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Jewelweed bejeweled

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Sword of the Sea, the latest game from Giant Squid (ABZU, The Pathless) is out! Scored by the incomparable Austin Wintory. I played the winds on the score, including this giant, custom-commissioned Mayan harmony triple drone flute, and have been so excited to finally share this instrument with everyone! Endless thank yous to Matt Nava and Giant Squid, to Austin for his friendship and artistry, and to Eagle Feather, this incredible instrument's maker. :)

Listen to the album: https://austinwintory.bandcamp.com/album/sword-of-the-sea

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i always thought it was pretty obviously the knight, but then i saw that kris slash theory is quite popular too, so! i'm curious!!

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Swiss Cheese Mono Font by Heirloom

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dinking my oiter

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fat porcelain dollgirl with lovingly filled in cracks for stretch marks

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40 bosses and 200 enemies? Christ alive. No wonder Silksong took so long??

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Remembering I lead a life of extreme privilege (was allowed to drink juice and eat chocolate as a kid)

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many trans people have terrific bird names (jay, wren, raven, robin, piper) but it feels like shorebirds are underexplored territory.

avocet: 7/10 great sound, very elegant. fails the starbucks test

killdeer: 9/10 imagine meeting a killdeer at a party. banger

woodcock: 3/10 probably not worth it but extremely funny bit potential for a trans dude

plover: 10/10 this one's real actually. where are all the plovers

heron: 8/10 you'd get a lot of "hera" but that's good too

dowitcher, godwit: 4/10 but very dark souls

sora: this one's taken actually. sorry.

brant. willet. whimbrel. grebe. we're missing out folks

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It wasn't there 😔

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Kris and Carol want to rewrite the timeline

So, reading this post got me thinking.

Both Spamton and Jevil talked to someone and ended up insane. Seam heard Jevil recounting what he heard and became nihilistic and hopeless.

A popular theory used to be that they were told that they weren't real. They were video game characters. But chapter three revealed that darkners are well aware and accepting the fact that they're based on objects, so I imagine that if someone told them that they're video game characters they'd go "welp, we knew we weren't real anyway so..."

Plus, Seam gets hopeful the more secret bosses you defeat. If they think that there's no point to anything because they're not real, why would the heroes defeating strong enemies even matter to them?

So, we don't know what the Strange Soneone told them but we know that at the very least that Jevil (and by proxy Seam) knows parts of the prophecy. It's reasonable therefore to assume that Spamton was also told parts of the prophecy (likely how he became sucssesful, through knowledge of the future).

So whatever it is that they know, Ralsei has to know it too, and he seems to struggle to cope with it like they do (even if he isn't insane just yet).

Which is why I think that the knowledge that drove them insane is the ending of the prophecy.

The ending of the prophecy therefore:

1. Has to result in "the worlds being saved".

2. Made two (three with Seam) people lose their minds after they found out about it, and caused Ralsei to break down under the pressure of it.

3. Made Susie break a wall in anger and immediately result to denial and defiance.

4. Caused Ralsei to act like he's living on a borrowed time and that Kris and Susie should move on from him.

5. Is something Kris might already know, due to it being revealed at the church dark world, so it might very well being one of the parts of the prophecy that weren't lost to time.

So.... What is it? What can cause such a reaction in so many different people but still result in the worlds being saved?

Well, we do know that deltarune is "a game intended for people who completed undertale".

We know that Toby Fox was "initially hesitant" to add save points in the light world.

We know that us playing deltarune like a video game is diegetic.

We know that determination is not the drive behind saving and loading in here, is independent from your soul and is what all lightners possess that allows them to open dark worlds.

We also know that we can save and load.

If we can trust anything in Ralsei's initial recount of the legend (now that we know that it's an "abridged version"), we know that the heroes are supposed to save the world after a horrible calamity happened. Like. A world ending calamity.

"A terrible calamity would occur.

The sky will run

black with terror

And the land will

crack with fear.

Then, her heart pounding...

The EARTH will draw

her final breath."

Only then, shining with hope... Three HEROES appear at WORLDS' edge.

We know that Gaster wants us to "create a new future with him".

I think that the answer is a reset. But not a simple reset, a rewrite of the entire timeline. Not in the sense of "the world is going to turn into undertale", that'd be weird and not a much better future for everyone involved (darkners being gone and monsters being trapped underground for a millenia.)

But in the sense of preventing Dess from ever dissappearing.

Changing the timeline in a drastic way that will ensure that the adventure of Kris Ralsei and Susie never happens. Maybe even lead to Kris and Susie never getting to the dark world in the first place.

Ralsei wants Kris and Susie to forget him because he knows it's already going to happen. He wants them to make "real friends" because they're likely to find them again after the reset, unlike him who they'll never meet in the new timeline.

What did he tell Tenna? To take comfort in how much happiness he brought the lightners before his time ran out. Because that's what he's trying to do himself. He wants to make them as happy as possible before time will reset and it'll all go away. He thinks that this happiness matters even if it's temporary, but he also thinks that he himself doesn't matter because he won't be able to ensure it stays for the long run, won't be able to fulfill his purpose.

Of course that Jevil and Seam think that nothing matters, all their actions are going to reset anyway. They're going to forget everything. No consequences.

Of course that Spamton wants Kris's soul, we are the ones who are going to cause the rewrite, at least this way he'll get to choose how the new world looks like (or at least that's what he thinks).

And for Kris. Their entire behavior suddenly makes sense.

