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iammeiamwe · 1 month

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So, finally, the continuation of this post here.

The first thing I want to say is that I was pleasantly surprised at how many people actually liked the previous post and wanted to see more - so thanks so much to all of you, I've never thought that so many people would be interested in me talking about the design and my country's culture🩷 (and yeah thank you @signanothername for your kind words again)

I'm sorry this post took so long, but I actually struggled a lot with Nightmare design. Everything just felt wrong for some reason and I literally couldn't finish it. I even took a break at some point, and it actually worked in a surprising way.

You see, I like the Dream design I made previously. But I always felt like something was missing. The design was beautiful, and the different ornaments actually had meaning that fit Dream well, but it was lacking... a story? Like, it wasn't completely accurate, and I could really imagine a person looking like that living somewhere in the ancient Russia, walking in the streets. It was a good representation of different russian cultural elements, but that was the only thing that it was really.

So instead of thinking what russian culture elements can I include in a design I started thinking about a completely different thing.

Can I possibly imagine the dreamtale brothers in the setting of Russia in the past? What would they look like? How would they live? Can I somehow "adapt" their powers and turn them into something more related to the russian culture of that time?

And well, I made a completely different concept with completely different designs.

Now, I wanna say that this post still contains an enormous amount of text, but know it's not only about the russian culture, but mostly about the kinda au that I made? It's still in the development, I'm still thinking about the details, I mean, I haven't even got a proper name for it yet... But I just haad to write about my thoughts and share some artwork that I did so here we are.

The whole thing is inspired not only by the russian culture, but also by the Black Book game which I mentioned in the 1st part and which gave me a general direction of where to go with this.

So, the setting is somewhere around the 19th century, in a quite ordinary russian village. Both Dream and Nightmare are children from a family of villagers. Here are some examples of 19th century russian villagers clothing that I took inspiration from:

At first it looks quite simple, but it has some interesting small details and looks quite unique:)

One of the reasons I chose 19th century is that despite being quite a "modern" time, with different new technologies and overall progress it was a time when many russians (especially in villages) still believed in different myths, sayings, tales and epics. Russian culture and mythology still played a big role in ordinary people's lives, changing and transforming through the minds of different people to better fit the ever changing reality and new technologies being introduced. Russian paganism, orthodoxy and local beliefs finally began to coexist organically with each other, in some ways even blending in together creating some unique traditions, customs and overall culture.

So now, about their magic.

One of the questions I asked myself was: What kind of magic would Dream and Nightmare wield if they lived in the traditional old russian village settings? Was there even a concept of "magic" in old Russia that could be suitable for the brothers?

And while I can't say that I've found a perfect alternative, and what I'm about to tell you might seem not fitting at all at first, I think the concept I'm about to show and especially the idea it can convey is not that far from the whole "positive and negative emotions" thing.

So, as it turns out, the concept of magic or paranormal abilities in old Russia is quite unique and different. There actually were people who were considered "magicians", or rather witches and withchers, but. The whole idea of magic itself was tightly connected with different mystical creatures that inhabited the whole country in minds of russians (and there were many. like MANY) and the ability of a person to talk with them, connect with them, correctly perform various rituals related to them and basically ask them to do certain things.

In other words, a witch or a witcher in old Russia is not a person inhabiting magical powers all by themselves, but a person who can "deal" with spirits and mystical beings of different kinds, ask them to do the magician's biddings or help them in a way needed.

And let me tell you, there are many different types of beings, creatures and spirits in russian culture, all of them fulfilling their own purposes. There aare the classical spirits of the forests, of the rivers and lakes, but we also have creatures living in people's houses (spirits that look after the well-being of the house), beings living in every banya (a small russian bathhouse located near the house), spirits of field, arable land, sowing season, winds (northern and southern separately) and many more. And don't get me started on the evil spirits and different types of demons like bisi and chorts, that's a whole another category.

What I've noticed is that the different beings of russian mythology are mostly either the ones connected with nature, like keepers and protectors of forests, lakes and etc, or the so called "evil spirits", different types of demons and devils or other beings that are overall considered dangerous, which are often portrayed to have connection with human routine and different temptations and sins.

And well, here comes my idea and the whole concept. What if Dream had the power and natural talent for connecting with the different spirits and beings of nature, while Nightmare had the natural talent for connecting with the so-called "evil spirits".

Maybe you already think it's fitting, but wait, there's more. You know, I (and probably many others) always thought of positive and negative emotions as a neutral concept. Emotions aren't bad or good themselves and both types can lead to good or bad things depending on the situation and the person who is experiencing those emotions. Guess what? (And I was surprised too when I found out during my research!)

