HI! This is my (valor-inthevoid) sideblog, I plan to just dump any old art here. I don't want to post and be Normal about Cdream on my main blog, for obvious reasons. anyhow WELCOME to any remaining fans of the Dsmp or c!Dream im sure you guys...exist.
Im kinda just treating this guy like an oc, I own him now.
NO WILBUR SUPPORT, OR CC!DREAM/CLAY SUPPORT PLEASE- THIS ISNT A CONTENT CREATOR BLOG AT ALL.
You can call me Valor/Val/Liam or by the blog name, anything really I don't care. I prefer they/him but I use any pronouns. Im a MINOR!!! YOU HEAR THAT?? so BE NORMAL. I really like purple. I also really like Ninjago, sonic, William afton and fnaf in general. object shows a bit. I really like Final space, iron man armored adventures, the bad guys books, and crime and punishment but no one else cares
ENG/ESP
With all that said
𝕊ℕ𝔸𝕂𝔼𝕊 𝔻𝕆ℕ'𝕋 𝕁𝕌𝕊𝕋 𝔹𝕀𝕋𝔼
More important info (stances and DNI) below!
MAIN STATEMENT!!!!!! IMPORTANT!!!
-I'm a c!dream enthusiast!! Not an apologist. Any canon dream is a good canon dream, that being said I do lean towards sympathetic/apologist. So don't be surprised to find both defending and shitting on em!
-I love angst! And if you are uncomfortable with topics of torture or dislike seeing drawn gore/blood. Abuse ect, I suggest you scramble and go find something more up your alley!
DNI- only the basic stuff, no Nazis, no homophobia, transphobia, or aphobia, no right wing. I don't even live in the us but maga and ice bootlickers fuck off. If you don't like my stuff for everyones sanity just scroll past. No fandom DNI!! (Except WSS.) I don't really care. I block freely. Especially Stan accounts (especially especially dream stan accounts) but like, no DNI you can still follow me I just don't care for the cc and find seeing him on my screen annoying.
-WILL STANCE: No WSS, defending people you don't know isn't the best use of our time. (Yes I believe he was abusive, I also don't think he's the scum of the earth and should die. But he needs to grow, and the internet, both sides, won't let him)
- DREAM STANCE; I never cared for him, I never watched his videos. I still don't care for him. Upon some digging, I do not believe the grooming claims are true and I've always thought that the strange tendency to hate on him relentlessly is weird and toxic and the internet definitely didn't do his mental health any favors. Despite that I do still believe he is an impulse immature prick that doesn't know how to handle an internet presence.
Don't bring up drama, I have a loving family and a high education school to go to, I don't care. It's not my business.
the idea that c!dream was somehow manipulating c!sam in the daedalus arc is wild. i mean, he was definitely trying to get sam to see things from his perspective but i wouldn't consider that any form of manipulation. giving him cake and steak and talking about how dream felt isn't manipulation.
I mean to be fair just because not everything Dream did had ill intent does not mean that it isn’t used to manipulate. And the Daedalus arc is very multi faceted. So yes, there is a prominent piece of raw uncalculated emotion for Dream, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there also isn’t manipulation involved. I think sometimes we consider manipulation, (especially in the context of the dsmp and Dream as a character) to be inherently malicious and evil. We tend is to have a negative opinion of manipulation in itself, but I don’t think manipulation by default is a bad thing. According to Google one of the definitions for manipulate is: “control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously.” Notice the ‘or’ making a version simply to ‘influence a person cleverly.’ That does not necessarily imply a vicious motive. In fact, you’ve probably manipulated before and didn’t realize. Like acting better while dating then marriage or dressing up a certain way for an interview these are methods of cleverly influencing people for a reason. It’s not lying but also not truly honest and yet it’s a part of society. Another example is like complimenting or asking how someone’s day is just so you can ultimately ask them for something. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t mean the compliments or didn’t want to talk to them, or that you really don’t care about them and only want to use them, it just isn’t you larger motive. Personally I do it all the time, because sometimes you don’t want to outright just say what you need. You need to influence the results indirectly to be more productive. Maybe you need to convince the other person that they want what you want or just want to be less rude. Sometimes you may know what the other person wants or is planning and can use manipulation to help them secretly achieve.
