know exactly how miserable it is." and her face was just like 'oh... right' as if my anxiety and the words I'd been saying all week finally dawned on her. As if the lighthearted nature and attitude in which I shared those facts before undid the gravity of them.

It’s actually something I really noticed this summer when my sister in law was in a car accident and got a concussion. My parents were reasonably worried and like offering to come up and if they need to bring my brother and her food and stuff, and it caught me by surprise in a weird way. Not because I don't think she (and my brother) didn't deserve or need the help and sympathy, but because less than a year and a half after spending a week with covid in an apparment with broken air conditioning during heat advisory, I end up fainting while coming out of the shower as I was getting ready to finally go back to work... The crazy person I am, I was bleeding and still the thought in my mind was - 'I'll just stick a bandaid on it’ (I ended up with 7 stitches lol)... Anyways, long story short despite my concussion I pushed on through my second to last semester of engineering courses and hell even made Dean's List despite my struggling short memory, which might be one of my proudest achievements to be honest. And in hindsight as I observed people's care and concern for my sister in law and them asking if she needs to leave the room for the quiet and how long is she taking off work... etc, I realized just how kinda screwed up it was that I had to handle everything by myself. That no one was there to tell me to not use a screen right after getting a concussion and how I definitely should not have been tutoring or doing school the week after. I did it all by myself and pushed through, and I realized that I think because I didn't make it a big deal, it become not a big deal for them. Because I laughed about it and tell the story in a comical way, people don’t seem to understand just how hard it was. As if a concussion in itself isn’t terrible, period.

In the same way, Torture is terrible, period. Dream shouldn’t have to be pathetic for that fact to be true. He shouldn’t have to be broken, or say “yes sir,” we shouldn’t need any evidence but that fact alone. (Now obviously within the dsmp Minecraft medium it’s a little different but hopefully you get the point). The torture isn’t any less horrible if the character reacts by becoming submissive or fighting back. Torture isn’t any less horrible because of who it is on (something Dream tries to highlight to Sam in Daedalus). Torture is bad, it doesn’t matter if the reason was good or not it doesn’t matter if the victim shows how hurt they are or not. And yet, those facts change our perception of it. It is different to know someone was tortured than see them having a panic attack afterwards or their scars.

So then, would characters and we the audience still think Exile is as bad as it was, if the person who was exiled didn’t react the same. If their clothes weren’t falling apart. If they weren’t moping around and complaining. If the facts were the exact same, but the attitude of the character was different, how would it change how we saw Exile? Would we still see Exile as even comparable on any scale to Prison? If we saw all 82 of Quackity’s visits how would it change our perception? If Dream was too scared to hold an axe during jailbreak or if he cried in Punz’s arms right after, if he didn’t show such apathy when telling Sapnap or Foolish or Tommy about the torture, would it change how those characters felt about it? If Dream’s skin had clothes that we saw slowly deteriorating everytime we saw him in prison how would that change how we saw it? Or if Tommy’s clothes hadn’t changed, how would that change how we saw Exile?… yes exile was horrible, and yes it was abuse and screwed up. But also is part of why we see it as this big horrible thing because Tommy’s reaction to it. That’s not to say it wasn’t horrible or I’m trying to minimize the abuse, but also lots of horrible things happen on the dsmp. I mean Fundy committed suicide and I don’t see people getting as upset at Wilbur as they do Dream for Tommy’s almost suicide.

I don’t know, it’s just something I been thinking about. If Dream’s attitude to being tortured changed how characters and we saw it, and if in the same way, Tommy’s attitude changed how we saw Exile. If the roles were reversed or someone else was in Tommy’s place, (whether or not they are actually comparable), would anyone think they are even comparable in any aspect?

Sapnap: “What do you mean he was torturing you? Like literally torturing you?”

