Hii, I really like your blog <3 and how u use game theory to analyze the smp :), do you mind recommend me some books or documentaries to get into game theory??
Gladiators, Pirates and Games of Trust by Haim Shapira was my first introduction to the topic and what made me fall in love with it in the first place. It's a very engaging and approachable first look and has my highest recommendations!
The Art of Strategy by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff is also a good intro point. It's a bit drier but also goes a bit more in depth about things.
There's some overlap in their contents but enough that's different they should be able to give you a solid grasp on the basics.
This analysis is participating in the Analysis Showdown, click here to rate it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The moment c!Eret turned traitor
In the days leading up to the L'Manburg Independence War, both sides engaged in intimidation campaigns.
On L'Manburg's side, Tommy and Tubbo went around and placed signs in Sapnap (27:19), Punz (35:30) and Dream's (43:30) houses trying to bribe each of them in order to get them to back off from the war. In addition, Tommy and Fundy placed signs in different languages along the prime path which all said "The green bastard will die" (x). (Eret and Fundy also dug the floor underneath Dream's house to bedrock level. They intended it as a prank unrelated to the war (x), but Dream thought they did it as part of their intimidation campaign (x)).
Dream Team's intimidation campaign looked a bit different. It, arguably, decided the entire outcome of the war.
Before the infamous “White Flags” speech, Dream and Sapnap (later joined by George) first started their campaign by burning down the entire forest surrounding L'Manburg. Next they built TNT cannons and shot a warning shot which hit one of the walls of L’Manburg. After building tall cobblestone walls and covering the lake with stone, they at last left signs threatening L’Manburg to surrender.
During the entire time this is going on, Eret has been running around inside the walls (metaphorically) putting out fires, both for what physical damage happened as well as the attacks on morale. In both cases they’re rather ineffective, unable to stop the Dream Team from acting and always having rather weak comebacks.
*In response for the lake getting covered in stone*
Eret: “I was meaning to fill in this water.” (x)
However between all those quips, one statement stands out as different from the rest.
Eret: “I've made a severe and continuous lapse in judgment.” (x)
Eret said this shortly after they’ve been chased away with swords and arrows from their attempts to sabotage Dream and Sapnap’s TNT cannon while the two were firing their warning shots. Where all other statements before and after it tried to put on a bravado of strength, this statement portrays them as being the one in trouble, trouble that they would have a significant issue getting out of.
By itself this moment wouldn’t mean much. Nothing more than a simple joke in the heat of the moment. However, some stuff Eret says later recontextualizes this moment’s significance.
Much of early DSMP had unfortunately been lost (with Eret’s vods in particular suffering heavily from this), however due to the amazing work of some of this fandom’s archivists some parts of Eret’s pov of the Independence War had been salvaged. In it they discuss their motivations for turning traitor:
Eret: “We [L’Manburg] were against a force we could not fight, I truly just saw the brighter way.” (x)
Eret: “[The L’Manburgians] said ‘what have you done for us?’ and I got them all their armour, I built this castle, I did-” *laughing* “I did most of the stuff.”
(...)
Eret: “So I did everything, I was like, well, we’re gonna lose, I’m gonna dip.” (x)
Out of all the times Eret talked about it, this moment is the most reliable source we have, unbiased by the passing of time or changed perceptions. We see there that one of their biggest motivations, along with getting the land and resources the Dream Team offered, is that they thought L’Manburg didn’t stand a chance against the Dream Team.
With this context in mind, we can see just how much of an impact Dream Team’s intimidation campaign had on Eret, and by extension on the war as a whole. After all, if Eret didn’t turn traitor, L’Manburg’s independence war would’ve looked completely different.
“Look, the world is fucked up. Everyone fucked up. There’s too much death, too much destruction, everyone hates each other, there’s a fucking egg. This world is so fucked that we just need to restart.”
c!Dream, November 12th, 2022. (00:31:15)
I think Dream's ultimate goal here may lead to the server's reset plot-wise. His goal is to unite the server but he always thought of it in the context of the early DSMP days, when there was chaos and fighting but they were all a big happy family at the end of the day. Trying to force everyone back to those days after everything is not really viable. But starting again from nothing? Maybe even wiping everyone's memories of it? Now that's way more doable.
Me, talking about why c!Dream would want to get locked up and what his goal may be, September 27th, 2021.
It's always nice when your theories get confirmed in canon :)
Didn't expect to get a confirmation from cc!Dream himself that exile was about c!Dream's goals rather than a product of an obsession with c!Tommy or a very misguided attempt to rehabilitate him (as some have suggested), but here we are.
What's interesting is that according to the tweet c!Dream's original plan (before c!Techno got involved) not only was foiled but seemed to count on a positive relationship with c!Tommy in order to achieve something. Unlike what ended up happening in canon, where it was c!Tommy's negative relationship with everyone else (which c!Dream encouraged) that got him the disc.
Makes me think that his plan A was to fuck c!Tommy up so bad that he would willingly hand the disc over when c!Dream asked. Getting Tubbo to hand it over seems to be a plan B.
However, considering just how early he started working on improving his relationship with c!Tubbo (Dec 7th, when c!Tommy was exiled on Dec 4th and escaped on Dec 16th) it had to have be a back up plan he put in from the start, rather than him scrambling at the last moment to figure something out.
Step 1: Frame Tommy for crimes
Step 2: Get him exiled
Step 3: Get Tubbo’s disc
Step 4: Destroy L'manburg
Step 5: Stage an epic final confrontation over the discs
Step 6: Get locked up
Step 7: ???
Step 8: Profit!
How it actually works:
Profit!
> ???
>> Get locked up
>>> Need to give someone a reason to lock him up
(I’m already beefing with Tommy. Staging an epic final confrontation over the discs would work.)
>>>> Need to get the discs for the confrontation.
(Buying the disc off of Skeppy is easy but Tubbo is loyal to Tommy and wouldn’t just hand it over.)
>>>>> Need to sabotage Tubbo’s loyalty to Tommy.
(He wants L’manburg to be peaceful. I could present myself as an ally to his goal and Tommy as an obstacle.)
>>>>>> Need to mess up their communication so they won’t just make up
(Exiling Tommy would leave him far away, but won’t guarantee success. Mess him up so he would self sabotage his relationships in case they do talk.)
>>>>>>> Frame Tommy for crimes he could be punished for.
>>> Need to make sure no one would suspect anything
(Tommy already sees me as a disney villain. Publicly destroying L’manburg would let everyone see me twirling my mustache and get them on board with locking me up.)
Since some people seemed to misunderstand my point, so let me clarify:
The first example is based on the way pop-media shows strategy. It's the most intuitive way of planning and also the most inefficient.
The second example is based on backwards induction, a technique from the field of game theory that's used in real planning of strategy.
In fact, all of c!Dream's planning uses real principles of strategy and game theory. Something which makes his machinations pretty invisible unless you know what you're looking for. Not only because they don't look like what media shows as "mastermind plans", but also because - by nature - they escape notice when done well.
Step 1: Frame Tommy for crimes
Step 2: Get him exiled
Step 3: Get Tubbo’s disc
Step 4: Destroy L'manburg
Step 5: Stage an epic final confrontation over the discs
Step 6: Get locked up
Step 7: ???