For example, one year my grandfather left the birthday card he got me at home and promptly forgot about it. My memory doesn’t really let me forget most things so when I saw him next I knew I should remind him. After all he put forth the effort to do it and I know he was disappointed he forgot and wanted to see my reaction to the funny card he picked (this is not an assumption btw he looked adamantly upset at the birthday dinner that he left it at home). But yea I also wanted to see and read my card, right? So inherently, asking or reminding him of it seems kinda rude or comes across like some selfish and greedy child, which wasn’t how I wanted to come across because like I said he also was sad I didn’t get to read it. So during our conversation at some point I referenced something I got for my birthday in a story and he was all like - oh yea that reminds me I forgot to give you this. He came to it on his own, I just had to prompt the subject a little. So yes I technically used manipulation tactics, but I don’t think that is inherently malicious.
That’s not to say manipulation cannot be used for more malevolent intentions, but it in itself is not, nor does it require abuse, lying or cruelty. I think it’s fair to say that you can use the truth to manipulate someone. Not to mention that lying does often contain partial truths anyways (well if you’re good at it ;). )
In daedalus, in my opinion there is some manipulation going by Dream, but there is also some genuine feelings going on as well. For me (I think I’ve talked about before) there is a change in Dream from the first initial response to Sam’s imprisonment to the next stream (therapy type session). Initially he is all about revenge, making Sam feel bad, rubbing in the karma and punishing Sam and Quackity. He used a lot of threats and thinks through ideas on how to make them suffer and I think the surprise and joy overcame him emotionally here. In the second stream though, his conversation was more tactical, he realized he needed Sam’s access to the prison. So he changed his approach and following actions. Instead of murder, torture and imprisonment for a year, he would get Sam to open the prison so he can use it to achieve his overall plans. This switch is intentional, if he simply wanted to talk about how he felt then there are other ways he could have done that.
Having said that, he was definitely dual tasking because if he can convince Sam that he was wrong in torturing anyone and treating people like Sam did, then it would both be some semblance of satisfaction and help him in his goal to bring Sam off his high horse down to equal levels so Sam’s more willing to help. In his conversations he switches between truth and half truths as well as tactful and emotional with him having the attitude that he’s fine but also deeply hurt. So yes, his emotions were certainly at play and while he does hide them behind other motives and goals that doesn’t mean that those goals weren’t also true. He’s multitasking, using his feelings to achieve an agenda as protection. And this is a tendency with him, his monologues do tend to show truths just not the whole picture.
And part of that frustration and hurt is the simple fact that torture as a form of interrogation tends to be a very ineffective method. More than anything at this point it’s mostly used as cruelty and punishment then to gain intel. Which is part of Dream’s point - you weren’t doing it for the book, you did it because you enjoyed punishing me. To drive his point home, he uses his manipulation to further prove that he didn’t have to lay a hand on Sam for him to get what he wanted. In other words, the torture was ineffective, pointless, bound to fail, and cruel for the sake of it and using a book as part of the intial motivation does not erase those facts.
Here’s how I think some of Dream’s actions were used to manipulate Sam. (Well firstly, again I’d say that you mostly have to ignore the first day, because I think Dream was not yet in his plan to get the book because he didn’t know he needed it.) But by feeding Sam he is creating dependency, he is not playing into what Sam thinks of him as the evil villain, and he’s proving his point. He does all this by giving food which is a generous thing to do since he didn’t even put him there to starve in the first place. One of the other things he does is leave for one day, which furthers that dependency, his point, and his satisfying karma. Dream also plays counselor to Sam, which both highlights the truth (in Sam’s own opinion) attempting to answer Dream’s deep question of - Why? What is wrong with you that said this made sense?…etc - but also allows Dream the opportunity to point out the flaws and bullshit of his mindset. But while this is somewhat cathartic for Dream, it is still part of his manipulation ploy. Notice how he lies about not having tested out the book before killing Tommy and using that to justify his actions. But he also offer’s information he didn’t have to. So yea, he lies and he abandons but he also tells the truth and brings food, good food all in part to convince Sam that he isn’t the ‘big bad’ Sam thinks he is. He does this to change Sam’s view of him in order to partly bring Sam down to his level of “badness” so they are on equal footing, which creates an opportunity for ally ship and unity against a “Greater Evil.” He’s trying to convince Sam that he doesn’t have ill intentions for the prison besides making it his home and as a fail safe against true evil otherwise Sam’s morals would have a hard time giving Dream the key card. - I fed you, I didn’t harm you, I kept you company, I listened to you, this is what you could have done. Am I not a good warden?… etc -
Anyways, lots of things are going on in daedalus for sure, but I’d say there is manipulation going here in more angles then one. Dream doesn’t just bring a cake to someone who tortured and had him tortured for nearly a year just to prove a point. There are far less extreme ways highlight the injustice of his treatment. Hell, giving him steak was enough he didn’t have to give him golden applies and cake, he didn’t have to agree with Sam nor share a less than honest part of his side. But he did because he needed Sam to trust him, to give him access to the prison.
