#Dream smp analysis

[appleflavoredkitkats]

there's something so meta abt the dsmp's narrative theme of legacy and how, slowly but surely, a lot of the fan content that helped develop the dsmp as a piece of media is disappearing. about how many of the characters in the dsmp do not remember where they came from, at the same time posts of what helped others understand the dsmp are being deleted one by one.

[clingyduoapologist]

The thing about c!tommy that’s so insane to me is that, well, he isn’t especially brave? Like he is never opposed to just running from a fight, he will scream and cry and plead and sob if tubbo pulls out an axe for like half a second. He is really not a paragon in any sense of the word.

AND YET PROTECTION AND FIGHTING IS LITERALLY ONE OF THE WAYS THAT HE SHOWS AFFECTION like if there is a mob hitting you and ctommy loves you that mob is going to die. If you want to hurt his friends he will bite you and claw your throat out. He is not a brave boy but he is a loving boy and I can gonna be sick

[yasminthespiritfaninnit]

I have one theory on why Tommy gets to be a damsel in fanfics a lot. (And why that is not stopping any time soon, thankfully.)

In canon, Tommy was a damsel. But he was never saved. Instead, he had to save himself *and* others. He was the one to reach out. He was the one who helps. He was the one who fought for others and tried his damn best to make sure they were safe.

Now, you might be thinking; *Didn’t Techno save Tommy from exile by taking him in?*

And to that, I say no.

Techno did provide shelter and defend Tommy from Dream. That was amazing. But that was always transactional. Techno offered Tommy (as the latter was walking away, I might add) a place to stay *if* he helped Techno with this plan to get his stuff back and do some “minor” terrorism.

Techno did not save Tommy. Tommy saved himself and then he and Techno made a deal.

Tommy was always the one who did the saving, even in the finale. He made the plan to use the discs to save himself and Tubbo. He made the plan to sacrifice himself to kill Dream and Punz. He extended a hand to Dream of all people.

He was a damsel who was forced to save others when he needed saving himself.

And that is why a lot of fanfic writers write that he has someone to rely on. Someone who steps in for him unconditionally when he needed help.

[pigeonstab]

Bedrock Bros lives on in my mind foreverrrrrr I love them so much. I love the mentor/annoying child duo it worked so well. And at that time it was exactly what c!Tommy needed. Fresh out of Exile where he'd been ready to give up on everything. There was so very little left of him, all of it conditioned out of him. (I'm probably gonna talk about the exile arc at some point just because it was my all time favorite part of the smp)

But it's his first act of rebellion (of maybe you could say anarchy) that led him to c!Techno. It's him choosing to disobey Dream that led him to the man (literal anarchy incarnate and if that doesn't work so well) that would help him reignite his spark and stoke the fire inside him once again.

And it hurts so much because in the end Techno and Tommy despite how well they work together differ in morals. Tommy thinks of the people he used to know, he believes in re-establishing L'manburg to get back what was ripped from him. And Techno believes only in the people he closely affiliates with, and his goal was to get rid of the establishment which twisted the people (the people Tommy is trying so desperately to get back) within it. So we've got two characters, one who seeks the order that once held his peers at their best and one who seeks to destroy the same order that changed them for the worst. It was bound to fail.

The worst was that they never spoke about it. Techno wanted to believe that Tommy was on his side so bad. He failed to see that Tommy was still so attached to the past. And then in destroying L'manburg a second time Techno sought to free them of that order (and also a bit of bloodlust and freebie terrorism in there but y'know it's Techno we're talking about here) but Tommy just couldn't understand. It left him with yet another gaping wound of loss. Maybe if they'd talked more. Maybe if Tommy was in better shape. Maybe, maybe, maybe. In the end the Smp was always about tragedy.

Discs analysis

C!Tommy analysis

[conarcoin]

i wrote a big thing for the dream smp analysis page on tv tropes about c!schlatt and c!connor

[mellorphic]

Tommy was the heart of L’Manberg.