There IS a similar concept with the russian mystical creatures and magic wielders. While people who can connect with "evil spirits" were quite often viewed in a more negative light (like the situation with negative apples and Nightmare), those people could (and actually did) use their abilities and knowledge for good purposes! Of course there were people who used such abilities for their own gain and evil deeds (especially when there was always a threat of being tempted and corrupted by the forces such people were working with). But there were other uses for such powers, people like that could help and save people from the evil spirits, tell them what to do to avoid getting "on the bad side" of dangerous beings, cure people from different illnesses and being possessed by demons, etc. For example, while it was partially done out of fear of a witcher rage and revenge, people used to invite people who had connections "with the darker powers" on their weddings so that they can protect the important event from different kinds of dangerous beings and spirits, to protect newlyweds from various misfortunes in their future life together. Even shepherds were believed to have connections with different kinds of low rank demons, and used them to watch over the herd, prevent other evil beings from stealing the animals.

On the other hand, the practice of talking to and performing various rituals involving spirits of nature was viewed more positively, since it was mostly used to please such beings and ask them for a good harvest, catch off fish, successful hunting, safety during travels and etc. But such powers could also be used with evil goals. Such people could easily affect the weather, cause different natural phenomenon and even poor harvest and famine.

So, we have a situation where there are two types of powers that are overall kind of similar, are actually completely neutral by themselves, can both be used for both good and bad and completely depend on the user, but one power is mostly viewed positively while the other is considered to be rather dangerous and evil. Yeah, I feel like I've seen that somewhere.

Now, let's talk about Nightmare and Dream separately (and the children designs I made for them)

Starting with Nightmare:

• She/her in this. I don't know why, I just see Nightmare as a girl in this and Dream as a boy. She is also inspired by the main character of Black Book who is female, sooo

• She and Dream were born in a small village in a family of a skilled hunter and a powerful witch, who wielded a mysterious artefact - a book containing a huge number of spells, rituals, descriptions of various creatures and other knowledge. She was able to connect with both types of spirits and beings and often helped the villagers out. Unfortunately, while there were no problems during the birth of Dream, the process of giving birth to Nightmare was hard and the witch passed away soon afterwards.

• As already mentioned, has a natural talent for communicating with "evil" and "dark" spirits and creatures. The villagers already thought of her as cursed since in their minds she was the reason the village's beloved witch died, and when they found out about her dangerous abilities (especially since connecting with dark spirits was considered a difficult art that people learned and studied, and being born with such ability on a good level was rare), well yeaah, she doesn't have the best reputation.

• So, this is actually a cool one imo. When I was creating this whole mess in my head I thought that them being named Dream and Nightmare was, well, not the most fitting and authentic for my traditional russian au thing I'm trying to do... So I thought that maybe I can find them some cool ancient russian names that have a meaning suitable for them? And I did. So they have ancient russian names now too! So, the original Nightmare's name (the one her mother gave her) is Tihomira (Тихомира) or Mira (Мира) for short, which means "a calm and quiet, reserved person".

• But eventually the villagers gave her another name (more like a nickname) - Zloba (Злоба), which literally means evil and malicious :'(

• She was always surrounded by rumours about her and the death of her mother, she obviously doesn't remember her mother but misses her dearly, she always looks at photos of her parents together with eyes full of longing.

• Her and Dream's father shuts down after the loss of his wife, he's rarely at home at spends most of the time hunting, Mira has to stay at home to work around the house most of the time.

• In search for explanation of her abilities, as well as trying to prove to herself that she's not the cause of her mothers death, she actively seeks out all the different object, photos and painting, anything that once belonged to her. And one day, she finds the book.

• By the way, unfortunately, the father doesn't really like his daughter too. Sometimes he looks at her and really struggles not to see the reason of his lovely wife's death in her. Actually he knows about Mira's slight obsession with her mother's things, he finds it unnatural and even creepy, he tries to hide all of the witch's belongings, especially the book, thinking it can be really dangerous in Mira's hands. Well, she finds the book eventually anyway.

• I know that some people don't really like the canon concept of Corrupted not being Nightmare but rather a completely different being. I don't like that too, but I don't want to completely get rid of Corrupted as a character, so they are both present in this story as separate characters, Corrupted being an evil spirit sealed in the book (you can see him in the background of the art).

• At first Mira tries to use the knowledge in the book to prove to the villagers that she can also do good with this power, but the book eventually influences her and corrupts her.

