#appleswap

It’s the core of one of the trickiest problems to square for Black Apple Blues - why does Night eat the dark apple? Given what is known about them, eating one is akin to drinking the Forbidden Hi-C: it’s not just stupid - it’s irresponsible. Night is putting himself, the villagers, and especially Dream at risk. So why does he do it?

In Main timeline Dreamtale, Night’s motivations make sense - Night initially goes for a golden apple to prove his worth, and it’s only when everything has gone royally fucked and he’s in immediate danger that he eats the dark apple in a desperate call for help.

But in BwB? The ghost timeline is inherently pre-apple incident, because it’s inspired by Quo’s (@the-kk-crow​) DTS ukagaka. And being bookish and a guardian, it would make sense that Night would know the effects of the apples. In BwB lore, the consequences of eating a dark apple are notably dire. So what would make him do it?

Interestingly, the motivations in the appleswap ficlets came easier to me. Obviously, Night going for a golden apple makes sense - it’s what he does in the main timeline, and who wouldn’t want to experience some positivity in their life? The key difference for “Gold Apple Glee” would be to ensure that Night goes for the gold apple in a mindset that wouldn’t convert it. Having him ride on an excited high, pleased enough to not let small mistakes drag him down - well, it seems like an obvious choice in retrospect, doesn’t it? (Side note: one key aspect I wanted to foreground was Night’s positivity being derived from his success and self-worth. It is very easy to make a desire for positivity into a metaphor for drugs, and I wanted to avert that implication here. As Quo joked on the server: ‘they’re not drugs; they’re anti-depressants!’)

As for Dream going for the dark apple - look, there’s a reason their tag is #have a plan to kill everyone you meet. Where Night faces the villagers’ overt ire, Dream has to sit and smile against their two-facedness, because they’ve learned that speaking up rarely goes well for them. It feeds a bitterness that could easily spill into the reckless ‘maybe they’re all wrong’ nigh-spitefulness that causes them to go for the dark apple in “Resolutely Black”. And honestly, they do not care what happens to the villagers. From their perspective, it’s akin to growing up queer in a homophobic small town, and they’re just better at ‘playing straight’ than Night is. (Continuing this analogy, this makes the apple incident effectively a gay-bashing that ended with their brother in a coma.)

For BwB!Night’s motivation though? There were several things that I wanted to be incorporated to not break our established themes: 1) eating the apple must be Night’s decision (even if he’s in an addled state when he does so). He can’t accidentally ingest it. He must decide to eat the dark apple. 2) He can’t be ignorant of the consequences. Given his knowledge and the roles impressed upon them, it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t know the dangers. 3) Night’s primary mindset must be loneliness, (which sows the seeds (heh!) of Mare’s attachment to Night) 4) Night must not recklessly put others at risk. BwB!Night doesn’t want to hurt anyone; he just wants his mistreatment to stop.

While I’m not completely happy with Night’s motivation as described in “All-Natural Cyanide”, I think I covered these bases pretty well - a sleep-derived haze of self-loathing and maudlin over-identification with the dark apples leads to him wanting to punish himself with the dark apples’ foul taste. When it is sweeter than he expects, it doesn’t fully register as that thing that’s leveled the village before. He doesn’t tell anyone about it because he misremembers the events as a bad dream, and as the symptoms start to show, Night thinks back to how he vomited up what he ate and took the tincture of golden apple juice, which is pretty much all he can do to head off dark apple possession. By the time Night has concluded that yes, he is possessed by the dark apple, Mare has proven himself to be at least amenable to persuasion, so the responsibility to tell anyone about what he’s done lessens and lessens as time goes on.

Night: Yeah, I named her ‘Kallisti’ after the inscription on the Apple of Discord Dream: Oh, I haven’t given mine a name yet. Night: [looks at Dream] Night: [looks at Kallisti] Night: [to Dream’s goopfriend] Nice to meet you, Ulysses.

(For those who still don’t get the reference: