#tommy in this is an unreliable narrator btw

[livwritesstuff]

Tommy POV, wc: 2890, full version on ao3

Tommy Hagan is not jealous of Eddie Munson.

He’s not.

There’s nothing to be jealous of, in his opinion, and Tommy probably wouldn’t be thinking about him at all if Eddie wasn’t the most publicly well known member of his graduating class – well, he hadn’t actually been in his graduating class, Tommy supposes.

They had been seniors at the same time, though.

If Tommy happened to be jealous of anything – and that’s a big if – it would probably have something to do with the famous thing. Everyone has a small part of them that wants to be famous at least in some capacity, he’s pretty sure, even if Eddie isn’t really, truly famous – not like the red carpet celebrities. He’s a writer. Even the most well known writers never get all that much attention, but Munson has his own Wikipedia page, and that’s more than anybody else from Hawkins, Indiana can say. Hawkins itself barely even has a Wikipedia page, and it’s only because of all the atrocities that happened in town in the mid-eighties.

Tommy hadn’t been around for the end of it all – the earthquake-slash-serial killer situation that never made any sense to him. He remembers his mom calling him at his college dorm when the deaths first started. He remembers her asking, “You went to school with that Munson boy, right? Do you think he could do something like this?”

And Tommy had been twenty and a total moron, so he’d said some dumb shit like, “Yeah, he’s into freaky stuff like that. Somebody should’ve put him on a list ages ago,” even though four years of experience told him that Eddie was all bark, no bite. Tommy hadn’t been surprised at all by the statements that later came out clearing Eddie's name, and by then his parents had already high-tailed it out of Hawkins so it all sort of became irrelevant to him.

Tommy never even returned to Hawkins one single time after he left for college (barring his high school reunion, obviously), and twenty years after graduation, he doesn’t really think about those years all that much.

He doesn’t love the person he’d been in high school. He was whiny and immature and had his priorities all messed up. Most of the memories he has of his teenage years, he looks back at and cringes, feels a whole lot of shame and embarrassment, but also some pride at how much he’s grown over the last twenty years. He also knows he’d been kind of a dick in high school, but that he’s less ashamed of. It’s normal, he knows, for kids to be mean, that it’s a standard response to being untreated kindly in other ways. Like, his dad had been an asshole to him as a kid, always on him about his grades and his smart mouth and how he’d no longer been a standout on any of his sports teams after starting high school, and Tommy had coped with that by poking kids beneath him at school. 

It’s just the pecking order of high school. It’s normal.

Even now, when Tommy’s son had dealt with some pricks in the year above him shoving him around, he had come home from school and tormented his little sister for a while – it’s normal, no matter how much his wife had tried to convince him it was something that needed addressing. It’s just kids being kids. They grow out of it eventually, just like Tommy had.

Occasionally he wonders where the kids he’d spent all those years with in the Hawkins public school system had ended up, but these days the internet makes that pretty damn easy to figure out.

He’s learned Tina got married and had kids real young. She still lives in Indiana. Carol, who he’d split up with before heading off to college, lives in Alabama now and she’s got kids and a husband too. Jonathan Byers is a photographer in California – Tommy isn’t into all that art-y crap, so he has no clue if he’s any good, but he definitely recognizes some of the organizations he’s worked for and if that’s any indication, Tommy would wager he’s not too shabby. No wife, though, he noted, so he’d either been right about Byer’s being a queer, or women just found him repulsive (admittedly, Tommy leans more towards the former – he’s a photographer). Tammy Thompson still lives in Tennessee, though it doesn’t seem like she does music anymore (husband, kids, blah blah blah). 

If he’s honest, the only person Tommy is actually interested in tracking down is Steve Harrington, and he’s the one person Tommy can’t find a single trace of online. No MySpace, no Facebook, no weird blog thing, nothing.

Vaguely, he wonders if Steve might be dead. A truly massive proportion of Hawkins had died over just a few short years in the mid-eighties. Maybe Harrington was one of them.

Tommy doubts it. 

He would have known. 

Steve’s parents would have made sure everyone knew if their son had died. Funnily enough, Steve’s mom is actually on Facebook, and pretty actively too, but there’s no sign of Steve anywhere on her page. 

He hadn’t even shown up for their high school reunion in the winter of ‘04, which is odd because Tommy had been certain he would.

He doesn’t obsess over it – he really doesn’t. It’s just a thought that pops into his mind every now and then – where the hell is Steve Harrington?

In the late spring of 2007, he gets his answer.

“Tom,” his wife says, “That guy from your high school is on the cover of this magazine.”

He knows without asking for clarity that it’s Munson – no other person makes sense – and when he eventually gets his hands on the magazine, he finds that he’s correct.

Eddie Munson is on the cover of a magazine because, apparently, he published another book. 

Truthfully, Tommy already knew that. 

It’s his fourth book (which, for the record, Tommy hadn’t known until he knew it because it’s not like he’s keeping tabs on this guy or whatever), and it’s been getting a whole bunch of mainstream attention after a controversial landing on the top of all those book charts Tommy doesn’t follow despite featuring a gay love store amidst all his normal fantasy crap. It sparked a whole debate about banning books and everything (dumb, Tommy knows, because if he learned anything in business school it’s that if you really don’t want something to exist, the best thing you can do is not funnel money and attention into it). 

Tommy does, in fact, watch the news so he’d already caught wind of all this – it’s part of the reason he can’t shake the guy – and it’s why Eddie Munson is on the cover of this magazine (because, seriously, nobody gives a shit about writers until it hits the news).

He allows himself a moment to look at the cover, to look at Eddie, who apparently goes by Ed now. Tommy is loath to admit it, but he looks good. His hair is normal and he’s grown into his frame, not all long and lanky and gangly limbs like Tommy remembers from school. He looks well-fed, confident, happy.

He looks good.

