The continuous dehumanization of c!Dream in the Dream SMP fandom
[ All of the names mentioned in this post apply to the characters, not the content creators. This post will include repeated mentions of fictional abuse, self-harm and torture. Please take care of yourself. Your mental health is important. /dsmp /rp ]
This fandom has driven me to my limit. I think itâs time to talk about dehumanization.
First of all; if youâre going to tell me âitâs a Minecraft roleplay, itâs not that deepâ, watch me say âc!Tommy deserved abuseâ (he did NOT) and get swarmed by 500 people telling me how messed up that is. There are literal abuse victims in this fandom, and I personally know a lot of them relate to what c!Dream is going through (more on that later). Seeing this fandom dehumanize the character on such a large scale makes me sick and extremely worried for them, so shut up.
Letâs get back to the point.
What is dehumanization? Big word, right? Wouldnât want to misuse it.
According to this article written with the help of a psychologist, âDehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other peopleâ. Or perhaps justify these people being hurt, in some cases; âIf you think of murder and torture as universally taboo, then dehumanization of the âotherâ is a psychological loophole that can justify them.â
Dehumanization is not a good thing, and it is never acceptable.
According to Wikipedia, âDehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are commonly attributed to human beings. In this definition, every act or thought that regards a person as "less than" human is dehumanization.
âDehumanization is one technique in incitement to genocide. It has also been used to justify war, judicial and extrajudicial killing, slavery, the confiscation of property, denial of suffrage and other rights, and to attack enemies or political opponents.â
Letâs see what this fandom does to c!Dream, and whether it matches up with the definition.
Justification of torture and abuse; revenge and âcatharsisâ
Since the very second c!Dream has started being tortured, the fandom exploded into discourse. About what specifically? Him âdeserving itâ.
Thatâs right, folks. People will genuinely get mad when others tell them âabuse is wrong, even when it happens to bad peopleâ.
Twitter is filled with people saying this sort of thing, but Tumblr is not exempt from this - they just make longer posts about it and they get deleted faster because there are more Dream apologists on there. I saw people calling it cathartic, I saw people calling it âvindicationâ.
If youâre reading this post, you probably donât justify fictional torture! Thatâs⊠good! Bare minimum, but good. However, the points explained here might apply to people you support/follow, and there are other, more subtle points that might apply to you explained later in this essay, so please read on if youâre still interested in the subject.
Now, Iâm not strawmanning a small amount of the community here. Big accounts from all over DSMPtwt and DSMPblr were reblogging and posting things about how âfunnyâ and âcatharticâ the abuse was, or about how they didnât care.
I donât mind if you donât care about the abuse victim in a story because you have a personal vendetta against him. I couldnât care less about you hating c!Dream - he did terrible stuff! He hurt your favorite character! I get it! But making light of someone being terribly traumatized (even in fiction) and talking about how much you enjoy it is wrong and upsetting.
There will always be a couple of bad apples, but this is not a loud minority. This was the fandomâs overwhelming response to the prison arc as a whole.
People were calling seeing c!Dream in pain ânarrative catharsisâ. Dream SMP fandom learn the meaning of words challenge episode 226.
âCatharsis is the telos of tragedy, the end towards which [it] is functionally directed. In Aristotle's theory catharsis is part of. the definition of tragedy : an imitation of an action "with incidents arousing. pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions"â
Narrative catharsis is all about feeling pity, fear, and sympathy for someone going through pain, and then after you finish watching the tragedy, feeling emotionally refreshed.
What the Dream SMP fandom actually means when they say âitâs narratively satisfyingâ is that itâs a revenge power fantasy they can indulge in. They hate the character, and when they see him in pain, they justify the torture to themselves through dehumanization so they donât feel bad for enjoying it, and the alarms of âhey, this is messed up!â donât go off.
Theyâd be disgusted with themselves if they realized they actually just want to see a (fictional) human being be abused and find it entertaining. So they blame it on the narrative making it âsatisfyingâ for them, and strip c!Dream of his humanity; down to titles such as âvillainâ âtyrantâ âabuserâ, when theyâre actually laughing at a literal (fictional) Person going through abuse and there is nothing more to it; nothing to excuse that or make it better.