Step 8: Profit!
How it actually works:
Profit!
> ???
>> Get locked up
>>> Need to give someone a reason to lock him up
(I’m already beefing with Tommy. Staging an epic final confrontation over the discs would work.)
>>>> Need to get the discs for the confrontation.
(Buying the disc off of Skeppy is easy but Tubbo is loyal to Tommy and wouldn’t just hand it over.)
>>>>> Need to sabotage Tubbo’s loyalty to Tommy.
(He wants L’manburg to be peaceful. I could present myself as an ally to his goal and Tommy as an obstacle.)
>>>>>> Need to mess up their communication so they won’t just make up
(Exiling Tommy would leave him far away, but won’t guarantee success. Mess him up so he would self sabotage his relationships in case they do talk.)
>>>>>>> Frame Tommy for crimes he could be punished for.
>>> Need to make sure no one would suspect anything
(Tommy already sees me as a disney villain. Publicly destroying L’manburg would let everyone see me twirling my mustache and get them on board with locking me up.)
Protagonist Paradigm Exemplar - A character analysis of Tommy
(Part 1)
/rp /dsmp
The topic of Tommy’s hero complex is a discussion that pops up every now and then in fandom.
The discussion is often framed around a couple of specific moments: The time Techno asked Tommy whether he wanted to be a hero on Nov 16, and the time Dream accused him of wanting to be one during the Disc Finale.
Many people rightfully point out that being a hero is the last thing Tommy wants. He isn’t someone who’s praticulary driven by justice to protect the weak and helpless. Nor is he looking to be the person to swoop in and save the day, praised and admired for his heroics. In fact, he would probably be more than happy to never be involved with a war or a high stakes conflict for the rest of his life.
However, by focusing so much on those two specific moments the discussion gets railroaded in a particular direction. One that focuses on the idea of “hero” in the context of Theseus and Greek heroes.
Yet that’s not the only possible meaning the word “hero” can have. A lot of people use it as a synonym for the main character of a story. The protagonist. To be clear, despite being used interchangeably by many, protagonist doesn’t mean “hero”. It doesn’t even mean “good guy”. It merely means “main character”.
Having said that, we know Tommy doesn’t think of himself as a hero like the Greeks, but does he think of himself as a hero like a protagonist?
Tommy: “What if- what if the protagonist over there had a family bond that you simply couldn’t comprehend due to your loneliness on this server and lack of family, so he had to stick with him even though there might have been a slight amount of reluctance in there. Also, he’s had some pretty hard times over these past few months, such as exile uh depression uh lots of terrible things so maybe you should go light on this protagonist.”(x)
Yes. Yes he does.
This protagonist complex is something which accompanies the character from his very first days on the server and affected much of his development throughout the plot, but the true origin of Tommy’s protagonist complex started before even that.
It started with the very conception of the character.
Roleplay has always been a part of DSMP’s identity in one way or another. However, back when it first started it was more along the lines of a sketch comedy or a sitcom rather than the epic character-based tale we have today. The ccs would log on and play their personas, bouncing off each other and causing all kinds of shenanigans before eventually resolving it. There was no script to follow, instead the plot was formed through a combination of roleplay and improv etiquette.
It’s no surprise then that many of those personas took on qualities of the archetypes common in sitcoms. Those archetypes are more than just a collection of personality traits, they often also indicate the role a character has in the joke so it’s easy to fall into them naturally when looking to create humor through character interactions. The influence of those archetypes can be seen most clearly in Tommy’s character, but they also helped shape many of the other characters who grew from their streamer’s persona (like Tubbo, Fundy or Ponk, to name a few).
For cc!Tommy, his persona was a mix between what the industry calls Loveable Loser and what Tv Tropes calls unsympathetic comedy protagonist.
Loveable Losers are common sitcom protagonists. They’re those characters who are driven by their want for something, and in their quest for getting that want they’ll manage to go about it in all the wrong ways. Most of the humor with them comes from their impulsive ideas that are bound to get them in trouble as well as their ability to dig themselves deeper once consequences come knocking. The archetype is very much defined by the character losing, and making that loss as hilarious as possible for the audience.
Which is why it’s a natural fit for the unsympathetic comedy protagonist trope. Despite the name, the trope isn’t about characters who are so hateable no one could sympathize with them. They’re about characters who make it easy to laugh at their misfortune when they bring it upon themselves with their harebrained ideas or by being a jerk.
Of course watching such a character would get tiring fast, so the “loveable” part comes in to balance it out. Whether through their charisma, hidden heart of gold or just an otherwise adorable or cool manner, the character endears themselves to the audience with their charm and makes it fun to watch them, not just to watch them fail.
cc!Tommy relied a lot on what makes those archetypes function in his streams. There was this routine he would do in the early days of the server. He would log on, hatch up a zany scheme (often one which involved getting power, scamming someone or scamming someone in order to get power) and set about implementing it until something went wrong or he provoked people enough that they decided to retaliate.
What followed next was sure to be hilarious. With everyone else also being some shade of asshole, it made it easy to laugh no matter whether our loveable loser ended up bemoaning losing all of his stuff in the conflict again or if he somehow managed to overcome all the obstacles in his way and emerge victorious.
Part of what made this routine so compelling is that it gave cc!Tommy a great way to generate conflict and keep things exciting. Conflict, as we all know, is the bread and butter of stories and indeed that’s what his streams ended up feeling like. Like a story where things were happening, rather than just people hanging out on a live stream.
When cc!Wilbur joined the server the roleplaying really went up a notch. The scope of the bits increased. No longer did they fully revolve around minecraft mechanics - with the main sources of conflict being stolen items or murdered pets - but now they were also about drug monopolies and rebelling countries.
The comedy show aspect was still there but it existed alongside other kinds of stories being told. Sometimes more literally than others. It’s well known that during the Independence War cc!Wilbur and cc!Tommy were constantly referencing the musical Hamilton, with cc!Wilbur taking on the role of the mentor character, George Washington, while cc!Tommy adopted the role of Hamilton, the main character himself.
However, unlike the sitcom archetype cc!Tommy played up to that point, the character of Hamilton embodied a more heroic archetype. The impulsive sort, who doesn’t think before he acts but has his heart in the right place. Who despite all his faults still wants to do the Right Thing. You know the one.
That archetype wasn’t hard to incorporate into Tommy's existing characterization. He was already impulsive and not prone to much thinking. He had enough Pet The Dog moments to show that he did indeed have a golden heart underneath all of his many flaws. The only problem was the part about doing the Right Thing.
You see, sitcom characters don’t often concern themselves with the morality of an action, at least not anything beyond what could get them into trouble. Philosophizing too much about Right and Wrong tends to kill the humor, especially when the characters are all assholes to one degree or another. As such, the archetype doesn’t have many internal values associated with it in that regard.
The heroic archetype… also doesn’t have many values associated with it, surprisingly enough. It wants to do the Right Thing but once we start looking at specific details they get a bit scarce. Heroic characters rarely fight because of a specific ideology. More often than not they do so because they have some kind of personal stake in the issue. Those who do fight for a specific ideology tend to be portrayed somewhere in the range between a well intentioned extremist and a villain.