And the reason I write however long this is, is because for me his manipulation of Sam to lead him to give up the book is part of what makes daedalus so cool because here is a parallel situation. A man imprisoned to avoid death with a powerful book that the other wants. But while it’d be perfectly reasonable to expect Dream to give Sam exactly what he faced, he didn’t. He gave all the things he didn’t get, didn’t have and he got the book he wanted in a matter of days without really laying a finger on him. Dream: *drops mic* and that’s how you get a damn book from someone. ;)
There has been a lot of discussion regarding c!Quackity, c!Tommy and c!Dream recently, a good portion stemming from the recent video circling around, where it is depicted that c!Tommy not only knew of c!Quackity’s torture but approved.
But while I could write an essay about it (ok yea I did…but) instead I want to shift the focus a bit, away from the same debates we keep having year after year. Because I think we’ve become too focused on the characters themselves over the audience's perception of them and too focused on morality, justification, and right and wrong in a story where everyone is morally questionable. Because at the end of the day it isn’t whether c!Dream or c!Tommy were actually right or justified, it is about - Who you root for and why. It is about (you) the audience's perception of the characters, not the characters’ perceptions of each other. Sure, c!Tommy himself feels justified in hurting c!Dream but do you believe he was.
With that thought in mind I found myself reading a 24 page research paper last night on a psychological study that looked at: What an audience defines as the hero and villain, Why they are naturally pulled to like certain characters and hate others, and What is the audience’s classification of morality in regard to the characters of fiction, where the conditions of morality are often not defined. One of the things shown in the data and line up to real life is that at the end of the day, heroes and villains are not defined on true purity and morality itself. If they were, action heroes and anti-heroes wouldn’t be successful and enticing. And yet, anti-heroes are some of the most beloved characters. In fact, I for one am typically drawn to violent anti-heroes, some of which are the heroes despite being perhaps sadistic murderers and torturers. But if the audience doesn’t simply define hero and villain as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ then what is pulling us toward taking one side over the other?
The answer is actually more complex than you might think. According to this paper, the first thing taken into consideration in a viewer’s appeal or unappeal of a character has to do with what the viewer considers “appropriate behavior.” Simply put, “appropriateness” is basically a social judgment which serves to approve or disapprove of a character’s behavior. This can be based on many things, such as cultural norms, societal code of conduct, your personal morals or experiences. And I think this is key, because I for one see stealing and griefing when I play Minecraft as seriously hurtful things to do (even though you can always rebuild). To the point that if you blow up the house I spent hours building or take my items it can ruin the fun for me entirely. So my definition of the appropriateness of such behavior might differ from people who take those things much more light-heartedly, causing me to disapprove of c!Tommy more than they would for that behavior.
Even further, when it comes to determining their appropriateness of behavior as in whether we tend to approve or disapprove of them we can look at moral domains, which spark our moral intuition instead of simply categorizing everything into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ since not even our subconscious brain is always so black and white. In the research I read, they looked at two sets of domains (aka sets of relating attributes used to measure and compare): The person-perception domains of Warmth (tolerant, friendly, warm, polite, gentle, trustworthy), Competence (intelligence, cleverness, opposite of stupidity, efficiency) and Duplicity (mad, tormented, violent, and tragic), which help to measure our perception of morality in characters as well as the five moral domains of MFT - harm/care (concerned with the suffering of others and empathy), fairness/reciprocity (related to justice), authority/respect (related to hierarchy and dominance), ingroup/loyalty (common good and punitiveness toward outsiders), purity/sanctity (concerned with contamination). According to the research behind these domains, we, the viewer, evaluate characters immediately and without cognitive deliberation. In other words, when characters fulfill domains it sticks with us and when they violate domains it can send out major red flags to us as soon as it happens without us thinking about it, not later in more considerate retrospect. So then, it makes sense that now as we debate we struggle to find common ground because our judgment was made ages ago and it's hard to reason with our already defined moral intuition.
