Dread Not AU

Why Quit?

It’s pretty well-known to the people that’ve been following this AU for a long time now, that my motivation for working on it has had its ups and downs. Mostly downs. I want to emphasise that this isn’t a hasty decision, I’ve been mulling over and trying to find other avenues for a while, but suffice to say the pros of continuing are few and far between when compared to the cons. For one, my working pace is horrendous and my drive is lacking, with the pace I’ve had these years Dread Not Act 4 would finish in, like, 2040. I don’t think anyone wants that, least of all me. Even if I turned the story into a fic rather than a comic, or simplified the story to the point it could be told in only a few comic pages, I feel like I’d still just hate working on it, not to mention it’d be a disservice to that original vision I had so long ago.

If you’d indulge me in a bit of needless self-psychoanalysis, Dread Not as a story has been a sort of mythologized retelling of my own adolescence without me even knowing it. To put it simply, when I was first writing it, it meant a lot to me, because it was an externalization of my constant inner conflict, the conflict between conformity and weirdness, femininity and authenticity, masculinity and powerlessness. I had a lot of jumbled up feelings about myself and my place in the world and Dread Not gave me a good outlet to explore and externalise it all, but... I’m turning 22 this year, I’m well on my way to finally get prescribed HRT, I’ve physically and mentally grown up, and this story no longer reflects the parts of me it used to. I think that’s the biggest reason why working on it has been so unfulfilling for me.

On the more technical side of things, my general artstyle has changed a lot (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) and so have my mediums of expression. I still love comics and will probably make more going forward, but not in this format. Not of this scale. Not alone, at least. Dread Not was a technicality NIGHTMARE to organise for my brain riddled with executive dysfunction, but I don’t want to paint it as a net negative. This project has taught me so much, not just about myself, but about how to work and create and tell stories, and put myself out there. It’s not an over-exaggeration to say it’s defined the last 5 years of my life because this story is how I met my best friend who I don’t know where I would be without. Whenever I’d do anything for school, I’d compare it on a technical and emotional level to Dread Not because it’s essentially been my golden standard of passion and discipline. It’s how I started actually posting my art online, like, AT ALL, and getting over my fear of people and being perceived. It’s how I’ve met all the wonderful people who joined its discord server who I’d consider good friends and I’m unspeakably grateful I met them all, and also... it’s taught me more than I ever asked for about the unstoppable force that is the human spirit and the immovable object that is time restriction. If I had like 5 clones of myself, by god would this have been easier.

But, cloning magic doesn’t exist yet and I can’t push myself any longer. I want to start new projects, actual original ones with my own characters instead of AUs, and I want to be unburdened from self-imposed deadlines and standards. I’m no longer the kid who could draw 3 fully coloured comic pages in like 2 weeks out of sheer will and school procrastination alone, and I’ll try to make my future projects reflect that both in skill and maturity. I think, what I’m trying to say the most is, I’ve outgrown Dread Not. I’m sure a lot of you have, too. It was a story born from my teenage angst and it had a pre-planned happy ending, it was always meant to. The only problem is, I reached that ending before the comic did, and my motivation to tell this story has dropped to an all-time low.

This doesn’t HAVE to be the end though.

What could have been

I know what it’s like to be really invested in something, and have the author just give up on the project halfway through, often even sooner than half. The untied loose ends, the disappointment, the tension of the story never released... Exactly because I know what that’s like, I’m really sorry, and I hope the ending of Act 1 and this post at least brings a little bit of closure on that front. If you want to know what the future acts WOULD have been about, you’re in luck. Since I’m leaving the AU anyway, I might as well document all my ideas for it so at least SOME version of it completed exists in the heads of people who care.

Not just writing it out for the sake of itself, but also if anyone wants to continue the AU themselves, they’re free to. I consider this whole concept up for grabs now, if you want to carry on based on the notes I leave here, or if you want to spin it in a completely different direction, or make your OC the president of the world, go for it! Alongside this post, I’ve made a dedicated Dread Not Neocities site, where I’ve compiled all the pages of ACT 1 and included my author commentary that is excruciatingly long, that I suggest you do not read every entry of unless you really, REALLY want to read all of my unhinged rambling about the creation process and the character beats I was conveying. I’ll be adding full descriptions of what future ACTS were MEANT to look like there too, plus concept art and sketches (that I might upload here if there’s enough demand for it), and that site will turn into the de facto “where to find the original Dread Not” place, as it’ll house everything I could’ve wanted to make with the AU.

For those curious who don’t want to read too much Kooki Speak (but still frankly a lot), here’s a shorter version:

ACT 1 was always planned to be just buildup, but by god am I bad at pacing. There’s a lot of small threads in ACT 1 that I never really had plans to address in future acts (Clover is one of those things, poor girl got retroactively shafted because I made her a third wheel in the Ralsei and Kris plot), but one of those is NOT Undyne and her team.

