#the malware puppeteer

[cobalt-axolotl]

Mavrick’s human form

This form is only seen by the foundation during his interactions with the more easily scared scp’s this form also affects his behavior as he’ll speak as if he was an average human being

And yes he’s supposed to look feminine as dr. Remi (the main doctor he based this form off of) is trans man

[mals-puppets]

*introduction.*

*Goggles maniacal laughter can be heard, echoing across the void him and the other puppets reside in.*

*In his usual upbeat tone, he introduces,* "Hello, everyone! I am Goggles. Welll, not really, but close enough! Anyway, welcome!"

*He smiles, his sharp teeth visible. Rather than a regular tongue, he has what look like six small, black tentacles in his mouth. When he closes his mouth, one slightly sticks out, giving him a permanent blep expression.*

[dracl-dragon]

i am. So tempted to make an rp blog for Mal's "puppets"

They're just silly lil guys

@itsgirlcraft

[frog707]

GitHub users beware

GitHub is one of the best behaved online communities I've encountered. The vast majority of its users seem aligned with the platform's purpose: sharing open-source software.

GitHub a large community, so it's hardly surprising it would attract some abusers. So far, I've not encountered the ghost network mentioned in the above Wired article. Something to watch out for.

[rotten-machinery]

The Impersonator was created to be able to hook up to the structural network (via several chips in it's brain) to replace the puppet for a little bit (while the puppet gets taken to another part of the structure to get some maintenance). It's creator was killed by a malware attack even before the test trials began, causing The Impersonator to lose it's purpose and wander off. It now wanders around other iterators' districts, searching for something to mimic

[creativecapybara]

For Never have I ever questions! Pick whichover one ^w^ (If idk your iterators are still able to be connected to their cans or are just loose somewhere so I came up with questions for both scenarios.)

Never Have I ever... Sent harmless/annoying malware to another iterator Asked for a new puppet paintjob or robes (like, asked the ancients to change the color/look of their puppet) Physically fought someone before (and not in a playful way) Purposely made someone cry Caught feelings for an ancient Fallen up the stairs :)

Ooo lots of good options hmmm

[baenyth]

We need more Danganronpa characters as evil groups, but not the Ultimate Despair or its remnants. Too abstract. Too bland. Fuck despair. Fuck Junko. I'm either killing her off or she doesn't exist. Danganronpa villain groups completely distanced from the Ultimate Despair:

Makoto Naegi is the charismatic head of a dictatorship. Perhaps he believes this is what's best for the world. Or he just wants a throne to sit on. This is an alternative timeline, maybe he's evil here. Either way, he managed to rope in his 14 other classmates into joining him in his empire. Byakuya uses the Togami Corporation to clench Makoto's rule and fund projects wherever he can. He's also a consultant, alongside Yasuhiro Hagakure. Kyoko Kirigiri is the head of the espionage department, with Chihiro as the second-in-command and head of data management. Kiyotaka manages the police force, acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Mondo, Sakura, Aoi, and Mukuro all work in Makoto's army. Sayaka, Leon, Hifumi, and Toko work in the entertainment (or in other words, propaganda,) division. Genocider is allowed to kill any pretty boys the espionage department lets her. Celestia rules over her own chunk of land as gothic lolita queen and is arguably the loosest link, but ultimately still abides by Makoto's laws.

The Danganronpa V3 cast has been corrupted into animalistic monsters, think Steven Universe. Gonta's body has been converted into a flying hive for all manner of bugs, all sorts of flyers coming from his eyesockets and mouth carrying centipedes, spiders, and other flightless bugs so they all can feed and bring food back to the husk that was once a gentleman. Kirumi now resembles a marble statue with a blindfold over her eyes and a clock on her backside, where her four arms and four legs move in orderly, yet seemingly random fashions. If you come across her, you have to play a game of following her increasingly complex commands, often akin to a game of Simon Says, or risk searing throbbing pain. Kiibo is one of the more threatening ones. With his body inorganic and unable to be distorted like the others, his mind was merely warped into malware that can possess anything with a computer inside it. This includes cell phones, calculators, thermostats, cars with built-in GPSes and cameras, etc. His body, the source of the malware, is still unknown. A two-faced gorgon obsessed with creating rudimentary-yet-effective deathtraps. A gorgeous and colorful false angel. A blob of goo that somehow knows how to use various machinery. Perhaps the three survivors are akin to the Crystal Gems here, survivors in a different sense here, the ones fighting their former friends for the sake of everyone else.

