It's So Over

broadway took a while to realize that animatics for their musicals were a Good thing and helped to put butts in seats, so every now and then there'd be huge waves of animatics being deleted and muted until it eventually stopped

and so many of these animatics were coming from teens, so they often wouldn't reupload them either because they were scared of the copyright system or because they found their old art embarrassing or because they'd just grown out of it and legitimately hadn't even noticed. that's why you see SO many reupload accounts from around the mid 2010s

it's ALSO why I always download my favorite animatics nowadays, that very First wave of takedowns happened and I just had to wait for the will of the people to bring them all back to me

except there was ONE that not only never came back, but that I've never seen anyone ever acknowledge existed at all

the ONLY proof that it exists anywhere on the internet, is a Mashup that Rips out the middle

and it's Honestly worse than not having any shred of it at all. I Still don't know who actually made the thing, because the uploader doesn't refer to them by name, there's just a dead link in the description. legitimately nothing else hits the same and makes me feel NUTS

one of the first things dream ever did in lore was organize and execute a mass murder, wherein the most number of lives lost in a single event on the server occurred and has yet to be passed.

However, I would like to offer to the court the fact that dream had Overtly Stated to tommy that he had intentions to kill people so that he could experiment with the revival book. and while typical assessments of what makes a serial killer verses your every day murderer don’t include discussions on magic or intentions for revival, I Do Think that this experimentation would count as a definable pattern to the murders if it could come to pass. with the first of these being Ghostbur’s Death in service of Wilbur’s Revival.

@stellocchia​ said: wouldn’t tommy’s death itself count as the first death if he were to start experimenting? [end transcription]

that’s a good point and one that I considered ! however, while I’m certain that dream had considered the Possibilities of experimentation before he knew that the revival book was real, I don’t think he was willing to risk until it was confirmed for sure. tommy’s death was more likely a Crime Of Passion because dream felt insecure when he felt the power he had over tommy was slipping. the primary goal was the prove a point, not the experimentation itself. though he Absolutely got the idea from what he did to tommy and had Threatened to do it to him.

WE DID IT FOLKS

LAZARBEAM, VIKK, TOMMY, AND GHOSTBUR ALL KNOWINGLY MURDERED FOR TESTING THE REVIVAL BOOK (and can’t forget him stalking tommy with the threat of death and revival and death and revival and death an-)

WE’VE GOT OUR PATTERN WHICH MEANS WE’VE GOT OUR SERIAL KILLER!!!!!

it’s not a ctommy summer without ctubbo

I DO genuinely find it commendable that there's so much overt queer representation in overwatch, but I don't think I'll ever get over them queercoding a fat leather daddy and his dirty twink for half a decade then deciding they had to stop talking to each other once it came time to canonize their queer characters For Real

it's been a bit over a year since I finally finished this thing, and the reception has been genuinely CRAZY to me. I still get comments on it regularly from people watching the musical for the first time and that's SO SO COOL... especially since I was never well known (or known at all) in the fandom beforehand

from what I've seen there's a few different attempts ! but the one I've watched was the m4 studios hobbit book edit ! [Link]

it cuts down the trilogy into one extended-edition sized movie ! specifically with the goal of taking out everything that isn't book-accurate

the editing is honestly Very impressive, especially with how much needed to be done with the battle of five armies to make it book-compliant. I'd really say there were only a few places where the editing is quite evident, but not enough to take you out of the movie !

like I said, I actually really enjoy the movies additions, and found myself missing them while watching the cut down version (though it Did inspire me to watch the extended editions, which is how I exclusively watch the movies now jfklsadlk)

BUT, if you've tried watching the hobbit trilogy and bounced off of it, I'd honestly suggest giving this a try ! a friend of mine Really liked it, and I really enjoyed and appreciated the experience myself <3

he intentionally enabled Both wilbur And schlatt while Also trying to prove to tommy that he's his friend, but Only when noone's watching

giving Tommy Specifically a chest full of items (more than he gave techno), addressing the "tyrant" book to tommy [Link], participating in the pet wars even After he said he couldn't associate with pogtopia and even when it was Against sapnap, saying he isn't friends with tommy when they're in front of other people and then hanging out once they're alone

conversely, not stepping in when schlatt violated the rules of the treaty between l'manberg and the wider smp (something we know Full Well he didn't actually care about) and instead seeking out a partnership with schlatt, enabling wilbur with the tnt, intentionally sowing doubt and paranoia with the lie about there being a traitor in pogtopia, Causing that paranoia in the first place by using eret's betrayal to hurt them (he never Needed eret to push that button, he could've blown up l'manberg himself, but it was the psychological aspect that mattered), the way he CHEERED when wilbur blew the place up, the way he happily told tommy that wilbur was the traitor when he was gone

c!Dream wanted what c!Wilbur had. He wanted power, he wanted respect, he wanted friendship, and specifically he wanted these things as they related to c!Tommy. I know I joke about brothers (derogatory) a lot- but what c!Dream wanted WAS to be c!Wilbur to c!Tommy. He might have not necessarily wanted to be his brother specifically (though I think it’s very likely he did- his whole motivation is wanting a big happy family and it’s not like his obsession with c!Tommy exists separately to his many other obsessions- obsessions over control, over being loved, over never being alone, ect.) but he wanted to replace c!Wilbur, and he wanted to do that Forever.