Still, there are some commonalities which tend to emerge. Power is Bad, unless the Right People have it. The status quo is Good, or at most it was Good until the villains made it Bad. Fighting for the personal is more heroic than fighting for the utilitarian big picture. Etc, etc…
Yet, where in most heroic characters those values are baked into the personality (to various levels of success), with Tommy’s character they’re tacked on top the sitcom archetype. Something which creates a lot of dissonance between what the character says he values versus what his actions show he values.
The combination of those two archetypes creates another interesting aspect to it. Both of them are commonly seen with main characters. It makes it easy to look at Tommy’s character and see him as a protagonist, if only because of how familiar that kind of character is. It doesn’t help that cc!Tommy plays into that familiarity because, well…
cc!Tommy: “Until the exile arc my character was basically just me cause I just assumed I was the main character.”(x)
However, DSMP is not a book or a movie. It’s a roleplay, it has no main characters. Or alternatively, everyone is a main character. Everyone is complex and three-dimensional, with their own agendas and internal worlds that don’t revolve around any other character. Furthermore, it’s a story told live on a minecraft server. The cc’s ability to make the world of the story bend over backwards for the sake of the plot is pretty limited. While stuff can be arranged, it’s not common.
So what we end up with is a character who acts like he’s the main character, expects the story to revolve around him like the main character, but isn’t actually the main character.
What we end up with is a character who has all the makings to be someone with a protagonist complex.
Of course, just because a character has the potential to develop a protagonist complex doesn’t mean they will. While those OOC reasons planted seeds, it’s really the plot and the character’s history which really made Tommy’s protagonist complex blossom.
We see those seeds in the way c!Tommy acted during the pre-L’manburg era. From the very beginning he viewed himself as set apart or more important than other people, whether it be by thinking he’s above rules he himself set(x) or by barging into meetings and talking over people to insist his issues were more important than whatever problem they were dealing with(3:43). At his worst, he went so far as to completely disregard any problems people had with him(x).
We see it also in the way he approaches morality, thinking he’s always a good person(x) or in the right(x) regardless of circumstances, as well as judging if someone is his friend by whether they’re on his side or not(x). Protagonist centered morality is what happens when a story treats everything the main character does as Right simply because they’re the main character. Usually it’s a meta trope, used to discuss the narrative, but here we see that Tommy believes in-universe this is how the world works.
Yet that belief is not confined to a single trope. Just in general Tommy seems to believe that life runs on narrative conventions.
Tubbo: “Wait what made us in the right to begin with? Maybe we’re the bad guys.”
Tommy: “No because we’re the funny guys and they’re always in the right.”(x)
Is it any surprise then that when Wilbur came on the server, spinning tales of evil tyrants and heroic revolutionaries, Tommy believed him wholeheartedly?
Not only did the stereotypical story make sense within his existing worldview, it came from Wilbur. Wilbur, who was Tommy’s guiding light. The one he trusted to point him in the right direction and hold him back if he goes too far. His mentor in all but name.
So when the time came to create and fight for L’manburg, Tommy threw himself into playing a persona that would fit the role of heroic underdog revolutionary that Wilbur’s tale laid out for him. As a result, L’manburg lies in the core of the persona he builds, in more than one way.
There are the obvious moments, like the ones we see during the Independence War where Tommy acts for the sake of L’manburg. Nothing says “heroic main character trying to salvage a hopeless situation” quite like butting into the leaders’ surrender negotiations(x) or making the fate of the entire country lay on his shoulders in a one on one duel with the enemy leader(x). Even the character arc Tommy acted out during all of it, of learning to believe in something bigger than himself and act on that belief - to be selfless for a change - fits the heroic persona he was playing.
(And it is playing rather than a genuine arc. Tommy shows a few notable moments of change, such as when he refrains from griefing Dream’s house or gives up the discs for L’manburg’s independence, but there’s no consistent followup on them later down the line. He continues to grief others and even ends up endangering L’manburg in his quest to get the discs without so much as reflecting on those acts. No actual internal change came from this arc, not even one that Tommy ended up backsliding on.
As cc!Wilbur said: “[Tommy] flips his values radically based on tiny non-emotional changes in his environment.”(x) For this reason, I’m describing him as acting a heroic persona which fits his situation rather than say he’s a heroic character with flaws.)
There are subtler ways in which L’manburg influenced Tommy’s protagonist complex as well. One of the first real values Tommy picks up, the values that actually stick with him and consistently influence his actions, is that L’manburg is Good. A value which was only reinforced by him trading the discs to secure its freedom. After all, his discs were Good, right? And if he gave them for L’manburg’s sake that must mean that L’manburg was also Good. Good enough to be worth his precious discs.
But more than that, L’manburg only existed because of his discs. Because of him. Or at least that’s how Tommy saw it. More than once he brought up how he gave up his discs for L’manburg(x) in order to argue that it’s worth preserving and keeping. In fact, it can be argued he felt entitled to L’manburg for his role in its creation.
On the flipside, feeling like L’manburg is his meant that any attacks against the country felt personal, like they were attacking all that Tommy did in order to preserve the country. And considering how L’manburg has been in the center of most conflicts on the server up until it got blown up for good, that made Tommy feel like all those conflicts were personal to him. Even when the other side's desire to destroy L’manburg was completely unrelated to Tommy.
This only reinforced the mindset that he was the one at the center of the story, the one the narrative of the world orbited around. A mindset that eventually led him to proclaim, “This server wasn’t about- this! It wasn’t- It was about me and Tubbo fighting Dream!”(x) when he saw the world moved on and changed during the month he was stuck in prison and/or dead.
(For the sake of not being misunderstood: Yes, Tommy said that because he was freshly traumatized from the events of the prison and his death. No, this does not contradict what I just said. That trauma didn’t create the sentiment behind this quote, it just brought Tommy to a mental state where it became a problem.)
We see Tommy’s possessiveness over L’manburg most obviously after Schlatt wins the elections. When Wilbur does his bad guys speech and asks if he’s the villain for trying to overthrow Schlatt, Tommy answers that he isn’t because “we started L’Manburg and… we should have won that vote.”(x) Even after Wilbur challenges him, correctly pointing out that Schlatt’s appointment is completely legal, Tommy continues acting like Schlatt usurped the throne of L’manburg away from its rightful heirs.
Yet for all of the ways in which Schlatt threatens Tommy during the Pogtopia arc, the one who truly leaves his mark is WIlbur.
Much of Tommy’s protagonist complex can be traced back to Wilbur’s influence in one way or another, an influence that is inextricably linked to the way Tommy sees him as his mentor. Despite being more self aware about it, Wilbur also acts like life runs on narrative conventions. This reinforced Tommy’s own belief, both because Tommy adopted a lot of Wilbur’s mannerisms but also because Wilbur treated him like a protagonist.
Wilbur: “And here’s Tommy. Here’s the man of the hour himself, Tommyinnit. The protagonist is finally here.”(x)
He even went out of his way to put Tommy in the spotlight sometimes. Such as when it was time to kill Schlatt and Wilbur decided to give Tommy the “honor”, despite there being people (like Niki, Tubbo or Quackity) who have an equal or greater claim to that honor due to being personally victimized by Schlatt(x).
