#the most human aspect the Entity has is frkn buttloads of pride

[ziracona]

anon that asked about Nov '19 here! thanks for the answer, its amazing how much thought u put into it all!! i also wondered about freddy, since he got to quentin when he fainted in trials, & wasnt able to get him in ur oneshot in annas realm, would quentin have been able to sleep fine at the campfire, or is their realm different? also, freddy was able to influence other killers' dreams right? he couldn't do that in the oneshot i think, so did his powers grow or r there different rules in ILM?

Good questions! And thank you. : )

ILM and Half-Life are based on the same core world system (so is all the DbD stuff I write for myself—although I make small tweaks sometimes from ficlet to ficlet). So, in both Half-Life and ILM, Freddy would be able to get into his dreams for real if he fell asleep in any unprotected realm. This includes the campfire, all trial areas, and some killer areas. The Entity puts up different barriers for different killers (for example, Myers can’t go anywhere and is completely isolated, but Philip could go to the MacMillan Estate, or to see Sally. It’s based on who would kill each other. Evan wouldn’t disobey the Entity, and except for when he doesn’t have amnesia, neither would Philip, so even though they are not friends, it’s not dangerous for them to be in a realm together. Freddy is one of the most dangerous and a loose canon, so he’s blocked—has been stopped—from physically manifesting in any places but his own🤣. The Entity did not know he could kill Quentin for real if he fell asleep at the campfire (Freddy & Quentin didn’t either until he finally fell asleep), or it would have set something in place to make that not happen. The reason for not putting up barriers everywhere is twofold—one, it helps killers go longer if they’re social and allowed some small amount of ability to speak to each other—it doesn’t want all of them completely mad. But also, it’s just energy. A lot of the mistakes the Entity makes are based around being the opposite of the “The Man Who Sleeps With a Machete is a Fool Every Night But One” tweet—it’s like “why would I waste so much energy maintaining safeguards that are literally never challenged? That’s Inefficent. I want to use it for other stuff, and I’m already running a complex system here. Unfortunately for it, that means the one night it would like to be metaphorically sleeping with a machete, it is not. It doesn’t really think about logic the way a human would at all though. Which is great for the humans!

In Half-Life, Quentin is mostly just lucky. Anna is one of the most territorial killers, so she, like Myers and Max, is completely barred from other spaces. This also means that, though in the Entity’s mind it is mostly for their own safety—no killer can get in. The protection is so strong, nothing could even get in enough to alter her dreams (or subsequently, those of anyone with her).

Freddy doesn’t have enough power to kill any other survivor in a dream (right now anyway—he could try to change that I suppose, but it’d take work. His ability to manifest is directly correlated to the strength of the victim’s fear and memories of him. Unfortunately for Quentin, part of what fucked him up/let Freddy get into his dream, was specifically the fear/belief that he would), or to kill another killer, but if he tries hard, can manipulate their nightmares or talk to them that way. He cannot, however, enter Anna’s. Her safe haven is too safe. This is why his interference late in ILM had 0 effect on Anna—he didn’t chose not to try to mess with her, he couldn’t get to her. In ILM when he enters a dream of Quentin’s for the first time, Quentin is “at” Anna’s, but only kind of. Because they’re not actually in Anna’s realm, just a trial that looks like it, unlike in Half-Life, where he makes it to her real home area, and unfortunately, her home base protection doesn’t extend to semi-real trial replicas.

So, sadly for my boy Quentin, in ILM he actually coulda walked over the border to Anna’s and taken a 48 hour coma nap, but the poor kid had 0 way to know that was the case and every reason to expect it wasn’t, so he never found out. There are probably a couple other places he could have fallen asleep too—I haven’t had to know, bc it hasn’t come up, but I for instance expect Legion’s place is specifically anti-Freddy warded, considering their ages (and they were also not influenced or attempted in ILM, unlike Sally, who got Nightmares, and just went >:-[ at them and chose to ignore/get mad instead of listening). Anna’s is actually probably the single “safest” place in the whole damn realm, except from her and the Entity, because the barriers it had to put in place were insanely strong (as Anna is the only killer canonically able to straight up snap the Entity’s connection to her). Thanks for asking! I love talking about realm mechanics. If any of that’s as unclear, lemme know. : )