I once had a person say to me in a discussion âI donât think anyone deserves torture, but c!Dream does.â A lot of people donât put it this blatantly because then theyâd realize what theyâre actually doing is, well, flawed logic - but point is, it does happen. This is peopleâs thought process; theyâre excluding c!Dream from the people who donât deserve abuse, which theyâd otherwise say is everyone.
This is dehumanization, case closed. But, hey, maybe youâre not saying what is happening to him is right. That means youâre not dehumanizing him, right?
Iâm not done. Not by a long shot. You see, dehumanization is an inherently subtle thing.
Calling trauma responses and self-harm âmanipulationâ
Pandoraâs vault is a traumatic experience. Isolation over 15 days is classified by the UN as torture, because of the negative consequences a lack of stimuli can have on oneâs mind.
Such as the fact our brain will prefer negative stimuli over none.
Yes, weâre bringing up the fact (yes, the FACT) that c!Dream has been indulging in self-harm with the use of lava because of solitary confinement.
He throws himself into lava; âswimsâ in it and kills himself, sets himself on fire and lets himself burn for a very long while - and calls the pain of being burnt âfunâ, calls it âexhilaratingâ. He laughs about it, says there is nothing else for him to do, and makes light of it. He has done this in almost every single visit. [link to only a few of the clips of him doing it] And if people paid closer attention to the streams, they would notice that he is constantly inching towards the lava, standing beside it, looking at it, running around it.
This is deliberate. c!Dream is hurting himself in prison.
Visitors told c!Sam about this, and he replied with utmost apathy, âyeah, he does that a lot. Usually itâs for attention.â He also couldâve easily stopped him from hurting himself this way by just putting up the obsidian barrier permanently. He did not.
Self-harm is not for attention. It is a sign that someone needs help. But even if - perhaps if someone is devoid of interaction and stimuli, which are essential for proper functioning of the brain, to the point when they hurt themselves over and over to get it - itâs their environment that is literally forcing them to look towards that as a solution.
c!Sam not only couldnât care less about c!Dreamâs health, but he is also negligent - starving him, only giving him one type of food (which he recently called âdisgustingâ, meaning that it was actually hurting him as well) and other things. c!Sam mentioned multiple times âbreaking himâ âbreaking his willâ as something he had hoped to achieve.
This is deliberate. c!Sam was hurting c!Dream in prison.
Why have you not heard of this sooner, you might be asking? ...Also dehumanization. This fandom couldnât care less that a (fictional) human being is being abused because they donât like him. Unlike pretty much everything else in the SMP, this information isnât picked up, analysed, and most people show no interest in it.
They ignore these inhumane conditions - literal infringement of basic human rights - because they donât want themselves or others sympathizing with c!Dream. They downplay these things, donât talk about them, and itâs very obvious the majority of the prison arc before c!Quackity was ignored - by, like, the entirety of the fandom - because people didnât care about c!Dream being abused, and (most of those people) deliberately stayed ignorant.
⊠Well, now that weâve established that pre-Quackity conditions were extremely messed up, letâs talk about the trauma responses!
c!Dream goes selectively mute in one of the visits. He acts desperate to get out from time to time, while also insisting c!Sam is âtreating him amazingâ and heâs doing âgreatâ. Despite purposefully hiding how much heâs being hurt, a lot of the things he does or says during the visits inspire pity.
And hereâs where the dehumanization comes in; people saying that those who feel sympathy for c!Dream are being âmanipulatedâ by his obvious trauma responses, and that either he has some âgreater planâ (I saw someone say he is âactingâ and âisnât actually scared of c!Quackity, because he is âgood at itâ) or that it just doesnât hurt him and heâs trying to seem pitiful to âmanipulateâ the visitors and the fandom.
(âThey canât feel pain the way we do.â Is actually classic dehumanizing propaganda that had been used against disabled people IRL. Please stop, itâs very uncomfortable!)
People also say they âdonât trust himâ, which I would understand, if the thing they âwerenât trusting himâ about wasnât trauma we literally see the consequences of on screen.
I donât think I need to explain how messed up this all is. The CCs are deliberately making him sympathetic via the prison arc, tackling serious issues like self-harm, torture of prisoners and systematic abuse, and youâre calling it a ruse, a red herring. You sound like that one screenshot from a TikTok of a c!Dream apologist that read âwhat if c!Tommy was actually manipulating c!Dream in exileâ. AKA stupid and insensitive.