Tommy thumbs through the first few pages of the magazine until he reaches Eddie’s interview, and, again, he allows himself to look over the photo of him that takes up nearly three-quarters of the first page even if he has no intention of actually reading the article itself because, again, Eddie looks good (and maybe there’s something about the scruff of facial hair along his jaw that Tommy's eye gets stuck on). Tommy’s allowed to say that men look good when it’s true – it’s 2007, as his wife likes to remind him whenever it’s convenient for her, and if she’s allowed to say that Angelina Jolie looked good in that CIA movie, then Tommy is allowed to say that Eddie Munson looks good here.

When Tommy flips to the next page, he’s met with a photo that stops him in his tracks, has his feet frozen to the floor because –

Jesus Christ, that’s Steve Harrington.

Fuck, okay, so he’s reading this fucking article.

It takes Tommy a long time to get through it, honestly. Eddie comes out in the article, which might be a big deal, might not (and he doesn't care to be enlightened, thanks). He keeps getting distracted by the pictures scattered throughout it.

The pictures of Steve, mostly.

Because, well, if Eddie Munson looks good, Steve…

Steve looks alive.

Tommy didn’t realize it until this exact moment, but Steve had existed in his head for the last two decades as the eighteen-year-old he’d been the last time they were in the same room together. It hadn’t exactly occurred to him that Steve’s been aging this whole time too, just like Tommy has.

It’s undeniable that Steve is older. 

His hair is starting to go gray at his temples (it’s the only thing that’s changed about his hair since he’s still styling it the same as he did in high school – because why mess with a good thing, Tommy supposes) and he’s got just the hint of crow's feet around his eyes when he smiles. He’s smiling in all the photos – every damn one – and it has Tommy struck by how unbelievably happy Steve seems. It’s an effect that somehow both takes years off the age Tommy knows he is and shines a light on just how good those years must have been for him. 

There’s no solo shots of him like there are for Munson – though according to the article, it's actually Harrington now – and only half the photos are in color. The rest of them – the more candid ones – are smaller and left in black-and-white. 

The one that caught Tommy’s eye first – because it was meant to, he’s pretty sure; it takes up half the page – is right in that sweet spot between staged and candid where Steve and Eddie both know that they’re being photographed even though neither of them are actually posing. Eddie is grinning at Steve in a wicked way that still feels familiar to Tommy even two decades since he’d last seen it on him (probably swaggering around the cafeteria like a total jackass – not that Tommy would know anything about that). Steve is grinning right back at him with a smile Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

Or maybe he has, but not on this version of his face, not since Steve was as young as his oldest daughter.

Just as the author of the article said, the photos don’t show the faces of Steve’s children, either leaving them artfully out-of-focus or choosing shots where they’re turned away from the camera, but they’re still present, and it makes the whole spread almost feel like a photo album in a way, like it should be private but instead was published for the whole world to see.

Steve has three of them – kids, Tommy means. He didn’t know that Steve was a family kind of guy. It makes sense though, when he thinks about it. Steve’s parents were kind of a nightmare — present in the worst ways, and absent in the worst ways too (though it hadn’t seemed that way when Tommy was a teenager looking for a failsafe party house). He'd always felt kind of bad for the guy. Like, Tommy's dad had been a total piece of work, but they'd at least been around, and he'd stuck around long enough for them to sort out their issues at least most of the way, and these days he's a pretty kickass grandpa to Tommy's children.

Tommy wonders about Steve's parents now, wonders if they maybe came around like his own parents had, but then he remembers Mrs. Harrington's Facebook page and how there's not a damn trace of her son on there, never mind three grandchildren.

Tommy isn't sure he wants to touch that.

Steve is probably a really good dad, Tommy decides. He’d been kind of that way when they were friends — Steve used to say he wasn’t all that bright, but he always had a freaky sixth sense for reading people, for caring about them in exactly the way they needed.

There's one photo where Steve is managing to holding his youngest daughter — a tiny little baby still — and her bottle in one arm (that's a level-three dad hold, Tommy knows). The bottle is angled in a way that obscures her face, and Steve's other hand is being tugged on by another daughter, this one with a mop of curly brown hair remarkably similar to Eddie's when it was still long.

That's another thing Tommy won't let himself think about, (because he knows if did he'd start wondering if any of those kids were half-Steve).

Anyways, Tommy doesn't need glance to see that Steve wears fatherhood like a favorite sweater.

There’s something about this, about seeing these pictures, about the way Tommy is getting an answer to that question he’s had for years about where his childhood best friend has been all these years, that is making him feel like his ribcage is being split open, bones splintering and shattering as everything vulnerable inside his chest in suddenly out for display.

He probably should feel uncomfortable, right? Like, a guy he’d been seriously close to growing up — sleepovers and gym locker rooms and all that shit — had turned out to be gay. If his own son came home from school saying that his best friend came out or whatever as gay…well, again, it’s 2007, and Tommy doesn’t think his wife would allow him to denounce the friendship entirely, but there certainly wouldn’t be any sleepovers anymore. He thinks that’s pretty reasonable.  

What was the likelihood that Steve had been, like, into Tommy?

And that should be an uncomfortable notion too, and in a sense, it kind of is, but not necessarily in the way he would expect. 

He just doesn’t understand why all this feels so much like a loss because he knows that he hasn’t really lost anything – not since he got his hands on the magazine, anyways. Steve Harrington hasn’t played any sort of role in Tommy’s life since their final falling out in 1984, and as far as he’s aware, having a falling out with a close friend is pretty much a guaranteed part of growing up. His wife even experienced something similar when her own grade school best friend suddenly stopped answering calls and stopped reaching out after they’d started college – and his wife is basically the nicest person Tommy has ever known, so…it happens to even the best.

It’s just…Steve had always continued to exist in Tommy’s life in a way, even if he wasn't physically present, and maybe Tommy had figured it could be the same for Steve too, that maybe he sometimes wonders where Tommy is, wonders what he’s up to.

This article and these photos makes it pretty fucking clear that Tommy doesn’t even exist in the same galaxy as the life Steve is living.