ACT 2 would’ve been entirely from their point of view, or rather the point of view of their newest recruit, Alphys, who joined the military essentially just for the money and perks, and ends up having an extended multi-year crisis over not being good enough physically, morally or mentally.  Alongside the running plot of the guard team (and sometimes directly involved with it) would be the two seperate threads left over from ACT 1 - one following Spade, Asgore and Kris trying to find their way in exile, and the other following Toriel, Gaster and their new maid/head of security, Muffet, who all descend into varying forms of villainy thanks to the influence of one another.

The Act wou;d’ve taken place over the span of 10 in-universe years, and the mutual element in all these stories would’ve been self-denial, with it being most prominent in Gaster denying his own mortal body while “helping” Mettaton with creating him a metal one, secretly using Mettaton as a guinea pig for his own experiments with his own body, becoming more and more machine-like in body and mind as the story goes on, for the sake of “productivity” (which itself was just his way of trying to escape the mounting guilt he felt for his involvement in Asgore’s exile). Mettaton would never be fully satisfied with Gaster’s work, and turned to Alphys for help to secretly “fix” it. The ACT would’ve ended with Alphys and Mettaton getting exiled after they in/directly cause a malfunction that nearly gets Gaster killed. They decide to stick together in the wilderness not because they have no-one else left, but because they WANT to help each other, self-denial turning into self-acceptance through another.

Toriel and Muffet would’ve spent the ACT building a rapport with one another, mostly through Toriel’s refusal to harm the spiders Muffet thought would’ve been dismissed alongside her, and in turn Muffet being Toriel’s only refuge from the chaotic demands of her subjects and courtiers. They would’ve ended the ACT as an official yet secret couple (since Toriel’s Queen she’s expected to court men for the sake of having offspring one day, and not Muffet who is a weird spider girl). Formally Toriel being the sovereign of the country, but informally they’re acting as essentially dual Queens, one dealing with trying to bring her people up while the other puts the “bad guys” down. Note Muffet’s skewed perception of morality and how it rubbing off on Toriel probably isn’t a good thing, even if they’re good for each other in a romantic sense.

Asgore and Spade, meanwhile, would’ve gone through ups and downs in their relationship in exile, predictably, as the circumstances are kind of really fucking dire, but eventually stabalize and preffer being fused most of the time rather than unfused (the fusion, yes, in-universe keeps being called The Fusion throughout the whole story, but he has an actual name so I’ll call him Corundum from now on). Kris, meanwhile, grows from being a scared kid who doesn’t really know humanity, to a teenage little shit rebelling against everything because they’ve Met humanity, and Embraced humanity and want to fight for it. Kris is actually a good segway into mentioning that ACT 2, alongside Alphys and Muffet, was meant to introduce the rest of the key players for future acts, namely Noelle, Susie, and Lancer. I’ll get to it.

Undyne would’ve started the ACT as a diehard patriot, but over the course of several failed missions, losing her eye and finally losing Alphys, starts to doubt and resent the cause they were enlisted for. Papyrus would essentially be the only universal constant, as his conviction doesn’t wane while his concerns for his friends grow, trying to keep what’s left of the team together and “fighting for good” because he doesn’t really want to consider that the country that won the war and saved monster kind could be Bad. Napstablook is there and Sad.

ACT 3 would’ve tied all the disparate threads together, from Undyne finally standing up to Toriel and getting exiled, to Ralsei becoming Gaster’s apprentice and inheriting his unhealthy coping mechanisms, to Corundum and Kris casually hanging out with Alphys and Mettaton like a weird extended found family. All of this (mostly) through the lens of Lancer, an orphan who heard about the traitorous escapades of the fusion and wanted to follow in his example of being a bad guy. Shenanigans ensue and he gets caught spying on them, only for Spade to eventually realise that, whoops! Lancer is his biological son, and he had no fucking idea he even existed.

Along the way Kris also meets and (spitefully) befriends Susie, who’s Lancer’s childhood friend he kind of left behind in pursuit of being a criminal. Susie both resents Lancer for abandoning her, but also admires that he even had the guts to go out on his own at all. Her and Kris mostly bond by being weird. Spade, meanwhile, makes the opposite choice to what Asgore did in ACT 1, opting to leave Lancer in the foster care system because he doesn’t think he’s capable of being an actually good parent, his influence on Kris be damned. This is (almost) immediately narratively punished, as after leaving Lancer behind, the family end up ambushed and terribly outnumbered by the Queen’s guard, now with machine reinforcement.

The fight goes poorly and Kris is wounded really badly. For the sake of survival, Spade and Asgore have to unfuse, and while Asgore gets Kris to safety, Spade is captured. Unwilling to let him be taken away alone, hoping he’d be able to save him, Asgore leaves Kris with Alphys, in pursuit of the people who took Spade away, and doesn’t return. Kris wakes up some weeks after, and realises they’ve been abandoned just like Lancer was. This causes them an understandably huge amount of pain, where they leave Alphys as well and try to live completely on their own, culminating in them talking to their memory of Ralsei through their old doll. They regress back to their younger self mentally, feeling alone and unloved and like they don’t belong, but it’s exactly the memory of Ralsei that reminds them that belonging isn’t something given to you, it’s something you find in other people, just like they did in each other when they were kids.