Ruruka Ando as the queen of what is essentially candyland, with Sonosuke Izayoi as her knight in sweet, delicious, and surprisingly durable armor. All citizens in her expanding country are given free sweets to devour, and those who don't are punished for their insolence.

Finally, the cast of Super Danganronpa 2 are a team of mercenaries. Evil goons for hire, as that's what they've been typecast as at this point. Maybe life has just been really harsh on them and NezumiVA was right. Or maybe this is similar to canon, where they got puppeted into evil and were eventually freed, only to annihilate their reputation by continuing to pose as villains, effectively pigeonholing themselves into evil from society's eyes. As for what they could do: Kazuichi could build a robotic army or just machines for the lower mooks to ride on. Sonia, Fuyuhiko, and Twogami could all rule conquered provinces in the empire. Nekomaru could command minions while Akane and Peko act as elite troops. Ibuki could too, considering the lethality of her music, or she could act in espionage alongside Mahiru and Hiyoko, considering her hearing skills. Gundham could add various animals to the armada. Teruteru can produce food for the army. Mikan is literally a medic. Izuru Kamakura lives on, and is the Ultimate Ultimate. Possibly even more, considering the timeline. Nagito Komaeda is the equivalent of one of those really small cylinders of play-doh that are wider than they are tall. I can't imagine Chiaki being in the group, however. Either way, I can imagine this quirky miniboss squad having various unique interactions with our heroes, whoever they may be. I'd imagine Nekomaru would befriend the heroes in an odd way, being supportive of their strength and a fair fighter despite being on the villain's side, while Teruteru would repulse our heroes for being a sexual harasser, for example.

Also @goshdangronpa I want you to look at this, girlie. Read it all. Soak it up.

[ideas-of-immortality]

Prologue: Infection

"In the end all that will be left is a broken vessel!"

Cover Page for Almost Human!AU

[Next]

[AU Explanation and Character Sheet]

Art Talk Below Cut

Okay doing the sxf was so much fun holy shit, actually surprised by how nice Feedback's death looks. I'm so grateful Procreate has some god tier pre-download sxf brushes fr.

If you're wondering what the motif behind them is, it's Malware's face... I didn't want to draw him fully, I was originally gonna have his hands surrounding them, but I think I'll save the puppeteer motif for a different chapter cover.

In the very back I wrote in Binary Code "Error Virus Detected"

Fun fact every main color in this is directly pulled from Omniverse screencaps, so they're show accurate. If anyone wants me to make a palette with the basic colors I use lmk.

Genuinely surprised by how well Feedback came out, man I suck at drawing bodies, so drawing this was a really cool challenge. I'm looking forward to developing this AU :D

[moth-yknowtheartist]

hey guys! Trying something a little outside what I usually post- so excited to share my process here, so please let me know any feedback at all (seriously, should I buy a new microphone?), I'd love to hear from you!!! and for the outro, please give Acher and Gale their well-earned props for their cover of Chase Petra's "Paranormal".

Posted: January 9th, 2024.

TRANSCRIPT:

???:

"To run o’er better water hoists her sails the little vessel of my genius now, which leaves behind her such a cruel sea; and of that second Realm I ’ll sing, wherein the human spirit purifies itself, and groweth worthy to ascend to Heaven. But here let Poetry arise from death, since, holy Muses, yours I am; and let Calliopë, here somewhat higher soaring, with those sweet tones accompany my song, whose power the miserable Magpies felt so keenly, that of pardon they despaired. The oriental sapphire’s tender hue, now gathering in the sky’s unclouded face, as far as to the first of circles pure, began again to give mine eyes delight, when forth I issued from the deadly air, which with its gloom had filled mine eyes and heart. The beauteous planet which incites to love, veiling with light the Fishes in her train, was causing all the eastern sky to laugh."

[TONE FOR A LINE NO LONGER IN SERVICE]

WHObris Icarian or

Daedalian,

am I Pygmalion or? (APHRODITE)

same Talos told again,

runs 0.333333(FREE)3333333333 along the Shore…

enter: Labyrinth.

