I'm gonna be doing another Soupy Tips again, for those that stuck around long enough for when I used to do these types of posts.

I'm constantly seeing the term "swap" everyday in this fandom. All the cool kids are doing swap takes nowadays. I've thought of making a Underswap take myself tbh. I come across people's idea for their swap takes almost everyday, but most of them don't really catch my interest for one reason or another, so here's a post of recommendations to make your swap take more interesting to your audience!

Although I'm mainly taking about swap takes, this could apply for most AU takes in general.

Name:

The name to any product is important and is what will get people to recognize your AU. A catchy name will have people remember your AU for a long time, and not just for swap takes either.

For example of really cool sounding and memorable names, I'm sure most people have heard of AUs like Inverted Fate, Undertoad, Dreemurr Reborn, Undertale Red, etc. So why am I bringing this up? Well, most AU takes usually go for names like "CD!Underfell", "QWE!Underswap", etc. and, to me, these are kinda just ugly names and aren't that memorable (except for, say, TS!Underswap, but that has a lot more going for it than just its name), especially word salads like "User!SwapSwapShift" and names like it. While this is fine, I think we can do better.

So, what are my recommendations? Well I'd say just ditch the habit of "Username!AU Name" and go for something that sounds more cool and official. Names like "Undertale: Fallen Angel", "Colossusfell", "Swapped Habits", etc. are way more unique and easily memorable. These names sound like maybe DLCs to the original Undertale, which I think would be really cool, which is why I went with the more cooler name "Undertale: True Genocide" and not just "Soup!Genocide Route" or whatever.

But you might be asking "How will people know I'm making an Underswap take if I don't use the 'Username!AU Name' format?" Well you don't necessarily have to remove Underswap in the name. If you were making a Swapfell take, you could still do something like "Underswap: Unforgiven", or stuff like that. Also, descriptions exists for a reason (even tho 90% of people don't read them lmao).

Interests:

When people are just starting to make their swap take, they'll usually show off some character designs or their swap role list. Personally, I'm not that interested when someone shoves me a role list and call it a day, no story or anything. You're not gonna catch most people's interest purely by a role list. That's just a bunch of texts on a screen like the text you're reading from me rn! Character designs are a little bit more interesting to see, but without context or story, they'd probably look like a new AU to me. If you're making a game or comic, I'd probably wait till you have enough footage or images to show off to people.

Gimmick:

To add onto interests, gimmicks! Your swap take should have a certain gimmick or amount of polish to make it stand out from the rest of the other swap takes. For example, TS!Underswap is a really ambitious and original swap take to the point where it doesn't even look like a swap take! It has twists and turns and subverting expectations around every corner, which is why I love it so much. Now, asking everyone to be a TS!Underswap would be way too demanding and out of reach for most small fangame teams.

So what are my recommendations to make your swap take more unique? Well, maybe you could add new locations, characters, story, etc. You could also swap elementals, like instead of Asgore using fire magic, he could use water magic!

(mock concepts of what my swap take would look like if I were to make one. instead of temmie, it's an echo flower)

Really, the sky's the limit in terms of what creative things you could add to your swap take!

Summary:

People are coming out with swap takes almost everyday and it's really cool to see how imaginative this community can be, but some of these swap takes could use just a bit more creativity and ambition, so I made this post so people can have a guiding hand into how to make their take just a little bit more interesting. Don't take my words as fact tho. If you enjoy what you're already doing, power to you! Sorry if you don't find the post helpful btw. I only really care about the people that DO find this helpful haha. I'm not trying to convert people or anything, just wanna help the community be a little more creative y'know.