This invigorates Kris, and they gather their rag-tag team (AKA literally just Susie and Lancer) and head to the capital, looking to free their stupid imprisoned dads and reinstate the family they belong in, the family they really want. The heist is complicated as the prisons are heavily guarded, but Kris eventually manages to sneak in on their own while the others form a distraction. They find their parents (first Spade, who chews them out for meddling before realising he really DOES need their help, and then Asgore who’s just crying, man. He’s just crying a lot.) and once the two fuse they begin making their exit, which is noisy and easily attracts attention. Attention of none other than Ralsei, who was just here to grab some documents for his boss and ended up seeing his convicted childhood friend escaping prison. He gets the chance to pull the emergency alarm, to call the guards, but even as Kris has to run and leave him behind again, he can’t bring himself to do it, he lets them go. Later that night, Kris sneaks into the castle just to find Ralsei’s room and leave a thank-you gift.

Meanwhile with the exiles, Corundum realises how badly he fucked up, in a lot of ways, both for his passivity in his own kids’ lives, as well as his refusal to accept how badly his own life has gotten. Lancer gets osmosed fully into the family (while Susie aggressively refuses to be part of any group hugs) and the next morning, Corundum finally decides to take up arms against the Queen, to make a stand against the tyranny, because it really seems like no-one else will. Until Undyne busts down the door, suplexes Corundum and declares herself queen of the pirates. It’s a weird day, and the direct segway into ACT 4.

With the Capital unstable and Corundum on the loose, Toriel’s attempts become somehow yet more desperate. While Kris and their friends are only wanted alive (they’re kids after all) Corundum is wanted Only Dead, and because of the giant target on his back and how badly the Queen wants him dead for no discernable reason (traitors of similar status in the rebellion like Undyne are wanted dead OR alive), he essentially becomes the mascot of the revolution while the actual organised army is a lot more loosely structured. Undyne plays a big role in actual battle advancements while Corundum mostly handles recruitment and survival off of the grid, as he’s kind of gotten the hang of by now. Alphys and Undyne reunite but way too much is happening right now for Alphys to actually ask her out.

Meanwhile, the kids are travelling with the rebels but aren’t allowed to participate in any real fights, which they all think is lame. One day while out and sulking, Susie and Lancer stumble upon a weirdly cold part of the forest, and find a lost girl singing to herself in what looks like a magic, giant snow globe. They take her back to camp, and while she’s suspicious, none of the adults really think of her as a threat, mostly because of how absolutely petrified and hungry the kid is. She refuses to say anything about where she’s from or why she was half frozen out in the woods, all anyone knows about her is that her name is Noelle.

On one of their self-given missions, the kids split up into two teams to see who could score more points in their made-up game. Susie and Lancer in one team, and Kris and Noelle in the other. They end up bonding a lot faster than expected, and Kris uses their human soul to power up Noelle’s already pretty destructive magic. Turns out, the ice Noelle was ‘trapped’ in was of her own making, a defense mechanism to keep her safe from the wild forest, but now Kris is teaching her how to use it for offense, too. This backfires quickly when it gets out of hand and Noelle ends up hurting Kris. They aren’t injured too badly, but are cold and bleeding and can't exactly stand up on their own, but Noelle completely panics and runs away. Kris is hoping she’s going to get help, but she doesn’t.

Once Susie and Lancer get back to camp alone, and realise Noelle didn’t come back with Kris and seems to be in a silent state of shock, they kind of panic too. Corundum and Lancer go out looking for Kris, while Susie stays behind and tries to talk to Noelle, to no avail. Once the family return, Corundum is visibly PISSED while Kris is lowkey/highkey scared of Noelle, now. Susie pieces together what happened and stops trying to reason with Noelle, instead just trying to get her to say WHY she did it, to say anything at all, basically. Alphys ends up intervening and telling Susie it probably wasn’t intentional, Noelle is having a panic attack and yelling isn’t gonna help anyone. Alphys ends up being a pseudo mom figure for both Susie and Noelle, separately. For Noelle, because she’s the only adult who really understands her animalistic anxiety and panic at the smallest perceived threats, and for Susie for being someone willing to talk her down from anger rather than egging her on or ignoring her.

During the kids’ misadventures, the two actual political factions were gearing up on both sides. On the day the rebels finally invade the capital, they do so by hijacking a trade boat and secretly passing through the border via the river, after which all hell breaks loose. The city becomes a battleground and the citizens are all weirdly equipped with shelters to wait out the storm. Meanwhile, Noelle runs at the sight of the capital back into the woods, and Susie goes after her. Kris and Lancer stick to Corundum and Undyne like glue until they get to the actual castle, which has been turned into a giant mechanical labyrinth. Alphys and Mettaton run into Papyrus and Napstablook, and end up reasoning with them rather than fighting. Undyne has her sights on fighting the Queen just as much as Corundum, but it’s really tough to manoeuvre the castle and the team gets split up.

