Latest Posts by wislawa1 - Page 6
c!Dream always told himself he was objective, but he wasn't. He couldn't be. Perfect objectivity doesn't exist; there will always be biases and preconceived ideas about others, and these ideas threw Dream off more than I think he'd like to admit. He was wrong about Sam following their rules (he was wrong about Sam caring). But he was also wrong about Tommy, when he was so sure that Tommy only ever wanted to cause him harm.
// dsmp rp
I might be crazy for this, but I don't actually think that any of Dream's relationships were beyond repair, if he chose to try to fix them.
I think that a big part of how Dream processes so many losses is by leaning into that cold, logical side of himself, rather than lingering on emotions. He can rationalize his pain in a way that makes it seem normal to him, and therefore not something worth getting upset about—and, weirdly enough, he's more likely to do this with the people who have hurt him the most (e.g. Quackity), not less. (The only real pitfall is that this justification is usually used when he's talking about people, rather than to them.)
But if his friends have reasons for turning on him, then they're no different from Dream himself, right? And Dream sure as hell knows he's done plenty wrong. He doesn't seem opposed to admitting to his past, nor to apologizing for things he's genuinely sorry for (even if that, admittedly, isn't much). With that in mind, I don't think it's unreasonable that he would try to find common ground, to reach out to those he used to care about and try to understand and to reconcile.
Weirdly, I think a main obstacle here would be Punz; as long as they are together, the Plan™ is all that matters. I think another obstacle would be Dream's sheer terror of showing that kind of vulnerability around someone he no longer trusts—but that's not an uncrossable line, as Tommy demonstrates in the finale. It might just take the other person to give him that push, to let him know that he's safe here. If Dream was seeking out this kind of reconciliation himself, however, I think he would be willing to open up sooner.
The one exception is Sam. Because Dream tried to reconcile with Sam, for a long time, back when Sam was stuck in prison. And Sam refused.
// dsmp rp
The contrast in daedalus… Dream trying to manipulate Sam into doing what he wanted, but Dream also just wanting to vent his feelings; his anger. Wanting Sam to understand how badly he hurt him.
There's a definite shift somewhere along the way, where Dream transitions from that bitter, mocking side from the first stream to something more pragmatic and cold. It's not both at once; it's a conscious switch. It's as if he realized that he would never get through to Sam on any emotional level. Which was fine, he told himself; Dream was a pragmatist. He cut his losses and moved on. But abandoning all hope of an honest conversation, one of the only times he opened up—that couldn't be an easy call to make.
Okay, question for people smarter than me: What would c!Dream and c!Wilbur's interaction have been like in and after the scrapped lore? I'm wondering if it was maybe intended to be an earlier version of the c!Dream-c!Purpled alliance, but that would obviously play out very differently with c!Wilbur. Food for thought.
Thinking today about how Daedalus wasn’t c!Dream’s revenge fantasy, it was his closure fantasy.
In his heart of hearts, he was fantasizing not about destroying Sam, but about Sam understanding. Sam acknowledging what he did. Sam conceding that what he did to Dream was…
(Sam apologizing? Did a tiny, shameful piece want that, picture it, what it could look like?)
we dont talk baout ctubbo giving away the cookie outpost without telling cranboo first like we dont talk about how thye dont talk about it you know, why ctubbo is doing all this in the first place, the isolationism, how the missing nuke was meant to be single use because it was meant to kill him, and how ctubbo is still spying still investigating because thats the only way he can feel safe, how hes spending more time doing this than at the unfinished mansion that was meant to be a family home. Can we talk about how he gave it away and cranboo never knew what that meant. can we talka bout it.
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.