• The apple incident is now the book incident :/

• Corrupted and Mira remain to be separate beings even after the incident, although they heavily influence each other, I'll probably talk about the incident and what happens after it in the next post after this, I still have to develop their adult designs too.

Now I'll give you a couple of examples of different creatures this Nightmare can interact with:

Actually, I need to put a warning here for descriptions of gore, death and violent actions since russian mythology is not just a couple of happy fairytales an can actually travel to some dark themes, so be warned ( if you don't want to read just skip to the Dream part)

1. Kikimora:

Kikimora was described as a short, crooked, slovenly and ugly old woman, a long-braided girl or woman. According to various other descriptions, a kikimora can be very small and thin, with a large head, long arms, short legs, bulging eyes, hairy paws, horns, a tail, and covered in feathers or fur.

It was believed that Kikimora could appear in a house after the death of one of the family members, but she could also be sent into the house by a witch or a witcher using a ritual artifact in the form of a small doll.

It was commonly believed that kikimoras cause great harm to people and can be dangerous: they prevent them from sleeping and frighten them with various sounds, annoy small children, pounce on and strangle them at night, throw various objects, drop and break things, pull out or cut out hair from people, wool from cattle, feathers from poultry in their sleep. The activity of kikimoras could even force owners to leave their home. There are stories in which kikimoras brought people to death.

Kikimora's favorite tool in the house is a spinning wheel. At night, Kikimora often spun, making a lot of noise; any things spun by her were considered cursed. If the owner of the house noticed Kikimora doing this at night, it could be a sign of imminent death. Most often, people did not see this spirit, but they heard her noise and felt her presence; it was possible to drive her out of the house only with the help of strong spells and rituals performed by a witch or a witcher.

2. Likhoradka (fever)

Likhoradka (which means fever in russian) is a disease personified in the form of a woman in russian mythology, invading a person and causing either chills or fever.

A distinctive feature of Likhoradka is her multiplicity. Most often, this spirit came in the form of several women at once (7, 9, 12). It was believed that Likhoradka crawled under a person's skin, causing illness, and after the death of a person, it jumped into the body of another. Likhoradka spread very quickly, sometimes taking many lives throughout the village. She can be driven out either by strong spells or by curing all the sick with special decoctions. If Likhoradka was driven out, then most often it was "sent" to the forests, fields, swamps.

3. Bannik and Bannica

Bannik lives in the banya ( russian bathhouse); usually invisible, sometimes takes the form of an old man covered in dirt and leaves from a broom, or a man with long hair, and also turns into a boar, a dog, a cat, a frog, a white hare. A female Bannik is called a Bannica, or an Obderikha. An Obderikha is a shaggy, scary old woman.

In general, Banniks are quite peaceful spirits, but only if a person follows all the rules during a visit to the bathhouse and does not forget to make offerings to the spirit. To appease Bannik, people leave him a piece of rye bread with a large amount of coarse salt, and also leave some water in the tub and a piece of soap nearby.

If a person angers the Bannik, he turns into a dangerous and malicious spirit - he can burn people with boiling water in the bathhouse, throw stones at them, and also knock on the wall, frightening those taking a steam bath. If a person has violated very serious prohibitions, the Bannik can cause great harm: he can peel off the skin or steam a person to death. People often came to witches for advice on how to properly appease the spirit, what should and should not be done in the bathhouse, and also asked for help if the spirit was angry.

Now let's talk about Dream:

• He/him

• His russian name is Peresvet (Пересвет), or Svet (Свет) for short, which means "the one fighting for the light". I know, it's really cool😅

•As mentioned, has a natural talent for speaking and connecting with different spirits and beings of nature.

• The villagers though of him quite well, especially compared to his sister. When they found out about his powers, they started to value him even more since he could help out villagers and perform various rituals which would bring a good harvest, protect crops, bring good weather, etc.

• He actually has sort of a hobby collecting different plants he find beautiful, one day villagers started noticing that all the flowers and plants he bring are actually either medicinal herbs that are good for curing different diseases or are used in some useful rituals. It's actually not because he's just lucky, some spirits of nature are actually helping him find them from time to time. It's after many such occurrences that the villagers started suspecting about his powers.

• Opposite to Mira, Svet is almost always outside, either just playing with other children, helping villagers with his powers or learning more about them.

