for anyone who read the big big post, here’s a summary of my points since it seemed people forgot them
Dreamtale’s theme is balance. This is present in both the comics AND outside the comics but when I say Dreamtale I mean the entire story, not just the comic. This means negativity and positivity can both cause or influence good and bad to happen, but they’re both necessary to exist. I’ve provided dozens of examples in my initial post, from Dream’s positivity hurting him, to Nightmare being having cruel elation to suffering, to the conflict being an injust persecution of a harmless negative entity, leading to one who harm everything. Here’s some more off the top of my head if you want a quick list:
- The people who use their negativity in bad ways are killed (being mean to Nightmare is bad and causes very bad things to happen).
- The person who wants to kill one emotion is the bad guy (having only one type of emotion bad).
- The person trying to protect the emotions as a whole is Dream (both emotions good 👍👍👍).
- Dream’s aura is bad for him and others despite it being injections of positivity into other people. (Literal aura of positivity being super harmful)
- Nightmare laughs at suffering and enjoys harm (bad positivity)
- Dream protects the apple out of fear of having good emotions disappear entirely (good fear) which saves the multiverse from losing the last apple
- uncorrupted Nightmare feels safe with this new entity and is killed (bad positivity)
- Dream feels bad for Nightmare so he helps him (helpful negativity).
- Dream feels the pain of the villagers and tries to protect them (good negativity).
- Dream’s new positive apple is confusing and painful (bad positivity)
- Dream and Nightmare both suffering from the villagers (being a positive guardian not preventing bad or negativity the same as the negative guardian)
- Dream’s never any more positive than Nightmare (despite being literally symbolic of positivity)
- Dream loses everything when his brother is killed by corrupted (our hero is hurt by the loss of that negativity/other half for something genuinely cruel and evil)
- Dream’s other new powers/role from the apple hurts him, such as empathy (bad positivity)
- Dream’s life goes to hell once the tree is gone and he has the only positive apple left (too much of one type of emotion is not good!)
- The point of Dream’s entire character!! (He’s supposed to represent positivity but he’s probably one of the most tragic, deeply hurt characters you’ll find, and it’s a point of his story that people misinterpret him as some universal good and never negative guy that hurts him even more. ‘He’s positivity, right? How could that be bad, it’s positivity!’ - Dream’s character is quite literally a challenge to this line of thinking)
Yes. There are plenty instances in the story where negativity is used badly and positivity is used for good. That’s the point. It’s not JUST negativity good, positivity bad, it’s a spectrum of both.
But, if you wanted a story where negativity is thematically evil and/or shouldn’t exist, and positivity thematically good, all those points up there, or at least the majority of them also shouldn’t exist, especially within those huge main conflicts and goals. I mean, heck, I barely scratched the surface of all of them. There’s so many more, I bet you could think of some yourself.
Dream should not be trying to save negativity if negativity is evil. Dream’s positivity should not hurt him is positivity is harmless and good. Uncorrupted should not be kind and gentle as a negative entity. The villagers should not cause the downfall of the literal multiverse if they were somehow in the right lmao. These are all examples of a spectrum, a wide array of responses to these emotions, that mirror real life. I hope someone going, ah but look, negativity was used evil here! Is not enough to make you forget every other point to the contrary. Sometimes negativity causes bad things to happen. Sometimes it’s helpful. Maybe even the majority of times it feels bad, as negativity tends to skew irl, but it’s never universally bad and never justification for its eradication entirely. That’s what Dream, our hero in the story, looks to prevent, and what the villain looks to cause. It’s a spectrum, a grey area. They both need to exist. That’s the theme of Dreamtale.
