#undertale bits and pieces

[akanemnon]

Completely unrelated but have you heard about Undertale Bits & Pieces?

This one I absolutely have heard of. It's the very reason why Frisk squeaks like a dog toy in Twin Runes.

[under-lore]

How much merit did "Star is Chara's theme" have really ?

The music of Undertale is quite renown for a number of things, from its quality to its abundant usage of leitmotifs.

However, there are a few tracks which went under the radar, such as the ones that went unused in the final release of the game.

One of such tracks was "Star".

This particular unused track found itself in an intriguing situation when it became the center of one of Undertale's biggest fully soundtrack-based theories of the early fandom.

The theory suggested that "Star" may have been an unfinished version of what could have been a Chara theme before the idea was eventually scrapped before mounting up to anything concrete.

That theory was based around the way Toby Fox makes his music and the way it correlates to his characters.

For instance, from its rhythm to its instruments and its intensity or even its fairly epic/heroic yet pretty chaotic & impulsive nature, Spear of justice has "Undyne" written all over it it countless ways. It isn't just an Undyne-associated song, the song literally feels like Undyne. It is a musical representation of Undyne and the situation she finds herself in at the moment. And that is how a lot of Toby's music is written.

Even someone who has never heard the song and knows nothing about Undertale, if given a description of each of the main characters and asked of which one was this a theme of, would easily find the right answer.

This particularity comes from a few things, such as the fact that Toby confessed that he actually often makes the music first and then creates the scene around it by taking inspiration from the music.

And so, in the case of character themes, it means that Toby Fox songs end up being filled with hidden details and tones that are relevant to a character's personality, backstory, psyche, etc... And thus makes the songs a lot closer to the characters.

Due to this, a number of fans tried to reverse engineer some of the unused songs using this technique in order to try and figure out what they might have been for, and "Star" was the one that stood out.

The reason why it stood out was because the fans did believe they were able to find such connections between "Star" and the first fallen human.

Some of the ties they proposed between the song and the character were :

The song starts out with a sad/depressing tone similar to grief or regret, seen as possibly alluding to how Chara's plan was a failure (that Flowey came to cruelly regret), and how it caused the kingdom to fall into despair after their death.

In addition, the song has a very strong "echo" effect, which is also often associated with the idea of death as well as that of the consequences of the past coming back to you. Two things that Chara as a character is also associated with.

But it soon begins to obtain an uplifting and hopeful undertone as the song goes on. This can be attributed both to Chara being seen as the future of humans and monsters, but also to their newfound "reincarnation" allowing them a new second chance at existence.

The combinaison of the previous two things makes the song feels somewhat confused before it finds itself a stable path. Which could also be tied to Chara's words at the of genocide. (but that one is a bit more of a stretch)

The song overall just has a very similar vibe to "his theme", Chara's best friend. As Toby likes to have musical similarities between themes of characters that are closely tied together.

The song is just long enough so that it could have fit to play during the chara flashbacks scenes at the end of pacifist if we were to add back the unused few more images that were going to be in there originally. (Side note : this being the case would give point n°3 a very toby-esque double meaning too. With Chara being there both in Asriel's memory and reincarnated)

Some claim that the instruments used in the song can tie it to the Dreemurr family, however my ear is not good enough to tell wether this point is actually valid or just a rumor.

The song starts off weak in intensity, but begins to grow stronger after a click that radically changes the song's overall feeling. (the same one that was proposed to be about their reincarnation.) This was suggested to be a reference to Chara's words about power at the end of the genocide route.

That the name of the song is "Star" in the first place, as there also happens to be a star named "Chara" not all that far from our solar System. On top of that, this particular constellation is known for having a top/northern dog star, and a south/lower dog star. Our Chara star is the lower dog Star, which could be interpreted as a metaphor for being a human yet living in the underground.

...Which isn't that for bad for a track that only lasts like 30 seconds.

So due to these reasons and to the fact that the song clearly seemed unfinished, it quickly became a popular theory that the song was supposed to be related to Chara in some way, with the flashbacks at the end of pacifist being a prime suspect for its intended scrapped use.

However, some time later, this screenshot came along :

The reliability of this screenshot is to be taken with a grain of salt, as there are many rumors that this screenshot may have been fake, and i have not been able to properly identify the source of these rumors. And besides, a private e-mail isn't something that can be easily verfied the existence of.

