*slides in and bites lip* hayy....
so irl stuff happened but we've been cooking up some stuff here and there and we figured you guys might wanna see them :D
so we're gonna talk about the second dreamtale concept we have which is a variant of the swap!osd au by @calcium-cat,,,, and basically! nm has a harsher personality, but at the same time holds a much softer spot for dream. He fights back against his bullies and believes that dream is too kind and tells him so often using scathing comments, but dream understands that nm is just a little tsun tsun. Nm is also proud of all the knowledge he has cultivated and makes sure to rub it in peoples faces by delivering sick burns and insulting bullies left and right
For the apple incident, the apples blacken when nm and the villagers fight over the tree and he accidentally touches one of the fruits. Dream arrives in time to see the villagers dealing the fatal blow to nm as well as the tree
Desperate, dream feeds a black apple to nm hoping that it would still be able to heal him but instead intensifies nm's negativity. This later on will be the biggest factor behind dream's guilt
Nm is still dying so his negativity powers him to continue consuming the apples but he keeps going and the power eventually corrupts him
Now nm wants to get revenge so dream takes the last golden apple (this one fell from the tree while the tree was being cut, before the negativity got to it) to have more of a fighting chance and to better protect the people against nm, but he still gets petrified like in canon (or maybe we'll just put him in a coma induced by the intense negativity... i dont really understand the logic behind him turning to stone so we might toss out that idea) (we're open to suggestions though!)
Nm's adrenaline powered mind sees dream's petrified/knocked out self and goes mad, going on a rampage and destroying the entire village.
Of course, 500 years later, dream wakes up and joins ink's group. Ink actually asked sci to make something up that could weaken nightmare's gang but forgets about it, so the formula somehow ends up in dream's hands as the unofficial second in command. Dream, ever the guilt-ridden but hope-filled person, tests it out first on nm. Maybe, this could buy him just enough time to hold a civil conversation with him... imagine everyone's surprise when the lofty scholar-type king turns into a filthy mouthed baby gremlin