(overlapping) MOTH:

[improvised starting recording, getting situated getting comfortable speaking to the mic]

> hey everyone! For anyone new to my blog, welcome, this is usually not the norm- mostly I post about puppet history and tech and stuff and I make art sometimes, on rare occasions my robot doppelganger creation takes control of my blog to scam my followers into their murder scheme while I'm busy playing arcade games in hell?

> for any long time followers and mutuals, hi, you're probably used to this by this point. Thanks for sticking with it.

> today, though, I'm starting on a special little project, something a bit closer to my usual tech and malware posting. You guys remember the robot doppelganger creation, right? Well, part of the… issue with them has been a malware infection originating around January of 2023, so- close to a year ago, now? We theorize this anomaly is the reason they've gained sentience and autonomy far beyond what I could have possibly created, why they've persisted so long past their planned funeral-robot lifespan, and why they started on their whole, um… attempted murder spree.

> that being said, I welcome you all to Log 0 of the Acher Malware Remediation project!! These audio logs will serve as my way to log everything I find and try as I figure out what they're infected with, what vulnerabilities this malware exploits and what its payload and impact looks like, and how to safely remove and resolve it. It also works to like… hold me accountable you know? Um- I've kind of been procrastinating on actually starting on this, like I keep talking about it to everyone and like 'ohhh that malware Acher's got I'm definitely gonna get on that and fix that soon' but honestly I've kind of been dreading it because I'm not super experienced and they're a whole person now, so like if I fuck it up it's kind of the equivalent of your hand slipping during brain surgery and OOPS surprise lobotomy!!!

[deep breath and sigh]

> I'm trying to be… more responsible. More careful. I've fucked up enough people's lives through not thinking things through, and- but if I never get this done, that's also irresponsible, letting this infection happen was why so many bad things happened in the first place. So no more procrastinating!!!!! I'm doing this, and I'm posting it publicly on the internet so that everyone can judge me until I finish it!!!!

> to give myself some structure here, and to use the hours and hours of A+ Core 1 and 2 studying that I'm never gonna get back, I'm going to model my investigation and remediation off of CompTIA's 7 steps of malware removal and 6 steps of the troubleshooting methodology. It's basically like the scientific method of IT? Those steps are, respectively-

Identify and research malware symptoms, and Identify the problem. I have a couple different places to look for this- one is obviously inside Acher's system itself, seeing if I can run some diagnostics or observe the malware's behavior to get an idea of what it is, how it works, what it resembles? If I can grab a sample, I can also run that through VirusTotal or something, figure out the malware family, and from there figure out how it's usually dealt with. I can also try and monitor network traffic in WireShark, see if it's communicating with any kind of command and control? But besides those technical steps, I also have the very helpful resource of Tumblr posts made around the time of infection, people I know who were around when it originally happened- those are gonna be huge in figuring out the situation leading up to the infection. Never overlook the human element, people!!

Quarantine the infected system, and Establish a theory of probable cause. The latter is gonna be based on whatever I find in the last step, and the former… should have been done ages ago, but listen, there's only so much a person can do from hell!!! Still, quarantining Acher while I start trying to actually remove things is going to be helpful as far as making sure it doesn't just plant itself in her system again.

Disable system restore in Windows and backups, and Test the theory to determine the cause. The latter is gonna be the most applicable here. Acher doesn't really have… backups? I'm sorry!!! I was planning on him being single use way way in the future, I didn't think I'd have to think about longevity!!!! … But at least it saves me a step here!

Remediate the infected system, and Establish a plan of action and implement a solution. This is the brain surgery part, this is the bit I'm dreading the most, but… assuming I do the last steps right, this will be easy. … These steps of malware removal aren't actually considered, like, best practice, because you can never really be sure you've removed everything. The actual best practice is going scorched earth entirely, assuming you have a backup of anything important, and then just starting fresh from a new OS install or a fresh image. That's… not an option here. Something that hasn't really left my mind since I committed to this project is the worry that, like, I can't remove the malware without removing Acher, who Acher currently is? I mean, I'm pretty sure the infection is part of the reason they actually evolved so much past their original code and developed a personality, independent wants and likes and dislikes and… I'm really worried I can't kill this parasite without killing Acher too. Or, hm, does that make it a parasite or is that more symbiosis?… I'm overcomplicating my metaphors whatever. Acher's being a pretty good sport about this, all things considered, I'm surprised they're actually letting me do this, so… I want to be really careful here. If I can't remove the malware without hurting them in the process, then I figure something else out. I can't afford to mess up here.

