Chapter Text
An internet web series, the 'Dream SMP', written and constructed by an anonymous playwright behind the scenes, took the whole world by storm.
At first, it was unheard of—after all, mere play scripts uploaded onto an inconspicuous website had no business going viral. Until that is, through some strange coincidences, a group of people stumbled across the plays. Intrigued, they read through it, realized its potential, and got in touch with the author, asking if they could roleplay it out in Minecraft, which was the group's shared passion.
The author said yes. Looking forward to it, they even changed up the scripts to match and include the characters the group created, treating it as some convoluted Dungeon and Dragon's game to go through with. It was after a while of fooling around that the author proposed they uploaded their story series onto YouTube, which the group agreed to do, not expecting much.
Suffice to say, that was all it took for it to take off and break record charts. Roleplaying a war story of heroism, betrayal, adventures, and deep character bonds in Minecraft? Unheard of. Everyone's eyes turned to it. One person—or, character—got a lot of attention. Although a well-mannered and quiet person in real life, Dream was the complete opposite in this story.
According to the growingly complex lore, Dream was the 'Server Admin'—a powerful being nearly on par with a god. He, blinded by the once-valiant urge to protect and keep things the same, slowly strayed from the heroic path the viewers assumed he'd take. Bit by bit, he crumbled, wasting away into someone whose morality circled around his goals, never once hesitating to wonder if his actions were hurting the ones around him.
Instead of becoming the hero, Dream became the villain.
Eventually, things took a turn. Tommy—the man that used to be viewed as the troublemaker—became that 'hero'. Still, the definition of 'hero' was skewed in the world of the Dream SMP, and Tommy also fell victim to it. Lines blurred. There was no classic 'protagonist trumps the villain' trope to follow. Everyone's light and hope were whittled into a thin stick, and our fellow protagonist of the story suffered an equally tragic fate of losing many things that were important to him.
Basically, things were going great.
Then, out of nowhere, the anonymous author refused to write anymore. The group protested, but the author had firmly put down their pen. In the end, they boldly proclaimed, you can continue the story if you want, but I'm not writing another word.
...And so, the series turned to shit.
After Dream was thrown in jail, the group had to make do, as that was where the author had left off. Their writer had retired, and now, it was up to them to continue their web series' legacy. Despairing, they milked every plot point they could milk; branched out and made ridiculous side stories; rehashed old tropes that were once praised as legendary; and did a lot of, to put it simply, utter nonsense and complete hogwash.
At that point, the series had already been written into printed books. Lots of fans had dropped watching their hour-long videos to save their sorry eyes, and instead, patiently waited for the written format to be published. It was a communal agreement that after the eighteenth book, no one knew what the fuck was going on, and neither did the creators.
The Dream SMP still remained popular, but there was an air of sad disappointment around the topic of its lore. Wistful ones would sigh, and loyal fans continued to make fanart for anything they could draw. It had changed lives, but no one could argue with its eventual downfall. The storyline—well, the neverending storyline—was doomed to turn sour with how long it became, forever refusing to die.
Right as it was about to fade into the background, it concluded.
Apparently, Dream was killed off. The new writers had most likely lost their marbles, and for the grand finale, it featured the nth duel between Tommy and Dream over their newest plot device—the 'Revival Book'—thus putting a stop to the seemingly endless shitshow as Dream took his last breath. To rub salt in the wound, the story fast-forwarded to a hallucination-worthy epilogue that had even the most talented character analyses (read: dedicated bloggers trying to save their formerly complex characters and explain their increasingly nonsensical actions) grasping at invisible straws. Everyone gaped in horror at the epilogue, not understanding why the SMP collectively triumphed and cheered over Dream's horribly mangled corpse, did a victory dance around it, and sacrificed it to the gods with a happy-go-lucky smile on their faces. And as the final nail in the coffin, all the dead characters were revived with that awful new plot device, and Tommy, whilst crying, gathered all the SMP members and initiated a group hug.
