#also tommy apologises and addresses his trauma

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Hey guys, eh little ramble about C!Dream.

I sometimes see takes that are rather sympathetic to his character, suggesting that even if some of his actions were reprehensible, his descent was partly due to others failing to reach out and help him. That he has his own reasons and people painting him as the villain essentially forced him into the role. Dream’s suffered too. 

And yeah, you can look into these ideas as an effort to get a better understanding of Dream’s motivations but it’s very easy to fall into excusing Dream’s actions too much or blaming others too much for Dream’s actions.

It’s a tricky thing, but for any action, there’s gonna be some level of personal responsibility assuming you have at least that much power/agency. (There are cases where a character does not have that much power over their own actions. I would argue that Badboyhalo is being heavily influenced by the egg. And there are other times when a character is basically being forced to do something against their will. I don’t believe Dream has ever been in such a situation - his actions in prison might count as he’s absolutely trapped in there with no options. Regardless, this post is only about his actions prior to his prison sentence.) 

Dream is responsible for his own actions.

 -No one pressured him to build obsidian walls around L’Manburg to trap the citizens in forever if they did not do as he demanded.  -No one compelled him to destroy Tommy’s armour every day.  -Or to convince him that L’Manburg was better off without him and to deliberately sabotage his party to make him believe no one cared about him while knowing Tommy was already feeling terrible and contemplating suicide. -Nothing forced him to destroy L’Manberg. -No one made him decide to kill Tubbo and lock Tommy in prison forever. These actions aren’t mistakes made under pressure, these are premeditated plans.

Now, one might argue that Tommy provoked Dream, that he had an irrational hatred for Dream long before Dream actually did anything terrible to him. Dream only became a villain because Tommy and Wilbur villainised him first. Again, this is removing Dream’s own responsibility from his shoulders too much for me. 

For comparison, Quackity tried pressuring Tubbo into executing Ranboo post the festival because he was a traitor. He even said he’d leave L’Manburg if Tubbo didn’t. Tubbo ultimately refused though! Quackity may have been pressuring him, but Tubbo had agency and if he’d actually gone through with it, it would have been as much his own fault. 

Besides this, it also suggests that Tommy and Wilbur were way worse to Dream than canon really depicts? I would argue that Dream did far, far more to provoke Tommy than Tommy did Dream. Dream for instance, griefed a bunch of places and blamed it on Tommy when Tommy hadn’t even been doing anything. To suggest Tommy viewed Dream as an evil villain prior to his exile is also untrue. Post Nov 16th, after Dream had already betrayed Tommy to join Schlatt (plus also having helped Wilbur gather TNT), the two of them sat on the bench together and listened to Blocks while watching the sunset. Tommy didn’t even care that Dream blew up his house. A week later, Dream and Tommy were friendly when they streamed with Lani. Tommy viewed Dream as a friendly rival at this point, and had for some time (the day before the Nov16th war, Dream had helped Tommy when he was in conflict with Sapnap after he’d killed Tommy’s horse. Also after Dream had announced he’d be fighting against Tommy in the Pogtopia war.)

As for friends abandoning him, this again suggests people were way colder to Dream than canon depicts. George was supportive of Dream when he was exiling Tommy. While he didn’t see such an extreme response as necessary, he definitely let Dream do what he did on his behalf. Punz was loyal to Dream right up until the disc finale. Sam built the prison on Dream’s request and remained at least neutral to Dream until the disc finale. 

Sapnap’s an interesting one, he was hurt when Dream declared the only thing he cared about was Tommy’s discs and took offense to Dream’s dethroning George rather arbitrarily and fought on George’s behalf against this. That said, Sapnap was doing this still in the position as Dream’s friend. A good friend doesn’t merely enable them - it’s good when Sapnap condemns Dream’s worse behaviours. He SHOULD be angry when Dream says he cares about nothing but Tommy’s discs and look for an explanation. 

