If you had the opportunity to rewrite dementia any way you wanted, what would you do?
that is a really good question! since I am having a bit of a hiccup warming up to her.
it's bc I require emotional depth for me to be interested in a character.
which I'm absolutely sure there is a lot of in her... but we've just not seen enough to work with. I like mentally disturbed characters that are struggling more outwardly, like Flug or Miss Heed. I think it's less of a writing flaw and more CN/Warner holding them back from releasing the stuff as it was roughly planned probably. maybe if we had the rest of the 1st season we'd already be much further in her character development.
there's core emotions that I NEED to see in a character to get hooked, which is fear, regret and grief.
none of which we've seen in her yet. nothing genuine that's not caused by the brainwash she stands under.
the most conflicting thing we've seen her do is having tears well up in her eyes after Flug hit her which didn't come off as physical pain, but emotional. that's interesting, but too short of a moment.
I feel like anything I'd "change" about her are things that are canonically planned, we just have to wait.
I think what's missing in her rn is self-awareness.
without her artificial obsession with Black Hat, she is nobody. maybe she'll have a crisis later about exactly that; not knowing who she is as a person. she should. if and when she snaps out of that she's wasted a large chunk of her life under his influence.
let's say it like that, if they don't start to show clearer signs of character development in the remaining S1 episodes, that's what I'd change. pick up the pace a bit. there's more obvious foreshadowing about literally every other character than about her. they really keep her backstory a secret.
there's so much to work with. why is her name Demencia? what's her real name? why did she arrive there "barefoot"? why is she better at math than Flug? why did she react so silenced when confronted with her mortality? was it fear? what does she truly fear? what or who is important to her outside of the hypnosis? does she have a real goal, for herself? smth must have led her to Black Hat... did he lure her or did she have such a terrible life before all this that she saw no other use to her existence than to turn to him?
you already know this drawing but I think I never posted it here
however I'd like to change 1 thing about her visual design for sure.
Please give her muscles. like... all the time.
I've criticized often before that I find the female characters in the show slowly drift too much into one and the same mould, their silhouettes are all the same, since Miss Heed; every relevant female character looks like her body type (...and some newer ones even in the face.) they could start diverting from that by giving Demencia muscles (not just in promo illustrations or closeup shots of her flexing, I feel like they could easily always draw a visible biceps on her)
that's not too hard to animate either, I mean they animated Sunblast and Airlock and that whole 5th episode, and it can't be harder than all the striped and spiked elements in Dem's design.