hear me out: c!dream as objectively, undeniably beautiful.
i like the idea that very few people on the server have actually seen his face. sapnap and george have, of course, and maybe a few other members of the og eight, but after things started going downhill, he was very insistent on wearing the mask around everyone and was usually dressed in thick cloaks and heavy armor. underneath all the layers, however, he is a very pretty boy. he’s well-built, with broad shoulders and strong arms. he’s powerful. lean. his face grants him a bit of androgyny; his eyelashes are full and thick, his features are delicate and thin, his eyes are bright, and his skin is sun-kissed.
and don’t get me started on his voice. smooth when he argues, charming when he laughs. it’s easy to believe him when he talks. besides that, however, most of his beauty is hidden.
maybe his mask was taken from him as he was put into the prison. perhaps it was public, or maybe it was done in a private moment between him and sam. either way, no one expected him to look like… That. some people imagined him as a monster, whatever their private definition of that word was (a freak of nature with too many eyes? a man with a lop-sided smile and yellow teeth?) but he is, in fact, just a boy. and a good-looking one, at that.
some people are surprised.
- sam is among them. there’s some pride in being the one to unveil the monster, he thinks as he holds the mask in his hands, but he’s taken off-guard by what he sees. he would never, EVER say this out loud, and it certainly doesn’t help the… Everything between the two of them. sam isn’t self-aware enough to realize the exact ways which it affects them. does looking into a pair of pretty green eyes make him Less likely to strike, or more?
- quackity also notices. quackity Does voice it. (he Gets it, alright? big q is also a beautiful boy and now he has this ugly scar across his face, and it’s terrible. there’s opportunity for humiliation here.) one time, after a session, he took the time to sit down and let dream know Exactly how he looked. he pulled out his most vivid, poetic words to describe his newly hollowed cheeks, the darkness under his eyes that aged him, how terrible each new scar is. he pokes at dream’s body with a blade as he speaks, using it like a pointer as he describes various flaws. dream flinches. dream might have cried.
- (sam’s terrible realization is that dream is, somehow, still pretty. in a torn-apart, fallen-angel type of way. he would never, ever say it out loud.)
- technoblade doesn’t see dream’s face until he walks into the cell himself (if dream hadn’t screamed his name so quickly, techno might not have known who he was). he’s a piglin, but he’s lived with humans for many many years and he likes to think he’s familiar with the culture well enough to identify an attractive one when he sees them. dream fits the description. he’s starved and unhealthy, sure, but those eyes and lashes are so unmistakably pretty. he doesn’t do anything with this new information, but he Does raise a brow in sam’s direction.
- punz sees his face for the first time shortly after the breakout. having next to no equipment or armor, dream hasn’t found a replacement for the mask and he makes no comment on it. punz thinks (hopes?) that it might become regular between them; now that there’s nothing to hide, maybe dream will take the mask off more. at least during quiet moments, you know? the next time they meet, the mask is back on. and the next. and the next
- dream is mostly unaware of how people react to him. does he look more of a monster now?