#c!dream analysis

[olive-is-awakened]

I think that statements such as “c!dream did bad things but was also a person who didn’t deserve everything that happened to him and is often excessively villainized by the fandom” and “c!tommy’s trauma and reactions to that trauma are not wholly unjustified, and him being a ‘bad kid’ doesn’t excuse c!dream’s actions” are two statements that can and should coexist.

I have not met a single person in this fandom who is able to equally and fairly appreciate both of these characters. Not one. It’s frustrating interacting with people from both ends because I like c!dream (a lot) and the rampant mischaracterization of him from c!tommy apologists is annoying. But then c!dream apologists who actually understand him turn around and belittle and mischaracterize c!tommy.

And neither groups realize what they’re doing. They criticize each other for “not watching the source material” and “having no media literacy” and “harassing people of differing opinions” and then perpetuate those behaviors just targeted at different characters. C!dream fans that constantly shit on c!tommy and c!wilbur are no better than c!tommy fans that constantly shit on c!dream. Both of you are wrong!! The beauty of the dream smp was that everyone’s the hero in their own story and no one is entirely good or bad!! The unique medium of storytelling gives us access to (almost) every character’s specific point of view; why are we not utilizing this more?? The source material doesn’t have one ‘true’ opinion or stance because it’s not just one source. It’s many. For example, the themes and morals of c!quackity’s lore is going to be vastly different from c!techno’s because they’re not the same source. Really, I think as a fandom we could benefit from treating each character’s lore as a separate story that overlaps in places instead of trying to weave together the broken and scuffed dsmp into one, full canon. Because it’s not. It’s not even close.

Also, as a bit of a side note, I don’t think fandom interpretations of characters are 100% bad. Found-family sbi and villain dream have their place and many of my favorite fanfics are built around them. The problems arise, for me, when not a single person is capable of the nuance the dsmp is filled with. This isn’t a war. We don’t have to be on separate sides. Both characters have value as forces of good and bad and gray area! We don’t have to fight about who’s better and who deserved it and how much of a bad/stupid/ignorant person you are for liking them!! We can just play with our toys together!!

[arsonistfriday]

I don’t think cc!Dream’s audio is meant to make c!Dream sympathetic. It is an audio practice of c!Dream, and c!Dream is known to be an extremely unreliable narrator, especially when trying to make it out that “woe is me, I was pushed to this”. I think c!Dream is definitely sympathetic, however not because he was pushed to this point, but because of how lonely he is and how determined he is to fulfill a futile plan.

So yeah, cool audio, but it isn’t exactly reliable, considering it’s coming from c!Dream. And yes, he can be honest- brutally sometimes- however, I think this is the time he is choosing to twist his actions and make it seem like he’s a victim to his own choices. Humans aren’t snakes, we’re aware of choices much more. Snakes bite to protect, and humans can blow up; can exile; can destroy, but that isn’t to protect.

[egopocalypse]

The way Dream acted last night goes against what we’ve seen in Tommy’s and Bad’s streams.

In Tommy’s, he was a little despondent and likely mourning his defeat. He kept his voice soft and acted like Tommy’s friend, knowing that was a trigger for his PTSD. He got Tommy to promise to forgive him if he completed the essays. He tried to trigger him again when it was time for Tommy to leave. (See: Dream’s “Get in the hole” vs. Sam’s “Stand in the water”.)

In Bad’s, he was slurring his words and taking a long time to respond, sometimes even saying something that went completely off-topic. His voice held very little emotion (if any) and his attachment to the clock was even more obvious than in Tommy’s visit. He discussed some of the prison conditions and brushed off Bad’s concern, which only served to make him even more so.

In the fandom, this is where people really started talking about the effects of prolonged solitary confinement and how it was hurting Dream. People analyzed the change in his response times and vocal tone, concluding that Dream has been slowly losing himself in the prison. Enough sympathy has been building in the community during both Tommy’s and Bad’s visits that we passed off Ranboo’s nightmare as a fluke. (Which it likely is, though it could be the warped memories he’s repressing/a side-effect of his brainwashing.)

But compare it to last night.

During Sapnap’s visit, Dream was in the middle of a strike. He refused to speak to anyone, but still had quick response times while writing and handing the book back to Sapnap. He easily followed the conversation and treated Sapnap like his friend, revealing secrets he hasn’t told anyone else that. He was confident enough that he told Sapnap he’s working on escaping the prison. He asked Sapnap to pass along the message that activated Ranboo’s Enderwalk state. He made promises that he would behave if it meant that Sapnap would visit and get George to, because he knew that’s what Sapnap wanted from him.