On Tommy’s first full day of exile, Sapnap joins Dream in essentially bullying Tommy, enough so that Tommy actually challenges Sapnap on this. At the festival, Sapnap actually declines joining Tommy, stating that Dream is his friend and he’s not going against him. The next day, Dream never bothers to talk to Sapnap, while Tommy goes out of his way to apologise to him and invites him to be his friend. Only then does Sapnap give up on Dream. I believe if Dream had reached out, he would have had Sapnap’s loyalty. But he did not. 

Perhaps they could have done more for Dream, but it’s very hard to help someone who is burning bridges. Dream was elusive, he let his friendship die as he came to believe that attachment was a weakness. It’s a tragedy, yes, but Dream is also responsible for the breaking down of his friendships. 

Dream was not forced to be a villain, to be abusive. He had friends, he had power. Like every character, he had a choice. And he chose poorly. 

[txbbo]

I've been debating making this because this is definitely not what my blog is known for and I was worried that people wouldn't want to see it, but with the amount of shit im seeing on twitter it's compelled me to make this because I'm so frustrated.

I feel like I could make 100 posts about 'Cancel Culture' and it wouldn't be enough, so I'm just going to focus on what caused me to write this tonight - the Tommy situation. *Warning for a VERY long post below*

To be clear, Tommy has been in 'hot water' on twitter for the past couple weeks, roughly starting with the KSI collaboration where he made a joke about dream stans.

Last week, when the SBI 'exposing account' got made and twitter hyped it up, someone made a Tommy account and made a thread of things he needed to be '''educated''' on: https://twitter.com/idktommyinnit/status/1379158964148002821?s=20

I'll let you read it for yourself (and come to your own conclusion) but to me.... half of this stuff does not require a twitter thread? Breaking it down accusation by accusation:

1) 'The Mexican accent' - the clips show he is clearly only doing it when copying big Q (who famously exaggerates his own accent) and there is zero malicious intent (Big Q is also IN the 3 clips mentioned in the thread, and obviously didn't tell Tommy it was offensive). There's debates in the comments from people who think it is offensive and people who don't, so I'm not trying to pick a side. To avoid accidentally offending anyone, maybe it is best for him to stop, but the way twitter acts as if he was purposefully doing this to offend people is just not true.

2- 'Making a slave joke' - Even saying that feels wrong, because it suggests Tommy is doing something awful. Instead, they are referring to the 'bit' that Tommy, Techno, Tubbo and Ant were involved in, when Tommy and Techno took Tubbo and Ant as their slave. People are taking this vod and using it to accuse Tommy of being insensitive to Black people, but I think people are just assuming the worst. Slavery existed long before the transatlantic slave trade and still exists today. This is a role-play server - Tommy 'forced' Ant to work for him and used the word slave, which to me is exactly what was happening? People 'murder' others on the SMP, people 'kidnap' on the SMP, people are 'terrorists' on the SMP, and all happen without issue. To add, Ant is a WHITE man. Tommy taking a WHITE man as a slave is not something uber problematic.

3- 'His reply to Techno's 'murder is bad' tweet'. - I get people saying that Techno's initial tweet was insensitive, but saying Tommy's agreement to this from almost over a year ago is something notable and worth addressing is just super nitpicky and is clearly only in there to pad out the thread. It also makes me wonder what other CC's interacted with it and if THEY should be cancelled too (according to twitter).

4 - 'The saying slurs' tweet / jokes about 'whats the worst word you know' - This one I can kinda see how people might not like it. However, it's clearly a 'poke' at his friends, making them seem like bad people. To me, its in the same vein as 'Tubbo is a Tory' or when Tubbo shoots back that 'Tommy is a Nigel Farage fan'. They're obviously not, but its making fun of your friends by saying they are, and mockingly making them out out to be bad people.

