I Think They Should Kiss

/dsmp /rp

I,, wanted to make this post because I’ve seen a certain take floating around, especially on twitter, that is very… interesting.

The take goes as follows:

C!Dream was locked up in the prison because he has the revival book. The members of the SMP consider the knowledge he has too valuable to lose, so they put him in jail.

Now, this isn’t wrong, per say, but it implies a completely different motive and series of events than what actually happened in the canon story.

Here’s the events as they are implied to have happened from that sentence alone:

- c!Dream obtains the revival book. He doesn’t share it with anyone, and destroys the physical book so it can’t be stolen from him.

- After a while, someone finds out about the book.

- The rest of the server agrees that this knowledge is too valuable to lose.

- They lock c!Dream up in the prison to either keep him (and thereby the knowledge of revival) safely contained, or to torture him so badly he blabs and gives it up.

Meanwhile, here’s what actually happened:

- c!Dream obtains the revival book. He doesn’t share it with anyone, and destroys the physical book so it can’t be stolen from him.

- Months later, c!Dream holds c!Tommy’s discs hostage to force him and c!Tubbo to come meet him out in the middle of nowhere to fight.

- c!Punz rallies the server together to stop him after c!Tommy gives him all of his savings in a last ditch attempt to get someone to intervene.

- They all catch c!Dream red fucking handed trying to murder c!Tubbo (and they would probably assume c!Tommy as well), to the point where c!Sapnap and c!Puffy had to physically block him from going after the kids once they started running for safety.

- They find the Vault of Attachments, a massive room filled with spaces for everything that anyone is attached to, up to and including a tiny little cage for c!Skeppy.

- c!Tommy forces c!Dream to drop all of his items, then kills him twice.

- As c!Tommy goes in for the third kill, c!Dream desperately screams that he can revive people. He even elaborates that if he dies, death will be permanent.

- c!Tommy traps c!Dream in obsidian. c!Dream confesses to blowing up the Community House. C!Tommy tries to get him to tell everyone about what happened in exile, but c!Dream stays silent, though everyone can pretty easily see that something bad happened there.

- They deliberate over what to do. Nobody wants c!Dream to roam free considering all the shit he’d done over the past few months (waged wars against L'Manburg, Pogtopia, and El Rapids/Mexican L'Manburg, orchestrated c!Tommy’s exile and drove a wedge between c!Clingyduo, manipulated c!Tubbo into giving him c!Tommy’s second disc, destroyed L'Manburg permanently and killed a lot of people), but considering the knowledge he has, they can’t just kill him.

- C!Sam suggests locking him up in the prison. That way, he’ll still be able to revive people if needed, but he won’t be free to hurt people anymore.

So yes, it is technically true that c!Dream was locked up because he has the revival book. Except, that statement is missing the very important context that the only other option was death. He’d proven himself to be such a danger to everyone around him, nobody on the server felt safe knowing that he was just roaming the server freely.

The main purpose of him being locked up there is to ensure that he won’t hurt anyone ever again. The knowledge he has makes him too valuable to kill, but that doesn’t mean he did nothing to deserve being isolated from the rest of the server’s population, considering what he has done and tried to do to that population.

power is power, and not everyone is powerful

when i see a lot of discussions who try to compare characters, the thing is, they forget about the very nature of the server, in that it is NOT our world despite how much it can feel like it, and thus the nature of power is much more primeval. 

on a basic level, power is power. nothing else.

having the best armor doesn’t make you unkillable. Tommy had the first piece of netherite armor on the entire server. and it was stolen and used against him. Sam insists he’s one of, if not the, most powerful person the server - he still lost to a PVP with Dream. Techno infamously was able to kill Quackity with a pickaxe, some potions, and iron armor despite the latter being in full enchanted netherite. 

now, in our world, resources = power. several people on the server take great pride in their resources (being the “richest”) but…once you have God Armor+Weapons and a solid base, you’re basically on the same playing field as everyone else, it then comes down to skill. because most people only have 3 lives, it’s not likely you NEED four stacks of Gapples and Diamonds. sure, it helps! in the Disc Finale, Dream talks a lot about how he has more than he’ll ever need and that Tommy and Tubbo can never feasibly beat him, but we’ve all seen an episode of Manhunt. Dream doesn’t need godtier items to be powerful. and it’s hard to say items make you powerful when out of canon, CC!Dream has a valid system to prevent people getting so far ahead no one can ever catch up (the End being closed and iron/villager/piglin farms being banned) 

and all of this means the interactions of “powerful” people - Techno and Dream in particular - need to be taken with the concept in mind that in the end, all the “power” (resources, money, friends, allies) doesn’t matter if another person is able to kill you anyways. (other characters like Punz should be on that list as well but OOC we know he prefers to be a supporting character, Sapnap is involved but not as much as those two, etc.)

and what it also means is that objectively weaker characters will view the world fundamentally different from them because they do not have Power nor do they have misconceptions about who actually holds it. which brings us to this:

“One arrow can be easily broken. But when five arrows are be bound together, they become strong.”

people like Techno will not understand why a group needs to band together and consolidate power in an organized government, and it’s because his version of anarchy benefits him, and “governments” pose a threat to him (whether he wants to recognize or admit it is another story). he’s Powerful! nobody can, on their own, overpower him. the Disc Finale is the ultimate example of this - Dream was able to be taken down by the entire server joining together and saying “we’ve had enough” and Dream, despite all his Power, couldn’t outmatch them all. and though they weren’t part of a government, that’s ONLY because their governments had been forcibly dissolved and their country lands destroyed beyond repair.

L’manburg was originally about a group of people coming together to keep themselves safe from people with Power. The Disc Finale proves that was the way to go! Dream was considered unbeatable, even 2 vs 1, and we know from Manhunts not even 4 v 1 can take him down easily. but a dozen people? there’s no escaping that. Techno can say he did it at the Community House, but they weren’t actively hunting him - there are several “good enough” fighters that if they teamed against him, he would die. Sapnap alone got him down to 2.5 hearts on Doomsday. him + someone else? Techno would have been dead. that’s all it takes. 

Dream understands this and did from very early on. he fully and absolutely understands why they formed a government. it’s exactly why he worked so hard to destroy it, and why he encouraged paranoia and sowed the seeds of distrust every chance he got, because it doesn’t need to be a “government” it’s any faction, any group that could get big enough to pose a threat, and if he can turn them on each other, he stays in control. he stays Powerful.

when Dream threatens people, when Techno comes into someone’s home and demands answers to his questions, when Sapnap tries to bust the drug ring, when Punz says stay away from the Egg, these are people who have Power. their actions, their threats, their intentions carry with them the Power to Kill if they don’t get their way. and that HAS to be considered when we look at how interactions play out and why other characters feel the way that they do.

oh you think you're soooo fucking smart. with your fucking convoluted pretentious sentences

"They're teenage boys, they're not even gonna think about sex"... Have you MET a teenage boy before. I wish I was kidding, this was said in 100% seriousness.

Squish

*gently places him into the palm of your hand*

Completely obsessed with ‘lim-life / the life series being a bunch of kids just playing in the playground’ idea

Taako looks like such a fckn meme, lol