#which made me go to a file I have where I specifically got dialogue that was sweet or nice or inspiring in some other way

[runefactorynonsense]

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping 2023 is kinder than its predecessor, and have a screenshot redraw I've been sitting on since December, 2021~

[pinkeoni]

TW for child abuse

Been thinking about this moment lately where Lonnie is hammering over the hole in the wall that Joyce axed to try to get to Will—

He’s literally trying to rebuild his home by shutting Will out.

If you pay attention to Lonnie’s dialogue, you’ll notice that he actually does want his family back. Now I’m not trying to give him any credit, this isn’t come from a genuine place of love.

Lonnie tells Jonathan that he wants to see him more. Again, not coming from a genuine place, as Jonathan points out, but I also don’t think he’s lieing.

When Lonnie comes back to the Byers’ residence at the end of ep 4, he immediately starts calling Joyce babe. And to be honest, if Joyce hadn’t kicked him out in ep 5, he probably would have tried to stay.

But if Lonnie does miss his family so much, why leave them? And if so, why not stay in town? Why move out to Indianapolis?

It’s pretty clear that Lonnie hated Will. When Joyce get’s mad at Lonnie in the flashback for not showing up, it was specifically about not bringing Will to the baseball game, not about visiting Jonathan or Joyce.

Now, from a base level, it looks like Lonnie was just them in order to get money out of Will’s death. If they were filing a lawsuit, using the broken family angle to get more sympathy in court, and making sure that he’s included in the payout.

And maybe that’s the only angle. But if you wanna get conspiratorial (like me) then there may be more behind Lonnie’s action then we are being shown.

If Lonnie was just in it for the money, why did he say that he wanted to see Jonathan before he knew that Will was “dead?”

I made a post awhile ago that pointed out some of Lonnie’s fishiness, indicating that he may possibly been working with the lab during his dissapearance.

Think about it, if Lonnie was working with the lab to cover up Will’s dissapearance, then doing a payout through a fake lawsuit would be the perfect cover. If Will died and Lonnie suddenly came into a lot of money, that would look fishy to people. But if Will died, and Lonnie sued the quarry and got settlement money, people wouldn’t bat an eye. If we already know that the body is fake and that the guy who found his body was instructed by the lab, then it wouldn’t be too hard to believe that they could be behind the settlement as well.

When Joyce finds about Lonnie’s plan to sue, we get this shot of Lonnie in the shower—

Now, narratively he had to be out of the room so that Joyce could go through his stuff, but figuratively, he is rinsing himself clean of his crimes. Will is “dead” now, he’s in the ground, and he has the perfect cover. He was can wash his hands of what he’s done.

Let’s take a step further and consider Lonnie’s past abuse of Will. If Lonnie was abusing Will when he was younger, and was nervous about Will remembering and telling, then it would make sense for him to skip town and stop visiting Will. And if Lonnie wanted to get his family back, he would have to get rid of the problem, which to him is Will.

Now, obviously Will is the victim here and not to blame, I’m just speaking from Lonnie’s messed up point of view. Lonnie is the one fault here, not Will, but to Lonnie, Will is the one who in the way of his perfect family.

So now the perfect opportunity arises for Lonnie to not only get his family back, but he gets a big payout whatever terrible thing he did to Will dies with him. It’s perfect.

[joycew-art]

Someone asked what my process was to make the Rickbot comic, so I thought I'd make a separate post to show it. The process was kinda all over the place and spread over many months from December 2022 up till June 2023, so I'll try my best to make it understandable. And if you have any questions feel free to ask them!

The idea

So it all started with the idea of; What if Rickbot came back? And then the idea immediately made me think of two things;

How would Rickbot react?

Why is he brought back?

Which ended up with these two scenarios in my mind;

A. Rickbot awakens and he's not happy B. Rick tells the reason he's activated again

These were the very first scenes that started it all.

So then the question became, how do I go from point A to point B?

I would take moments from the show as reference for how they would act in these scenarios. And I'd take inspiration from manga and other comics of how I wanted the dialogue to flow and what the comic layouts would look like. In this case I knew a lot of dialogue would be involved cause these guys talk a lot! But I also didn't want the panels to feel too crowded and rushed so I limited myself to the amount of dialogue per panel.

Right now I'm writing it down like it was very planned, but for me this was often a very subconscious thing I did. I just thought up scenarios while I was taking walks or daydreaming in the shower etc. And sometimes these very specific moments would pop up that I would write down or draw out later.

I would make mini thumbnails of how I wanted the pages to go and write the dialogue next to it. At this point I'm mainly thinking of what I want characters to say and how I want the story to flow. Sometimes I make multiple versions of the same scenario to see how it flows better.

At times I even only write down dialogue and then make the thumbnails for them later. I have a tiny a6 sketchbook for little thumbnails and ideas like this. These were often moments were I didn't know where I wanted to take the comic yet, so I would separate the two to keep it more organized for myself.

As you might have noticed, not everything is the same in the final comic. I always fine-tune or change stuff up as I go. Sometimes things don't flow as well as I thought they did or some dialogue feels awkward or unnecessary.

Sketching

Once all the pages were planned and I have a good idea of how the story would go I opened a new Clip Studio Paint file and used the comic feature to set that up.

I would then copy the thumbnails I made in the page files and exported a thumbnail draft of the whole comic and 'read' through it to see how it flowed.

After I was satisfied I finally started sketching the pages.

Most of the pages stayed the same from the thumbnail, aside from some poses or expressions here and there. But I would also change up stuff I wasn't satisfied with.

For example, initially the Prime panel looked like the left one, but I didn't like how the pose flowed with the text balloons. There was a lot of empty space as well. So I decided to redo it to the one on the right.

Even now for the final version I'm thinking of resizing Rick a bit more. These kind of changes just happen throughout the process.

The backgrounds

I knew the comic would only take place in the garage, so to save myself a lot of time I decided to make it in 3d.

First I decided to sketch out the four walls of the garage as planes;

Then I imported those in Blender. I did some simple 3d modeling to get the basic shapes for the counters and the cabinet et voila! 3d sketch version of the garage!

I know this is a very watered down explanation, but trying to explain how I did it would take a whole new tutorial. And there are many other ones out there that explain it much better than I could. I was lucky that I already have some Blender experience cause of past works I've done for school and stuff.

But if you got the time to delve into it I would recommend it! For this here you only need to know the basics. Also Blender is free to download :)

This has saved me a lotttt of time drawing the same backgrounds over and over again!

Cover

Lastly I did the cover. That one has also gone through multiple versions. I had a vague idea of what I wanted, but I wasn't happy with the execution so I redrew that one as well.

So that's the whole process so far. I do I wanna continue the comic once I got the energy to work on it again. Gonna do some test pages first to see what kind of rendering I wanna go for. Not sure if'll be in black and white, color or a combo...we'll see.

I hope this helps! And if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask them.

[commanderquinn]

meta: sam coe - post-campaign analysis

allllrighty i am officially post-campaign so time for first thoughts. since im still collecting my feelings/opinions on the main quest i dont want to go super into that. i wanna wait and consolidate into a deep dive on that one. BUT i am a fic writer with a fixation on socioeconomics, intergenerational trauma, and more specifically the phenomenon of atheists clinging to their religious parents morals because they haven't taken the time to evaluate their biases and the reasons they still hold them

translation: the silver spoon space cowboy is an interesting concept. poory executed in the case of starfield, sadly, but great framework for fandom to chop the head off of and bring to their own individual comfort interpretations.

this meta will include spoilers for the following:

-sam's questline and the npcs involved

-his romance

-cora, the safety storyline around her, and how she's the best part of the space game

-why bethesda was fucking stupid to turn the cowboys into cops when they have the perfect opportunity for not that. i went in hoping for retired/reformed army rangers fed up with war looking to defend their home from fascism given the "han solo simulator" marketing, but all i got was this lousy ass rendition of the texas rangers, which i for SURE did not want

-i WONT be going into detail about the main plot for this post, just fyi. i wanna save that, and sam's relation to it, for its own essay. id still recommend not reading meta's until you finish the game tho

-i miss obsidian's writing. this game made me want to play outer worlds for the 100th time. that will probably come up a lot

this is probably gonna sound more than a bit scattered and off the fucking plot for the first section, but bare with me, im making a point eventually i promise. gotta make sure we're all on the same page first.

now that ive done a majority of his content, it's clear what the intent was for sam and i applaud it. i like it when good hearts in bad systems spot the fundamental flaws and decide to abandon it entirely, or work to change it. i hate perfect characters. i hate characters that have no growth to find. sam is a great character for showing the awesome power of a perspective change. but damn. what a waste when you're talking about a format where a writer is constricted to:

-an exact conversation trigger (bethesda games have always relied on interrupt & player approach, and i didnt notice any variation on game engine front but i wont know until they release the ck so)

-word limit on all responses (yes, you can make long dialogues in engine. but those words still have to be f u n d e d from a dev standpoint. words are not free in video games. capitalism sucks for art.)