5- 'Covid jokes' - People are taking jokes he made about him 'having covid' and saying he shouldn't joke about this, even going as far to linking it to asian hate crimes. I don't even know how to explain that that this is just? not a 'cancellable offence'? I'm sorry but if I hear anyone in my family coughing I make a little joke that 'they better not have covid' and I know other people do. I have someone in my family who is extremely vulnerable to Covid and if they caught it, would quite literally die, but I can understand that jokes like these are harmless. The whole internet had a running joke that we were in a 'panoramic' or 'Panera' or 'insert any word that sounds like pandemic.

This thread got a lot of attention and anything he tweeted afterwards was spammed with the link and there were so many people upset that he hadn't addressed it. I saw so many people say how 'upset' and 'disappointed' they were in him.

Going on to today, this happened: https://twitter.com/khasiid/status/1380611890104139776?s=20

I get it, it looks bad. But for context (which the tweet doesn't give), the reply was only up for less than a minute. It was obvious to me, even BEFORE Tommy addressed it in his stream (clip here: https://twitter.com/cowrpse/status/1380640046202593283?s=20 ) that it was a mistake. In the clip, he clearly acknowledges his mistake and seems embarrassed. To me, this situation should just be laid to rest because a mistake does not need this much attention, but twitter disagrees.

In case it wasn't obvious by now, the tide is turning against Tommy and people are less willing to ignore genuine mistakes and assume the worst.

Today, during his birthday stream people were clearly already waiting for him to mess up. Around half way through, he started saying 'finna' out of context and Tubbo joined in. This led to tons of tweets telling him he was misusing AAVE, and while there were plenty of people willing to be patient and educate, there were also people seeing this as an example of him being a 'bad person' and someone who should be 'without a platform'. I think people forget that not everyone has the same internet upbringing as they do. In general, I think its noted that the misuse of AAVE is something that has just recently been brought to attention. I learned about it through tiktok and stan twitter, and I don't think it's unimaginable that a British 17 year old boy (who is not active on either) has never heard of 'African American Vernacular English'.

Just for a fuller picture, today has also brought about another 'criticism' that I just had to address.

1) 'Tommy made a KKK joke' - Like the 'slavery' point, saying this is extremely misleading. It makes people think the worst. Here's the clip: https://twitter.com/ghostburz/status/1380673589612011522?s=20

Here, Tommy and Tubbo are both joking about Tubbo's 'bit' of naming his alt streams 'aaaaaaaaaa', 'bbbbbbb', 'cccccc', etc and how it would've been bad if it was 'kkkkkkkk' (for obvious reasons). That is literally it. It is a less than 20 second clip. Acknowledging that people woulda thought about the 'KKK' is not him 'not understanding Black issues', its a throwaway joke about the obvious.

Lastly, someone on twitter has made a tommyinnit (address asap) doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tZEZtBzikS-EYYkssfFtwVOoFqOwCK0zhStLe6H1wCc/edit

I've basically already covered everything in this document, but I wanted to mention how extremely 'guilt trippy' the whole thing is. I struggled to come up with the perfect word for the situation, and I am open to hearing other peoples opinion, but as I have mentioned none of these things Tommy has been accused of were done with malicious intent, and some I believe don't even need addressed at all.

'slavery is a source of astronomical trauma for black people, and isn’t something to be taken lightly if you’re to look into the horrors of the slave trade."

and "Oftentimes they are the last words we hear before we die and it really is not Tommy’s place to joke about words that affect us so negatively."

Are extremely emotional words for a 17-year-old boy to hear on his birthday, for stuff that I believe has been taken out of context and blown out of proportion.

I really feel bad for him, because such a large proportion of twitter (which ofc is the loudest side of the fanbase) is angry at him and is demanding (as the document says) ''either a stream or twitter thread/twitlonger to addressing this' and 'a long and serious apology instead of a short statement pre-stream'.

We all know how twitter works, and unless his apology is perfect (which to me means apologising for stuff that he should't have to, as explained in the thread), twitter will continue with this weird hyper focus on everything he does, and it's not going to end well.