But all that aside, the e-mail seems to say that before it was scrapped, the usage of 'Star' was actually attempted for the fight against Madjick, a regular enemy from near the end of the game.

Although technically not fully disproving it (as the fact that Toby makes the music first & it not fitting Madjick much or just overall that regular enemies don't usually have such unique themes might let one argue that it was first made for something other than Madjick, then was used for Madjick before being removed.), the way that Toby appears to talk about it seems to imply that there isn't really more to the song than that, and thus that the theory would just be wrong after all.

Since then, the theory was pretty much left as is, slowly fading away in popularity over time.

Was this theory correct ? Whilst we will probably never be sure, the answer is most likely no. I wouldn't bet on it, at least.

However, no matter wether this was all ultimately just a coincidence or not, one thing which remains true is that the music certainly does sound quite close to how one would have expected a Chara version of "his theme" from Toby to sound like.

The same cannot be said for other fanon Chara associated themes, such as "Megalo strike back". While Toby did make this song, this was not the song's intended name and it didn't have anything to do with Undertale.

I find it unfortunate that people went fishing this far on Toby's archives for a song to make fanon Chara content around when Star was right here in the Undertale game files for the taking and would have been a more fitting choice overall.

By default of being an actual Chara song, Star still had everything one would need to build good Toby-like fanon Chara songs around at the very least. But this opportunity went surprisingly under-exploited under Megalo strikes back's shadow.

It doesn't mean there aren't any Chara fanthemes using Star, though.

For instance, Undertale bits & pieces made this Genocide Chara theme using the Star leitmotif among a couple others. I believe it is an example of using Star as an inspiration done well !

[clicktuck-suskriberz]

Someone please make a map with all the extensions to the main Underground from True Genocide, UT Yellow, and Bits&Pieces

[oograths-pizza-and-chill]

2023: The year of getting sick and tired of modders.

[swagboi7tmblr]

TIL there’s a Bits and Pieces Together mod for Undertale and the second player design gave me a fucking stroke

The coincidence of all time

[jothb]

Not about music but growing up I always had to pirate games. Not a statement asking for pity, just a fact that happened. Sometimes I'd feel bad, but I mostly just wanted to play videogames.

One day I pirated Undertale. It became my entire identity for two years. I *loved* that game and it affected me in ways no game really has ever since. I played it over and over so many times, trying to get faster and faster (I don't know if I knew what a speedrun was), looking for secrets, finding them on my own (It should be noted I played undertale without access to the internet, I was staying at my grandparents summer house at the time). I still remember how smart I felt when I figured out how to solve the piano puzzle, or that you could sell dog residue for infinite money, or how to edit the save file to give me 999 hp to fight sans. I don't think I ever had or ever will have such an experience with a game again. It was the most memorable summer and it completely changed how I viewed videogames ever since. However I've given Toby Fox no money

Fast forward a couple years and I buy myself a Switch. It's a good console, and I was really enjoying playing the two games I bought with it (botw and metroid dread). Still, I decided to open the e-shop and see if there are any games I'd like to purchase. The second I open the front page I see it.

Undertale

I couldn't even finish a thought before I bought it. This game means so much to me, and now that I could finally buy it, pay for it, I did. I haven't touched it in years and yet I still remembered everything. It was like visiting the neighbourhood you grew up in and seeing how little everything changed. I finished it the same evening.

I don't think you're morally required to buy games you pirated once you have the money. Hell I didn't do it with every game I've pirated (if I did I would go bankrupt). But I know that just because someone can't pay for a game, or chooses not to, says nothing about whether they would support the developer or not. I didn't just do this with undertake too btw! Spiritfarer is another game that I bought *because* I loved it so much

Anyway fats forward another couple of years and I learn about the Bits and Pieces mod. It's for Desktop and I don't have money to buy Undertale on steam at the moment, so I just pirate it. At this point I already paid Mr Toby Fox (to be more precise I paid Nintendo and they gave him a cut), and had I the money to do so, I probably wouldn't have objected to buying the game on Steam. But I didn't, so I just looked up a pirated version and installed the mod on it.

I was greeted with a fucking anti piracy screen. Undertale doesn't have one. At first I assumed they just did the kind of piracy screen I have found memories of - "hey dude just tell your friends about the game if you can't buy it". I remember seeing one on my pirated copy or Terraria.

