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ask-codeearasure · 8 days ago

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Dreamswap Critique Part 2: Turns out this isn't a Dreamswap but it's inspired by Dreamtale a bit, Ouija just had a bimbo moment.

Okay so while taking a refreshing shower after listening to one of my favorite video essays, I just found myself having an extremely ravenous need to rip another pair of designs apart with sadistic yet constructive glee. So this week’s victim– I mean subject, are these two goobers Faith and Frenzy, two characters who this time are based off of the Dreamtale brothers in some aspect but clearly are not the same people.

Look at these goobs. They goobin.

I must start with a self-correction, though. Before writing this rant I assumed Frenzy and Faith also came from some version of Dreamswap. Sarco had to correct me. They don’t have the same creator, it’s not even the same artstyle. That’s on me for assuming impulsively. (This has been a certified Ouija-Bimbo-Moment ™ )

Onebizzarekai created Dreamswap. Faith and Frenzy were created by Unu-Nunu, who is also the creator of Pale and Template, which are two really good designs. I highly suggest you check them out when you get the chance.

Starting with Faith, who is inspired by Dream, let’s begin with what he is wearing. It's zipped/buttoned up and shows him to be far more closed off as an individual. He is shielding his chest/heart from the world, and it could be viewed that he himself will not tell us what is on his mind.

Frenzy on the other hand has his coat open which shows he's humble and open with his emotions. With how tattered his clothes are, even going as far to have stitches around the rim of his hood, he looks like the type who either gets attacked a lot or looks to be someone who is not as well off as Faith. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and gets into a lot of danger though we don't know if that is willingly or unwillingly. If anything, if I had to pick one to trust in a life or death situation if I didn't know them, I'd pick Frenzy hands down because he looks to be the more open one, the more “Yup. I’ve seen this before…” one.

Faith, meanwhile, is far too clean, far too prestigious-looking. He comes across as a rich kid going on his first ever hike and would get pissed if a speck of dirt or a blade of grass got onto his cloak or stained said cloak. The only thing that would even give you “traveler vibes” is his living branch which is the most toned deaf choice I’ve ever seen – also if you’re wondering, yes this would apply to any Genshin character that happens to wear white. White is a wholly impractical color when it comes to designing a character that is supposed to be one that travels a lot.

White as a color is a sign of “purity” ; it's why every single angel ever painted has white wings. It’s why women have worn white dresses when they have a wedding, etc. White equates purity, but it is unfitting for a character that is meant to travel a lot, and therefore, be exposed to elements that will wreck whatever semblance of “purity” they began with. Travelling is synonymous with experience. Unless there is a narrative reason white is included anyway, the color does not mesh with this theme.

We also need to address another aspect of the stave, that being it's a living branch. It has leaves. Usually when using this type of concept for character design this signifies the character is tied to nature as a whole and most specifically plant life. This is why a lot of Grass Type Pokemon usually have leaves and flowers as legit parts of their biology.

But there is nothing about Faith that attributes to him being tied to nature.

To give an example, the champion Lillia is a nature spirit who has a flower growing out of her head, her hair and eyelashes are flower petals, she has a living branch she uses to collect dreams for the tree that is her mother-tree who is dying. The stave fits her with this information in mind, not Faith.

Not to mention it must be asked: Did Unu forget that the player can sweep the entirety of Undertale with a stick as a weapon, or are these characters supposed to be separated from the rules of this game? My criticism here would be rendered moot if the latter is true, but I’ve looked and found no confirmation on which it’s supposed to be, so I’m gonna keep talking anyway.

Dreamtale itself is meant to be separate from Undertale in so many aspects, but whatever Frenzy and Faith are supposed to be hasn’t been made clear.

