#yes i am aware of how overture factors into this and i do love it

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

so in most ways, the game in hell in 1x04 is (at least in my opinion), a vast improvement on the comics, it adds so much extra drama and interesting character moments and it looks so much cooler and i love it

(also, for context, dream played against choronzon in the comics, not lucifer, which is another point in the show's favour, that was way more interesting)

but the downside of seeing it in tv form, is we don't get dream's inner monologue during it

and there's two moments specifically that stand out to me

one is this elaboration of the rules

and then the second is this, in between the butcher bacterium move and i am a world

and i wish we'd gotten that in some way, because it says so much about dream

because like. he knows, going into hell, that he lacks the strength to properly fight anyone. he puts on a brave face with it, but even when faced with the prospect of fighting choronzon, let alone lucifer, we get this bit of inner monologue

and he certainly makes his best attempt. but even if he was at full strength, lucifer making the first move set the battle as a test of violence. and dream may be the king of nightmares, he's no stranger to violence, but against lucifer? against the being that has personally overseen every kind of violence since very near the dawn of time?

and lucifer isn't playing fair, either. dream plays moves of strength, of physical might, he is a hunter, he is a bird of prey - cunning and clever predators, to be sure, both are creatures of precision rather than brute force, but they are honest and straightforward in their intentions. lucifer plays the serpent that you don't notice until it's too late, with a venom that will kill you in a single bite, plays an enemy too small to see but that will eat away at your flesh and render you incapable of even trying again. and dream could keep bringing bigger and bigger enemies, but everything has a weakness, and lucifer is oh so practiced at finding it

if he keeps playing to lucifer's strengths, trying to win this fight with violence, he's gonna be on the back foot the whole way, fighting to keep up, and eventually that won't be enough

however, as dream says, being physically unable to make your next move is only one way to lose the game. you also lose if you're too scared to keep going, or if you can't think of a counter quick enough. he doesn't have to play to lucifer's strengths, of killing your opponent, he can play to his own.

i think i will abandon the offensive.

and dream, for all he struggles with his own depression, and often needs reminding to hope for his own future, he is still made of dreams. he believes in people, and their hopes for a better world. we see that in his speech to john dee in episode 5, dreams aren't about lies, they're about potential. imagination, creativity, kindness, hope. the endless are all keepers of their opposite as well as their aspect, and in the same way death has power over life, dreams have power over reality. if you can imagine your better world, you can make it.

even nightmares are only temporary, but hell is eternal. lucifer could imagine a hundred thousand better ways to be violent than he could. but they can't use that to counter warmth and kindness and hope, because if violence could truly kill dreams, it would have.

and that turns the entire game around. suddenly lucifer's on the back foot, because it's not a test of strength anymore. a planet isn't going up against anyone in a cage match, a planet is here to support life. all dream has to do to win is survive, while lucifer has to come up with greater and greater, impossibly enormous threats, just to keep playing. even when lucifer's sure they won, they don't ask "what could destroy the anti-life", they ask what could survive it

and the truth intrinsic to dream's being is that in the end, hope will survive anything