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Oh yeah, that Hunter stuff is dumb as fuck.
There's a reason almost nobody ever follows that; even when little Nighty dies. In Im_Sorry_Buddy's fanfic Spilled Ink, it's just corruption overtaking him and not a third party haunting his corpse.
Dream is always more interesting when he combats negative emotions, and Nightmare is always more interesting when he is (at least most of the time) in control of himself. (Passive and Corruption sharing a body is also interesting, but I haven't ever seen Passive with Hunter and For Good Fucking Reason.)
Words cannot describe how much I despise the og dreamtale story, and I'll share why.
if we're speaking purely by the barebones plot, dreamtale can be, on a surface level, considered a well put together story on how there are different ways to feel negative and positive emotions and how feeling negativity towards some things is healthy, but letting it consume you leads to you yourself becoming what you previously hated the most. It also explores how being to positive and not letting yourself feel negative emotion is harmful toward your mental health and wellbeing.
This is where I think Dreamtale fundamentally fails.
Joku decided to write Nightmare (and dream but we'll get there) in a way that actually harms the story its trying to tell.
Passive is an innocent child, bullied for something he cannot control, this is because the people around him associate negative emotion and negativity = Bad, harmful. As the readers, we know this isn't the case, but eventually, passive is pushed over the edge and consumes one of the apples of negativity.
Nightmare is immediately corrupted, but instead of Nightmare being well.... nightmare, passive is apparently dead and nightmare is now a dead, vengeful hunter that had tried to slay Nim (Dream and Nightmares Mother) a soul was trapped in the tree?
This could be Joku trying to convey that sometimes negativity can consume a person so much it fundamentally changes them, but this is much less impactful. We have not grown close to this Nightmare, we just know that he's evil now, and he wants to kill everyone yet also have more negativity? The only motive that makes sense is killing his brother.
I believe that this could have been much more impactful if we cut the hunter out entirely and portray Nightmare as he really was when he transformed; A scared, hurt child.
Nightmare wasn't immediately this imposing, dark, and looming figure of uncertain fate, he was a child whose negative emotions consumed him, and being a young child, he lashed out.
And he would continue lashing out, for many years, many different villages. But as he aged, he also matured and realized that the murder of thousands of people would not help him achieve his main goal: Killing Dream. After this realization, he hid himself away in an abandoned castle, collecting his followers from across the multiverse and preparing for the fights with Dream soon to come.
Dream is a little more complicated to asses, as throughout the story, he is portrayed as an innocent baby who can never do anything wrong.
But Dream is an adult.... and he should be treated as such. we never see any of Dreams flaws and disadvantages explored, only the fact that he loves his brother.
I wish we could've seen Dream struggle with negative emotions and feels as thought he must bottle them up being the guardian of positivity.
I want to see him look back and hate the villagers that hurt his brother, and he has to come and confront the fact that he has hate and negativity in his soul and its okay to feel those emotions.
But this is all just my opinion, share your thoughts/how you think the story could have been handled better.