Okay, time for a rant about Undertale in general and how the creator of these two characters either didn’t understand the story or message of the game itself or disregarded it for other reasons—

Undertale as a game is often talked about having a strong message of pacifism and genocide but there is a bigger message that is comically missed to such a point that I’m shocked that everyone missed it, even me, a fucking Pokemon fan. To spell it out I’m going to give you a direct quote from one of my favorite youtubers but I will not give you their name to spare them from being harassed more than they already are:

“Even when I came away with very positive feelings about something, people still needed to desperately cope and make up fiction to avoid accepting the idea that... a person with ADHD doesn't want to reread the same quippy banter 12 times in a row? It's so fucking weird. People did that with Undertale as well. I've seen people get harassed because they refuse to play the Genocide run, by fans who think it's necessary for a complete experience. Even though the Genocide run is one long running commentary about how you're only doing this because of an avaricious drive for more content, never being satisfied with a good ending. Even when the game takes you by the hand and walks you out of it in the True ending, you still have this insatiable need to wring more content out of it.”

Do you know how weird it is to think that you want to go back and forth over and over and over again just to kill every single monster in the Underground as a sick way of getting more content? Why are you so voracious in the need to squeeze more content out of this game? You got the true ending. Why are you fucking doing this. The most popular boss – Sans – literally has an attack style straight out of fucking TouHou just to hammer it into your dense ass skulls that what you’re doing is beyond stupid and pointless.

Hell, Chara themself outright deletes the world and if you try to wring EVEN MORE CONTENT out of the game. You are forced to make a deal with them and then get the worst ending in the game, where it’s implied that you’ll be possessed by Chara who will still delete the fucking world but in a more sadistic manner just to spite you specifically.

I mean youtubers find it so tedious that they have to cut the video and try to avoid looking bored out of their mind. There is nothing interesting about it gameplay wise. Shiny Hunting in Pokemon is more interesting than the Genocide Run in Undertale because at least you have to battle or hatch eggs or both. You have something more to do there instead of the same exact process repeatedly.

The True Ending of Undertale is about a random scrappy small child falling into the Underground and happens to wind up freeing the Monsters and making friends. Literally the only two items Frisk has is a stick and a bandaid. They are legitimately a child. Why is a child going to go and commit a fucking genocide? It is literally just Alice in Wonderland but it's with monsters and the child is an orphan.

Committing genocide in Undertale is boring and the majority of the time you are using the fucking stick so the character that has a living branch as a stave is getting the fucking side eye from me because a stave does not communicate pacifism in the context of Undertale!

You can say “Oh, but Frenzy has knives and Chara is always depicted with a knife!”

Yeah. By the fandom. It is not in any way a canon feature.

The only reason why you are saying this is because of one little comment from them in the main game which can be simply summarized by “Finally! A real weapon!” because everything that they had as options before were all things a normal kid would play around with if you discount one thing.

You have a stick which is something any average kid would play outside with if they didn't have any toys or video games.

A toy knife comes with plastic cooking sets… for kids.

A book… ever heard of the children's section at a library?

A pair of boxing gloves which are only used for training and sports. Boxing is a sport. Some kids play sports.

A pair of ballet shoes which are self explanatory but if you need an explanation, there are these things called ballet classes. It's a type of dance that requires a pair of shoes that helps you stand on the tips of your toes and it takes years and years and years to perfect one’s practice of the dance. Many ballet students start as children.

A gun which logically has limited ammo in an irl sense and I've never seen it be actually used in game. If a kid had it before, whoever they got it from was one of the most irresponsible people on the planet or it’s a toy gun. Ever heard of the NERF brand? NERF or nothing?

A pan which likely was given to the Kindness child by Toriel, or that kid had it while camping or shopping with their parents before falling into the Underground.

And then the knife which you get at the end of the game.

Only two of them can be considered actual weapons and only one of them is given to you at the end of the game. And since Chara disregards the gun, that says a lot.

They are melee. And you give the pacifist rep a stick which can be used to slaughter a fucking Boss Monster? That’s certainly a jump. I wouldn’t call it thought out.