-multiple conversation branches that ALL have to circle back to the original topic (they have to follow a set pattern of establishing a subject, then the players possible responses to that subject, the npcs responses to those responses, AND provide a seamless, one dialogue tie-in path to the next branch. it sounds super easy until you're the shmuck writing it, and then it doesnt feel so easy anymore)

-get approximately two personal quests with, what was it, 12 motion scripted scenes? (im watching other peoples pts now so ill try to remember to count, but it was. hmm. lack luster imo. im not saying quantity is vital. im a bioware fanatic, i know the power of quality when its actually delivered. i didnt have any moment like that for sams quests and it was kind of crushing. ill get into it.)

-appeal to a wide enough audience to obtain profit by holding back eXtReMe ViEwS (id like to point out that there is, at this exact moment in time, an active pr campaign (and a few scattered gaming content creators) surrounding starfield talking about how pronouns are politics and should be left out of gaming. over a setting flag in a save file. you literally dont even have to press a button about it. like, you pick your characters body. masc bodys are auto assigned m pronouns. fem bodies are auto assigned f pronouns. you literally dont even have to SEE the button, and it never gets brought up. the only purpose it serves is so the game knows what voice lines to fire. that. is. it.)

im not going to humor the "thats dumb, bethesda makes political games" contribution to the argument.

i get straight people think they're being super helpful and witty on that one, but i think the world would collectively benefit from allies taking just a few extra seconds before standing on that soapbox to maybe consider that calling existence "politics" might be, gee idk, insulting. maybe more than a lil dehumanizing. maybe super easily solved by just NOT giving into their parents obsession with playing devils advocate. i think if maybe allies could shut the fuck up for a minute or two at a time and go look for voices of authority within the communities they're defending instead of trying to talk over them, that'd probably work out better. might help cut out the completely useless middle man their parents taught them to be when they drilled home "you have to respect everyone's opinion"

no the fuck you do not, actually. i, as someone on this earth attempting to be a compassionate person, owe people a chance at understanding. i do not, under any circumstance, owe someone any kind of respect WHATSOEVER if they cannot respect me as a human being. full stop. i dont owe it to them, i dont owe it to their religion, i dont owe it to the government they try to establish. i do not owe respect to people attempting to oppress me. i never have and i never will.

but remember. there is context to be found in the passing of time. yes, you need to tell grandma to stop being racist. no, you do not need to banish grandma to the nursing home if there's still a chance that she's willing to sit and listen. a chance that she'll empathize with social perspectives that the racist society she was raised in never allowed her to have. breathe and give grandma the chance. then send her to the home if she's still racist.

(yes that was an analogy for how i imagine a perspective conversation with jacob would go. i do not have high hopes of that man finding self awareness given. well. who he is as a person.)

now. if you've played through sam's content, you already know why im bringing all of that up, but lets put together a list of all the things that Make Sam Coe Who He Is before we wrap it all up in a pretty bow that hopefully reads a lot less scattered than this "yo society got some trauma actually" lead up ive dumped on you

quick interrupt just for me: i love that im back on tumblr where i dont really have to give all that much of a fuck about making sense. any audience i could find here is equally unhinged so mostly i just have to format it in a way that makes your brain not hurt. sorry if you dont have adhd <3

1: lets talk about cora's hair.

im going to make the race observation because its bothering me from a dev standpoint AND the gamer crowd is already starting to make cuck memes which sucks to see.

i get that this doesnt matter in a colonialism scifi future where a service like enhance exists and we're talking about two rangers that apparently went under cover regularly, but it matters in the context of how sam was handled in a 2020 era commercial, creative environment. im just going to MENTION that cora coe's biological mother (that jab was me not liking her as a person, not me giving a shit that she's white) is paler than pale, and sam does NOT look like some of his earlier promo images. bethesda as a company also has a very long history of making characters arguably tan to avoid this shit.

9/16 edit: was asked for source, heres the exact image im referencing, which is still his set image on the starfield wiki to date:

(im going to preemptively warn any white artists building the urge to argue over this: you DO NOT want to die on a hill about lighting for this one, fucking trust me. thats not what this conversation is, and if you dont understand that as a White Artist, you need to sit this one out until you understand the full weight of the conversation and the profound effect of media treating skin color like a rare diversity accessory. bethesda has a very very long history of this. their last major story title, fallout 4, (76 was a money grab made in the other studio and i barely want to call it a game) had a whopping total of two black characters in its main cast, and both of them acted in subservient roles so please. please please please just. stop trying to defend bethesda on this one. its dehumanizing, cowardly, and malicious in this day and age. i promise im not trying to bite anyones head off here, im just Old And Tired when it comes to suburbanites in fandom.)

i think having solomon be canonically black would have been a really important aspect. i think it would have given the opportunity to show white people why its fucked up that they get SO EXCITED to save war mementos (or in the case of starfield a nasa memento) and will go on and on about how vital it is to save that piece of history, but when you bring up memorializing the importance of race as it pertains to human history and cultural history/pride, they suddenly start getting Very Uncomfortable and throw out phrases like "what does it matter we're all human" while standing next to the gun their grandfather smuggled home from the war

there is no brightness slider on pc and i havent gone reshade tweaking so everything is still washed out on my end (dont worry, as an rtx user, imma be makin a rant post on that) b u t. cora coe has a pale as fuck mother and a vaguely tan father with blue eyes and straight hair, meanwhile my precious angel has a darker complexion and curls that look like they're closing in on the 3c range so like. im getting vibes that sammy boy mighta been whitewashed during game dev, and thats about as far into THAT topic as im gonna bother to venture for this post.

2: his dad

were we supposed to have more daddy issues content??? istg it feels like there was the initial map talk and then nothing. im not saying that i cant pull blood from a stone and give you an entire essay on that glimpse of family trauma just from a few lines of dialogue, but still. feels like thats maybe something that should have gotten more detail.

"no forgiveness between me and my old man. it's uh... coe tradition."

oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy. what a line to start his personal quest

before we go ANY FURTHER im gonna drop a reference to one of my favorite aaron sorkin scenes of all time. its from the movie he did about the chicago seven, and i think it fits VERY well when having a conversation about how sam is shaped by his father

unfortunately the exact scene i want to show isnt clipped anywhere easy i could find, so here's an article that talks about that scene specifically if you want more context but dont want to watch the whole movie. what we're really focused on is this:

which is a scene where a fictional account of bobby seale, the leader of the black panther party at the time of the chicago 7 trial, said that above quote to a fictional account of tom hayden while they were having a conversation about how the stakes of this trial are life and death for him as a black man, but little more than a family dispute and a dark spot on their records for the (all white) chicago 7.

its a GREAT continuation of sorkin’s fascination around father son conflicts (he covered it a time or two during his writing days as west wings original creator, which is a great political show id strongly rec) and it really really works when used in comparison to those rebellion days sam had that he still flagellates over

sam was a privileged kid without a foundation of emotional support or a safe environment to vent to. he didnt have the words needed to communicate what he was feeling and thinking and experiencing. he didnt have the means to express himself in a way that wasn't immediately criticized by the people in his life. it doesnt take a degree in psych to figure out that sam first ran for the stars to run from his father. and it sounds like that was tradition

from the MOMENT YOU MEET HIM, jacob is full stop "my way or the highway" until you hit him with the good ol bethesda persuasion and his disposition pulls a 180 to hand you the next plot device

sam: "you know why im here."

jacob: "oh? and what's that? you come to your senses? realize where you ought to be for once?"

w o w

i wonder why sam never felt safe in his own home. i wonder why he doesnt feel safe leaving cora there. i wonder why that miserable fucking attitude and guilt has sam convinced that jacob will be the worst possible thing for his curious daughter's self esteem.

