#legitimately it might be better than undertale

[tea-n-ink]

✨ In Stars and Time✨ is one of the best games I've ever played. buy it on steam :D

(reference, full image and grey version under cut)

(redraw of ALIEN POP II album by Snail's house)

[flambeaufelid]

Okay, just realized that if "Papyrus is the knight" theory (which I think is unlikely) AND "Undertale Sans and Papyrus are from Deltarune theory" (which I think is moderately likely) are BOTH true, then the implications are utterly fucked.

Imagine. You get through all of Deltarune, and come face-to-face with the knight. And it's Papyrus, but he's younger, and perhaps darker in personality. His natural narcissism and insecurity portrayed as legitimately dangerous rather than charming character quirks.

(After all, THIS was what Papyrus was supposed to be like originally, and we know Toby was working on Deltarune first... If that version of Papyrus was the silly Undertale version of him, what might the original Deltarune version have been like...? Although I suppose the wording here implies this may have been the "original Deltarune version", I dunno.)

Perhaps despite his brother's best efforts, he's detached from reality. Too scared (or something) to make friends himself in Hometown. Addicted to making fountains, because in those, everyone respects him. He's "popular", and he doesn't have to try.

And then, Kris and friends show up. You have a big climactic fight scene. You talk him out of all this, somehow. You become friends.

And then, something fucks up his memories, and also gets him sent to the world of Undertale.

And for a pacifist route, that's fine.

But if you play Deltarune first. And then Undertale. And then you do a genocide route...

Can you imagine? This was enough to get some people to stop their genocide routes, back in the Undertale days. But here it would become SO MUCH WORSE, especially because in this context, it would be a play on "don't forget"... It would be asking a player to "forget" about Deltarune, and everything that lead Papyrus to being the better version of himself he is in Undertale, how far he's come, and kill him anyway.

[fortressofserenity]

The sort of men

When it comes to what many, if not most, Tumblr users find sexy in men there are those who prefer the more conventionally attractive men. But there are others whose tastes diverge significantly from the expected norms, when I mean by that they go after characters like Sans of Undertale or Alastair from Hazbin Hotel (or is it Alistair).

Even if there are women who do prefer the typical romance novel hero model, so much so this character shows up in slash fanart art and the like, there are others who go after a more unexpected model. I actually think this might be endemic to geek communities, where there is a line between sexy and geek sexy. Geek sexy would be David Bowie, not Marvin Gaye even though the latter was a real sex symbol to many other people.

A more recent example would be Adam Driver, a man who I’ll never find arousing in any way (I admit Morgan Nakhisa’s better looking than him). So are Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch, to the point where I get the nagging feeling the Geek Sexyman is practically the straight female equivalent of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

You know, quirky and appealing because she’s not like other girls. With the exception of Bruno and anime characters (since most of them are Japanese, regardless of how white they look), the average Tumblr sexyman is skinny, white and well-dressed. Or rather wears a suit, though for some reason despite getting skinnier not a single Jojo character’s made into a Sexyman.

Despite recently returning to Tumblr, I really don’t find these characters and people attractive in any way. But I suppose for some geeky women, they look for a man who isn’t like other men but still benefits from white privilege in a way that’s denied to men of colour. I guess it’s being nonthreatening whilst being malicious.

Sans probably got really popular not so much that he’s sexy (not even deliberately sexy as with Mettaton), but he’s quite cute and some straight women do respond well to cute characters. Though my theory doesn’t work, since he got sexualised big time. Even then, there are other factors that make him a sexyman.

Perhaps this gets stranger when you realise that Dick Grayson, despite being a major sex symbol in DC Comics, isn’t a Tumblr Sexyman most probably because he’s too conventionally attractive. Probably the same with so many Arrowverse male characters, the Arrowverse really doesn’t have its own Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch.

I still think there’s a difference between sexy and geek sexy, conventionally sexy would mean the men who appear on the covers of romance novels. Geek sexy would be whatever man some geeky fangirls get horny over but still benefit from white privilege. This is probably the real reason why David Bowie has a Fanlore entry but not Marvin Gaye.

I guess this theory’s way too damning in some regards, even though Marvin Gaye was a legitimate sex symbol in a way Bowie wasn’t. Geek sexymen (since it’s not restricted to Tumblr) are unconventional, but only in a way that privileges white men. Men of colour, for most of the part, are only attractive if they fulfill stereotypes.

Even then, it seems on one hand some geek women are desperate to reject the sort of men they’re socialised to find attractive. On the other hand, they still cling onto white men for most of the part. Possibly why so many Tumblr Sexymen tend to be white.

[undertalethingems]

Sorry, I'm kinda new to the fandom but I never heard the "Undyne is racist" thing,, and I have no idea how someone came up with that???

yeaahhh it's. bad.

so, full disclosure, i'm white, so i'm not qualified to talk about racism in-depth and don't wish to get into it. but i feel like the people who say undyne is racist because she hates humans have only the shallowest understanding of what racism even is. I can only imagine they think racism is simply hating people for their ancestry--in this case, hating someone for being a human. but... racism is way more complicated than that, and it ignores the many legitimate reasons Undyne--as well as other monsters--might fear and hate humans. But it seems that context doesn't matter to people like this. hating people is bad, therefore, undyne is bad. the end.

it suggests a very simplistic worldview where a single bad action, even if later atoned for or corrected, renders you a bad person forever. It doesn't matter why you did it, even if you were misled or misinformed, because it was bad and you should have chosen to be good instead--but you didn't, so now you're irredeemable. It paints everyone who isn't a perfect angel as a hypocrite, because if you were really good, you wouldn't do bad things like lying, hating, or [reads smudged words on palm] manipulating people by trying to give them advice about making better choices? yeah. we're talking serious circular logic and mental gymnastics here, and insisting on seeing every "bad" action as proof of bad morals.

it's a very close-minded approach to the world... and it completely misses the point of a game about having compassion and understanding even for people who are very different from you. i'm baffled why these folks bother engaging with undertale at all.

[marshvlovestv]

I’m in a bad place right now so I thought I’d bring myself some positivity by talking about my top ten favorite video games I’ve ever played! They’ll be in alphabetical order rather than being ranked because I love them all for different reasons and don’t want to compare them against each other. I wholeheartedly recommend every game on this list, honorable mentions included.

1.Celeste - I’ve gone on at length before about why this game is so important to me, so I won’t repeat that all here. I really, truly believe that Celeste is a perfect video game.

2.Cuphead - Cuphead is a treat for the senses and an absolute blast from start to finish.Even when I was losing, I was so delighted by the music and animation that I still had fun (except when I was trying to beat that stupid robot, I hated every second of that). Cuphead is an exciting challenge, and finally beating it is one of my proudest accomplishments because my life is really sad.

3.Elsinore - I feel like more people have probably heard of The Sexy Brutale, which is, similarly to Elsinore, a puzzle adventure game with a time loop mechanic. But I’ve never played The Sexy Brutale, and Elsinore is better anyway because it’s based on Hamlet, of all things. It’s a video game for a different kind of nerd, you might say. I love what they did with all the characters, and the story is gorgeous, with all its different endings both tragic and bittersweet.

4.Hades - You can probably tell from the other games on this list that I’m not one to gravitate towards action games. Even in a game like Cuphead, combat for me is something to get past, rather than something to be enjoyed for its own sake. But Supergiant Games did something incredible with Hades: it made action combat something so deep and varied and downright fun that I wanted to return and return and return, to master every nuance of the weapons and boons and challenge myself with the customizable difficulty. The story is worth every ounce of praise it has received and I adore all the characters, but the story is not why I have over 400 hours of Hades logged on Steam (maybe it accounts for the first 50 or so).

(Honorable mentions: Bastion and Transistor. Haven’t played Pyre yet but I’m sure I’ll love that one too.)

5.Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass - Undertale was my very first experience with video games, but I only watched other people play it. Furthermore, it’s not the most traditional JRPG out there. My real first impression of Earthbound-like JRPGs was JatPM, and it made me fall in love with the genre. I delighted in the cuteness and was utterly shaken by the horror of it - and yes, you could absolutely make the argument that OMORI belongs in this spot instead, but honestly, I found the psychological horror of that game too familiar to be fazed by it. But I don’t have personal experience with the existential horrors of being a small child with a terminal illness, and Jimmy’s portrayal of that made me legitimately queasy.

(Honorable mention: OMORI)

6.Life is Strange 2 - It’s frankly amazing to me that a French studio was able to tackle American social issues like police brutality and the discrimination faced by Latines with more honesty than an American studio would ever be willing. I am a white woman - playing as Sean in LIS2 is the closest I will ever get to being a Latino man, and the experience is heartbreaking. But that’s not to mention gorgeous environments, the beautiful story about brothers, great characters, and some real mechanical improvements over the first game, from a more comprehensive way to choose dialogue to the increased subtlety of the choice-consequence system.

(Honorable mentions: LIS 1, Captain Spirit, and Tell Me Why. I’m hype for True Colors but I’m scared that it’s going to be ruined by having a bigger studio behind it; The Sims 4 notwithstanding, I am strictly an indie girl.)

7.Paradise Killer - I love detective games. In theory. When I made this list I was surprised that I couldn’t think of more detective games to include, and I think the reason for that is that while a lot of games have a lot of great detective stories, very few actually make you feel like a detective in the way that Paradise Killer does. The onus is entirely on you in this game to scour for clues, ask people the right questions, and ultimately come to your own conclusion. If there’s an important clue you didn’t find on your own, too bad, the game won’t lead you to it, and if you’re misled by red herrings, oh well, the game won’t correct you and ultimately you’ll get a less satisfying ending.

(Honorable mention: The Painscreek Killings - similarly an open world detective game that puts the investigation entirely on you, just without the quirky characters and fun worldbuilding of Paradise Killer)

8.Rising Dusk - Truly the definition of a hidden gem. I found Rising Dusk buried deep in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality and it turned out to be really fantastic. Cute, clever, totally committed to its theme of Japanese folklore. The main mechanic of “limit how many coins you carry” makes for unique and varied puzzles. I almost excluded this one because it didn’t quite “stick with me” like some of these other games have, but thinking back to just how high-quality it was, I think it absolutely deserves a mention.

9.The Sims 4 - Okay, okay, I’ve kind of gotten bored of The Sims 4. I haven’t played it in ages and I don’t know if I’m even going to download it on my new computer. But that doesn’t change the fact that this game was the first one I really got into playing as an adult, or that my Tumblr avatar is, always has been, and always will be my Simself.

10. Unavowed - I discovered this game through a Let’s Play which made me fall in love with it. I wouldn’t have bought it for myself, except for the fact that this is a replayable point-and-click adventure game. Can you imagine? I’m not really a completionist but I was obsessed with getting every achievement, which was just an excuse for me to experience the game again and again, playing every backstory and trying every possible combination of characters for every case just to see what dialogue I’d get. I kept coming back for more of those characters I loved. (And hey, to all the Supergiant fans seeing this post because of Hades, Logan Cunningham is in this game. So, that’s pretty cool.)

(Honorable mentions: Any other point-and-clicks with this aesthetic: Kathy Rain, Lamplight City, Whispers of the Machine, the Shivah)

Honorable mention: Heaven’s Vault - This game was made for me. A story-rich mystery adventure game with a major mechanic centered around translation, of all things? Perfection. Unfortunately Heaven’s Vault was disqualified because of those godawful flying segments. I get that we’re in space and have to travel to different moons, but I signed up for translation and mystery, not an outer space racing game that handles like garbage.

Honorable mentions: Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps - A rule I went for at first was that any game I had liked enough to buy its soundtrack automatically goes on the top ten list. Yeah, I do have the soundtrack to Blind Forest, and I do really like both games, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that other games were just edging Ori out. Not to mention, these are metroidvanias, a genre I like in concept but not so much in practice - the huge worlds are overwhelming and the backtracking is tedious, and while Ori is beautifully made enough that I still like it, those elements I dislike are still there.

[serenawitchwriter]

BNHA fusion (Bakusquad/Deku)

BakuDeku

HE NUMBER ONE HERO

SCREAMS

DESTRUCTION!

is so insecure tho, don’t tell anyone

WILL ALSO TAKE ANY CHALLENGE

SCARY

YOU CAN’T HURT HIM??

SUPER UNSTABLE

ONLY GETS ALONG WITH KIRASHIMA

really wants to be friends with everyone though, please?

WOULD KILL YOU

NEVER SHUTS UP

BREAKS EVERYTHING INCLUDING HIMSELF, STILL COMES AFTER YOU

AND HE’S SMART!!??

