atomiclightcycle

[atomiclightcycle]

happy nov 16!!!

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tommy cuddling shroud in a heated blanket to help me push through the last of my finals ✊

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my prediction for this season since sam nook is apparently omg???? back

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a comprehensive essay on why the disc finale being staged is bad writing and makes no sense

“the disc war finale was staged” (all /rp)

let’s go down the list and nitpick every single little detail i can think of why the finale being staged makes more plotholes than it solves and is clearly a retcon

first off: punz had already betrayed dream by fighting against him at doomsday

this was the biggest argument, but it’s true. punz fought on the side of l’manberg during doomsday, when previously he had been a well-established ally. it was a big deal that he was not part of the doomsday trio because from the other character’s POVs, it signaled that he had gone against dream

this is further hinted at by the fact punz knew what dream was planning in the finale but was also not involved - he was supposed to look like he had betrayed dream while dream secretly reached his real goals and punz could stay as an informant and spy to the SMP

narratively: punz betraying dream continues the over-arcing theme of how cutting off your attachments is reciprocal, and how dream set up his own failure by insisting attachments were a negative. punz literally says this verbatim in his stream the night before, saying that he and dream aren’t really friends and that he’s a mercenary, so he should go where the money is. 

as an aside - tommy paid punz off. how would dream plan for this to have happened? was it just a convenient bonus that punz had an excuse and that it didn’t matter, punz was always going to do this? then why wasnt he saying goodbye at the prime path when that would have been a show of him caring for tommy and tubbo? 

punz is the sole reason that clingyduo won in the finale

no one knew where they were or how to get to them 

the entire server felt like their death was inevitable and were helpless. we don’t see their POVs but they were saying goodbye at the prime path. we have no indication that anyone was planning on mounting a rescue without punz’s involvement

even though he had already betrayed dream, it’s odd he waited when if he’d really betrayed dream he’d have told them ASAP. when originally, it’s more than punz was struggling with his decision to agree to tommy’s payment and betray dream. 

again i cannot emphasize enough that punz is the ONLY reason tubbo is not dead and tommy kidnapped/in prison, without him there was no chance of anyone - even if they tried! - being able to find them

now let’s summarize what was happening before punz and the server showed up (aka why dream was winning):

tubbo was going to be killed by dream

tommy was going to be kidnapped and put in prison for crimes he’d been framed for 

the server, despite their goodbyes, were still unhappy with tommy for these crimes 

dream, who no one knew had committed those crimes or about exile, was still on neutral terms with many members of the server even though others hated him 

dream’s vault was completely unknown to anyone (potentially even punz) as well as his power of resurrection

dream had all 3 lives 

from dream’s perspective, no one on the server was willing to oppose dream at this point, tubbo and tommy were the last defiance with l’manberg destroyed and broken apart

so now, punz steps in. the server saves tommy and tubbo, and now all of dream’s plans are ruined and his secrets revealed. even his closest friends like sapnap have turned against him and see him as evil. tommy reveals the framing, the vault, and his plan to murder tubbo and put him in prison.

now almost the entire server is now against dream unanimously.

narratively: we now know dream’s motivations! it’s about control! we know he has cut himself off of attachments, and the cost of this is that he has no friends and no allies. he is worse for having done this! we get the big payoff!

that’s the narrative lesson - that tommy is not wrong for having attachments, and that dream is wrong for trying to use people’s attachments against them, that it doesn’t make them weak, but him cutting off his attachments DOES because he has no one who cares! hurting people has a price! 

now let’s put this into character perspective. the RISKS/LOSSES of dream’s “faking it” plan:

the entire server is against dream and knows of his plans to use their attachments against them - including punz! 

he has lost 2 lives and almost a 3rd - tommy was very close to permakilling him, the only reason he stopped was because of wilbur being revived. and with that, anyone else could have stepped in and killed him (like sapnap!)

tommy is free to heal (aka unlearn his manipulation!) and tubbo (the strongest support tommy has) is alive 

everyone knows about his ability to resurrect people, an ability others might kill or torture for 

even if he perma-dies, no one will revive him even if he tells them the spell because, again, he is only alive because of that and everyone hates him

he is trapped in a prison that he knows is inescapable only by outside help, and is objectively inhumane (both by his own design)

even if he does escape, the entire server will now be hunting him

he no longer has access to the discs that once gave him control over tommy as well as the rest of the server guarding their valuables 

he now owes techno a favor instead of the reverse meaning he not only had to cash in techno’s favor but OWES a favor, so double-loss 

this breakout has led to the new server members being educated about his atrocities to some degree, meaning people who were previously skeptical or even on his side like michael mcchill dislike him despite having never met him 

the REWARDS/WINS of dream “faking it” 

LITERALLY NOTHING 

seriously, there is not a single “win” for him here, dude sat in prison for almost a year and got tortured and killed two people which was fun for him i guess but is in every single way shape and form worse off than he was before the finale 

punz is on his side 

like was all of the above?? worth it???????