yes, grandparents sip a different kind of koolaid when it comes to their grandkids. no, that is not enough to protect that child from that much intergenerational trauma. sam's made a bad choice keeping cora in space, but he's made an EXCELLENT choice keeping her away from jacob.

forget "showing respect" to his son's choices, jacob won't give them the time of day. he brushes off constellation and wont go meet them for himself, he insists that cora being "in her family home" is the only priority (isnt THAT telling) and, as if that wasnt enough to prove he's incapable of empathy, the fact that he outright, direct fucking quote during that first scene with him, says to sam's face

"the only mistake im seeing here is you"

fuck anyone who walked away from that scene of a parent saying that to their own kid and had the response of "i dont understand why sam wont let jacob take care of cora." fuck you, genuinely from the bottom of my heart, if that was your reaction.

i looked for opportunities to get sam to talk about what the rest of those "30 plus years of experience with the man" really looked like after that. the fact that it was used as a plot device without any (from what I COULD FIND in my first pt, if i find any ill edit this) kind of dialogue discussion about that trauma around his father's behavior/mentality and the terrible influence it had is such a waste. chances are!!!!!! id fucking agree with him!!!!!!!!!! SO TELL THEM TO ME BETHESDA!!!!!! give me the chance to storm back into that house with the full story and let that geriatric fuck know why he will not be allowed back into my daughters life (yeah we're gonna be calling cora our daughter on this one bc, again, she's the best thing in the game) until he can learn to be a safe emotional environment for her

and THEN, at the end of the romance, the wrinkly mf drops a "hey can you go over sam's head and make the parenting decisions now" 20 minutes before your vows get exchanged in his living room (WE'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT MESS OF A WEDDING LMAO ITS A LOT but im probably gonna save it for another sam post where i talk more in depth about why packing a complicated romance in that tightly just Dont Work). like wow. wowowowwow. if that doesnt perfectly sum up how he views the dusty's (shhh i really hope that name catches on pls i keep seeing ppl use captain instead its heartbreaking) role in the family now, and confirm how he's always viewed his own son, idk what does

3: lillian "i can abandon my kid and demand she be taken care of in the same breath" hart

i was originally going to go into hella detail on his relationship with his ex but honestly i think im just gonna leave a few paragraphs and not touch on her again bc its bad for my blood pressure.

okay, here's the deal. im biased in the sense that i had a mother with attachment issues and lets just say that his ex is worth about as much to me as a pile of dogshit. it'd be one thing if she had that moment of "oh. sam and cora bond really well and i dont fit" and decided to look at that and evaluate if she wanted to continue trying to be a parent.

but she didnt have a moment of reflection. she didnt talk to a therapist. she didnt have a discussion with sam. she went back to work and decided "oh well, my kid doesnt like me" and then left her daughter with an open wound and no shot at closure. which is just. wow. that's active abandonment. she WALKED OUT of cora's life because she couldn't stomach the idea that she didnt immediately win over her daughter without any effort to connect to her.

then she has the nerve to yell at sam for not doing the best for cora. like bitch, you cant even consistently answer the phone??? what are you on??? she's REPEATEDLY broken cora's heart with false promises, and clearly made no effort to truly atone for that given just HOW angry sam is ALL the times he brings it up.

and she does it all for what????? a beat cop reputation and some shiny medals????? like shut the fuck up with that righteous indignation piglet, you're killing smugglers under someone's made up authority to protect COMMERSE, not creating galactic peace. the idea that THAT SHIT is worth more to her than her own daughter having a mother who's around for all her life milestones is inFURIATING and id fucking deck her if i could.

the fact that there's zero chance to call her out other than one single "thats a pretty awful thing to say" option is a real cop out from bethesda. they realized they put a woman in a position where she could be really, truly yelled at for something like child care, and chickened out on following through with it so they wouldnt take any heat.

thats gross and should piss you the fuck off, by the way. that sure the fuck isnt what equality looks like by any measure. you don't empower women by acting like they're infallible creatures you cant call out for being flawed. and you sure as shit dont empower the next generation of women by forgiving their abusers.

4: cora's safety

which brings us to the big sticky: sam is a disaster and i DONT think that keeping cora on a combat-active spaceship is right. i think she'd be much better off living in constellation hq (aside from the main plot obvsly) with a constant open comm to her dad and the ability to bring her to outposts and secured sights.

the problem with the biomother's abandonment isnt the distance. its the lack of attempt to connect. its the lack of forming a bond. its the fact that she had zero desire to understand her child once she figured out her child didnt "love her the most" when thats literally not a thing. the problem was never the physical space, and it wouldnt have to be in sam's case, either.

he's a dad that's there for cora day in and day out, he just never got the chance to grow out of the panic stage of a parent worried the first fever is going to kill the baby. he didn't have his dad because he had to get out to protect himself, he doesnt have a mom because of how long she's been dead, and lillian checked the fuck out at an early stage apparently. so sam was left to be the nervous wreck trying to keep history from repeating itself. the man's flying blind in the face of all the combined generational trauma of himself, his father, and his ex, all while trying not to fuck up shaping a human life.

you're damn fucking right he keeps cora glued to his side, i legitimately do not think his own ptsd would allow him to do otherwise without someone like the dusty to come and and go "hey dude, maybe its time we read some emotional intelligence and trauma books so we can start getting cora into a stable environment for literally the first time in her life? also im going to teach her gun safety for my own sanity because you keep letting her walk all over you and its scaring the fuck out of me thinking my daughter is going to try to raid a pirate ship at 15 because no one taught you proper boundaries."

5: his morals

its been 30+ years and his father wont let go of arguing and micromanaging long enough to try to understand his son. lillian is a workaholic who believes her only inherit value is what she can provide to an organization that views living, breathing human beings as occasionally expendable while screaming about its pursuit of freedom and equality.

sam coe is a man who got told what he was supposed to be his entire life, tripped into drugs and crime in an angry, sheltered act of rebellion, and walked away from it all with a very skewed, very flawed interpretation of morality as a result.

lillian and his father are the clear moral compasses in his life. like yeah, sure, he'll talk about how cora is his driving force until he's blue in the face. and he's not lying!!! he's not even technically wrong. she is his active motivation day in and day out. but she is not his Morality. she hasn't developed enough as a person to be able to be that kind of beacon. she's a kid rushing herself through childhood because she thinks that will make her better and no one in her life recognizes it enough to stop it. she shouldnt have to be the moral guide for someone who's supposed to be guiding her

sam cant let go of the ranger envy. he couldnt stomach being around it, but he cant look at that discomfort long enough to identify why. he can walk into a bank and plain as day go "ah, don't you hate the smell of capitalism," but he can't bring himself to blink the stars out of his eyes long enough to ask why the rangers are so willing to put smugglers to death without trial. sam has enough awareness to identify the system is flawed, but he doesnt have the guts to really stare that down

he'll make cracks about walter having too much money and influence, but he wont actually mention how he and his wife are the root cause of an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering and perfectly avoidable manslaughter as a result of their business. i get that constellation runs as a dont as dont tell organization, but if sam's going to give me shit about nabbing a paper weight from a guy's desk, i think we should talk about how he doesnt display anger for walter's business practices.

sam coe, at his heart, is a dreamer who doesn't want to look too close at things. he was taught that some things just Are, and looking for too many answers will find you trouble. he's got the spirit of an explorer dampened by a lifetime spent under cops.

you can hear it in his voice whenever he talks about how proud he is of cora for being a goddamn prodigy. you can hear the wonder and the excitement there. you can hear the curious kid in him that probably got pushed out of the way while he was trying to shape himself into a Proper Coe

i think sam coe is a dreamer who was forcibly taught to fear learning as a child, and thats the real tragedy of him.

so let's start to tie our bow here.

sam is a man who, in a way that only a privillaged kid can, stumbled into neon's life of drugs and smuggling and self harm through destructive behavior with both eyes firmly shut.

he didn't fall into drugs after a lifetime of being submersed in the culture of it. he didnt take them because he grew up surrounded by people that just knew that's all life was ever going to hold. he didnt get into smuggling because he was starving. he didnt take on his first "criminal act" because there was a life and death battle going on somewhere in his life.

this man was drowning in guilt and shame centered around not "being a proper coe" by the time he was free of his father's control, by all accounts. you can hear how much self hatred he has over the memory of that time in his life. look, im not going to say that age and recovery doesnt come with regret, but he talks about it like degeneracy and something to be guilted about rather than just... living life. like so what you did some drugs?? so what you did a capitalism no no?????