But Wilbur’s biggest influence came from his downward spiral. “Let’s be the bad guys,” He told Tommy, “let’s blow that whole thing up!”. In that moment Tommy’s mentor died, stepping out of the story and leaving in his place a threat he had to contend with.
Like any mentor dying, this too forced the “hero” to stand on his own two feet rather than rely on someone else. It’s at this point in time that Tommy really internalizes the role. If Wilbur kept talking about being the Bad Guy, Tommy - who wants to stop him - is by implication the Good Guy.
We see it in the words he chose to use when arguing against WIlbur. “[Blowing L’manburg up] isn’t the moral thing to do,”(x) He told Wilbur when they first discussed it. A sentiment he didn’t express a few days before when he wanted to torch Manburg to the ground to avenge Wilbur’s honor after Fundy disowned him as a father.
Tommy: “Wilbur, take one look at Manburg. Cause it ain’t no more!”(x)
Because really, it’s not that Tommy suddenly gained a conscience about property damage. He didn’t. Even months later he would suggest blowing up the community house and had to be talked down(x). Rather, it’s Tommy retreating further into the “heroic” role in order to distance himself from Wilbur’s “villainous” role.
(Ironically enough, it’s at this point where he embraces the “heroic” role the most that he starts to reject the narrative Wilbur creates for him. The one that places him as the most important person. The one that would place Tommy as the president.)
Wilbur’s tales worked too well, and by the time Pogtopia came Tommy bought into the myth of L’manburg just as much as he bought into the myth of his discs, in a way that was independent of its origin. Seeing Wilbur - the man who came up with the idea and taught it to Tommy and bolstered his faith when it faltered. Seeing that man trying to shatter the myth and go against it shook Tommy to the core. It would’ve been like seeing Tubbo trying to burn his discs.
The more Wilbur spoke about destroying L’manburg the more Tommy dug his heels into the opposite position. If Wilbur wanted to blow it up, Tommy made sure to not allow a block to be out of place, even if he needed to grief Manburg as a distraction(x). If Wilbur went around calling himself the villain, Tommy would pull out the most stereotypical heroic arguments regardless of how relevant they were to the situation(x).
All of this, in addition to Wilbur’s death, left a deep imprint on Tommy. So much so that even months later he talks about the way Wilbur’s “let’s be the bad guys” line rings through his head when he tries to sleep(x). The ghost of that experience haunts him and even without Wilbur around Tommy tries to distance himself from being the “bad guy”.
However, it’s important to note that there’s a very specific kind of “bad guy” he tries to avoid. The image of the “bad guy” Wilbur evoked in his speech and downward spiral. Image being the key word here.
For all he talks about not wanting to be the bad guy, he sure doesn’t mind taking the same actions said bad guys take. That double standard is there in many of his actions, but we can see it even with his objection to Wilbur’s plan to blow up L’manburg. I’ve already talked about how he’s not really opposed to property damage, but one may argue that the thing Tommy took issue with was abandoning L’manburg rather than the way it was done.
Tommy: “So you have all the discs?”
Tubbo: “I believe so, yes.”
Tommy: “So- Sit with me, Tubbo. Right now we could- I mean we could run away from here and we’d never have to- We have everything we ever wanted.”
Tubbo: “We have everything we care about.”
Tommy: *resolute* “No. We can’t. We’re here for L’manburg. We’re not giving up now. We’re gonna restore it.”(x)
Except later in the day, after Wilbur made his speech and Tommy argued with all those pretty words, Tommy considered the very thing he condemned Wilbur for.
While he ends up deciding not to, the way he frames those two situations is very different. With Wilbur he framed it as a moral issue. But when he himself considered the idea, Tommy framed it more along the lines of whether it’s worth it to fight. Not because L’manburg may not be worth saving, but because the fight is hard and they may lose.
What we see here is Tommy’s protagonist centered morality from the early days after it has been entangled with the myth of L’manburg and the heroic role Tommy has been playing all this time. By the time the events of Pogtopia finished, that mindset grew much worse.
This was not helped at all by what came next.
Exile.
Exile did many things, but most importantly in the context of Tommy’s protagonist complex, it cemented Dream’s role as an irredeemable evil villain. Where before he saw Dream as his arch nemesis but still could accept the good sides in him (to the point where he seemed genuinely surprised that Dream wasn’t on their side during for the Pogtopia-Manburg war(x)), now the resulting trauma clouded over any attempt to see Dream outside that role.
Something which Dream abused mercilessly.
In order to pull off the Disc Finale the way he wanted to, Dream had to make sure his actions won’t be looked at too closely. Many of his actions and mistakes would make anyone familiar with his methods raise an eyebrow simply by how stupid they are for achieving his stated goal there. That level of scrutiny wasn't good for someone who relies on information warfare as much as Dream does.
So for the sake of masking his goals and win conditions, Dream played into Tommy’s existing expectations. All of which were colored through his belief that the world runs on narrative conventions with Tommy as the protagonist.
Confirmation bias is a powerful tool and we see Dream continuing to adjust his persona to give Tommy exactly what he expected. “Why?” Tommy asked, and Dream answered: “The server will be at peace now.” “Couldn’t you just do it to me?” Tommy continued, and Dream changed tracks: “This is much more fun.”(x)
The way Dream went about Doomsday was in large part because he needed to establish his supervillain persona before the Disc Finale so it won’t seem like it came out of nowhere. As soon as he got his hands on Tubbo’s disc, Dream switched from his normal, more reasonable demeanor to that of a blatant villain. The more stereotypical the better.
Techno: “Dream, Dream, what’s our plan for tomorrow? Why did you give them a full day? We could’ve been back there in like thirty minutes, Dream.”
Dream: “Well, it’s like an evil villain thing, right? Like you give them time and then-”
Techno: “Ah, an evil villain thing. Cringe. Been watching too much anime.”(x)
From Tommy’s POV, this didn’t seem like an abrupt change but rather Dream taking off the mask and showing his true colors, confirming what he always thought about him.
In fact, everything from exile up until the Disc Finale served to confirm and reinforce Tommy’s perception that the world runs on narrative conventions. Not necessarily because all of it was meant to cause that impression, but because thinking this way made it easier for Tommy to cope with all he has been through.
Tommy: “I fucking miss when times were simpler. When all I had to worry about was defeating one big green guy.”(x)
Seeing the world through narrative conventions allowed Tommy to make sense of things. There are certain ways in which stories go. Consistent arcs and patterns that show up over and over again. If Tommy is the protagonist and Dream his antagonist, that makes the way forward clear. He can rely on tropes and countless other stories told before to figure out what’s going on and put it in context.
But it’s also something that brings comfort. Stories are neat in a way that life isn’t. The good guys win, people learn to be better and once the bad guy is taken down everything is resolved. Tommy held on to the hope that once Dream was defeated, it would all turn out alright, even when Dream’s defeat didn’t logically solve the problems he was facing(x).
Dream’s supervillain persona being so stereotypical and generic made it easier for Tommy to believe in it. It played into two of his beliefs at the same time. Both that life runs on narrative conventions and that Dream is a mustache twirling villain. He had no problem believing Dream would monologue his actual plans or have an evil lair where he puts his schemes on display, because that’s just how villains act, right?
And if Dream is the evil villain and Tommy opposes him, that makes Tommy the hero right? The only one, by choice or by fate, who’s capable of stopping the villain’s evil.
