. . .

i guess first and foremost in a general sense it's very important that they are abuser and victim, NOT villain and hero - i think most cdiscduoers know that, but it's a common misconception, even within the story itself from characters who don't understand their relationship. tommy is not and has never wanted to be a hero. all tommy wants at the end of the day is to just be safe and happy and live his life. dream is the one who exaggerates tommy's role as the one who brings attachment to the server and makes him into this important figure who he has to pursue and deal with, when all tommy wants is to be left alone.

tommy starts out as just a troublemaker who annoys dream, but as time goes on dream becomes more and more fixated on what he represents (attachments) and subsequently tommy himself. dream is someone who is obsessed with power and control and that can be seen from the very start with how he treats l'manberg and everything, but him getting tommy exiled is the first major instance of him seeking power and control over tommy specifically. it was flat out stated that dream enjoyed the feeling of power he got from getting tommy's own friend to exile him, and it's clear that that extends to his abuse of tommy as well. isolating, manipulating, gaslighting, and abusing tommy all bring him that same feeling of power. his self-stated goal is controlling tommy because he's the one who "brings attachment to the server" but as time goes on that motivation warps and he seems to care far less about controlling the server as a whole via their attachments and moreso becomes specifically obsessed with tommy himself.

^ all of that is moreso just the text itself, but it's an important jumping off point for my personal view of their relationship. everything i add onto their dynamic is extrapolation from pre-existing ideas.

the thing that ive been talking about a lot recently (and that i'd once again like to thank everyone for receiving well) is that there is a romantic/sexual element to dream's obsession with tommy, and that more specifically tommy was sexually assaulted in exile. as i've said before, this is NOT something i just made up to be "edgy," it stems from what's already there. mainly dream's obsession with specifically tommy, his abuse of him and attempts at making tommy trust him and reliant on him, and in general the various super creepy shit that dream says towards/about tommy.

sam saying that the only thing dream would talk about in the prison was "tommy, tommy, tommy." dream saying he's "playing with his food" in the disc finale. dream asking tommy if it "felt good" after he murdered and revived him in the prison. dream telling tommy he's sad in prison because he lost "my friends, and my stuff, and my server... and you." dream saying "you'll be immortal just for me" when he confronts tommy in logstedshire after breaking out. and many other various specific lines and details from across the story.

with all that said, i think the big picture reason why my brain came to view them this way is because of how their dynamic functions in practice most of the time - that being that dream is a scary adult man who teen tommy was manipulated into being close with, who now hunts him down and seeks something (an infinite "game") from him that tommy does not want to give. dream pursues this back-and-forth relationship with tommy but it's entirely one-sided - tommy does not reciprocate those feelings and does not want anything to do with dream. the times he takes direct action against dream post-exile are only out of fear of him being hurt again.

i quickly became incredibly fixated on this dynamic and it didn't take me very long to introduce a sexual element to it in my interpretation of things, and i think a large part of that is that even tho i didn't know it at the time, i am aromantic and asexual. a dynamic where one person is relentlessly pursued by another person who seeks something from them that they don't reciprocate resonates with me personally because of that, so i think that + again all the specific creepy shit surrounding their dynamic is what caused me to view them the way i do.

(tw for discussion of rape in the next section)

reasoning aside, when it comes to the actual specifics of that element of their relationship, i first want to restate that i don't personally believe dream has any genuine feelings for tommy. i think he's somewhat physically attracted to tommy, but that isn't really relevant. for dream, sex is just another way of feeling powerful via controlling tommy. he grooms tommy until he's able to initiate sex and not have tommy immediately turn him away, which both allows him to get off sexually, and get that same feeling of power from playing with tommy's feelings and manipulating him into doing what dream wants.

in my interpretation of events, dream raped tommy the night after the beach party. tommy was at his most vulnerable there, freshly angry at everyone and accepting of the idea that dream was the only person who cared about him. that night when he went back to his cot, dream initiated sex and tommy - lonely, touch-starved, thinking that dream is the only one he has, unknowingly demisexual but curious about sex and thinking this might be his only chance to experience it, and most importantly, scared of what dream would do if he said no - tentatively agreed. it started as just pleasuring tommy, but dream took it further despite tommy telling him to stop. afterwards, tommy was deeply confused about the situation and how he felt about it, especially since dream would act like it didn't happen. it might have happened more than once - that part isn't as important to me. but tommy was terrified of it happening again and all future interactions with dream are colored by this event.

while dream's abuse of tommy as a whole is pretty secret across the server (and was intentionally kept that way by dream - tommy tries to get him to admit what he did to him in exile in the disc finale and dream stays completely silent, which makes it clear that he knows it'd be bad if the general public found out), tommy tells absolutely no one about this part, due to the usual reasons of shame, fear of not being believed, of being looked down upon or treated differently, etc. it's not until at least a year post-canon that he's finally able to tell tubbo about it and then others, and it hangs over his relationship with sex and his body for a long long time. (he's able to overcome it and enjoy sex again eventually though)

while on the topic, tommy's fear of people not believing him and thinking he's crazy if he tells them about dream's abuse is something that really stands out to me in particular. obviously that's not a mindset limited to sexual abuse, but it does very much parallel how victims of SA often feel when deciding if they should tell people.

