I Felt Like Painting Something With Owls And Cats Again And Suddenly This Idea Popped Up In My Head.

Art by Maciej Sidorowicz

c!discduo in their double life arc

/dsmp /rp

Thinking again about how Dream's trust in other people got irrevocably torn down throughout the prison arc. How even after all the blackmailing and all the murder attempts, Dream had expected people to be fair and play by the rules. To keep their word, just like he always did.

But then Sam almost immediately deviated from the prison protocol. He isolated and starved Dream, he let a torturer in and trapped Dream's one chance of escape in the cell with him. Sapnap threatened to kill him if he ever got out. And it got to the point where Dream believed that Techno, one of his only allies, would not even come back for him.

When he was finally free, Dream decided that the only option left was to kill everyone who was against him and Punz. Otherwise, he thought the others would "force" them to revive whoever they killed. It wouldn't surprise me if he imagined that this "forcing to revive" would likely entail torture. He had already seen how far some people were willing to go for the power of revival, after all.

No longer would Dream give people the benefit of the doubt. No longer would he trust them to treat him fairly, to see him as a person. Either they sided with him, or they died.

Art by Seung-Jae Lee

Art by Maojin.Lee

Art by Yi Jiaqin

new home

I do think about how Tommy's fanon design kept the green handkerchief, while Tubbo very rarely has his post-New L'manberg. And how often people see Tubbo in Tommy's shadow, when upon Tommy's death, Tubbo had his husband and child and his country, when at the thought of losing Tubbo, Tommy couldn't imagine who he'd be without him. Exile for Tubbo meant all of NLM with no Tommy, exile for Tommy meant no one at all, and a chest full of photos of Tubbo. "I feel like I always saw you as a sort of sidekick" and Tommy kept his handkerchief and Tubbo lost his compass

// dsmp rp

The contrast in daedalus… Dream trying to manipulate Sam into doing what he wanted, but Dream also just wanting to vent his feelings; his anger. Wanting Sam to understand how badly he hurt him.

There's a definite shift somewhere along the way, where Dream transitions from that bitter, mocking side from the first stream to something more pragmatic and cold. It's not both at once; it's a conscious switch. It's as if he realized that he would never get through to Sam on any emotional level. Which was fine, he told himself; Dream was a pragmatist. He cut his losses and moved on. But abandoning all hope of an honest conversation, one of the only times he opened up—that couldn't be an easy call to make.