corporations arent people. you shouldnt steal from them because itll put YOU at risk, but under no circumstance should anyone hold onto any guilt for stealing from them. money is fake and capitalism murders people every hour of the day. fuck the system, its fucking rigged, look out for you and yours while capitalism is stealing your natural resources and making private homesteading prosecutable (translation: in our actual, real life here, the government can throw you in jail for building a house without a permit. go look up at the sky and think about the moral journey humanity had to take to get us to that point, and then come talk to me about how i shouldnt encourage people to steal from corporations)

anyways back to the video game, as far as the "what if he was unknowingly smuggling something like organs or weapons" argument, there's no desire for me to defend it, tbh. i dont view crime as a personality brand the way cops do. someone being convicted of a crime doesnt make me see them as lesser, it makes me see them as a person who did a bad thing. i do bad shit all the time. we all do. we're human. sometimes there's an excuse for the behavior, and sometimes there isnt. that's not the end of the world. you own up to your actions, you apologize, and you put in the effort to make amends that fit the situation. end of story. the obvious exception to that being when someone you have victimized tells you to fuck off because they dont want your further involvement.

yes. yes there are people in the world that are genuine monsters that spend their time and energy looking for ways to do the cruelest shit imaginable to their fellow human beings. but those are fucking outliers, so no, im not going to let a conversation about morality be derailed by a fraction of a percent of the population

but people (like the rangers) who aren't ready to look at the whole picture of context, who would rather hyper focus on the unbending rule of the land, don't see that. they see a "type" of person once a crime has been committed rather than "a person who found themselves in this scenario"

sam was raised by cops. he fundamentally does not understand how biased his own view is. he'll sometimes make a vague mention of crime being a necessity, but you can hear how many strings are attached there just from the way he talks about it. he truly views crime as a black and white subject with exceptionally few slivers of grey to be found. you can hear the "law and order is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom" in his voice whenever he talks about how the rangers are "good people" he just "didnt fit anymore" and it's heartbreaking

he'd be so much better off if he would take a moment to reevaluate his priorities and look a lot closer at that guilt he carries and why he carries it. i think it would even help him better connect with cora in the long run. it would for sure give him a better handle on why letting his daughter take on college courses this early in her life isnt something to brag about. its a bad sign that she's pushing herself to Be Something in the exact same way he used to. he just doesn't recognize it because her way is "healthy" by society's fucked up view of child prodigies

tl;dr

i don't need to fix sam coe. he's stubborn, traumatized, and sheltered, not broken.

give that man good enough head and i'm absolutely sure he could be talked into reading some -clutches pearls- marxist literature

[starchaserdreams]

Erm, hello!

I am an aspiring writer. I have these stories in my head that I love and want to write about. But when I try, it's the absolute worst shit I've ever seen in my life.

Sorry, what I'm trying to ask is, any tips for younger writers who have no idea what they're doing...?

Hi! I have no idea what I'm doing ever, but I'll try to answer as best as I can. I'll start with generic advice, then say what works for me specifically. Sorry this got so long.

We're all kind of fumbling through life. The writing habits that I have have come from three sources:

a) hearing what other people do and building from them. I'm always in one writers group or another (currently I'm in a local writers group, and I'm regularly involved with two different NaNoWriMo groups in November, one locally and one virtually) and I've picked up a lot from them

b) a metric fuckton of trial and error. Because while part (a) is great some of the time, most of the things that work for other people don't work for me. I can't set a strict schedule at the same time everyday. I can't edit for a long time after I write.

c) NaNoWriMo (see link) helped me SO MUCH. I don't think everything can be written that way, but in terms of getting a handle on your own voice, preventing yourself from stopping to edit, and letting the story flow on its own, NaNo is amazing. It's a great starting point. Editing can come later, once the words are done on the page.

If you're unfamiliar, it's a (totally free) event that happens in November every year where everyone tries to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel in the span of one month. That's 1,667 words per day, so there isn't much time to stop and edit as you go. You just keep going. It's a competition against yourself rather than anyone else, to see if you can accomplish the task. It's also a community based event, so you can commiserate with other writers about the bad and celebrate with them about the good.

They have smaller events in April and July, but to really get the feel of it, November is when it's a party (or a rollercoaster, either way). I went to write-ins in cafes, bars, grocery stores, on the subway, etc. The event is a whole vibe, and now they have in person events again (they paused for covid). If you want to stay virtual, they have that too!

And as for what works for me:

1.

This most certainly wouldn't work for everyone, but it's my current strategy:

I think best when I'm in motion. By far. So most of my storyboarding I do while walking or driving, and I dictate into the notes app on my phone.

I do most of my dialogue this way too, because speaking it out loud makes it feel more like a conversation and more natural. I won't dictate the narration, but I'll include action tags. So it comes out like "Anthony: *flings door open, eyes wide* what in blazes are you doing??" (I add punctuation later)

Then when I get home, I often have several thousand words of notes to work from. My notes file for my last fic was 30k words, almost all of which had been dictated. It's a lot. It might sound daunting.

But it was done while out for a walk or drive, so it felt easy and effortless. And then when it came time to actually write, I got 48,000 words of a first draft done in 8 days (about 15k of which was just copy pasted from the outline. The whole time it felt like cheating and using guidelines to write the actual story, but it was all my original work, just done at different times.

2.

Keep writing as an exciting treat rather than a chore.

I've started to create little writers retreats for myself. My friends and I rented an AirBnB for two nights this winter, where the entire goal was reading and writing. Sure there was sitting around the fire talking and eating good food, but we built it up so that the writing was the exciting part. It worked SO WELL. We did writing activities together too, not just staring at a word doc. We did character studies and made little AUs to imagine our characters in.

A friend and I took a six hour road trip for another writers retreat too. We spent the 12 hours (RT) in the car talking about our stories and characters. We'd started with dozens of prompts so we'd have enough material, and we never ran out. Then we took rest stops at gas stations and restaurants and did little 15 minute writing sprints. It really got me fired up. I wrote 6,000 words over the two days of that retreat!

Keeping writing fun can be big things (my sister and I did a writers retreat like that in Hawaii) or little things (I always treat myself to a donut and a coffee on Sunday mornings and then have a leisurely morning in the cafe writing).

I can't say if any of this will work for you, because I can't even say whether it'll still work for *me* in a few years. But I hope it's food for thought!

Anyway this is like one million words long so sorry about that, hope it was interesting.

[sapphim]

Sibling Rivalry - DA2

I'm probably not the only person to wonder the degree to which Bethany and Carver's approval score affects their disposition toward Hawke in the game. So I got it into my head to search the game files to see every instance in which the game checks their approval score and... it's not much!

A couple things.

There's always a small chance that there's some other line of dialogue in the game that's been coded in some fuckstupid nonstandard way that my search didn't catch, but this should be everything.

Unlike the game's full companions, which have major milestones at 50 and 100 approval points and can sometimes behave accordingly, Bethany and Carver are always at a flat check to determine if their approval is either above or below zero. There's no further benefit to changing their approval more than +-1 point from neutral.

Approval scores for Bethany and Carver really only ever come into play in Acts 2 and 3. There are basically no approval checks in Act 1, and none in the base game.

There's not a lot of approval-related dialogue in the base game, and it's all for warden siblings -- in the Act 2 climax and in the optional Act 3 sidequest Finding Nathaniel. Templar Carver and circle mage Bethany do not have any approval-specific dialogue in the base game... and the majority of approval-specific dialogue in the DLC still goes to their warden counterparts.

I'll be posting additional posts with the dialogue from MotA and Legacy in separate posts, to keep the length manageable, which will be found under the #sibling rivalry tag. Here's the base game dialogue:

Act 2 - Demands of the Qun (Warden Bethany)

Blue Hawke: [Are you all right?] Are you injured? Are there more of you?

[friendly]

Bethany: This is everyone. Thank you.

[rival]

Bethany: We're fine. Everyone's here.

---

Purple Hawke: [I live here.] Last time I checked, you'd moved on from Kirkwall.

[friendly]

Bethany: I'm a Warden now. We go where we're needed.

[rival]

Bethany: We're here on Grey Warden business.

---

Red Hawke: [You're welcome.] A "thank you" might be in order, don't you think?

