Just saw your post about c!Dream telling c!Tommy where c!Techno’s house is during exile.
What are your thoughts on exile and c!Dream’s purpose for it / actions during it after that? I know you said it changed your view a lot so I’m curious what changed!
Thank you so much for the question!
There's going to be a lot of text and a bit of backstory XD
So, I got introduced to Dream during the prison arc and assumed that my new favorite would again be Villain™ who did a bunch of bad stuff. However, when I watched a brief lore summary, I was left completely confused as to why Dream was the only one who deserved prison.
Well, to figure it out I started watching Tommy's streams, and I understood less and less why he was the 'hero' of the server and what exactly Dream had done wrong. I thought maybe I'd end up turning against Dream after the Exile arc, but… I couldn't sympathize with Tommy while watching those videos — though that's a different story.
1. In one of the several videos related to the Exile arc (I can't say exactly if it was before or after Technoblade's visit to Logstedshire), Dream clearly says something along the lines of "yeah, Techno lives in that direction, about (...) blocks from here", pointing to the side. It's a small phrase, barely noticeable, but it immediately caught my attention. Yes, I initially interpreted exile as the fandom's "most unjust treatment of a poor innocent child", but — if you're a villain who wants to torment a child in solitude and isolation, why would you point out where someone close to Tommy lives?
He could have misspoken — which would make him quite human (and not much of a 'master manipulator,' since that's important info. Dream didn't reveal anything about the Book or his connection to Punz even under torture, so why would he blab to Tommy?), or he said it intentionally, assuming Tommy would latch onto it.
(At that time, the prison was being built + around the same time, Dream very publicly fell out with Punz so the server wouldn't know about their collaboration. However, it would be very strange if Tommy could just run away from him for no reason — that would undermine his authority. But "escape and take shelter with Techno" sounds entirely plausible.)
2. Regarding Doomsday — I don't think exile played a huge role in that. c!Tommy doesn't change or grow as a character (I should note that I don't think that's a bad thing — such characters should exist), and his betrayal of Techno was only a matter of time. Techno had been planning to destroy L'Manberg for a long time and was essentially taking any allies he could find for that purpose. He thought Tommy had learned his lessons — he just didn't account for the fact that this guy's frontal lobe development simply doesn't happen /j
Well, since we never saw and will never see the story from our favorite blob's perspective, I can only make assumptions — and there are several.
- Dream was trying to scare Tommy. This is the most likely, considering how much trouble Tommy caused and how many times he got in Dream's way and interfered with his plans. Given that at this time Dream was trying to bring peace to the server through his very unique methods, he was probably trying to get Tommy to just stop being a nuisance (A quick reminder — he did the same thing after escaping prison: scare him and leave him alone). But it didn't work.
- Dream was taking out his anger. Also quite possible. Again, I'm not trying to whitewash the character — but considering the amount of pain and destruction Tommy caused Dream (and essentially, it all started because Dream asked Tommy for an apology for attacking Alyssa), his nerves probably gave out. A harsh lesson he tried to teach from the height of his own understanding of 'right and wrong.' And harsh by our world's standards — considering their attitude toward non-canon deaths, it was essentially a punishment akin to 'standing in the corner on peas.'
'If a child breaks other people's houses and steals things precious to you, do the same to them — break something in front of them.'
(By the way, we don't even know how old Dream is, so this could be two teenagers butting heads — and kids are ve-ery cruel creatures.)
- Dream was trying to rehabilitate Tommy. Also plausible. Given that in an environment where Tommy was enabled by his friends, who weren't really capable of standing up to his temperament, he could do whatever he wanted — it's quite possible that Dream was trying to isolate him from the world in order to retrain his habits. Again, being a fairly firm and quite ruthless person, he chose to do it away from people who would pity Tommy and undo all progress.
I lean toward a mix of these reasons.
In any case, I tried to watch the Exile arc through Tommy's eyes to understand where the 'horrible abuse' was supposed to happen and why I should feel sorry for him. Unfortunately, even watching most of the server from Tommy's perspective didn't give me answers — moreover, the dramatization and the lack of truly horrifying actions from Dream only strengthened my sympathy for the latter.
Still, I think Dream's behavior and the comment about Techno's house were part of a larger preparation for his Plan and that final battle — and who better than Tommy to spread the word across the server about the 'big scary villain'? The key is to let him 'escape' naturally.
I hope this was interesting)
I'm very happy with the questions, and I love discussing characters and their motivations/ideas, so thank you very much)