#dsmp analysis

the fact that this country physically represents tommy. it represents his hopes, his dreams, his childlike wonder, and the fact that people want to protect him.

and then it’s blown up. it’s blown up by the older brother figure who swore that he’d protect him; by the closest thing he’s ever had to family. mere moments later, it’s further decimated by c!techno, the guy that he looks up. the guy that he fears. the guy that killed his best friend on a stage. it’s blown up while he’s being yelled at to die like a hero.

and then the presidency falls to c!tubbo, representing how tommy’s entire trust is founded IN TUBBO. there is no one else. just him.

and then he’s exiled. tubbo betrays that trust, stages an execution, caves to c!dream’s wants.

and then, after thinking that he can maybe trust techno again, l’manberg is blown up AGAIN, for the final time.

blown up by the man who abused him, who manipulated him, who made him feel suicidal and worthless and so angry (“i never used to be this angry”).

blown up by the man who housed him from said abuser, who he formed a bond with, a partnership that was doomed from the start because they were always too different to last.

blown up by the man who killed wilbur, who laughed while he cried over tnt falling, who would always and will still always choose techno above all else.

l’manberg’s land and its repeated desecration represents the repeated disregard that tommy was given by every single person who failed him. it was the most explicit representation of how tommy felt towards the end of the server, before everything ended and he finally was given a chance to rest.

That would be a perfectly valid interpretation if it was not CONFIRMED OTHERWISE BY CC!DREAM.

READ THE WIKI!!!! PLEASE!!! IT IS OPENLY STATED IN THE WIKI THAT C!DREAM'S MOTIVATIONS ARE THE CLOSEST TO C!TECHNO'S AND THE SOURCE IS CC!DREAM HIMSELF.

c!Techno is not a power hungry monster lying to himself he genuinely believes what he's doing will create the best world for others and he would protect his friends to his dying breath. Out of EVERYONE, c!Dream has the closest motivation to him, not Schlatt or Quackity or Sam or any other power hungry character.

You are supposed to interpret the snake monologue as sincere. The entire point of the snake monologue is that it is sincere. You are meant to be sympathizing with c!Dream during the snake monologue, or at least learning more about him.

I now headcanon that Technoblade doesn't like big open houses, especially when he's alone, because they feel lonely and cold to him. :)

also the festival - if you watch the vod from your pov (which you totally should!!!!!) she just sits there and looks So Pissed Off the entire time. like she doesn’t hide how pissed of she is. she’s downright furious during that entire discussion!

and i think the most crucial part of all of this is what happens to her because of this. she is consistently belittled by c!schlatt - frequently in a “omg shut up”/“would somebody shut her up” in a way that feels like how somebody talks about a bug in the house. it’s misogynistic in many ways, i think - she’s consistently invalidated and overlooked, like her rebellion doesn’t even hold weight.

and then when she finally does more - i.e. the taxes - she’s literally hunted. and she runs, and calls c!wilbur, and she is terrified. and he says “can you just hold out a bit longer? pogtopia’s kinda full right now and we can’t take more people” and she’s like, actively unsafe in manburg and has nowhere to go and can’t go home. and she is told “just hold out a bit longer”

and then. the festival. again, she’s in the audience and watches tubbo get blown up and she’s shouting about it! like screaming at him! and finally c!schlatt is like “you’ve been a thorn in my side for too long” and he has ponk kill her! and she runs and he chases her and nobody follows to help, they just tell her to run. and she’s in the call w all of them and the conversation just moves on while she silently runs and silently gets killed. and that’s when she leaves for pogtopia.

I feel like c!discduo has something really unique to the dsmp in the sense that c!dream and tommy are pretty great representation of abuse at a young age, ESPECIALLY from a parent/guardian, because what was really so horrifying about their relationship was the fact that it literally was DREAM’S world that everyone was living in.

Dream was the server owner, dream could go into creative mode, dream could revive people, dream was one of the two best pvpers on the server, god was literally MADE IN DREAM’S IMAGE. No matter how hard tommy tried, escaping dream was so hard because the server WAS dream. Tommy had dream to thank for reviving him but also had dream to thank for killing him. It was literally that dream brought him into this world and took him out of it… sounds like something an angry parent would say, right?

C!tommy is an amazing reflection of how it can feel to be under the authority and especially in the house of your abuser, in the sense that everything in your life can and does revolve around them, if they can help it.

We see how tommy, despite hating dream, craves his attention and feels guilty being away from him because dream forced himself into Tommy’s life and made himself a PART of tommy, similar to how it’s difficult to escape the way you were raised, especially in an abusive household.

Also, I love the body horror aspect of Tommy’s revival and wish it was talked about more… like, dream has the ability to disassemble and reassemble tommy however many times he likes and tommy is kind of powerless about it? Like HOW are you supposed to move on with your life with the knowledge that your heart is only beating because your abuser wanted to “run an experiment on you”, forever infecting you with weird magic or whatever is in the revival book???