[friendly]

Bethany: I must say, it's less painful than the last time you saved my life.

[rival]

Bethany: I knew you didn't go to so much trouble to save me, just to throw it away now.

---

Hawke: [You're leaving, Bethany?] But you just got here.

[friendly]

Bethany: You gave me this life… I'm just doing the best I can to live it.

[rival]

Bethany: I've been here for six days.

---

Hawke: [Bethany, Mother's gone.] Wait—I need to tell you about Mother.

[friendly]

Bethany: I know. When we got the news, the Wardens helped me hold a wake. I'm… glad you were with her. In her final moments.

[rival]

Bethany: I know what happened. I waited and waited for you to tell me yourself. Did you hold a funeral, or was there not enough left?

Act 2 - Demands of the Qun (Warden Carver)

Blue Hawke: [Are you all right?] Are you injured? Are there more of you?

[friendly]

Carver: I'm good, but we're not the help you need.

[rival]

Carver: I'm fine. We're fine. And no, this is all of us.

---

Purple Hawke: [I live here.] Last time I checked, you'd moved on from Kirkwall.

[friendly]

Carver: Things change. But… I can't stay.

[rival]

Carver: We're here on Grey Warden business.

---

Red Hawke: [You're welcome.] A "thank you" might be in order, don't you think?

[friendly]

Carver: Sorry. A bit distracted by all the friends you've made since I left.

[rival]

Carver: Pardon my manners. You save me so often I sometimes forget.

---

Hawke: [You're leaving, Carver?] But you just got here.

[friendly]

Carver: Another time, perhaps.

[rival]

Carver: I've been here for six days.

---

Hawke: [Carver, Mother's gone.] Wait—I need to tell you about Mother.

[any]

Carver: I already know what happened. I'm sure you did your best.

Act 3 - Finding Nathaniel (Warden Bethany)

Hawke: Bethany? Is that really you?

[friendly]

Bethany: Why would you come back here if you didn't have to?

[rival]

Bethany: Are you here to "save" me again?

---

Blue Hawke: [Are you all right?] You don't look well, Bethany. Are you injured?

Bethany: Injured? I have the darkspawn taint forever in my veins, barely held in check by the Wardens' rituals.

[friendly]

Bethany : I'm sorry. You did the best you could.

Hawke: I wish there'd been a better way.

[rival]

Bethany: I will never be well again.

Hawke: Where there's life, there's hope.

---

Purple Hawke: [Cheer up, Sis.] A little smile for me, Sister? It's been years. I've missed you.

[friendly]

Bethany: If I let myself miss you… and Carver… and Mother… I couldn't go on.

Bethany: It's better not to feel.

Hawke: I, ah, won't try to cheer you up, then.

[rival]

Bethany: I have kept track of your doings. I'm glad you've done well for yourself, though perhaps too late for Mother.

Bethany: But I am a Warden now. We have no families.

Hawke: They say it's always darkest before the dawn.

---

Red Hawke: [Pull yourself together.] You're not dead yet. Shake it off! There's work to be done.

[friendly]

Bethany: You never change, do you?

Hawke: Enough, Bethany. We need your help here or we'll all die.

[rival]

Bethany: You sound just like Ser Fenley—before the Children devoured him.

Hawke: Enough, Bethany. We need your help here or we'll all die.

Act 3 - Finding Nathaniel (Warden Carver)

Hawke: Carver?

[friendly]

Carver: Well, just like old times.

Carver: Still coming to the rescue after all these years? I have it under control, but thanks.

[rival]

Carver: What are you doing here?

Carver: Just like always, no cause is too small for you to stick your nose in. I have this under control.

---

[friendly]

Blue Hawke: [I'm glad you're doing well.] It's good to see you. I hope the years have been kind.

Carver: I can't say that. The Blight is long over, but the threat never really goes away.

Carver: I don't know if you can understand that. Maybe someday.

[rival]

Blue Hawke: [I'm glad you're doing well.] It's been years, Carver. We can't be civil?

Carver: I almost died in your shadow. I don't appreciate you showing up to take my thunder.

Hawke: If my shadow made it down here, you brought it.

---

[friendly]

Purple Hawke: [Why are you down here?] Don't you have Archdemons to hunt or something?

Carver: There's a considerable gap between Blights, you know. Apparently, just long enough for people to forget.

Carver: We Wardens don't have that luxury, though.

[rival]

Purple Hawke: [A little thanks, maybe?] You know, the average person saves a life, they might expect some gratitude.

Carver: I've seen too much of the world to be impressed by this.

Carver: It's just kind of sad.

Hawke: What is?

Carver: That your world has stayed so small.

---

[friendly]

Red Hawke: [Still hold a grudge?] So, do you still blame all of this on me?

Carver: Do you still expect me to? I'd like to think we've both changed.

Carver: I guess we'll have to wait and see, won't we?

[rival]

Red Hawke: [Still angry, Carver?] Nothing's changed between us after all these years?

Carver: I've seen a lot, Brother. Our little squabble, it doesn't matter.

Hawke: Your tone says otherwise, Warden.

[vigilskeep]

Reading your blog made me want to replay through the series and since I'm about to start Origins I thought that maybe this time I would use some mods especially for fixing bugs but looking at the amount of those mods ok the nexus made me realize that apparently I got lucky in my first and only playthrough since I haven't expirienced almost any of them. So I was wondering if you could reccomend me some mods in that regard since I've tried looking around and found both people that said "yeah just download the silverite mine one and you're good to go" and peole who posted a list of mods as long as my arm.

hi here are all the mods i currently use for dao that are purely bug fixes/restorations:

morrigan restoration patch

zevran dialogue fix (this and the above fix many other dialogue issues as well as those just with morri and zev, and are compatible with each other)

jowan’s intention bug fix, small one that allows you to get a chanter’s board quest where you will see what happened to jowan, specifically if during redcliffe you told him to run and that you never wanted to see him again. probably only necessary for mage wardens

a couple of aesthetic mods so basic and essential i consider them bug fixes:

gives your elf warden proper elf ears like most other elves

patchy skin fix, always essential but especially so if you have a dark-skinned warden

and awakening has lots of small bugs, so you should get all of these fixes:

silverite mines bug fix

sigrun personal quest bug fix

companions’ joining rituals bug fix

lets you keep your equipment from the warden’s keep dlc

the ‘what is built endures’ bug fix from this selection, which also has an alternate version of the sigrun fix

fixes an anders velanna banter that will otherwise keep repeating

and finally it’s worth mentioning that i believe this is what i used to make dao work on my newer more powerful laptop. so if you haven’t played in a while or you’re on a new pc, and textures are acting up or the game keeps crashing at a certain point or something weird is happening to the save files, give this a shot. i don’t know what it is or how it works either but i followed the do it yourself instructions and it made the game playable so, i don’t know that you should do it ahead of time but this is the card to play if it’s fucked up

[nicolos]

Hi, this is very random but I LOVE your edits!! SO SO much!! And I wanted to ask (if you feel like elaborating but no pressure!) about your editing process (I am a complete newbie). I am in awe of the connections you draw in your edits - do you first choose a song and then try to match the content to it or the other way around? And if you don't mind me asking which program do you use? And how do you get clean audio without the background music? ((I would greatly appreciate your advice if it wouldn't be too much of a burden, wishing you the loveliest of days<3))

hi there!! first off this is so sweet, and I really appreciate hearing that you like my edits!it's always so exciting to get that kind of feedback, esp since video edits arent smth ive done a Lot of or my primary form of fanwork, i guess

For some elaboration - I assume you mean the black sails edits (?), so I'm going to be answering for those. On the whole, I don't have a super well-defined process, so it definitely varies edit to edit, but in general, I tend to work off themes or ideas rather than audio! Especially since I'm not usually working with lyrics, in which case it would be a totally different story.

