#lore finale

tommy, dream, and punz all get blown up by tubbo’s nuke in the first like,, ten minutes.

they all die.

tubbo cries,,

there’s a timeskip? to some prerecorded stuff (a la quackity),, maybe we get to see tubbo building the flag like tommy wanted, maybe he reconciles with jack, maybe he goes back to settle in snowchester.

maybe he leads a new world, a new nation!

maybe tubbo goes to the moon alone

maybe the rest of tommy’s stream is done in the style of Ghostbur’s Epilogue, ie. animated, emotional, beautiful, soul destroying,

tommy goes to limbo after dying “a hero’s death”

and his limbo IS different!!!

maybe it’s the early days of l’manburg? maybe it’s his house + the bench, all intact

henry is there!!

it’s nice!!!

maybe we even get Shroud content???

a silly personal thing i would like:

tubbo sat on the bench in the overworld, while tommy is sat on the bench in his limbo, listening to cat. it’s bittersweet.

something i think is actually going to happen:

tubbo dies in the nuke blast as well/instead

what i would really like but probably won’t happen:

c!jack manifold content i am BEGGING

philza saves the day, “i told you to be safe you idiot!”

i would really love c!niki and c!fundy content as well please i MISS THEM

c!p… c!pur,,, c!purpled,,,, please,,,,

TOMMY END UP IN UTAH

irl lore (please)

So, what do I mean by that? Well people who believe that c!Tommy forgave Dream or that it proved Dream’s are just, well, wrong. That’s not what happened.

I want to start with some meta about Tommy’s story. I think we all know by now that Tommy was greatly inspired by other pieces of media, specifically marvel and especially Spider-Man. Tommy’s finale is very reminiscent of a classic principle of heroes. The no kill rule. All of your classic heroes follow this rule, Batman, Superman, Captain America- Spider-Man. The idea of defeating your enemy and showing empathy and mercy is a very popular heroic trait in modern media. C!Tommy and C!Tubbo spent the last three streams reiterating this point over and over, they don’t want to hurt anyone, they don’t want to kill Dream but they believe there’s no other choice because Dream can’t be reasoned with. Or can he?

That is what the real question of the finale was, could Dream be reasoned with. Was he just human or the devil. Throughout the series Dream is dehumanized, for an understandable reason mind you, but dehumanized nonetheless. He’s called a devil, a monster, a villain. C!Quackity pretty much outright confirms this in his finale, with the propaganda slideshow, showing Dream as we hear the words “how to think like a human.” Implying that Dream is simply acting human, and not truly human. The point is, that c!Tommy viewed Dream as inhuman, even if he hadn’t fully realized that. So of course he believes Dream couldn’t be reasoned with, he’s the literal devil! Dream doesn’t not help his case by dehumanizing himself, calling himself a god, and evil. He does this to create fear, because to him, fear is power.

That brings us to the final culmination of the confrontation, Tommy is in limbo watching Dream just enjoying being with his friends. Being happy to just live his life day to day. Embracing all the mystery life has to offer. Tommy saw that Dream was human. When Tommy returns he is armed with this newfound realization and we see Tommy’s character arc come to a close as shows empathy, becoming a real hero in the process. C!Tommy did not forgive c!Dream. Or even excused his actions. He appealed to his humanity, he found that one remaining part of him that just wanted to have friends again. Who was terrified of being alone, just like Tommy.

C!Tommy and C!Dream have always been the archetypical Arch-Nemesis. Down to the we’re not so different you and I conversation. Dream was always doomed to fall by his own fear, he pushed away everyone to gain power so he could hold everyone together. His obsession with Tommy stemmed from his fear of loneliness, Tommy had people who loved him and he loved in return. Tommy was never alone unlike Dream who had no one. He hated Tommy. He wanted to be Tommy. He wanted to make Tommy feel just as alone as he did, which was why exile happened; but, Dream didn’t want to be alone and this obsession morphed into a sick form of kinship. Dream couldn’t lose Tommy because Tommy was all he had. The one person that wouldn’t leave him, who couldn’t leave him. No matter how far Tommy ran, in the end he’d always go back to Dream, because they were fated to always fight. Dream needed the discs so that Tommy would always have a reason to hate him, would always have a reason to come back to him. This, is c!Dream’s motivations. He is sickenly, pathetically human. Not a god or a devil. Just a person.