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I don’t know why, but I find it interesting how Dream is so many contrasting things…

Disney Princess & Villain

Good Guy & Bad Guy

Hero & Monster

Jesus & Devil

God & Lucifer

Duckling & Snake

Puppy & Lizard

Teletubby & Ghoul

Stripper & Ugly

Builder & Homeless

Tortured & Torturer

Prisoner & Warden

Test Dummy & Scientist

Control Freak & Agent of Chaos

Most Knowledgeable Person on the Server & Idiot

Doesn’t want to be Alone & Lone Woof

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Oh no I just realized… Dream being autistic means the bell Techno was ringing had to be like torture for him. Like talk about overstimulated. I think I’d kill Techno at some point to be honest if he was too annoying with it, because I cannot handle noise very well… but also just even the noise of the lava and guardians had to get annoying, though I suppose at some point you kinda get used to it. At first though, it probably made him miserable. And oh, the texture of the obsidian, and his jumpsuit, and a blood soaked jumpsuit, and his long hair and then dirty long hair would be awful. And then there’s the obnoxious lava light always shining with no reprieve (damn with a concussion it’d be even worse, yikes)… just wow Pandora is such a nightmare for people but for autistic people and our heightened senses it really would be hell in of itself… at that point, who wouldn’t jump in the lava to erase, even if just for a second, the feelings of all the textures around him. A few warm seconds of silent dark bliss before he respawns.

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Sometimes I wonder if we give too much credit to Dream for knowing things he doesn’t. If perhaps we sometimes assume he knows what we know. It’s something I often find frustrating with the takes on Dream being obsessed with Tommy, because a lot of times they require Dream to have this knowledge about things like the intricacies of Tommy’s and Wilbur’s relationship. I think we can forget that while we get to see the moments of them together and their dynamic, Dream isn’t getting that. Dream doesn’t get to see what we see. How much did he know about Tommy’s declining mental health during Exile? Sure Tommy certainly shows it while Dream is there, but Dream tries to cheer him up and perhaps afterwards he goes home and thinks it’s fine. He isn’t there to see the moments when Tommy wakes up in the ocean trying to drown himself. We, the audience, get to see some of these sad monologues that Dream doesn’t. In other words, I wonder how far Dream actually knew he was pushing Tommy towards the edge, if maybe he didn’t know it was to the point of suicide. In the finale, Tommy says something along the lines of ‘why driving me to kill my self makes sense’ with the assumption that that was Dream’s goal, but I hardly think it was.

How about the staged finale, a lot of times it is assumed that Punz and Dream did experiments prior to it as a fail safe in case something happened to Dream. Which isn’t an unreasonable conclusion to make by any means, but it is based on the fact that he assumed Tommy might kill him permanently. And I’m starting to wonder if maybe he didn’t. If maybe just like with the Sam he underestimated people’s loathing for him. Maybe he didn’t think it would go that far. Maybe having the book was his fail safe without even knowing if it works. Maybe just how he underestimated how a majority of new L’manberg was ready to go to war just with him, just how he underestimated Sam’s betrayal, just how he underestimated George’s response to being dethroned, just how he underestimated Sapnap’s response to his speech and Berkerson on the wall, just how he underestimated even Tommy and Tubbo in the finale, he underestimated the staged finale too.

Maybe he isn’t as smart and well planned as we thought. Maybe he doesn’t have the foresight to predict things like we thought. Maybe his plans weren’t as well planned as we thought. Maybe he’s more emotional, more impulsive, more naive than we thought. Maybe every time they went above his expectations of loathing, it shocked and horrified him a little more. Maybe that horror pushed him to make impulsive plans where he thought he considered all the variables but underestimated them yet again. Maybe he didn’t know how much they hate him because he wasn’t there when they talked about him. Maybe he didn’t know how much he hurt them because he wasn’t there when they had to put the pieces back together. Maybe he wasn’t this mastermind but just a guy, grasping at straws, trying to make plans with the incomplete information he has…

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I'm rereading old transcripts to work on a fic, and

Dream: Well- … Because- … Well, Technoblade doesn’t like government and then… everyone else… just hates… m- me? And then therefore they don’t like you.