A lot of my black sails edits specifically are about highlighting a specific theme and how its paralleled over the show, so finding parallels usually is just me trying to remember different scenes which demonstrate the same concept, kind of. I have a file of the whole shows subtitles pasted into one place, so I do a lot of Ctrl+f with keywords (the 'you and i' video was built off literally just that) - and then try to arrange it in a way that makes sense for the BS narrative as well as the point im trying to make in the video. i also really love finding completely different conversations that feel like call and response, and setting them up against each other. Parallels! Contrasts! Etc

I try to work with an audio already in mind, though, generally, just because the flow is kind of determined by that. I didn't for the partners video, and I think it's a bit weaker for it, though i did adjust the music to suit it later. Picking a song if I have a theme in mind is really just going thru my soundtracks playlist, which is like 30% of all music I listen to, and picking smth with a vibe that fits + a pace and length that I think the video will match. (Sometimes I will also just cut the song down a bit)

The program I use is kdenlive, which is an free and open source video editing tool! It's not got quite as many features as smth like davinci resolve, but I find it works for my purposes, which are really just cropping, pasting, and a tiny bit of sharpen/recolour. that said kdenlive has a bunch of other features and options that I simply don't use and also don't know how because I haven't experimented, so its not like snip and move clips around is All you can do with it.

re: the background audios... this one is actually a process lol. i have high qual versions of all the BS eps with 6 channel audio, and ive made versions of each episode where ive isolated the central channel which usually has dialogue. however this channel also will have some slight background music or ambient sounds, so it's not really just the dialogue - but it works for the purposes of the video, where lower sounds like that may get hidden by music anyway. ymmv, it depends scene to scene, but I don't need it to be perfectly clean so it works for me. Ive isolated these channels through ffmpeg, which is a command prompt based editing thing, and isn't difficult to learn but isn't exactly the most user-friendly thing, i guess? However I understand ( @dykementality confirm?) that davinci resolve lets you just isolate audio channels of any clip you're editing, so like, that's an option. i Can give more detailed instructions on ffmpeg, or at least on the code that I use to make files w isolated audio, though honestly I've forgotten how to install ffmpeg (though it can't have been too difficult or I wouldn't have bothered)

I hope that helped you a little, pal! If you have any further clarification I'd be happy to help w/ what I know! And I hope you have a wonderful day also!

[twipsai]

so i finally played Yume Nikki

opening thoughts: it's really cool to see where a lot of newer rpgs got inspired from (omori, utdr, etc), and it was also NOTHING what i thought it would be like

(spoilers for the. entire game lmao)

im really glad that i had a few friends (rpg3 server ehehehe) help me out who are both more experienced in rpgs and more experienced in yume nikki, otherwise i think i would have shattered my computer screen. i generally enjoy walking-simulator type games, which is why i didnt completely give up, but oh my god. this game is like if you put a normal game with like. objectives. and then put it in a blender. i dont think there was a single time where i didnt feel lost, which was great when i accidentally deleted my save file (which was my own mistake but still). i think the fact that im not being distracted by constant dialogue or battles is good though, it felt like a complete experience. the Yume Nikki wiki,,,, helped, sort of. it gave some sort of guidance, sure, but i really wish that it was a bit clearer on where to go. it did feel really satisfying collecting effects, though, and made every deadend i faced worth it. there are some things that i absolutely hate about this game (the fact that most areas are looping, making it really hard to find specific points in a landmark-less void), but i dont think any of the actual gameplay stuff was the point of the game.

artistically, i love Yume Nikki, and it may be one of the best experiences ive ever had with video games. everything felt distorted and off (correctly so), and i absolutely adore every character design. doing weird things to just make a sprite change, going off path to just see a fucked up, uninteractable creature, fumbling around in a shifting, unnerving void-area-- stuff like that, while i am biased to, is something that i think is missing from a lot of modern rpgs. its really refreshing to see something from a time when people werent chasing that game theory video or putting weird things in their game for the sake of getting people talking. Yume Nikki is the result of, what i think is, genuine passion and want to create. i love how much the game doesnt explain, simply because the player has too many questions. personally, every question i have about the game is overshadowed by the question "whats behind the door in Madotsuki's room?"

however, i dont think i ever really need to know, nor do i want a "canon" answer. the game is self-contained and says all that it needs to.

i already knew the ending, which i guess made it a little underwhelming, but i think that it really wraps it up nicely. no questions are answered, and this girl that we barely know anything about jumps off her balcony. the credits are nice, too. the weird jellyfish thing thats in the deep forest being at the blood splatter felt poetic, though i dont know how.

closing thoughts: Yume Nikki is a great game if you dont mind being frustratingly lost for a majority of the time, and is an even greater game if you enjoy shit thats just straight up weird. to me, it tells a whatever story the player needs to hear.

[silvereelve]

I think I'm done. I spent a lot of time on this instead of other projects, but I was really enjoying it. I'm especially happy with the background. Going into it, I wasn't planning to do individual bricks, but I think they worked out nicely. Leading with a mockup because looking at how things would be if they were real is fun. ETA: I redid the art again and removed the old versions. This version matches the style of the newest pages I've made for this project.

So the super long writeup of where this idea came from. I watched Supernatural for the first time this year and it quickly became one of my favorite shows. I was sad there wasn't a pop classics series children's book to go with my Buffy and X-files ones, which got me thinking about what a Supernatural children's book would look like.

I've also watched a few convention videos and ran across a cute song the band sings when Misha - who plays Castiel - is running late to his panel, called Where's Misha. One thing led to another, the title of this fake children's book is Where's Cass. I might make a few more pages over the next few months until I get bored. There are a couple I want to do and it's a good exercise for working on backgrounds.

The thoughts for this specific page are centered around storybook characters speaking directly to the reader and the reader seeing things the characters don't. I liked it in the early seasons when Cass would pop in at odd locations, so that's why he is where he is. I'm not 100% on the font, but it seems okay with my art style. About half of the dialogue is direct quotes from episodes. There are two versions, a physical book version and a digital version - where Sam and Dean are a bit bigger because they don't need to not be on a fold line.

I used a 3d model for the perspective and outlines on the Impala. Eques_inferno on Sketch Fab "Chevrolet Impala 1967" which they have up for free. The colors and everything else was free-hand. Cars are hard, like a fourth character.

Anyway, I hope you all like this thing I made this week. ❤️❤️

[tomatograter]

What are your Thots on jake’s pq route?

I already wrote some about it in this post where I discuss the problem with taking dirkjake as a literal parallel to tavris (Mainly, that it’s inaccurate to both situations and misrepresents the dynamics at play) but it’s been long enough since release that I feel like I can talk about it without that criticism being taken as a personal witch hunt. TL;DR: As a general rule of thumb I don’t cite Jake’s PQ as part of his characterization, and I think basing your Jakewriting on it will only lead you astray.

I liked a lot of the Pesterquest routes and the alphas were among some of my favorites, but I think when you play the four of them in sequence Jake’s really... stands as the odd one out. It’s almost as if he’s afforded way less sympathy from the get go for some indiscernible reason, or like MSPAR took a day to say ‘I can’t stand this kid in particular’ after dealing with waaaaaaaay more mindboggling troll customs or stupid dangerous situations that tested their patience and their limits. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly an issue of framing.

Let’s go with the “Just the Alpha routes” example, because I think that makes the overall context clearer and the response/reactions it gathered (or the lack thereof) easier to understand. The alpha kids were the last 4 Pesterquest episodes. They were also afforded entire volumes just for themselves, which cemented our expectations on “oh, they’re going to really dig into unexplored territory!” and for the most part, that’s what we got! It was really nice to see the internal mechanics of Jane as someone raised within a corporate echochamber, Roxy as a grieving, isolated kid, deprived of all human contact, and Dirk as a nerdy doomsday prepper haunted by private flashes of himself as a supervillain. It all works! Those are things the alpha kids were dealing with on the background of the broader Homestuck story, things we were only hinted at as the *larger* problems played out. It makes you understand their point of view. Except on Jake's route, where nothing about his life seems to be relevant at all? 

With Jane we get discussions about HIC and her family, with Roxy beautiful passages about a mother they never met and growing up alone— Same for Dirk, who gets a whole brother zapped from an alternate timeline. But on Jake's route there's not even an expansive dialogue path dedicated to Grandma English, Skaianet, the rebellion, or the giant red ship that came and murdered her in the night and then bombed his house, leaving him trapped inside his only surviving tower. No understanding passage realizing that this kid has had to fend for himself in an island full of Actual Giant Alien Monsters trying to eat him alive, or that he cremated his guardian specifically to avoid attracting predators to the scent of fresh blood drying on her mutilated corpse at the age of an actual toddler. The text refuses to dig into any of the psychological implications or impact an environment like this could have on a kid, which is even weirder when you consider MSPAR has met and helped Vriska get out of a similar situation. The whole thing with Jane in the previous volume has just happened, even, while Jake's particularities go unremarked. He was just supposed to deal with it. And that's because a choice was made to portray all of Jake's problems in this route as sort of... single handedly Dirk's fault? Something he should have Just Dealt with?