He lived and died for it. He loved it longer than anyone else and was loyal to it regardless of the ways it failed him. He inspired the anthem and everything L’Manberg stood for, Tommy stood for too.

Tubbo was the body of L’Manberg.

He built L’Manberg. He built Manberg. He built New L’Manberg. Everyone else could give the nation everything they had, but it wouldn’t have existed without Tubbo. Not in the way that it did.

Wilbur was the mind of L’Manberg.

Without his ideas and without his dreams, L’Manberg never would’ve existed, and it never would’ve been a synonym for freedom or joy. There never would’ve been a deceleration or a war or an election or a nation without Wilbur to think of it. And he blames himself for its downfall because of this.

Fundy was the spirit of L’Manberg.

Fundy had lived in L’Manberg through all three of its administrations. He was born there. He pulled pranks on the nations people which made it what it was. And Fundy believed in L’Manberg and it’s message until the end of schlatt’s presidency. Then he lost all trust in it.

Niki was the soul of L’Manberg.

She fed the nation. She fought for it. She understood the vision of it. She loved the people inside of it for so long. She broke when it did. Niki gave up it lost its final life. Eventually she did move on.

All of them were L’Manberg. All of them lost L’Manberg. The country died, bit by bit, every time one of them lost faith in it.

[cdreamscumrag]

My favorite thing about c!dream is how people used to always be like “ugh this is his plan it’s all playing into his hands he’s a schemer” when like… do you know this guy? It’s cdream. He couldn’t scam his way out of a paper bag. “Oh he’s a master manipulator” ur litterally being more manipulated than anyone he ever talked to. “Oh exile was him trying to make Tommy his friend” dream was litterally just holding him there until the prison was done and it just so happened that Tommy is a freak who is obsessed with roleplaying disorders he doesn’t have for clout really wanted a sad boy arc was drawn in despite dream just trying to get him out of the way and dream was like “ah yes… surely this all informs my master plan.” Like he’s so stupid but he’s the narratives favorite so everything ended up working out anyway

[constellationofafox]

“I’m looking at you!” C!crime and Authority:

I was watching some old L’Manberg vods, and I came across a moment that is really interesting to look back on after Wilbur’s finale.

(All c! btw)

In Wilbur’s vod from September 3 2020, Wilbur and Tommy are standing on the wall, just talking casually about the events of the sever, when Tommy says, in a teasing way “Look at me when I’m talking.” to which Wilbur responds “Don’t tell me what to do.” and knocks him off the wall. Tommy rants at him while Wilbur just keeps repeating “Who’s the president?” over and over until Tommy relents. Notably, this is the same vod where Wilbur laments that nobody listens to him, calling back to the moment where Tommy ignored him when he was trying to negotiate with Dream, causing the duel to take place. I think it’s pretty cool that this silly little action at the start of the stream ties so seamlessly into what Wilbur has been feeling about his role in L’Manberg.

This dynamic isn’t confined to this moment either, Wilbur constantly, especially throughout this vod, but also at earlier times throughout the formation of L’Manberg, will order Tommy around, and Tommy usually ends up going along with it, even if he complains. Don’t misunderstand, they’re still on good terms and enjoying each other’s company, and a lot of this is very lighthearted, but their dynamic seemingly makes it harder for Tommy to get Wilbur to listen to him, as Wilbur often acts as the authority in the relationship. For someone as supposedly uncontrollable as Tommy, Wilbur seems to be pretty good at controlling him.

