AU where c!awesamdude, for whatever reason, decides that c!dream needs to be allowed to go outside and wander around the smp every once and a while, albeit heavily monitored the entire time. i'm going to say that sam does it because dream is starting to get vitamin d deficiency and maybe some limb atrophy from being inside a tiny dark cell all the time. that being said, dream uses this as a chance to cause mischief by trying to eat a variety of non-edible things while sam isn't paying attention.
"fuck dream" "they changed the ending" "he left people on read" HE WAS FACING LIFE RUINING ALLEGATIONS. THE SAME ONES YOU ALL HELPED SPREADING EVEN WHEN ALL PROFF WE HAD WAS LAUGHABLE. SHUT THE FUCK UP
the worst part of it all is that dream accepted his blame. he said himself that he knows he neglected dsmp. he said it was bc of the allegations. he is sorry for that. it all happened during terrible time of his life and you all still just keep complaining and blaming it all on him only
also people who think that what bad said about dsmp ending changes c!discduo ending anyway are literal dense and unable to interpret any media. that ending was probably the only part of the original ending we were able to see. nothing that happened there goes against what bad said. you can hate it forever and its would still be canon even if original ending that was 'taken away from you' âïžâïžâïžâïž
For everyone on this post asking which villains Iâm talking about/what kind: this post was written especially about the all villains that you particularly hate, and it was written to spite you, personally.
im contractually obligated to like every character that has no human heart or no human soul or so on allegedly and is an empty shell allegedly. for the record
Just a quick not friendly reminder: someone who has apologized for past mistakes, made amends for past actions, and clearly no longer holds past beliefs, is a far better person than one who digs up old dirt and uses a person's past that no longer exists against them.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding c!Quackity, c!Tommy and c!Dream recently, a good portion stemming from the recent video circling around, where it is depicted that c!Tommy not only knew of c!Quackityâs torture but approved.
But while I could write an essay about it (ok yea I didâŠbut) instead I want to shift the focus a bit, away from the same debates we keep having year after year. Because I think weâve become too focused on the characters themselves over the audience's perception of them and too focused on morality, justification, and right and wrong in a story where everyone is morally questionable. Because at the end of the day it isnât whether c!Dream or c!Tommy were actually right or justified, it is about - Who you root for and why. It is about (you) the audience's perception of the characters, not the charactersâ perceptions of each other. Sure, c!Tommy himself feels justified in hurting c!Dream but do you believe he was.
With that thought in mind I found myself reading a 24 page research paper last night on a psychological study that looked at what an audience defines as the hero and villain. Why they are naturally pulled to like certain characters and hate others. What the audienceâs classification of morality in regard to the characters of fiction where the conditions of morality are often not defined. One of the things shown in the data and line up to real life is that at the end of the day, heroes and villains are not defined on true purity and morality itself. If they were, action heroes and anti-heroes wouldnât be successful and enticing. And yet, anti-heroes are some of the most beloved characters. In fact, I for one am typically drawn to violent anti-heroes, some of which are the heroes despite being perhaps sadistic murderers and torturers. But if the audience doesnât simply define hero and villain as âgoodâ and âevilâ then what is pulling us toward taking one side over the other.
The answer is actually more complex than you might think. According to this paper, the first thing taken into consideration in a viewerâs appeal or unappeal of a character has to do with what the viewer considers âappropriate behavior.â Simply put, âappropriatenessâ is basically a social judgment which serves to approve or disapprove of a characterâs behavior. This can be based on many things, such as cultural norms, societal code of conduct, your personal morals or experiences. And I think this is key, because I for one see stealing and griefing when I play Minecraft as seriously hurtful things to do (even though you can always rebuild). To the point that if you blow up the house I spent hours building or take my items it can ruin the fun for me entirely. So my definition of the appropriateness of such behavior might differ from people who take those things much more light-heartedly, causing me to disapprove of c!Tommy more than they would for that behavior.
Even further, when it comes to determining their appropriateness of behavior as in whether we tend to approve or disapprove of them we can look at moral domains, which spark our moral intuition instead of simply categorizing everything into âgoodâ or âbadâ since not even our subconscious brain is always so black and white. In the research I read, they looked at two sets of domains (aka sets of relating attributes used to measure and compare): The person-perception domains of Warmth (tolerant, friendly, warm, polite, gentle, trustworthy), Competence (intelligence, cleverness, opposite of stupidity, efficiency) and Duplicity (mad, tormented, violent, and tragic), which help to measure our perception of morality in characters as well as the five moral domains of MFT - harm/care (concerned with the suffering of others and empathy), fairness/reciprocity (related to justice), authority/respect (related to hierarchy and dominance), ingroup/loyalty (common good and punitiveness toward outsiders), purity/sanctity (concerned with contamination). According to the research behind these domains, we, the viewer, evaluate characters immediately and without cognitive deliberation. In other words, when characters fulfill domains it sticks with us and when they violate domains it can send out major red flags to us as soon as it happens without us thinking about it, not later in more considerate retrospect. So then, it makes sense that now as we debate we struggle to find common ground because our judgment was made ages ago and it's hard to reason with our already defined moral intuition.
