Hii! I absolutely love your cat and skele-dog AUs, but if you had to choose, which is your favorite?
Hello! Ah, thank you so much for liking those IFs 😚
Hmm, I really don’t think there’s much of a difference between them for me. I had so much fun drawing and imagining both of them, and so many people enjoyed them together with me, so they both became really fond memories. That’s why it’s genuinely hard to choose just one.
With the Cat Dream IF or Cat Night IFs, I really love the fact that the twins care for each other so deeply. In canon, they’re in a situation where they can never truly coexist peacefully, so the idea of them openly caring for each other like that is something that can only really exist within an IF setting.
I also really enjoy thinking about ideas for the other characters too. Not just the twins, but imagining what kinds of cats—or even what kinds of people—the others would be is really fun to me. Since it’s closer to a modern setting, it can be a little difficult to decide where the boundaries of the setting are, but at the same time, that familiarity makes a lot of ideas come naturally.
The Cat IFs are overall fairly peaceful settings, so I also like that most of them are in relatively calm and comfortable situations there. The multiverse is such a chaotic place, so peaceful everyday life feels precious.
Of course, the Skeledoggy IF isn’t exactly all that harsh either! After all, if there are cats over there, there are dogs over here too.
The Skeledoggies are still living in the chaotic multiverse, being raised by Nightmare, who loves negativity. But Nightmare doesn’t really expect anything special from them—he simply prefers managing them. (And for the record, making them bite Dream is basically just a dog version of playtime and a walk combined. Ah, poor Dream 🫠)
Nightmare tends to choose the kind of response that best suits the individual in front of him. He ignores Killer’s antics, acknowledges Dust’s wariness, turns a blind eye to Horror’s kindness, and calms Cross’s confusion. Since he treats them as possessions to manage, he values efficiency and always responds in whatever way is necessary.
And, well, the Skeledoggies are dogs, and dogs constantly and shamelessly seek affection. Nightmare understands that affection is something dogs need in order to stay emotionally stable, so awkwardly enough, he lets them stay by his side and pets them from time to time.
In some ways, it goes a bit beyond simple “management” at times, but Nightmare is fundamentally a diligent person. Even back when he lived beneath the tree, he preferred staying there and focusing on his duty as a guardian rather than giving in to his curiosity about the outside world.
Because of that, whenever Nightmare has something he considers his possession, and that possession openly seeks and expresses affection toward him, the atmosphere of the IF tends to become softer than you might expect. In that sense, he gets along better with people who express themselves honestly rather than hiding what they feel.
Anyway, since both IFs revolve around animal themes, the core emotions behind them become the purity, honesty, and attachment animals naturally have. That’s why both settings feel soft in their own ways, while still having very different charms because of their different backgrounds.
So in the end... choosing just one is impossible for me! I actually ended up organizing my thoughts while writing this, but the more I sorted them out, the harder it became to pick. I’m deeply attached to both of them, and since I love animals so much, they’re all just too adorable to me 🥺
At this point, it’s starting to feel a little like asking me to choose between cats and dogs... and whenever I had to choose between two things as a child, I was always the greedy kid who wanted both anyway, haha.
Thank you for the ask, and I hope you have a wonderful day 💕
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