Lancer fights and conquers the staff (Rouxls) and is so happy with his victory that he takes a nap. Kris ends up in the bowels of the mechanical castle and comes face to face with Gaster, who Corundum advised them to go easy on earlier, which backfires. To their rescue comes Ralsei, and the two fight Gaster side by side, reclaiming their childhood and friendship in the face of cynicism and hopelessness. Gaster is essentially completely incapacitated, but Ralsei knows how to keep him alive via the machines while cutting off his influence on the building. Susie and Noelle’s fight ends more peacefully though, with Susie realising Noelle was running from her family this whole time, and opting to help her rather than chase her away. Undyne comes face to face with Muffet and finally fights her head on, making up for not standing up for her teammates when she should’ve.

And then there’s Corundum and Toriel’s fight, which goes so much worse. The two of them are symbols for both sides, yes, but their conflict is a lot more personal. Despite his best efforts, Corundum is unable to fully conquer his legitimate FEAR of Toriel, while she’s unable to deliver any decisive killing blows because she’s still holding onto the vague hope that no one has to die for the prophecy not to come true. The tides of their battle go in her favour, and she forcefully unfuses them, again. Wounded and emotionally exhausted, neither Asgore nor Spade can put up a fight, at which point Toriel makes the difficult decision to kill One of them, deciding that if they can’t fuse anymore, the vision won’t be able to come true.

Only for her to be interrupted by Kris, kicking down the door only to be unceremoniously kicked out of the throne room by Toriel in a single blow. She pities them, but can’t risk leaving both their parents alive, only to see that Kris isn’t alone. Behind them, storming the halls, the rebels have formed an entire siege, and it finally clicks into place for Toriel that the prophecy already came true, and she only certified her own doom rather than preventing it. She resigns herself and refuses to fight anymore, which Asgore witnesses and is extremely confused by, even as Spade helps him back up on his feet as the Queen’s surrounded by rebels, just like in the vision. They fuse again, and while Corundum is 70% ready to kill Toriel for real this time, Papyrus of all people ends up stopping him, as even though he’s on the side of the rebels now, he still believes in a true hero’s principals, the relevant one being that you may never strike down an enemy that’s already surrendered.

Toriel is jailed instead, dropping her crown along the way and (to everyone’s surprise) putting up so little of a fight that she’s essentially the one to lock her own cage. While Corundum stays in the throne room and ponders life and what the fuck he’s gonna do now (going back to the simpler lives he had in the capital before his exile still somehow seems like an impossibility to him), the kids all reunite outside the castle. Lancer and Kris introduce Ralsei and brag about their battles, while Susie (holding Noelle’s hand very tightly) asks them if there’s a way for their big scary four armed monster dad to make sure Noelle doesn’t have to go home to her parents. Undyne and the rest of her team summon Corundum and organise an impromptu coronation and correction of the system, pronouncing the fusion as the new king while the actual delegation of the system won’t be solely in his hands (allegedly).

The story would’ve fully wrapped up with Corundum finding Toriel’s crown, and more importantly finding her in jail. As a show of spite, he breaks the crown in front of her and tells her that her reign of terror is over. Toriel looks at him, coldly and dismissively, and “wishes him luck” in ruling better than she did, if he really thinks he’s capable of it. Despite her not saying much, Corundum is still lowkey/highkey terrified of her, and the sword of Damocles begins to swing again.

There was also a planned epilogue, but... you’ll have to go to the neocities page if you want to read up on it ;)

(When I update it, that is)

Meta-deconstruction of my own work

If you don’t want to read me ramble on about my own psychological issues intertwined with trans confusion and gay denial, just skip this entire subtitle, I wouldn’t blame you at all.

I’m a big proponent of ‘death of the author’ as a means of engaging with a story, original intent being secondary in importance to your own, individual perception of the themes and characters. However, in this case I AM the author, and don’t really have that alternative lens. That kind of screwed me over in a lot of ways because I kept trying to engage with my story only through the way in which it relates to Deltarune and Undertale, like it was an extension of someone else’s work rather than my own world. From this arose issues like... really unclear timeframe for when the story takes place at all, disjointed aesthetics and character designs I was never fully proud of, but had to stick to for the sake of being reminiscent of the original. I gave myself plenty of leeway, don’t get me wrong, but I always thought of Dread Not as the third wheel in a very solid twin story, and it blinded me to what the story was, metatextuality, actually about.

I was in high school when I came up with the concept of the AU, the monsters winning the war and Toriel inheriting an unstable throne. Originally, it was just Asgore, Spade and Kris, on the run from Toriel and Gaster. The conflict was more overtly a love triangle (square?) and Toriel’s motivations were fairytale-like while Asgore and Spade were... my main focus, I’d say? I designed their fusion (lovingly nicknamed Corny by me and my best friend who I expanded the AU with later on, and who you can thank for the scope of the story described in the above subtitle) and, for a long time, he functioned as my stand-in whenever I’d make other AUs, or when I’d just be randomly doodling stuff. Yeah, the scrawny transboy with no confidence made a big fat furry to project onto, what else is new. The difference is, I never admitted that to myself. There was a lot of shame and vulnerability in openly having a fursona for me, especially since he was just two of my favourite characters literally mashed into one, it’s pure wish fulfillment. I still kind of struggle with that, and I think it shows in the way I wrote Corny in my Act 2 drafts and onwards.

