Do you think The Plan™️ still includes a place for Quackity despite Dream’s contempt for him? Or do you think Dream’s modified his goals with the “Knowledge” that behind the mask of decency Quackity wears, all there is is a being that exists to use and get off on the suffering of others?
“I said I wanted a big happy family. A Nephandus existing is not compatible with that goal.”
/dsmp/rp
This is something I keep returning to: what HAS Dream concluded about Quackity, and about his motives, and what does that mean for his plans?
On the one hand, I don’t think Dream changes his overall goals based on how he feels about people. He’s not primarily driven by revenge, to the point where he’s let Sam go despite what he did to him. On the other… Dream’s view of Quackity is warped to hell. He’s terrified of Quackity, traumatized, and has a low low low opinion of him. He has some difficulty talking about him directly. When he threatens Sam, it’s not with “torture” but with “Quackity.”
When Dream talks about Quackity’s motives to Quackity, he accuses him of sadism. But when he talks about Quackity’s motives to Sam, Dream says things like “financial benefit”, reviving JSchlatt, taking the power of the book for himself. He even says he’d also have done “everything” to try to get the book in Sam’s shoes, though he stops short of saying precisely what this means. He calls Quackity a sociopath and says Quackity doesn’t feel, but also talks about destroying all the people and places and things Quackity cares about. This is a very distinct accusation from calling Quackity sadistic!
And interestingly, categorizing him like this divorces Quackity from emotional reasoning, but not necessarily from the pragmatic reasoning Dream typically prefers. If anything, you’d think someone as relentlessly amoral as Dream would understand and appreciate what he’s calling “sociopathy”, ie the willingness to set aside all feeling in pursuit of a goal. Except in this case, Dream knows the goal is so personal. Except in this case, the means were so much more extreme than Dream ever imagined. (Except in this case, Dream saw Quackity ENJOYING the means.)
At what point did Dream realize how conflicted Quackity’s motivations were, between “get the book” and “make Dream suffer”, and just how much the one was intrinsic to the other? I’m positive that Dream tried to bargain with Quackity: made offers like, ‘look, you know I can’t give you the book itself, but I can swear to bring back anyone you want, whenever you want, please stop.’ When Quackity refused, it would become abundantly obvious that he didn’t just want the power, but also, critically, for Dream to not have the power. Quackity wanted Dream hurting and he wanted Dream DEAD and he was trying as hard as he possibly could to force Dream to let himself die; Dream was painfully aware of this.
Dream also seems to be genuine when he says he thinks Quackity would not have shared the knowledge with Sam, that he would have kept it to himself, which speaks to his low opinion of Quackity’s long-term goals. This also says something about how Dream views their business partnership—the power struggle there, and their mutual power struggle over Dream, and how Dream was acutely aware of himself as something they were to some degree fighting over. Dream had to remain constantly cognizant of that push and pull between the two people with power over his life and death.
So what’s this mean for the future? I don’t really know! Dream’s contempt for and terror of Quackity is unlike anything he feels for anyone else on the server. Even Sam, who certainly comes closest, has a lot of mitigating and complicating factors that Quackity lacks. Like Sam, Dream loathes him; like Sam, Dream will never trust him again, at all; like Sam, Dream now understands the depths to which he can sink. Unlike Sam, Dream doesn’t really have evidence of these crimes being directed against anyone other than Dream: does that make it better or worse?
I can’t imagine Dream doesn’t want to kill him at least once. I also won’t be surprised if Quackity’s one of the only people Dream wants completely dead (though I do think it’s notable that, even in his bullshit threats to Sam, Dream tells him he plans to imprison Quackity rather than kill him dead). The question is, what does Dream need from Quackity? From Sam, Dream needed the keys. What ulterior reason, unrelated to revenge and trauma, does Dream have to confront Quackity? If there’s none, will he invent one? This more than anything is going to determine the outcome, I think.