Tommy: “[Dream] was just here to make sure- ‘cause I’m the only one that will thwart him. I’m the only one that Dream’s scared of.”(x)
As a result, Tommy ends up defining himself in large part through his opposition to Dream, which has the same effect as his desperate attempt to distance himself from Wilbur and the “villainous” label he chose during Pogtopia. Only by comparing himself to Dream he also exacerbates his tendency to think he’s always in the right. After all, when the bar for “evil” is set as low as Dream placed it, any lesser fault comes across as inconsequential.
We can see the results of how much he defined himself in his opposition to Dream in him saying that he feels like he has no purpose without Dream(x). We can also see it in his mindset in exile. In fact, this mindset is what allowed him to escape exile in the first place, which is another reason why it’s so hard for him to let go of that mindset.
However, it also opened him up to being more easily manipulated by Dream. Someone who always says no is just as easy to manipulate as someone who always says yes, the key is just presenting your goals as the opposite of what they actually are and then watch the victim rush to be a contrarian. Lying to Tommy also became significantly easier by abusing that persona and narrative conventions to get him to believe it.
Something the Disc Finale shows perfectly. Dream set up the confrontation and played the villain to a T, allowing Tommy to get a storybook ending while giving Dream exactly what he wanted.
This storybook ending marks Tommy’s “completion” of his hero’s journey, and unfortunately it also marks Tommy’s protagonist complex being fully cemented.
A big part of why c!Dream is so hard to analyze is because so often his behavior is motivated by how it helps his goal rather than anything personal that would tell us about his thoughts, emotions or personality.
It's hard to get the full picture without knowing exactly what his goal is, both because the goal itself can be rather telling and because it can help us separate between what was only means to an end versus what was a genuine action.
The problem comes then, from figuring out his goals. Which is harder than it sounds.
c!Dream planning style is distinct for using a technique called "backwards induction". In short, it's planning starting from the end goal rather than looking at what you currently have and deciding how to go forward. It's looking at your goal and figuring out what conditions you need in order to make it happen. Then you look at those conditions and figure out how to get them. And so on and so forth.
What this means for us is that, at best, we can only see his most immediate goal if even that. Most of the time his immediate goal would only become clear after he already achieved it, when we have all the facts and we saw what he focused on. More than that, it means c!Dream's current actions have no relation to his ultimate goal except in a very indirect way.
So we can only watch and wait as more clues fall into our lap in order to try and figure out just what the hell is going on inside his head.
One thing i still am trying to wrap my head around is c!dream asking c!sam to build the prison and c!sam NOT ONCE gets suspicious, and that he just casually brings it up in the finale like. Why. He was employed under dream right, what reason would he have to betray him. I feel like im missing something huge bc i dont tend to watch all lore streams or anything.
I just do not understand early c!sam’s line of thinking, its all over the place, that or im connecting the dots wrong or something
While c!Sam does have his moments where it seems he skipped a few crucial steps in his logic, his actions in this do make sense.
For a bit of context, c!Sam agreed to build the prison because c!Dream payed him 64 diamond blocks. As part of the Badlands, c!Sam's relationship to c!Dream was neutral-positive. The Badlands wanted to create chaos in the server in order to give themselves a better position so they didn't really care about c!Dream's actions against L'manburg and c!Dream was willing to negotiate with them in good faith. In addition c!Dream's reputation was a very different thing than it is now. Now he's seen as the villain of the server, but back then he was seen as someone dangerous if you piss him off but overall respected.
While c!Sam and c!Dream were on good terms, they weren't particularly close. c!Sam had his own reasons for going along with building the prison, namely the payment as well as the prison being in Badlands territory and c!Sam being the warden gave their faction more power. c!Dream was a business partner more than anything. They weren't loyal to one another.
Then came doomsday and the attachment vault and the revelation Dream is the one who blew up the community house. All of those were enough to, at the very least, paint c!Dream as a danger and that's before getting into c!Sam's personal feeling on the situation. As one of the original members of the server he was very attached to the community house. And in the attachment vault, one of the displays was made for "Fran", c!Sam's dog who he's insanely protective over.
c!Sam had plenty of reasons to turn on c!Dream and frankly not much reason to stand by c!Dream's side.
As for c!Sam being suspicious, I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to so apologizes if I don't answer your question exactly. But the short answer is, why would he be suspicious?
He knew Dream had a prisoner in mind for the prison and assumed that this prisoner is an enemy of c!Dream, which is very much the logical conclusion. We as the audience can call bullshit on that because we have access to much more information, but it's not exactly the things which immediately springs to mind.
There's also simply that c!Dream is very good at what he does. Him worsening the conditions of the prison wasn't because he's a masochist but because it deters anyone who knows about it (namely c!Sam) from thinking c!Dream built the prison for himself. It seems insane anyone would do it, isn't it? I mean, there's a reason why so many people bring it up as an argument against staged finale.
And during the disc finale, c!Dream engineered things very specifically so people would feel like they're the ones who came up with the idea (and so won't question it much) when in truth there wasn't much else they could come up with. They couldn't kill Dream because he had the revive book. They couldn't let him free because he just showed how much of a danger he "intends" to be. They couldn't risk experimenting with anything because Dream was on his last life and they didn't have any error margin. Locking him up in prison was the only solution to the riddle c!Dream set up.
Hi, kinda new to the fandom so I'm sorry if this is obvious. You seem really familiar with both DSMP mechanics and base minecraft. I've seen a people stating that the "canon disks" are special or magic, or do something beyond normal disks (aside from sentimental/historical significance). Is there any evidence of that, if so what/where? I'll admit I easily could've missed it but it's got me quite confused.
No, the disks were never anything special aside from how much value was assigned to them.
They were the first disks c!Tommy got on the server so he considered them special. Later on they got a lot more emotional symbolism associated with them so his attachment grew.
As far as c!Dream was concerned, their value began and ended with how much c!Tommy valued them.
Of course, people making them to be such a big deal and fighting over them also bumped their value up and there were the negotiations for them and sunk cost fallacy and a bunch of other stuff. Frankly the way the discs are valued can make an entire essay in and of itself
can i ask why is the staged finale so important to the story?
because if the only people who knew it was staged were dream and punz (i dont think sam knew because he seemed to truly believe the prison was made for tommy) then all the damage and trauma the whole incident inflicted on tommy, tubbo and other characters is still the same. it doesn't really make it any better. tubbo still believed he was going to die and so on.
like i get why dream apologists cling to it like lifeline- dream mustn't be all evil if it was staged right? but overall, unless they plan on doing a huge reveal and have a big arc about it, i cant see how it changes anything
btw i don't doubt the finale was staged, i just don't see how its so important and you seem like a person who knows their lore
I’d say it changes more about c!Dream’s character than the story at large, but still has a significant impact on the story. This got kind of rambly and long so I am putting it under a cut.
1. Staged finale confirms which interpretation of c!Dream is the most accurate. Both the antis and trauma interpretation predicted genuine finale while strategist interpretation predicted staged finale. This is huge considering how all those interpretations are so wildly different.
2. This in turn gives us a good framework to read his previous actions through, which recontextualizes so many of his past action. And when I say past, I mean past. As far back as the original disc war and in many occasions since.