“oh but his grand master plan is to make people think he’s changed and that tommy is insane” BUT THAT’S NOT HAPPENING?

a) sapnap, sam, quackity, tubbo, phil, jack, and hannah all hate him and have been outspoken that he is bad and has made no effort to change. sapnap actively tells dream this to his face when dream tries to ally with him.

b) those same people are all, to varying degrees, aware of how horrible dream is and how attached he is to tommy, and have actively said they will defend him/kill dream 

sapnap promised tommy he’d protect him if he escaped and told him to get behind him when dream did and is currently actively hunting dream

phil has sworn to kill him and is protecting tommy and promised he believes him when dream vanished (which, duh, the kid is bleeding and frantic, of course he believes him) and phil is friends with techno

quackity has offered tommy anything he needs to keep him safe

sam and jack have reached out to check on him and sam warned tommy that dream would be after him. both of them want dream dead. 

tubbo obviously knows how bad dream is do i even need to say it

hannah is aware of dream hurting tommy and has actively defended him when eryn tried to frame him and was telling boomer how bad dream is

and why would he need to do all this?! nobody knew it was him who blew up the community house! nobody knew his plans for their attachments! it would have been so easy for dream to start playing sad and pitiful after the finale and blaming tommy for everything and that now that tommy is in prison dream can finally move on and heal and they can all be happy family again! that was, before this retcon, almost certainly his plan! 

narratively: making the disc finale staged undoes dream’s motivations and character themes, makes him seem like a total moron who is torturing himself for literally no reason with an endgame that is literally unachievable because of his own actions that he himself set up to be revealed

it turns him from a power-hungry, god-complex villain strung up by his own puppet-mastery and defeated by the power of love and friendship and reaping the misery of his own designs and a story of an abused kid fighting back and winning against his abuser

to dream being an idiot who puts himself through hell for no gain and no reward and retconning his motivations while undoing the win of tommy and tubbo for, and i cannot stress this enough, no fucking reason

it sucks. it’s bad writing. all they had to do was have dream pay off punz and it would have made complete sense, in-character, and kept all of the impact that s2 had without retconning anything. i hate it. no one has given a single reason why it’s good writing, just that it’s a “twist” which yeah, it is, but it sucks. it’s shocking but it sucks in every single way. 

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Anyone want me to rant about why I despise the Disc War Finale being staged plot twist bc I have some grievances

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"he's going to make me sound insane, but I'm not!!" tommy knows. he knows exactly what dream is going to do. dream is going to use people's kindness to make tommy sound crazy, so he can torture tommy without any problems. he's sick

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TOMMY LORE

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TOMMY LORE

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TOMMY LORE

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TOMMY LORE

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Quackity looking up slime tutorials on youtube: (through tears) A MUSICAL??

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im seeing a couple people be nervous about tomorrow's stream and i want to assure that i highly doubt the dsmp is going to make c!dream sympathetic or friendly with characters like c!ranboo and c!niki. i genuinely believe that cc!dream 100% knows what his character is about, and with how apathetically c!techno has reacted to c!dream talking about the torture, i assure that c!techno does not in truth gaf about him either. (and good for c!techno Tbh). also like why even worry about this when our savior our all-knowing king sam awesamdude is RIGHT there

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“how do you balance sapchad” BY PUTTING HIM WITH 15 IN A ROW LOSER TOMMYINNIT PLS

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okay but are we gonna talk about the deliciously blatant confirmation that c!dream is Not in fact a good guy? are we going to discuss how absolutely sexy it was of them to execute it the way they did?

"quackity, what is an example of a bad authority?" [proceeds to mimick literally every aspect of c!dream, down to wearing his fucking skin, all while mocking c!dream's ideas and plans and the way he went about achieving them]

like talk about the tongue-in-cheek meta talk about the sly-as-fuck diss to people insisting c!dream is good talk about subtly breaking the fourth fucking wall cc!quackity has seen the apologism cc!quackity decided to confirm it was fucking Incorrect actually and cc!quackity went ahead and did it in the most annoying over-the-top unmistakeable way and i fucking love him for it. cc!quackity said "no youre GONNA accept that c!dream's the villain" and then shat on anyone who spent actual time trying to prove otherwise. cc!quackity you're a fucking genius /gen and i adore you

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i want to talk about quackity's "hopefully I don't end up in prison or I'll GET WHAT I FUCKING DESERVE!" because it's so personal. it's right where the footage cuts to black. this is the point where he's no longer just teaching slime about the ways of the world. he's angry, he's upset, but on someone else's behalf more than his own. yes, he was upset about dream stealing everyone's attachments, but the even bigger motivation for going after dream was what he did to tommy, before and after his death. they had seen each other at their worst, and were really good friends. he was there when dream called tommy "too fun." he was there for tommy's exile. he had seen what dream did to tommy, and once tommy died, all of that hatred culminated in quackity entering the prison to torture dream. to quackity, this is justice, not only for himself, but for tommy.

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watched the vod. am in shambles

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my dsmp tommey design vs my osmp one…… hm