Nope. The game told me I am a greedy little fucker and should go pay Toby Fox. Like it literally says "you gotta pay Toby Fox". This wasn't added by Toby, this was added by a *mod*. It genuinely felt kinda disgusting. Of course I looked up how to go around the anti piracy screen, but it made the entire experience much more miserable. It was like coming back to the neighborhood you grew up in only to see it gentrified and fenced off

I don't know how to finish this post

fun fact: if you pirated six full length albums from your favourite band, listened to them all back to back 5 times, and then sent them $20 on ko-fi or whatever, on average they would have earned slightly more money per play than they'd get from you streaming the same shit with ads on spotify.

[animalinvestigator]

happy 9 years

here's to 990 more

[oversizedsunhats]

My favorite ship dynamic: gay married

[changantenna]

undertale yellow?? except you're not Clover and you CAN DATE PEOPLE (if ur from twitter yes. you've seen this before)

[copper-skulls]

Vs. Queen Alphys

[caycanteven]

Night out~ ✨🍷

[mesopelagos]

i am not a pattern to be followed

[akiretv]

cant stop singing sans and papyrus animatic i left very unfinished more than a year ago

my style has changed A LOT and im still without a proper animation program but this thing calls me like the goblin mask, should i try to finish it sometime?

[oops-its-a-fanwork]

Ask: A pirate's first kiss! 🤭💕

Anonymous asked:

Oooh great taste in questions already! I always love reading kissing headcanons myself, never made them before though :p

Pirate au as kidnapped depicted from @mega-punani ! Go check 'm out, there's cute skele pictures there too~

In this case, you and your skelle are both into eachother and you both kinda know it, but this is the first proper kiss on the lips! ...teeth?

Uuuuhhhh you're smoochin! Enjoy <3

Sans

First kiss huh? If he initiated it, it probably came paired with a pun. In fact, he would be making hundreds of kissing and relationship puns to try and help you catch on to what he's going for. When you finally realize he is asking for a kiss, he gauges your reaction, looking to see if you're up for it. You can be as shy about it as you want, with his judgement eye he can see right through it!  

"Well, if you insist~"

It's a very sweet kiss, and he has a dreamy, almost smug smile on his face afterwards, teasing you a little bit if you look very flustered. Don't be fooled though, the smug smile and teasing are there to hide his own bashfulnes. You don't need a devil fruit to realize it though, seeing as his entire face is bright blue: he absolutely adores you.

If you catch him off guard by initiating first and out of the blue, he buffers for a few seconds before blushing hard and hiding his eyes with his hat, not able to stop smiling all day. You can watch him trying and failing to come up with a pun about it the first minute after.

He'll probably find you at some point during the day to return the favour.

Papyrus

Oh dating manual my beloved...

So papyrus is casually suave and totally swept you off off your feet when your relationship was still completely platonic, but now that you both feel the romance growing... he gets kinda flustered lol. He has no idea of how much natural charisma he has, so now that he wants to impress you he sticks to the book... the Dating Manual!

He meticulously searches for the right place, time and circumstances to have a romantic first kiss to, which we all know means it's highly unlikely to happen anytime this year. He does, however, loudly proclaim romantic expressions of love to you when he deems the time to be right (or on accident) and he is always hiding the little book behind his back when you walk in on him reading it. It is very, very clear that he wants a kiss. Please save him.

If you want him to take initiative, you'll have to make it very clear you are expecting a kiss, *right now*. You read somewhere that uhhhh seeing two seagulls fight over a scrap of bread after having sailed north for at least two hours means a romantic kiss is bound to happen! Oh, if only something that romantic would happen to me...

There is a 30% chance he'll both take the hint and take the step, but when he finally does, well...

"Wowie...."

If you happen to kiss him somewhat out of the blue, he short-circuits- trembling a little and glowing pink and orange. Tell him he looks like a beautiful sunset and watch him flounder. Will excitedly tell Sans about the whole thing. Multiple times. (Sans is a very supportive bro and is very happy for him)

Blue

Your first kiss with Blue may have been a spontaneous, spur of the moment kinda thing, like many of your adventures with this man.

As he held u princess style in an epic rescue from something very dangerous (you slipped), you aimed to dramatically smooch him on the cheek as thanks. But then he angles his head in an unexpected way and oh my... 