And that’s not to mention the Eddie fucking Munson of it all.

Tommy had been kind of ignoring the Eddie of it all until he couldn’t ignore it anymore, because he doesn't care about Eddie Munson.

He'd never cared, but he'd spent years seeing the guy's face and his name everywhere, and now it feels like a sick joke, like he's the piece of Steve left in Tommy's life.

If the article is accurate (and he has no reason to believe it isn’t), Steve and Eddie have been together for longer than Tommy has even known his wife. Steve has been with Eddie for longer than Steve was ever friends with Tommy – not by a lot, but still more. That’s a long fucking time, and it’s clear as day on both of their faces that they’re just as in love with each other fourteen years in as they were on day one.

It’s not just Steve, and it’s not just Eddie, and it’s not one more than the other. It’s both of them.

There’s one photo in particular – a small black-and-white one that keeps pulling Tommy’s attention.

It’s another candid shot, taken from a bit of a distance. In it, Steve has Eddie boxed in against the counter in what has to be their kitchen. Eddie is leaning back against the edge of the granite countertop and looking at Steve with something sappy and fond on his face, and Steve’s hands are this close to grabbing Eddie’s waist as he looks at him the exact same way.

It’s shit out of a fairy tale or something, and sure, maybe someone could argue that they’re laying it on thick just for the sake of the magazine or whatever, but Tommy knows Steve Harrington and that look on his face is more real than Tommy had ever seen in all the years he'd known him.

So maybe Tommy has a reason or two (or three or four) to be jealous of Eddie Munson.

[charles-simmons-fanfiction]

I LOVE THIS QUESTION! Dw, I'll explain!! @thatrandomfandom

Dream smp, basically, is a minecraft roleplay server with its own story. Every character gets to tell the story through their own point of view, so depending on who you chose to watch you'll experience the same events completely different, bc every characters perceives things differently (like an unreliable narrator, but you can hear all the sides!!). Some parts and POVs happen on minecraft, which is a very simplified media for storytelling, and some of them were recorded/animated or even written (literally canon content, but posted on ao3 by the creator!)

It has three seasons of lore (if you like Hamilton or history, you'll like it from the start), and LOADS of fanon content, seriously!

One of the main reasons I love dsmp is that most of its content it's about platonic love. Two traumatized brothers who will hurt each other in every way and still can't let go. Three child soldiers who will clingy tightly to each other even after every war. Two anarchist old friends who would give the world to each other. It's perfect. It's rare to find fandoms with this much focus on the platonic relationships and not treat them as "less", y'know?

Dsmp is also great for its amazing AUs and fanfics!! Like Passerine or Tommy's Clinic for Supervillains, which became so famous people made physical copies of it!

Anyway, this got a little long and you probably wanted a short answer, so my bad. I just love this story so much! I love how there are no villains or heroes, and how morally gray and truly complex the characters were, and how realistic it felt despite being literal minecraft?? Like, it's awesome!! And btw, thanks for asking, I never miss out on a chance to talk about dsmp! <333

[bonesandthebees]

So guess who just finished the newest Stars chapter? You weren’t kidding when you said we would have a field day. Where the fuck am I supposed to start, Bee?!? There’s so much. And it was so satisfying to read. I’m gonna start by gushing about the unreliable narration. Because it’s been such a wild ride and you finally pulled back the curtain a little.

Because technically we should know right? Of course Ranboo is reporting back to Techno. Wilbur spends most of his time there believing it. And you lead us along this road of believing Tommy is being dumb by giving him the benefit of the doubt and thinking Ranboo is his friend and just a kid.

And then Wilbur gets more and more paranoid to the point of not trusting Tommy or himself. And Tommy is fighting his paranoia at every turn so you think maybe it is just paranoia, maybe there’s nothing there. And Wilbur starts to trust more and Aimsey calls him out and Ranboo said he just wanted to be friends while he’s still so damn noisy.

But you think maybe, just maybe, it’s just that, especially last chapter cuz this chapter he’s being noisy again and a little more suspicious which is part of the foreshadowing. Learning that Tommy also thinks he’s noisy and tells him off makes him more suspicious because if he’s trying to figure Wilbur out, why is he still pushing Tommy?

Jack fits in great with this too btw. Because he’s a guard and Wilbur knows he has orders and reports back. But then Jack reveals that he doesn’t and Wilbur trusts him. And there’s transparency there. And Jack and Wilbur are friend so I do still think Jack genuinely doesn’t report back but congrats on having me doubt it anyway. So if Jack has the order Ranboo might also have the order, but he’s not a guard. And if Jack can decide not to do it because of his friendship with Wilbur, Ranboo could do the same with Tommy.

But he didn’t.

-🌲

Okay spruce my flight boards in 6 min so I’m not gonna get through nearly as many of your asks as I thought lol but I’ll try to get through at least 1-2!

Unreliable narration my beloved <3 I feel like so many writers don’t realize how far they can go with it unless they’re going extreme with unreliable narration. If you’re in a single characters head, the perspective is gonna be skewed. But as readers we forget that because that one voice is our only insight into the world.

From the beginning, Wilbur suspected Ranboo. But then Wilbur’s POV gets questioned, and he starts second guessing himself so his POV changes to reflect that. Signs of suspicious from Ranboo are ignored or downplayed in the narration because that’s Wilbur tamping down on his inner paranoia.