(^ from tommy and quackity's convo post-jailbreak)

that fear of tommy's also stems directly FROM dream himself telling him that people won't believe him and that dream will be able to just turn everyone against him. (which he's already done with other things like framing tommy for the destruction of the community house. he did it before, so of course tommy would be terrified that he'd be able to do it again.) there's also the fact that as the owner of the server, dream is in a position of power, while tommy is someone many people already dislike... etc. etc.

(^ from the logstedshire confrontation - also side note but in this scene dream keeps noting how it's just him and tommy and that no one knows they're here (i.e. no one will be able to save tommy from whatever ends up happening) which is super fucking scary to me)

moving back from that though, another aspect of their dynamic that i portray a lot in my art is dream trying to change tommy into something more "palatable." tommy starts as this loud, annoying, troublemaking kid, but dream's abuse in exile transforms him into a complete shell of himself - subdued, helpless, obedient, etc. dream finds this version of tommy far more tolerable (and unfortunately so do other characters AND many fans - ive talked about it before but ppl tend to view ctommy far more positively when his mental illness and trauma is expressed as quiet sadness rather than anger or other destructive behaviors) and i view this as being something he deliberately tried to encourage. he presented this to tommy in exile as him "fixing" him so that people would like him more and instilled in tommy the idea that he is inherently a bad person.

alongside this, their species (in my hcs) is relevant as well. dream is the only full human on the server, everyone else are hybrids or human variations. (regular purebred humans are quite rare in this world, but there are many different off-shoots of the human species) tommy is a horned human (different from demons - see this post for more details) and dream gets fixated on the idea of ripping off his horns and tail to make him look fully human like himself.

dream being the only human fuels his god complex (he HATESSSS that he's just a normal guy) so i think him wanting to make tommy "fully human" as well stems from wanting to "pull him down to his level" as well as viewing the horns and tail as symbolizing tommy's undesirable behaviors. (which in a meta-sense is actually kind of true since drawing tommy with horns in the fandom came from his mischievous nature iirc) also he just finds them ugly.

during exile, dream would make offhand comments about tommy's horns and tail that led to tommy developing an internalized dislike of them. way later, when dream kills tommy in the prison, he breaks off one of his horns. (it took a lot of effort and was a very imperfect job so he left it at that and decided to remove them in full "later." i think if he had caught tommy when he chased him thru logsted post-jailbreak he would've done so then.) so that's why my tommy design has one broken horn after a certain point in time.

also on tommy's appearance - tommy's hair grows long during exile, which dream prefers. whether thru subtle comments or an out right command, dream tells tommy to not cut it and keep it long. tommy complies, even though he absolutely hates having long hair as it makes him incredibly dysphoric. once he's living with techno he tries to cut it but gets scared about what dream will say if he sees him with short hair. eventually though i think he manages to do it a little before the green festival and he keeps it short onward.

tommy's transness also plays into this as well. ive discussed this before on my main, but i unironically view dream as a chaser lol. (he dated fundy in the past, who is also a trans man.) dream is transphobic in the sense that while he does not see trans men as women, he does not see them as men either. he views them as their own category that are not real men. (i think of dream as only being attracted to men, but cis men don't really interest him.) dream wanting tommy's hair to be long and wanting him to be submissive (and probably being weird about tommy's body too) don't stem from a desire for him to straight up "be a girl," but it's moreso that he doesn't care that those things are uncomfortable for tommy, and in fact that's probably WHY he does those things. he gets off on forcing tommy to change himself and do things he doesn't want to do because dream told him to.

umm im trying to think if there's any big things im forgetting. i guess there's also the possessive element of dream's obsession, how he wants to literally Own tommy and keep him locked up. (never forget that tommy once referred to him as his "owner" in exile...) in general i think dream wanting to keep tommy alive and imprisoned purely for his own sick entertainment and satisfaction is another thing that feels really icky and lends itself well to my interpretation of them. dream wants tommy's entire existence to revolve around dream, despite AGAIN tommy wanting absolutely nothing to do with him. "you'll be immortal just for me" and all that.

this dehumanization aspect also ties into the horrific moment in exile when dream comes to logsted with lazar and forces tommy to put his items in the hole in front of him, all while laughing and being like "watch what i can make him do" while tommy stands there viscerally uncomfortable and weakly protesting. he's literally treating tommy like a toy or a dog, something to entertain a guest with. (he often treats tommy like a toy - "you're just too much fun" and all that.) and it's another power play as well, humiliating and putting tommy "in his place" in front of another person. treated like an object. all the while tommy has to stand there knowing someone visited him just so dream could show off his abuse of him. seeing another adult witness him being abused and doing nothing about it.

also in exile dream showed his face to tommy for the first time as a way of further manipulating him - since dream's face is only known to those he's closest to (i.e. trusts the most) it furthered tommy's belief that dream was truly his friend and cared about him. (it also was something dream could hold over tommy's head whenever tommy protested revealing something personal of his own)

i think that's most of the main stuff. see also: this post i made about how dream wouldn't enjoy fully "defeating" tommy