Now there’s Boundless Sands, where the dynamic is reversed, but in a less lighthearted way. Tommy is the one telling Wilbur off, specifically getting angry and yelling “Look at me!” Wilbur tries telling him to “calm down” but it’s not until Wilbur relents by saying “I’m looking at you!” and agreeing to talk that Tommy stops. That’s the line that came to mind after watching this earlier interaction, and thus inspiring me to make this post. Wilbur, in that moment, is listening to what Tommy wants. The implications of the fact that Tommy needed to pull out a sword to make that happen isn’t lost on me, but I think it’s a step forward for Wilbur that he stopped, listened, and did what Tommy asked him to, even when the threat had passed. I wonder if he realized in that moment just how much Tommy had changed. He wasn’t his right hand man anymore.

It’s... probably unintentional parallels, but it’s a sign of good storytelling regardless, I think, how their dynamic has realistically transformed through the years.

[appleflavoredkitkats]

i know we can all argue that any l'manbergian embodies the essence of l'manberg itself but there's a specific sense of poetry that comes to fundy's own toxic connection to l'manberg. i've mentioned before that he literally is meant to represent the ideologies wilbur had when founding l'manberg— peace, no violence, camaraderie— but if it were cranked up to a toxic level.

like. as violence becomes more prevalent and practically status quo in the dsmp, the more fundy fades into the background. quackity literally compares him to the structures in l'manberg fading away. and! and! he's the only one referred to as "from l'manberg" by charlie. not even wilbur or tommy gets referred to as l'manbergians!

and more! the last we see of fundy in general is 1.) when he kills himself by jumping into the l'manberg crater, and 2.) when he pops up in eret's stream donating schlatt's sword to the museum. after, he disappears. we don't know what happens to him!

like you guys. this man has been doomed by wilbur's promise of giving l'manberg to fundy. he will never be severed from it as long as he harbors that blind need for nationwide camaraderie that can never be achieved because no one but him believes in such anymore. fundy's l'manberg! he's always been l'manberg!

[clingyduoapologist]

The thing that will always stick in my mind about November 16th is that Wilbur wanted to hurt them. He wanted them to scream and feel betrayed and to curse his name and forget about him, because he didn’t want anyone to mourn. He wanted Tommy to hate him so much he forgot him. He wanted Tubbo to be president just long enough for the loss to tear him up. He would finally be slaying the beast, after all. He just had to make sure that they were all on the same page, that they knew that he was doing them a favor. He wanted to hurt them so badly, all because he didn’t want them to miss him…

[yasminthespiritfaninnit]

Hello everyone! I have something to say. I have seen some arguments that I didn’t like at all. But, I still respect everyone who made it.

So, Imma say my perspective.

Tommy didn’t deserve Exile or to be exiled at all.

Dream didn’t deserve to be tortured in prison or to be imprisoned without a fair trial.

I will detail what I mean the best that I can.

First, let’s start with Dream and the prison.

Dream was imprisoned, after Punz led the entire server to him, before he could kill Tubbo in front of Tommy.

Am I saying that he shouldn’t have been arrested? Hell no. His list of war crimes and atrocities against humanity at this point was and still is a mile long.

But the group failed to give Dream a fair trial to defend himself.

Instead, Tommy (after killing Dream twice as revenge for the two deaths that Dream committed against him. Note on that one, I completely understand Tommy’s rage. But killing Dream was not right, nor did it help anyone.) had Sam, (the warden) to imprison Dream after he claimed that he could revive Wilbur.

Neither Tommy or Sam or anyone here had the authority to imprison Dream. Especially not without a fair trial. But they did it anyways and that’s not right. Dream was unlawfully imprisoned against his will.

Now, the torture. Imma say it bluntly. It was 100% not Dream’s fault.

Quackity, who had no authority to do this, wanted the revive book.

Dream said no as he had the right to say that.

So, grossly abusing his rights as a visitor, Quackity started to torture Dream.

So, yeah.

And now, we get to Exile and Tommy.

Exile was an overreaction and rigged from the start. Plain and simple.

Was Tommy completely in the right for the conflict? No. (In order of least to most fucked up in my opinion.) He grief-ed and robbed George’s house, compared Tubbo to Schlatt, tried to frame Niki, and tried to use Dream’s dead horse against him.