I wanted to try and make Ranboo’s nosiness something that could almost just be seen as a character trait of his. Because in the dsmp, c!Ranboo is a centrist who likes hearing all sides of things. And I wanted to use the readers impressions of c!Ranboo against them, but not in a way that was ooc for c!ranboo. In my opinion, this is still fairly in character with c!ranboo’s people pleasing tendencies and his spineless, hypocritical nature. He’s not tricking Tommy out of malice. It’s because he wants to prove himself and make sure Techno likes him. But a lot of the fandom I think has a skewed view of c!ranboo and perceives him as a lot nicer or more genuine than he really is, so I wanted to take advantage of that and make readers think stars!Ranboo was like that. Genuine, sweet, if a bit awkward. So unreliable narration plus the medium of this being fanfic itself really helped with my trickery :)

Exactly! Jack can find a way around his orders, so Ranboo 100% could too. With the reveal, I wanted to emphasize that Ranboo has a CHOICE. He doesn’t have to do this. Techno even gives him an out! But he insists. This wasn’t something he was bullied into. It’s something he just doesn’t view as that bad because he’s a hypocritical lil guy

[dreamhot]

just wanna say htat I loved the finale, I did watch it. But I'm still confused ccdream said that ctommy always saw cdream as a bad guy, but he didn't? c!tommy tried to befreind c!dream in pogtopia arc and they did the pet war thing and burnt down a tower together which btw c!dream said 'im not on ur sdie i just like chaos' which contradicts his apparent hate for chaos. So I'm just confused by that and also why ctommy was blamed for everything, even tho everyone griefed and stole :/

i have it on good authority from my lorehead friends to blame pretty much everything on c!wilbur so i'm gonna go with that

truthfully tho i'm no early lore expert (or a lore expert at all, really), so i can't give you a clear answer here. suffice to say that much of c!discduo's opinions on one another were the result of their respective framing of one another as opposing forces - which was helped in no small part by c!wilbur, on both ends. not to say there wasn't just cause for that animosity Obviously, but you could attribute some of the variable stances on just ... the complexity of the dynamic & how external forces might have been influencing things, y'feel me? not to mention structure considerations like unreliable narrators etc etc it's just not a simple thing to break down

[solarwhick]

replaced.

[fridgeza]

tommy playlists: au, duo, canon and otherwise

when you leave the prison, there is no one there to welcome you out. there is no one who treats you like you are normal. there is no one

you take a page out of ghostbur’s book and forget the bad times. you look back at it with rose tinted glasses, and wish for it. you weren’t happy then and you aren’t happy now, but it’s easy to pretend

stuck on a deserted island with a green shithead god / stuck in a prison with a green shithead prisoner (still a god tho btw)

you and your bestie, you know, before it fell apart

you are a sleepless child president and no one notices. this shit sucks.

having fun with ur friends during the apocalypse and then remembering ‘oh fuck its the apocalypse, we should probably unpack our trauma’ and then you dont

princes of the antarctic empire

younger brothers and longer nights

you said family went to war

this was home

the ranch

hoglin tommy

[blown-to-kingdom-come]

btw c!wilbur's entirely an unreliable narrator with regards to c!primeboys's relationship he still seems to think that what still ties c!tommy to c!dream is purely l'manberg and the discs. this is the end of c!primeboys in c!wilbur's eyes but not in c!dream's eyes. he made it very clear he didn't care about the discs anymore over a year ago. he dangles c!tommy's life above his head, threatening to take it away at any given moment. he can threaten the lives of the people c!tommy cares about. the sentiments that the discs held mean nothing to anyone except c!tommy and c!tubbo anymore. when c!dream was looking at c!tommy before he burned the discs, it wasn't to see if his face showed them to be authentic. it was to see the look of horror, anguish and betrayal on his face. he was toying with him, holding off until the very last second before c!wilbur would burn himself to death before throwing those discs away.

and i know this because there was no reason for c!dream to burn those discs if they truly meant something to him still, cause he could just revive c!wilbur again. those discs are irreplaceable. all they were to c!dream anymore were an asset to emotionally torture c!tommy with.

the sentiment that he was a traitor to l'manberg, and c!wilbur was its true ruler, meant nothing to c!dream either. the words in that book he wrote were just words to him. l'manberg was long gone. to c!dream, that chapter of his life had closed on doomsday, when he ran that country into bedrock.

nothing was achieved in that prison, but c!wilbur doesn't know that, because he wasn't there to see c!dream walk away from the sentimental value that l'manberg and the discs had had on him.

[dogin8]

Somebody said about how "Anyone can be your protagonist depending on who you watch" (Amen btw) and that made me take a look at how unreliable narrators and dramatic irony make it so that the story of the server is actually different depending on who you watch (this is assuming you solely watch one streamer and never watch any of the other POVs), for example you could have the classic underdog tale of Tommy who is a kid that keeps getting battered down but won't give up and eventually through the use of words and loyalty over violence, he manages to triumph over the greater evil. If you watch Ranboo, you are watching a psychological horror where dramatic irony comes in the form of memory loss "who knows what ranboo is up to, because he definitely doesn't" (a brief summary) and the problems the character faces are mostly emotional and psychological, there are aspects of this story that we don't even know whether they are real and there are easter eggs and clues for the observant. or Wilbur, the charismatic leader of a country in it's fight for independance who then became too ambitious when he had it all, subsequently got exiled and we watch his descent into despair as his mental health worsens to the point of destroying what he loves and suicide (with help from dad), it's a story of a tragic hero with a brief reprise of happiness at the end (ghostbur). Or Technoblade is a prime example of my point. Technoblades point of view has been intentionally removed from the rest of the server, he has distanced himself to the point where the opinion of a Techno viewer and a Tommy enjoyer (had to do it) are so vastly different that it's a large source of contention in the fandom, this contrast in opinions of two characters who are in the same world is what makes the dream smp so brilliant because Both of them are the main character. Somebody recently pointed out how Dreams "attachment room" was a testament to the power of collective stroytelling, roughly saying "To a sapnap viewer you don't care about friend or skeppy but you care about Mars and Beckerson" showing how there are so many things that are only important depending on what POV you watch, and they were damn right, Dream Smp is almost entirely unique in the way that there are enough different narratives happening simultaneously that there are things that are "incredibly important" to one viewer but another viewer might never have heard of it before.