He freezes, eyelights expanding, and slowly becomes completely blue. Before you can apologize, he starts running around the ship with you, holding you tight and loudly giggling as he is overtaken by excitement and glee. You are so sweet he is on an artificial sugar high!

Even if it's not a spur of the moment kiss, it will likely still be up to you, to some degree, to make the first move. It's not that Blue doesn't want to kiss you! Heavens no! It's just, well... He knows that he can miss the occasional social que and he doesn't wanna fuck this up by hurrying you or misreading your intentions, so he just flirts dramatically and hopes you take the hint to take initiative. Just for the first time though, after that he has a free pass and boy is he gonna use it.

The flirts are pretty forward, you can't miss em: things like kabedoning you and looking at you expectantly, or showing up with a rose in his mouth. Even if it doesn't lead to a kiss, he hopes it will make you laugh!

Stretch

With Stretch, it pretty much happened on accident.

You were sitting next to each other, your head against his shoulder, listening to him softly playing some tunes as the sun set on the sea. The boat was anchored, and the others were busy or tuckered out after the long day. It was just the two of you, the waves and a soft melody.

He looked to his right and found your face just- so close to him. You both just kinda studied each other for a while, lost in thought and completely at ease...

When did you start kissing?

His reaction to it is fireworks going off in his head, but definitely the kind that fitted the occasion.  He didn't even take the time to be embarrassed about it, instead just basking in the moment of having you so close.

Red

As flirtatious as this man is, he will pretty much never initiate the first kiss. He'll initiate after the initial kiss for sure, but he has a lot of respec juice and since he knows he's a bit much sometimes, he doesn't wanna overstep or pressure you into something you are not ready for. He's pretty used to being rejected for being crude so might as well let you come to him.

If you are having a rare tender moment, and you initiate a kiss from there... this man will be in the clouds for a few days: very distracted, uncaring even for his more interesting duties and sporting a huge dreamy grin which grows when you are in the same room with him. His brother is worried he's going to melt.

If, however, you decided to kiss him because you are sick of the teasing flirts he keeps throwing your way, he will be VERY smug about it. Also it will not actually stop his teasing flirts. But you do both get a kiss out of it so it may have been worth it.

Besides the tender moment, there is no way to surprise him with a kiss. He is always waiting for you to kiss him. Always ready for a kiss. Bring 'm in, those kisses! A huge simp, this one.

Edge

Edge does, occasionally, take a break. When most chores have been done, someone else takes the lead for a while or when the crew is simply having some down time, dear Edge gets to relax with some tea and a good book as well. And if it is at all possible, he shares these rare moments of downtime with you. 

He usually distracts himself from his crush on you by being busy, so now that he is sitting down and taking his time... he may actually be forced to confront his feelings, at least to himself. After heaving a heavy sigh, he steels his nerves and decides this should be the moment to kiss you. What other times will be as appropriate as this?

Edge takes the time to tilt your face towards him, looking you in he eyes and glancing at your lips... and that's where he reaches the edge of his courage. Luckily, you feel the same, and his set up makes it easy for you to simply close the small gap left to kiss him.  Edge remains quite red the entire evening, but he tries to keep it cool. Please think he's calm and collected and that he doesn't get desperately embarrassed and infatuated upon receiving a single wonderful kiss. He's cool! He's never been more collected!! Don't look at him like that!!!

Razz

Ah the tsundere. Let's see... Maybe after a long tiring day, when everyone save for you and him has finally gone to bed, you find him still buried deep in his maps, clearly trying to distract himself from everything that happened. You softly convince him that the quality of the map may suffer if he keeps going when this tired. You even hug him close and he lets you, just this once. You give him your first kiss to his forehead as he is in your arms. As he slowly turns purple you expect him to turn you away, yelling or mumbling something about you being a distraction. Instead, he simply grumbles something along the lines of "not even doing it properly if you're going to do it at all" as he smashes his face into yours. It's actually very nice, and you guys keep the sweet embrace and kisses up until you decide to leave his little mapping office and go to sleep. He seems well rested the next day, if a little purple, and the crew is blessed with some lovely weather after the heavy rains from the past few days.

He won't do much pda with you after, almost making it seem like he doesn't care, but he only shares this with you when no one can disturb you both.