If you want a character to represent the pacifist runs, give them a defense item. Give them a shield. Or an invisibility cloak. Or a tennis racket to parry attacks like they’re tennis balls.

But to be honest, if you took out the pictures of Frenzy with the knives… I would've thought he was the pacifist more than Faith was.

But let’s get to his name, “Faith”.

Faith does NOT equate to Pacifism.

Faith doesn't equate Pacifism. Faith doesn't equate to a good person. Faith is not inherently a basis for morality or well-intended justice. Faith isn’t always used to support others. In our world right now, it is being used as a weapon to target, evict, and kill others by the American Republican party.

You can try to negate this with “Oh, but you see the character is secretly a self-centered asshole!”

Wow. Original. How magical. You really got me there. It's not like you just happened to also make him represent the Pacifist Timelines which actively requires you to be a good person and make good decisions to benefit the other characters to get the best endings. How ironic. It's not like everyone makes their characters be ironic because irony = cool which originates from Homestuck which is the greatest waste of time to ever exist and was never good to begin with.

The thing is, the word faith means “to follow something blindly”. You don't need evidence, you just need to believe. And what makes this design all the more Abrahamic religion-inspired is that the fact the character is meant to evoke the idea of a Shepherd, a figure that symbolizes protection and safety, a means of defense to the predators who hunger for the sheep he watches. The Shepherd, by design, is not supposed to be a pacifist if it means his sheep are in danger. He is justified to defend himself or his animals if they are under the threat of harm or death. Shepherds have to be prepared to fight, therefore, Shepherds are not pacifists.

This should not fly over your head. That's the entire idea of this character’s design but fails when it comes to the fact that he's supposed to be an Undertale OC inspired by Dream, or really, if not that, it was probably just the positivity vs negativity theme a fuckton of media have in general. And while positivity and negativity do obviously exist in stories including subjects of pacifism and genocide, those two opposites are not synonymous, nor do they inherently solve anything. Genocide is the worst thing one could do to entire populations of people (we’ve already been seeing that in Gaza, Sudan, etc.), and pacifism is just the life decision to never fight/avoid all fights. It is the belief that violence should never be used as a means to solve anything. Pacifism is not a means to stop genocide, and genocide is a means that kills everything out of systematic prejudice, even the pacifists that choose to do nothing for their own comfort.

Frisk was able to pacify every monster they met because monsters are not inherently violent, aggressive beings. They have a conscience. They are more accustomed to and prefer kindness and pacifism over violence and aggression. Pacifism works for Frisk because their temporary adversaries are open to change.

In genocide, the people perpetrating it all are already beyond reason and have been that way for a long, long time. Their minds are set on mass murdering thousands to millions of people. They do not want a change except the one only they will benefit from. Pacifism, especially from their victims and bystanders, makes them stronger. The only way to combat genocide is through direct rebellion and violence. Regardless, genocide is the obvious wrong. There is no debate.

Violence in and of itself is a tool. It can be used to subjugate others, or it could be used for defense.

The messages in comparison are simplified and muddled within the concepts of Faith and Frenzy, and the designs don’t do much to help with that. They don’t add or remove anything of value and all I get when I look at them are questions and observations with no answers or supportive context I have missed for rebuttal. I would like to like these characters, but outside the points I bring up in this rant they’re just… bland.

It’s entirely fixable if Unu ever wants to come back to them, they’re just not for me as they are.

Okay, that’s enough of Faith, let’s look at his counterpart.

I’m going to repeat myself but it’s okay because it will all make sense soon. He has his cloak messy and open, which is a universal character design sign of showing us that he is more humble and open with his emotions. With how tattered his clothes are, even going as far to have visible stitches around the rim of his hood, he looks like the type who either gets attacked a lot or looks to be someone who is not as well off as Faith. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and gets into a lot of danger, as shown with the bandages being evident of that, though we don't know if that is willingly or unwillingly. If anything, if I had to pick one to trust in a life or death situation if I didn't know them, I'd pick Frenzy hands down because he looks to be the more open one, the more “Yup. I’ve seen this before…” one.