He’s just a big ball of pride and shame mixed into a destructive fake cat man, running from his own identity while trying to embrace it. It's weird and complicated and, frankly, with the drafts I had I never felt like I was really doing him justice. Like there was always somehow More to him that I was failing to bring up. In time, I realised that ‘something’ is the melancholic haze of losing the place in society you thought was your birthright. You USED to be normal, you USED to be successful, but now you’re not. You’re something else, something monstrous, something everyone despises but also, you could never be anything else now. You love the new you, but you hate that no-one else does. You want this, but you also want to fit in, and you can’t. And it sucks. And that’s what the fusion of two exiled gay men have in common with a former girly girl transman slowly figuring out he’s gay.

Asgore and Spade, and Corny by extension, all represented this almost shunned masculinity within myself. I kind of lived vicariously through these outlaw gay men because, even though I’m not illegal, living day to day as a teenager at the tail end of a puberty that scarred me, still struggling to come out even to myself at times, kind of gave me the impression that I don’t belong, anywhere. Kris is and always was representative of my inner child, loud and creative and kind of just unwittingly tossed into this whole mess. And Toriel? Sadly, she got saddled with the symbolism of all the femininity I was forcing myself to live up to, to stay hidden and “passing” as the wrong gender. I never disliked Toriel, and her “villain” role to me (at the time of originally making the AU) was a necessary evil. She would get overthrown eventually, yes, but while she’s still here her reign is stifling and strict. Tyrannical. But necessary to survive. She was the one making sure the country didn’t collapse in on itself through paranoia and control, analogous to my very thin perpetual mask of girlhood I didn’t belong in that I used as a survival strategy to not get relentlessly bullied again like I used to.

I kind of feel bad that I made Toriel the villain if I’m being honest. Like, in hindsight, she really doesn’t deserve that role. Even if she’s prone to acting paranoid or rash sometimes, I feel like I really undersold her very real wisdom in the games by (plot hole DING) having her not realise that trying to stop the prophecy would probably end up being its exact catalyst. I always meant to give her that sort of resigned realisation of that fact moments before it happens, but, I’ve gotten complaints from certain people that her acting the way she does in the comic makes it seem like she never read a single piece of ancient greek literature, and I’m kind of inclined to agree with that criticism. I needed SOME kind of effigy for my younger self to metaphorically burn in order to finally embrace what I’ve been all these years. And, that reflects really poorly on Toriel. If she were a real person I’d owe her an apology. Not for trying to dethrone her, but just for giving her kind of weird motivation that I had to further expand on retroactively in later pages.

If I were to make the AU from scratch today, I’d probably put more work in giving Toriel a more grounded motivation, give her actual stakes and history in the monster/human conflict outside of a vague family lineage, and potentially also tie Kris into her plot more. It feels like a missed opportunity in hindsight, they ARE her child in Deltarune, after all. Gaster, out of the main cast, got the lamest symbolism out of everyone though, the “adult” voice that’s nudging everything into conformity, beefing with a literal child to represent the constant war between “adultness and logic” and “childlike wonder” that plagues everyone during puberty. His general role in the story was of a passive machine, someone who’d do as he’s told and not question sides, that sort of “neutral instinct” to not rock the boat that’s generally expected of adults. Again, if I were to make the AU over, I’d probably give him a more mysterious role? Have him be less overtly one of the main catalysts for the story’s events, and more like a shadowy observer cataloguing the misfortunes of the people around him for the sake of trying to prevent tragedy. He’d still be a bumbling gay idiot though, don’t worry about that part.

All of this writing about the AU, I hope, can put into perspective why it meant so much to me, and kind of still does. I might never make all four acts into standalone comics, but I still put as much of it out there as I could. It’s 7AM on a Friday after pulling an allnighter writing this entire spiel, so please excuse me if it’s sloppy or weirdly phrased in certain places. From start to finish, Dread Not has been an honest work of pure passion, and I hope if nothing else about this AU sticks with you, it’s that I loved working on it, and I’m eternally grateful for all the people who engaged with the story. Even you, whenever you’re reading this ungodly spiel, thank you.

What’s next?

For a lot of you, I’d understand if you weren’t interested in my work outside of Dread Not, or outside Deltarune/Undertale. For a long time I branded myself on those games alone, but I’m hoping to branch out more soon. If you want to keep up with me outside this project, my Art Tumblr and my Youtube are the best places to do that. I’ll be turning off Asks for this blog, so if you have any questions for me about this AU or anything else really, the art blog is the best place to go.