I mean, he literally attempted to kill Ghostbur later on to make sure he was the only sort of mentorly figure that c!Tommy had to guide him anymore. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to see c!Dream's behaviour in Exile as a deliberate mimicking of c!Wilbur's in a lot of ways- only much, much worse. While he does have a genuine, albeit very warped, sort of brotherly love to c!Tommy, he also sees him as both an entertaining experiment and as a tool to be used. It’s very much an exaggeration of the worst ways c!Wilbur would lash out and neglect c!Tommy, but fully intentional and cruel. He’s not poking and prodding out of a need for validation, he’s doing it to break c!Tommy.

Hell, even Logstedshire can be compared to the ravines of Pogtopia in a lot of ways. c!Dream's relationship with c!Tommy is very much a twisted, incredibly dark mirror of c!Wilbur's relationship with c!Tommy- very much what it could have been if c!Wilbur had truly been the sort of villain he saw himself as- and I don’t think that’s unintentional. I mean, it’s almost certainly a deliberate writing choice to a degree, yes, but I mean in-universe. I think it’s very probable c!Dream is trying very hard to mimic c!Wilbur to get c!Tommy to be as unhealthily attached to him as he was his brother, and the fact c!Wilbur Being Alive was an obstacle in that means he’d be a target.

like, when l'manberg emancipated it was in land that had never been claimed by dream. they didn't take resources that dream couldn't have anymore, they didn't take land from him

what wilbur took was People. dream wanted what wilbur had. and what wilbur had Was A Family.

it's not Just that dream got wilbur out of the way to get to tommy. it's that dream wanted to Be wilbur. wanted to Be the general that tommy respected, wanted to Be the brother that tommy would follow to the ends of the earth and back.

but he didn't know How to do that through love, and importantly he didn't want to lose the control necessary that Vulnerability requires. so he used what he Did know. pain and control.

I think a lot about the disc war finale. about dream trying to use his friendship with tommy as a reason to keep him alive and only resorting to telling him about wilbur and the revival book when that Failed.

the whole point was that he was using people's greatest attachments against them, and he'd been so hoping that he was able to replace what wilbur was for tommy. And He'd Failed.

When Tommy came back he begged Dream not to bring Wilbur back, but a detail that people unfortunately seem to forget is that he specifically stated that Wilbur at that moment was the worse option for him between the two.

And I'm actually gonna refresh everyone's memory on the exact quote Tommy used in the revival stream:

“Do NOT bring back Wilbur. Ever! Promise me you’ll never do that, alright? Dream, Dream, you are nothing, you’re nothing, you’re fine Dream! We can be friends if you don’t bring him back! You’re not even- all the tragedies you’ve done-”

Of course, Dream's answer to that plea was a straight-up refusal. (“It’s not up to you. It’s up to me because I- I have that control”). And we know from one of the streams with Sam trapped in prison that this is exactly why he brought Wilbur back. Because he thought that, by then, Wilbur's presence would hurt Tommy the most. He thought he'd won out.

it's not a simple matter of fear or anger, there was something done or said that made tommy see wilbur as Dangerous and we just simply won't ever know what that was meant to be. it's one of the many reasons why I wish the creators would go over the full list of dropped plot points.

because obviously wilbur Wasn't intended to be this huge imposing villain post revival. but there was obviously an intent to make us think he was.

but back on topic fjklasdkljafsd

excellent Excellent point stell. dream can Claim that he wanted wilbur to break him out, but even if wilbur Had spontaneously become a super villain there was absolutely no shot that he'd ever have the ability.

for all that wilbur had Influence that influence never came from like. Material Skill. it was his ideals that people latched onto. Words Over Weapons makes all the sense in the world from someone who was rather shit with weapons.

and more to the point, dream Never would have revived wilbur if he thought that wilbur was capable of taking tommy away from him. if he had Any intention of letting wilbur anywhere Near the server again before this point then why not use his revival to try to barter for his freedom right away?

he could've offered to bring wilbur back in exchange for his freedom that very first visit with tommy, he could've offered it after months of torture. But He Doesn't. he doesn't even Consider It, doesn't Mention It, until tommy's told him in no uncertain terms that he doesn't want it to happen.

it'd make no sense if dream had seriously considered reviving wilbur as an option before. but it makes all the sense in the World in this context.

And I'm gonna go further and say that I think the retcon possibly happened after cWilbur's actual revival stream because of how genuinely horrified all of Bench Trio was at it.

And, don't get me wrong here, post-revival cWilbur was still a major dick, especially to cTommy (I'm still not over him listening to cTommy tell him about getting beaten to death in prison by cDream on top of the hotel roof and just... ignoring all of that to call cDream a hero some more. Like... we don't talk enough about how messed up that was), and he did end up getting cRanboo killed (and yes, their death was on cWilbur's hands, he literally rigged the explosives).

But he was nowhere near being a bigger danger than cDream.

That said, I like to interpret that as cWilbur doing what he's done best since Pogtopia while they were dead and playing on all of cTommy's fears that he undoubtedly still knew oh so well because of the whole "seeing cTommy as an extension of himself" thing which makes him think that cTommy deserves all the suffering he thinks he does thing.

Regardless, at the moment of Tommy's revival his fear definitely impacted cDream's decision making going forward because cWilbur was no longer a threat. And, from a certain point of view, it wasn't even a wrong way of thinking on his part because cWilbur did end up leaving without cTommy, removing himself entirely and leaving the Big Brother™ position up for grabs AND leaving cTommy more vulnerable than ever.