[wasflypaw]

I feel like because of the Fanon Verison of c!Wilbur that's been floating around for months (red eye crazy TNT obsessed boom boy manipulator) and the fact that a LOT of the fandom havent experienced watching c!Wilbur live before he was revived and are therefore expecting him to be Like That

I feel like people tend to Exaggerate his actions and how people feel towards him? Take c!Ranboo empathizing with him for example. If he feels bad for him, c!Wilbur must've MADE him feel that way. There must've been some subconscious fucking with his brain or something.

And the TNT thing? Thats just typical TNT obsessed c!Wilbur!

I feel like a lot of people would sympathise more with him if they'd watched his corruption arc Live. If the large fanbase we have now was there for August-November.

There's also the issue of manipulation. Back during Pogtopia if anyone called c!Wilbur manipulative I dont think many people wouldve batted an eye. But now the word "manipulation" is tied in with abusers like c!Dream and torturers like c!Quackity. Manipulative character = An Abusive and Evil Bastard. Yes c!Dream and c!Quackity are manipulative but that isnt all there is to them. c!Dream hitting and abusing c!Tommy every day was not simply manipulation. c!Quackity physically torturing c!Dream is not simply manipulation.

This is the issue with framing exile as simply mental manipulation rather than abuse, because characters that are manipulative in some way are now painted as abusers.

c!Dream and c!Quackity werent Like That back then. There was no "he's gonna be as bad as c!Dream" or comparing stuff to exile back then. As the series grew darker with more characters having mental health issues and going through horrible situations, the Fanon version of c!Wilbur became darker. People looking back on his old moments and comparing them to things that happened in season 2 and 3. People looking back at Pogtopia and comparing it to Exile.

The "c!Wilbur manipulated c!Dream" take becoming more popular. (A take that did Not exist during season 1 btw)

Analysis became popular after c!Wilbur had died in the story. During season 2. Looking DEEP into the characters actions wasnt really common during season 1. The fandom learned the words "unreliable narration" during season 2 (sighs). And people begin analysing early season 1 with a season 2-3 era lense despise season 1 being much more lighthearted in tone with a lot more bits over serious roleplaying.

Idk what I'm really saying here. Just thinking. Rambling

[almondmilks-posts]

Just a lil ramble

Ok just a thought because I'm getting back into the secret history again ...

Dream smp characters as the secret history characters because i can

Henry: thecnoblade because this definitely the dark personality, the mystery the enigmatic character but also the death. He killed 2 people?? Well 3 because himself kinda and also he planned the best ways to kill bunny which is 1000% technoblade and look on the SMO they look up to thecno for answers like they do with Henry... And the Greek obsrssuy with homer ... "Welcome home Theseus?" Ring any bells.... OK BUT HENRY THREW BUNNY OFF A CLIF ISNT THAT WHAT HAPPENED TO THESEUS.... The parallels are disgusting. ...

Richard: I'm thinking Tommy because it really is Tommy smp unreliable narrator we know Tommy and Richard lies about the plotline.... I also think because controversial but all of Tommy's issues were because of him he wasn't actually that good of a person and when you analyse Richard he wasn't exactly good either.... But also Henry kinda takes Richard under his wing much like thec does with Tommy. Richard and we know is easily manipulated like Tommy so it's a no brainer ...

Camilla: tubbo ok hear me out... I know she had a thing with Henry and Charles but let's forget that... Camilla's character is basically based on others because that's how Richard (our narrator) sees her now tubbo his lore and plot line is based on others, . Tommy than schlatt than ranboo not 100% sure but I don't think tubbbo has had lore not based upon others... So we know kinda bearly little about tubbo lore wise because of other plot lines much like camilia and while Tommy the dream smp narrator isn't with tubbo if we didn't watch a tubbo stream or or non cannon ranboo and tubbo lore we really wouldn't know shit about tubbo

Bunny: I want bunny to be dream so bad which is the only right answer ofc. The manipulation the shitty Ness of how he treats his friends like dream with Tommy and George and sapnap look that there fight when dream came out of prison yea it's somethy dream would do...

Julian: oooo ok ok Wilbur. This character is so fucking shady when you dig deeper into Julians role and search up some fan theories about him. But also because Julian is a "coward" (quote( and I'm convinced manipulated all of the students like Wilbur did in pogtopia with the big bang and leave by blowing up lmanburg because he couldn't have it. The group also look up to Julian him and Henry being close and Richard wanting to be close ... Also makes sense with this SBI brother head cannon of Wilbur tech and Tommy....

Francis: I wanna say Fundy, not just because of the ginger but the daddy issues and the hypochondria like I'm sure that's cannon for Fundy, but also gay? Like fundys lore although there really isn't much like him and Wilbur were close but are not now like Francis and Julian because im sure Francis was like woah this man's actually not that great ...

Judy: tough but im thinking quackity based on the comedic timing and always being around, plus tell me quackity wouldn't do some cocain with Tommy in a burger king parking lot .. we know quackity lives burger king and he had that weird drug dealer arc which btw I love quackity lore probably one of my fav characters and streamers actually

Charles: see this one was also quite hard but hear me out I'm thinking this one is schlatt because alcoholics but also SMp live is cannon on the dream smp, bring schlatt as a character between both and see see this decline of humanity much like we do with Charles. Also schlatt lore was great AND I WILL stand by this schlatt as a character wasn't that bad at all like really what did he do wrong? Exile Tommy and Wilbur and tried to kill tubbo for conspiracy for treason which he did.... So like yea but also Charles was sexually abusing his TWIN like schlatt was kinda witch quackity but Camila was his sister but ngl I know because it's Richards narrative and I really shouldn't but I do kinda feel for Charles like Henry was a shit head to him and put all the blame for "killing that farmer" which I don't believe they even did kill the farmer in the first place but that's irrelevant I'm just saying I think the characters kinda line up

[melo-efcarist]

Why perspective and empathy matter SO MUCH in the DreamSMP: A post that I felt the need to make.