Assuming everything else went according to plan, Schedule scans and run updates, and Verify full system functionality and implement preventative measures. Basically fix the mistakes that led to this all in the first place, make sure they don't happen in the future.

Re-enable system restore on Windows and backups, and Document findings, actions, and outcomes. I guess I'm already documenting throughout the process, so I guess I'm getting ahead of this one? See, look, I don't procrastinate everything.

Educate end user. I'm not exactly sure who counts here in this case. Am I the end user, maybe I'm the one who's supposed to have the learning experience here? That would make sense, but also I'm the one learning throughout this whole thing so again I'm kind of already getting ahead of that. Is it supposed to be Acher, maybe? I dunno, I'll get a better idea of it once I figure more out about how the infection happened.

> thanks to everyone listening! Next time, tune in for step one- research time! Also, let me know how my audio is? I did a couple test recordings before I committed to this one and I swear I kept ending up with little bits of corruption or weird background noise. Maybe I need a new microphone.

> cue outro!

[outro does not play; start of a different, candid audio clip]

MOTH:

> [startled noise] JESUS. acher it's 3 am.

ACHER:

i donT sleep. You doNT sleep.

MOTH:

> yeah, but- but gale's supposed to be, so I try to be quiet-

ACHER:

SORRY. couldnT get A thought out Of my head. dO yo.U reMEmber th.e deTAILS of my C.ode?

MOTH:

> [groggy] .... uh, maybe? It's been a while since I... why? why are you doing the ryder thing?

ACHER:

[silence] couldnT get A thought out Of my head. hopeD you could eLUCID.ate.

MOTH:

> you're being weird.

ACHER:

I feel finE?

MOTH:

> okay. ... actually, can you come to the garage? I've been meaning to ask you about stuff anyway.

ACHER:

surE.

[cobalt-axolotl]

Well GET SOMEONE TO VELVET! N O W

Accurate representation of the Future if you dont^

Vel: I’ll ask korsvir.

Mavrick: NO!

Vel: he says no

[ben-101-rewrite]

So how did the other Ben's deal with their respective Zy'Skayrs? Like has Ben 23 dealt with him?

For all the Alt Bens their story with Zs'skayr depends on what Zs'skayr is up to in their timeline. I can sum up ideas I would have for alt Zs'skayr in each timeline

-Gwen 10- He's basically the same as the prime timeline, but now Gwen has to deal with him, sadly.

-Ben 23- Zy'skayr 23 never got into the omnitrix, instead he's been in a constant war/fight with Vilgax and his empire. I mentioned elsewhere that Vilgax 23 is just a dude trying to run his kingdom, so here he is expanding his empire against someone no one really likes, hoping to take control of the Anur System and help it in his own way. Of course, Zy'skayr does not like that one bit.

-Ben 10k- Similar to his Vilgax, he killed Zy'skayr a long while ago, another situation where a villain pushed things too far. Though thankfully not to the same degree as Vilgax had.

-No Watch- With no omnitrix, Zs'skayr mostly spent his time trying to cure his boredom elsewhere, and partly running his kingdom. He did have an encounter with this timeline's version of Azmuth, and loves to bring it up to rub it in his face.

-Omni Ben- Zs'skayr's escape from the watch was a little more complicated, and he knows he can't exactly possess Ben easily due to him being the omnitrix itself. But he finds Omni Ben to be fascinating, seeing how even a piece of tech can become so alive. He loves to see how Ben ticks, even via unpleasant means.

-Jen 10- The same as his prime counterpart, but now a female called Zs'feear. Still an awful being.

-Julie 10- Being that his timeline from escaping the watch happens during their version of the hybrid war, he tries to turn the tables in his favor by corrupting some DNAs and even a couple of highbreeds with corrodium. He also loves to torment Julie regarding her kindness and soft side.

-Sentient Omnitrix & Ben- Zs'skayr finds the whole thing interesting, and finds entertainment having discussions with the Omnitrix, finding ways to push her buttons. He knows very well she would be willing to kill him, but enjoys walking on the thin line.

-Rooters Ben- There was an entire situation where Zs'skayr infiltrated the Rooters, and it has left him as being high on the Rooters' hunting list. But he always finds a way to escape, living out in the Null Void to spread his own influence.

-Eon- Like everyone in his timeline, dead.