• On the contrary to his sister, is not really interested in developing his powers or learning more about them and all the rituals, he mostly wants to have a simple happy childhood like other children, he also dreams of becoming a simple herbalist in the future, not a witcher, but he feels like he has to do all that to help the villagers and be a good person, so he tries his best to practice and study anyway.

• Is actually quite close to his father, well as close as you can get to a shut person like him, sometimes the father takes him to some walk in the forest with him, he tells him about different plants in the forest and how to properly survive there since he's a hunter. Svet cherishes such rare interactions quite a lot.

• Doesn't understand his sister's troubles and doesn't spend much time with her, the villagers are always demanding him to be outside, to help with some rituals or collect some herbs. But he actually wants to spend more time with her, he just doesn't know how to say no to the villagers.

Some examples of the spirits Svet can connect with:

Actually, there are no descriptions of gore here or anything, but some darker themes like death and being lost are present so please proceed with caution

1. Leshy

Leshy is the spirit-master of the forest in russian mythology. In mythological stories, Leshy appears as a plant, animal or anthropomorphic creature. It is also common for the leshy to appear in the form of relatives and acquaintances. The leshy was sometimes described as a giant, sometimes as a dwarf; there are beliefs that he could change his height.

As the master, the leshy takes care of the forest, protects it, and is the patron of forest animals and plants. The leshy was considered a fair master of the forest, who would not harm without reason, but could punish people for inappropriate behavior in his domain, or if a person behaved,he could help them. According to popular belief, the leshy could ensure good luck in hunting and safe grazing of cattle, but for this to happen, hunters and shepherds needed to make an agreement with him.

Such an agreement was called a "forest charter", people (usually with the help of a witch) wrote their requests on birch bark, asking Leshy to help in hunting and not to harm the village. In order for Leshy to accept such conditions, he was appeased and brought offerings: various foods, bread, milk, sometimes coins. However, Leshy punished people who violated the forest's prohibitions - he could kidnap them, make them wander and get lost in the forest, from where people rarely returned and usually died wandering in the forest.

2. Gamayun

Gamayun is a mythical bird of paradise in Russian culture. In literary works of the 17th-19th centuries, it is a bird that flies in from paradise and flies forever with the help of its tail. In the culture of the 19th-21st centuries, there were two main directions in the development of the image: as a bird of paradise, which is associated with ideas of happiness and bliss, and as a mythical bird that foretells trouble. Depending on which side it flies over a person's head, either luck or misfortune can await them.

...

Yay, I actually found some time today to finish this! Of course that's not all, and I have a lot more to tell you: about the specifics of russian spells, about the book, the incident and what happened after (I still need to do the adult designs), who knows, maybe I'll even add other au sanses to this. I also will certainly do more fanart for this, tell about the traditional russian house called izba, I'll also talk about more mystical creatures (I actually wanted to tell you about one more here that Dream can interact with but I cannot put any more pictures). So stay tuned for updates for this!

(i really gotta think of a good name for this au...)

(actually all the research, drawing my own art, finding pictures and materials as well as translating everything so that it would be understandable to non-russian audience takes quite a lot of time, especially since making one art piece can take me anywhere from two hour to several days, so please be patient since the next part probably won't be posted soon. anyway you are free to ask any questions about the au or russian culture as a whole while you wait, i'll try my best to answer them)

#digital art #digital artist #artists on tumblr #sans au #undertale #utmv #russian culture #russia #art #mei art #dreamtale

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iammeiamwe · 2 months

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So, um... Originally, I was just planning on doing a little fanart for the cool queen Dream design by @signanothername (and the wonderful @undertale-person, let's not forget), in this post but...

I got carried away. A lot.

Now. This is actually a very long post in which I talk a lot about the culture of my country. If you are interested and want to read this type of post, then go ahead. If not, I just have to warn you that this is 1% undertale au pictures, 9% of pictures related to the russian culture and 90% text.

So if you are ready go ahead:

Everything started with me thinking that it would be cool to add some kind of interesting pattern to her (queen Dream) clothing? But I wanted it to have some meaning. And since the original design was already related to the sun theme, I wanted to have something sun-related too.

And then I for some reason remembered my school's art classes. I was in the 4th grade or something and we studied traditional russian patterns and ornaments. (And for anyone wondering yes I am russian) And on one of the lessons we learned that ancient russian people had different ornaments and symbols on their closing signifying different things, and I remembered that there was a symbol that had the meaning of sun!

I browsed the Internet a bit and found some different variations of that symbol, so I chose the one I liked the most and added it.