In each visit, he played up the expectations of what the guest wanted from him, all the while continuing to manipulate them. Through preying on Tommy’s triggers, emphasizing his living conditions to Bad, and making false promises to Sapnap, he’s garnering sympathy from the people who will be the biggest threats to him after he escapes. Tommy is his enemy (and likely his first target upon escape). Sapnap is his friend. Bad will be his guard.

He’s never mentioned escaping in other visits. Not once. He talked about attempting to escape via the lectern portal method. Despite Sapnap telling him he would never escape, Dream never swayed from his belief. He has a plan and is using Ranboo to prepare for it. He’s likely using the books to communicate so Sam doesn’t overhear conversations Dream doesn’t want him to, then he’s destroying the evidence in the lava.

While I do believe that the solitary confinement has had an effect on Dream, Sapnap’s stream showed that it was not in the way people expect it. He hasn’t lost his mental faculties in the prison. He’s been manipulating people and working towards his escape, and sending Sapnap to trigger Ranboo into his Enderwalk state shows that he hasn’t given up yet.

TL;DR: Dream is still manipulating people while within the prison and has done it to each visitor he’s received, and he will not stop until (or even after) he escapes.

[anonymous-dentist]

Now, I haven’t actually watched any of Sam’s lore streams recently because I’ve been busy, but I can sense C!Dream apologism from a mile away.

There’s a popular phrase. “History is written by the victors.” For a good example, look at the way that western, and particularly American, textbooks describe Christopher Columbus. He was a horrible piece of shit motherfucker, but the way that Americans talk about him erases what he did to the natives of the island he called Hispaniola, and what that in turn led to throughout the American continents.

History is written by the victors at the expense of those who lost. Erase all evidence of any misgivings, or convince those left behind to maybe just. Think about it, won’t you?

Let’s go to the Dream SMP. L’Manberg was founded upon the principles of freedom, but that didn’t last very long, did it? It was a doomed country from the start. Now, that’s something said in various circles around the fandom, and I’m not here to say whether it was or not. But don’t forget who basically started that trend, C!Dream.

Exile happens. We all know this. Tommy goes through hell, and only a few people know what happened. But no matter what he says, nobody will listen. No adults, anyway. Techno has some vague idea considering the fact that Tommy hid in his house for a not insignificant amount of time, but we all know how Techno feels about Dream. Wilbur is a Dream simp. Phil isn’t necessarily invested in Tommy and would be on Techno’s side if another argument broke out, and chances are that Techno would take Dream’s side in another war (Dream, unfortunately enough, does support the kind of anarchy that the Syndicate works towards.) Sam is being gaslit in prison, and, while torture is proven to not be able to make a person change their entire ideology and such, it does hurt. It’d be easier to give in than have your nose broken again. In this case, it would be easier to admit that Tommy maybe deserved punishing than have Dream skip another day of visiting.

So where does that leave Tommy? His two closest supporters at the moment are Quackity and Sapnap, two people that Dream wants dead. Eradicate the opposition, leaving one person the victor. There is no way that Quackity could beat Dream in pvp, and Sapnap has that dubiously-canon deal with XD that guarantees his own death if Dream dies. And if Dream dies, he still leaves behind plenty of people who believe in him. Punz, Ranboo (to an extent), Wilbur, possibly even Sam soon enough. The other adults on the server either don’t care or are too wrapped up in their own business (see: Foolish and Bad’s war, George and his own weird arc, Karl being… Karl.)

History is written by the victors, and the thing about Dream?

He never loses.

[pathetic-dumpling]

I have to make this now so i don't forget but i have some dream analysis/theories!! i'll probs rb this later with more explanations +detail but for now, i'm throwing this out into the world!

/rp /dsmp

dream strikes me as the kind of guy who has never had something good. of course, he had his friends and things he loved, cherished, even, but he seems like the guy who doesn't even know what a good quality of life looks like. it feels like he's always had it rough, had so little, that he doesn't even know that it's bad. the way he said "i don't even sleep" to techno in passing made it sound casual like it was something that's become a common part of dream's life (or always has been?)

dream never approaches the negative parts of his life with anything but a casual, neutral tone. he never complains about grinding for resources, never mentions that he's tired, his houses are barren and empty, and really he had nothing that was his, outside of his armor, for a long time. like, pre-disk finally (and even then- the legitimacy of dream's evil lair being nothing but for show is up for debate). the only exception to this was the Spirit Speech, but those were completely different circumstances.