Twitter's mentality of 'putting everything this person has done that could ever be considered problematic' into one neat little thread is so unhelpful and counter intuitive. I got overwhelmed reading some of the stuff people were saying about him, I can't imagine how he feels.

I feel like I have more to say but at risk of writing an essay longer than my actual work I have to do, I'm going to end here.

[tibby]

Can you speak more on Steve Harrington's trauma? I've never seen anyone address it, seemingly dismissing his character as just a "dumb mom friend" or whatever...

sure! i’ll stick to the show with this, because even though i have a lot of thoughts wrt steve and his life and why he acts the way he does, it’s all personal interpretation and not actual canon (though would happily discuss those more anytime.)

before i get into any specifics with regards to what steve has been through during the show, i do want to discuss a little about what we can assume of his relationships pre-nancy, and pre-everything: 

canon doesn’t give us a lot to work with in regards to steve’s parents, but based on what we do know, it doesn’t seem good. we can assume that they’re somewhat neglectful and have an unhappy marriage, presumably featuring adultery. he only refers to his father as an asshole or a douchebag and seems reluctant to follow in his footsteps. it seems like he has a slightly better relationship with his mother, but we also don’t know much about her outside of her following his father on business trips because she doesn’t trust him. regardless of how people personally interpret how bad it is, at the very least, he seems lonely and uncomfortable with his family.

up until the final two episodes of season one, we know that steve is king of the school and uses this power to his advantage. but despite his clout, he doesn’t seem to have any actual friends outside of tommy h and carol (and nicole, i guess, but she appears in like three scenes and we don’t really know much about her.) and tommy and carol aren’t good people. it’s not just that they’re horrendous bullies to jonathan and nancy, but they’re not great to steve either, given how quickly tommy turns on him. how quickly he threatens him, and how scared steve is in that moment. and given that tommy participates in mocking steve with billy a year later, it clearly was never that healthy of a friendship. your only friendships being with toxic people who don’t care about you as a person is always going to be damaging, regardless of how “popular” you are.

(steve’s unpleasant family/friendships pre-nancy seem backed up by a quote from the duffers that i can’t read because it’s behind a paywall but is referenced in the wiki: “what kind of family life [Steve] comes from and maybe this girl Nancy is quiet and listens in a way that other people haven’t listened to him at this point.”)

which brings us to the show. steve finds someone, maybe the first person who’s ever really cared about him, the girl he really likes. and he’s protective of her and wants to be with her and ends up fucking up in the process (i maintain that steve had every reason to go after jonathan for the photos, but he was absolutely in the wrong for the slutshaming and the alleyway fight.) 

but the fight shifts something in him, makes him want to right his wrongs, so he finally dumps his toxic friends (one of whom physically threatens him in the process) and goes to apologise. and walks right into a monster trap.

steve gets no context as to what’s happening when the demogorgon shows up, doesn’t get any explanation from jonathan and nancy (not that they’re at fault for that, given the circumstances,) and is basically just confronted with the sudden knowledge that monsters are real. and he ends up saving nancy and jonathan from it.

in an ideal world, the trio would have helped each over with their trauma together and would’ve been friends and would’ve had more natural progressions of their relationships. i don’t like reducing nancy and jonathan’s traumas to Just the monster thing, but it’s how the show tends to handle it, and i really feel like steve’s own trauma with what happened that night should have been addressed even slightly, particularly in relation to the two of them.