It can be stated that he’s supposed to be the representation of the Genocide Runs, it falls flat on jump because of Frisk.

Thing is, it's evident that Frisk does not look very well off in the game.

For one thing their “defense item” was a bandaid and they fell from a great height into the Underground. A great enough height that it hid an entire civilization from the world with little to no problems. And they can outright choose to be adopted by Toriel showing that they are in fact an orphan, given you complete the game through a Pacifist route.

Look at Frenzy's design.

He looks like he steals food just to survive. He looks like he gets into fights often and is struggling to keep going just because of how his clothes are tattered and has visible patchwork on his hood. He has bandages on his body showing that he's either lost some fights or didn't get out of those fights unscathed, needed to avoid any infections and wrapped said wounds in bandages. His shirt is two sizes too big!

This tells me that the creator thinks that “Impoverished = Violent / Uncivilized” which is… certainly a choice. It’s incorrect and disgusting but I’m giving Unu the benefit of the doubt that this message was not intended.

The way Frenzy looks simply tells me that he is beyond unprivileged meanwhile Faith looks like he is some pompous rich kid who decided to go “slumming it with the poor” and thinks that the outfit he's wearing wouldn't look too fancy in comparison to those that are actually poor, only to find out that it's still fucking blatantly high end shit.

Wait a minute.

Hear me out for a second.

One of my favorite shows is Arcane. I've made it abundantly clear that I’m a League of Legends fan, but in Arcane we get a very similar dynamic that I just described. We get this with Caitlyn and Vi.

Someone once made a comment about how Cait and Vi’s relationship made no sense at all and how Cait constantly treated Vi like trash, using the moment when Vi decides to stop by a small restaurant in Zaun.

I pointed out that Cait is so privileged that she doesn't even have the awareness to think about things from Vi’s perspective and never fucking tries to. She didn't think of dressing like a Zaunite meanwhile Vi has the awareness to steal Cait some clothes instead of letting her go around dressed like an enforcer.

Vi points out to Cait that she cannot go around asking questions if she actually wants answers – meaning Cait needs to actually do things gently and subtly.

Vi states, “You go around thinking you'll get what you want, but you need to make people think you have what they want.”

But this scene is skipped over simply for the “you're hot, cupcake” line and that's it.

Cait is so privileged that she doesn't see the way she is treating Zaunites is wrong and it's so subtle because she isn't using the same language as the character Marcus (using “Trencher-Trash”, “Sump-Rats”, etc.). Hell, Cait went around poisoning Zaunites and viewed it as a necessity and good despite the fact that that same gas would kill her and normal Piltovans in SECONDS.

But what truly makes this all beyond evident is the way she and Vi dress in comparison to each other, specifically in the first 3 episodes of Arcane Season 1.

Vi wears very neutral tones, her pants and shirt look like they're two sizes too big for her, she has bandages, her shoes are very plain looking, and her vest is tiny and has a belt that looked like it was originally used for a much smaller and younger version of herself or maybe her baby sister.

Caitlyn, on the other hand…

She has a poofy top with gold trimmings, a purple skirt, white leggings, and Mary Jane's.

Which one of these two characters do you think comes from wealth?

It's Cait. If you guessed Vi, you’re either blind, stupid, or wasn’t aware of these design gimmicks.

So when I say Faith looks like a pompous rich kid in comparison to Frenzy and this doesn't fit with the messaging of Undertale as a whole because remember Faith = Pacifist Run, while Frenzy = Genocide Run, it doesn’t make sense. Or at least, any sense that would fall flat on its face.

Okay, back to Frenzy.

