Hello once again, my esteemed Topaz (have run out of original greetings)
I have come here with a question once again.
How old, exactly, are Dream and Nightmare?
I've been wondering this for a while now...
I'm also curious about how exactly Nightmare was old when the apple accident happened and when he gained back control over his body.
Corrupted mentiones Nightmare suffering for '12 years' before Dream turns to stone, BUT in that chapter it was mentioned that Nightmare was an early teen, which could be 13~15 years old. Maybe 12 years could be the years the village was around which.... is not great.
Also, second point, Nightmare is petty. Very petty. We know that. But it still seems weird for him to keep up a feud for hundreds of years...
Last point, it's mentioned that Dream possibly saved Blue and Stretch (Orange) from the destruction of their au, maybe? Seven years prior. But Dream has surely been around for longer.
Idk. I just like timelines i guess.
Nightmare was “12-13” at the time, but will usually just say “12” or early teens. There is the time they spent as little balls of energy and it is unknown how long that was. Also, mostly because I honestly haven’t decided fully on this yet, I also am waffling on something else, as it would also make sense if their perception of time was different since they are immortals and would age slower. Plus, where they lived all the seasons were mostly mild so the years might run together now and then. So, rather easily the twins could have been 12 or 13 mentally and physically, but lived twice as long. This may also explain some things with the villagers. After all, it's hard to look at someone as a child when you’ve known them since you were a child and you’re now an adult.
Since that is a matter of perception and your question brings that up, pov is also something to bear in mind while reading. Basically, all the narrators in HNBD have their biases. I plan to have a narrator in the future who will be truly neutral about everything. :3 I already love this narrator and can’t wait to tell more, but not yet. Anyway, the bottom line is that thoughts, words spoken, or things perceived are not always 100% accurate. Consider who the person is and the biases they may have.
To fill in the timeline more, he, Nightmare, had been slowly regaining some control now and then, which I will eventually show. However, he regained full control about 50-75 years after Dream was freed, so he may have been around 570 years old. Still, he wanted to get the upper hand against his brother at that time as the resentment was still kinda strong and… well, he was anything but a “Dadmare” at that time.
Ha! Nightmare’s pettiness knows no bounds. That said, yes… even he knows this conflict is stupid, but both brothers currently don’t know how to talk to each other, and too much pain is blinding their sensibilities. Also, don’t forget, as I said earlier, that as immortals, the twins have a skewed sense of time. So, this petty feud might be centuries long, but to them, it doesn’t feel like that.
This Blue and Stretch (Noot: Orange is still a better name) are not from the original Swap AU. They are from a Swap AU that Error destroyed. By the time Dream arrived, it was mostly gone, so he led them to safety while defending them from Error, as Ink had backed down due to it being a lost cause by that point. Error is also petty, and he did try searching for them; luckily, his memory is poor, and he later forgot. And yeah, after all the years of conflict before being followed by about six more years of fighting against Dream, Ink, and now this random mortal had Nightmare saying, ‘Fine, I will hire some help.’
I hope that helped you. I should try drawing out a timeline, but I’m too lazy for that, so I’ll just go with the whole thing said in Dr. Who about time and timelines.