THE END, proclaimed the onscreen iMovie-edited (did they run out of budget?) six-hour-long episode. The grand finale. Episode one thousand and twenty-two.
The team of book writers, who were not fully affiliated with the group of roleplayers, were going to have an aneurysm and go into catatonic shock.
As for the fans... not so much.
Isn't that just letting the protagonist trump the villain?! everybody raged. What happened to the morally gray aspects of this show?!
People were not happy in the slightest. Enough was enough—their formerly deep characters had been ruined and reduced into shells, and they could no longer tolerate such slander.
Negative reviews were spammed across the web, and forums were created to heatedly discuss the active failure of the plot. And Dream—no, not the character, the real Dream, who was a twenty-two-year-old man ready to blow off his tendons just to knock some sense into the scriptwriters—was no different from the others.
www.fakefanforums.net/dreamsmp/sort:newest/1843723210/view
THE DREAM SMP SUCKS - The fall of the Dream SMP (a series lasting for a full-blown decade) and how they should've just ended during Prison Arc
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wilburger | 12:02 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: To celebrate the end of the Dream SMP [...]
I still can't believe it ended. Not like this :ranboo_NLT:
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DREAMBIG | 12:02 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: I still can't believe it ended
Just wait till the book onlys find out
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jumbomeed | 12:03 AM Feb XX 20XX
Dream is finally dead crab rave 🦀
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DREAMBIG | 12:04 AM Feb XX 20XX
The only good villain in history, dead and 6 feet under, penetrated by 29 spikes to the abdomen, 16 stabs through the chest, 2 wallops to the head, and burnt with a few thousand-degree burns. too brutal too brutal :techno_yamete:
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wilburger | 12:05 AM Feb XX 20XX
@DREAMBIG I'm sure there are plenty of other good villains. But OP is right though this story SHOULD'VE ended during prison arc
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howmaeda (OP) | 12:05 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: @DREAMBIG I'm sure there are [...]
:techno_yamete: :techno_yamete: :techno_yamete:
He should've died in prison if they were gonna kill Dream off.
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DREAMBIG | 12:06 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: He should've died in prison if [...]
Right??? Though getting tortured to death by Quackity is a bit...
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wilburger | 12:07 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: Right??? Though getting tortured to death [...]
Honestly he deserves it
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DREAMBIG | 12:08 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: Honestly he deserves it
Yeowch, found the big brother Wilbur. (it's OK I own a Wilbur figurine)
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wilburger | 12:09 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: Yeowch, found the big brother Wilbur [...]
Found the Dream apologist. (it's okay too I own a Dream bodypillow)
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mishpacito | 12:09 AM Feb XX 20XX
Both of you guys are literally not transparent with the way your usernames are phrased. Also @wilburger, where did you buy that?
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wilburger | 12:09 AM Feb XX 20XX
Eat shit I'm not telling. Anyway fuck this show
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technoUnpog | 12:10 AM Feb XX 20XX
if you guys hate this show why do you even follow it???????
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DREAMBIG | 12:11 AM Feb XX 20XX
Dude have you even seen how weird it got. Wasn't Tommy the farthest thing from the 'all-rounded never-wrong righteous hero' archetype? Why did he become this arrogant idol masculine boy bastard all of a sudden? What happened to his trauma with Dream?? What happened to that Red Egg side story and the DreamXD side story and the Drista side story?? Not to mention the Blaze Sapnap lore explanation that was half unfinished and the Forest King George thing that was foreshadowed but never done?? Where the fuck was Dream after the prison arc, mans just upped and left and appeared out of nowhere to DIE???? Where were Sam and Foolish and everyone else?? What the fuck happened to anyone that wasn't the DTQK/Benchtrio/SBI in the story??? What kind of shit writer do you have to be to confuse even YOURSELF?!?!? EVEN THE PERSON PLAYING DREAM ADMITTED HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON! PLOT HOLES LITTERED THE SMP SOIL! FORESHADOWED THINGS WERE LEFT OPEN AND DEAD, NEVER TO BE TOUCHED AGAIN! UNNECESSARILY COMPLEX EXPLANATIONS! USELESS WORLDBUILDING! I DID NOT READ 8887 CHAPTERS AND WATCH EONS WORTH OF VIDEOS WAITING FOR THE LAST BOOK TO LEARN THAT DREAM DIES LIKE THAT IN THE NEWEST EP!!