As such, since I started getting into the dsmp first by watching all of the recordings of previous streams in order in this one playlist then going onto watching all of the blueberrytv videos (at the time of course), which edit the streams to allow you to see things from multiple perspectives. Therefore, I watched things from the very beginning, back when it was just c!George and c!Dream goofing off and dying in the nether. So, my intuitive judgment of c!Dream involves him building the community house, always trying to keep the peace between his friends, exploring the world so he can bring back all the types of wood for people to build with, building the prime path to connect everyone's houses together to make for easier travel, rebuilding Tubbo’s house after c!Tommy burned it down, helping c!Ponk when people kept burning down his house. These are just some of the moments I suspect helped to form my evaluation of him. Showing him as being very empathetic and caring, being loyal to his friends and accepting of new people, being a mediator and trying to keep things fair between his friends, fulfilling at least 3 (since he kinda is the authority that is hard to classify) of the moral domains. The streams also depicted the characteristics with warmth as well as competence and intelligence. So immediately my perceptive moral intuition deemed him the hero. As he fulfilled the warmth and competence domains of the one method and most of the domains of the other method without violating them in an obvious enough manner for me to remember at this moment (These are by no means the only reasons why I’d be inclined to root for c!Dream but that's beside the point).
On the other hand, my introduction to c!Tommy was him immediately breaking the three rules, by going around taking down donator’s signs, griefing, stealing, claiming things and property as his, trying to kill people until he ends up being banned. So he hurt others and causes harm, he is invited to join and have fun but fails to reciprocate that by going about and messing things up, he immediately disrespects everyone and defies authority by breaking the rules, hard to say on loyalty though (as mentioned above) him burning down c!Tubbo’s, his best friend, house doesn’t give me the impression of loyalty, concerning purity he scams and lies, is obsessed (though hardly the only one) with male genitalia (which I personally find unsavory) and is disrespectful towards women so definitely failing in the purity and sanctity domain as well. In regards to warmth, I wouldn’t say so, nor particularly competent, though certainly meeting the more violent and aggressive elements of duplicity. So in other words, in just his first few streams he has violated every moral domain, while also not meeting the warmth or competence but meeting duplicity. So immediately my impression of him is to dislike and disprove as my moral intuition labels him as a villain.
In other words, perhaps our affinity for characters and perception of their morality has less to do with actual legal or other measurements of morality but more of what our initial impression was that formed our judgment from the very start. Because at the end of the day, I feel like the discussion needs to be less about whether this character or that character is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because their motivation or trauma justifies their behavior and more about what qualities do you appreciate about the character. At the end of the day, it's fiction and you should be able to love or hate whatever character you want regardless of morality or right & wrong. It’s your opinion and I don’t see other fandoms shaming and bashing other people for liking a certain character that others dislike and/or the protagonist dislikes meaning therefore they are bad so how can you like them. But in the same way, I should also be able to hate a character without being bashed for not being empathetic to their trauma… Anyways I think the idea that we all see characters as justified and innocent in our own way is cool, especially in respect to the dsmp which is told from all angles, and that’s what I set out to learn more about and share with you. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my findings and I made sense (…..and if it didn’t, you are always welcome to ask or add on :D), sorry for the length I’m beginning to realize conciseness is not my strong suit…
I hope with this interesting angle, we can lean away from discussions on legal, moral, crime, trauma and more towards questions of preference and characteristics and personal perception - Why do you root for them? What was your introduction to the characters? How do you think that impacted your viewpoint on the story? Has your viewpoint ever changed? What do you think helped define your definition of ‘appropriateness’?… etc <3 <3
This is a great analysis! Do you still perhaps have that paper saved somewhere I'd love to read it and send to a friend of mine since I think he'd anjoy it as well
nice pair of characters who trust each other more than anyone else in the whole entire world it would sure be a shame if one of them betrayed that trust for the sake of trying to keep the other alive. it would sure be a shame to love someone so much you destroy them