-Bad Ben- A soft, kind, and wandering ectonurite, having never fit in his monstrous planet of people, failing to keep them under his ruling as he didn't have it in him. He tried to possess Ben and the watch in hopes to gain power to do the right thing.

-Mad Ben- The Anur System got taken over by Vilgax a long while ago, but Zs'skayr slipped through the cracks and now wanders, doing his own thing, engaging with the chaos around him. While he does miss being king, he's not burdened enough to do much about it beyond screwing with Vilgax wherever he goes.

-Negative Ben- He decided to help Azmuth, becoming one of his assistance during the creation of the omnitrix, though it was clear he wasn't a great person either. Something sinister with him going behind the scenes, seeming to prefer using words to mentally mess with people, including Ben.

-Benzarro- Fused with Ben during a possession attempted gone wrong. He still calls himself Zs'skayr, but it's clear it's not exactly him anymore. Having a mix of him and Ben's personalizes.

-Malware Ben- Ben went to Zs'skayr once in a desperate attempt to try and get help removing Malware, and while Zs'skayr decided to give it a go due to being amused by Ben's pleading, he didn't calculate on Malware just storing him back into the omnitrix with high security measures in place.

-Forever Knight Ben- He watches the Knights and Vilgax's empire at war with each other, along with others involved, and does a lot of puppeting behind the scenes. He rarely shows himself, and people didn't know how involved he was for a long while.

-Fusion Ben- He is stuck within Ben's fusion, and has been trying to escape for a long while, however it seems his background influence makes things worse for him and Ben.

-Ultra Ben- It seems he's gone into hiding since catching word of Ben killing many of his villains, no one knows where he went, though there have Ben rumors and people thinking they see him, with Ben often investigating.

-Light Magic Ben- Something old, something clearly not a normal alien, Zs'skayr seems to be something similar to Dagon, but strangely there are no books or writing on him anywhere. He just merely exists, living in the shadows of Ledgerdomain.

[dracl-dragon]

Random thing about Mal

He canonically has an internet access :]

Occasionally he gets his internet privileges revoked by Puppet Goggles-

[marshmellopie]

YOU THERE

Give me your spamton headcanons! Any kind!

loki i love you so much you don't know how much i've been wanting to share my headcanons oh my GOD [scans over my 20+ page headcanon doc]

putting it under the cut because it's a lot of random stuff, i didn't categorize anything so there might be whiplash between everything:

– Five feet tall, previously 5'10 when he was still an Addison. I made Puppet Spam was 4'5 for the longest time, but I decided to say fuck it and make him taller. Still short in terms of Cyber City residents though, I like to imagine normal Addisons are around 6ft.

– I sometimes forget to draw it and I can't really animate it consistently, but his knuckles are constantly bruised because he keeps punching things whenever he's angry. Experiences really severe temper tantrums/outbursts and usually resorts to violence.

– Do not touch his fucking hair if he doesn’t know you. He’ll legitimately plan your murder if you cut any of it off– and that’s not a hyperbole. He can’t grow it back and his hair is his pride and joy, so he will genuinely track you down and rip your goddamn soul out of your chest. It's also permanently black (besides the grey but that's from stress), he changed his coding when he was famous to have black hair. Could've been reversible, but some things kinda stuck after he fucked himself up and became a doll.

– Weird mixture of Addison and mannequin. Mysteriously fell incredibly ill with a virus that was destroying his coding after his phone went dead silent, and became desperate to the point of converting his remaining data into an inanimate object. Kind of like converting a PDF into a JPEG with the compressed quality and all. Kinda iffy with this one and not really canon-inspired, I swap between him gradually and suddenly turning into a puppet. Used to base it off the Acid Theory but I'm tryna be creative sjfkdsjf he did probably fall in/get pushed a few times but it didn't burn him to the point of no return, it definitely stung though

– Blurry vision in both eyes because he had the audacity to peek into the Shadow Crystal multiple times. Hacked his glasses to somewhat correct it, but it only works to a certain extent.

– Talks through a voice box. He really doesn't need to move his mouth at all to speak and has limited range of motion (he can't close his mouth all the way and has no tongue), but he tries to purely out of habit.

– gayest man in cyber city

– Eats basically anything. From spaghetti-code to cardboard, his body is kind of forced to digest all of it, but it obviously hurts him if it's not supposed to be eaten.

– Sometimes doesn't recognize his own reflection.