3. Everything c!Dream did in s2 has a such a different meaning now. It shows us how ruthless, methodical and skilled the bastard is because almost everything he did there was something he planned since the end of s1 (with the sole exception of Techno's execution). This includes exile, the green festival and doomsday. They weren't staged in the same way the finale was, but they all similarly shared a huge ulterior motive in that, ultimately, they were all about his plan to get locked up.
4. Which makes the sheer scope of his plan so much bigger than it first seems, because he planned for two whole months just to get to the part about getting locked up. All the time, effort and sacrifices on c!Dream's part imply an endgoal that's somehow worth all that. And that's without getting into how many others are involved in this plotline (in ways that are more and less obvious).
5. And considering how c!Dream is antagonizing so many other characters, it's a safe bet that he's gonna make this big plan of his everyone's problem.
6. Staged finale proved that in dsmp's story (or at least for some of dsmp's writers) noticing little details and inconsistencies can lead to viable theories. There are many more mysteries where the details of things don't add up. c!Dream's deal with Schlatt. c!Wilbur's seemingly having knowledge he shouldn't have. Basically anything to do with the enderwalk in c!Ranboo's narrative. Stone theory. There's a real possibility all of those lead into actual plot points that will impact the story.
7. It also proved that just because a plot point takes a long time to pay off, doesn't mean it was dropped or abandoned. Staged finale took 10 months to be confirmed and it has yet to be payed off. Who knows what other mysteries thought long abandoned are going to be confirmed.
8. Staged finale tells us the writers are aware of common opinion and perception in the fandom and will abuse those things in order to pull the wool over the audience's eyes. They would play into those common fandom assumptions in order to get people to believe a red herring while planting foreshadowing for the real twist that mostly goes unnoticed because people wouldn't be looking for it.
9. And speaking of red herrings, any answer to a mystery that seems to be too obvious and handed to us on a silver platter by the story is most likely one. Especially when said mystery is related in any way to c!Dream.
10. Both the writers (and some of the characters) are genre savvy and so dsmp is going to play with tropes and narrative conventions accordingly.
you mentioned c!wilbur having a lot of the traits of narcissistic personality disorder, and that reminds me of something interesting that i've never seen anyone point out: c!dream seems to have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. it matches up very well, and explains a lot about his behavior and motivations. whether or not this was intentional, from personal experience i can definitely attest that he is very cluster c, lol.
Huh, that's an interesting line of thought. Admittedly I'm less knowledgeable about the cluster c personality disorders so I'll refrain from forming a solid opinion just yet, but it does feel like an idea worth considering.
A lot of it would obviously depend on the exact shade of your interpretation of c!Dream and which actions you consider genuine vs a ruse, but assuming you're talking about a strategist interpretation similar to mine I can definitely see where you're coming from.
c!Dream is very rigid in his way of thinking. Even when he displays flexibility it seems more like an elaborate flow chart of "if-then" statements rather than actual mental flexibility. And that goes for both the "how" as well as the "what" of things. His ruthlessness, strong convictions and his prominent hang ups about rules and fairness all also line up really well. I think that at the very least, his personality structure aligns with cluster c.
However, I think those things have less to do with his motivation and behavior than it may first seem, especially in s2 and s3. It depends on the exact action we're talking about obviously, but as a general rule of thumb c!Dream acts the way he does because it's the strategically optimal move to take at the time. So more than anything those actions showcase his logic rather than say anything about his personality or emotions.
Unless we're talking about his ultimate goal with this mysterious master plan of his, but that's a whole other can of worms considering how much information we still lack there lol.
"Something interesting that we may see on c!Wilbur’s side is his admiration turning into idealization. He has a tendency to view things in extremes, a kind of black and white thinking. You’re with him or against him. He’s in the role he wants to be or he’s a total failure. You’re someone to be admired or you’re someone to look down on. There’s little in between." Can you give me some examples? what lead to that conclusion? I really enjoy your posts and I'd love to know why you think this way.
Referring to this post.
The most blatant examples come from the Pogtopia arc, when his mental health was in the gutters and this coping mechanisms went up in flames. His "let's be the bad guys" speech is full of them. To give a few examples:
"Our nation is far behind us, Tommy. Let’s blow that motherfucker to smithereens!"
"If we can't have Manburg, no one can."
c!Tommy says he needs a minute to think and c!Wilbur reacts like c!Tommy argued against him.
And that's without even getting into what triggered this entire thing, which is c!Schlatt declaring a festival to celebrate democracy. AKA c!Wilbur getting slapped in the face with the fact that c!Schlatt being the president is 100% legitimate and that by going against him they would be "on the wrong side of history".
Now, there's a bunch of stuff at play here which makes c!Wilbur's reaction to this so extreme, but his black and white thinking is certainly a factor. He can't process the idea in a nuanced way, at least on an emotional level. He can't just be doing something which is a little bit wrong. Either he's completely in the wrong or he's completely in the right. And as he accepted the fact c!Schlatt's presidency is a legitimate one, that only leaves c!Wilbur the option that he's completely in the wrong. (His inability to process being in the wrong comes from a different place though.)
However, we also see this even before Pogtopia. It's harder to spot then, as c!Wilbur's coping mechanisms are more functional so he can manage his symptoms better, but that kind of thinking is certainly still there.
Take for example his conversation with c!Niki on Aug 10th (19:33). In it c!Wilbur confronts her after he discovers she's been talking to c!Eret and even picked a fox with him. During all of it the underlying emotion is pretty clear: c!Wilbur is jealous of c!Eret because he sees him as better. And because he sees him as better, c!Wilbur feels as if c!Niki is going to replace him with c!Eret if only she's given the chance.
Once again there's a false dichotomy in his thought process - where c!Niki can either like him or like c!Eret but not both - as well as immediately jumping to an extreme conclusion by catastrophizing and seeing a simple friendship between c!Niki and c!Eret as evidence that c!Niki is going to replace him.
In addition, this kind of all or nothing thinking is a pretty common symptom in NPD and just in general c!Wilbur shows a lot of NPD traits. Low self esteem, high dependence on external sources of validation, grand internal narratives (either positive or negative), viewing things in the context of how they relate to himself, etc. At the very least he has a very similar personality structure, so I find it a useful framework to analyze the character through.
Hello hello again!!! I loved your latest post :) I just wanted to ask, was it confirmed that c!ranboo is who blew up the tnt? Or is this still unconfirmed? Thank you!!! As always, your time and thoughts on this are greatly appreciated!
Thank you :D
It's still officially unconfirmed but honestly I don't think there are too many possibilities there. @theenderwalker made an excellent post about this here which lays out the reasoning for it really well.
Practically speaking, c!Dream was too calm for it to not be part of the plan, which means it could've only been c!Ranboo or c!Punz. There are a bunch of hints pointing towards c!Ranboo and none towards c!Punz. I don't see much point in treating it like a mystery when there can only be one answer here.
Pandora's Prisoner - aka the art of planning in advance
(This was mostly written before the confirmation of the staged finale. While the content still holds up, the phrasing will reflect that fact.)
/rp /dsmp
“Who was the prison meant for?”
The question has been a subject of heated debate for almost a year now. Every so often a character or a CC would mention something and the topic would be at the forefront of discourse for a few days before fading into obscurity once again until the cycle continues anew.
