Hm, odd question but, just going off Technos POV do you think Dream comes off as a tyrant? I’m thinking about posts that got mad at Techno for siding with Dream, a “government” but the more I think about it. Dream just comes off as a regular asshole, no different than other players. Like, it’s very odd because Techno acknowledges Dream is a force not to be messed with but then tells Tommy (b4 doomsday stream) that Dream is “just some guy.” So I don’t really know how C!Techno sees Dream. But, from my seat in the audience, Dream hasn’t really done anything that strikes me as a tyrant. Rebuilding the walls is arguably the closest thing but that also takes place after the community house blows up. This isn’t a defense of Dream mind you, it’s just something I’ve been pondering for awhile now and was wondering what others thought (especially since I’m working from one side)
Wouldn’t call that an odd question at all, it’s a good question if anything. Honestly I’ve been wondering about it too, it’s just so hard to figure out what Techno’s character knows because he’s just been an outsider from the start and isn’t actually that good at doing his research. Admittedly part of it is fair in that he’s literally been an outlaw from the beginning and hasn’t been able to trust people, but at the same time he doesn’t seem to have put much effort into figuring things out either. I think it took until Dream put up the walls for him to actually get a sense of which territory even WAS L’Manberg. (Tommy didn’t exactly help with that, since Tommy has even RECENTLY been calling places like the Community House part of “L’Manberg“ despite the fact that Tommy’s character definitely knows better.)
I don’t think Techno understands what the Dream SMP faction is, or at least his character doesn’t. He just sort of vaguely knows that there’s a king? And that there’s land that isn’t L’Manberg.
As for Dream... I don’t know, on the one hand you have the “just some guy line”, on the other hand he also called him a “hostile foreign power“ in the context of Tubbo exiling Tommy, but I guess technically that doesn’t have to mean “tyrant“ or “government“, it could just be any kind of power, and Dream is powerful as a person. I don’t see how Dream could have realistically enforced the blockade alone, but technically he didn’t have a formal role in government and he was just threatening to use mercenaries to patrol the walls.
I would say that’s definitely a tyrannical move, though, even if he doesn’t have formal power. Imprisoning an entire country, at that point it literally doesn’t matter whether you have institutional power or not, I think that definitely counts as tyrannical because you’re basically practicing imperialism. Dream would have been the de facto ruler.
Of course the blockade didn’t happen, but the fact that Dream seriously threatened it would be questionable on its own, and Techno WAS spying on the events. And I feel like Techno more or less agreed that it was questionable, except he still put the blame on L’Manberg primarily. So maybe he did still see Dream as just one guy who the government should have been able to resist.
And I guess the problem here is that with the populations being so small, the political metaphors kinda break down. But then again there ARE some individual people IRL who do have the resources to threaten entire small countries, so maybe it’s not that outlandish after all.
Also of course Dream controlled the king (both George and Eret) and he was the one who ordered the prison from Sam and owned it up until being locked up himself, and he was planning on getting leverage over every single powerful player on the server, so I would definitely call him a tyrant, just one that intentionally kept his role informal. At the very least he was an aspiring tyrant.
The question is, how much of that Techno knows or suspects? It’s really hard to say, because Techno doesn’t always say what he thinks. He’s clearly suspicious of Dream and recognises him as powerful and a potential threat, and I’m fairly certain that he knows Dream is definitely not an anarchist, but I don’t know if he sees him as a tyrant. Although it’s possible that he’s been stalling because he sees Dream as too big of a fish to take down.
I also think Techno was biased against L’Manberg in particular, for flawed but very understandable reasons. And he was at least somewhat biased in favour of Dream since Dream had helped him so many times, literally so many times. And conveniently, now that L’Manberg is no longer around, Dream has ended up in prison so he can’t be a tyrant NOW, and Techno continues to have more immediate opponents.
I really do want him to realise that governments aren’t the only form of coercive power and I want him to realise all the things Dream did. But we’ll see if that ever happens. The thing about Techno’s character is that he is always left in the dark about things (and he doesn’t really ask enough questions to make up for it either). I don’t think anybody’s told him about Dream planning to kidnap Carl and steal the Axe of Peace. And who even knows what he knows about the prison other than it’s now used to hold Dream.