HONEST

kinda hates himself, but in an apathetic way

NEVER GIVES UP

possibly Undyne from Undertale?

cries when frustrated

ADMIRABLE DESPITE ALL HIS FLAWS

UNSTOPPABLE WHEN HE PUTS HIS MIND TO SOMETHING

gets strangely flustered around people he admires, comes across as tsundere

KiriDeku

MANLY AS HELL

SO STRONG

FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE

WILL BENCH PRESS ALL HIS FRIENDS AT ONCE

A HERO FANBOY SQUARED

TOUGH AS NAILS

ALMOST ALWAYS SMILING

freckles and shark teeth

explosion of red fluffy hair, green roots

is very private with their insecurity. will go quiet and thoughtful when left alone

unshakably kind

MOTIVATES YOU

TRIES TO USE SLANG AND FAILS

has this weird habit of headbutting things and breaking them?

Bakugou hates but tolerates them? he acts more like a wet cat than sparky sparky boom man

they are LITERALLY the only person who can get away with hugging him

(Bakugou secretly loves them)

SO

MANY

BRO

HUGS!!!

prone towards depression but makes himself feel better by helping people

LITERALLY EVERYONE LOVES THEM

gives off a strangely unattainable vibe

DekuMina

watermelon, freckled pink skin, green fluffy hair that is amazingly curly. horns

green eyes, with black sclara

cute beyond reason

really really excitable

#1 friend, always knows when something is wrong and how to cheer people up

socially conscious. can hang out with basically anyone and be liked

an ambivert

loves dancing and moving and fighting. incredibly flexible but also muscular. sorta Mirko physique only unmatured

has sick kicks and flips

hates bullies and will punch clocks out without hesitation

can be kinda obnoxious, especially because they don’t know how to shut up

will tease you accurately if you call them out. they’re not mean, but can pick out what’s actually wrong. getting called out when you’re trying to be mad is also obnoxious

extremely tactile and clingy. loves hugging and just touching their friends. Mido never felt like he had permission before, but combined with Mina they give out touches freely

slightly dark, self-depreciating humor but you can never tell if they’re serious

both intentionally and unintentionally funny

clumsy, a bit of a space case

makes fun of Bakugou the most

gets really creative in the type of acid they make and how they use it, particularly combined with the tentacle quirk

has no fashion sense. Mina might be able to claim her bright colors and patterns are an aesthetic. but DekuMina can make no such claim. they are an eyesore and they love it. ugly is their aesthetic and they will not apologize

unironically wears eye-searing Hawaiian shirts, bakugou hates this about them

unironically finger guns at every opportunity

KamiDeku

oh man, they are not okay

chronic pain

trying to cover up that anything is wrong with smiles and humor x2

yellow hair with more than once green lightning streak

electric green eyes that glow constantly

attacks with green lightning in general. it’s overpowered but they can control where it’s going now.

unafraid to go all out in a fight and suffers physically and mentally for it

really hard on themselves, low confidence

the kind of adhd where they have a million interest and skill-sets. they’ve learned so much, they genuinely are really smart. but they remember absolutely nothing

they get really frustrated and will often cry because of this. they know the information is there but they can never find it when they need it. they’re just reaching into their brain and finding nothing when they know something is supposed to be there. they hate it

pretty depressed

an incredibly loyal friend, always trying to help no matter how worn out they are

is genuinely really funny. they know how to do critical and aware humor, situational humor, improv. they could do standup if they tried.

probably eats really weird food. i see them combining bizarre food items together and really liking it. will put garbage into their body, shaggy style

easygoing when they don’t have any stressors

but extremely anxious when there are stressors (note: there are a lot of stressors)

stims with their hands a lot. their hands just can’t hold still. will flap twiddle, twitch, tap, anything

the friend that will try to put all the focus on you when it’s clear that they’re the one having a meltdown.

is baby

the friend groups come out in force for this one. they will not let them feel alone or bad. kamideku is getting the support they need

loves cuddles

JiroDeku

vibing

Jirou brings out Mido’s attitude, so honestly they are mean and sassy and sarcastic. they’d insult you and you’d thank them for it

straight green and purple hair in an gradient, keeps the earlobes.

trying and succeeding to be punk rock but is also adorable. like you know they can and will kick your ass, but they are also so short and they have chubby cheeks and freckles. they’re adorable

a short and compensating for it vibe except they are legitimately edgy

they might be nb, but they are also absolutely still a sword lesbian

sonic boom quirk. they will destroy building with their quirk, they will destroy eardrums

absolutely in a punk band and capable of rapping

probably does vocaloid/computer based music

could also see them using a gun

I could see them being into arson, too, hopefully only for good reasons 

is wild and chaotic. they are genuinely having a lot of fun.

their grin is absolutely feral and a threat, and honestly that’s very valid and sexy of them

pretty chill when they aren’t up to shit, 

constantly listening to music, always has a pair of good headphones around their neck

vibes  with Bakugou more than Jirou does alone.

big sister to most of the class

probably kicks doors open

serodeku

spiderman

weird, not in an artistic or intentional way. they just have an off vibe

unsettling smile, freckles, eyes that are a bit to big. curly black hair.

on the plain side

lanky and scarred

can shoots energy, tentacles, and tape from elbows.

great a parkour, has fantastic mobility

full of nervous energy, but still 100% down to fuck with people

secretly a sadist.

will call anyone out when they’re being stupid or reckless

pretty social

loves fruits and vegetables

loves tv, could probably tell you everything about the show he’s watching

pretty bashful

besties with Kaminari and Kirishima

a great hype man

insane, slightly scary pranks

it’s hard to tell what they’re thinking, especially in a fight

fantastic at creating traps and pushing people into them

tries to pretend he’s not as dangerous or confident as he really is. would prefer to be underestimated

tends to talk down his achievements as a result

but knows exactly how powerful they are

(masterlist)

[fatal-error-blog]

A Peaceful_Fundraiser has Occurred - An Effort to Fight Against Racial Injustice!

Hey everyone, this is going to be a long (but important) post. Given the title of this post, I’m sure you know what I’m about to mention. So before I get started I just want to say that it’s totally okay to not want to see this on your dash, coming from this blog specifically. While this is a really important issue that shouldn’t be shied away from, I do 1000% recognize that this blog has always been (very purposefully) kept as a fun and safe place for us all to enjoy a good story together. Heck, this blog is a safe place for me, too. I like knowing that I can come here and focus on content that makes me happy, and that makes you all happy, and just escape from how gross the world can be for a little while. But I also realize that I have the power to do some good, and I want to try to do some good, with your help, hopefully. I want you to know that it’s okay if you don’t want to see mention of what’s going on out there, here.

Any post I make on this blog that specifically references the racial injustice movement going on right now will be tagged with ‘FE BLM Fundraiser’. You are more than welcome to block that tag so you don’t have to see it here. It’s truly okay, I promise.

With that being said, let’s get into this!

I’ve never done anything like this before, so please bear with me! But like I said, I want to do some good with your help, hopefully. So I’ve made a charity fundraiser page where the proceeds will be going to the Black Lives Matter Global Network. If you’re not aware, there has been a lot of turbulence regarding racial injustice and police brutality going on all over the world, centered mostly in the United States. There are so many resources out there with information on what’s going on and different ways you can help (even without donating any money!) and I encourage you to do your research if it’s something you feel you need to be more enlightened on. I took a couple of days to think about how I wanted to help, and I thought that a fundraiser with awesome goals could be a really great thing! To be honest I’m not sure if we’ll reach many goals, but I think it’s worth a try, and no matter what, every little bit helps :) So here’s the deal:

A link to the donation page is here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fatal-error-blog

This fundraiser will run through the month of June, all the way up until midnight, June 30th EST!

Anyone who donates at least $15 will be able to receive a free commission from me!

Commissions will be a colored character bust (so like, from the top of their head to just below their shoulders) of a character of your choosing (not necessarily just Undertale themed, and can also include original characters or characters in different fandoms). This is a bit cheaper than my normal commission rate, so it’s a great opportunity to get some cool art if you’ve always wanted some!

If you want to claim your free commission, you need to: 1) Contact me via tumblr (@xedramon or @fatal-error-blog) or via email (xedramon@gmail.com) saying you’d like your commission

2) Send me a screenshot of your (at least) $15 donation

3) Tell me the name of the character you want, and a reference picture I can use

*** You MUST contact me to get your commission. Pretty sure I’m not able to see how much people donate so I will have no way to reach out to you, so you have to reach out to me first! Commissions will get done as quickly as possible, and will be sent via however you contacted me (so either tumblr or email)

FUNDRAISER GOALS!

So along with the commissions, there are community goals we can all reach together! I feel like some of the higher goals are a bit daunting to reach, but if we reach them, good for us! Each goal has a fun reward attached to it that I think is worth the goal we’re trying to reach. $50 - Everyone here gets to vote on an Undertale AU to be featured in an upcoming chapter of A Fatal_Error has Occurred! It can be anything, from an AU that hasn’t appeared yet, to one that already has, to one that you think would be hilarious or cool to see, whatever! Only stipulation is that the creator of that AU has to give me permission to include it. If this goal is reached, I’ll make a list of the AUs people want to see in order of what was voted for, just in case the 1st place winner doesn’t give me permission, I’ll check with 2nd place, and so on.

$100 - I’ll host a Game Night Livestream! We’ll pick a date, and play some stream-friendly games (like Jackbox Party Pack!) for several hours! Perhaps we’ll even do two nights so that people can choose which night works better for them :)

$175 - I’ll host a 12 Hour Art Livestream! What’ll happen is that the stream session will be broken down into different segments (so maybe for a couple hours we do a request stream, and then we switch to working on something else, etc). People will have the opportunity to vote on the date we do the stream.

$250 - Everyone here gets to vote on which side comic I work on next! This means I’ll give everyone a couple of choices to pick from with a brief idea of what each side comic would be about. Everyone votes, and I’ll start on the winning side comic immediately. This is a great opportunity to basically demand that you get to see what you’re most excited about sooner rather than later!

$500 - This goal guarantees that Chapter Five of A Fatal_Error has Occurred will be completed by the end of THIS YEAR. Which is some seriously insane pacing, but hey if we reach this goal, a promise is a promise!

$750 - I will create a (hopefully awesome) Fatal_Error animation! I have a couple of ideas in mind, and perhaps I’ll let you all vote on what idea you’d like to see come to life the most. I am the most nervous about this goal, haha!

$1000 - I’ll host a 24 Hour Art Livestream!!! That means exactly what it sounds like! We’ll pick a date, I’ll take the most intense nap the world has ever known before we start, and then we’re gonna stream for 24 hours straight. I’ll set up a schedule so we do different things every few hours to keep it interesting. It’ll be so rad!

$2000 - Everyone here gets to vote on an Undertale themed tattoo (an honest to goodness permanent one) that I will, 100%, absolutely get! How this will work is that everyone will be able to suggest what I should get, I’ll pick a handful of the most popular ideas (that I’m cool with having on my body for the rest of forever) and you all will get to vote on what I get! This would, of course, occur once tattoo shops are allowed to open back up and it’s safe for me to go get one. But I promise you, I’ll do it and it’s gonna be AWESOME.

$3000 - Last but certainly not least, if this goal is reached then I will resume working on Sondertale again, alongside working on A Fatal_Error has Occurred. What’s Sondertale? Well, it’s another UT AU comic I started on before I ever began Fatal_Error’s comic. I ended up setting it aside so that I could focus on Fatal’s comic instead, and over time there has been some...surprisingly popular demand/request that I return to working on it. Originally I was going to consider what to do with it after Fatal’s comic is done, but if this rather large goal is reached then I will pick right back up where we left off and commit to finishing the comic, in it’s originally intended comic format. It’ll be a LOT of work (which is why getting a legitimate permanent tattoo is an easier goal to reach than this) but if we work together to donate this much, then it’ll be absolutely worth it.

And that’s it for the goals! I think that the higher goals will be plenty hard to reach, but if somehow we surpass the highest goal then uhh...I guess we’ll talk about what kind of goals you all might like to see after that, haha.

This fundraiser will run through the rest of June - so if you would like to donate and help contribute to seeing some of these goals realized, please do!

I will reblog this post on the following days: June 7th, June 14th, June 21st, and June 28th as a reminder, and also to update everyone on how the fundraiser is going. As goals are hit, I’ll also mention them on the blog so we can all share in the excitement of what’s to come!

Thank you so, so, so much for your consideration, your help, and your support. Please stay safe, stay hopeful, and stay determined.

Link to fundraiser page: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fatal-error-blog

[autumnblogs]

Day 60: Aranea’s Evil Deeds

Thank God, it looks like Microsoft365 is back to normal so I’m off the hook for extremely busy work today.

https://homestuck.com/story/6667

Aranea’s words are as empty as her soul. Mankind ill needs such a savior!