(I chose the one on the right)

But the problem is, I got inspired. Too inspired. I liked the new look a lot, and then I had an idea, that maybe it would be cool to add more russian culture related elements, since I haven't seen many examples of russian culture represented in the undertale au fandom (I mean I've seen a lot of russian content for the fandom but it was mostly done by the russian community and for the russian community and therefore mostly received and recognised by russian people), especially on the more western side (I don't know if I phrased it correctly but I hope you get what I mean).

I also associate Dream with the theme of nature, and I knew that the theme of nature played a huge role in the life and culture of the ancient Russian people. So I thought that russian culture would be fitting for Dream (at least in my head it fits).

So yeah. I got carried away, and I made a completely different design.

The important thing I want to point out here is that this design is in no way 100% correct representation of russian culture, I was just inspired by different elements of russian culture and included them in my painting while trying to keep some of the original Dream characteristics and colours. I stylised some of the elements, mixed some of them which you normally wouldn't see together if it was completely accurate. I also didn't do too much research and kind of worked on the design on the spot while I had the inspiration.

Even though I'm russian there's no way I'm a russian culture or history expert, I only made it because I thought it would be nice to do so and maybe it would inspire some of you to learn more about russian culture!

So with that said I'll now explain some of the design elements more!

We already talked a bit about the pattern on the sleeves, the one that means sun. It's called Colovat (Коловат in russian). It can actually also mean happiness and kindness so that's also why I chose it for Dream. People used to put such pattern on their clothes in hopes it brought them and their families luck, happiness, calm and tranquility.

The interesting part is that I've found some other symbols and patterns that ancient russians included in their clothing which can suit Dream. For example, there's this symbol:

It's called Arepei (Арепей or Орепей in russian), and its meaning can differentiate depending on where it is located on the person's clothes, but overall it means happiness, wealth and self-confidence. You can actually see a little bit of this pattern on my drawing if you look closely at the bottom of Dream's dress.

We also have the symbol called The World Tree of Life or The Tree of Kingship. People believed that the gods liked to rest under it's crown, and they put this symbol on their closing believing that the Tree's crown will protect them from bad luck and the evil spirits. Originally I wanted to include this pattern in my art too but I just couldn't find a good place for it so here's one of the examples of what it can look like:

So, the other major part of russian culture that I've included is called Khokhloma (Хохлома in russian).

It's an ancient art that originated from the Nizhny Novgorod region (Нижегородская область in russian). It is a form of wood painting and it most often depicts various plants and animals. It mainly uses colours like black, yellow, red and green. Most often, different kinds of wooden dishes were painted this way. (Which is why my design is not an entirely correct representation since I painted some of the Khokhloma traditional elements on Dreams clothes).

Here are some examples of this beautiful art:

There's is also one interesting fact about the last picture. On this picture you can see some wooden spoons. Such spoons were actually used as a musical instrument by russian people because of the unique sounds the made when you knocked them together, and the art of playing such spoons is still preserved in Russia!

In my painting you can see this art both on clothes and the sun behind Dream's head. The reason the sun is the black/greish colour is that all the pieces painted in the style of Khokhloma had to be painted black first since the background for the colourful elements was always black.

So. That's all I've wanted to say about my Dream design. It was supposed to be a queen Dream design, but the Dream design I created actually reminds me of some of the characters and mystical warriors from russian fairytales. So I guess I made a mystical russian warrior Dream design? I dunno. Anyway, if you got inspired by this post and found the russian culture that I've showcased here beautiful and interesting, please take some time to learn more about it. There's actually so much to it: chastushkies (частушки), epics(былины), tales, fairy tales, chronicles... It's actually very different and diverse!

I would also recommend playing (or at least watching a playthrough) of the game called Black Book (which is available on steam and it's doesn't cost much as far as I'm concerned). It's a game which lore and plot concentrates around the culture of one of the regions of Russia - the Perm region. It may not have the best graphics but it has a professional English translation and even an English dub! It's a rougelike card game but it has an immersive story and the overall atmosphere is amazing! It's the best way in my opinion to learn more about the russian culture and myths if you don't want to just read articles and watch videos.

The last thing I wanna mention is actually a question. Do you want me to make a similar Nightmare design with russian culture elements? Because I already have some ideas for it, and I actually want to tell you more about another type of russian art called Gzhell which elements I want to include in the design, so let me know your opinion.

So yeah, that's all for now, hope this was actually interesting, if I got to inspire even a small number of people I would be super happy!

#digital art #digital artist #undertale #sans au #utmv #dreamtale #dream sans #culture #russia #russian culture #mei art

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