But also, Exile was both a unfair punishment and one that was pushed so heavily.

Dream, (the main ring-leader for getting rid of Tommy from L’Manburg) provoked Tommy to make him look worse, pushed Tubbo into a corner about the topic, and tried to frame Tommy of many more griefing incidents (with the help of a unwitting Puffy.). He was pulling the strings when the real victim, George, didn’t even give two shits. Tommy’s damages were easily fixed and everything stolen was easily recovered.

Should Tommy be punished for griefing George? Yes. But he should have been put on probation and made to fix the damages (and recover the stolen property) to George’s house, not put through a rigged series of events that got him banned from his own home.

(And I have an extra argument for this part. Canon is canon. Just because nothing came of something doesn’t mean that it is not important. Tommy’s framing of Niki was immediately shut down. But he still tried instead of fessing up. Dream’s framing of Tommy didn’t seem to do much. But he still did that, showing that he was trying his hardest to get Tommy out of L’Manburg no matter what.)

And now, the exile itself.

It was 100% not Tommy’s fault. Nothing during exile was his fault and nothing was exaggerated by the fans.

Dream really did make Tommy throw his stuff down the hole to destroy it.

Dream really did beat Tommy with an axe if he mustered the tiniest rebellion.

Dream really did changed up his rules and the rules of Exile on a whim.

(For example, Tommy was only banned from L’Manburg. But when they got there, Dream told him that he couldn’t go *anywhere* that was established.)

Dream really did make sure that Tommy was dependent on him for everything.

And Dream really did all of this to control Tommy, to make him a protégé. (Cc!Dream confirmed this over Twitter.)

When people say that Exile was abuse, we didn’t exaggerate it. In fact, I think we didn’t do the horrors justice. Exile was torture as much as the prison was for Dream and Vice versa.

If anyone wants to discuss, please reblog this with your opinions or comment on this blog.

[yasminthespiritfaninnit]

LITERALLY THIS!

C!Tommy was not perfect by no stretch of the imagination and that is why people in the story and irl are still struggling with seeing his pain.

He was not perfect but he was also hurt. Abused even.

He was the opposite of the perfect abuse victim and that is why no one listened when he needed help. And that’s not his fault.

Victims don’t deserve to be shoved in tiny little boxes. They are people and they are imperfect.

hi yeah just… had another crisis about C!Tommy because…. Like, he was the worst possible victim? He was brash and loud and annoying and rude and exuberant and opinionated and inconsistent and inconsiderate and not that great at stuff. Like me. And nobody believed that people were treating him poorly, that he was suffering, that he was being traumatized because he was Still Like That. It woulda taken him loosing so much of his soul as to be unsalvageable before they noticed something was off, and honestly? They mighta viewed the new Tommy as better. He’s quieter, he’s more aware of the people around him, he’s quicker to help, not as likely to butt in where he isn’t wanted. and as someone who’s really, really similar to Tommy in a Lot of ways: …. Oh holy scud. Oh. Oh I get it. I get why nobody noticed. I get why they liked me better when I was suffering. I get why my parents put me in situations where I was in pain, because the aftermath made me easier to handle. I was Palatable when I was in pain, and nobody believed me when I said X or Y thing was hurting or traumatizing me, because I was Still Me, and that image of the Victim, the quiet broken child who backs down at the slightest hint of violence, was too big to look past. When someone raised their hand or their voice, I made fists and widened my feet. No wonder. No wonder. they made him a martyr, when he died. They spelled it out for us. Holy crap. They really went “here. Here is the true child abuse. Here is the people you ought to love and protect. They are hard to love and protect. They deserve it anyway. Here. Here is what people do to them when they die because no one believes them. Here is the symbol they become. Now here is what happens when they come back.”