Castlevania jokes aside, Aranea really well fits into this category of villains I enjoy dearly who just suck.They have no class, however pretentious they might be, and have few to no sympathetic traits whatsoever. Everyone can see through their act, and as they rush to commit evil deeds, their own feet are caught in the nets they have laid. They’re not these flashy exciting revolutionaries, and you can just laugh at how terrible they are, and how much they have no one else to blame than themselves for their own destruction.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/6696

I think we’re all with Dave on this one when we wonder whether this is Terezi whispering sweet nothings to her black lover, or if she is legitimately trying to kill him.

It’s probably complicated for her too, considering the breakdown she has when she realizes that she legitimately physically hurt him, and the immediate backbreaking abuse that she takes once he breaks free of Aranea’s hold.

https://homestuck.com/story/6698

I suspect that what’s happening here is that Terezi is in a moment of crisis, and is really leaning into her self-conception in a last ditch attempt to relive a version of herself that she wants to be, the person who she wants Terezi Pyrope to be able to exist as - but it’s just not the version of her that is either happy or healthy.

Vengeance has made Terezi too miserable, she has had her fill of it, and it doesn’t make her happy anymore to hurt people in retaliation for the pain that they have inflicted on her.

https://homestuck.com/story/6711

I haven’t commented on this much because I had kind of been playing it off as an Artificial Intelligence/Robots Don’t Have Feelings Joke but it’s just occurred to me that Jane’s assertions off non-feeling have literally just been disproven, so what we should read out of that is that it’s an act.

I think that in the same way Jade’s Grimbark status is somehow aspirational for her ( Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt. ), the idea of being a coldly unemotional, flawless being of logic and reason is deeply appealing to Jane.

Why shouldn’t it be? What did following her emotions ever get Jane? A twice-broken heart, and an estranged friend-circle.

https://homestuck.com/story/6713

What ultimately sucks Dave into conflict against all of his better judgement is not animus toward something he hates but protectiveness toward something he loves.

Dave is emotionally complex, but he’s ultimately not a tragic case. Dave is willing to die for the people he loves, but unlike someone like Vriska who is practically impatient to die, Dave is prepared to live for them too.

https://homestuck.com/story/6733

I feel like Dave might be the only person to give Jane an uncomplicated compliment in the story, and it’s clear that it has an effect on her.

https://homestuck.com/story/6749

It had never occurred to me, but as practically the embodiment of toxic stagnation, and undue attachment to legacy, Aranea is actually a major villain for this entire part - she has roughly the same screen-time and magnitude of influence on the story’s themes as does Doc Fucking Scratch - especially if we combine Aranea and Mindfang as conceptually one character.

https://homestuck.com/story/6852

This entire sequence, up to and including Game Over serves kind of the same purpose that the Genocide Run does in Undertale, which is to say that all of the characters are subjected to what amounts to Maximum Stress in a way that allows us to see their true character.

While all of these characters are doomed to die, while it’s too late for them to fix the disasters of their lives, this whole sequence lets us see what they are all prepared to do to make things right.

This doomed timeline earns the post-retcon characters the right to live; or we might properly say instead that they have always had the right to live, and no one can take it away from them justly. Game Over is a fundamentally unjust outcome, and we know it.

Anyway, that’s all I’ll say for tonight. We’ll check back in tomorrow to see what Caliborn’s up to. We’re all the way up to the Gigapause! Wow!

Cam signing off, Alive, and Disco as fuck.

[megaderping]

I’ve been thinking a lot about online fandom climates but specifically my experiences within the Undertale fandom and especially the Discord and Soundcloud communities. If there is one thing I’ve noticed in all that time, it’s... just how quickly negativity can spread and make others feel outraged as well. And how little communication and respect happens in these online spaces. For instance, one of the servers I’m a part of- it used to be commonplace for people to nitpick the HELL out of AUs and other fanworks. This led to this twisted sense of superiority and jealousy. People were outraged that the works they put so much time and care into were overshadowed by other works that they felt were less deserving. I, regrettably, fell into this habit, too, and for a long time I was just so... hostile and resentful toward certain AUs and Undertale fanworks. And on one hand, I get it. There are popular Undertale fanworks that do things that are... frankly uncomfortable. Misgendering Frisk/Chara/Napstablook/etc, killing off Alphys or Papyrus for shock value, uncomfortable ships etc, etc. To a lesser extent, some just have really bad writing or characterization. I understand wanting to vent about these things in a safe space rather than swarming the content creators- but my concern is that many of these servers are actually public or semi-public, and with a large userbase that kinda feeds into circular venting that can consume channels and leave spaces with an overall toxic atmosphere. Granted, I ALSO get that not every content creator has been polite in response to fan concerns. I have seen popular  creators actively mock people who politely raise issues to them. And I think that’s really in poor taste- I get being frustrated if someone comes to you saying this thing you worked on is uncomfortable/hurtful, but I think as long as they are NOT attacking, it’s important to have patience. People aren’t mind readers. Popularity doesn’t excuse folks from human decency, and I also think that fans of content creators should also just... not gang up on someone who maybe has a dissenting opinion on the thing they enjoy? Though I will say, there’s also a pretty serious problem of disrespect toward content creators, too. Consider how many people go to Youtube and reupload people’s art/animation without credit or consent. This is a HUGE problem in the Undertale AU community especially, but it doesn’t end there. People will argue a creator’s decisions. I see this a LOT with people who label their work’s Chara as nonbinary- there’s a VERY vocal part of the fanbase that INSISTS Chara must be female... which is really unpleasant (yes, I realize gender discourse goes both way and aggression is never cool but I see this particular example a LOT). Never mind the occasional entitlement.

One prominent issue I see is just... the expectation of a work to conform to popular headcanons/interpretations. When IF started releasing its dubs, people got angry because some of our casting choices were unconventional. But it’s not just a matter of voice interpretations. There are ideas within the fandom collective people just treat as Objective Canon. E.G. Gaster being lost to “the void” and forgotten, Toriel and Asgore NEEDING to get back together Post-Paci and especially in any timeline where one/both kids is saved (disregarding that Toriel has a right to keep boundaries), the assumption that every work will select certain dialogue choices that are popular when things like Places to Go exists and deserve exploration, too. But it’s not just that. Take the Undertoad AU- people have gotten SO angry and entitled over its character placements (especially Kammy as “Toriel”). They got hostile when the AU creators declared they aren’t directly using roles, and while I personally think the matter could’ve been handled more delicately toward the fans, I also sympathize in that it is an AU that has been disrespected by fans since its inception, and as a content creator, that can be so, SO exhausting. But it’s not just Utoad. Team Switched has gotten so much flak for not sticking to the original Underswap concepts. The ORIGINAL Underswap creators got so fed up with fans disregarding their comfort zones and drawing ships they did not approve of (and requested people not draw) that they up and deleted the blog and disowned the AU. I know it’s just fandom, but it’s just SO unfortunate when a content creator’s ideas aren’t respected. When a creator asks that people not create certain types of fan content or sets up certain boundaries. More than anything, people need to understand that we’re all just... people. And just ‘cause someone is popular doesn’t make them unapproachable. I know, personally, I’d MUCH rather someone come to me if they had a legitimate grievance with my work so I can understand and at the very least keep it in mind going forward- especially if it was hurtful. People make mistakes, and sometimes the social climates one grows up in means they still have a LOT of room to learn or they just might not be privy to implications behind a given idea. Or they’re just inexperienced. It’s why I HATED when the SC and Discord spheres would tear into people with less experience- folks who are still learning to create and don’t have the foundation or knowledge others have. Like, goodness. There was this one AU made by someone whose first language was NOT English, and everyone would meme the heck out of it instead of talking to the creator and giving constructive feedback. It’s one thing if a content creator refuses to take input and lashes out- at that point, it’s best to block/unfollow and move on. But it is SO important to remember that this is a fandom that is FULL of young people, and making a public mockery of their work can really discourage them from honing their skills. It’s just... cringe culture is really bad. And so is online bullying. And so often, that’s what happens. The UTSC community, for instance? Rampant with all manner of toxicity. Backlash towards anyone who dares mention the oversaturation of Megalovania styled tracks, mockery toward new composers, transphobia (good LORD I heard about some awful conduct in *that* regard), the idea that servers that have zero tolerance for edgy slurs are “too soft” (yes, the IF server won’t let you be racist/homophobic/transphobic edgelords. Human decency is kinda important). These things, of course, are just a universal part of fandom and especially public spaces. There will always be online toxicity. But I think it’s important to remember not to get too swept up on it. To step back sometimes and understand that there’s a point where you can’t force change and sometimes it’s better to block/unfollow and find something more positive to remind you of what you enjoy about fandom. Though as one final note, I think it is ABSOLUTELY important to watch out for younger fans because SO many fandom spaces have predators and abusers. When it reaches a point where someone is actively hurting others, then it is completely understandable to spread the word. But that should be saved for the people who are actually a danger and not the person giving a dissenting opinion on a character you enjoy.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

How do you feel about Catra, Shadow Weaver, and Hordak? I know you said you find SW interesting but like on a scale how redeemable do you think these characters are. Ive seen a lot of infighting in the fandom cause some people love one and hate another and I just figured you would approach the topic nicely

Oh damn, happy to respond! (Under the cut because I don’t know how to shut up.) 

I think I’ve seen some of the posts that you’re talking about, and my friend did tell me that there was apparently tension between Entrapdak and Catradora shippers for that very reason. Still, I should start off by saying that the only character who is probably completely irredeemable is Horde Prime. And knowing this show, they’ll find a way to humanize even him if they are so inclined. The great thing about She-Ra is that there aren’t so much heroes and villains as there are complicated people. Undertale is the same way. This might sound weird, but I legitimately hope Horde Prime does get humanized, because otherwise it’s just way too easy for all of the characters to band together and take him out for a happy ending. This show has never had a character that was pure evil before, know what I mean? 

With that in mind...let’s talk about Hordak. 

I know, I know...before Horde Prime was known to us...Hordak basically was Horde Prime. That’s the role he played in the show, and it’s not like he isn’t guilty of countless war crimes. He’s a conqueror, and yeah, conquerors should not get off scot-free. But...Hordak is also clearly an abuse victim. That doesn’t excuse him from what he’s done, but I can’t just ignore it. He was so eager to get back to Horde Prime, so determined to please him and prove himself to his “big brother.” and the moment that they’re reunited? We see what a nightmare it is for Hordak, see him get mentally violated and brain-washed. This can’t be the first time it’s happened, and yet all Hordak wanted was to return to Horde Prime. This man is so sheltered and so emotionally stunted in relationships, that I doubt he understands the full ramifications of his actions. He certainly doesn’t understand that he’s in abusive relationship. Hordak is just doing what he knows. He could learn better, if he learns to accept what a monster Horde Prime is. (But first he’ll need to break from the conditioning.)

 I genuinely like how it took Entrapta, a character who isn’t really loyal to either side, to reach out to him and help him understand how it feels for a person to care about him, and not fear him even when he tries to be intimidating. And whether or not you ship them, (I do, I admit it) Hordak clearly has feelings for her and that guides his character in Season 4. I don’t know if Adora and the others will agree to take him in...but Entrapta will remember the bond they had. I just feel so bad for this guy, even if he has killed countless innocents. My philosophy about redeeming villains is very much a pragmatic one...will Hordak’s redemption spit in the face of all his victims? Perhaps. Will it bring them back to life? No. But neither will executing him or throwing him in prison. If he can heal, if he can learn better, and do better...why should we waste that growth? Why shouldn’t he be allowed the chance to make up for what he’s done? It seems to me like there is everything to be gained, and nothing to be lost, in letting him redeem himself.

Of course, there are many types of crimes...let’s move on to Shadow Weaver.

....She’s a child abuser. Plain and simple. That is a hard pill to swallow, that is a very difficult thing for me to look past. I don’t think I can do it. The way she treated Catra, the way it’s ruined Catra and Adora’s relationship...it’s unspeakable. She manipulates Catra one last time and leaves her high and dry so she can escape and go to Bright Moon...whereupon, she starts grooming Glimmer the same way she did Micah. I know it seems silly to be more upset about child abuse than what probably amounts to genocide on Hordak’s part...but part of it is how relatable the crimes are. There’s a reason most Harry Potter fans hate Umbridge more than Voldemort. Most people don’t know a mass-murderer, and excusing a character like Hordak won’t change their perspective on murder being wrong. But plenty of people might know an abuser, and abusers thrive on a culture that blames victims and downplays the effects of abuse, or otherwise excuses those responsible. We need to get better about sending the message that abuse is real, and wrong. But the great thing about She-Ra is that it depicts the cycle, from Shadow Weaver to Catra. If Catra is redeemable, why not Shadow Weaver? 