(quick sidenote: my issue with the way the show handles jonathan/nancy and their “shared trauma” is a whole other thing, but i really don’t understand how the show can basically reduce it to the fact they fought a monster together, and then leave steve out of the equation entirely. i wouldn’t have an issue if the show actually looked into the trauma both jonathan and nancy have outside of the monster stuff, but since it refuses to develop that, it…bothers me that steve’s role in what happened and resulting trauma is shoved aside, and they both now just ignore his existence entirely.)

but the show didn’t do that, so let’s get into season two, and steve harrington’s very rough week:

gets dumped! it should be noted that i don’t blame nancy for the breakup, nor do i think she was a bad person who set out to harm him. she’s a confused seventeen year old girl dealing with the loss of her best friend, and i don’t think she deliberately led steve on for a year or knowingly lied to him about her feelings. but it’s still going to be hurtful when your significant other reveals that they didn’t love you, they only thought they did. and steve loved nancy, cared about her, took comfort in her - she was the first person to listen to him, to care about him, to like him for who he really was, not for the mask he put on. i wish they’d gotten a proper conversation about their relationship in either season two or three, particularly as the destruction of the high school fairytale (the relationship between the coolest guy in school and the girl next door) is an important element to both their characters. i know steve says that he’s over her in season three, but i still know that that’s an incredibly heartbreaking thing to go through, even if it wasn’t a relationship based on an illusion - the kids that they were before.

gets involved with more monster hunting stuff, this time with a bunch of bratty middle schoolers! overall, i think stranger things handles the collective trauma the entire gang have like…terribly. i find it weird that it’s been three seasons and the only time the party/the teens/jopper are ALL together is in the final two episodes when it’s Boss Battle time. and i know i shouldn’t expect much from a show which barely lets separate people handle their trauma, but i feel like…maybe they should all like, sit and talk and comfort each other? keep an eye on each other? i don’t know. i think the trauma steve has is trauma he would share with all the others, especially since season two properly involves him with all the monster stuff (plus fighting them is hard enough without also having to deal with his past experiences, a big head injury, and the lives of a bunch of thirteen year olds in his hands.)

gets beat up! again! this time it’s not deserved! i really don’t understand why the fandom acts like steve’s repeated injuries each season are a joke and not like…a genuine cause for medical concern within the universe. i get that it’s basically played for laughs in the show and this incident in particular is used to once again highlight how violent billy is. i don’t have much to elaborate on here but i feel like someone needs to check in on steve and all the head related trauma he’s suffered through in the past eighteen months.

and after all of that, steve is just…left on his own to deal with it. he gave up his friends for nancy, and they weren’t particularly good friends in the first place. nancy left him. he and jonathan don’t ever talk. all he has are the kids and it’s not as if he can really talk about his trauma with a bunch of fourteen year olds. out of all the main cast, he’s the one that has the least support when it comes to this. nancy and jonathan have each other. joyce and hopper have each other. the party has each other. the byers family has each other. el and hopper have each other. but steve doesn’t have the same support system, and there’s nothing to suggest in canon that he actually interacts with the other teens/adults.

steve’s left alone in general, really. he maintained somewhat of his social status following the events of st1/st2, since he mentions being prom king to robin, but does he really…have any friends his age? he lost tommy and carol when he chose nancy, and those two latched onto billy (who, again, is someone who hurt steve and who steve does not like.) he and nancy broke up, and considering he shared about ten words with her and jonathan in st3, it’s safe to assume he’s not really friendly with them. and we don’t ever see any acknowledgment that steve has friends his age, even if it’s just…normal people who don’t know about the monster stuff.

it’s not until he meets robin that he really finds someone he can talk about any of this with, and even then it just comes with more trauma. i feel like steve’s experiences tend to get played for laughs and i really got that vibe in season 3. steve was tortured and drugged. he took another beating, arguably his roughest one yet. he and robin both thought they were going to die down there. it’s not really handled at all within the show, but it’s a lot for someone to go through, especially when combined with the past year and a half of steve’s life.

anyway. i don’t think the show will ever actually address steve’s trauma (or anyone’s, really) which is sad because like the others, he’s been through a lot and i think some acknowledgement/discussion of it would further help his character development. but i guess that just isn’t as funny as writing him off as an idiot and a loser.