There's not even a hint that Jake knows Hal exists. Which is important! Jake can pick out Hal from Dirk based on *verbal cues*, and the fact that he considers Hal a barrier between him and his "real friend" getting to communicate with one another is a whole point of contention (and even comedy) in the story proper. Instead of examining Jake's isolation, or grief, or how he literally locks himself in his room and plasters it with cinematic posters to pretend he's just the main lead of a wacky adventure movie in the face of the immense shitshow outside, we get brobot acting nonsensically and threatening to break into Jake's room to beat him up. 

A general reminder on brobot: He was programmed to scout the jungle and deal with predators so Jake could a) Be allowed to safely leave his room (something he simply didn't do before age 13 out of sheer terror, and we know this because dirk and jake talk about it on his birthday conversation, when he first gets brobot) and 

b) Learn how to defend himself in the case of a surprise attack, with different combat settings adjusted to his level. The brobot has a novice mode Jake feels patronized by, but pushes him up levels quickly enough. In Homestuck proper, the brobot only enters "stalking mode" after Hal gets pissy with Jake for finding him out, and forcefully switches the setting on to make Jake work for the Uranium inside it. When you take Hal out of the picture, this plotline makes no sense! Jake's route is set way before the Alphas even think of entering the game, so this particular event hasn't even happened. Jake goes on to text Roxy and she turns the stalking setting off remotely anyways, so even if brobot was programmed to murder Jake in his sleep, or jump him inside the safe zone of his room (he's not) he has literally no reason to be acting like that when he's been set to Baby Buff Up Mode.

(Brobot does end up spontaneously pulling himself apart to give Jake his reward after this)

Which brings me to my other problem with the general framing of this volume; the alpha kids don't feel present in Jake's life as friends at all. It's all "romantic options" and "shipping discourse" and MSPAR making these silly logic jumps to justify insisting on this line of query, and all it does is completely flatten out anything of interest having to do with Jake as a Person, to build up an image of Dirk as being suspicious and shady for his volume and more or less come to the conclusion that Jake sucks because he just Cant Choose Who To Date Between All His Friends! And that's why jake is just like tavros… and dirk is just like vriska! Or something. 

And just as a reminder, here's Jake talking with Roxy so I don't have to explain why that feels like a weird choice to me. (click to zoom)

And then there's the endings. On the vriska ending, MSPAR just ends up weirdly angry at jake for being such a piss baby and not getting that he's tavros and dirk is vriska so he had to… uh… take all his anger out on this 13 year old alien girl he has never met and teach her a lesson to prepare to do the same on dirk, or something. And on the other ending Jake mentions his pen pal, is zapped to meet jade, they have some non-committal greetings and then a cosplay party where Jake insists that he totally likes Lara croft not because she's a femme fatale and he relates to that, because he's never ever in his life thought of anyone being interested on him. Or Something. He likes Lara croft for normal reasons only. He wears really tiny shorts and does sexy poses because he's not aware at all of how other people find him attractive. He's just too dumb to get this, or the shipping thing, or that he's tavros and Dirk is vriska (who the hell are these people?).

Jake feels like an afterthought in the grand scope of events. Sidelined on his own episode. This volume is busy with rehashing age old fandom arguments that have little to do with his character, because said arguments were started and maintained by bored teens engrossed on fighting online instead of analyzing Homestuck; we introduce vriska for no interesting reason at all (thank god at least Jake has enough decency to say he's not into hitting on 13-year-olds, because that would have been particularly rancid.) And aside from catchphrases and old slang sprinkled liberally into his dialogue like a fog making machine, none of the motivation for the character is there. What does he want? What does he fear? Why does he act like the way he does? What would accommodating him look like? What would helping him look like? We get this on Jane's volume, Roxy's volume, and Dirk's volume. To really heart-wrenching and dramatic results, too. You get to know who they are, where they live, what they want, what they fear, what might help them get better, but Jake is just sort of There. He's a burden. MSPAR either ends this volume berating him for not doing what they want or finding him weird and confusing and like they don't know each other at all, and the fact both of those were marked as dubiously bad ends in the game files speaks for itself, I think.

[theggning]

I Hate the Alternate Ending of Blind Betrayal, and Here's Why!

DISCLAIMER THE FIRST: Massive spoilers for Fallout 4 abound. This post discusses Blind Betrayal, a quest with suicide as a heavy theme. Content warning applies.

DISCLAIMER THE SECOND: This post discusses cut OFFICIAL content from Fallout 4 that has since been repurposed into multiple mods. I am not criticizing any modders or their implementations of this content. Mods are fun and people can enjoy whatever the hell kind of game experience they want with whatever mods they want.

I am ONLY interested in discussing the original cut content as Bethesda had written it, and how it would have impacted the story and lore of Fallout 4.

So, yeah, it seems there was originally going to be another way to conclude Blind Betrayal (BB).

As described in this Kotaku article (citing this post by Tumblr user tentacle-explosion,) there are unused audio files of Danse’s dialogue that show an alternate ending to his pivotal quest. These lines are the only evidence we have of this ending (suggesting that it was cut fairly early on, as no other actors/characters seem to have recorded for it.)

From what we can tell, in this alternate ending of BB, Danse comes up with a possible way out of the sticky situation re: his identity as a synth. According to the Brotherhood Litany, he is able to challenge Maxson’s authority as Elder via combat. If you agree to this idea, you go with Danse to challenge Maxson. The Paladin and the Elder duel one another, Danse wins, and Maxson dies. Then Danse names the Sole Survivor the new Elder-- or with a hard charisma check, you’re able to convince Danse to take the job himself. It is unknown how the main plot would have progressed beyond this point, as there is no other evidence of what being (or influencing) the Elder would have been like or what choices it would have given you.

There is understandable disappointment in learning that this ending was cut. Choices in games are great, and it could have been fun to have multiple different options for how to resolve the quest. In many gaming circles, people complain that this theoretical ending is superior to the one we got and shouldn’t have been axed. The Kotaku article calls it a “way better” ending, and you’ll see many players lamenting that it wasn’t implemented, saying Bethesda was bad at writing for cutting it, etc.

So why did Bethesda get rid of the Elder ending of BB?

In December 2020, after the Fallout 4 Cast Reunion, Danse’s voice actor Peter Jessop answered questions in a private signing session on his Instagram. Peter Jessop is an extremely kind and gracious man, an avid gamer, and a huge fan of Fallout. During the stream, he reflected on the alternate ending and remembered recording the lines, but stated the content was ultimately cut because Bethesda decided it was lore-breaking.

Peter Jessop is right. Bethesda was right. The Elder ending of BB is a bunch of dumb nonsense. It sucks, I hate it, and I’m glad they got rid of it. And now I’m going to tell you why!

SIDENOTE: King Shit of Fuck Mountain

There is no wrong way to play a single-player video game. If you are having fun, then you are accomplishing the task for which the game was made. Good for you! Play it on easy. Play it on hard. Mod it. Speedrun it. Make up an intricate roleplaying scenario. Perform “challenge” runs. Kill everybody you see. Ignore the story and run around collecting wheels of cheese. Games are meant to be fun and there is nothing wrong with enjoying a game however you damn well please. This is especially true for RPGs like Fallout, which are designed with player freedom in mind.

There is an RPG playstyle I like to call King Shit of Fuck Mountain: a naked power fantasy in which your protagonist is the most powerful person ever, even beyond normal RPG plot significance. Through brute strength, incredible charisma, or having completed tons of quests for world-breaking artifacts and weapons, your character wields godlike influence, able to control people, factions, and the fabric of the world itself. A game enables KSoFM gameplay when it allows the player limitless freedom to gain as much power as they like with zero consequences to plot or storytelling.