– Riddled with viruses for so long that he probably wouldn't ever be able to get rid of them. He could probably minimize them if he got treatment, but only to an extent. They're a permanent part of him now.

– His nose is simultaneously the strongest and weakest part of his body. Either pierces through metal or bends like a bendy straw depending on if you throw him or just lightly poke it.

– Terrifyingly amazing aim. Can throw a pipis at a specific target without much thought. His pipis explode.

– Calmed down a bit as the years went on (because he lost hope LMAO), which isn't saying much considering he's still extremely rabid. Was extremely volatile when he first decided to give up the good life and live in the dumpster. Frequently tried to break into the mansion, probably stole a few cars, mugged a few Plugboys, picked fights with other malware on the streets. He still continues to do these things, of course, but to a lesser degree.

– Spiteful cunt. Wrong him once and he'll never forget your name. Rarely apologizes even if he's in the wrong.

– Can't say names properly unless he's being completely serious.

– Upholds his end of most deals, but words himself carefully so that if what he has to bring to the table isn't up to par with what the other person asked of him (which is 99% of the time), he can easily swindle his way out of it. No refunds on the sword. It's broken? I told you that. Cut anything, two pieces. You heard me clearly, and you obviously had no qualms with it from what I could tell. (Except he'd say that in a really fucked up and more condescending way.)

– Constantly hears static, but it grows and fades depending on his mood.

– Laughs at the most inconvenient times. Someone's threatening him? He'll chuckle. He's nervous? A little giggle. He just received some devastating news? Roaring laughter.

– Very unreliable narrator and storyteller. Tends to exaggerate things that have happened to him (doesn't mean that he didn't go through some wild shit though).

– Doesn't celebrate his birthday, for obvious loneliness and conflicting self-resentment reasons. Also because he doesn't keep track of the time. He don't know what day it is fam.

– Can mimic voices really well, though he still retains that bitcrushed/noisy overlay and the ad pop-ups.

– Tends to chew on things occasionally as a nervous habit. He doesn't exactly have a tongue, so he instead picks up random small items scattered around (ie. a pencil) and chews on them. Worst case scenario he just grinds his teeth together.

– Gestures with his hands a lot when he speaks. It literally looks like he's going through an emote hotbar. Also very expressive when it comes to his face, despite rarely being able to frown properly. You can garner a lot about his mood from his glasses.

– Mostly bark over bite. Tends to make empty threats a lot when he's startled in hopes his loudness will be intimidating, but will indeed bite if he needs to… or wants to. Sometimes there’s no bark at all, and he’ll literally bite.

– Has a weird fascination with shiny objects. He steals many things that seem valuable or visually appealing and hoards them in his shop.

– Once you put the KEYGEN into NEO, it takes a little bit for him to actually take over the body because he's transferring his data onto it. Permanently. Even when he becomes small Spamton again, he's permanently linked to the machine now, so he can change into it at will. Technically not at will because he has trouble controlling it, but you get what I mean.

this was insanely long but thank you for letting me ramble <3

[illusion133]

Rain World AU: Eye of Sliver

Since I'm drawing sliver of Straw currently- I might as well share this au with y'all-

In This AU, whoever looked at Sliver before she died, Their puppet would be missing from their structure or They would die too-

Nobody knew why This happened and many Iterators were theorizing on why it happened, for safety purposes they would only contact reach other once a full cycle passed incase it could spread via communication- And one Cycle, Chasing Winds was seen walking and stumbling out of their chambers- Karma flowers growing out of their puppet and their eyes yellow while their pupils represented the Max karma symbol- This caused Iterators to lock down their chambers and any entrances through their cans- but not before Five Pebbles was also infected with this mysterious malware- Together Chasing Winds and Five Pebbles created the Cult of Sliver- Where they try getting the others to join them on their quest to revive Sliver, Both of their methods were horrible and when Unparalleled innocence refused to join- they cut them from their can and brought them to Something- it has the voice of Sliver but it doesn't look like her- now it's up to the 3 remaining Iterators, NSH, SRS, and Lttm to try and reverse this-

any questions-?