Looking at Frenzy and his name, it's okayish in the sense it's a very basic idea as a name, however it is failed by the design of the character. He doesn't look like he himself is the violent one, just someone who is used to being put in situations where he is forced to use violence.

I mean if he really is violent, why would he hide his weapons? Hiding the weapons communicates “I might need this later / I might need this in case of an emergency.”

If he is the violent one of the two then he should have the weapons out in the open. Have them litter him fully.

To use a more minor example, look at Hidan from Naruto.

He is always carrying his giant as hell scythe out in the open. If you see that out in public in the Naruto universe, that is a threat. That is where you see parents pulling their children close and worrying about whether or not they should run, preferably in the exact opposite direction.

Having such a big and blatantly dangerous weapon out in the open that just screams the word “violence is the only option” is better than the characters just hiding them. That is getting past the fact that the entirety of the Akatsuki is wearing the exact same cloak which has already been communicated as a violent group thanks to Itachi and Kisame. Hidan is just the most direct one about it.

Then we also have the fact that if Frenzy is the violent one, why not litter him with scars showing that not only is he violent but actively THRIVES in it? Naruto also has another character that actively shows this kind of idea with the other character from the Zombie Combo, that being Kakuzu.

He is stitched up like an overly loved doll that got shredded by a feral rabid cat. So when it's revealed that this guy was the one to fight the first Hokage and survived that ass beating it's not surprising because, LOOK AT HIM. That man persevered like a damn tank!

So with the fact that Frenzy has no scars and not openly showing his weapons, he does not scream violence. His design does not scream aggression. It does not scream obvious evil intent. He does not scream genocidal. He just looks like a kid that needs a mom to scoop him up and adopt him and get him some new clothes.

“BUT WAIT!” I hear you screaming. “You said that having the open vest was a bad thing for Frenzy but Hidan has his bare fucking chest out in the open! His tits are out in the open air! What about that, huh?”

Have you watched Naruto Shippuden? It’s okay if you didn’t, I’ll explain my thought process anyway.

Hidan doesn't hide his emotions. Hidan wears them openly and proudly. This is a fact. Either you get calm priest of Jashinism, or you get a manic sadomasochist who is going to laugh in your face, cussing you out and calling you more slurs than you could ever comprehend as he stabs himself through his heart after his weird jutsu is already linked to you causing you to die from that very wound without him actively stabbing you through the heart. And he's a thirst trap on top of that.

It's fitting for Hidan. We have all the behavior, backstory, and extra context to support his whole concept and role in his source.

It's not fitting for Frenzy, because Frenzy doesn’t have that. He wasn’t given that thought, at least not from what Unu has posted about him. The closest we’ve been given to “evil” from him is basic annoying asshole behavior and Faith’s basic reactions to his very existence.

Then we have the lack of shoes. Lack of shoes are a universal signal to a character that is down to earth or even someone who is connected to it.

Look at Toph Beiphong from Avatar the Last Airbender, she is so connected to the earth that she has seismic sense, able to see through the ground via vibrations in the earth itself and even when she's elderly, she can see everyone on the entire planet.

If you want another example, let's look at someone who represents the idea of frenzy better than Frenzy himself. Meet Briar from League of Legends.

Briar is a blood golem experiment in Noxus. The story with Briar is that she is a blood golem, she was created from pure magic to be a living weapon, but when the new ruler of Noxus captured her and had her locked away with her fellow golems, who were all starving from a lack of blood, she realized that she was bored as shit and wanted to try being more than a starving golem. She wanted to be a person.

For lack of a better word, she wants to be normal.

Even in her trailer, she outright kept calling a guy her friend and her “escape buddy”. She wants friends, she wants to be able to socialize and be a person, not a weapon or just a starving creature. In her voice lines she is trying to convince herself that she has control over her hunger and who she is. In her voice lines in the game she outright goes around asking other champions to share their blood.

This is all subtly shown via her lack of shoes, showing that she is trying to fully ground herself and be self aware. She is connected to the earth. A big part of her character is a symbolic rock. Her intentions and outlook of herself are solid and stable.

