C!dreamwastaken - Tumblr Posts

C!Dream being treated kindly feels wrong to me. The idea of C!Dream getting a redemption arc feels wrong to me.

It feels wrong to me, and I think some other people feel similarly, and I think I can kinda put into words why?

I think the thing that’s the biggest factor in why possible redemption/sympathy for C!Dream feels Wrong to some people rn has to do with Exile.

To me, I can’t really sympathize with C!Dream, even with his abuse and the prison situation rn, because I still resent him for Exile.

And with every situation as it is rn, I feel like he’s gotten away with it.

Because I think there’s a question that’s important: Who knows the extent of what happened?

•Tommy obviously, as it was done to him

•Dream, because he did the abuse

•Arguably Wilbur, because he has Ghostbur’s memories(?) and Ghostbur witnessed much of Exile, not the entire time as he was sent away but enough to witness abuse

•Possibly Sam, because I believe he mentioned Dream telling him what he did to Tommy to the Eggpire, and seemed disturbed and protective over Tommy, but we don’t technically know what he was told

•Ranboo, along with Techno and maybe Tubbo? know more than most, or have seen some about how it’s affected him. (Ranboo wrote letters with Tommy and saw Tommy’s concerning words, Techno worked with Tommy after his exile and witnessed his behavior and fear of Dream, along with Dream threatening to burn his disc if he didn’t come with him.

Other a few, people don’t really know what happened. Not really anyone other than Tommy himself knows exactly how fucked up it was. Nobody else, besides the victim and abuser, knows the extent of what happened. (Ghostbur didn’t witness everything so neither did Wilbur; Sam, through Dream’s words and getting his knowledge, still wouldn’t know how Tommy felt or acted in personal moments Dream wasn’t there to witness)

Okay. Another important question, worded twice bc I talk too much: What are the consequences of those people knowing? What’s happened because of it?

Well, in terms of people holding Dream accountable specifically for Exile?

Nothing, really. Dream’s essentially gotten away with it.

His actions did lead him to prison, which is definitely a punishment and accountability for his manipulation and crimes throughout the course of the server and all that jazz, but that wasn’t for Exile; that was really rather for the whole Finale situation and everything else. I don’t think that’s Exile accountability because it wasn’t intended to be so. Sam knows about exile because Dream told him, but I don’t think he knew then. He only learned after Dream was in the cell. It didn’t play a factor in locking him away.

Sam defended Tommy from the Eggpire, showing an understanding that he’d been through a lot, and he treated Tommy with kindness during the Hotel era. This can be seen, at least partly because Sam has had a positive relationship with Tommy before, in response to Sam knowing about Exile from Dream. But this reaction only affects Tommy rather than involving or directly referencing Dream.

And what happened with Sam later on? Well, because of his role as the Warden and his attachment to the rules, he ended up locking Tommy in the prison with Dream. So from a character who arguably Knows about the abuse, that’s not an action that holds Dream accountable, and as of now it looks like that’s not really going to happen.

Techno, a character who has Seen A Bit (“come with me or I’ll burn you disc” in front of his eyes, saw Tommy’s behavior after exile, hid Tommy from Dream, who was looking for him) doesn’t Know Enough to have a full understanding and Doesn’t Know what actually happened and ended up teaming up with Dream. He didn’t seem to care when told Tommy was beaten to death by Dream.

Wilbur technically held Dream accountable, in a way, for a moment, though not to his face—he told Tommy that he would have killed Dream for how he treated him. That was a moment where a character other than Tommy said, essentially, That Was Fucked Up. But he then changes his mind and tells Tommy he agrees.*

*I feel like I explicitly remember Wilbur saying he agreed with Exile in a certain point at a stream but I rewatched a bit and didn’t see it when I was expecting to. I still need to rewatch it all but I may be wrong on this wording?? Nonetheless he expresses Dream is right and that he’s in prison because he dared to be a challenge.

So from the non-Tommy people that know Dream hasn’t recieved backlash for Exile, to his face or about him or otherwise.

In general, this is understandable because Tommy has barely processed the extent of the trauma and abuse himself (I don’t think he’s even used the word abuse yet? I think he’s called it manipulation and has used trauma) and not many people know. And as I went through before, the people who do know don’t Know Everything or they still haven’t really done anything to acknowledge Dream as the abuser.

But recently, with the prison plotline and the torture plotline where Dream is suffering, and where he might possibly be broken out and given a healing arc or even redemption, that’s pretty uncomfortable to me.

That creates sympathy for him and puts him in a vilnerable siruation.

That’s fine and natural to sympathize with someone in a situation like him; I kind of feel guilty I don’t. It’s fine for characters to sympathize and it’s fine for viewers, etc.

But it’s uncomfortable, to me, because it’s not Dream in his entirety that’s being treated nicely. It’s a version of Dream who hasn’t done all he did in exile because people don’t know what he did. Their perception of him is without that act of cruelty and in my opinion, torture. The audience knows; characters don’t.

Fine, if the characters learn what happened, they can still break him out, they can still help him recover mentally, if that’s what they want to do. But if they don’t have that knowledge, to the audience watching and knowing what they don’t, it brings about a sense of injustice.

It’s like the fandom is at the risk of moving on from Exile because in the story, it’s really brought up by nothing but Tommy’s trauma responses?

I lied. As I get further I’m getting more aware I’m actually terrible at this putting this all into words. While knowing abuse is abuse and both Dream and Tommy should have help for their trauma:

It just feels cruel for an abuser not to be properly known as an abuser and receive sympathy or empathy from characters who’ve treated the abuse victim without sympathy or empathy, even if they didn’t know.

I worded so much of this badly lmaooo my bad

TLDR: I think it’s off-putting to see Dream being given sympathy as an abuse victim when we haven’t seen him really acknowledged as an abuser.