And here’s the thing...I’m not saying she isn’t redeemable. Just that I don’t expect this show to fully redeem her, and I’m 100% behind that outcome. She could be allowed to live in peace with the other characters, her victims might forgive or at least tolerate her. (Especially if she wins over Micah again.) But even if I find her genuinely compelling...I’m not seeing too many outcomes where she would deserve this mercy. Shadow Weaver has done terrible, selfish things, and her only loyalties seem to lie with knowledge and power. She’s completely unrepentant, and while she acknowledges that she was “hard on Catra” she also refuses to apologize. Shadow Weaver strikes me very much as a kind of “no regrets” type of person. But she also has a fascination with power, and any time she sees a youngin’ with a lot of potential, (Micah, Adora) she seeks to train them. Considering how poor her record is...she needs to stop doing this. I might be inclined to forgive Shadow Weaver, if she acknowledges her own short-comings, apologizes to the people she’s hurt, and realizes that looking after children is not something she’s cut out to do.  

Finally, there’s Catra. 

In many ways, she’s my favorite character. (Though I also might go with Glimmer.) The story is largely centered around Catra’s journey alongside Adora’s...she might as well be a secondary protagonist. What’s more, she’s a character who we basically know is going to get redeemed, Noelle has all but told us that it’s going to happen. I’m fine with her getting redeemed but so help me god if she dies in the process....if any aspiring writers are reading this, please stop killing your villains to complete their redemption arcs. Let them enjoy being redeemed. Please. Anyway, where was I? Ah that’s right, Catra. There have been times that I was beyond frustrated with her because she was purposefully choosing to be “evil” as Double Trouble lampshades at the end of Season 4. By the time she opened up the Portal, after sentencing Entrapta to die, nearly dooming the entire world, causing Angela’s death, and despite it all she still blamed Adora even though she only did all of this because she wanted to beat Adora...yeah, I was really running out of patience for Catra. And even now, I can’t really bring myself to agree with the fans as they draw parallels between Catra opening the Portal and Glimmer activating the Heart of Etheria. I’m sure this was intentional, too. The echoing of two characters dooming everyone through an impulsive, reckless choice. However...as I said, Catra was pretty much going off the deep end when she opened the Portal. She just wanted to stick it to Adora. I realize I may be biased as a Glimmer stan, but Glimmer was at least trying to defeat the Horde. Her intentions, however misguided, were noble. She thought she was doing the right thing. Catra just didn’t care. 

All this, and you might think I’m Anti-Catra, that I await her inevitable redemption with gritted teeth. But that’s not true at all. Catra is a character who is her own worst enemy, and characters like that have a knack for winning my sympathy. She continues to dig herself into a deeper hole and hurts those around her in the process. Part of her journey is realizing that and presumably working to change it. This is why I love how distant she becomes from Lonnie and the others in S4. Why I love Double Trouble betraying and completely shutting her down with their monologue about her. Why I cheered louder than you can imagine at “You’re a bad friend.” Because it was such an amazing crossroads in the development of both Scorpia and Catra’s characters. To be clear, I love these moments not because I dislike Catra, but because I genuinely like her as a character, and Catra as a “good guy” is a lot of fun. I don’t know how many people remember what it was like in the first episode when Catra and Adora were still besties, but it was just generally fun. I miss that dynamic. I want Catra to learn from her mistakes. Because I rambled on about the terrible things Shadow Weaver has done, and onscreen those were primarily done to Catra. She’s a character that I am rooting for one-hundred percent. A character who is almost a deconstruction of the tired writing trope “They had a hard childhood, and now that you know that, they are redeemed.” Catra turns that on it’s head. “Promise” is one of my favorite episodes for this very reason. Few moments have gotten me as choked up as Adora saying that she thought Catra didn’t care about being Force Captain, and Catra exploding with “Well I was lying, obviously!” It was a reveal that I genuinely didn’t see coming, but it makes so much sense, and demonstrates how much Catra has sacrificed for Adora and how much that weighs on her every time she makes a villainous decision. 

TL;DR: I am one-hundred percent on board with Catra and Hordak redemption, and tentatively on board with Shadow Weaver redemption.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Van Pelt

“A hunter from the darkest wild, who'll make you feel just like a child.”

Jumanji is already one of Robin Williams’s most enjoyable films, being a fun dark fantasy adventure film based around a supernatural board game, and while the board game itself is technically the main antagonist, its desire to test its players is given form in the maniacal hunter Van Pelt. And while I certainly would not argue that Jumanji is the deepest film ever made or anything like that, I think there is a bit of unique symbolism and interesting character quirks that make Van Pelt an enjoyable antagonist.

Actor: Johnathan Hyde portrays Van Pelt, and interestingly enough, he also plays Alan Parrish’s father. This bit of casting is honestly brilliant; think of the description of Van Pelt quoted above, used to announce his arrival from the game into the world - he is said to “make you feel just like a child.” And who above all others makes Alan feel just like a child at this point? His father.  Van Pelt thus becomes symbolic of Alan’s parental issues, which makes his overcoming Van Pelt in the end all the more poignant and powerful. On a more meta level, it is an amusing coincidence Robin Williams starred in a film where the father and the antagonist share an actor, something typically the case when it comes to Captain Hook/Mr. Darling in theatrical adaptations of Peter Pan, whose eponymous character Williams had played five years prior to this film. It was likely unintentional, but it is an amusing thing to note.

Motivation/Goals: Van Pelt is clearly a creation of the game, a hunter conjured up by whatever poor schmuck draws his card and given a form that will cause the most psychological damage as well as the most physical damage. To that end, he relentlessly pursues Alan with the intent of killing him, with nothing stopping him and very little actually slowing him down. In fact, Van Pelt seems to be indestructible, likely a side effect of his supernatural nature. Nothing short of beating the game is enough to defeat him, and his goal is just to make that as hard as possible by targeting the one who brought him out. It’s a simple motivation, but it’s pretty effective and allows room for all the other insanity of Jumanji to take the stage without him overshadowing it entirely. He ends up feeling more like an extension of the game’s will than anything, and that’s honestly for the best.

Personality: Relentless, implacable, and clearly very bloodthirsty: these are the traits that define Van Pelt. Considering he’s just another manifestation of the board game, he didn’t even need a personality, but as the game tends to exaggerate real life dangers of the jungle, so too did they exaggerate the stereotypical “Great White Hunter” character into its perfect form. An interesting thing to note about him as that he seems to have a certain respect for Alan, and despite being incredibly dangerous and skilled never seems to land a single hit. An interesting idea is that perhaps he is intentionally missing as part of some ploy on the game to help Alan overcome his father issues and truly mature; of course, it could just be that Van Pelt enjoys the chase more than he does the kill.

Final Fate: Alan calls out “Jumanji,” ending the game and causing Van Pelt to be sucked back into the board. This version of Van Pelt would never be seen again, for obvious reasons; using someone else’s symbolic antagonizing force would be a bit weird, no? Van Pelt does show up in a different form in this film’s sequel, with some more intriguing powers but a lot less plot relevance and personality.

Best Scene: In an amusing and darkly comical scene, Van Pelt decides to forego any form of background checks while attempting to purchase a fancy new gun, instead opting to dump a pile of gold right on the gun shop clerk’s desk. Thankfully it is not this ridiculously easy for mentally unstable lunatics to buy dangerous weapons and perform horrible crimes with them, and this sort of thing only happens in fiction… Ahem.

Best Quote: His introductory quote: First, a bullet from offscreen whizzing by Alan’s head, followed by: "You miserable coward! Come back and face me like a man!"

Final Thoughts & Score: Van Pelt is definitely more of a living setpiece, an obstacle to be overcome much like the other supernatural critters the game unleashes, but he’s one with a lot of dramatic and thematic weight to him, seeing as he represents Alan’s conflict with his father that is set up at the film’s start. He’s quite similar to the T-800 in a lot of ways, seeing as he is a hyper-competent implacable and unstoppable assassin sent by a fantastical force to ensure the continued existence of its creator, with a dash of Captain Hook thrown in for personality and the little bit of symbolism present in theater adaptations of Peter Pan. 

Van Pelt is a solid 7/10 for the level of symbolic brilliance he brings to the table, but I can’t justify rating him any higher because, ultimately, he is just another figment crafted by Jumanji to make the game more entertaining, meaning he has no real backstory, goals, or motivation and exists only to cause trouble. Still, for what he is, he’s more entertaining and intriguing than he has any right to be.

But you know who isn’t entertaining or intriguing?

Psycho Analysis: Russell Van Pelt 

Ok, so that was unnecessarily dismissive and harsh. I actually think that the iteration of Van Pelt from Welcome to the Jungle has some pretty interesting concepts going for him. Ultimately though he’s kind of done in by the fact that he is the villain in an 80s video game, albeit a supernatural one. And 80s video games were not exactly known for their intriguing, complex villains.

Motivation/Goals: So this Van Pelt actually has a backstory, and it’s kind of interesting too: he was once a determined archaeologist who just wanted to have some proof of the Jaguar Shrine... unfortunately, said proof was the Jaguar’s Eye, which is the Chaos Emerald seen in the picture above. 

Here’s the problem: as he is a generic antagonist created to oppose our heroes, he has no motivation other than that he wants to use the jewel for nebulous nefarious reasons. He kind of just exists to be a threat, and yeah, it makes sense, but it is a bit of a letdown compared to the original. In fact, he’s very much a non-action villain and doesn’t even really directly confront the heroes until the very end, and even then it’s not like he has some spectacular throwdown. You’d think the guy with the one magical glowy eye would put up a better fight, but maybe Dr. Sivana and Sans Undertale just set the bar too high for glowy-eyed super battles.

Final Fate: The heroes return the eye, and he collapses into a big pile of rats and bugs. Why does he do this? I’ll get into it more below. Needless to say, he’s beaten in a way that lines up with all unsatisfactory 80s video game endings. 

Final Thoughts & Score: I definitely don’t hate Russell Van Pelt, but I think that he ultimately fails to even come close to recapturing the magic the original Van Pelt had. This is despite of, amusingly enough, having just about everything the original lacked: he has a backstory, he has intriguing powers, and he looks genuinely intimidating. The problem is that nothing is done with him and his motivations aren’t explained at all, and he ultimately lacks any sort of personality to try and glean some entertainment from.

It stings all the more because he utilizes one of my favorite tropes: The Worm That Walks. Essentially this trope is when a character is, in actuality, a mass of worms, bugs, or whatever other creepy critters you might want in there. Oogie Boogie is one of cinema’s shining examples of such a villain, and something of the gold standard; these sorts of villains are fun and creepy when utilized correctly. As you might of guessed, with Van Pelt... they don’t. It’s kind of just there to add to his creep factor and doesn’t much come into play very often. When he does utilize this strange power to store animals inside himself and add them to his hive mind, it’s suitably disturbing and eerie, but it’s not a major focus.

Still, I don’t think I’d give him more than a 4/10. Yes, he is a generic doomsday villain, but at least in this instance there’s actually a legitimate in-story justification for that. And even if they don’t use it to its full effect, I do think that his powers are really cool and the backstory he has is pretty neat. I think I would have preferred if they just tossed aside the backstory stuff and go for the more psychological approach of the original, but I guess that wasn’t exactly in the cards. Ah well, you can’t win them all I suppose.