- technoUnpog | 12:12 AM Feb XX 20XX
well, i mean. you're kinda stupid for following the story and hating on it at the same time........
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DREAMBIG | 12:12 AM Feb XX 20XX
EXCUSE ME????
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wilburger | 12:13 AM Feb XX 20XX
> RE: EXCUSE ME????
technoUnpog has a point. We're all secretly idiots. +1
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DREAMBIG | 12:14 AM Feb XX 20XX
aRE YOU KIDDING ME DID MY WHOLEASS BREAKDOWN OF THE PLOT FAILURE GO UNNOTICED
Right as Dream finished aggressively smacking that into his keyboard, he rose from his seat and went to grab a glass of water to cool down.
He was blissfully unaware of his upcoming demise.
Light shone and broke past the curved slits of Dream's closed eyes. Slowly, the blinding white glare forced him to wake up. He snapped out of his stupor, gasping for a ragged breath of air, and looked around in curiosity.
By all means, he should be very, very dead.
The last thing he remembered before succumbing to the darkness was slipping on his Wilbur Soot figurine, which had accidentally toppled off his desk. From there, he had tried to pick it up, only to trip on it with a cup of water in his hands. He had spilled the water all over his computer, accidentally unplugged some cords with his clumsy flailing, and with a glorious, comical arc, flipped backwards and crash-landed headfirst onto his setup, thus electrocuting and concussing himself into what he assumed to be an instant knockout.
[Salutations, Traveler!] A voice announced its presence. [You're finally awake.]
First of all, Dream thought as he massaged his aching forehead, two pop culture references in one greeting? Maybe three, if Charlotte's Web even counts as a pop culture reference.
[You're much less alarmed than I thought.]
I just died, he sniped in response. A talking Siri in my head is the least of my concerns.
[Excuse you! I'm much more sophisticated than Siri. But, congratulations!] the peppy voice cheered. [You have been selected as a lucky winner to inherit one of the transmigrational 'System' programs, also known as yours truly. To make things simpler, you have been transmigrated into the body of DreamWasTaken, your favorite character from the hit series who also happens to share your name. Right now, you have one hundred B points, or, 'coolness points', to start off with. As a celebration of your successful transmigration, fifty points have been allotted, which brings us to one hundred and fifty B points! Aren't I great?]
Why yes, Dream deadpanned back. But. Character Dream. The very man who also happens to suffer some of the most horrible deaths known to man.
[Definitely not my problem,] the System whistled innocently.
Can I request a change?
[No.]
With a disbelieved shake of his head, Dream took his surroundings into account, hoping to find out where he was. To his horror, nothing but grass rolled on for miles. The sun burned overhead, and if he squinted into the distance in front of him, he could see the sparkling surface of the ocean glinting back at him.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.
Looks like he was in the middle of nowhere.
Wow, System. This was amazingly convenient. Truly one of the best spawn points ever.
What did you say about being DreamWasTaken again? his mind quipped.
[You have inherited the role of the main villain in this story. We run by a, 'You can you up, no can no BB' principal. If you can do it, do it. If not, don't run your mouth. As many fans, including you, are unsatisfied with how the story killed him off as its final ending, it is now your job to provide a much more interesting plotline for the viewers and fix the subpar storytelling. Right now, your actions are limited. The OOC function is still active.]
The OOC what now?
Dream struggled to his feet.
[If you do something that counts as an 'out of character' act, B points will be deducted,] the System explained.
...And what happens if I run out of B points?