[cartoonishlyincorrect]

ok i know im late to the deltarune theory train by like, years now. but also I'm on a kick atm and have a few things I need to throw to the wind before I forget

Pretty sure this is widely agreed upon but Darkners are (in the light world at least) things that Lightners discard. The abandoned classroom hasn't been touched for years, all the Darkners you meet are represented in some way by items found within, and the secret boss is, even within the confines of that abandoned room, even further neglected: the Joker card is almost always the one removed from the deck, and Jevil's locked underneath Card Castle. In Cyber City it's popups and adblockers and long-forgotten malware.

Darkners are the result of Lightners discarding objects.

At the end of an Undertale No Mercy route, the first human confronts the player and encourages them to "erase this pointless world and move onto the next." I'm inclined to be suspicious abt this being "moving onto the next *timeline*" because that only occurs when the player sits on a black screen for, what, ten minutes? It feels like a concession more than anything, so what is this next world? And who are they talking to, specifically?

The Gaster followers are their own can of worms, but I want to focus specifically on Goner Kid, whose dialogue revolves around a "world where everything is exactly the same except you don't exist" before encouraging you to just forget it.

What happens if a Lightner themselves is discarded?

Every soul theory I've seen kinda falls apart at the end of Chapter 2 where Kris, independent of the player, opens a fountain regardless of whether a regular or Snowgrave playthrough was completed. The only conclusion I can come to is that Kris doesn't care about *what* happens during a run, just that it *continues* happening

Do you know what happens before you begin to tell a story? Do you know what happens after the conclusion? Where does everything go in those moments? Does it all just slip between the cracks? Does it disappear? Can it be brought back?

Maybe it can be true that the player is Kris's soul and also that Kris resents the player's actions because they're not their own. We only have their background as far as we're told it exists, and what does a background provide, really? If nothing else, I'd wager at least characterization and justification of actions

If I tell you a story and let you know that a character has a soul, does it become real in that moment, or has it always been that way? Does the story begin for us, but continue for everyone else in this world I've made for you?

Are we interrupting something?

What if you woke up one day knowing damn well that, despite everyone around you saying that this woman is your mother, this is your home, this is your school, these are the people you have been going to class with and this is your town and this is... you know it isn't true. And it can't be true, because you only began existing this morning, deep down you know it, as much as it pains you to admit to yourself, you understand at your very core that this existence you are living only started that morning and no one else seems to acknowledge it.

And then something else starts moving for you, puppeting you around, with some indiscernible mission in mind. If it stops, you won't exist anymore. You know this, you don't know how, but you do. It doesn't seem malevolent, not yet at least, it just wants to poke around your neighborhood, meet your friends, take you on an adventure.

It wants to understand your world. It wants adventure.

Something's just here for a story, it seems.

You go to watch a play. The curtains fall. Where do the characters, not the actors, the characters, go? Are they all dead now?

You go to watch a movie. The credits roll. Are they all dead now?

You go to read a book. The pages end. Are they all dead now?

You go to play a game.

You'll slip between the cracks if they stop looking.

[paradoxbeta]

it is time for the second goober. say hi to Narrowing Inversion Executed Right

this absolute goof and her local group were built by ancients that basically viewed iterators as tools and who immediately for the most part ditched the whole gang because "oh hey we're making some way way newer ones". basically yeah her ancients were shitheads to her and her fellow puters in general. also they did some fun things like almost half-dissecting NIER specifically for free parts for aforementioned newer iterators. anyway end result she becomes avid ancient hater and after witnessing some more iterators that went through similar experiences comes to the conclusion that all traces of the ancients as a species and civilization should be wiped from existence altogether. iterators who like ancients, mass ascension survivor ancients and just about anything that gets in the way are also on the delete list.

hacking enthusiast and generator of malware that game ends your brain activity and or messes with your processing in general. also is in a friendgroup of like 3 iterators (other two being Broken Can the silly goober who enjoys rot to an absolutely unnecessary degree and Molten Karma the. literal mobile weapon) with similar fuck-the-ancients-let's-kill-their-shit-and-anyone-who-gets-in-the-way goals who indulge in... exactly that 24/8. More specifically, NIER is basically the one who runs the whole thing. overall yeah. Very Normal Iterator oh and also as a result of the attempted partial dissection she lacks an actual puppet. later recreated (a slightly tweaked, because she silly version of) it with holograms, which is what's seen here. Also she made the hologram puppet slightly glitchy On Purpose thumbs up emoji

also this is the correct head proportion i have no hecking clue why i drew it as bigger

oh this design freakin SLAPS. can i join her ancient hater club