Yes, having practical footwear is important to travel but it can also communicate something else: a lack of resources.

With the high top boots that Faith has and having pure white clothes which is very typical for angelic characters and character designs it also communicates an abundance of resources.

Where Frenzy with his lack of shoes and simply relying on tattered clothes that looks like he has to sit down and patch up for hours on end, and wrap and rewrap his feet on bandages, he looks like he just escaped an abusive household, stole some clothes and bandages and has been running from the cops for years.

He looks more like he's a street rat like Aladdin rather than someone who is evil and dangerous.

Again, this tells me that the artist views people who are in poverty are evil just for being poor, where the rich are the good guys because they're rich. But there is no way of me knowing these were Unu’s intentions at all, because it’s very likely it’s the exact opposite and Unu wasn’t thinking about poverty at all. They could have been inspired by very, very ratty looking demons or something. I’m not a mind reader, I wouldn’t know.

But let’s look at Frenzy’s primary weapon.

Knives can be dangerous, don't get me wrong, but it's not a typical weapon. It's utility.

A knife is something you use for cooking, whittling, and sharpening and defense. It's not the first mode for attack.

Hell I even had to find multiple reasons for this particular item to be the main weapon for one character and an optional weapon for another.

Such as Edelweiss, it's supposed to be attached to his bayonet.

It's not the first line of attack, it's the last line of defense and survival.

If Frenzy is supposed to be the dangerous one, why use basic knives, why not kunai, or a sword, or a scythe, or ANYTHING ELSE?

And finally there is the color scheme. Faith’s is decent but again it still communicates wealth and purity and all that other superior garbage, and Frenzy's… Frenzy's color scheme is an overdone choice that anyone can see from a mile away and say “Oh, that's a villain. Neat.” that I want to scream.

I can hear Team Rocket calling to demand their color scheme back.

Black and red... Revolutionary.

It's been used by every single villain concept in popular media: Team Rocket, Jafar, Harley Quinn, EVERY SINGLE SITH CHARACTER IN STAR WARS. Seriously, I'm sick of it.

It's the most overused color scheme ever.

You can try to use that argument against me with Klezmer, but only his turtleneck is red and it's negated by everything else, especially his hood and cape which are gold.

I mean yes, Frenzy does have specs of gold and neutral tones like muted reds and gray, but it’s still over done.

Also I just looked at his and Faith's designs again at the time of writing… I didn’t notice the star and heart motifs on their cloaks.

So you give Faith the Save-Point star, and Frenzy the heart….

So you give Faith the tool the player uses to constantly RESET the timeline, while you give Frenzy the one symbol for love and human souls in the game…. Again, Frenzy is more linked to Frisk than he is to anything else.

Now… I know what you're going to inevitably say.

“Well Ouija, if designing Dreamtale-inspired characters is soooooo easy… then why don't you do it?!”

Well guess what…

I did.

Take that! [Evil laughter ensues.]

As an artist and writer I’ve always had a… unique way of going about my designs. For one, I tend to pick one aspect of something I like, run off in that direction and pick up things as I go along. I usually have a small idea in the back of my mind that is an itch I haven’t scratched. For this one it’s the idea of toxicity.

I literally wrote the word “Toxic” in the picture, so it should be blatantly obvious. I took note that the fandom loves doomed siblings and it shows. Toxic relationships are almost if not blatantly fetishized by the fandom to a horrifying degree, from incest to abusive siblings and outright abusive victim and trafficker ships like Killermare (gross), it’s almost unescapeable. I could hide all these ships from myself by blocking the tags, but let’s be real, not everyone is going to use them. Some clearly don’t give a flying fuck. So let me bitch, will ya?

I then took the idea that I used for my actual Dreamtale based AU, that being instead of a goopy goop monster for Nightmare, I go into a more ethereal direction.