// dsmp , rp , the festival , doomsday 

Perspective changes a lot of things we know about characters and the plotline. What could look like an act of protection to one looks like an act of cruelty to the other. Outside perspectives are good for looking at events, but never good for looking at character depth. It doesn’t show what the character felt and went through compared to actually watching their point of view. With a biased point of view, or viewing things from an unreliable narrator, you could have a warped perception of a character. I think a good example of this is C!Tommy fans that didn’t watch C!Techno’s perspective. In the doomsday war, C!Tommy labeled C!Techno as a tyrant. However, if you view it from C!Techno’s point of view - or anyone else’s point of view for that matter - that moment was almost laughable.  Anyone that knows C!Techno would not agree with C!Tommy. That is because C!Techno was hurt. He gave the government a chance to live already, but due to all the things that the government did to the people he cared about, he just couldn’t sit idly anymore. “It’s clear that the government and I can’t coexist in this world, Tommy.” And so, he destroyed the country, along with Dream. Now, you see, even after this, some people who viewed it from C!Tommy’s point of view didn’t notice something. C!Techno was also mad for C!Tommy. I was watching Ranboo’s POV, and I thought it was obvious but I don’t think it was obvious for other people. C!Techno doesn’t hate C!Tommy, he never has, never did (annoyed at most because he kept stealing his stuff but he could get over that). C!Techno has known that C!Tubbo exiled C!Tommy, and he was really upset about it. Power corrupts people, is his belief, and what better situation to see it other than this? And yet, C!Tommy went back to C!Tubbo and forgave him. C!Techno thought C!Tommy deserved better than to forgive C!Tubbo. Now, I’m not saying C!Tommy is in the wrong. I just know very well that a large part of this fandom sees things from C!Tommy’s point of view, so I’m explaining it from C!Techno’s POV. However, from C!Tommy’s POV, you can very much see how he viewed C!Techno. His POV is self-centric (more self-centric than others imo), so you think that C!Techno was in the wrong because C!Tommy made a decision he thought was right, and then C!Techno just got mad at him for seemingly no reason (there was a reason btw, as explained above).  C!Tommy tried to tell C!Techno that he could just leave them alone and be happy, but he doesn’t know how C!Techno felt when the butcher army sent for his execution. So he called him a tyrant, because he thinks C!Techno wants things his way and doesn’t have any compassion for the actual people who wanted to live in there. In the end, both C!Techno and C!Tommy ended up hurt. So, C!Tommy’s decision was reasonable. C!Techno’s decision was also reasonable. Well, who’s in the right now? Both of them! Both of them are in the right! Or neither! Maybe both of them are wrong! That’s the beauty of this SMP. All the decisions the characters make can be labeled as right decisions. They hurt people, even if they don’t want to, even if they don’t mean to. It’s relatable because it’s an accurate representation of the problems people encounter in real life. Most harm caused by people are unintentional, or if is intentional, they think it’s the only thing they can do or the right thing that they have to do.

So, with this in mind, enter C!Dream. No one ever knows his perspective, so c!dream enthusiasts/apologists try to empathize and understand his perspective the best way they can. You can’t understand his perspective without empathizing with him in some way (gentle reminder that empathy =/= sympathy). If you try and understand his point of view without using empathy, then you’re viewing him from an outside perspective. Which, again, is good for understanding events, but not good for understanding a character.  What most C!Dream enthusiasts do is that they try and view it from C!Dream’s point of view. He has a perspective, just not one that’s available to us.  Try to look at it this way: characters are like puzzle sets. Each action they do drops a piece of the puzzle. In other characters’ POVs, they drop pieces of them is very much clear and clean. But seeing it from another person’s POV, it is very dirty and tainted, making your view on that character different from what they actually are. C!Dream’s puzzle pieces are almost never clear. Upon dropping them, it’s at least a little tainted and at most covered with grime. Putting them all together, you get a very different view from what his character actually is. Empathizing with C!Dream makes the piece cleaner, and at least just a tad bit shinier, forming a better view on his character. Sometimes we can put the pieces in the wrong place, which causes this character to be woobified. So we go and interact with other people who have the same pieces, but whoops looks like some of the pieces are dirty. When brought the idea of giving C!Dream empathy, others think it won’t help, with their pieces remaining dirty.  Also, this doesn’t only apply to C!Dream, but to other characters as well. Remember to empathize with other characters if you are going to talk about them. If you have an available POV for that character, please do watch it. Don’t just go by with what you know from that specific person, because they might be an unreliable narrator. Anyway, with all that done, thank you for reading. I usually don’t step to apologism territory and I do usually encourage having different takes, but this has just been on my mind for a while, and I miss writing really long tumblr posts. So thank you for reading :D

[kateis-cakeis]

Alivebur Saw Himself As A Villain... For A Reason

btw: suicide tw

SO, hi, hello, you are not ready for all I’m about to say.

The other night I was thinking about why, Alivebur, the character bound to literary devices in the way he was - always referring to Chekhov’s Gun - would see himself as a villain and not like, an anti-hero.

Because blowing up L’Manberg was a bad thing to do, but he saw it as right to avoid more bloodshed: 

“Okay, me and you, we both agree we’re right. We’re in the right here.” - (Wilbur’s video Am I the Villain?: 16:27)

and

“Look, do you know how much blood was shed to get L’Manberg to the point it was at? You know what would happen if we manage to get L’Manberg back again? More blood would be shed, and we would be the illegitimate rulers of a nation.” - (Wilbur’s video Am I the Villain?: 18:52)

So ultimately, in Alivebur’s own unreliable narration of the story, he would surely see himself as the anti-hero, since avoiding another war by blowing up L’Manberg would be a sorta... noble thing to do.

But then I realised, he had to get others to see him as a villain.

Why?

“Tommy, none of us know what we’re doing. We’re fucked, we were fucked the minute we were thrown out.” - (Wilbur’s video Am I the Villain?: 19:39)

Because Alivebur... Alivebur may have wanted to die the second he was exiled.