My complicated thoughts on c!Wilbur's ending (I tried to make this short)
For me, there are things about Wilbur's ending I still don't vibe with because they'd need to be more expanded on to be effective
The whole last arc still feels like a big flop because in the end Wilbur just kinda got stomped all over until in the end he followed Phil's worst advice for the worst moment and went away with that idea of "If they don't forgive me I have to go", and Phil's erroneous message was just kinda never really defied by the narrative
I still wish he would've had a moment to yell at someone and be rightfully mad because holy shit he should've, a scene to parallel Ghostbur's rightful anger at phil during Doomsday that felt to be so easily set up with Wilbur being reminded a few times that Phil, Techno and Dream did doomsday and the crater wasn't from the 16th, and with him having to confront and be pretty disappointed in it just being "his grave" when he had no grave, lighting up at the idea that L'manburg was worth enough to rebuild after he was gone in his conversation with Tubbo on the 3rd of August 2021 stream
The book for Eret and half of what was said in it regarding Eret is still shit in the context of my own Judas being a thing, with Eret only chastising Wilbur for "not apologizing well enough" when Wilbur never did anything to Eret aside from rightfully not trusting them once Eret murdered everyone for their own selfish gain and continued to do shit to the L'manburgians after (which is all in lost VODs and this isn't Eret crit centric, so I won't go too far into this, but the towers to make them feel watched, something like covering the sun on their territory to make mobs spawn, etc). Eret never apologized for real, Eret admitted to wanting Wilbur to be a sort of puppet leader in a new country to essentially make Eret a dictator, as she later said that democracy wasn't good, the only reason why she told Wilbur not to jump off the bridge was because "think of all the resources I wasted trying to revive you", she made the empty gesture of throwing away the crown for like the third time while losing no real power or status, etc
And I don't like that in defending the ending so much in the most literal sense some people have just disregarded what in my opinion makes the ending more interesting, which is that the Utah desert can be seen as a metaphor for the afterlife, but an afterlife in which Wilbur went to his imagined desert instead of the limbo he thought he deserved to suffer in, because that possible interpretation was clearly done intentionally with the Eret book, the Ozimandias callback, the "I never did forgive myself", and we know that Wilbur wants us to analyze the ending as he himself said it
So I understand those who didn't like it, had some problems with it or were dissatisfied, because I myself could never be satisfied by it, because to have that I would need everyone else who isn't Wilbur to own up to their own shit and make it explicit that Wilbur isn't and wasn't at fault for everything
Have Eret actually say a real sorry for killing him and all L'manburgians and it to have weight for real, have Niki own up to the fact that she was never abandoned, but she did betray the L'manburgians multiple times, have Fundy and Wilbur have a talk about the Pogtopia buttons and Fundy disowning Wilbur as a father, have Phil own up to and suffer consequences for Doomsday, let Wilbur actually confront the reality of Doomsday with Phil there, have them talk about the 16th, have Wilbur come closer to an understanding with Ghostbur from that going further than just sending Friend to him, get some deeper understanding of Ghostbur as a part of himself, have Wilbur see that self-love isn't letting yourself be beaten down and stepped over for the comfort of those who wronged you, have him see and others confront that he isn't just a scapegoat and he isn't the source of all evil, have that mythical reddit post that put this all so clearly guide the steps to this
But I get that it all would hinge on all these characters with pretty bad writing in general getting their shit together and actually being written well for longer than just one stream, things should've started changing with them all from hitting on 16 onwards and that just wouldn't happen, so in the context of what cc!Wilbur could do by himself, it's pretty good, and the open ended-ness and little more metaphorical pieces such as the nice afterlife in the desert, the bandage being gone without us ever getting a proper explanation of it, Ghostbur getting Friend sent to him by Wilbur even if Wilbur will forever separate himself from the idea of Ghostbur makes it all feel like at least c!Wilbur himself is... Ok. He isn't doing incredibly good, he still doesn't forgive himself, but hell, he's ok, be it at peace in a literal place or the afterlife, in the end he went off with a smile, he made his decision and got at least Tommy to talk with him one last time on ok-ish terms, in the end at least he knows that Tommy cares, even if it would've been much better to have more
More people involved, more explained and shown, more time, but alas this is it
A list of some bits of Dream SMP character perspective lore that I remember sometimes, and they hit me like a train:
-Both Tommy and Tubbo (as well as possibly a lot of the Pogtopia members) still believe that Wilbur placed the buttons all over the base in an act of insanity, instead of it being Fundy’s prank.