Because I used Dreamswap as spiteful inspiration for this idea, I kept this Nightmare design as a solid skeleton, but gave him a gasmask and a smoking flask that gives off the idea that if he threw it at someone, you’d get nothing but smoke. I also had the idea that without the mask, his breathing would create green toxic smoke that would bring nothing but negativity to everything and everyone around him.

The idea obviously spawns from The Gray from Arcane/League of Legends, but it also comes from the idea of toxic fandoms and communities and other populations in general. Think of the harassment that the Jokublog has gotten on and off for about eight years now, or any transgender person who happens to exist happily, or any girl that dares to join a VC in an online game, or transfemmes if they exist in any proximity to a cisgender woman, or a transmasc if they breathe in lesbianism’s general direction, or a thirteen year old discovering they’re a therian and unfortunately TikTok caught wind of that, or— I’ll stop.

Talking to Sarco briefly about this idea, they brought up the idea that he has the mask to hide his identity, while I got the idea that because he represents the Negativity of the Positive/Negative dynamic, he just doesn’t care about other AUs and is so focused on getting his brother back, he just experiments on his magic and uses the other AUs as his lab rats.

I also went with Cybergoth as the main outfit style of choice. My reason being is because, again, that idea of “Toxic”, and the fact that Cybergoth is the most underutilized version of goth in all of media. I will admit that this design is very much half-assed. I didn’t put nearly as much effort as I would with my normal designs. But that’s mainly because I’m wholly uninterested in making a Dreamswap AU. I put in as little effort as I could but enough to at the very least make him interesting enough to myself and what I think might be at least intriguing to anyone that looks at him.

I needed to make this character look like he could play either role as villain or hero or even just being an agitating neutral party. He could be a hero in one perspective, or a villain in the other. I needed his design to also get people to ask “Who is he? What’s his story?” because that’s the entire idea of making a character. You make them designed enough to invoke that outside interest.

As for the color choice I chose black and a bright neon green. It’s my personal favorite color combination. I find that people use either purple or red as their stereotypical “poison” and “evil” color choices and adding black on top of it just triples down on those aspects, but for whatever reason a bright neon green screams “toxicity” to me. Maybe it’s how radiation is depicted as a bright green in media. I don’t know, but it’s something that I just like. I also gave him the cracked moon pendant to show that he is damaged in some way. But I also added the design of Dream’s circlet on the collar, as a way of showing him perhaps holding on to the past but isn’t willing to speak about it. It’s literally tethered to him.

But that’s enough of this design that took me maybe an hour and a half of my life I’m never going to get back…

To leave off this entire tangent, I’ll say something nice about Faith and Frenzy’s designs.

For one, I love the halo idea, it is such a unique take on the circlets, and shows their ties to the originals’ designs without rehashing it – if Unu happens to read this entire shitshow somehow, keep the halos, but maybe change Frenzy’s, the whole devil-horn idea isn’t really working on him.

Adding purple to Faith’s design was a nice choice, it adds this nice softness that would’ve been missing in the design without it.

I love how expressive the characters are in the ref sheets. Frenzy’s expressions in particular can get 500 Italian finger kisses from me. The top right corner image of him with the vines just gives nothing but cheeky-bastard energy and I’m all here for it.

At the end of the day, these are just my hot-takes and so long as I keep getting the message of “Just put effort into your designs even if it’s just a little” I did my job with this. If you have any comments or questions just either comment in the towel section or throw yourself into the ask box, one of us will respond.

Either way, keep drawing, put in effort… My carpal tunnel is trying to murder me.

-- Ouija

#message from ouijas board #design critiques #undertale au #utmv #undertale #undertale multiverse #utmv au #ut au #my carpal tunnel is gonna kill me #have mercy on me #hot takes #character designs #just put in some god damn effort into your designs #thank you sarco for editing this #love you sarco #everyone give sarco love they deserve it

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