They live like a zombie, a person who is already gone. Their room is empty, they don't want to go to school, they don't try to make friends before we come, they let us puppeteer them and do whatever the hell we want (except for the weird route and other instances where their loved ones are in danger, which they desperately want to stop because they don't want those horrible stuff to happen to them regardless of resets).

They act like the least determined person out there.

.... Except for when it comes to their plan.

Why did Kris continue with the plan even after what happened to Berdly in the weird route? Why do our choices don't change Kris's actions at the cutscenes at the end of every episode?

Why do they take us back every single time, even though they can do stuff like carry Berdly to the hospital, walk, talk, climb and play the piano for a long time without us?

What is the significance of deltarune being a video game specifically, and one that is intended for people who completed undertale?

Resets.

Kris doesn't believe that they have anything to live for in this timeline. A broken family, a lost friend, years of grief. They stay away from Noelle the same reason why Carol is emotionally distant from her: both believe that they already failed this version of Noelle. That they screwed up so badly, that their only hope for salvation is to get a do-over. A do over where Kris can be the friend she deserves and Carol can be the mother she deserves. A do over where Dess never ends up like this, a way to erase all the pain and create a better future.

This was the plan, to host the power that can reshape the world and manipulate events (the soul) so that a rewrite of the timeline will end up happening, and prevent Dess from ever being lost.

And then Susie came.

And suddenly, against all odds, Kris found a reason to want to stay in this timeline. And then they warmed up to Ralsei and were made to spend time with their childhood friend they kept avoiding because they felt like they didn't deserve her and and and

Fuck. Why did it have to happen? Why did they have to get attached? Everything would have been so much easier if everyone just went through the motions until they can finally get rid of this awful timeline and make a better one.

Why do they want to stay now? They can't stay, Dess is the roaring fucking knight! They don't know how to change her back and they just want everything to go back to the way it used to be. And.

And they promised.

They promised.

So they can't keep this timeline. They have to help it be rewritten. This is how you make a better future.

Even if it means....

That them, Susie and Ralsei will never be friends.

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"what if there was something that could see your every intrusive thought fully revealed and then make you act on them" is really effective horror that I keep circling back to. what if something could lay you bare and draw out the worst of you and make it all real. what if you were proven right that you had been a danger all along because of thought alone. what if you were accused of secretly liking it, wanting it, and you couldn't deny it because you know you provided the option at all

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Dear Sirs.

SCP-682's powers are metatextual. He's unkillable because the story says he is nearly unkillable and no solution would be satisfying. His nickname is 'the very hard to destroy reptile' for rigour's sake. You don't have to be Grant Morrison to put this together.

The solution is to alter the narrative so that there is a means of killing him that is satisfying. Unfortunately, only full-on apocalypse scenarios or the use of SCP-682 as a jobber for an even worse threat would fill that criteria.

So unless you want to unleash something even more tiresome, like the Black Moon or the Scarlet King or the Yellow Submarine or whatever other color-coded doomsday monster you have on tap, you're just wasting jumpsuit filling doing anything at all.

The easy alternative is to simply stop trying to kill him.

Just focus on holding him in the most boring, routine ways possible, rendering him increasingly less interesting and thus reducing the time between stories focused on him and thus, the resulting breaches and disasters.

Or you can do what we did. If you aren't chicken.

Ours wasn't a rotted lizard. It was a sort of mummified horse the size of a 1996 Volkswagen Harlequin, and it was a she, but otherwise same deal. Regeneration. Vat of acid. Mass casualties. Violent opposition to the use of breath mints. Endemic to all life. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

We figured out the how it worked, and we speed-ran the whole concept, hurling that vile beast through a veritable plinko-fall of thousands of extermination tests and controlled rampages until there was literally nothing left to do with the 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse'.

And we trust the populace enough to not lie to them for 'their own good'. Because its funny? Sure. Profitable? Absolutely (don't worry, shareholders!)! But never for 'their own good.'

So we turned those experiments into a 17 season reality television program hosted by Greg Kinnear and force-fed them to a sludge-hungry populace.

There were 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, two different animated spin-offs running at the same time for some reason, four movies starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the horse, an ongoing sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' "acid bath" sour candy flavored yogurt in a tube, a series of increasingly inadequately playtested gameboy cartridges, a 27-issue limited series from Image comics, and adorable plush mummified murder-horse plushes with little suction cups on their red-felt hooves so they can stare balefully out the back of your station wagon at that ASSHOLE Kevin in his souped up Trans AM who does not understand the concept of a safe following distance, and you JUST want to run him off the road with the magno-lifters and recreate the scene from Lost Highway with Robert Loggia, but "you can't use the magno-lifters for revenge" because it's "against OSHA regulations" and "technically assault!"

And once the first shipment of 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' Funko Pops hit store shelves, the creature's cultural cache cratered so hard that it became a parody of itself so predictable it's "containment" is now a Universal Studios attraction with two failed executions and a containment breach each night, with double shows on Saturdays.

Now, it was a rocky ride getting there, especially for Utah (projections say you'll get those House seats back in two, maybe three, generations at most, don't you worry!) but we've proven that even if it isn't killable, you can, in fact, beat a dead horse.

Hope this helps.

Humbert, Outreach Liaison Melinoë Laboratories "Hoc non veniet ad nos mordax"

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My personal hc design of susie.... susie i care abt u sm....

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With the rousing success of princesses and knights, the next big pseudo-medieval sexual fixation will be: [draws name from a big box] Barber-Surgeons! Let's give it up for barber surgeons!

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giving myself a 20min time limit