[quantumfeat72]

Ask Meme: Chara Dreemurr

:>

favorite thing about them

baby!  chara’s one of those characters who i latched onto on a sort of “it me” level - like, a lot of that is just me projecting but it’s also just so great to have a character who’s coded neurodivergent and still gets to be fucking baby!

but also i love that they make puns as the narrator, so that’s probably my favorite thing from their characterization in the game itself, but tbh a big part of what i love about them is their characterization in (parts of) the fandom

(and, you know, a canon nb character is always great and they were a big part of how i figured out i was nonbinary)

least favorite thing about them

ummmm does “i wish they got a happy ending” count?  like, i wish they’d gotten to heal and grow up because nd characters never get that.  like it makes sense, cause their death was like, the inciting incident, but that’s why i write so many stories about brain-ghost chara getting to be happy. they deserved better dammit

favorite line

this is tricky but imma have to go with

brOTP

fgkafds um unpopular opinion maybe but chara and sans are my main brotp in this fandom.  like, they have a TON in common when you look closely - they both love to make stupid puns and poke fun at people, they’re both super cagey about their pasts, they both have brothers they would die for, they’re some of the most depressed bastards in the game, etc etc

and like, there’s stuff they don’t have in common - chara has a very set moral compass and ends up seeing themself as a villian most of the time by failing to meet their own expectations of “good”ness, while sans is more of a “just dont hurt me or my family and we’re chill” attitude, which i can see getting on chara’s nerves a lot but it might be part of what they need to help like, overcome their self-hatred and learn to accept themself

plus the two of them would get on each others nerves CONSTANTLY but like in a fun way they both think is funny.  they get chocolate together and sans puts ketchup on his.  chara replaces his ketchup with hot sauce.  sans dares chara to do something dumb and films it

OTP

frisk!  i don’t have a ton to say about it though because,, honestly, ships aren’t a big part of fandom for me lol (i learned by reading a bunch of shipfics that i’m arospec, and honestly it’s great to have a reason for why it doesn’t really interest me)

that said, this is another dynamic that i really love exploring, because frisk is another person whose moral framework is antithetical to chara’s in a way that could help them learn they aren’t such a shitty person, and also because bodysharing is a very fun trope to play around with

nOTP

ummm i don’t see a lot of chara ships that legitimately bother me (including chasriel, i don’t get it but it’s whatever).  something that really does bother me though is any sort of antagonistic relationship between them and the dreemurrs.  like.  the kid canonically loved their family a whole lot and their difficulty expressing that love in a healthy way is part of what i love about them because i relate so hard to it, but any sort of story where chara feels ambivalent toward or actively dislikes their family is a big squick for me

i’m also not fond of those stories where sans and chara are like, Mortal Enemies, because it usually plays one or both of them as a Bad Person

random headcanon

i thought of this just barely too late to add it to the autistic hc post - chara has about one million comfort items.  they’ve got their locket, their knife, probably five other Things Chara Keeps With Them At All Times, and they have a lot of anxiety about losing things because everything chara owns is special to them.  they struggle to throw away stuff that’s broken or useless

unpopular opinion

ummmmmmm, i dunno man most of my chara takes are shared by a good portion of the fandom.  i guess my main Hot Take is that the line “Chara wasn’t really the greatest person” says a lot more about asriel than chara - he’s learning to treat them like a flawed person and accept that they fucked up and hurt him and it’s okay to be upset about that, and he doesn’t have to see them as some kind of perfect angel because they weren’t, they were a kid who he trusted with his life, and they hadn’t earned that trust.  

i think one of the most important messages in undertale is that you don’t have to be a Bad Person to hurt someone, and that doesn’t make it okay but it does mean you can do better in the future.  asriel doesn’t have to forgive chara, either.  they deserve a second chance, but he doesn’t specifically owe it to them

song i associate with them

blissful ignorant by awkward marina if that wasn’t obvious, but also:

Holding on and Letting go by ross coppermanThe Learner’s Paradox by WoodloreJust Someone, Not Me by Awkward MarinaBarricades of Heaven by Jackson Browne

just to name a few

favorite picture of them

loaded question so i’m limiting it to ones i could easily find lol um, this one and these two are some of my favorites. i can’t pick just one

[inarjollyhound]

How Travis Touchdown Can Smuggle More Indie Characters into Super Smash Bros Ultimate With Just One Character Slot.

I haven’t played any game in the No More Hero’s series, or even watched a play-through. But seeing reviews for the latest game Travis Strikes Back, (particularly The Completionist one) and re-watching trailers, I had an epiphany.

Travis could seriously change this game, with just his stage alone. 

Travis Strikes back is a side-story, where Travis, and someone trying to kill him for vengeance sake get stuck in the Death Drive MK II where they have to beat 6 games to escape, and have a wish granted for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG24TTOhg_A

These 6 games are nods to real games that Suda51 (The creative mind behind No More Hero’s) really enjoys and appreciates, and in the game itself there’s even T-shirts you can equip to Travis that reference various IRL indie games.

If Travis were added to Smash Bros, The Death Drive MK II, could be a stage that cycles back and forth between each of the 6 games, and the 80′s/90′s cyber space aesthetic featured in the game as a whole.

But for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. the Death Drive MK II could feature 6 real life indie games instead!

This would carry over the themes of celebrating the independent game developers that are Present in Travis Strikes back, while still maintaining the general vibes from the game, and Travis’s Weeb/Gamer personality as a whole.

And while having the character’s and level elements in each respective game appearing as individual stage hazards might get hectic, it would also evoke the crazy and wild nature of Travis Touchdown’s games.

Just imagine for a second, fighting in the crazy looking cyber space map, then suddenly it warps and your in a big beach area with bouncy enemies, and a purple dancing genie, then it warps back into cyberspace land. Then it warps again into a dark world of grim monsters, with inky black enemies, and a tiny little knight fella with a skull helmet, somehow manages to fight them off. Reality shifts again, back in the cyberspace land. Next thing you know your in a snowy place with goofy pixelated looking skeletons. 

In this way Travis Touchdown would not only be an indie rep in symbolism, but in function as well.

Ever since I’ve been following serious discussions about an Indie Rep being added to Smash Bros in the Wii U/3DS games, from serious discussions to a character’s relevancy and their iconic mark on history, To Swams Munderfail memes. I’ve been legitimately hoping to see something come out of this. to see a comparative small, independent character rise up, and join the ranks of the famed Super Smash Bros Roster.

And with most Indie Character’s Roles being integrated primarily as spirits, with only Shovel Knight as an exception as an Assist Trophy. The Chances of one being added as a fighter seem even lower, and the speculation of DLC fighters is reflecting that, as predictions lean more towards the big name characters like Sora, Minecraft Alex/Steve, Master Chief, Etc.

Which is why I feel that if there’s gonna be a strong “Indie rep” it’s gotta have to hit hard, and utilize the indie space as a whole to it’s highest degree. Extending past a single genre like Platformers, or RPG games.

What 6 Indie games would you like to see integrated into Travis’s Death Drive MK II Stage?

Personally, I’d Like to see: Hollow Knight, Shantae, Cave Story, Undertale, Shovel Knight, and A Hat in Time.

On hand, this selection is more Platformer Heavy, and you could argue that it lacks diversity, on the Other Hand, back when the Wii U Ballot was happening, it was most of these platforms that fans have been asking for, and I feel that it would line up more with the Indie Rep crowd than going out of our way to look for other characters.

But if they did focus on genre diversity in this Hypothetical Stage design, for this Hypothetical DLC Challenger pack fighter. I think at least Undertale could come in some form or another, given that it sticks out as a unique variation of the RPG genre.

Travis Touchdown’s Final Smash Could also draw from Travis Strikes Back game.

And if it does, then that could lead even more room for more crossover and references!

Though to be completely honest, I feel like it would be best if between Indie Characters getting integrated into his Final Smash, or his stage, That it has to one or the other, not both.

After All, Travis is his own character. And I think his final smash would be better off as that kick-ass beam sword shit I see whenever I glimpse just a bit of his game-play footage.

But what do you think? Feel free to comment in either the replies or via re-blog!

[nighttimepixels]

on deltarune

Okay, holy hell, I can’t start without saying that, quite frankly:

I loved it.

The music, the visuals, the new characters, the evolution of the battle style - it still retained so much of what I loved about Undertale, yet pushed further/evolved to suit this game.

I was nervous, admittedly, at the first battle - honestly, I’ve never liked team management RPGs too much because so often they get tedious. This, though? It was the perfect balance, and with the shifting team dynamic throughout the game, it really enhanced the story and added to it, rather than being a tedious distracting!

I also have to immediately say how much I loved the Dark World. The designs, the music, the uniqueness of the characters - seriously, Toby Fox did an incredible thing. This doesn’t feel like The Underground 2.0 - this feels like a different place, with beings that are different.... yet their attitudes and interactions still have that freaking charm and depth (even in minor NPCs) that I love about his style of storytelling.

Also, Ralsei is fluffiest best boi, I’m weeping.

Okay - I’m going to save the majority of my gushing over the team & team dynamic in the Dark World for another separate post, because given how much everyone is freaking out, i want to jump right into the meat of it:

Thoughts & Theories

First off... Do I think that this is Undertale 2: the Sequel?

No... but, also, kind of.

I do not think that Deltarune is in any way a direct sequel to Undertale. I especially strongly feel that it’s not an accurate take away to say this is ‘erasing the canon of Undertale’ or ‘destroying the characters/messing with what I love about them’.

I absolutely believe that this is, very literally, an alternate universe to the one we know and love in Undertale. The evidence is everywhere, especially once we return from the Dark World. The characters are nearly all there (and then some), and all the familiar ones carry the same personality and traits that make up the core of them, but the relationships, the context they’ve lived is different. This makes them different people in many ways- hell, with how widely accepted AUs became for the fandom, this should be nothing unfamiliar - but I think a lot of people are wildly thrown off by the fact that Toby Goddamn He Sure Did That Fox legitimately made AUs canon with this game.

Hell, the world of Deltarune seems to even give us the detail that The War (between humans and monsters) never happened here! There’s no hints of it - while the town seems to be almost entirely monsters but for Kris (presumably adopted), there’s no mention of some past sealed in the Underground (or the relationships/bond formed from such an experience), and frankly it doesn’t seem like there’s animosity between monsters and humans, either.

So if it’s not a Sequel™, what is it?

Deltarune is exploring a new theme, using familiar characters, a familiar setup, which in my mind makes it all the more powerful-

Namely, I believe Deltarune is taking two main characters/’entities’ from Undertale as it’s core focus-

‘Chara’ and Gaster.

Why do I think ‘Chara’? (and why the quotes?)

This, from the end of a No-Mercy Route:

and once you select ‘Erase’:

(see too, the fact that if you do a full Pacifist ending after a No-Mercy run, the post-credits include ‘you’ waking up in the middle of the night, and the ‘Chara’ face and familiar red glint occurring.)

Deltarune is a natural ‘evolution’, a follow-up to this specific moment, this concept.

Especially, especially, I note the phrasing ‘this pointless’ world’-

because a major theme of Deltarune (Chapter 1) is the idea that your choices have little impact on the world.

This is in direct juxtaposition to Undertale’s them of ‘choices matter’ - hell, in Deltarune, the ending is damn near the same in the Dark World even if you fight every monster - you can’t even kill any of them, because they run away, scared of you.

So, Deltarune’s theme - so far, your choices... don’t matter.

I’m not here to conjecture without proof - the fact is, this is Chapter 1, and we just don’t have all the details, not even close. We don’t know Kris’ origin (adopted, almost certainly, but how/why? from where, when there seems to be no other human in this town? are monsters largely separated from humans, or is this town just a case of a concentration in population?); we don’t know Gaster’s role (I’ll get to him shortly); we don’t know if the Dark World (and Lightners) are something even whispered about in legend in the world we came from.

(That said, I don’t stand by the interpretation of ‘all that being just a dream’ situation, but again, I’d rather have more info from the next Chapter before I try and conjecture there.)

We see in the beginning of the game something that the weight of doesn’t really hit hard until after it all- Kris, when facing the mirror and checking it, gets the flavor text ‘It’s just you.’

Naturally, at first playthrough, this largely just seems like a callback to the mirror text in Undertale, and a minor insight into Kris’ personal self-value - with the ‘just’ seeming a little sadly self-deprecating.

But after you’ve seen the post-credits-

Suddenly, that feels more like tired relief.

I don’t want to say for sure that Kris is ‘haunted’ or anything like that, but Kris is definitely not just Kris. The post-credits confirm that without a doubt. Suddenly, they lurch out of their bed - not moving normally, as if something else is... piloting them, for lack of a better term - they look like a freaking zombie, at best... and then they rip their soul out of their body and slam it into a cage. The next moment, we get the chilling red-glint and distinctive ‘Chara’ like expression.

I say this tentatively, but my guess is that Kris, being adopted (though certainly at a young age, given the text about Kris growing up with Asriel) came from a bad situation. Again, avoiding too much conjecture in this post, but there’s a lot of signs that point towards that - and I mean, the symbolism of ‘separating yourself from your heart/emotions’ after something traumatic...? The emptiness of Kris’ side of the room, the way that Kris doesn’t fight back in the beginning against Susie, the emotional distance... Seeming, based on interactions with others, like Kris has been largely reticent or at least distant from others more and more, with the exception of big bro Asriel? That’s a lot of red flags, in my mind-

But it’s more than just having issues from whatever happened in their past (and presumably to their birth parents...), it’s also that either because of or in relation to that, ‘Chara’ has become a part of them, and, apparently, takes over at times. That red wagon, that cage... that’s not new. It’s rusty, there are stains nearby seemingly from it/what it held-

This is why I keep putting ‘Chara’ in quotes. It’s moreover a name for the entity of hate/no mercy that you face at the end of the game, not so much the actual Fallen Child from Undertale.