Alongside the formal “closure” of this blog (no more updates) I’ll also be working on remodeling my Dread Not Discord Server into just a Kooki Discord Server, and if you join you can see the myriad of fan characters for this AU that people have already made and that I never cease to be impressed by. If there’s ever going to be an “official” continuation of the story, that’s made without me but with my blessing, it’ll have its roots in that server. But, also, I wouldn’t entirely bet on it. This story is kind of a behemoth and if I can’t do it justice I don’t want anyone else to feel pressured to try it either.

Once again, thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for caring. I hope to see you again on the road ahead. And, hey, if you’re second guessing whether you wanna put your own stuff out there, take this as a sign to just go for it. You have no idea what will come of it, but that’s part of the fun. Even if you can’t see it through to the very end, it’s better to try than to never give yourself that chance. Make that comic, write that script, draw that idea. It’ll be worth it, even if it takes a few years for you to see how.

Alright, I really gotta stop writing now. I think I’m just postponing the inevitable, because ending this post means really, genuinely ending Dread Not... I guess all that’s left to say is

Goodbye

Pages 94 and 95 split into multiple parts for easier reading:

Pages split into smaller parts for easier reading:

Page split into two parts for easier reading:

First off, kind of a big announcement, the twitter is officially GONE. As "twitter" (x?) added a policy that starting from November 15th, all posts made by users would be fed to their AI algorithm, both my personal twitter as well as the Dread Not twitter are deleted, to prevent my content from being used to feed some shitty AI algorithm. Tumblr isn't exempt from this bullshit AI fad either, but at least they gave you a toggle to opt out of it. It's a low bar and yet sites keep not clearing it. Don't be afraid, though, I've downloaded the archive of the official twitter account and if the fancy strikes me (and if there's enough of a demand for it) I might mess around with the html and make a downloadable version of the Dread Not Twitter for anyone interested in having it as a remnant of that bygone era. I'd just have to find a way to scrub all my actual personal data from that account first though, lmao…

On a more serious note, you probably noticed the comic itself hasn't updated properly since, what, June? And that was only one page. Before then the last update was in September 2023, so it's been well over a year since proper, consistent content for this comic has been made. For that, I am genuinely sorry. I made a lot of false promises and with the update in June I hyped it up with being "finally back" and then held up none of what I promised. That sucks and I wish I had anyone else to blame, but it's all me and my shitty nonexistent work ethic. I COULD'VE finished Act 1 during the summer, but with the way my motivation for art works, I got swept up in other projects thinking I could make up for lost time eventually, and then just didn't. This sucks and I wish it hadn't happened, but here we are.

Moving forward is going to be difficult because of this. As mentioned, I have other projects I'm working on now, projects I'm arguably more invested in than Dread Not. If Dread Not was EASIER to make, it'd be less of a problem, but I've set up a kind of impossible standard for myself of putting my everything into every page. This makes it look phenomenal, I can't deny it, the last few pages have been some of my best work and I still look at them very fondly, but there's also an aspect of… what it is that I'm actually putting so much work into. I don't mean to diminish my own fiction here, but Dread Not was kind of made on a whim, and while it has themes I find interesting it's not as… deeply significant as some of my other work is, or at least is MEANT to be.

To use a metaphor to illustrate, Dread Not is like popcorn that I've painstakingly made a giant ornate bowl to serve it with, while my other projects are fully planned meals that I need to find a good way to serve, and if all my energy is spent trying to figure out how to make my popcorn snack presentable, what time does that leave to the Actual Full Course Meal I'm planning? I hope that metaphor makes sense, because popcorn is still good! It's tasty! You can make it really nice and spicy, but at the end of the day that's not a gourmet meal, and I'd like to try my hand at more serious (culinary) projects. Projects that require me to work not just physically, but also mentally, to explore more difficult themes that mean a lot more to me. And, don't get me wrong, Dread Not HAS interesting ideas in there, it's just that I haven't reached them yet because I've been so preoccupied with this fucking BOWL. The popcorn is cold now and I still haven't finished painting it's goddamn container. There's a reason you usually serve this stuff in a paper bag.

And, paper bag analogy is right, because if you've seen my latest art dump on my art blog, you might've seen a couple of different styles in one place. Flat colours, monochrome colours with an emphasis on shading, a general complete lack of backgrounds, etc. What I want from you, dear reader, is to tell me what YOU want from Dread not. There's no way for me to finish act 1 in a reasonable time frame without downgrading the art, so I want to know what kind of downgrade you're willing to put up with. My personal ideal would be if I could just release the remaining pages as just line-art with minimal shading, but I understand that's probably not what people want, so…

Here's a forum for you to weigh in! (I recommend filling it out after you read this whole post)

On a different note, I want to heavily stress that I'm not abandoning the project, it's just morphing into something different now. It kind of HAS to in order to survive. Originally, working on Dread Not was something I did between classes, it was my only real "organised" artistic outlet if you could call it that, but now that I'm going to school FOR art, something as demanding as a full comic is less an outlet and more a chore. Even WITH downgraded visuals, that's still time spent on something that's not getting me grades or recognition, and while it's fun I'm kind of planning on doing art as a career now, so fun projects have to be REALLY fun for me to still invest so much time into (again, refer back to how my shitass art motivation works). This is why Act 2 is now planned to be entirely text, like other fics I actually work on in my spare time as a Break from visual art. It's a continuation of Act 1 still, just as originally intended, but I'll be adjusting my original script for Act 2 to fit into the new format. I'm sorry if this is disappointing to anyone (if the visual downgrade for the end of act 1 wasn't enough), but this is the most reliable way I can get myself to actually work on Dread Not since, again, I don't think a "passion project" should be draining to think about.

