ahhhh, but of course the green moon is Alternia’s dream moon! because in the same way the scribbles on the walls of Dave Strider’s subconscious represent a latent urge to create that bridges timelines and lifetimes, Scratch represents a bridge between Alternia’s own instances. Alternia’s history isn’t some unique design - as I keep trying to hammer home lately, there is nothing new in Paradox Space - it’s his troll fanfiction. the things that seem like they should be uniquely Alternian in nature - the clown church, the quadrants, the lusus naturae - are all just things that evidently already existed on Beforus, but were coopted and twisted into something else when he rewrote everything. just like Dave’s dream scribbles ensuring the existence of SBaHJ on both sides of the scratch, Scratch’s big hollow head is the ark that ensures everything that once happened on Beforus happens again on Alternia.

(this is the same modus operandi employed by Meenah in the Skaianet history; she does everything in her power to make sure the post-scratch Earth turns out essentially the same as the pre-scratch, with only the necessary changes required for her plan to come to fruition.)

I wonder, then, if dolls (such as those found in dream rooms) represent holdovers or throwbacks of some kind, like toys retained from childhood… or are they heirlooms, inherited things? almost everything in a Hero’s house is inheritance from their forebears, of course, but dolls tend to embody (nigh personify) the sentimental muck that bogs them down, and seem particularly attractive to sprites, which themselves represent family totems…