Talking about victim blaming, people are so quick to say that c!Dream deserves it or is getting retribution because he commissioned the prison and âwas going to do this to c!Tommy!!1!1â, as if the main cell wasnât only meant to be used for up to two weeks and as if he ordered c!Sam to be negligent and cruel.
Also, âc!Dream is manipulating c!Quackity and/or c!Sam!â. Stop :D Youâre saying heâs manipulating/hurting his abusers even though they have control of literally every second and every inch of his life! What the hell!
All in all, If you say stuff like this, you are denying him the ability to be hurt and suffer, emotionally and physically, like a normal human being can - denying his humanity - hence downplaying his trauma and abuse because you donât like him.
Itâs dehumanization. Denial of human rights is about as dehumanizing as youâll get. Time to get into widespread and controversial territory, so stick with me here.
An aggressive response to the debate and assignment of positive traits [ + ableism ]
Itâs time to talk about the first thing that pops up when you search âdehumanizationâ, as well as the method most often used by war propaganda; depriving a person of positive human qualities. How does this apply to c!Dream?
People who dislike him, which are some of the most influential of the fandom, will do anything to erase even a smidge of humanity in the character.
Even though he has proven time and time again to care pretty deeply about his friends, even though his good intentions and motivation were literally confirmed by the CC, people will discard that to assign him inhumane qualities instead and make him a personification of evil, abuse, or tyranny; denying him moral complexity or âpositive human qualitiesâ. People will discard everything we know about him (which isnât a lot) to claim heâs just âobsessed with hurting c!Tommyâ (ah yes because everything is this story including all of the characters definitely revolves around him /s) even though it has no actual basis or solid proof.
I have seen time and time again people act outright aggressively to whoever assigns normal, positive human qualities, that could help us see c!Dream as a person to the character.
This is!! Not a good attitude!! Getting defensive towards someone humanizing a person whom the fandom has dehumanized, even if he did some vile stuff, is Not Chill! Not only have you convinced yourself that he doesnât deserve a personality or to be seen as something other than a threat or a villain to be defeated, but youâre so convinced about it you are in fact attacking and pressuring others for not agreeing with you.
This, however subtle, wide-spread or normalized, is *whispers into the mic* dehumanization.
And when I say âdo anything to erase even a smidge of humanityâ I mean everything including *that one rainbow spongebob meme* blatant ableism!
AKA, assigning him personality disorders, saying he âcanât feel empathyâ or âcanât care about peopleâ, diagnosing him and then weaponizing that to dehumanize him further. This is sadly widespread on pretty much anywhere but Tumblr (especially Twitter and Ao3), even though I guarantee you people have been calling c!Dream a âpsychoâ on there as well.
This is not ok. Donât be ableist because you dislike a character for the love of god.
You can hate him, though! He abused a teenager! He also killed him once! There are solid reasons why you should feel strong negative emotion towards the character; if you have dehumanized him in your mind, you know what, who am I to attack you?
Iâll do you one better; who are you to attack me for not doing the same?
A firm opposition to empathy, and the effects of peer pressure and conformity
This is less of a point rather than a closing note; an explanation of the reason why I wrote this in the first place.
All of the dehumanization mentioned before leads into a singular point; c!Dream doesnât deserve empathy, and those who relate to him are wrong / I cannot understand them, hence I believe theyâre wrong about the character.
This is, once again, common in the fandom. You mightâve listened to people dehumanizing him and you agreed and didnât notice. That doesnât mean youâre a bad person for it. That doesnât mean it has to stay that way.
There is a lot of pressure in this community to conform to the overall opinion that c!Dream is an evil no-good villain (rather than person) deserving of nothing less than death, and people who empathize with him are terrible or stupid people. This is what newcomers are faced with and expected to follow; since these other people were here before them, theyâll naturally think theyâre right, and wonât challenge this status quo. Even if they wanted to, this entire place is an echo chamber, and they canât escape it; so theyâll conform at some point, and dehumanize him as well, because everyone else is doing it, so they must be correct, right?
And while this is all fiction - a goddamned Minecraft roleplay - there is something that has to do with real people and the harm that can come to them as a result of this.
You see, my followers probably donât remember this, but back in the day, I made a survey. It was called the Dream vs. Tommy apologist survey, with two simple questions for each side; why are you a c!Tommy/c!Dream apologist, and why do you think people are c!Tommy/c!Dream apologists?