All of the technical stuff about the comic/AU/fic ASIDE… I want to give a huge shoutout to everyone in the Dread Not Discord server. Despite all the hiatuses and despite all the Lack of content I've given them, the server's been decently active and we've even made stories and characters completely divorced from Dread Not or even Deltarune as a concept! It's a really nice group to be a part of and I'm eternally grateful that something I made attracted such creative and thoughtful and SKILLED people into one place to share new ideas and discuss old ones. It's just a great time all around, and I don't think I'd be where I am today if it weren't for that server, as corny and stupid as that may sound.

I'm sorry this ended up being kind of a damper of an announcement, but seeing the state this blog is in I think it's a little necessary to make a proper post addressing all the stuff that's been going on behind the scenes. I hate leaving ya'll in the dark, but I also know that these posts are really long and probably really boring so getting something like this every other week would probably be even more annoying than complete silence.

Again, thank you all for your patience and, by all means, weigh in on what you think should be done with this AU going forward.

-Kooki

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Boy, time flies, huh? Feels like the second anniversary was just yesterday, but maybe that’s just the several long hiatuses getting to me. I’ve been scarce on uploading anything anywhere for a while now, even though I promised I’d actually pick up the slack this time around. What gives? Well…

For one, college hell, and for two, a lot of unfounded anxiety about putting my art out there. Allow me some theatrics for a moment and I’ll actually get back to the comic at hand… I’ve never had an exceptionally supportive environment for making art. It wasn’t suppressive, not in the slightest, but it also wasn’t… encouraging. It was always treated as a hobby or a distraction rather than something I was allowed to be fully proud of, especially because a lot of my art focused on more cartoon-y and fantasy ideas, rather than still life studies and painting (which people generally outside of the art sphere tend to value more, arbitrarily). Couple that with a childhood full of being bullied over minute shit you hadn’t even considered could be an issue before, and you get a teenager hellbent on never sharing his interests or ideas with anyone, mostly due to the fear of rejection.

I’ve grown, thankfully, but that paranoia and fear doesn’t go away overnight. As I’m sure you all know, Meowchela was the one who originally encouraged me to post this comic, and the only reason she succeeded was because she was the first person in a long time who listened and engaged with my interests and my art in a meaningful way. It’s kind of obvious her friendship had a profound impact on me, and I’d cite her as one of the reasons I was even hopeful enough to apply to an art college in the first place! This comic, and that bond with another person, proved that maybe these things I’m so passionate about weren’t duds, and weren’t something I had to keep to myself.

So, fast forward a few years. About three years, in fact.

During one of my classes, right before this hellish two weeks of exams started, one of the class assistants talked me into showing my comic pages to one of my professors. He’s generally a pretty open guy when it comes to new mediums, but I’m always… apprehensive about showing my less “traditional art”-y things to professors, but, he ended up being genuinely proud of it. Specifically, I showed him pages 85-87 (because they’re my favourites) and, he didn’t read the text, just the visuals were enough for him to say “good job, keep it up” (which is HIGH praise from that guy). When I mentioned I’ve been meaning to simplify the visuals because I didn’t have time to work on the comic very often because of college and classes, he dismissed it on principle. I was honestly caught off guard. Heavily paraphrasing, he suggested that worsening the visuals for an arbitrary deadline was counterproductive to making something that’s Good™.

That’s kinda stuck with me. For a good few years now I was more focused on optimisation rather than visual improvement for the comic, and though it HAS contributed to better visuals in some ways (cutting corners sometimes makes for a less pointy and jagged end result), it’s kind of weird I’m treating an art project that way, isn’t it? I set a lot of… arbitrary deadlines and standards for myself, in the form of expectations and what I “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing at certain stages in my life. I’ve thought of Dread Not as a passion project second and a stepping stone first, if I’m being honest. As if it was too… fandom-y and derivative to be treated with more gravity than that, like it’s an immature project because I was still a child when I came up with it. As if it was something I’m making to Build Up to Something Else, something Bigger and Cooler and More Important, and… the more I think about the future of Dread Not, and even my future career options, the more I realised that’s, ironically, a really immature way to think about it.

If there’s one thing going to this art college has taught me, is that there’s no “right” way to make art, and there’s no “right” way to success as an artist. There’s no clear-cut paths, just more commonly treaded roads, but even those are heavily overgrown. Why should I try to box myself into thinking I have to make things from complete scratch to be taken seriously? What’s so bad about Dread Not as a story and as a comic that’s caused me to vaguely keep it under wraps when conversing with people in my day-to-day life? Why wouldn’t I put all these skills I’ve acquired to improve and expand this project that’s Right There, WAITING for me to finally get off my ass and get pages out there again?