Something something tommy describing revival as “it felt like my body was taken apart and put back together again, and then taken back apart again here. I felt stretched” “I felt like I was shredded to dust, but there was no blood, there was no flesh, it was just essence”

Like sometimes one of the most obvious clues of a person’s character is who their friends and enemies are. C!Dream’s enemy wasn’t the anarchist trying to free people from oppression and the corruptive power of government, it was the power hungry. The elected dictators, wardens, and presidents forming nations and countries so they could be on top. The same people who are c!Techno’s biggest enemies… it’s just kinda interesting how c!Techno even went after c!George because he was a king and yet didn’t really see c!Dream as an authority needing to be taken down…

okay folks, this is going to be a long one, but it’s been on my mind. let’s get started with

The Source Material

You will virtually never run out of content, even now that it’s ended. You have 30 streamers who each streamed for god knows how long each day during its height and a massive amount of content from the same creators outside of the SMP itself. A lot of this content isn’t canon compliant, of course, but it scratches that same itch.

As for canon content, you still have that massive well to draw from. You know each perspective will be interesting, leading to my next point:

Everyone was their own main character.

Yes, it is pretty unanimously decided that Tommy was the main character of the SMP, but every single streamer had their own character that was most important in their minds. Therefore, they included nuance, interesting storylines, and cool narratives in EVERY CHARACTER. Each streamer interacted with different people and wanted their character to have distinct relationships with each member of the server, and therefore the web of relationships is incredibly complicated and nuanced.

The amount of character dynamics and character arcs is incredible, and there’s always something to explore with different combinations of characters at different points in the story. You can find a deeply complicated and unique character within every member.

Because of the improv nature of the server, it also helped prevent characters from becoming caricatures. Very often in planned and structured stories, people can fall into stereotypes when writing a character. However, the way that streamers had to adapt to their environment introduced a level of real character development that allowed for a much more interesting character. They could not structure their character to follow a trope, and instead had to adapt like a real person would to situations, making their characters all the more realistic.

All of these, along with the sheer amount of time we had on our hands in 2020 led to the second section of the fandom:

Fan Content

Because of the pandemic, people had far too much time to dedicate to this fandom. There is a more wide range of fan content in the DSMP fandom than I have ever seen in my life, something that I hoped would be recreated for the QSMP but clearly couldn’t because of the state of the world at that time.

Fan songs, animations, fanfiction, cosplays, and fanart are all 5 times more than you could even begin to guess. Any trope, medium, or idea you could have has been explored by incredibly talented artists, and it made navigating the fandom (even today, as a seasoned fan) an exciting experience. The amount of creativity that people exhibited is frankly inspiring, and I wouldn’t be nearly the artist I am today without seeing all of that content.

It also certainly helped that the creators of the thing you adored so much were such big supporters of the fan content. You often would see them react to animations or songs on stream, leave kind comments, or repost your art. This was so apparent in one of the biggest fan content creators, SADist, who was frequently mentioned IN LORE STREAMS because they had such a big impact on the creators.

The creators cared about their fans and their fan’s experiences and deeply appreciated the fact that people loved their content enough to make art for it, and everyone could feel that love.

From simply a character design perspective, the fact that the character designs were so simple (minecraft skins) left so much room for people to be insanely creative about designs while still keeping true to the character. seeing so many interpretations of the characters and how people changed their designs throughout the story was so interesting, and made fan content not get repetitive or boring.

The base of minecraft gave a great jumping point for world building and environments, while also allowing for lots of insanely cool expansion and exploration from artists. Using the mobs, items, and builds in the server once again made fan content connected and recognizable but also gave artists room to make a world and interpretation of their own, and made the world a lot more interesting and deep than if it was created with everything in mind from the beginning. Finding ways to include seemingly silly minecraft mechanics into your fantasy world allowed for really cool world building.

Even now, I cannot stop thinking about the fan songs. For me, audio (particularly music) is some of the most impactful content in a fandom. Having something to play in the background that expresses the story sticks with me far longer than anything visual. To this day, the songs from the character playlists I made invoke such intense emotions in me that I sometimes have to sit down and just. Listen. Songs created especially *for* the SMP only increase that sense of nostalgia and emotion.

Yes, the fandom has its rough spots (as every fandom does). Yes, many of the creators were not who we thought they were during its peak, and yes there is a lot of controversy and drama.

However, I don’t think that takes away from the Dream SMP as a whole. I think it is one of the most incredible time capsules and, even to this day, is a great fandom to join. Whether or not you were a fan while it was at its peak, I still think it is something that can inspire you, give you endless entertainment, and make you think harder about the nuances in people around you, and improve you as an artist, a consumer, and a human being.