I do still think it's funny/sweet that c!Dream separates out c!Technoblade's attempted murder (actually just hates government) and literally everyone else (just hates c!Dream personally). Rivals Duo prevails even when discussing attempted murders on c!George

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omg how could I forget smell and taste and texture lol. Like how bad his BO and blood and such smelled. How bad blood and raw potatoes taste and their texture… just such sensory suffering to be honest… poor Dream…

Oh no I just realized… Dream being autistic means the bell Techno was ringing had to be like torture for him. Like talk about overstimulated. I think I’d kill Techno at some point to be honest if he was too annoying with it, because I cannot handle noise very well… but also just even the noise of the lava and guardians had to get annoying, though I suppose at some point you kinda get used to it. At first though, it probably made him miserable. And oh, the texture of the obsidian, and his jumpsuit, and a blood soaked jumpsuit, and his long hair and then dirty long hair would be awful. And then there’s the obnoxious lava light always shining with no reprieve (damn with a concussion it’d be even worse, yikes)… just wow Pandora is such a nightmare for people but for autistic people and our heightened senses it really would be hell in of itself… at that point, who wouldn’t jump in the lava to erase, even if just for a second, the feelings of all the textures around him. A few warm seconds of silent dark bliss before he respawns.

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Oh no I just realized… Dream being autistic means the bell Techno was ringing had to be like torture for him. Like talk about overstimulated. I think I’d kill Techno at some point to be honest if he was too annoying with it, because I cannot handle noise very well… but also just even the noise of the lava and guardians had to get annoying, though I suppose at some point you kinda get used to it. At first though, it probably made him miserable. And oh, the texture of the obsidian, and his jumpsuit, and a blood soaked jumpsuit, and his long hair and then dirty long hair would be awful. And then there’s the obnoxious lava light always shining with no reprieve (damn with a concussion it’d be even worse, yikes)… just wow Pandora is such a nightmare for people but for autistic people and our heightened senses it really would be hell in of itself… at that point, who wouldn’t jump in the lava to erase, even if just for a second, the feelings of all the textures around him. A few warm seconds of silent dark bliss before he respawns.

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Sometimes I wonder if we give too much credit to Dream for knowing things he doesn’t. If perhaps we sometimes assume he knows what we know. It’s something I often find frustrating with the takes on Dream being obsessed with Tommy, because a lot of times they require Dream to have this knowledge about things like the intricacies of Tommy’s and Wilbur’s relationship. I think we can forget that while we get to see the moments of them together and their dynamic, Dream isn’t getting that. Dream doesn’t get to see what we see. How much did he know about Tommy’s declining mental health during Exile? Sure Tommy certainly shows it while Dream is there, but Dream tries to cheer him up and perhaps afterwards he goes home and thinks it’s fine. He isn’t there to see the moments when Tommy wakes up in the ocean trying to drown himself. We, the audience, get to see some of these sad monologues that Dream doesn’t. In other words, I wonder how far Dream actually knew he was pushing Tommy towards the edge, if maybe he didn’t know it was to the point of suicide. In the finale, Tommy says something along the lines of ‘why driving me to kill my self makes sense’ with the assumption that that was Dream’s goal, but I hardly think it was.

How about the staged finale, a lot of times it is assumed that Punz and Dream did experiments prior to it as a fail safe in case something happened to Dream. Which isn’t an unreasonable conclusion to make by any means, but it is based on the fact that he assumed Tommy might kill him permanently. And I’m starting to wonder if maybe he didn’t. If maybe just like with the Sam he underestimated people’s loathing for him. Maybe he didn’t think it would go that far. Maybe having the book was his fail safe without even knowing if it works. Maybe just how he underestimated how a majority of new L’manberg was ready to go to war just with him, just how he underestimated Sam’s betrayal, just how he underestimated George’s response to being dethroned, just how he underestimated Sapnap’s response to his speech and Berkerson on the wall, just how he underestimated even Tommy and Tubbo in the finale, he underestimated the staged finale too.

Maybe he isn’t as smart and well planned as we thought. Maybe he doesn’t have the foresight to predict things like we thought. Maybe his plans weren’t as well planned as we thought. Maybe he’s more emotional, more impulsive, more naive than we thought. Maybe every time they went above his expectations of loathing, it shocked and horrified him a little more. Maybe that horror pushed him to make impulsive plans where he thought he considered all the variables but underestimated them yet again. Maybe he didn’t know how much they hate him because he wasn’t there when they talked about him. Maybe he didn’t know how much he hurt them because he wasn’t there when they had to put the pieces back together. Maybe he wasn’t this mastermind but just a guy, grasping at straws, trying to make plans with the incomplete information he has…