This ending was… questionable. But very logical. I mean, everything was foreshadowing to that, we should’ve known and I am not surprised.

I have very mixed feelings about it and I don’t really know how to explain all of them, but let’s start with that:

1. I am proud of Tommy for writing this. No matter how some aspects of these are srewed and how some are not good in the message, he still did a great job. I mean, imagine being responsible for ending ALL of this? The server that was so big and gave so much to millions of people, and you are the one to write an ending of the story.

Endings are hard to write. I am sure, everyone who’s every written a story will agree with me. Happy endings are even harder, because if you have a long and complicated story, with so much angst in it, it’s almost always troubling to find a satisfying happy ending. And successfully lead everything to that.

And the fact that Tommy took the responsibility to finish this MASSIVE story is admirable. I know I wouldn’t do that on his place, wouldn’t have the guts. I am proud of him.

2. Being proud of Tommy though doesn’t make me less irritated with the last confrontation he and Dream had. I feel like everybody here already mentioned how the fact that his character said sorry to his abuser is… not great. Awful honestly.

And it annoys me. As an always inniter and c!Tommy enjoyer, I can’t be less angry with that. Because it’s not right. Dream did too much fucked up shot to earn that apology. Even if Tommy hurt him too, it’s not something you can redeem.

3. But I understand. I completely understand why cc!Tommy wrote it that way.

Hear me out.

c!Tommy is one of the most compassionate and emotionally smart characters on that server. He was always the one to see good in others no matter what. Even if he didn’t always act that way. I mean, just remember his conversation with c!Foolish: ‘I believe everyone have a little bit of good in them’, ‘I think Wilbur is a good person, but he’s been playing a bad guy for a long time’, ‘It’s not about giving him a second chance, it’s not about giving him a third chance, it’s not about chances! It’s about not giving up on people you care about’.

If there was a character on a server to understand (not forgive, c!Tommy didn’t forgive him or joined him, he understood c!Dream) the monster, it’s Tommy.

It makes so much sense for his character to realize the part of the picture he hasn’t seen before and accept his flaws and mistakes. Apologizing to c!Dream is a bad message. But it makes so much sense that c!Tommy did that. It’s about not giving up on people, eh?

4. Which makes me a little bit happy. Not a lot, but just a smidge. Just knowing that if they survived, c!Tommy would heal. After all, sometimes to heal from something awful like an abuse you need to understand what exactly happened.

And don’t take it as me saying that ‘Tommy should’ve realized that he is in fault for everything that happened’, because fuck no. He isn’t, and he is still a victim in this situation.

I mean it as the understanding and coming to terms with it would give him the closure he needed.

He would’ve healed, if they survived.

5. And of course I am devastated. I understand why people think of this finale as an awful one. I am in shambles. It’s so hard to take in the fact that everything just got erased.

I am a big c!clingy duo enjoyer. I loved a lot of other characters too, but they were the best for me. They were the ones who I would always love, no matter what. Hell, I even watched those streams despite Dream being in them just because I would never not watch an ending of c!clingy duo.

I wont repeat what others said about why this finale is sad and awful and devastated. I will only say the thing that makes it the worst for me.

Tommy and Tubbo didn’t get to meet that end together. They were so close to each other, a few more minutes, and Tubbo would’ve be there. But they didn’t, and I am just. I just. I hope people will write c!clingy duo fix its. I don’t even really need the rewriting of that particular stuff. Just maybe them going to the Moon and being happy and raising Michael together on stories about all the friends they had. Please.

That’s kind of the mix of my feelings.

——

I also wanted to talk about messages in general.

The Dream SMP story as cc!Wilbur once said is always not characters influencing the plot, but plot influencing the characters. And that’s what was best about it in my opinion. There was no meta gaming, it was a raw reaction of people in the situation, not from the distance.

So sometimes it’s not about writing the tight message. It’s about how that character would act right there and right now.

And all of this ‘i know *blank* better than *cc blank*’ is fun and all, I also post stuff like that, and it helps to say fuck you to canon to feel better. But no, we don’t know those characters better than ccs who play them. At least because it’s not our characters. We know their fanon versions better, sure. We know our versions of those characters better. And that’s cool! That’s how fandom works! But just imagine someone read a story about your own OC and said that they understand them better than you.