Lucidstuck II

Daydream puts illussion spells on the people trapped in the construct (lucia, derrick and emily), the spell's effect include: loss of memory their lives outside construct, personality alteration (derrick being dense), and who knows what other stuff, hell, maybe the other kids have it too, to some extent. emily's spell broke when we told her about the construct, this allowed her to remember stuff from outside, like that nice lil traumatic experience she related to dd.

Daydream talks about the spell on this page https://mspfa.com/?s=3039&p=4186
"Daydream: Derrick is under a spell, he is oblivious to his true nature. Among... other things.
Daydream: I've put a LOT of effort into keeping him "sedated" so I can do my work here."

breaking the spell is essential to succeed in waking lucia and healing nightmare, if derrick doesn't remember he won't be ready for fusing back with nightmare when the time comes, and there is a danger of nightmare "fully taking over" and derrick could become god tier inside construct, amongst other possible risks

I buy it affecting his memory and powers. I don't quite buy it being required to wake Lucia. I'm not even sure if, in the end, we intend to fuse Nightmare and Derrick per se.

I think that you might be trying to see patterns where there are none. Derrick is kept 'sedated' so he isn't just blasting through the dreams early on and drastically changing the power balance each construct instance. His memory is kept hidden from him so he doesn't question why he doesn't have powers he should have, or, why the days keep repeating so much. I don't see any reason to alter his personality.

You reference Emily and how we helped her realize the deception, however, she realized this on her own. We didn't really do anything if I remember right. She just started exploring this herself:

This is where I think she got a hint of it:
https://mspfa.com/?s=3039&p=2758

And this is where it's revealed she starts understanding:
https://mspfa.com/?s=3039&p=3144

All we did, so far as I could see, is keep her alive to have time to realize.

I'd say there's a more plausible reason for the others 'waking up from the illusion' at different times: besides Lucas, the other kids seem to spawn into construct instances in tandem with their construct versions and have to share a body and mind. Memories from the construct instance seem to take precedence until memories of their out-of-construct (OOC) selves begin to bubble up, and they accept, in the waking world, that this is who they really were.

The speed at which this happens seems to be determined by how perceptive the individual is. Garry and Emily woke up rather quickly--seeming to within a week of a new construct instance--but Lucia and Derrick are waking up rather slowly. I won't deny that DD might have some hand in this, however, there are probably other factors in play.

For Lucia's case, it just feels like she isn't very self-aware... Ira is constantly having to remind her to think about how she feels and to take a moment to contemplate. She's an 'act first, think later' kind of person, which is a great reason that she didn't look too deeply into things. I have theories on why her memories didn't come back after the construct explanation, but I'll talk about that another time. If anything, it's proof that knowing this is 'fake' isn't enough.

For Derrick, after speaking with martialAcademic, I have a tendency to lean toward him being very perceptive, but also very prone to deluding himself and not questioning the things that he notices, even if it strikes him as uncanny. I say the best examples of his perception are in his perfect memory upon exiting a dream [indicated by dream journals] and his amazing ability to read others emotions and social situations... when he wants to or has to. There's a very good chance he might be totally aware on some level this is a construct and just Bamboozling us all.

I agree that this encounter with Alice and potentially bringing to light her deception might shake this self-imposed ignorance a little bit and might start paving the way to Derrick understanding the construct's true nature and the events leading up to his death.