Just look at how he acted after running. He was speechless, quiet for a long time, he said:

“Tommyinnit, I am a slow burning fuse. I am a long slow burning fuse, but I’m telling you now, over the next couple weeks, I am gonna be a different man than the one JSchlatt crossed. I can feel it.” - (Wilbur’s The Election Results: 52:31, 22nd Sep)

He maintained that he was a bad guy, once he thought Schlatt was doing better for the nation than he had.

“It feels like we’re the bad guys, Tommy. This doesn’t feel correct.” - (Wilbur’s video Am I the Villain?: 15:49)

And the way he says it, suggests that he’s thinking from an outside perspective. 

“Then let’s be the bad guys. Tommy, why not? Why not? Look, our nation’s gone, our nation’s far behind us, Tommy. Let’s blow that motherfucker to smithereens.” - (Wilbur’s video Am I the Villain?: 16:33)

This too ^ it feels like he’s thinking from how others will see this.

And then, this quote got me thinking:

“This isn’t about me, this is about blowing up Manberg, this is about just finishing it. We’ve got this! Look, Tommy, what else do I need to convince you? The festival was a front.” - (Wilbur’s The Festival: 1:15:47, 16th Oct)

It ties all this into a neat bow, because of the ‘This is about just finishing it’. But we know now that finishing it did not just pertain to L’Manberg, it was referring to himself too. 

Finishing it meant himself, and that seems like a priority. Blowing it up. Finishing it.

Alivebur pushed towards being a villain, not only to end L'Manberg, but to end himself....

If everyone hates him for taking away their home, then someone would kill him....

Alivebur knew fine well he wasn't going to survive the 16th of November. It’s clear in the way he acts, constantly telling everyone he’s the traitor, wearing no armour in the battle (which is the opposite to the Independence War where he willingly wears armour for the fight), telling Tommy he was gonna hate him.

But it was blowing up L’Manberg that got him there. As if he couldn’t die until it was gone. And it’s a quote from the festival that really makes this clear: 

“I thought today was gonna be my last time here, honestly. I genuinely, I was considering, blowing up L’Manberg, having a big moment where I’m like looking over the rubble, and I’m like ‘I’ve changed as a person’. But like after this, I am just deeper. I wanna do different, more blowing up things.” (Wilbur’s The Festival: 1:29:34, 16th Oct)

This suggests that if he blew it up during the festival, then he would have died on the 16th of October. 

Because, consider this part of the line: “Having this big moment where I’m looking over the rubble, and I’m like ‘I’ve changed as a person’.”

And what does he do on the 16th of November?

He looks over the rubble, shouting about his unfinished symphony, and throws his sword over to Phil, begging to be killed. If that doesn’t encapsulate having a big moment and knowing he’s changed, I don’t know what does.

He used L’Manberg blowing up, him doing that, to justify his death. Maybe he just... couldn't pick up the sword himself and do it, he needed someone to do it for him.

Perhaps his long burning fuse was metaphorically connected to the TNT that blew up, his suicide.

This also ties in with how Alivebur had connected himself to L’Manberg so fully. It was his ideals, it was what he put himself up to fight for, what he started. Sure, Tommy was there too, but Alivebur lived there from the start, it was his entire life on the SMP, the second he lost that... the second it became as shadow of itself...

That was the second Alivebur decided to be seen as a villain so he could do whatever he wanted and blow it up, killing it so that he could die himself (props to @bryzy-mc for pointing that out to me).

Like he said, he had nothing to lose, and he really didn't, he'd lost everything, even his son! (Since he didn't know he was a spy.)

He knew pressing that button would change everything, would make him that villain he so desperately wanted to be seen as. And the second it happened, was the second he could beg for death, and get it. 

Alivebur is a character who connected his life to literary devices, he knows story telling, he knows the quickest way to get killed off is to do something bad and ask a hero character to kill him... (See Ghostbur calling Phil St George for slaying Alivebur.)

After all, it makes it easier for the other characters and the audience to accept it.

On the 16th of November, we all watched Alivebur carry out his own murder (props to @bryzy-mc again for that), one he had been planning for an entire month. No wonder he looked so happy when he blew up L’Manberg, he knew his idea of ‘peace’ was coming, after all... he says it himself on the 20th of January:

“Ohhhhhhh my god…! I was so free! I was liberated.” - (Tommy’s The Dream SMP Finale: 1:32:30, 20th Jan)

He saw his death as freedom, as being liberated. In the end, he only ever wanted peace, and he turned to dying to achieve that. It wasn’t a good end, nobody ever wants to die, and maybe... if the resurrection goes well, his story can show us that life matters.

Maybe he can find true peace in life, and wouldn't that be hopeful? 

[greasers-against-onision]

Onion Boy’s Reapers Creek (BIG problems right off the bat)

Warning! Minor discussion of a lewd scene involving minors! Marker in red.

Hey onions slicers, I’m gonna go on a quick rant about Onion boyo’s third book in his horribly cursed trilogy of “””literature”””” (I hesistate to even call it that). This is my first real rant, so it might be too long, it might be too shitty, but we’re gonna try. I’m in AP English Literature and Composition, and I’ve been in AP English Language and Composition. I’ve got 2 years of reading classic novels and analyzing them under my belt. I know what can be considered at least an okay book. And Onion boy’s book is not okay. It’s not even bad. It’s the unbearable. Because of my experience with all that AP “author’s purpose” shit I’m going to be critiquing this very harshly.

Also I’m REALLY sorry this came out super long, I got carried away lmao.

Also good luck to anyone taking any APs this year! I’m rooting for y’all! :)

I really sympathized with KrimsonRogue in his review. (LINK! It’s a great video, I highly recommend it. I applaude Krimson for putting up with all of Greg’s shit.) I read up until Chapter 10, as I just couldn’t handle the disgusting content Onision’s had written in—nor could I decipher exactly why he put it in there. Whatever the reason was, it was as poorly executed as the rest of every type of similar scene Greg has written.

