TommyInnit's Unbeatable Method of Avoiding Sudden Death
is a Dream SMP Alternate Universe Crack Fic, centering around Tommy's adventures as the bravest, coolest vigilante who ever lived.
The story is episodic, with each chapter detailing a new adventure for Tommy, his friends, and his newfound family, superheroes Philza, Technoblade, and Willow (Wilbur). Together, they battle robbers, thugs, family arguments, Wilbur's habit of throwing Techno out of windows, and reality coming apart at the seams.
Some trope names may include MAJOR ending spoilers. Proceed with caution.
TommyInnit's Unbeatable Method of Avoiding Sudden Death contains examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: The fic opens with a scene of a young Tommy in a burning city, being saved by an angel, before it cuts to sixteen-year-old Tommy doing vigilante stuff. This leads the reader to believe that Tommy was saved by Philza as a child, and that the actual story starts after a time skip of a few years. In reality, Tommy wasn't saved at all, and the entire world is his own dying fantasy, wherein he's older, has a bunch of cool gadgets, and does superhero stuff like in the cartoons he idolized. The angel he saw wasn't Phil, but his mother (AKA Clementine), there to take him to the afterlife.
- Compelling Voice: Wilbur can order anyone to do anything he wants them to do, just by ordering them to do it. Tommy is the only one immune to this.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Ranboo makes a habit of putting spaghetti in literally everything, including things like cereal, smoothies and soup.
- Destination Defenestration: A Running Gag — Wilbur has a habit of commanding Techno to throw himself through windows, among other things.
- Downer Ending: As Tommy's denial gets harder and harder to keep up, the world starts unraveling around him, until the reveal that none of it was real. He says a tearful goodbye to dream!Wilbur before we, the audience, learn what actually happened. Tommy was never a sixteen-year-old vigilante, he was a twelve-year-old boy who just watched his home burn down and his brothers die in front of him due to a war invading his city, and who died of smoke inhalation before he could get to his father's workplace. In the end, Tommy leaves his dream world behind, and goes with his mother to the afterlife.
- Dying Dream: The entire story is made up by a twelve-year-old, superhero-obsessed Tommy, who dies of smoke inhalation and creates the world to cope with his impending death.
- Easily Forgiven: From car theft, to shooting random civilians with a dart gun, to straight up arson, Tommy gets away with pretty much everything he does with little more than a stern talking-to. Tubbo and Ranboo also seem to face absolutely no consequences for just taking in a random toddler off the street, and Michael's parents or guardians never seem to be looking for him. This turns out to be justified, as the entire story is a superhero-obsessed 12-year-old boy's dying fantasy, so Tommy wouldn't think to add realistic consequences for his or his friends' actions.
- Foreshadowing: There are a lot of hints to the final twist of the story.
- Chapters 15, 22 and 24 are short segments where a mysterious entity tells Tommy that he can't stay forever, while Tommy begs them to let him live out his fantasy world for a little bit longer. This entity turns out to be Tommy's mother, waiting for him to come to terms with his impending death so she can take him to the afterlife.
- Clementine, Tommy's fish, is definitely not a normal fish. She survived being out of water for as long as it took Tommy to walk back home from the pond and put her in a cup in the first chapter, survived living in a Sprite-bottle that Tommy took with him everywhere and was likely getting shaken violently on a daily basis, and seemed to be able to communicate with him by swimming in certain patterns. Clementine is actually a manifestation of Tommy's mother, who died when he was very young, and is letting him live out his fantasies before taking him to the afterlife.
- As the story progresses it shifts focus pretty rapidly. The first chapters focus on the vigilante-and-hero dynamic between Tommy and the rest of SBI, then after that it focuses much more on the family dynamic, then the plot starts to derail to the point where it stops making sense at all. After that the fantasy world starts to fall apart, and Tommy is forced to finally let go. This was a deliberate choice, and according to Word of God, represents the Five Stages of Grief. throughout tumoasd tommy actually experiences the five stages of grief. he’s mostly in denial up until chap 7 (when clementine first tries to reach him). at this stage, the story is a lot more coherent and it follows him actually being a vigilante. when his denial is broken, tommy panics and his focus changes to become more family based as he starts to realise that he doesn’t have much time left hence why it starts to focus more around sbi. chap 15 is when he reaches the anger stage, the plot starts to derail even more until it doesn’t really make sense. chap 22 is bargaining and chap 24 represents the depression stage where tommy starts to realise there is nothing he can do. chap 26 is him reaching acceptance. a somewhat key point is that tommy keeps reverting back to denial which is why he frequently states that "grief has five stages and they don’t always happen in order.
- One that's easy to miss: Ranboo is shown watching WandaVision at one point. Tommy's story ends up having a lot of similarities to the show; both he and Wanda built fantasy worlds based on their favorite childhood shows as a coping mechanism for losing everything they loved, and tried desperately to hold onto them when they started falling apart.
- Immune to Mind Control: Tommy is completely immune to Wilbur's Compelling Voice.
- Insistent Terminology: Tommy insists that Clementine should always be referred to in italics.
- Running Gag:
- Every time Techno and Wilbur appear in a chapter together, it will end with Wilbur ordering him to throw himself out of a window, off a building, or off a bridge. This becomes a lot less funny once it's revealed that in reality, Tommy watched Techno fall to his death when he missed the jump from their burning apartment.
- Tommy shooting anyone who pisses him off in the leg with a dart gun.
- War Is Hell: The second-to-last chapter is a BRUTAL description of the city Tommy lived in being invaded by an enemy force. The city is described as being completely on fire, and the streets swarming with panicking residents and soldiers who shoot at anything that moves. Tommy watches Techno fall to his death as they escape their burning apartment, and as he and Wilbur make their way to the city center to find their dad who stayed at work overnight, Wilbur gets shot in the chest and dies in Tommy's arms. Tommy makes his way to the city center to find Phil's office building on fire, with no idea whether or not Phil made it out, before he himself dies of smoke inhalation, in the process hallucinating the entire story.
- Winged Humanoid: Philza has a pair of wings.