We don’t know what’s been happening with that, we don’t know how much or how often ‘Chara’ has control - but they’re there, and Kris knows it.

This is what so strongly ties together that theme of choices don’t matter - because that seems to be what Kris feels.

Additionally, on the note of Gaster:

No, we haven’t ‘seen’ him yet, or received.... direct confirmation. But Toby Fox, despite being the greatest troll with the best payoff to have ever lived, doesn’t do things lightly. Hell, despite the overwhelming popularity of Undertale, he’s only ever done a handful of proper interviews, and rarely gives concrete details about anything - if he doesn’t want to imply or say something, he won’t.

But we know for certain that he never does things lightly, and the tweets leading up to Deltarune’s release were all in the style of the ‘Missing Entry’, the DARKER YET DARKER entry - ie, the Gaster entry. Coming from a background of writing analysis and style analysis, this matches to a T (though seriously, you don’t need any kind of background to notice that...) - and furthermore, matches the ‘character creation’ start of Deltarune.

Gaster, wherever, whatever he is, is likely ‘viewing’ all this from his position smeared across space-time... everywhere and nowhere at once. He’s positioned as the narrator in an overarching since - his seems to be the ‘voice’ speaking to you when you game-over, his is what you see in the beginning... I’d bet we’re going to be seeing a lot more, though almost certainly in unexpected ways, in future chapters.

Wrapping up-

There’s so much up in the air, but I feel certain about that much based on all the evidence so far. The fact that a game of this length came out of the blue when only some of us even dared to hope for a small demo from the Gaster Tweets on Oct. 30th... holy shit.

Some people seem to have mixed feelings, but seriously - Toby Fox released a 3-4 hour game (depending on how you played it, that’s about the fastest I’ve seen on average for first plays without rushing), with no Kickstarter, no whisper of it coming out - and it’s only the first chapter of the story. However you feel about that, seriously - this man is an incredible creator, and I couldn’t be more in awe.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to reblog this/add on! I might come back and do some light edits/add-ons as I’m sure I’ll think of something I forgot to say in hardly ten minutes, but anything major I’ll likely add in a personal reblog.

With that, I’ll leave off with one final note that I think no one’s brought up yet in what little I’ve seen on full thoughts of the game:

Anyone remember the Stretch Goals from the Undertale Kickstarter?

Well, under the last, largest one, Toby Fox wrote this:

The “other” game... I can’t tell you anything about it. Its very nature is shrouded in darkness.

Toby Fox, everyone.

Toby Goddamn Fox.

[popatochisssp]

Fur a Good Time, Call... 15/15

Series: Undertale, Horrortale Relationship(s): HT!Sans/Reader, HT!Papyrus & Reader, HT!Sans & HT!Papyrus, ensemble Chapter Warnings: none 

You work at an animal shelter. You love all your fuzzy buddies and can’t imagine a better job for yourself than looking after cats and dogs all day, even when the work is hard and often gross. What can you say? You’ve got a lot of love to give!

You’re just not quite sure yet how you feel about the new monster who’s been helping out these days, and this riddle wrapped up in an enigma is something you just can’t resist investigating…

AO3 Link

Epilogue - Family

They say time flies when you’re having fun.

If that’s true, you must have been having a skeleton of fun, because the next few years feel like they’ve breezed right on by.

You finally pulled the trigger and moved yourself in with the brothers after a lot of encouragement and not-so-subtle hints.

You were right, it didn’t really change anything, except that now when you come home after a long day, you have your dog right there waiting for you and roughly eighty percent of the time, a delicious home-cooked meal from Papyrus instead of something you have to toss in the microwave or eat right out of a bag.

When you find a particularly rib-tickling meme in the middle of the night, you no longer have to text it to Sans to share it. All you have to do is give the big skeleton next to you in bed a little nudge, and you get to enjoy the wonderful sound of his sleepy chuckle in person instead of just an ‘lol’ on a screen.

It’s not a big difference, but it feels like an important one.

Nothing much has changed at the shelter either, excepting maybe your promotion to assistant manager.

When your boss had first pulled you into her office and offered you the change in position, your instinct had been to turn it down. You were just a worker, after all, and ‘assistant manager,’ well, that sounded important, not something you could do…

Except you’d started working on that a lot lately, recognizing your own self-deprecating thoughts as you were having them and shutting them down when you could.

Papyrus had been a huge help with that once he’d noticed it was something you struggled with, and he had actually let you in on some of the techniques he used to power through similar feelings.

The most helpful had probably been when he told you to, “Imagine Those Thoughts Are Coming From Somebody You Loathe With Every Fiber Of Your Being! That Way When They Tell You That You Can’t Do Something And You Do It Anyway Because You’re Super-Cool, It’s Like You’re Proving Them Wrong And Rubbing His Gross, Greasy Face In It, I’M AMAZING, JERRY, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT AND YOU CAN’T HOLD ME BACK!”

You’d only asked once who the hell ‘Jerry’ was, in the middle of a Grillby���s date.

Every single monster in the vicinity, even Sans had just grimaced and looked away, pretending you hadn’t spoken and eagerly leaping onto a different subject.

You decided that maybe it was better you didn’t know.

In any case, with Papyrus’ advice in the back of your mind, you managed to accept your promotion with hesitant grace and to your pleasant surprise you were able to handle it just fine.

You already did so much at the shelter that the new job title barely added a handful of responsibilities that your workaholic self wasn’t already doing, and certainly nothing you weren’t capable of getting the hang of quickly. You make a little bit more money now and you have more control over your own hours than you ever did before, which is a very nice perk!

Actually taking time off for yourself…that’s admittedly still a work in progress, but you’re lucky: if there’s one thing your Sans is good at, it’s knowing when you need some self-care time and he’s always ready to con sweet-talk you into taking a break now and then.

You’re actually taking the day off right now, though not because of Sans.

Today is for Papyrus, because after years of study and hard work, your favorite skeleton has made it—finally about to become a boneafide nursing school graduate!

…Pap refused to speak to you for a solid three hours after you made that joke.

Sans, on the other hand, looked at you like he might legitimately cry over it.

His emotions had been pretty high lately, actually, what with his little bro’s big accomplishment and it seems like all the pride and joy in his soul the past few weeks has left him just a teensy bit of a walking disaster.

He can barely focus on anything else for the life of him, so this day off of yours was kind of a necessity. Sans is in absolutely no state to be remembering things like finding the camera, making sure it has memory, ordering the most gaudy and colorful bouquet you could possibly find, figuring out the itinerary…

You handle all of that for him so that all your scatterbrained bonefriend has had to do for the past two weeks was gush to literally anyone who stood still longer than a minute—friend, acquaintance, or complete stranger—about how his bro was graduating and isn’t he just the coolest?

With the way he’s been talking it up, you honestly wouldn’t be surprised if half the shelter staff showed up, plus the entirety of monsterkind.

You hope they all do come: your Papy deserves as much recognition he can get!

-

Sans shortcuts you onto the neatly manicured lawn of Papyrus’ campus, not far from the auditorium where the little ceremony is going to be held.

He’s practically vibrating with excitement and it’s so different from his usual chill persona that it makes you laugh.

“Are you actually gonna be able to sit still the whole time?” you ask with a grin.

“what?” Sans barely glances at you, smoothing his clothes down a little. He processes your question belatedly and when he’s done buffering, he huffs. “oh. pfft. i’m fine.”

He’s back in that tie/sweater-vest combo he wore on your first date—the only ‘nice’ clothing he owns, you think—after Papyrus begged him to please, please not embarrass him by wearing that ratty old hoodie of his.

You’re a little dressed up yourself and so is the dog between you, Buddy in a novelty bone-print bow-tie and a knock-off service animal vest that had been bought online at the last minute.

He hadn’t earned it with any kind of training. It was just a way to sneak him into the place and keep people from questioning his quadrupedal presence, thought up because if there was anybody who looked like they needed a support animal, it was Sans with the giant, debilitating-looking hole in his head.

You weren’t sure you were a hundred percent on board with the deception, but both of the brothers had outvoted you on this one: Buddy was family, too, and he should be there to see Pap graduate!

Sans had (mostly) eased your concerns by pointing out how well-behaved and unlikely to cause a scene your son was, and also by promising that you could leave to escort him out if there was any kind of trouble.

Buddy is so calm right now that you're actually starting to think there won’t be any trouble.

It’s only Sans you’re still worried about.

“Are you fine?” you have to wonder teasingly. “You know Pap’s not the only one graduating, right? We’re gonna have to sit through speeches and other graduates, real boring stuff.”

Sans rolls his eye-light at you. “duh. why do ya’ think i skipped my own graduation? ya’ think i’m gonna waste my whole day at a snoozefest? keep dreamin’.”

Your laugh turns to a soft, affectionate smile as he duly continues, “but this one’s for pap. i don’t mind doin’ it for him.”

What a sweetheart…

You pass him the camera, knowing he’s going to want to be the one to record everything, and with your lightened burden of only flowers and a dog leash, you start walking.

“C’mon,” you say, “we better get in before all the good seats are taken. Unless you want to try taking video from the nosebleeds?”

Sans looks mortally offended by the very notion and follows right after you with an indignant little, “how dare you,” that gets you snickering all over again.

In spite of your warnings about boredom, you’re pretty excited for this, too.

You get to be present for a huge moment in the life of somebody really important to you, with just about everybody else who’s important to you by your side.

It’s a momentous occasion and you can’t wait to see it.

-

Turns out getting in early was a good idea—the auditorium is quickly packed with people, mostly humans come to see loved ones graduate, but also monsters, and lots of them.

You remember learning from Sans that monsters are made of love and compassion and you see it now in spades as all the familiar faces pour in and take seats toward the back or choose to stand, perfectly willing to give priority to people who had actual family in the ceremony but still wanting to be here to show support for one of their own.

You wave hello to everyone you know from your seat and beside you, Sans just beams.

Another thing you were right about was the boring speeches.

There’s two separate addresses once everything gets underway, with the usual types of academic buzzwords liberally tossed about: hard work, dedication, responsibility, ambition…

Sans dozes off halfway through the first one and you just barely manage to snag the camera back from him before it falls out of his lax grip.

You decide to let him sleep, though, knowing it’s not going to get more interesting for awhile yet and what Papyrus doesn’t know won’t earn Sans a lecture.

For his sake, you hope his quiet snoring is too soft to be picked up by the recording. If it isn’t…

Well, that’ll at least be funny to find out when you play the video back later!

It’s not until they finally get to the heart of things, calling up the graduates for their photo-op walk across the stage, that you give Sans a gentle elbow to the ribs.

He snorts awake and gives an appropriately sheepish look to your teasingly raised eyebrow, but he also leans over to nuzzle your cheek as he takes back the camera with a grateful little, “thanks,” that melts your heart.

You spot Papyrus well before it’s his turn, standing off to the side in the line-up. He’s simply too tall and noticeably nonhuman to be missed, especially among his slightly younger and much smaller peers.

He’d done such a good job of being all cool and unaffected in the days leading up to this…but not anymore.

Even from here you can see Pap struggling not to cry a bit at the sight of just how many of your friends had come out to see him today.

Sans’ eye-sockets are starting to look suspiciously wet, too, and if it weren’t for that ‘Don’t Embarrass Me’ promise he’d made, you have a feeling he’d be on his feet bragging to everyone around you about how that’s his brother! Get a load of that skeleton! Ain’t he the coolest?

When it’s Papyrus’ turn to cross the stage and accept his window-dressing diploma, Sans is back to nearly vibrating and you clap as hard as you can on his behalf.

He surprises you, though—holding the camera steady in one hand, he puts the phalanges of the other between his teeth and defies every rule of acoustics and logic itself with a loud, impossible whistle that pierces the auditorium even through all the applause.

You smile when Pap’s skull swivels right over to where the two of you are sitting and he scowls at you in that unique, ‘I Cannot Believe You Right Now’ way of his.

But then he looks…surprised.

And then happy?

Happier, anyway.

You wonder why the change of heart, but they’re already calling the next name and he’s walking back off stage to let all the other grads have their turn in the spotlight, too.

Sans pauses filming and turns to you, grinning so wide you’re surprised his mandible is still attached.

“you know what this means, right?” he asks in an eager whisper.

No, but you think you can guess.

Still, you want to hear the punch-line, so you ask, “What?”

“Pap’s a nurse now—he gets to call the shots.”

“Pfft! Do not say that to him today!”