-Everyone believes that Dream blew up the community house, not Ranboo, with some of the people that weren’t in the Season 2 finale probably still thinking it was Tommy (like Fundy).
-Tommy never found out that the disc he and Tubbo nearly died fighting for was, for a while, in the possession of Ranboo, somebody he trusted.
-Schlatt died believing that Quackity placed the TNT under Manberg, and probably still thinks he did.
-Almost nobody knows the full extent of what happened to Tommy in exile
-Niki doesn’t know Ghostbur exists (she thinks he was a hallucination, or just a figment of Fundy’s imagination), and might never find out about him.
-A lot of the members that joined post-original L’manberg, like HBomb and Ranboo, have a relatively negative opinion about it because all they know about the original era was that it started from a drug van, and they don’t know about the police brutality, the independence stuff, or really any of the true reasoning for founding L’manberg.
-Judging from the fact that both Quackity and Karl were extremely surprised to find out about it and didn’t know previously, a lot of people don’t know that Tommy gave up his discs for L’manberg and therefore falsely believe that he has only ever sacrificed things FOR the discs.
-Wilbur never found out that Eret was truly sorry for betraying L’manberg and actually wanted redemption, and he also never found out that people like Fundy or Tubbo, never actually were against him or wanted to betray him.
Some of the character perspectives are really interesting. A lot of characters have completely different ideas of events that happened due to lack of information, with some of them still holding these beliefs. It’s a really interesting form of storytelling, because it makes everyone an unreliable narrator in at least some way.
worst dsmp take might be ppl comparing lmanburg to colonists
no the worst dsmp take is those same people calling a bunch of white (mainly american) people "indigenous" because they don't realize that appropriating racially charged language (using it Incorrectly) to paint their little minecraft guy as oppressed to win an argument online is, in fact, racist.
for the record:
dream, sapnap, and george where there first. they are not indigenous because they Also Traveled There. dream was not born there, there isn’t a culture that was developed over many generations that the other members of the dsmp are not a part of, because he showed up two to three months before tommy got there. he is not the “native population,” he is not Indigenous, he is a white guy that traveled to a land and then claimed all of it.
if we Were to use terms like “indigenous” in this context, then it’d be for mobs with a society, like villagers or piglins. but I’m going to hazard a guess and say that All of the discourse in the dream smp would be better off if we avoided language like that. it could not more clearly be charged language chosen specifically to demonize or valorize based entirely on the Real World History connected to those terms and not the events within the story. there is no productive conversation to be had within this framework, and everyone who’s not trying to insta-win an argument by shutting it down with scare-tactics knows that. either nobody’s a colonist or everyone’s a colonist and that’s not a conversation that I think we want to have.
and for the record Once Again, even disregarding all of that L’manberg Is Not An Example Of Colonization.
the l’manbergians Were Citizens Of The Dream Smp. they did not Invade the dream smp because they lived there. they were Meant To Be There. they were Contributing To the culture of the land that they lived In (tommy making church prime with dream, the Literal main religion of the region, and building the prime path for instance).
the l’manbergians didn’t Colonize, they Seceded. because they were Already citizens of the dream smp, but they claimed a section of land (land that had been Empty Forest, dream didn’t actually know where it was at first Because it’d been unoccupied by either mobs or other players) and declared that they were No Longer citizens of the dream smp and instead wanted to self-govern.
they did not travel to a culture that wasn’t their’s, claim it for themselves, and then either force the people that lived there Out or force them to abandon their original culture for the new one. what they took away from dream Was Their Own Citizenship. was Dream’s Ownership Over Them And Whatever They Built.
any conversation about the morality of this fact has to be made with the understanding of that. dream’s rejection of their independence wasn’t about the land, it was about maintaining ownership of the people on it. dream wasn’t trying to Stop colonization, he was trying Keep The L’manbergians Inside Of His Society (under his Rule).