[Well, you get sent back to your original world.]
...But I'm dead in my original world.
[I meant what I said,] the System cheerfully declared. [However, there is good news. You can always remove the OOC function after completing a 'tutorial' of sorts. Try opening your inventory. You should see me next to your armor-equipping interface.]
Dream wordlessly opened his inventory by willing it to life, which seemed to work. He startled himself when he saw the number of high-quality items there.
"Holy shit," he marveled as he shrugged on a netherite chest piece. "Wait, why wasn't I wearing this when I came to?"
[The System refuses to answer this question.]
So basically, a glaring plot hole, Dream thought with a grimace. He looked at the Minecraft dirt block that had blue grass hovering next to his armor display. The block made a pinging sound, and a pixelated speech bubble popped up next to it.
'Quest Complete: Open Inventory! Tutorial completion progress: 25%.'
[After equipping your items, please walk to the ocean ahead of you. You will intercept a camp halfway. Blow up TommyInnit's items for now. We'll call it a day done after that.]
Wait wait wait wait wait. Hold the fuck on.
"You want me to change the plot?" Dream quietly recalled. When he heard nothing, he shrieked a pure, unadulterated shriek of unfiltered rage that did the same effect as dropping his vocal cords in an air fryer.
"IF YOU WANTED ME TO CHANGE THE PLOT, WHY AM I IN THE MOST ISOLATING AND DAMAGING ARC OF ALL?"
[T-the System refuses to answer this question.]
I'm dead. I'm really dead, Dream sobbed. Time to get penetrated by twenty-nine spikes. And get stabbed and maimed and brutally walloped to death. Let's not forget that I first get tortured Quackity, above everything. Why must I do all this? Just to be a manipulative scum bucket?! Character Dream, what were you thinking? Couldn't you have posted some evil stuff on Twitter instead of antagonizing innocent teenagers?! Goodbye, L'manburg. Goodbye, Revival Book!
Dream flopped his hands in defeat.
"You," he spat aloud at the System, jabbing at nothing in particular, "brought me in here, into my favorite character who just so happened to share my namesake, telling me to change the shitty plot, only for the arc to be the one where I'm abusing a child?! Not to mention it being a big reason why I'm subjected to a horrible, horrible death?!"
[Once again, the System refuses to answer this question.]
"Don't give me that bullshit," he threatened. "I'm not blowing his items up. When I go to jail, I'm not getting my bones broken for every iron that I robbed from him."
[Acting OOC will result in a mark deduction.]
"I'll find a way to overcome this. I will not get maimed. Or killed. I won't die in the prison, either."
[Good luck.]
"Are you acting sarcastic? Aren't you supposed to be helping me?! SYSTEM!"
Dream found himself hollering into thin air. There was no use. Reluctantly, he stomped across the massive expanse of grass to search for a camp that was probably thousands of blocks away with nothing but three pieces of steak and two cods as food.
There he is. The man of the hour.
In hindsight, it might've been a bit creepy for a six feet tall man to quietly observe the almighty protagonist from afar, oozing out some horribly threatening aura as he sported armor that could very well protect him from a casual drop over a cliffside. However, this was Character Dream, and the real Dream was certain his predecessor had done stranger things to boot.
[Go and approach him,] the System urged.
"..."
[Hello? Is the connection faulty? I said to go and approach him.]
"Shut up. I'm considering my choices."
[Considering your choices? For what? You do realize you have to blow up his items to unlock the OOC function, right?]
"Yes, but... ugh, there really is no way out of this one, is there?"
[The System refuses to elaborate. Go figure, idiot.]
Dramatically sighing, Dream decided to weigh his options against each other. He could either:
- Blow up TommyInnit's items and potentially face future repercussions, which were not limited to:
- Dismemberment
- Waterboarding
- Lingchi
- Nail-pulling
- Teeth-pulling
- That Inevitable Death™ He Would Have To Face Eventually, If Things Were To Go Down This Road
Or,
- Do something else and get B points deducted, which might kill him for the second time today, depending on the severity.