Cash

May have been a little shit who tried to dare you into kissing him, or to make bets in which you'd have to kiss him if you lost (and he'd have to kiss you if he lost). He didn't expect you to actually accept his dare, especially if you have declined his dares before, but now he's sweating bullets: he likes having the excuse that it's just a joke or just to tease you, but now that you're standing in front of him expectantly he is once again forced to recognize that he genuinely really wants this... and he's so scared to fuck it up. He genuinely believes he doesn't deserve something like this.

He teases you again to divert his attention but you take that as a sign to just get this over with and kiss him. The kiss melts away any doubt he just had, and when you release him he's just kinda standing there, buffering.

You're kinda disappointed seeing no reaction from him. Maybe he did only mean it as a joke... but as you turn away to do literally anything else he finally loads back in and starts asking for increasingly dumb bets and dares trying to get another kiss. 

Bear

Bears first kiss, if given, was probably to calm you down. It was almost instinct: you were upset, and he was already swaying you side to side gently, waiting for the flow of tears to stop. He wants to help, to do more... so he lifts your chin and gives you a gentle but firm kiss on the forehead, as he remembers someone having done for him when he was younger, one of few sweet memories of days long past.

You look up at him with wide eyes, now still, and he notices the crying has slowed to a stop as you watch him in fascination. Neither of you remember who leaned in after that.  

Cinnamon 

Gosh he wants to kiss you. He wants to kiss you so badly!! But he is very nervous to initiate. Is it the right time? The right place? Do you feel the same? He thinks you do, you are always so sweet to him! You help him out when you can! And you are respectful of his boundaries- but oh please take initiative and put an end to his suffering!!

He'll make plan after plan to initiate, even asking Papyrus and Blue for help, only to chicken out for some reason. At some point the rest of the crew gets involved in trying to get this over with, so now if you don't initiate, the way your first kiss goes may depend on them:

Cash would trip Cinnamon into you repeatedly, Red locks you both into a room until you make out, and Razz just straight up tells you to get it over with so Cinnamon will stop nervously tapping his cane on his cabin roof.

How he reacts when you finally initiate depends on your intensity: if you are soft and sweet with him he is blushing hard but mostly just heart eyed, but if you are, *ahem*, intense with him, he pretty much faints in your arms, anime-comedy style. It's very cute ;)

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this and wish to send an ask as well, please read this post and maybe my pinned post as well! See ya around <3

[millydrawsthis]

I swim for all salvation I swim to save my soul But my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornado.

BONUS DOODLES—

[supermarioterrarium]

Just had an Aha moment about Deltarune, not necessarily to any end but certainly an interesting parallel to keep in mind going forward. Spoilers for Mother 3 and Chrono Trigger. I've struck through and isolated one particularly large spoiler if you'd still like to read this but haven't played and don't want a major twist spoiled.

If you know Toby Fox, you know that his work with creating games started with an Earthbound hack, and UT/DR definitely share similarities with the Mother series. Mother 3 in particular is being used, I think, as a sort of structural rubric for Deltarune. It seems to be following similar plot beats:

rather than pulling seven needles from the earth that spew steam out like geysers, we're sealing seven (?) fountains opened with a blade

a lost sibling is a major element of the story

- a lost sibling / twin is perhaps also a major antagonist (this could work if the Knight is either Dess or the Vessel)

Those (potential) connections have always been really cool to me. But you might know if you've played Chrono Trigger that that game is definitely also an influence on UT/DR:

Story begins w/ mother figure getting you out of bed (though this is also just a JRPG trope)

A town fair being the impetus of / significant to the plot

The mentions of a Black Wind

"Then the world was covered in darkness" feels very inspired by / similar in execution to "But the future refused to change"

And the one that most recently occurred to me:

Schala, Janus and Queen Zeal seem to be at least slightly paralleled by Dess, Noelle, and Mayor Holiday. Schala's fate in both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross could be seen as similar to Dess', trapped somewhere outside of normal spacetime, possibly at the hands of the greater antagonist. Queen Zeal's connection to Mayor Holiday is a little more nebulous -- she's a figure of power who may not have her children's best interests in mind, at the very least -- but the comparison could grow much stronger depending on how DT's story plays out. And Noelle as Janus.. is maybe a little more tenuous than that. She's a strong offensive magic user who can become a member of the party.

This is somewhat of a malformed line of thought, mostly by merit of not having a complete picture of the DT characters involved just yet. But I do think it's worth thinking about!