For the start of pride month, I choose violence.

So let's talk about Reaper, Dream, and Life. In the original comics, Reaper only has met Life through the moments when tragedy occurs right when Life begins. Toriel, in turn, thinks Death is somewhat of an abomination against her creation. It is, afterall, the reason she ran away from the other Gods in the first place. Then, they learn about each other and fall in love, I recommend reading the comics for more on that. But of course, something goes terribly terribly wrong, and Sans's scythe is stolen by the very first human, who he hesitated to reap and it's used to kill Toriel.

In my comics, Toriel has been brought back, but is slowly returning to full power. The original comics ended on somewhat unresolved with her being upset Sans lied to her, so let's say they're not exactly on great terms right now. But, Reaper, someone always quite cynical, has spiralled since then in terms of his self-perception.

In comes Dream, someone with many of the same characteristics of Toriel, but with the new bonus, that he is automatically excepting of Death right off the bat. No hostility, no fear, just a desire to be Reaper's friend.

There is one problem here, though, and that's how negative Reaper is in general. It's only a matter of time before Nightmare finds them while they're together. But he likes to cause suffering and he likes it to be immense, so what better dagger to drive into Reaper's heart than the looming threat that the more he sees Dream, the more he puts him in danger? What if the same thing happens again? What if he's responsible for the death of EVERYTHING this time? If Nightmare wins, the entire multiverse will slowly crumble until there is simply nothing left, and there will be no revival this time around.

Worse yet, he can't do anything against Nightmare. If Nightmare did appear, what would he do? What could he do? His fear would only make him stronger and Dream weaker. What good is he then?

If you're wondering why Nightmare doesn't have his soul on him, let's say he can break himself apart into various controllable vessels. At the cost of being weaker, it lets him keep his real soul, his one true soul, hidden somewhere Dream can't find it, meaning he can kill Dream and Dream will have a much more difficult time killing him.

I had fun finally making Reaper a skyscraper. Based off like one Reapertale drawing and its caption: [1]

Also funny coincidence, right as I was drawing the image of Reaper teleporting away the first time, I read the text under one of the Reapertale comic pages that said: "because sans teleporting away from problems"

Good to see I am right on track even when I'm not intending to directly reference something.