It was a no-brainer. He went with option two.
"Tommy," Dream called out as he entered the camp. He immediately surveyed the teen and searched for any visible reactions. If this were the beginning of his exile, things wouldn't be that bad. He could probably salvage this. There was no need to go sicko mode over their 'friendship' like some propagandistic My Little Pony ad. But since there was already a camp, it couldn't be the total beginning of exile, so Dream just had to pray that—
—mercilessly, to put a dent in his carefully crafted plans, Tommy flinched.
Oh no. OH NO.
Wordlessly, Tommy pulled his helmet off, releasing the uncut mass of his blond curls. He paused to worriedly look at Dream, curious as to why he wasn't already digging a big hole.
It was unbeknownst to Tommy that Dream was nearing a blackout.
SYSTEM! he roared in his mind, rooted deathly to his spot. WHY IS HE ALREADY TRAUMATIZED? FUCK, FUCK, FUCK. FUUUUUCK, I'M SO DEAD. DEAR PRIME, DEAR LORD, OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN, PLEASE TELL MY FAMILY THAT I LOVE THEM—
[The System advises you to stay calm. Your family is probably burying you, and your oxygen levels are low. Do remember to breathe. If you forgot how to breathe, the most efficient way to do it is by bringing the air down towards the belly. As the diaphragm contracts, the belly expands to fill the lungs with air, and—]
In retaliation, before the System could finish its copy-pasted explanation from whatever redacted website it'd stolen it from, Dream succumbed to the darkness.
Yet again.
Thankfully, there weren't any Wilbur figurines to cause this. Tommy's mortified face as Dream fell, however, was enough to make him want to die another time for real.
[Welcome back to the land of the living,] the Siri-esque voice which Dream now chalked off as 'the world's most annoying sound' sighed.
It's great to be dead. Oh, wait! Look what you did to me.
[...]
Finally shutting up now?
[No. OOC alert. Severe OOC alert! -50 B points for fainting instead of going through with the exploding. A villain like Dream would never faint in front of Tommy because of his crippling inability to use flint and steel.]
YOU'RE TAKING AWAY POINTS JUST FOR FAINTING?!
[I'll subtract more if you don't cooperate.]
Fortunately, before he could faint again from high blood pressure, Tommy decided to intrude. Dream blessedly realized he was inside a rickety excuse for a tent and was haphazardly sprawled across the only available bed. Maybe things weren't as doomed as he had thought. It was obviously Tommy who moved him there, and if anything, he could've been thrown into the ocean with fifty-kilo weights on his ankle.
"...Are you alright?" Tommy hesitantly asked.
Dream was tempted to cry.
[For every tear that rolls down your face, I'll take away five points.]
Dream was no longer feeling emotional.
"I..." He tried to choose his words carefully. Who knew speaking in character felt like walking on a minefield? Dream combed over eight thousand chapters belonging to that godawful series (which still awaited its final installment), and because he came up blank, he merely shook his head, grateful for the mask that obscured half of his features.
[Oh, and as a warning. If you take that mask off without unlocking the OOC function, I'm going to send you straight back to your world.]
That warranted an audible choke, and Tommy took it as a cue to slowly back away. He left quickly. Dream felt even more like shit, which shouldn't be humanly possible.
"Look what you did," he grumbled aloud to the System. "I was going to speak to him."
[Congratulations on boosting your decision-making abilities,] the System dryly remarked. [It appears to still fall short. Minus five points for choking. That was not very Dream of you. You now have ninety-five B points.]
"Can you not?"
[Can you blow up his items?]
Dream decided to ignore the System after that and left the tent with a prayer to any god that would aid him.
