characters berate c!tommy for being destructive, when he's one of the most peaceful people around

something i've noticed kind of recently, when looking retroactively throughout the story in a general sense, is that people in the dream smp destroy everything they touch. common knowledge, i'm aware, but it's something i wanted to talk about.

oftentimes when people destroy things, it is out of grief or anger. prominent examples that come to mind include jack burning down manifoldland after tommy dies, wilbur's, and later techno, phil and dream's destruction of l'manberg, niki exploding her bakery, dream's destruction of logstedshire and all of the times tubbo's homes were destroyed.

something to note is that tommy is only responsible for one of those major instances, being the first time tubbo's house was burnt down. and what did tommy do? he paid tubbo either half a stack of diamonds or half the diamonds he had (i can never remember which) to make up for it.

you might also recall tommy burning down george's house with ranboo - which, to counter this point, this was on accident. tommy never intended to destroy anything, but instead to steal. he also tore down the remains of ponk's lemon tree - this was per the request of sam nook, who tommy would do anything for, and ponk's lemon tree was in tatters either way.

(sidenote: i'd debate the morality of stealing if it wasn't commonplace on the smp. tommy does it no more and no less than the average server member, if i'm honest, and he has good reason to considering everything he has, whether or not it's stolen or worked for, get's destroyed or stolen from him.)

the most griefing tommy tends to do is the things he creates, namely his infamous (often) cobblestone towers that litter the server. they are ugly, yes, but they stand out and kind of act as landmarks for places of importance to him. prominent mentions include a blackstone tower next to his house, a cobble tower near l'manberg, a wooden tower he started building with dream, and later drista, in logstedshire another one near pogtopia and one next to techno's house (that was later torn down by phil).

a lot of characters on the smp have realisations that they need to move on from the point where they once were. jack burnt down manifoldland to get away from his hateful obsession with tommy, as it wasn't healthy for him, and he came to the realisation, whether or not he'd admit it to himself, that he missed having tommy as a friend. niki blew up her bakery because she wanted to distance herself from l'manberg (she was barely a part of new l'manberg anyway, but this isn't the time for me to rant about how much c!niki irritates me to my core). wilbur blew up l'manberg because he wanted to rid the world of what he percieved as the villainy and corruption that he birthed. techno and phil did it out of pure anger and hatred for institutional structures. dream did it because it, for the longest time, was a thorn in his plans, and because he found it fun to toy with tommy. they burn and break and blow up and ruin things just because they find catharsis in it, but never do they stop to think that they can leave peacefully and abandon things, knowing that someone, someday, may find joy in the thing that you left behind.

tommy broke this tradition.

in season two, tommy was inhabiting his home only for about the very first two weeks and the very last two weeks, as the largest middle chunk of the season was spent in exile, either in logstedshire or with techno. during this time, connor tried inhabiting his house, to very little success - connor was kicked out and later held hostage, but something to note is that tommy refrained from destroying his stolen house, which would have mirrored wilbur's 'if i can't have manberg, no-one can have manberg.' around the end of the season, post-doomsday, tommy promised his house to two separate individuals should he die on january 20th (i believe it was to connor and sapnap, but someone can correct me on this information if i'm wrong.)

tommy's house has had it rough. it's probably one of the few houses that has stayed in the exact same spot since the beginning, but my god has it been through it. it's been blown up, torn apart, dug into, burnt, destroyed, remodeled, refurbished and expanded so many times that what appears to be an unsuspecting hobbit hole is a labyrinth of pure history and despair - and the amount that tommy's been stolen from trumps most on the server.

what i'm saying is, is that it's impressive tommy has stayed there so long and has broken the tradition of destroying the things that cause you grief. in fact, he went the extra mile to say that if he died, he would leave it to someone else.

tommy finds no catharsis or joy in destroying something that someone else could learn to love, even if he hates it, even moreso in the present than ever before. he refused to destroy the blackstone tower outside his house for resources, and he didn't partake in any of techno's terrorism - and was outright shocked at the wither spawned the day before the festival.

tommy seems to be one of the only characters who recognises that there is no beauty in destruction - no catharsis, no peace and no fresh start. there is only an abrupt end and a feeling of hollowness, knowing that the thing you had created could have been left to someone who would have loved and cared for it ten times the amount you ever did. he might not enjoy the fact that people may try to use and abuse things he already owns and wants to keep as his, but if he lets it go, he won't destroy it. he'll have faith that it's next owner could do a better job with it than he ever could.

/rp