[omegamoo]

one of my favorite parts of c!niki’s arc is manburg era because she was the person living in manburg who was most outwardly rebellious. she never stopped fighting - she made it clear that she hated the schlatt administration and everything they stood for, and so she fought back. she didn’t screw around with a “will-i-won’t-i” she just did. and i think people undersell that a lot, especially in favor of the pogtopian rebellion. but c!niki refuses to pay taxes, she sets fire to the manburg flag, she refuses to cater for schlatt and co. she doesn’t stop! when cschlatt exiles ctommy and cwilbur, she’s the one shouting about it. during the festival, she’s the one who shouts while ctubbo’s getting blown up and says from the beginning how much she hates the new country.

also the festival - if you watch the vod from your pov (which you totally should!!!!!) she just sits there and looks So Pissed Off the entire time. like she doesn’t hide how pissed of she is. she’s downright furious during that entire discussion!

and i think the most crucial part of all of this is what happens to her because of this. she is consistently belittled by c!schlatt - frequently in a “omg shut up”/“would somebody shut her up” in a way that feels like how somebody talks about a bug in the house. it’s misogynistic in many ways, i think - she’s consistently invalidated and overlooked, like her rebellion doesn’t even hold weight.

and then when she finally does more - i.e. the taxes - she’s literally hunted. and she runs, and calls c!wilbur, and she is terrified. and he says “can you just hold out a bit longer? pogtopia’s kinda full right now and we can’t take more people” and she’s like, actively unsafe in manburg and has nowhere to go and can’t go home. and she is told “just hold out a bit longer”

and then. the festival. again, she’s in the audience and watches tubbo get blown up and she’s shouting about it! like screaming at him! and finally c!schlatt is like “you’ve been a thorn in my side for too long” and he has ponk kill her! and she runs and he chases her and nobody follows to help, they just tell her to run. and she’s in the call w all of them and the conversation just moves on while she silently runs and silently gets killed. and that’s when she leaves for pogtopia.

anyways. point being: c!niki and overlooked rebellion.

[a-moth-called-mof]

You know the dsmp fandom had its several negatives but it's still one of my favourite fandom experiences of all time. It was so chaotic but it was so earnest. It felt like everything was some big fandom inside joke. It was so silly. It was poetic at times. I don't think I've ever seen a fandom with so much literary and metatextual analysis (though some have gotten close). It honestly is what got me into narrative analysis. I just love how some of us made jokes and we all ran with it. It was a mess at times but God it was so fun. DSMPblr. I will always love you.

[charles-simmons]

If there's something I love is seeing how people draw c!Tommy. Especially about his age.

Some people draw him with more childlike features. He looks younger, more "helpless" in a way. You can really see it's a child soldier. Someone who is not ready in any way to be in those situations, but is there anyway with a confident face and a loud voice. It's very visible he should not be there and how wrong it all is.

But other people draw him looking a bit older, looking more like someone who's soon to become an adult. In a way he looks less innocent, even when he's still the victim. He resembles Wilbur a bit more, and he doesn't look as helpless when next to Dream. But here's the thing, he's still a child soldier. He might act like he knows what he's doing, use big words, and act all powerful. And it's not that visible how wrong it all is, but it's still there.

You'll look at him and see this seventeen-ish years old guy, and, in a first glance, it won't feel as wrong. But when you really look at him, that's when you notice how vulnerable Tommy is. Surrounded by people who are more mature, more powerful, and who hate his guts. And you'll start to notice how easily influenced he can be, which seems unlikely for someone who always expresses what he thinks. And you'll start to notice he was never as ready as he says he was. And you'll start to notice how most of the messes he got himself into had completely disproportional consequences to him.

And after all of that, you'll look at him again, and maybe he even looks a bit older, but you can still see it. The child behind the loud voice and the bright smile, holding a sword that is just his size, but will always feel a bit too big for him.

[killin-kel]

second part of my Dream SMP character design analysis because a lot of people liked that in my animatic. and now it's Tommy's turn!

(you can find first part with Wilbur's design here)