Sam: “[Dream] said I need a prison that someone cannot escape no matter what.”
Dream: “The problem is that the people or the person that right now is on my mind to be put in this is highly capable and, you know, it needs to be fortified.” (04:33:04)
This has been our only solid clue about the identity of the original prisoner, with most everything else being circumstantial at best and a mere assumption at worst. Guesses have ranged the spectrum of basically every character who was part of the server at that time (and even some who weren’t).
Many have given up the question as useless trivia or a mystery which never had an answer to begin with. It’s easy to see why. So much has happened with the prison since Dream was locked up that the original plans for it seem almost irrelevant. Sure, it could add some flavor and insight into Dream’s motive at the time, but those motives have led to arcs which have long since been resolved. The fact of the matter is that no matter who the original prisoner was it would hardly have any impact on the current narrative.
Well… almost.
There’s one person for whom being revealed as the original prisoner would massively shake the plot, recontextualizing past events and setting up new conflicts. Possibly even raising the stakes to a level we haven’t seen before.
That person being Dream himself.
And whoo boy, is there a lot of evidence to support that idea.
Let’s get the simple stuff out of the way first. The description Dream gives for the prisoner immediately brings to mind two people, Techno and Dream. The two most highly capable people on the server.
Techno certainly seems like a logical target. He’s the only one who really poses a threat to Dream in a fight. His ideology may motivate to take a stand against Dream in the future. Taking care of him before he could become an obstacle seems like the logical thing to do.
However that idea falls apart once it’s examined more closely. In order to lock up Techno, Dream would have to already defeat him in some way. And if he has Techno in his mercy it would be better to outright kill him and prevent him becoming a threat in a much more foolproof way. There’s no incentive to keep him alive. Even if Dream could usually consider Techo’s firepower as an asset, after locking him up it would be naive to expect good faith cooperation from him.
Furthermore, this is simply an inferior strategy to the one Dream was already using in order to prevent Techno from becoming a threat to him. Ever since Techno joined the server, Dream went out of his way to get on his good side and prevent their agendas from clashing. At the time of the prison’s commission It has been roughly two weeks since both of them fought side by side against L’manburg on November 16th. They weren’t friends, but they were far from enemies.
Locking Techno up would undermine all of Dream’s previous efforts and give Techno a reason to go against him, the very thing he tried to prevent. After all, a fight avoided is superior to a fight won.
Leaving us with Dream as the main person who fits the description.
Of course, the implications of that are a bit crazy. Dream gave the prisoner’s description on December 6th, while the disc finale happened on January 20th. Roughly a month and a half before it happened. Could Dream really have predicted things so far? Could he have planned things from so far back?
Well, no. And yes.
Such a degree of prediction is simply not humanly possible, even for a crazy good predictor like Dream. There are too many unknown variables, other people's decisions and stuff one can’t possibly take into account to do so. The further into the future you try to predict the worse the uncertainty gets. Trying to predict everything which would happen during that month and a half of dsmp’s plot is impossible.
Which is why Dream didn’t bother to.
His plan doesn’t rely on prediction at all. Instead it relies on two assumptions:
Dream would act according to his own plan.
He’s skilled enough to achieve the goals he set to himself.
The disc finale didn’t happen as a reaction to anything. It was done fully on Dream’s own initiative with every little bit of it - from the place to the time to even who participates - was under Dream’s control.
“Come see me Wednesday. You and Tubbo ALONE. If anyone else shows up the discs are gone forever.”
~The note Dream leaves Tommy about the disc finale. (2:44)
The disc finale was disconnected from anything preceding it in terms of cause and effect. Sure, Tommy and Tubbo were very much influenced by events like exile and doomsday, but they weren’t the one who decided to make the disc finale happen. Dream did. And Dream could’ve decided to make the disc finale happen whenever he wanted.
He could’ve decided to make it underwater instead of on top of a mountain. Built his lair in a desert or a forest or in the snow. He could’ve told Tommy to come alone, or he could’ve told him to bring Fundy, Quackity, Niki and whoever else Dream so desired. He could’ve told them to meet him directly in front of the prison.
He’s the one who decided to show the attachment vault, it would’ve been just as easy to skip that stage and do something else. If Dream wanted to, it would’ve been just as easy for him to come up with a bullshit lie that would distract Tommy from his actual plan, make a giant prop to support his claim and then do whatever he wanted to do with Tommy being none the wiser.
Everything about the disc finale was Dream’s decision and he only needed one thing to make it happen: Tommy’s discs.
So really, his plan was pretty simple:
Step one: Get Tommy’s discs.
Step two: Do the disc finale.
Step three: Get locked up.
So long as Dream could get his hands on the discs, and so long as he followed his own plan, there was nothing stopping him from planning the disc confrontation ahead of time. Not only in broad strokes either, but even as far as the details.
A detail like, say, how he would prevent himself from simply being outright killed.
On December 6th, the same day he gave the description of the prisoner, Dream mentions the revive book out of nowhere. He does so while in a call with BBH and Sam, as they’re all working on laying down the foundation for the prison. While he doesn’t mention the book’s ability he does say he got it in his deal with Schlatt and that he considers it “the most valuable thing on the server”.
Dream: “I have actually not ever to this point brought this up so this is interesting. Do you remember whenever I switched sides, like I was helping Pogtopia - mostly just because I didn’t like L’manburg and Manburg, I don’t like their government and I switched sides to Schlatt.”
Sam: “Who died.”
Dream: “And he died. But the reason I switched sides is because he gave me something in order to switch sides to him and I mentioned that I didn’t say what it was though but he did give me something.”
(...)
BBH: “Was it diamonds?”
Dream: “No, *laughs*. But that card is always up my sleeve until I need it.”
(…)
Dream: “I won’t go into specifics, but what he gave me was a book.”
(...)
Dream: “I think it’s the most valuable thing on the server.” (01:06:51)
This mention is notable for how nothing previously in the conversation led up to it, as they were talking about something else entirely. Dream brought it up entirely out of his own initiative. What makes this even stranger is that despite bringing up the book himself, Dream keeps it shrouded in mystery and refuses to elaborate. Hell, he doesn’t even mention it’s a book initially!
There was absolutely no reason for him to bring it up there.
Even looking at it as OOC foreshadowing by CC!Dream for the sake of the audience doesn’t line up. This was done roughly three hours into BBH’s stream with an audience of thousands at best. It was such a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that barely in the fandom talked about it afterwards. Certainly none of them remembered it.
Foreshadowing is a storytelling tool which serves to prime the audience to accept future events in the plot. It’s useless if the audience doesn’t know about it. Yet, this is the only time Dream brought up his deal with Schlatt or what he got from it since November 16th.
So why did he do so?
Well, just because it’s not OOC foreshadowing, doesn’t mean it’s not IC foreshadowing.
As mentioned, in that conversation Dream is talking to BBH and Sam, one of whom is a huge player in the upcoming prison arc. It could definitely be argued Sam is the most important person (or at most just behind Tommy) to convince of the revive book’s existence, as he’ll be the one tasked with keeping Dream alive in his cell.
Someone babbling about how they can bring the dead back to life seconds before they’re killed can be taken as a desperate lie in order to buy their survival. When that same someone has mentioned a book they consider the most valuable in all the server before, it’s a bit easier to believe said magic book might be real.
