#the general advice is just play along because otherwise the narcissist couldbecome extremely volatile when their world is threatened

[sing-me-under]

I think the thing that bothers me most about how criticism perceives the fandom is that a lot of them treat c!Tommy as like a y/n of an abuse victim rather than his own character. Like, yes it’s valid that you are upset by his decision and that you would rather he have done something else but like… that’s not what what c!Tommy was. c!Tommy’s choice was his closure as best suited to him because trauma isn’t universal and people aren’t a monolith.

This is a mild follow-up to a post I made earlier about c!Tommy’s story being a coming of age and overcoming a child’s black and white world view. It’s buried in the many many other posts I’ve made, but the key point I’m elaborating on here is that c!Tommy’s entire character arc was completed when he chose to understand Dream as a person.

Tommy has always been extremely self-aware, defending himself rather than accepting pain. Tommy was aware he didn’t deserve the blame placed upon him, and he was aware that he didn’t deserve to be hurt. He knew that the justification others claimed was flimsy at best, especially when he was treated worse for things others did too. He was fully aware of this and fought back.

However, just because he knew he didn’t deserve it didn’t mean he understood it. If the things he did “deserved” to “punish” him worse than others, then surely there was a reason for why it had to be him. Without any other possible explanations, Tommy determined that the reason behind his suffering was because Dream was obsessed with his very existence. It wasn’t his fault. It was because Dream was evil.

To c!Tommy, c!Dream had always been a force of absolute evil, an inescapable monster who hurt needlessly. To anyone, being hurt for things beyond your understanding is inevitably scary. The belief that no matter what he did, Dream would hurt Tommy because it was Tommy, nothing more, nothing less. Tommy only ever wanted to feel safe and happy, and he would do fucking anything to escape the inevitable pain. The prison wasn’t the safety barrier he could rely on anymore, and death especially wasn’t an option for escape as long as Dream (and Punz) still had the knowledge of the revive book. The fear that at any moment for any reason, The Unfathomable Evil would hurt him only worsened Tommy’s mental state and paranoia until he was barely husk of a person.

The abstract is scary. c!Dream perfectly embodies the existential fear of the unknown. This was how everyone perceived Dream, not just Tommy.

Tommy, endlessly afraid but so compassionate and kind, chose to free the server of the Pure Evil at the cost of himself. Even though he knew he didn’t deserve it, he still believed his very existence was the crime itself.

When Tommy chose to understand Dream at the very end, it wasn’t understanding out of the sake of compassion. It was his compassion that allowed him to understand for the sake of his freedom. He finally understood why Dream had chosen him to hurt, to abuse, to torture. c!Dream is a terrible person, but he was a terrible person with the very human understanding for why he chose Tommy. Tommy was just the wrong person at the wrong time.

In my previous posts, I emphasize that Sapnap was the one to aid Tommy in killing Dream that very first time all those years ago. No one was happy under Dream’s iron grip, but it just so happened that Tommy was the first one to win against Dream. It didn’t have to be Tommy. It could have been anyone else, but it just happened to be Tommy who received Dream’s ire first.

And that was freeing. It was clarity, a weight lifted off of Tommy’s shoulders. He knew he didn’t deserve it, but now he understood that he wasn’t being hurt simply because he existed. This was no longer some abstract unknown that would hurt him just for the sake of his very existence. It was a real, tangible reason with a real human motive. It was a problem Tommy finally had control over had he just understood sooner.

That’s not to say Dream wouldn’t have still been an manipulative piece of shit, but at the very least Tommy wouldn’t be paranoid and confused and scared out of his mind, obsessed that Dream was obsessed with him. But they could have come to an understanding sooner, before Dream truly became the Evil Villaiin everyone made him out to be, before everyone turned against him, before there was no turning back.