When beloved mutuals are like oh no tumblr might be going down add me on discord! like okay I love you I’m kissing you on the mouth I’ll die without your little posts but am I going to message you? are you going to message me? we all know this is not going to happen.we r open pasture creatures we both need a place to post freely
Sometimes the autism thing isn’t being oblivious to when someone is hinting at something but instead being unsure of whether the thing you think they’re hinting at is actually something they’re hinting at or if you’re reading into it too much so you just ignore it anyway because you don’t want to be wrong
thinking about how the extra area added on to a pacifist run of undertale, the true lab, is about alphys's past mistakes. how it ends with the story reaffirming that, despite the pain she's caused, the thing that matters is that she has now made the choice to do the right thing. she's still worthy of her friends' love.
thinking about how undertale doesn't expect the player to get a pacifist ending for the first time. how it's more likely than not that the player will kill toriel the first time they battle her, how lots of players don't initially figure out how to end undyne's fight without killing her, etc. what it expects — not even expects, really, but hopes — is that the player, if they care enough, will use their canonically acknowledged power over time to make up for those mistakes.
no matter how many neutral runs a player has done before committing to the pacifist run, the thing that matters to the characters, to the story, is that you've chosen, now, to do the right thing.
compared to alphys, the player honestly gets off lightly, in that you're the only one (other than flowey) who really remembers any harm you might have caused. and any direct guilting the game could have done about it is long past at this point.
instead, as undertale often does, it makes its point via parallels: alphys caused harm, and she knows it. she has committed to being better. in doing so, she has unlocked for herself a better ending to her story. and she deserves it. she's forgiven.
those structural narrative parallels are all over undertale, if you know where to look. and that's one of the things that makes it so fuckin' good.
NO MORE ASSOCIATING THINGS WITH FEMMES ONLY BECAUSE THEY ARE PINK!HYPERFEM FEMMES ARE GREAT AND I LOVE YOU CAMPY FEMMES WHO EMBODY PINK BUT ALSO JESUS CHRIST CAN YOU GUYS NOT GO MORE THAN ONE DAY W/O TRYING TO SHOEHORN FEMMES INTO BEING ONLY PINK UWU BABIES. I AM FEMME AS IN GRASS AS IN DIRT AS IN TREE BARK AS IN WEEDS SPROUTING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK CEMENT. FEMME AS IN GENDER NONCONFORMITY AS IN FUCK YOU MY FEMININITY IS WHAT *I* SAY IT IS. FEMME AS IN DEPTH AND DARKNESS AND WARMTH AND TERROR. FEMME AS IN CAVES. FEMME AS IN LIGHTNING. FEMME AS IN AN AMALGAMATION OF TRAITS THAT I HAVE DECIDED ARE FEMININE REGARDLESS OF WHAT SOCIETY SAYS. FUCK IS IT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!???
i'm dehydrated and it's giving me alice dyer thoughts i think that a key component of her being the way she is is that she's an older sister and she plays the role to perfection
the teasing/needling everyone around her? yeah that's just how she interacts with people. eldest sibling behavior. crucially it is also definitely a mask. sam knows her well enough to ask her to "turn it off" in ep 5 and she does! and we know she's capable of being serious with her brother, and she takes gwen's information about lena planning redundancies seriously
underneath that persona i think she is also a very protective person, but specifically in a calculated sort of way. she knows how to social engineer; as aforementioned she can turn her mask on/off at will. she also asks sam to call central it specifically because he's new and will be questioned less — which makes sense, actually. and there's the redirect she does when gwen says "are you all done talking about me" and alice says "oh you caught us" (note: alice and sam were not talking about her)
specifically the protective part is what pings me because like. she keeps advising sam to not get lost in the weeds, to just do the job without researching, and as Horror Podcast Fans we can all agree that is probably sam's best way of survival. she reassures gwen about the redundancies thing. i think it's implied this episode that she's also helping her brother with finances?
i think that the silly mask she puts on is specifically for deflection. it's something she has developed over time and can weaponize to great effect. but underneath that isn't some evil antagonist or whatever, it's an older sister who's very tired of her job and just wants to keep everyone safe
cooked too hard talking about how fun transfem asriel could be so im taking a rare moment to post it to the tumblr followers lol
image id under cut!
[Image Description: A discord screenshot. The text reads as follows:
something i think a lot about for deltarune SPECIFICALLY is how societal expectations, narrative roles, hierarchial positionings, and the metanarrative interactions by the player are all often rolled together and depicted overwhelmingly as a shackle for its characters
even seemingly positive ones like "smart kid" "prince of the darkness" or "nice girl in town" are ideas that constrain the people they're placed upon
in that context, i cannot IMAGINE asriel having a positive relationship with his role as idolized golden child in deltarune
I don't think he wears it well. this isn't the sort of story where people can wear that kind of overwhelming weight well
especially considering how asriel is the offscreen apex of all of those conditions I mentioned. both in universe and out, his mere existence is charged with this gigantic significance
so yeah, I think theres no way asriel makes it out of this as "pure uncomplicated good golden boy who everyone loves." something has to crack somewhere and i think one of those cracks could be asriels fucking egg LMAO. Estrogen Will Save Her