#cranboo analysis

So, before the Community House we had no reason believe that Ranboo was working with Dream. He saw the Spirit speech, he saw Dream manipulate Tubbo into exiling Tommy. But Exile is when things get interesting.

You see, there were only three frequent people who interacted with Tommy in exile: Ghostbur who lived with him, Dream who visited him, and Ranboo who wrote letters to him. Important context: Ranboo blames himself for exile because he was not allowed to speak during Tommy’s trial.

Now Dream is a smart lad and he knows how to manipulate people. So what if he intercepted one of Ranboo’s letters and wrote back himself? That, or Ranboo visited Tommy and didn’t remember but we would have seen him in Tommy’s streams. It’s fully possible that Dream knew about Ranboo’s guilt and said he could redeem himself via a similar crime: helping him destroy another piece of property and taking all of the blame.

That was the reason behind the community house. They started working together in Exile, and Dream could have convinced Ranboo that he was helping Tommy by keeping him away from the conflict in L’Manberg, and at the same time, keeping L’Manberg from “dealing with” Tommy Since Ranboo never saw the state of exile he would probably believe it after a bit, leading to his seemingly-out-of-nowhere mindset of “Stop conflict at all costs” And if that’s not enough let’s take a look at the timing of the first time the Dream voice appeared. According to my notes, it was right before the Green Festival where Ranboo was outed as a traitor. The next time he heard it, it said that he blew up the community house and has been helping Dream. If Dream told Ranboo his main goal was ending conflict between the server, Ranboo would not only believe him but also want to ally with him, while Dream and Punz did the really awful stuff on the sideline without Ranboo knowing I’d be willing to bet as well that Dream told Ranboo that the discs were the main conflict on the server and he was actually helping Tommy by hiding one. A “it’s for his own good” type thing The tnt on top of the prison could have also fallen under that same logic and by that point, Ranboo was manipulated or blackmailed into believing Dream was in the right.

The reason Ranboo forgets things is out of guilt. He never wanted to hurt anyone. He never wanted to cause all that damage, all he wanted was to keep his friends away from conflict. c!Dream cannot possess or control him like some still believe, but he can blackmail and manipulate him into having him do his dirty work. Everyone has a right to be mad at c!Ranboo, and based on the way his ghost talks he probably hated himself more than anyone else could hate him for his actions.

c!Ranboo, enderwalk state or not, is an unknowing villain on the same level as Punz in terms of what he's done. aside from the hunting down, experimenting on, and killing people.

It's just a shitty situation all around. c!Ranboo is not irredeemable, he just... looked to the wrong person for redemption. He's not a stone-cold bad guy, he's someone who needs help and wanted other people to be helped. He and Dream both share the "one big happy family" line, but Ranboo actually means it from a perspective of compassion rather than control. He has a consistent ability to find the wrong people to bring him that.

Eventually he found the right people: Tubbo, Tommy and Michael were his family, they were there for him the most, and in trying to protect them he only ended up getting one of them killed and traumatized and the other mourning.

TLDR: Ranboo is a complex and deeply tragic character who wanted redemption for himself and safety for his friends and, in doing so, fell for the lies of the worst tyrant on the server, leading to the deaths of several people and mental scars on his loved ones that will never fade. He's flawed, he's hypocritical, he's destructive, but all he wanted at the end of the day was for his friends and family to be safe. He's as much of a victim of Dream's manipulation and control as Tubbo is. That doesn't mean that people don't have the right to be mad at him though, I know I would be fucking pissed if my husband did that.