As such, since I started getting into the dsmp first by watching all of the recordings of previous streams in order in this one playlist then going onto watching all of the blueberrytv videos (at the time of course), which edit the streams to allow you to see things from multiple perspectives. Therefore, I watched things from the very beginning, back when it was just c!George and c!Dream goofing off and dying in the nether. So, my intuitive judgment of c!Dream involves him building the community house, always trying to keep the peace between his friends, exploring the world so he can bring back all the types for wood for people to build with, building the prime path to connect everyone's houses together to make for easier travel, rebuilding Tubboâs house after c!Tommy burned it down, helping c!Ponk when people kept burning down his house. These are just some of the moments I suspect helped to form my evaluation of him. Showing him as being very empathetic and caring, being loyal to his friends and accepting of new people, being a mediator and trying to keep things fair between his friends, fulfilling at least 3 (since he kinda is the authority that is hard to classify) of the moral domains. The streams also depicted the characteristics with warmth as well as competence and intelligence. So immediately my perceptive moral intuition deemed him the hero. As he fulfilled the warmth and competence domains of the one method and most of the domains of the other method without violating them in an obvious enough manner for me to remember at this moment (These are by no means the only reasons why Iâd be inclined to root for c!Dream but that's beside the point).
On the other hand, my introduction to c!Tommy was him immediately breaking the three rules, by going around taking down donatorâs signs, griefing, stealing, claiming things and property as his, trying to kill people until he ends up being banned. So he hurt others and causes harm, he is invited to join and have fun but fails to reciprocate that by going about and messing things up, he immediately disrespects everyone and defies authority by breaking the rules, hard to say on loyalty though (as mentioned above) him burning down c!Tubboâs, his best friend, house doesnât give me the impression of loyalty, concerning purity he scams and lies, is obsessed (though hardly the only one) with male genitalia (which I personally find unsavory) and is disrespectful towards women so definitely failing in the purity and sanctity domain as well. In regards to warmth, I wouldnât say so, nor particularly competent, though certainly meeting the more violent and aggressive elements of duplicity. So in other words, in just his first few streams he has violated every moral domain, while also not meeting the warmth or competence but meeting duplicity. So immediately my impression of him is to dislike and disprove as my moral intuition labels him as a villain.
In other words, perhaps our affinity for characters and perception of their morality has less to do with actual legal or other measurements of morality but more of what our initial impression was that formed our judgment from the very start. Because at the end of the day, I feel like the discussion needs to be less about whether this character or that character is âgoodâ or âbadâ because their motivation or trauma justifies their behavior and more about what qualities do you appreciate about the character. At the end of the day, it's fiction and you should be able to love or hate whatever character you want regardless of morality or right & wrong. Itâs your opinion and I donât see other fandoms shaming and bashing other people for liking a certain character that others dislike and/or the protagonist dislikes meaning therefore they are bad so how can you like them. But in the same way, I should also be able to hate a character without being bashed for not being empathetic to their trauma⊠Anyways I think the idea that we all see characters as justified and innocent in our own way is cool, especially in respect to the dsmp which is told from all angles, and thatâs what I set out to learn more about and share with you. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my findings and I made sense (âŠ..and if it didnât, you are always welcome to ask or add on :D), sorry for the length Iâm beginning to realize conciseness is not my strong suitâŠ
I hope with this interesting angle, we can lean away from discussions on legal, moral, crime, trauma and more towards questions of preference and characteristics and personal perception - Why do you root for them? What was your introduction to the characters? How do you think that impacted your viewpoint on the story? Has your viewpoint ever changed? What do you think helped define your definition of âappropriatenessâ?⊠etc <3 <3
remember when people were theorizing on what c!dream's chat would look like? what about possums? i feel like c!dream would relate to them (also the mental image of c!dream on doomsday with a bunch of possums perching on his shoulders and hanging off of his arms is funny to me)
16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)
One dimensional, flat, Villainâą c!dream. it's so... boring. Reducing a very complex, multifaceted character like dream into the most storybook, children's version of an antagonist makes me want to chew glass đ. Taking dream and using him as a vector for the most boring uninteresting ctommy whangst or as a scape goat to explain why every bad thing happens in your fanfiction (cough... passerine... cough). Like this does NOT deserve as many fics, posts, and headcanons as it gets. It's lame and boring. straight to jail, do not pass go do not collect 200 dollars.
*Obama voice* let me be clear. there is not a single character on that smp that is Just a villain who only does Bad thing for Evil Bad reasons. Even the Eldritch unknowable egg monster is fucking complex. There is no easy antagonist, full stop. And obviously all of us over here on this side of the Mississippi understand that because we're all adults with media analysis and super well adjusted and cool and medicated people. but in the wider fandom this Irks me