“why not?” Sans scoffs, feigning realization. “oh, you’re right, no job yet. he wouldn’t have the patients for my jokes.”

You press your hand over your mouth, trying to stifle your giggles.

“Shhhhhut up…!” you hiss.

He sighs. “guess ya’ don’t wanna hear the one about surgeries, huh? ah, suture self.”

Damn him.

Damn him, you are trying to be courteous to everyone still trying to pay attention to the ceremony, but judging by the amount of whispering and secretive glances in your direction you must not be doing a good job.

……Or so you think, until Sans goes very, very still beside you.

“Babe? …Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer you, which is concerning.

Concerning enough that you frown and follow his gaze, just behind you to the very back of the auditorium where…

Oh.

Oh stars.

There’s another familiar face in the room today, but this one you’d only ever seen in pictures, maybe once in some distant footage aired in the news, right when monsters had surfaced.

You understand that surprised look on Papyrus’ face now, and the wide-eyed stares and whispers from the people sitting around you.

Even shadowed and silent, flanked by armed guards, Queen Undyne cuts an incredibly imposing figure in person.

Former queen, you suppose, but her very bearing could only be described as regal…or maybe military. She’d captained the Royal Guard once and you can see that now in her posture, parade rest if not for her hands cuffed in front of her instead of behind.

Her expression is stony and utterly unreadable to you, but there’s only one reason she could possibly be here, today, and he’s probably ecstatic backstage right now waiting to come greet his oldest friend.

And his brother is here next to you, hands starting to tremble as he stares blankly at the woman who broke his head and Papyrus’ teeth all in the same day.

“Oh, stars, Sans, are you…? Do…do you—”

You cut yourself off as Sans suddenly moves, taking the dog leash out of your hand. Buddy, lying obliviously at your feet, perks up a little in curiosity.

“gonna…take buddy out for awhile,” he says quietly. “back later.”

And with that, the seat beside you is empty, just you and the vibrant bouquet of flowers in your lap.

…Oh, boy.

-

The ceremony can’t end quickly enough.

It’s a struggle to remain politely seated through the rest of the proceedings and when it all wraps up and people start to get up and mill about, you can’t help but feel a little lost.

You can’t see the ex-queen anymore in the crowd, but you also can’t see Sans or Papyrus and you’re not sure which of them needs you more right now.

It’s a tough choice, but in the end you settle on Papyrus—as much as you love Sans, it’s Pap’s day and he needs to get these flowers and a ‘congratulations’ straight from your lips.

Plus it’s not like Sans is alone right now. He took your ‘service dog’ with him and Buddy is probably getting some on-the-job training about emotional support right about now.

They’ll be fine.

It takes some searching, but you do eventually find Papyrus…and you’re not the only one because Undyne is there, too, listening patiently to whatever Pap is talking about with such broad and animated gestures.

You stand there for a long, indecisive moment.

Should you…just go over there and…interrupt? Wait until they’re finished?

…At least one very cowardly part of you thinks Sans had the right idea just peacing out like he did.

Even this close, Undyne is beyond intimidating, as massive as Papyrus with none of the gentle friendliness to soften it and not even the orange prison jumpsuit she’s wearing can cover all of her sharpest features—spines, scales, teeth, all razor-sharp and terrifying.

(You wonder if the officers escorting her here today would stand any kind of chance if she decided to escape custody, even with their side-arms.)

Ultimately, the choice of what to do is taken out of your hands.

Papyrus spots you and calls your name, eagerly waving you over, and well…

Here goes nothing.

You walk over with your best winning smile, presenting your bouquet to the new grad.

“Happy graduation, Pap!” you say brightly, feeling one yellow eye burning through you. “We’re so proud!”

Papyrus takes the flowers with a crinkle of the plastic around them, looking like he’s ready to start sparkling any moment now. “Thank You! Wowie, I’ve Never Seen Glitter On Roses Before!”

“Sans’ idea,” you admit.

“Oh!” Papyrus frowns, seeming to notice his brother’s absence. “Oh, Is He…Did He…?”

Need to go get some air because Undyne was here and he hasn’t forgiven her, but he also wanted to let Papyrus have a moment with his friend on his big day?

Probably.

But what you say is, “He went to take Buddy outside. He said he’d be back, though!”

You trust the sharp and clever Papyrus to be able to read through the lines, and by the relieved and undeniably fond smile on his face you’re pretty sure he understood.

The amused-sounding snort from Undyne suggests he’s not the only one.

Papyrus perks up at the sound, suddenly tugging you closer. “Stars, I Almost Forgot! Human, This Is My Friend, Undyne! Undyne, This Is Sans’ Human, I’ve Told You About Them Before!”

You crane your neck, meeting the fish-monster’s piercing gaze for the first time. She certainly doesn’t look very impressed with you, making no move to offer you a hand to shake or even speak.

Considering her history with humans…you’re not surprised.

Still, Pap is watching you expectantly, so you smile and introduce yourself, saying, “It’s nice to meet you!”

Is it, though…?

Maybe. Maybe not.

You know this person by reputation only, and the brothers’ opinions on her are from two opposite ends of a spectrum. You don’t know her for yourself and all you have to judge her on is her actions.

You know what she did to Sans and Papyrus. You don’t like that at all.

But the sight of her standing here in flimsy handcuffs that she could probably break just by flexing a little too hard…it reminds you that she chose to wear them so that Sans wouldn’t have to.

And the fact that she’s here is a whole other layer. How hard must it have been to finagle something like this? You can’t imagine how frustrating and redundant the maze of human politics and legal proceedings must’ve been, even for someone with literally royal clout, trying to arrange leave from prison to be here today, just to be able to see Papyrus graduate.

Undyne did it anyway.

She must really care about Papyrus and as someone with that same level of investment…

Well, that has to earn her back a few brownie points with you.

You can at least be polite.

“So…you’re the punk Papyrus won’t shut up about, huh?” Undyne sneers down at you.

…You can try to be polite.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s me!” you say easily, sparing a glance up at the skeleton in question. “Unless Pap’s been talking up some other humans I don’t know about, I guess.”

Papyrus gasps as if greatly offended. “I Would Never!” he exclaims. “You’re The Best Human!”

You laugh. “‘The best’? Really? I’m the best one?”

“Of Course You Are!” Papyrus says, as if it ought to be obvious. He bends down a little to more easily hug you, explaining, “You’re Our Human. That Makes You The Best!”

Oh…oh, jeez, Papyrus…!

You hug him back.

“Is that true?” You turn to find Undyne watching the two of you, her eye narrowed. “They’re your human, too, Papyrus?”

Papyrus doesn’t hesitate to answer with a firm ‘yes.’

Undyne huffs, making a face.

“Man,” she grumbles, before turning to you with a stern expression. “Hey, human—you know you have to be good to these skeletons, don’t you?”

Your eyebrows shoot up. “Uh… I—”

“‘Cause they’re real important!”

“…Well…yeah, they—”

“It looks like you’re doing okay so far,” she says, which sounds almost like a concession, “even…even…but! You better keep it up, alright?! Queen’s orders!”

“You’re Not The Queen Anymore, Undyne,” Papyrus tries to cut in, but she just glares at him.

“Cherish these skeletons, human!” she demands of you, making it sound like a proclamation. “Cherish them!”

“……”

You…

You kinda want to laugh.

Undyne is definitely intense…but she’s hardly the cold and solemn monarch the human media’s made her out to be. Having her here in front of you, trying to intimidate you into taking care of Sans and Papyrus…

You think maybe you understand why she and Pap used to be friends.

Are friends, that’s…that’s pretty clear.

When you smile at her instead of cowering, she scowls, which really just makes you grin wider.

“I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem,” you assure her. “These guys are…they’re basically my family at this point.”

You give Papyrus a little side-squeeze and feel your expression softening at just the thought of Sans, still off somewhere settling his nonexistent nerves.

“Don’t worry,” you say, as firmly certain as your entire soul is on the sentiment. “I’m gonna cherish the hell out of these skeletons, no matter what!”

The way Undyne is looking at you now…you’d almost call it impressed.

You could probably stop there and call this a confrontation well-handled, but…

You’re not sure you’ll ever have an opportunity to talk to her again.

You might as well say everything you need to say right now.

“And hey…when Pap comes to visit you, actually see him. I don’t like hearing about the times he wasted a trip, okay?”

In your peripheral vision, you see Papyrus’ cheekbones going blue and he whines your name a little plaintively, but you hold eye-contact with Undyne.

It feels like the right thing to do.

Undyne seems surprised.

And then slowly…she starts to laugh.

“Fuhuhuhuhuhu! Okay…okay, yeah!” She grins at Papyrus, a shark-smile if you’ve ever seen one. “I guess you were right, Papyrus. They’re not a total wimp…for a human!”

You wonder if that’s her way of saying you’ve earned some brownie points with her, too.

One of the humans standing quietly beside Undyne suddenly speaks up. “Ms. Undyne? It’s time.”

She sighs, rolling her visible eye. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever…”

“It Was Good To See You Again, Undyne,” Papyrus chimes in. His smile is wide and after all these years, finally free of the corrective braces.

It brings a very nostalgic look to the former queen’s face.

“You, too, Papyrus. Congrats on doing something cool with your life. Come…come see me again soon, okay?”

“Of Course!”

“And human…” She smirks at you. “Just keep cherishing…or else!”

You give her a cheeky thumbs up and a wink that makes you feel an awful lot like you’re channeling Sans for a second. “You got it!”

That gets you a nod of approval, and in short order, Undyne is led away.

“……I Think She Likes You!” Papyrus decides after a long moment.

You snort. “Is that what that was?”

Whatever Pap says in response, you don’t hear it.

With Undyne’s departure, it’s apparently the perfect time for Papyrus to get swarmed by a whole gaggle of excited and curious people.

Some are monsters, wanting to offering congratulations and ask after the old queen, but a lot are human—fellow graduates from Pap’s class, you realize—impressed that Papyrus was apparently important enough that Undyne herself came to their graduation.

In all the bustle, you end up…kinda trapped, squished up against Papyrus’ legs.

Until he effortlessly scoops you up and sets you down just outside the circle of admirers with a patronizing little pat on the head.

“My Adoring Public Needs Me,” he proclaims grandly, to several fond laughs around him. “You Go Find Sans, I’ll Catch Up With You Later. We Still Have Those Dinner Reservations, I Haven’t Forgotten!”

You almost did, but you accept your mission with a playful salute, already looking forward to the fancy new Italian place you were going out to celebrate at later tonight.

Provided, of course, you can actually find your boyfriend somewhere around here.

Papyrus’ voice stops you again before you get too far, though.

“Oh, And Another Thing I Haven’t Forgotten! I Was Promised A Very Specific Graduation Present!” Oh…that was news to you. “When You Find Him, Tell Him To Quit Being A Snail And Make It Happen, Already!”

You chuckle but say, “Sure thing, Pap!” on your way out.

You hope Sans jotted himself a reminder for this mystery present somewhere or you weren’t gonna be much help to him.

You’ll just have to ask him yourself and you don’t think he’ll be very difficult to find.

After all, he wouldn’t go too far on Pap’s big day, and by now the sun’s been down for awhile.

You can’t think of anywhere else Sans would rather be right now, when he wanted to clear his head, than out under the stars.

-

You don’t miss your guess.

Of course you don’t: after the years you’ve been with him, you know your funnybones.

Sans is sitting there outside in the grass, stroking Buddy’s head in his lap and staring straight up at the night sky.

He looks alright, which makes the ugly knot of compartmentalized concern unravel in your chest. You’re glad tonight’s surprise guest hadn’t shaken him up too badly and you approach him with a smile.

“Hey there, sugar-skull.”

Sans looks up at you and your heart skips a beat. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of seeing the love in that big, red eye-light of his when he looks at you, or the way it makes you feel warm inside like nothing else ever has.

“Mind if I join you?”

“thought you’d never grassk.”

That startles a laugh out of you.

“Is that a new one?” you wonder, getting down to join him. “I don’t think I’ve heard it before.”

Sans shrugs, but you see him smiling. He loves being able to pull a new pun on you. It’s happening less and less these days, the more you’re together and the more jokes you hear from him, but you never fail to laugh at even the old ones you’ve heard a dozen times before.

Funny’s funny, a joke’s a joke, and from probably your favorite person in the world, the humor never feels stale.

“undyne give ya’ a hard time?”

You shrug right back. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. …Pap thinks she likes me.”

Sans huffs, but he slings his arm around you, pulling you right up against his ribs.

“‘course she does.” His skull settles on top of your head. “you’re the best.”

Sweethearts. You’re surrounded by sweethearts.