...has dream ever had a safe place to sleep? has he ever had a home? has there ever been a time where he just let himself rest, realize what's good for him, and what's not? because it really doesn't seem like it

(I'm really excited for techno to teach him)

[rynzii-419]

I’ve been reading about this study on psychology and it talked about this thing, “positive sentiment override” vs “negative sentiment override” and so, of course, I connected it to apologist discourse.

Bit of warning; this is going to talk about Dream in a negative light, and I’m going to reference Tommy and Wilbur in a positive light. The point of this is to show why I think common interpretations of Wilbur and Dream are exaggerated, and I try to talk about Wil critically too even though normally thats a bit harder for me, which is actually related to the psychology thing I’m gonna talk about here. So yeah, please read this if apologist discourse something you’re interested in! I try to make this readable and unbiased as best as I can. (I say this but the point here is to talk about misconceptions and exaggerations about Wilbur and Dream, meaning I say why I think Dream isn’t as deserving of forgiveness as the fandom treats him and Wilbur isn’t as deserving of the hate he gets, but I really feel like this one isn’t biased.)

Alright, first I want to explain positive sentiment override (im gonna abbreviate it to “pso”). Pso is something I see used on Dream a lot, where people will see someone do something negative and think “oh well they probably had a reasonable explanation for that”.

Negative sentiment override (nso) is what I see used on Wilbur (like all the time). This is where someone will do something even positive and people will look on with skepticism and think “that was manipulation.” (ex. The reaction to every conversation he’s had with ranboo)

While its great to look for reasoning behind a character’s actions, and great to have skepticism about a darker character’s motives, its also taken too far in these cases very often.

Okay here’s where I get a little critical of Dream. The reason that I believe he isn’t very deserving of this “benefit of the doubt” he gets so often is because:

He isn’t apologetic for any of his actions. Now, we could go back and forth all day on whether his treatment of L’manburg was right or not, but we all know that his behavior with Tommy in exile was wrong. The thing is that Dream doesn’t agree. He even says in the prison when Tommy got trapped in there, “this is gonna be so much fun, just like exile” (paraphrasing, im sorry </3). When a character shows no remorse for actions that are inherently evil (like theres no getting around that Dream in exile was evil), it makes me feel as if they cant be treated as if they’re redeemable. Of course, he could be redeemed, but i can’t see that happening to him until he apologizes to Tommy and Tubbo and distances himself from them entirely. The problem is that i don’t see that happening at this point.

He showed signs of being a bad person/friend before exile. Again, I’m actually not even going to address L’manburg because that’s something that people disagree on often, so here I’d rather talk about Sapnap and Dream’s relationship and why I believe that was very unhealthy. After Dream’s speech about Spirit and how he doesn’t care about anything other than the discs (and its implied that he really meant tommy but thats besides the point), Sapnap instantly took that as meaning Dream didn’t care about him. Now some people hear that as “Sapnap is such a bad friend, he immediately assumed the worst out of Dream, how could be be so rude?” What i see that as is a sign that Dream probably wasn’t a very good friend himself. I also had a situation similar to this, where i had a friend who was really trashy (but i didn’t realize at the time) and I was always scared that they would ditch me. A lot like Sapnap, I would ask “do you think they’ll leave me?” then go back and say “haha, no, thats irrational, isnt it”. The problem is, those kinds of fears often aren’t based off of nothing. They come from an understanding of how that friend treats others, and the fear that they feel the same way for you. I think Sapnap saw how Dream treated others and didnt care much for his relationships and that made him scared for his own friendship, and rightfully so, as we saw later.

Dream was unapologetically manipulative and abusive continuously. A few spur of the moment actions would be an unhealthy mental state, but continued and premeditated abuse without remorse is a… really bad sign.

WILBUR TIME!! At long last aha. Now, this is where i speak POSITIVELY about Wilbur. I’ll throw in some crit dont worry <3. So here’s why I dont believe that Wilbur is deserving of the amount of hate he gets:

Wilbur has shown at least an attempt to apologize to people, which goes against his usual mentality. He’s a very prideful character, and he hasn’t apologized much in the past i believe. While he’s nowhere near better mentally than he was on Nov 16, he’s shown that he’s trying.