This isn’t the only time Dream showed knowledge of how (at least some) of the disc finale would go down.
BBH: “Why do you want to build a giant prison to hold the world’s most hardened criminals.”
Dream: “Um, I can’t say too much. I guess it’s just like, there’s certain people who just don’t… who either are now a threat or in the future will be one, you know? There’s certain people like- I’d say I’m probably one of the more powerful people on the server, would you say that’s true?”
BBH: “Yeah, I’d say that.”
Dream: “I feel there’s certain people who may do bad things that might end up- that could potentially be powerful, you know?”
BBH: “I see, I see. So it’s important to keep those people in check.”
Dream: “It’s just an option because if you can’t kill somebody you might need to lock them up.” (01:01:03)
This is… oddly specific. It may not sound so at first as “too valuable to kill” is a familiar trope in this day and age but take into consideration the mechanics of a minecraft server. What possible skill or item could exist that would make someone too valuable to kill? Nothing in vanilla minecraft, that’s for sure. Definitely not anything anyone else had on the server at the time of the prison’s construction.
Some may argue that Tommy with his “bringing attachment” answers those criteria. And they would be right!
However, this argument fails in several other aspects. I’ve talked before about the numerous inconsistencies in the disc finale. Everything Dream said there should be looked over with a skeptical eye. Especially anything which lines up with the persona of a stereotypical villain Dream was pushing at the time.
One of the few lines we can be relatively sure about being genuine is the line about how the prison wasn’t meant for Tommy at first (52:17). If this is a lie it’s a sub-optimal one which goes against his agenda. Saying the opposite, that he commissioned a giant inescapable prison weeks ago just for locking Tommy up, would be far more threatening and further his image of obsession with Tommy.
Plus, this just raises weird questions. The kind of which Tubbo proceeds to immediately ask. We can see that his answer to Tubbo’s question is a deflection which shuts down that line of questioning, which is very different from his persona’s willingness to monologue and answer questions but fits much more to Dream’s true reserved nature.
Tubbo: “Who was [the prison] meant for originally?”
Dream: “Ehh, you don’t need to know.” (52:17)
Another problem in assuming Tommy was the original prisoner is that he doesn’t answer the description Dream gave. A description which we can be sure is accurate as lying about the specifications by which the prison is to be built is counter-productive to the goal of actually getting a functioning prison which does what he wants.
Dream meanwhile is two for two for the description of the prisoner. We saw exactly how having the revive book (a supernatural object outside the boundaries of vanilla minecraft) made him too valuable to kill, leaving prison the only option they could use for him.
Another time we see Dream describing the disc finale way before it actually happens is on December 17th in his conversation with Punz, one day after Techno’s execution.
Dream: “There’s a lot that we can do, but there’s something that I’m doing soon that… Nobody’s gonna like me.”
(...)
Dream: “I’m gonna have to at some point leave you in charge here, while I… I go far away to avoid… death.” (7:40)
Most have read it as him talking about doomsday, yet there’s nothing specific pointing that way. Both doomsday and the disc finale are equally viable explanations for it, with the pharseing being more accurate to the disc finale.
Yet even if Dream is talking about doomsday here (which I don’t think is likely), this still points towards him being capable of planning the disc confrontation in advance.
Doomsday happened on January 6th, a good three weeks after this conversation happened with Dream having no possible knowledge of how the events leading up to it would go down. Very similar to his plan for the disc finale.
In addition, Dream here shows knowledge of his plans for after doomsday. If he got to that point, pretty much the next step from that is the disc finale. Between January 6th and January 16th - the day he leaves Tommy the message about the disc confrontation - he does… nothing. Nothing public at least. Literally the very next step in his plan after doomsday is the disc finale. Why wouldn’t an obsessive planner like Dream not figure out what he would do next when he’s very much capable of doing so?
All of which brings us to our last piece of evidence. The blueprint chest Dream left for Techno.
While everything else could be argued to be circumstantial evidence, this one is not quite so easy to dismiss.
The map blueprints, the placement under a specific block and Dream memorizing the coordinates all tell us the chest must’ve been placed by Dream before he got locked up. The place it was hidden in tells us it was always meant for Techno. The existence of the chest at all tells us Dream planned for being a prisoner.
Some may argue that this is simply Dream being his usual paranoid self who plans for any and all outcomes but that doesn’t quite track.
For one, it’s yet another inconsistency to add to the ever expanding list of the disc finale. The persona Dream displayed there is arrogant and fears defeat so little he not only monologues his entire plan to his enemies, but actively brings them to his lair in order to show it off. That kind of caution is simply not evident in his actions there.
But more importantly, it can’t be Dream’s escape plan in an event he didn’t plan to get locked up because if it was, why didn’t he use it already?
He had plenty of opportunities to. Enderwalking Ranboo visited him a few times during the first couple weeks of his imprisonment. All Dream would have had to do was simply ask him to leave an anonymous, unsigned book in Techno’s home calling in the favor and listing the relevant coordinates.
Even after Ranboo was banned from the prison, Dream still managed to get a message out to him. The only one he would be able to considering the restrictions, something they both knew. That would definitely seem to be the time to pull off that escape plan.
Yet he didn’t for some reason. And it’s not like Ranboo stopped working with Dream either. Only a week and a half later he blew up the TNT that led to Tommy getting locked up in Dream’s cell.
So if all this time Dream had an escape plan, had opportunities to take it and yet still didn’t?
We can only conclude he wanted to be there in the first place.
A Mercenary's Loyalty - How Punz's betrayal is a hoax
/rp /dsmp
For many people, Punz coming through the portal and bringing along the cavalry was the highlight of the Disc Confrontation.
Tommy and Tubbo were trapped with one of the most dangerous people on the server. They had no gear, no way out, no hope at all for saving their lives. Their respective imprisonment and death seemed inevitable. The only thing left for them to do was say their final goodbyes to each other. That is, until Punz intervened in a perfectly well timed and epic Endgame moment.
…A little too perfectly well timed.
Punz’s betrayal was a pivotal moment in the plot of DSMP, shaping the landscape of the story for the months to come. You would think something so important would not leave much room to doubt the validity of it. Yet, even when it happened there were things which pointed towards said betrayal being a lot more uncertain than it first seems. And not too long ago some evidence was discovered which questioned things even further.
On November 28th, Dream got broken out of prison by Techno. They thought together against the prison guards as well as many members of the SMP until they reached Techno’s base, at which point they parted ways.
The next time Dream was seen was on Punz stream, happy to see his friend and confirming that they never stopped working together.
Punz: “Keeping an act that I’m against [Dream] (...) Dude, I’ve had to keep that a secret for so long, oh my god.” (1:14:57)
Punz: “It’s been a long time coming. That took [Dream] way longer than it should’ve to get out of that prison. It was not the plan at all.” (1:10:34)
Punz: “Everything is back the way it should be. [Dream] being locked up took a little bit longer than expected, but I’m glad that it’s back to normal. Now plans can go as they were. Back to the script as you can say. Back to how we had it all written out. The server would finally be back to normal.” (1:16:06)
This conclusively proves the theory correct and, by extension, the rest of the staged finale.