You don’t think you’d trade a single one of them for the world.

You spend awhile out there, just cuddling out under the stars.

You point out a constellation or two that you can see, even with the urban light pollution. Sans manages to find his favorite, Scorpius, and you spot…one of? the dippers, and it’s not until you’re arguing about how he can possibly tell, without a telescope, how that particular speck of light could be Cassiopeia A that you remember.

“Oh, wait, shit, I was supposed to remind you!”

“hey, you don’t gotta make up excuses, babe. you can just admit you’re wrong, y’know i ain’t gonna make fun of you for that.”

You smack him lightly on the sternum and he snickers at your ineffective bat. “No, seriously. Papyrus wanted me to tell you something.”

“sure, i completely believe you. what’s the message from ‘Papyrus’?”

You shoot him the fiercest side-eye you can manage. “Pap says he hasn’t forgotten about his graduation present and for you to stop being a snail.”

Whatever response you were expecting, the way Sans stiffens against your side really isn’t it.

“……shit. right. yeah. that.”

“Did you forget?” you wonder, trying to hide your amusement.

“mmm, little bit.”

“I mean…you can teleport. If you need to go get it…”

Sans fidgets a little. “nah, it’s not…i already have the……have for awhile, i just haven’t…gotten around to………”

You make a noise of surprise when Sans stands up, pulling you with him. He looks awfully nervous all of a sudden, even more nervous than when Undyne had shown up.

“Oh jeez, Sans,” you murmur gently. “Relax, I’m sure Pap’ll love it!”

It doesn’t stop the sweat from beading along his skull. “that, uh…that’s the thing, it…it’s not……for Pap, actually. it’s……it’s for you.”

You frown, confused. “Pap’s present…is a present for me?”

“eheheheheh…nah, the…it’s for you, Pap’s part of it is……uh. i ‘stop bein’ a bitch about it.’ direct quote.”

Snrk… Oh, Papyrus…

“Okay. Weird, but okay. So…what is it?”

“………um. so.” Sans looks like if he had a lip, he’d be biting it right about now. “i…found a really cool rock…that i wanted to give ya’…”

Oh!

Sans had great taste in rocks, you couldn’t wait to see it.

“‘cept i…wasn’t really sure when the right…time…was…?” He chuckles a little, his eye-light darting everywhere but you. “human……customs, or, whatever. but…but Pap says i already been draggin’ my feet too long, so, uhh…”

Sans reaches into the pocket of his nice slacks and presents you with…

Oh, a crystal!

And by far, the most beautiful one you’ve ever seen: it’s a gorgeous cyan blue and glowing, actually radiating light in the darkness.

The urge to reach out and touch it is powerful and you just stare at it for a moment completely awed.

But then Sans starts talking.

“i…i got it from, uh…from waterfall. the ceiling. took a little doing, but it…it seemed right. we…monsters, we used to wish on these, y’know? did…did i tell you that?”

“Not in so many words,” you say, but you don’t need words for memories conveyed directly through the soul.

You have a clear picture in your mind of the place he’s talking about, and what it meant to monsters when they were trapped.

“well…we wished on ‘em…like how humans do with stars, for stuff we wanted…things……things we never thought we’d get to have…ever.” Sans goes a little glowy in the cheekbones himself. “stuff that was too important to give up on, no matter…how impossible it was.”

He’s still not looking at you and you have no idea where he’s going with this, but when there’s a long pause, you prompt him to continue.

“Sans…?”

He shakes his skull, like he’s trying to clear an etch-a-sketch, and seems to start again.

“i saw a documentary about…one of the animals ya’ got up here. the little…” He struggles with the name and tries, “tuxedo birds,” and you nod encouragingly that you understand.

Though you can’t for the life of you figure out why he wants to talk about penguins right now.

“it, uh…it said they…when they really want to…be with somebody, what they do is…they, they find a rock and give it to ‘em and that’s how they find their mates.” Sans laughs a little, still with that persistent edge of nervousness. “i dunno, i thought it was pretty cute. monsters don’t…we don’t have nothin’ like that, but i guess…i guess humans do?”

Sans freezes suddenly, like something’s just occurred to him.

“shit,” he mutters. “i’m supposed to be on one knee for this, right? does it matter which knee, or…?”

………

Holy shit.

“Sans, are you…are you proposing…?”

He winces at the question, a rueful expression on his skull.

“jeez……guess i’m doin’ a pretty shit job of it if ya’ gotta ask.”

If your heart skipped a beat before, you actually think it stops this time, just for a second.

Sans is proposing.

He wants to marry you.

He wants you to be a part of his life, always.

“Yes.”

Sans blinks at you, looking startled.

You’re not sure if he actually processed the thing you said or what it meant, so you say it again, as emphatically as you can.

“Yes, Sans, I want to marry you!”

He stares at you just a little bit longer…but you know your answer got through this time.

That traitorous eye-light of his can’t lie, and it’s heart-shaped and adorable.

“heheheheheh…hahahahahaha!”

You laugh, too, as you’re suddenly scooped up off the ground, literally swept right off your feet into his arms as Sans holds you up against him, fervently nuzzling at your face.

You nuzzle back, grinning so widely it actually hurts and pressing smooches against him everywhere you can reach.

Below you, Buddy has taken to darting around and barking, excited by the sudden movements his people are making. You know he has no idea what’s going on, but you’re excited, so??? He’s excited too??? Yes?!?!

Stars, you love your stupid dog-son.

You love your goofy skeleton fiancé.

You see several sudden camera flashes and hear a triumphant, “NYEH-HEH-HEH, FINALLY! YES!” off from the side, and you love your meddling, soon-to-be brother-in-law, too!

It might not be the biggest family, but it’s yours and honestly…?

Your life feels as full as it’s ever been.

You gasp as something utterly delightful occurs to you and you brace your hands against Sans’ shoulders, pulling away just enough to look him in the eye-socket.

“Sans,” you say urgently, “Sans!”

“what?” he asks, frowning a little at your tone. His eye-light pops back to its normal round shape, but if you have your way, that won’t last long.

“Do you know what this means?”

Sans can see you starting to grin, the kind of grin that goes hand-in-hand with his most favorite thing in the world, and his concern falls away.

He spares an insufferably smug smirk over at his poor, unsuspecting brother before turning back to you, as eager as you’ve ever seen him.

“what, baby? what does it mean?”

“When we get married… do you know what that’s gonna make you?”

Sans knows it’s going to be good. He’s practically vibrating again as he asks, “what’s it make me?”

“Sans……you’re gonna be my husbone.”

Papyrus shrieks in dismay, even as Sans’ eye-light blips right back into a heart-shape and he completely loses his mind, hugging you even tighter against him and laughing until delighted tears streak down his skull.

“HUMAN! Stop Ruining This Beautiful Moment For Me!” Papyrus demands, his hands on his hips.

“keep…keep enhancing this beautiful moment for me,” Sans wheezes, nuzzling at your cheek.

Buddy just keeps scurrying around Sans’ feet, jumping up and trying to be part of the action, too.

Pap corrals him for you and comes on in to join your little hug-fest with a hilariously irritated look on his face, saying that you two had better not start this up again at your celebratory graduation-slash-engagement dinner or he'll be very displeased, disowning you both!

This…

This is a very good family to be a part of.

You couldn’t be happier.

Prev Chapter | Snips & Snails

[badgersgarbage]

Controversial Deltarune Theory/Thought-dump Time!

Also known as the Ralsei Might (MIGHT) Be Not Be Part Of The Prophecy But Please Don’t Quote Me On That Or Shank Me In A Dark Alley Because I’m Saying The Best Fluffy Boy Might Not Be As Good A Guy As I Want Him To Be Thank You theory.

Someone may have covered this already but I honestly haven’t seen anything so I figured I’d give my two cents on the matter.

I wanna preface this by saying that I’m not entirely convinced that this theory is true, but it seems... somewhat possible.  We won’t know what will happen in the future or what Deltarune has in store for us, or if we get better screenshots for scale’s sake, but until then this is based on whatever I can find and thoughts from other theories I’ve glanced at.  To save clogging your dashboards or searching, I’ll put all of this under a cut.

Still with me then?  Alright, so, here’s the hypothesis:

Ralsei, our favourite fluffy boy, isn’t the Prince in the prophecy he mentions.  Instead, Lancer is.

I hit on this idea when I saw a comment on Game Theory’s first Deltarune video.  Now I know people tend not to like MatPat on here, but, personally, I found that video pretty decent, and it brought a perspective to what was happening with Kris and Susie and that’s not the point, the point is the comment.

The comment I saw is as follows, copied partially:

“In the prophecy:

Kris=The human

Susie=The monster

Ralsei=The prince from the dark

Asriel=The Knight

but what if there was a loophole where

Kris=The human

Susie=The monster

Lancer=The prince from the dark

Ralsei=Asriel=The Knight

and you would need to do something similar to what you did in undertale pacifist with Asriel at the final boss fight

i can see it working“

And that got me thinking.  What if Lancer is the prince in the prophecy, and Ralsei isn’t?

Now I’m not gonna say that Ralsei isn’t still a nice boy or that he’s actually the Knight, so don’t worry.  But I feel like Lancer has more claim to being the prince of the legend than Ralsei.

Here’s what I can find that supports it:

The Legend of DELTA RUNE requires, specifically, a human, a monster, and a Prince from the Dark.

While Lancer and Ralsei both use the title of Prince, Lancer is the only one who has currently-seen evidence of that title being legitimate.  His father, the King Of Spades/Chaos King, is, well, a King.  With a title and everything.  Sure, he was part of a quadarchy with the others, but he’s still a king and that makes Lancer a honest-to-Lightner Prince of the Darkners.

[said comment is followed with “The KINGDOM OF DARKNESS”]

Ralsei, on the other hand?  All he does is tell us he’s a prince. 

And it’s kind of hard to be a prince without subjects.

Okay, so let’s assume that Ralsei does actually have a father with the title of king, and his subjects are all missing.

What about the whole part of there being one pillar of darkness shooting up from the ground, with a second one sprouting up?

Let’s have a look at what the image in the prophecy tells us:

The one depicted in the foreground is the one we see when we meet up with Ralsei.  The one in the background is the one where the Chaos King fight happens and is connected to Card Castle.

From this perspective it seems like there’s a massive scale difference between the two, with the Card Castle Pillar being the larger of the two.  Which makes sense in two ways:  the first, that with it being a new pillar, it would be fairly wild and uncontrolled.  The second, and perhaps more likely for reasons I will explain, is that it’s the original one, and the one near Ralsei’s castle is smaller because it’s a newer one that isn’t nearly so powerful.

It could also just be a stylistic choice.  *shrug*

Now the perspective of both of these screenshots is a little off, and it’s kinda hard to tell how close or far these things are.  But above is the Card Castle Pillar (which is in the background, difficult as it might be to tell), which looks pretty big and could be somewhat far away from where the battle takes place.

On the other hand, the pillar here has at least a slight reference to it?  Gah, it’s hard to tell.  But here’s some screenshots of the courtyard you enter when you move towards the pillar:

That’s pretty much the size of it actually.  The entrance there isn’t too big and it’s kinda hard to say where it starts, but I’ll let someone better at that kinda thing work it out.

More to the point, the Card Castle Pillar has a pretty massive central castle around it, and is the hub of all of the various Darkners you encounter in Chapter 1.  The one at the Empty Town, however, has... well... nothing.  No people save for Ralsei, no real buildings of note (hell, they even look flat - just look at how the outer buildings in the screenshot curve around), it’s just... there.

Which, to me, seems just a tad suspicious, given it’s Ralsei presenting the legend.

Honestly, maybe the Darkners only need one fountain up at a time for them to survive, but I digress.

So what does this all mean?

Well, for one, it solidifies Lancer, our favourite milk-osmosing chubby boy, as a potential candidate for the Prince of legend.  He, perhaps obliviously, alludes to this in his first appearance:

Granted he only says this when you skip over the legend, and let’s be real it could just be from this image:

Does that mean Ralsei isn’t a potential for the slot of ‘Prince from the Dark’?  Weeeeeell... that’s kind of hard to say without knowing more about Ralsei aside from what he says when we meet him and his staggeringly obvious connection to Asriel.

Is Ralsei actually Asriel that has found his way into the Dark World?  Is he a projection of Kris’ desire to preserve how his brother was before he left for college?  Does Asriel tie into the Knight somehow?  Does Ralsei have a parental figure or two that will tie into Asgore and/or Toriel?

Honestly, I have no idea.  But I’m eager to find out.

I’m open to discussion about this idea, but please be civil, and please don’t gauge out my liver because I said bad things about a character, thank you :)