SAVE Point :) - Blog Posts

can we pretend the ripples in the park lake are like swimming trout........ i could really use a fish right now, fish right now, fish right now.......

As a canon sans fanatic, man,I JUST LOVE HOW YOU WRITE SANS! I want to write sans as faithful to the canon like you one day, so you have some tip or something to master the art of writing sans undertale as accurated as possible?

make a file with all of his lines. the undertale text dump is your best friend. select all, copy, open a new document, paste it in. the deltarune one is a bit trickier because it's not formatted as tidily but it's there too. as for the rest, you're on your own. alarm clock winter dialogue, casino dialogue, crosstitch book, Q&A. all of it. snoop around. and then format it into looking normal. this means removing all the asterisks and putting it all back into chronological order because the dialogue dump is a bit all over the place. i used to be annoyed about it, but honestly it was a good excuse to look at the dialogue more. i already have a fully formatted doc but... not gonna share it with ya. half the benefit comes from having to read it so many times yourself while putting it together. actually, this is a practice I'd recommend to learn the voice for any UT character

you are going to treasure this file. consult it constantly. now, make ANOTHER file, open them side by side, and start jotting down shit. sentence length, structure, vocal tics, any pattern you can spot. look at what makes him tick. for the more, uhhh, mathematical side of the analysis, sometimes i plug bits and pieces of it in prowritingaid. the free plan does 500 words per session. it rules.

i am not kidding, are you writing in his voice? then consult that file constantly. if a specific term feels weird, look if he's said it before in canon. if he hasn't, look for a synonym (or shortened version). if he doesn't have that, either reword your bit, look for phrases where he says basically the same thing but with a different structure, or just say fuck it and leave it in anyway. hey, I'm not your babysitter

undertale is a comedy and sans is a comedic character. his comedic role is as crucial to his persona as his speech pattern is. sure you can make him be funny, but is he being funny in a way that fits his role?

continuing off the previous point: sans is a "born lucky" character. a jester. a troll. in a comedic context, this means he's always landing on his feet. this man's got the rules of comedy wrapped around his fingers so tight you'd figure they owe him money. one does not simply "dunk" on sans undertale. either the situation isn't goin to arise full stop, or you're going to get your ass handed back to you with "some king" written on it in magic marker, or he's going to roll with the punch. people don't laugh AT sans, they laugh WITH him.

do you however require him to eat shit for story purposes? alright. like i said, roll with the punches. if he can't turn the situation around in his favor, he's going to brush it off with humor and nonchalance. relegate the shit eating to the machinations of his inner monologue

so! you managed to get all the way here with a reasonably canon sounding sans and now you're finally at that emotional scene you wanted to write for so long! how exciting! dial it back. it's too emotional. "but i already d-" nope. trust me, I'm guilty of this too. artists and writers love melodrama, but whatever you're thinking is too showy for him. so dial it back again for good measure.

"but what if i insult his brother to his face-" you can do that in-game, he tells you sarcasm isn't funny, says a nice thing about him, then moves on like nothing happened

"but what if i killed his brother-" you also do that. in the game. he leaves. hauls ass immediately, drops off the face of the earth, takes a memento with him and then he's Gone. his meetings with him afterwards are brief, sterile and resentful, but he doesn't explode or anything

continuing once again, Angry Sans Does Not Yell. there's a whole fandom subgroup dedicated to making him a big burly roaring axe-weilding cannon blazing killing machine. this is very cheap. sans is an example of one of the most impactful uses of audio design in undertale, and it's when it cuts out entirely as he begins to speak. sans is terrifying because he's quiet.

there's only one occasion where he raises his voice and acts intimidating in a more stereotypically tough guy way, and that's in the second part of his fight. you know, when he's getting tired by the minute, his trap already failed and he's not so metaphorically feeling the hounds of hell yapping at his bony heels. he's panicking, and it takes him a LOT to get there, so if it happens in your story don't throw it out there all willy nilly.

likewise, long gone are the days of teary eyed sans clutching papyrus' scarf, vowing to revenge his death and bring you to justice to protec-wait a second this is undyne. anyway, those days are gone and thank god for that. sans is inherently conflict avoidant, in a very similar way to papyrus. but most of all he's private: with his emotions, with his grief, with his backstory, with his trauma. sans faced with something devastating, or depressing or just plain hopeless doesn't beat his chest like a woman in some trashy romance novel. he shuts down. he leaves as soon as he can..

now, sometimes you're writing a story and you kinda NEED him to eat shit. or become emotional when confronted with something, or get him flustered cuz he's in love, or cry or get angry or snap, etc etc. for plot purposes! that's completely fine. not everything has to follow undertale's criteria. but, if you want to keep it feeling authentic, try to keep it mind that this condition is NOT standard for him. this is uncharted territory. it's the exception that confirms the rule, not the new average (think eggs husband joke in dr), and thus you're going to need to justify it in the face of the story. give him a reason to get to that point. build it up slowly and carefully. too much and you break the character. if you're doing a backstory for him, maybe before he was as cynical as he is today, you might have a bit more breathing room, but you're gonna have to work backwards to explain How He Got Here, both morally and personality-wise

this response is already colossally long so I'm gonna close it here. it's pretty late now in my country and I don't know if any of it is coherent, but i hope it helped you at least a little. night night!!

my blog is about to turn one month old. I need to think about something interesting to do on May 16...

but for now...

let's take a closer look at moving between SPs!

(part 2)

In the previous part, we looked at moving between SPs on a multiverse scale. but today we will look specifically at moving between two SPs. (and yes, I decided to draw in @miracle-negative (really cool guyl) style, because I was in the mood only for these doodles)

well, it's simple. Save can move between any SPs, without any special restrictions or debuffs. all items in the inventory are saved, including those in the bag.

in addition, Save can move things with them that they have in their hands (this is not actually the concept of "in inventory", by the way).

yes, that's how I drew it, on their heads. why? I dunnoooooo...

(cuz it's classic)

Save can also move living creatures with them if desired.

note: no Froggit was harmed during the experiment.

aaaaaand... uhh... that's probably the end of it.

the topic of moving between SPs is almost completely explained!

of course, I might have missed something, but as for me, this topic is understandable and disclosed.

and according to the classics, I ask you not to forget to ask questions and also not to forget about ask Save.

have a good day.

bonus: me who writing (and drawing) this all.

well... I don't look well-cared... eh! doesn't matter.

✧nervous sigh✧

I didn't write anything yesterday... IT'S BAD.

on the other hand, I have no idea what to write about... plus, I'm going to burn out soon...

In theory, to do this kind of work, I need to be an artist, not a nerd... preferably with a healthy mentality.

✧disappointed sigh✧

No, I still can't figure out what to write abo—

let's take a closer look at moving between SPs!

(chapter 1)

consider the SPs on an improvised map. it outlines here that Save can move between any two SPs... yes, I wrote about it anyway, but we need to look at it in more detail.

Let's look at another map.

Here is an outline of moving between AUs using SPs. as you can see, there are no restrictions.

the only problem is that initially Save does not focus on AU when moving, but on SPs, that is, in fact, the map of the multiverse for it is, so to speak, initially covered with fog, in which only SPs are visible.

but if Save can study this place thoroughly, they will be able to understand which SPs are in which AU (in short, they will know which SP to move to in order to get to a certain AU).

and this is what Save's mental map of multiverse looks like. (yes, I'm too lazy to sign the names of AUs, but imagine that it's there.)

in the next chapter, I will write down the details about moving between the two SPs, that is, I will do tomorrow what I planned today. bruh.

why not now? because that's what I decided. 'kay, just kidding, because the post is already big enough.