I ended up getting a thousand responses, all catalogued and to be processed - I was supposed to do an analysis, but it was too mentally exhausting to get through.
What the answers showed was,, surprising, to say the least.
You see, when you think about âwhy are people c!Dream apologists?â you usually donât come up with âthey relate to him on a deeply personal levelâ, but here are only a few of the people who had this as their reply.
âi relate to a lot of his trauma / feelings.â
âI relate a lot to his fear of people having power [over] him and his situation in the prison reminds me a lot of my own traumas.â
âas someone from a colonized country and people I can't help but feel for c!Dream and his situation. Being villanaized just for wanting his server back to how it used to be is also painfully familiar.â
âI also tend to project onto c!Dream, as he does remind me of myself in some aspects like trauma responses.â
âI see so much of my mental illnesses and past self in him.â
"c!dream is a genuine comfort character for me as someone with c-ptsd myself"
"I can see a lot of myself in c!Dream, even the bad parts. Took a lot of guts to realize that âoh hey, I think like that, I should probably stopâ and have been doing better since then."
People⊠relate to the character, and not for bad or insufficient reasons. (Not that there are âinsufficientâ reasons to relate to the character in the first place.) Itâs usually got to do with repressed trauma and emotions, specific trauma responses such as cutting off the people around you and desperately trying to control your life, being abandoned or cast out by your family and friends, even having your country colonized, etc..
These people were anonymous, however I myself know quite a lot of c!Dream fans who are past or current abuse victims and see themselves in the character. Some of them because of physical abuse or being trapped in their house; some because of the dismissive attitude of others when they opened up about what had happened to them, similarly to how people who claimed to care about c!Dream donât care about what happened to him in prison.
I am not using this to guilt trip anyone, but it is important to know the effect your words can have on people, and the constant hate and dehumanization is frequently sending many c!Dream fans (me included) into panic attacks and anxiety spirals.
âBut I tag my crit!â Yeah, your 2k followers who are listening daily to you dehumanizing him very likely do not, and youâre contributing to the trend in the fandom either way.
With that in mind - meaning people take specific experiences c!Dream had (in canon) and specific experiences (often highly traumatic) that they had IRL and relate them to each other - what effect do you think it has, saying he is âirredeemableâ, âdoesnât deserve to healâ, or âshouldnât/cannot get betterâ? Calling c!Dream sympathetic people âabuse apologistsâ, âbeing manipulatedâ, or âthinking of the wrong characterâ?
(Side-note: the fandom also has an awful double standard. Characters who are also manipulative or abusive, such as c!Wilbur, c!Sam or c!Quackity, are deemed as âable to heal/be redeemedâ while c!Dream is not. This is usually explained by saying, âwell, x character has these positive qualities they can return to and that stayed with them, and c!Dream does notâ - which is, once again, blatant denial of positive human qualities. I hope we all agree all people can and deserve to heal and get better - however, according to the fandom, once again, c!Dream can not.)
How do you think this affects people who have been on long roads to healing and becoming better people? How do you think this affects abuse victims, when you say c!Dreamâs treatment is justified or that you enjoy watching it?
I am not using this to guilt trip you. c!Dream antis often pull out the âwell abuse victims project their abuser onto him and youâre hurting them by saying people should be more sympatheticâ card, however, so I feel like I should tell you that there are abuse victims out there who relate themselves to him and want him to get better for that exact reason.
It is a Minecraft roleplay, yes; but if I see something that is overwhelmingly common in the community continuously hurting a group of people, like hell Iâm not going to speak out about it. And c!Dreamâs dehumanization does that. Fighting anyone who believes he deserves empathy does that, because people see themselves in him (and once again, they are completely valid to do that) and you are saying people who have done bad things (which some of these people have, as coping mechanism or simply because they spiralled) but have also been hurt donât deserve to be sympathized with or get better.
So, to summarize; donât dehumanize c!Dream, and donât villainize people who sympathize with him; if not out of understanding, then at least out of human decency.
If you have questions, want to ask for proof, or simply want to see what the more sympathetic outlook on c!Dreamâs character looks like, feel free to send asks. Iâll definitely answer yours if you arenât a prick - by which I mean Iâll let you stomp all over me, but if you send me into an anxiety attack by just sending hate, I probably wonât answer you.
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