Dump of the comic i made for my dsmp fic -- "Come Up for Air"
At some point in 2022 I made a Dream/George fanfic, which is a bit of a mouthful to explain. I also made a comic about it, that's mainly what I want to show here, but I do have to explain the fanfic for it to make any sense at all.
AS A DISCLAIMER I do have the headcanon that George is the god of the forest.
If you know nothing about the DreamSMP, all you need to know to understand this is that Dream is a villain, the sort of villain that thinks they're controlling everyone like puppets. At the beginning of the story he was good, spending time with friends like George, but then something happened and now he feels the need to protect everything he built with his friends, and that broke him.
The fic is set in the DreamSMP universe, meaning Dream is a piece of shit. He is imprisoned in Pandora's Vault in the server, enclosed inside three obsidian walls and one of lava. The fic happens entirely in his own head, where he explores what behaviors and what wrong ideas ultimately brought his downfall. Why he is trapped. Why will never feel cool air on his face again.
One day in his imprisonment, he comes to find that a strand of grass has grown in his cell. Dream feels like a caged animal, he resents this cell because it deems him dead before he's stopped breathing. The fact that something could ever grow in this place is baffling to him.
The strand of grass serves as a small messenger of the outside world. It reminds him of endless green pastures, and thus reminds him of the cold, the fertile soil, the pleasant wetness of morning dew.
It reminds him of George. How exceptional George was. How precious. Gifting beautiful things grown from his own skin even if he didn't deserve any of it.
It reminds Dream of how George used to sleep directly on the earth, with a stretched hand grasping the ground. Similar to how he slept on Dream with the same outstretched hand on his chest. Dream believes maybe the Earth has a heartbeat, that George likes to feel when he sleeps. George has probably always been the only human who ever cared to perceive it.
Dream starts to wonder whether he'd be able to feel the Earth's heartbeat too.
He sees it as an act of submission. A way to admit to himself that he never had as much control as he thought because there's so much he doesn't know. That George was always right, and he'd screamed his throat raw trying to make Dream understand, but he never listened.
***
There's a lot of longing and a lot of guilt in this fic. I really enjoyed writing it although it feels kinda weird to read back haha.
There's a couple pieces of imagery in the written fic that I definitely appreciate having written, but I think this comic is probably what I like the most that came out of that initial idea.
If you want to read this fic for some reason, you can find it right here on my AO3!