While he has manipulated people since his revival, it’s all been spur of the moment reactions. No continuous decisions, like I mentioned with Dream. Its likely that they come from his delusions/paranoia (which he still suffers from, isolation does not heal mental illness).

I believe that the times that we see him being most genuine are when he’s with Ranboo, since Ranboo is a nonjudgmental person who Wilbur has related to and feels is a blank slate for him to talk to. We’ve heard him open up about his motives a lot, such as feeling as if everyone is scared of him. That’s further pushed by the fact that cc!Wilbur confirmed that when he said that Quackity is the only one that makes him feel human since he’s not scared to question Wilbur.

I think this is the big one: Wilbur recognizes that he was in the wrong in Pogtopia. He sees that he hurt Tommy and regrets it, which I think is really important to remember. Simple as that. He said he sees Tommy look at him with the same eyes as he did in Pogtopia, which makes me believe he would want to be better. I would talk about what i believe Wilbur’s motives throughout Pogtopia was here but I think that’s a post for another dayz

Alright uh thats it i think, sorry this was so long i was just havin a lotta thoughts about it, ya know? This is open to discussion i think, i just really enjoyed writing this out :D

[generallyunskilled]

I really hate to burst a lot of c!rivalsduo fans bubbles but like… c!Techno does not care about c!Dream. And c!Dream does not care about c!Techno. The fanart of Techno taking care of Dream post-prison is nice but so incredibly canon divergent. They’re not buddies. Techno owes Dream a favor and that’s literally it currently. They’re not hostile against each other, either mind you, because they have no reason to be. Whether or not it’s being used, Techno and Dream are the most power people in the server and they’re smart. Neither of them want to make the other an enemy.

They’re separate people who live very separate lives. They don’t team up out of any sort of camaraderie. They team up when their goals overlap. I say overlap for a reason here. They’ve never had the same endgoal. When it came to Doomsday, they both wanted L’Manburg gone but for different reasons. They each just needed each other’s respective power and resources for a common short term goal. Their long term goals do not currently align. Odds are, once Dream uses that favor, he won’t have anything to do with Techno unless they have a similar goal again. Dream’s got other fish to fry once he’s out of prison.

[lyllicoris]

TW // mentions of exile arc, abuse, manipulation, c!dream defense

"c!dream apologists can't sympathize with c!dream because he has no pov!"

let me be honest on how, in the nicest way possible, dumb that argument is.

sure, he has no 1st person pov, but 3rd person povs literally?? fucking exists??

the issue there is that you guys haven't seen all the povs with c!dream like some of us had! i bet you've mainly relied on c!tommy's pov, who's clearly biased against him (rightfully so). and even then, if you were mainly watching c!tommy's pov, you only focus on the fucking exile arc, like it fucking defines!! every single aspect!! of c!dream!!

have you seen c!punz' pov during pogtopia arc? their conversation about sides? have you seen c!skeppy's pov when c!dream explained why he needed lmanberg rightfully gone? his one sided conversation with c!wilbur in pogtopia arc? (i might talk more about these in the future)

to clarify, im no way saying that exile arc isn't important or should be ignored, BUT i just hate how it's the center piece all the damn time when talking about c!dream. what about his character during the first lmanberg war when he was first painted as a villain? when he had a clear sway of judgement and morals during pogtopia vs. lmanberg war, wanting to stay out bc he "didn't wanna be the bad guy"? his desperate speech about spirit to cover up his attachments? you're all so busy seeing him as villain, you didn't see how he slowly spiralled into one like a 100k word slowburn fic.

yes, he's a bastard, a manipulator and abuser, a murderer, insane mfer with a god complex, hot, but to narrow all of his character down only to those points makes him seem like a one dimensional villain, and he's not. it does injustice to his character. like. what's fucking interesting about a villain that's just pure evil for no fcking reason..??

it's like narrowing c!wilbur as nothing but a selfish mad man, or c!tommy is just nothing but an annoying kid who does everything wrong (which i know half of you will disagree on), disregarding context behind their actions.

im NOT saying you can't dislike c!dream. you can. you can dislike any character for any reason like how you can like a character for any reason.

my main point here is that we c!dream apologists/sympathizers have a lot of content and povs of c!dream, enough for us to observe and analyze his character to our own understanding, enough for us to sympathize and like him.

we'd absolutely fucking love to have a c!dream 1st person pov lore stream, but as of now, this is what we have, and what we have IS reasonable enough to symphatize with him. you don't need to always choose a morally correct stance irl to symphatize with a fictional character.