I wish I could say I’ve used all this time away in a particularly clever way, but I really haven’t - at least, it feels like I haven’t. My art has undoubtedly improved over time (though admittedly the art for this post was Very rushed, fuckin exams), and while I’ve been working on projects in the background, chipping away at them in a VERY disorganised way, I haven’t been posting that progress anywhere, and I haven’t made any good progress on my biggest project, Dread Not, because of the other ones. And, honestly? Admitting that kinda stings. This comic means a lot to me, and I wish I actually gave it the time and attention it deserves instead of letting it sit out hiatus after hiatus because I keep failing at structuring my time.

So, my new plan is a little more abstract: find a way to work Dread Not into my school schedule, and slowly build a habit of working on it more often. No clue how long that’ll take, but I think it’ll be worth it to consider it as an option, and hopefully finally end these long, drawn out hiatuses with short bursts of uploads in-between. HOPEFULLY. Building habits was never my strong suit, so please bear with me while I figure this out in what will probably be the most hectic upload schedule in this comics history, which is: no schedule at all.

From now on (until the end of Act 1), I’ll upload pages when they’re ready, and depending on how the weeks go and how complex the page is, they could be weeks or days apart from one another. Hell, some might even take a month to finish if school stuff gets REALLY hectic (god knows Hellish Exam Week number 1 and number 2 won’t be giving me much time to work on the comic), but I’m determined to do this. I want to be able to put my all into this project again!!

(And hopefully finish Act 1 by the end of this semester…)

TL;DR: College is giving me life lessons I didn’t expect, and because of them I’ve decided to give myself a non-existent upload schedule for Dread Not: Pages will be posted when they’re ready, and the spacing between pages could wildly vary depending on circumstances and the actual complexity of the page itself.

As always, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient!

In all honesty there's no big dramatic reason this time around. I've just slowly lost drive to work on Dread Not as often and as thoroughly as I used to be able to. As I said in one of my previous posts (that sounded suspiciously like this one), I want to focus on other projects as well. One of those is my personal art blog, which I've neglected even though I've had art on the backburner that I've been meaning to post for AGES. Kingdomrune is another one of those, where I have shit I could post that I just... never did. Dread Not takes a lot of time and I miss being able to dedicate that time to consuming media instead of just grinding and trying to produce my own. One of the most important things to do as an artist is to broaden your horizons and take in as much art as you can, to diversify and expand what you know and what you can make. But, when all day every day I'm just sitting and drawing my own thing, it's like I have tunnel vision and my creative resources run dry. It's starting to feel weirdly soulless on my end, because I don't feel nearly half the inspiration to make the pages as I did when the big hiatus ended. It's all dependent on time and exposure, and I can only crunch for so long before it starts to feel damaging to me instead of fun and creatively fulfilling.

So what does this mean, practically speaking? Well, for one, I'm spacing out the page upload for the rest of Act 1, as previously mentioned. I'm well aware this will kill the pacing and it'll drag out longer than it theoretically needs to, but I'd even rather that than trying to rush out a page in the Two Days I have free this week (yeah, ONLY two days free out of the ENTIRE week. Don't ask me why it's not even my fuckin' fault this time). If pages become even more scarce than 1 page per 2 weeks, blame it on college. I'm getting new subjects and I don't even know the class schedule yet. Concerning Act 2 though, I'll be changing the structure of the pages from their core. I'll be switching to a different drawing software (probably Krita, suck my dick Photoshop) so it'll take some getting used to. I can't even promise bonus content or anything during the necessary break between acts because of that shift in software happening, I've never done a massive technical move like this. However, it'll allow me to, not only work on Dread Not better, but expand my art overall, so it's definitely worth it. I've wanted to get into animation for YEARS and Krita seems like an okay place to start (the gif on this post WAS made with Photoshop, but shitty gifs are about all I can make as animations in Photoshop). Act 2's style will, predictably, differ heavily from Act 1 and (with how long writing the dialogue alone for it is taking), it might end up being Longer than Act 1, too. Visually, it'll probably be something like cleaned up and coloured sketches, with simpler colour palettes and simpler (big airquotes) visuals overall, and it'll speed up the process and possibly allow me to post more than one page at a time. Possibly. That's not a promise.

I'm sorry if that's disappointing to anyone, but I physically can't make myself continue the current artstyle across all acts. It's just not feasible.

For those curious about the FARTHER future of Dread Not, I have plans to turn Act 3 into a series of fics rather than full comic pages, and something maybe a bit more insane for Act 4. I don't have everything figured out yet, and I don't want to make any false promises or give any grand ideas I won't be able to commit to, since only time will tell how my creativity will flow years from now. If you all want more content from me specifically, again I'm planning on reviving my art tumblr like a half buried zombie, and you'll probably see more there than you bargained for once I actually get into the habit of posting things. If you're mayhaps interested in my original stuff, keep your eyes peeled for a guy called Duro, I might start posting about him some time soon.

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