Discussion YMMV / DreamSMP

I'm not sure how closely you looked at that original entry, but the language in it was pretty inflammatory towards a specific group who have a valid interpretation of the character, even if it's not an interpretation that is popular with the entire fandom. I tried to change the entry to be more neutral; due to the nature of the SMP, a lot of characters can be perceived as 'Draco In Leather Pants' because none of them are really morally-innocent pure beings. They all have deep flaws and have done bad things, and a lot of them in portions of the fandom have those flaws and bad-acts washed away/completely excused. c!Dream and c!Wilbur are probably the two this happens the most obviously with, though c!Dream has the bigger reputation for it. I never stated in there that their actions were of equal-levels, just that they are the two characters who most frequently have this trope enacted on them.

It's true that none of the characters in particular are morally sanitized, and I agree with that statement a lot. However, you believing that c!Wilbur is subjected to the DILP trope implies that fans sanitize c!Wilbur's actions to make him look better, but what actions, exactly, are sanitized by c!Wilbur sympathizers and apologists? I hang out in c!Wilbur sympathetic circles and few (if any of them) really try to justify his actions, even in his spiral arc (Pogtopia or otherwise).

I mean I could say the same for c!Dream sympathetic circles hah, very few of them actually justify/excuse his actions, though I know a very small minority do. And the majority of what I've seen for c!Wilbur are people saying he was 'manipulated into blowing up L'Manberg' and thus can't be held responsible for it, or saying that none of the abuse/harm he laid on his friends really mattered because he was mentally ill/paranoid, and thus he's sort of innocent in it all. Which isn't really true, but seems to be fairly present in at least a portion of the fandom. Same could be said for c!Tommy actually, who has a lot of the harm/bad actions he did to other people wiped away because he's young or because of his own trauma. Both of the characters are sympathetic, but there's definitely a good portion of the fandom who just pretends all of the bad things they did are A-OK because they were mentally ill.

The thing is, most c!Wilbur sympathetic people do think he should be held accountable for blowing up L'Manburg. c!Wilbur sympathizers, in my experience, tend to say that c!Wilbur did some morally questionable if not outright immoral things, and use his mental illness as an explanation but not a justification for what he does. c!Tommy witnessed c!Wilbur's spiral firsthand and canonically had/has nightmares because of that; most c!Wilbur sympathizers (afaik) acknowledge that he hurt people in his spiral and don't (or at least try their best not to) invalidate other characters' trauma. Most c!Wilbur sympathizers in my experience don't say he's innocent, but I do admit there may be a minority that do. Also, c!Wilbur, as far as I know, also didn't abuse anyone—abuse usually carries connotations to a repeated pattern of harmful behaviour towards another person, as well as a power dynamic.

For c!Tommy, no one (or only very few people) is sanitizing his 'bad actions' because of his age of all factors, so to speak. The thing about c!Tommy's so-called bad actions are that he seems to be genuinely trying to make up for them if he knows of them. He's apologized to so many people and has been trying to make up for things. Him unintentionally killing c!Jack in his Logstedshire spiral? He apologized for it on stream but didn't really acknowledge it much because he didn't know it was a canon death, I don't think. And as for him stealing and doing minor griefing/trolling? That's just Minecraft server normalcy for you.

c!Dream, on the other hand... the issue is that many people find child abusers hard to sympathize with, and especially child abusers who almost make their victim kill themselves. The prison/torture plotline is controversial in some circles because of this, because, as the Unintentionally Unsympathetic section says, people who are unsympathetic to c!Dream think the plotline forces unnecessary sympathy on him.

So I'm unclear on what you think should change in the version of the trope that I posted then, or in general what should happen with the DILP trope on this page.

We both agree that there is a minority of people trying to sanitize the actions of c!Dream and c!Wilbur (and I seriously have seen quite a few people say that c!Tommy and c!Wilbur can't be held accountable for any of their actions due to their mental illness/trauma or age), which would be the DILP trope as I understand it. Both of their characters DO have aspects in the canon story that would make them sympathetic, though different character interpretations obviously mean some people don't agree with those existing/being sympathetic enough (as you mentioned with the Unintentionally Unsympathetic mention.) In my eyes at least either interpretation/view of their characters is valid as long as they are based in fact, because obviously people are going to have different perspectives on what makes them sympathetic.

The way the original trope was worded however made it seem like people who did feel sympathetic towards c!Dream were flat out wrong for being so, excused/justified all his actions, and had no actual evidence or canon-compliant information to actually back up their perspective. Which isn't true, although I don't want to get into a full discourse over WHY it's valid here. In my re-write of the trope I tried to keep the trope present, while also identifying that many characters in the SMP can suffer from this Trope because of biased-narrators, fandom members viewing only certain PO Vs and not others, and just the nature of the SMP making it easy for mis-information or lack of information to influence fandom perceptions of certain characters. I was in no way saying one character was worse than another, but was trying to label two characters I know are the most controversial in fandom terms and then give an example of where two very different opinions (neither of which I in particular find accurate) on one event split fandom perceptions. Evidently I missed the mark, but that just leads me to believe the trope should be removed from the page altogether, due to the fact that every character on the SMP has something sympathetic about them, even if it is more difficult to sympathize with specific ones.

Hm, understandable, perhaps there should be an extended list of how each individual character is sanitized by different groups of people then. Just to make sure we cover all the bases.

Maybe, although that seems rather exhaustive. I'm not sure if there's a way to display this trope without having to go into extreme detail over each character, or being a more generalized vague. It's a YMMV type trope in this fandom, because no matter where you go different characters will be sanitized by different groups. Which is why it probably belongs under this page, but I also just don't know how you can display it without making a whole page for it hah.

Well, there are genuinely media that have individual pages for the DILP trope, and even with this, we can still do a summary of talking points for characters who are most susceptible towards the trope.

If you think it can be done then we can go for it? I think the characters I've seen experience the trope the most is Dream, Wilbur, Tommy, Sam, and Quackity. And there's a small portion I think who do something akin to it with Schlatt as well.

Do you have any points for c!Sam and c!Quackity? /gen

c!Sam it usually revolves around saying things like c!Dream manipulated him into mis-treating the prisoners, c!Dream included, or just that generally the burden of being the Warden and how it has affected his mental health absolves him of any guilt/blame for his actions like cutting off c!Ponk's arm or his part in c!Tommy death. Also there's the revolving door of 'who is to blame for Ghostbur dying' and the different opinions on why c!Sam isn't at all to blame but c!Tommy/c!Dream are.

c!Quackity also gets the "c!Dream manipulated him into torturing him" treatment on occasion. With the added bonus of his behavior towards the L'Manberg cabinet members, c!Techno, and then what he did to c!Foolish, c!Purpled, and the general Las Nevadas crew (letting c!Foolish die, blowing up c!Purpled's UFO, etc.) being the result of trauma response from his time in Manberg and with c!Schlatt

I think we'll save off those latter two for now because I think I need a little more time to word them satisfactorily (and also because it's way past 1am in my time zone). I might add c!Dream and c!Crimeboys tomorrow if/when I have the time.

I'm still not overly pleased with the Dream portion of the entry as it makes it seem like anyone who doesn't find his character Pure Evil is DILP'ing him, which really isn't the case, but I really doubt I'm going to convince you to change it any other manner, and the other entries at least somewhat balance it out.