There are some pieces of work that are so bad it’s good. Let’s look at The Room, by Tommy Wiseau, for example. A classic definition of “so bad it’s good”. Awful writing and dialogue, even worse acting...but it’s all these that gives it its charm. I’m a sucker for shitty works like these. But Onision’s Reapers Creek** is so bad it hurts. There are some moments that are straight up disturbing and SHOULD NOT EVER have been as much as conceived by Gurg’s edgy twisted mind.

****——Warning: slight discussion of a lewd scene involving minors below!——****

Aside from its obvious self-insert main character,—“Daniel” is sometimes referred to as Greg, oops!—the poor formatting, the endless typos, the shitty syntax style, etc, the biggest most disgusting part about the book is the explicit scenes with the 11 YEAR OLD MC. And it’s EXPLICIT. It is a sex scene. With an 11 year old boy. I do not care that Julie or Julia (or however Greg felt to spell her name this time around) is 15. They are MINORS. I nearly fucking threw up reading this. If you don’t believe This is CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, Greg! Do you know how many sick, disgusting fucks would get off to this if you let them get their hands on this?

For comparison, let’s look at Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. It’s a controversial work, I know, and absolutely disgusting to read, but I have read it to reference it on the AP at the advice of my teacher, as she read it in grad school. Keep in mind, Lolita is by far worse in content, as it focuses on a pedophilic relationship throughout the whole novel. There are gross scenes where the nasty pedo protag makes out with Lo, but there are no explicit sex scenes. The most is like a sentence just saying that it happened. But it was done with a reason. Nabokov uses pretty language and juxtaposes it with horrible, disgusting acts on the protagonist. It’s about propaganda. The reader is tricked by the protagonist Humbert into thinking he is a good guy on purpose. It’s “Tyranny from the POV of the Tyrant”, as one person put it.

The point is, Nabokov had passable reason to write on a subject matter so horrifying and despicable. To show how people can be manipulated with pretty words and an unreliable narrator (sound familiar?) By the way, it’s totally fine if you disagree and hate Lolita. It’s an uncomfortable read, and I totally understand. I’m just bringing up its merit to show how Greg’s writing is utterly horrible.

Why does Greg make his 11 year old protagonist have sex? Why, the same reason there’s sex scenes in all of his other books! The same reason he throws tragedies like school shootings in his books. Because he wants his self inserts to get laid. Why the fuck else?

In Stones to Abagaile**, the school shooting only brings James and his love interest closer together.

In This is Why I Hate You**, the school shooting again only brings Arthur and whatever love interest he had back home closer together again.

In this book, its sex for sex’s sake. Greg just wants Greg—oops! Silly me, I mean Daniel— to get laid. That’s it. Oh, and didn’t Onision himself give us the green light to interpret the novel as we wish? In the introduction he says that we can decide what really happened and what is just a “product of creativity” I believe he said. So, in the words of KrimsonRogue, headcanon accepted, Greg only wrote this to fulfill his weird fantasies.

Thank you for listening to me go on a literary rant about this shitty book.

**I’m not gonna italicize it. It doesn’t deserve even that. These books suck, btw. Not you, though. You rock. :) unless you’re Onision.

[95er]

(Should I have a specific emoji or something or is just the phrase 'mcyt anon' powerful enough onto itself. Can I just claim 🔔 cause primes SJSJSJS) but god you're so right its kinda horrible seeing the amount of techno hate in the tags cause people don't even BOTHER tagging it or specifying its c!techno and it's like,, it gives me the exact same vibes as people being fans of dreams character, obviously not supporting the actions he does, but because he's interesting and people go feral over it sjsjsjs.

Like,, I know techno, philza, dream, are unreliable narrators and even morally gray or straight up villains at time, that's what makes them fun AJAJAJA you know maybe I'm not the best judge of this whole conflict cause I unironically adore c!Schlatt's entire character both when he was alive and as an ghost SJSJSJ

On another more happy, positive note, can we mention how everyone thought schlatt would come back even worse than before and Wilbur would get a redemption arc? How are we feeling that its canon that schlatt actually regrets, knows that he did wrong, and actively makes sure he doesn't hurt people and just have fun? That he was lonely which suggests he might've slept for so long cause he knew Wilbur was spiraling quickly and just didn't care or didn't want to spiral alongside him? And VILLAIN WILBUR might be coming back??? POG

🔔 get your primes here, get your channel memberships here ONE OF US ONE OF US 🔔

The hate he gets is really frustrating because it feels as if the same principles don’t apply to everyone. No way in hell would I support someone who does the things Techno/Dream do IRL but this is literally scripted. It’s a game. It’s media and content, nothing to do with IRL so I don’t see why there’s so much outrage for anyone who’s goes ‘I like them’. Personally, I always tend to be more intrigued by villains/morally grey characters/antiheroes just because they’re fun for me to watch. I LOVE SCHLATT. I WANT SCHLATT BACK SO BADLY OH MY GOD. Remember when he made a brief appearance as Glatt, that was hands down one of the best things ever and it gave me so much hope that he will one day return. 😭

VILLAIN WILBUR POG. I don’t care about redemption arcs and personally, I wouldn’t want one so I’m SO glad that Tommy implied Wilbur is just as bad (if not worse) so the fact that he could come back like that? SIGN ME UP. I know Wilbur will be an incredible villain. I know it. I feel it in my bones. This season will be SO GOOD.

What are your thoughts about the Syndicate btw? I was so hyped to see them meet for the first time yesterday and that room. Holy shit, it was so cool and I can’t wait for them to give us more Syndicate content, but also - who’s the other member? 👀 There’s been a lot of people I saw say they want the person to be Callahan and now I can’t get that out of my head bc Callahan in lore? *quackity voice* That’s poggers. 

[wasflypaw]

"Dont only watch c!Tommy's POV" doesn't mean "c!Tommy's POV is less essential to the story/you can ignore c!Tommy's POV/His POV doesnt matter even in situations where he's hurt someone or done something bad/c!Tommy's POV is only unreliable narration" btw