#no?…. oops lol… cTommy is continuing to give me brain rot

[bleue-flora]

@cleofast300 hope it’s ok if I respond to your tags from my essay (linked here) and lol no need to apologize for writing lengthy paragraphs as far as I am concerned. I certainly can’t judge and am always happy for more discussion. :)

On that note, you are very right it is more so about what c!Tommy himself believes. His perception is not that of the audience or at least it really shouldn’t be that of the audience, while as you said he can believe he is the hero and justified that does not make him one. And the difference between audience perception and character perspective is what I kinda talked about in the essay that came out before this one (linked here). Where I try to highlight how it is less about what the characters think about themselves and others and more about what we think of them, which can be derived from a variety of factors... anyways straying off topic.

While I would say he is certainly not self aware and that does play a role in his character, I’m not sure I would say it is his biggest flaw. For one, it is not the cause of all of his conflicts, though I supposed you could argue that is it the underlying problem for which the rest of his flaws spur from. But I’m not so sure. he is certainly not the only character without self awareness. Most importantly though, I do not think his character arc revolves around self awareness. Because he doesn’t over come that in the end. He becomes aware that c!Dream has feelings and emotions, but he doesn’t recognize what he did to hurt those feelings. He doesn’t gain awareness for the part he played. There is no remorse. As you said, the ‘sorry’ was about the nuke not for how he hurt c!Dream. For self awareness to be his biggest flaw and the one he over comes, he’d actually have to gain awareness for how he hurt people. How he hurt c!Tubbo, how he hurt c!Dream, how he hurt c!Punz… etc. He’d have to gain awareness for the part he played in the mess. Instead, we have a ‘sorry’ that is about the future. About realizing they wanted the same future all along and that it’s too late for that.

You are right of course, it was about him learning to see the world in its complexity and not as the black and white - hero and villain- one he wanted it to be. Though he is hardly unique in that viewpoint, so I’m not sure it is a strictly child perspective as much as it is just a naive and deluded one. Plenty of other characters share this perspective of the world and it is less about age but actually about the stages of psychological development (but thats a discussion for a different time). In fact, the main theme of the dsmp as a whole is about realizing that the world is complex, that people have different perspectives and things aren’t always cut and dry like we want it to be. It is easier to believe you are the hero and everyone who hurts you is the villain. But I will say, although c!Wilbur exasperated this ideal, he did not create it. The disc wars were already a thing. C!Tommy had that belief long before c!Wilbur arrived, he just used it to manipulate him, but that mindset was already there. That idea that he was the hero of the story was already set. So yes, c!Wilbur used him to be his little soldier pinning him up against c!Dream. Yes, he was abused and manipulated, but that only makes him a victim not the victim.

But just because in the end he realized that c!Dream was not one-dimensional, doesn’t mean he becomes self aware. It broke the cycle of violence, yes, because he realized they wanted the same things and the violence this whole time was actually useless. But that doesn’t imply that he feels remorse, realizes he hurt people, that he plans on being better and changing his behavior, that he no longer sees himself as innocent, that he is aware of the things he caused, that he no longer thinks he’s justified, that he realizes how Wilbur used him. It only showed that he realized that people are complex, with feelings and emotions and motivations, who are flawed, who can be hurt just like him. His views on people changed, but honestly we don’t even know how far that ratified his world view. Whether it just changed his perception of c!Dream or others as well…we just don’t know…