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I don’t know why, but I find it interesting how Dream is so many contrasting things…

Disney Princess & Villain

Good Guy & Bad Guy

Hero & Monster

Jesus & Devil

God & Lucifer

Duckling & Snake

Puppy & Lizard

Teletubby & Ghoul

Stripper & Ugly

Builder & Homeless

Tortured & Torturer

Prisoner & Warden

Test Dummy & Scientist

Control Freak & Agent of Chaos

Most Knowledgeable Person on the Server & Idiot

Doesn’t want to be Alone & Lone Woof

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Hi! I wanted to ask, from the characthers You have draw, what was the process in making their designs like with cpunz's? I'm really curious bc they all look really cool :D

Ooo yea I would love to talk about him and my design process. In fact, here is the 100 hours of me making Punz [post] reduced to 30 seconds (apologies for the part you can’t tell what I’m doing I like to work with no background a lot which defaults to black apparently.)

So as you can see, because I am not that good of an artist I use a lot of references mostly trying for real photos versus other people's art. I'll trace different elements from them and then change and alter, just so that I have a starting place, scale and general shape. I also use a shit ton of layers, laying different textures on top of each other as well as colors and such. As you can also tell I change my mind a lot but the foundation of the design was because it doesn’t feel right for these characters to be swinging around swords and fighting wars and such while just wearing hoodies. Like if this was a tv show that doesn’t really fit the vibe. Plus I made Dream look really epic [art] so for Punz I wanted to do the same thing so he can look like the bad ass necromancer mercenary he is with more of an assassin knight vibe than a comfy gamer lol.

[here's my art with removed purpled highlights so you can see some of the details better]

So just like with Dream, all of the elements of his skin are included in the drawing in one way or another, as well as Minecraft, skin and real life colors. His hoodie is now a white cloak, the stripes on the side of his hoodie are now stripes on the armor plate, his gold metal is now the gold pendant for his cloak and he is just wearing ripped black pants because that’s cool and I didn’t feel the need to change that :D 

One of biggest changes I made is background. I originally drew him much further away from the portal but the perspective wasn’t right so I ended up moving him to right in front of it with the portal magic like blowing his cape a bit.  I also was going to try and do the redstone lamps but I couldn't get it to look right and I realized it would make my highlighting process super annoying so I settled for some marble tiles.

Originally, I was going to make his metal one of the gold chains [right image] you see on medieval priests or the queen in GOT, but decided that was hard to show with the sword and took away the space I had to do armor details. Additionally, on his skin his hands and boots are also white, so I did white boots and was planning on him wearing white gloves [middle image], but I also wanted him to look really rich and liked the look of all the rings so decided against the gloves because it looked weird. (btw as you can tell from my recent art [art], I have improved on drawing hands quite a bit since this artwork :D). His skin shirt is also all white but I thought it’d look cool if his clothes where like white and blue gradients [middle image], not that you can really tell once all the shading happens lol. His is armor changed quite a bit too, because at some point I was going to make it kinda honeycombish [left image] (because Dream had a snake theme so I felt like Punz should have a theme too, hence bees) but that ended up being too busy and I didn’t like how that would be so complex versus Dream’s more simple looking armor. 

Like I wanted them to exist in the same world so even the way and colors I did the armor in the Dream drawing I did in this one. Because, that was the main reason I made him, so there could be a badass looking Punz to go with my badass looking Dream. :)... thinking about doing a badass looking Techno too but we'll see.

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I'm sorry to say it but post-prison c!Dream absolutely wears black.

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[part 1] - [part 2]

I gotta get out of here

maybe if I get some dirt I can go through the lava...

oops almost missed that jump

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I can just dig around....

FREEDOM!

right lets get rid of this garbage and get the hell out of here...

runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun........

was it ever an egg?...........

maybe it was just making us hallucinate to see an egg?.......

maybe.... maybe its not vines spreading throughout the server…

maybe it’s been the mushrooms polluting the air to make us all see a big red egg when it was actually a big mushroom this whole time.........

huh... or.... or..............

welp it's official I've been playing too much and the shrooms have gotten to me...

I need to go touch grass...