The first thing he saw was Tommy's items stacked neatly in a pile on the grass. If Dream had to guess, maybe he'd just started demanding Tommy to surrender his tools to none other than the horrible green man of unforgivable criminalities. The 'eh, he's alright' to 'this man is out to make my life a living hell' pipeline was evident here, and Dream, inwardly, cursed Character Dream for all of his crimes against man, animal, and XD alike.
To start: he had to blow up Tommy's things. Although he didn't have a love and/or reputation meter function that those crappy dating simulators had—
[Actually, you can unlock that in the future by paying three thousand B points.]
No way, seriously?
—Dream was quite certain if he were to blow up this fledgling protagonist's items any longer, his credibility and reputational standing around Tommy would plummet into the abyss, preventing him from achieving the desirable ending he wanted—which was simply not dying.
Well, honestly, dying was fine. But dying to twenty-nine spikes through the abdomen, sixteen stabs to the chest, two hits to the head, and a bunch of other burns before finally being tossed into some flaming fire-lava-thing-dude-the-writers-didn't-explain-this-part pit—now that wasn't very ideal for any young adult. Not to mention the fact that your old comrades and compadres ended up dancing and sacrificing your corpse to the gods like some sort of crazy cult ritual (which should've been decimated by the lava pit, but again, there were even worse plot holes across the SMP timeline). All of humanity should avoid such a fate. It was simply too much to handle.
So, to blow up or not to blow up. That was the moral, or 'B-pointal' dilemma of this new era. Arc. Timeline. Anything was fine, the story was always inconsistent, nobody cared, yadda yadda yadda.
Dream clapped his hands together to snap himself out of it. He looked around, making sure Tommy wasn't nearby to witness his utter failure at comprehensive decision-making. When he noted that Tommy had, for more strange plot reasons that the System once again refused to explain, disappeared; Dream wilted in on himself. He had to go through with the blow-upping. The odds were stacked against him. Goddamn it, his life was just one miserable event after another in an unbreakable chain sequence.
It was nice to have you, social standing. May you rest in pieces.
Hiding the fact that it took multiple tries to spark his flint and steel, Dream dug a hole, placed some TNT in said hole, and tossed Tommy's items in there whilst trying not to feel like he was sealing his own fate. He blew it all up with a vaguely similar energy of someone condemning themselves to Hell voluntarily. Dream argued, silently, that this was exactly what he was doing right now.
The items were gone with a muffled explosion.
[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Jackpot! Banzai! Wansui! It appears you have finally manned up enough to explode Tommy's items! Truly incredible that "you" would do this! How unforgivable and incorrigible, how slimy and mean! As expected of the big bad Dream! +30 B points. Keep it up!]
"Hey," Dream weakly protested as he stared at the smoking miniature crater. "You took away fifty points after I fainted, then five more for making an un-Dream-like sound. Why do I only get thirty points as compensation?"
A ping sounded out.
'Quest Complete: Explode-o-Inventory! Tutorial completion progress: 60%.'
[That's why. Did I forget to mention? The tutorial consists of spending the rest of the day with Tommy! You'll unlock the OOC function tonight. I hope you'll have a nice campfire chat. Maybe you can subtly convince him to spare your life.]
The only reason Dream didn't faint and potentially die again was because of his remaining B points, which he kind of needed to spare. That three-thousand-point investment sounded great.
Though, if those primesbegotten points never existed in the first place, none of this would've happened, and he could've died way earlier by either hurling himself off a cliff. That, or he would've already been kissing up to Tommy's ass in hopes of never having to face damnation as he inwardly passed away with no pride.
Both sounded so much better than right now. Right now was a menace. Right now was a nightmare.
"I HAVE TO WHAT?!"
[You're very, very lucky Tommy didn't hear that.]
"WHERE EVEN IS HE?!"
[I don't know, fishing or something. I'll deduct your points if you squabble and ask for more reasons.]
"MOTHERFUCK—"
Defeated, devastated, and thoroughly worn out, Dream sat down on the grass to contemplate every single life choice he had made up to this point.
He could only hope that nobody sold his limited-edition Wilbur figurine back at home.