A great example of this is the Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If the player chooses to pursue every questline in the game, one single person can become Harbinger of the Companions, Archmage of the College of Winterhold, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Nightingale and Guildmaster of the Thieves’ Guild, hero of the Imperial/Stormcloak army, the chosen one of like, 11 different Daedric princes, a bard, a Blade, and otherwise just, absurdly goddamn powerful in completely unrealistic ways. And that’s not counting DLCs. A fully-kitted-out Dragonborn is King Shit of Fuck Mountain.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing KSoFM if you like to. But I’m not a big fan of this style, personally. Sure, my first Skyrim character became KSoFM while I was figuring out the game, but after my first playthrough I preferred my characters become coherent figures in the story of the world. I pick one or two character traits and things that my Dragonborn is good at, focus on them, and make them part of some overall story. My honorable Imperial paladin werewolf is in the Companions, and hunts vampires on principle. My Argonian sneaky archer is a gleeful thief, but would never jive with the College or the Dark Brotherhood. I like creating protagonists who fit into these settings immersively. I don’t care about power fantasies or being in charge. I don’t WANT my character to be all-powerful, because that ruins my immersion and my little story.

Additionally, in a plot-driven story-focused game like Fallout, KSoFM tears the narrative apart. Skyrim is fairly light on story, so the Dragonborn can be the leader of the Companions and the Dark Brotherhood and whatever other factions without any of them noticing or caring. But FO4’s themes, faction drama, and the main thrust of the plot don’t work at all if the Sole Survivor is able to become too powerful or too influential. The Sole Survivor cannot become the leader of every faction, solve every problem, or eliminate every inconvenient bend of the conflict because it makes the lore of the entire setting implode. Thus, the game forces you to choose between factions. You cannot be with the Minutemen and the Nuka-World Raiders. You cannot be with the Railroad and the Institute. And you cannot become Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel.

So if you’re the kind of person who loves playing KSoFM, if you like plots that your character can “solve” with relative ease, or if you just think it would be super cool for your Sole to become Elder regardless of surrounding storytelling, then you might think the Elder ending sounds super cool. You are absolutely allowed to disagree with me here. Install all the mods and write all the fic and have all the headcanons you like. I respect that. There is no wrong way to enjoy a single-player video game. Have fun!

But if you’re a big nitpicky pedantic lore nerd like me, a fan of cohesive storytelling, or if you just want to hear how the Elder ending of BB absolutely fucking ruins Maxson, Danse, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the entire plot of FO4 from a narrative perspective, read on!

1. The Synth Thing

The Elder ending requires the stupid plot contrivance of the BoS forgetting about Danse’s synthhood.

One of the biggest problems with the BoS as an institution is their strict and dogmatic beliefs, which include a widespread dislike of non-human species. Perhaps more than any other non-humans, the BoS hates synths. Synths are, in their eyes, machines given free will, a violation of the sanctity of human life and the ultimate example of technology run amok. To them, synths are not sympathetic, they are not slaves, and they are not victims of circumstance. They are weapons that left unchecked will destroy all of humanity for a second time. Synths are anathema to everything the BoS stands for, and finding out that one of their most beloved and trusted Paladins is one is an earth-shattering blow to their integrity and sense of security.

It is completely absurd that the BoS would allow a synth within their ranks, particularly as they are waging war against the Institute, who created synths in the first place. It is even MORE absurd that they’d allow one to influence their Elder, or even worse, to become Elder. It completely undermines their mission in the Commonwealth, and the core tenets of their extremely rigid beliefs. No matter the Elder, no matter the Litany or obscure BoS law, no matter how valuable the Sole Survivor is as a soldier or how much influence they wield. Danse is a synth. He’s the enemy. He is physically the embodiment of everything they hate.

Not only wouldn’t they trust a synth in general, but the BoS specifically believes that Danse is an infiltrator for the Institute. Even Danse believes that he is a danger, that the Institute may be able to take control of him and use him as a weapon. Sure, we know none of this is actually true, or possible, but the BoS don’t know that. And given how quick they are to order Danse dead without even the possibility of surrender, I don’t think there’s any charisma in the world that’s going to convince them otherwise.

According to Peter Jessop, this, ultimately, is the reason why the Elder ending was cut. He talks about it around the 11:30 timestamp in his Instagram stream, linked above:

“We recorded an ending where you keep Danse alive and you take over the Brotherhood. But there was a question of content… there’s no way the Brotherhood, once they knew he was a synth, would let him be even the right hand of the person in charge.”

Bethesda correctly recognized the incredible narrative contrivance for the BoS to shrug off the reason they’re trying to execute Danse in the first place. Whatever other beefs I have with this ending conceptually, they all come in second to just what a big dumb leap it is to get beyond this first and most important problem.

2. The Complete Death of Conflict

The Elder ending of BB destroys the conflict of the quest, and potentially the conflict of the entire game.

Greed is a poison. There is no such thing as a perfect ideal or a perfect organization. Power corrupts. Humanity has the choice to build back better. War never changes. The Fallout games are full of themes, depicted by the characters and quests and factions we play out.

Blind Betrayal is rightfully praised as one of the most powerful quests in FO4. Not only is it well-acted, but it puts the player in a very difficult position. The BoS has given you clout and glory and free power armor and lots of firepower, but now you see the price: unquestioning obedience. You are ordered to execute your friend and mentor Danse for the mere fact he is a synth. Are you going to follow that unjust order? Are you willing to give up your principles on command? Or is this where you can no longer stay quiet and stay in line?

To be honest, I’ve always thought the fact you can talk Maxson out of killing Danse but still remain with the BoS in good standing was a cop-out. BB goes 90% of the way to forcing you to choose between a companion and a faction, and then chickens out at the last second to let you have both, if your charisma is high enough.

(I believe this has the fingerprints of Skyrim’s development on it-- Bethesda’s writers got nervous about doing another Paarthurnax choice involving the fan favorite Brotherhood of Steel. That’s right. Danse is the Paarthurnax of Fallout. Frankly, I understand why they chose not to go there, but damn, wouldn’t it have been wild? You want to run with the BoS? Then kill your friend and feel the burn. THIS is what it means to follow orders without question.

As for me, I’d pick Danse every time and sleep soundly without the company of shitty bootlicking dieselpunk LARPers- but I digress.)

Anyway, you know what would have REALLY been a copout? If the game asked you to make a difficult thematic storyline choice, and you solved the problem by just not choosing at all.

You are supposed to feel uncomfortable when Maxson orders you to kill Danse, because the game is telling a story about how it is maybe a bad thing to thoughtlessly follow orders without question. It is asking you to think about what the BoS is, what they are doing, and how they are going to run things, if you choose to let them “win” the Commonwealth. It is pointing out that there is no room for gray in the BoS’ black and white. That a good, loyal man may die because of the way he was made, through no action of his own. That soon, you’ll be killing other people on command. The Railroad. Fleeing Institute synths and scientists. Others, down the line. It all depends on who’s giving the orders. Are you going to follow those orders?

Eesh, that sounds thought-provoking and unpleasant and difficult! Let’s just skip it by killing Maxson and making ourselves the boss. Now we get to tell everybody else what to do!

It’s unknown what powers the Elder ending would have granted the player, or how it would have interacted with the other factions. There is speculation that you’d have been able to ease back on the BoS’ dogmatism, or change some of the later events of the game. For instance, perhaps you could talk the BoS down from attacking the Railroad, sparing popular characters like Glory and Deacon who must die in the normal BoS storyline. Perhaps you could have made the BoS a kinder, gentler faction and directed them to run the way you want them to.

If this was indeed the case, then the Elder ending would not only suck the gravitas out of BB, but torpedo the entire main plot.

If you can get rid of any and all downsides to siding with the BoS, why in the hell would players side with anybody else? With the player given total power, the BoS becomes a perfect faction with no drawbacks, no weaknesses, no tough decisions to be made. Screw slumming it with the Railroad or the Minutemen, let’s take over the BoS. Free power armor and a giant robot! Forget the whole intolerance thing, I hereby proclaim the BoS No Longer Problematic! Now to force all the factions to get along, completely removing all conflict and nuance from the plot!

That’s some real anticlimactic “tell Legate Lanius to go home and then he does it” bullshit right there. King Shit of Fuck Mountain!

Look, it might be nice if there was a perfect path like that to take through the game. It would be cool if our characters could be that powerful and the game was that tailored to our individual choices. On the other hand, “I change all the factions to suit my exact liking” might be a fun idea for a fanfic, but it’s an incredibly boring plot for a video game. “I get to make everything in the world exactly how I want it” is Minecraft, not a story-driven RPG with a complex and intricate plot.

It would be great if complex conflicts could really be solved that easily and effortlessly, but hey, you know what? War never changes.

3. The Assassination of Arthur Maxson (Literal)

Arthur Maxson’s death is too significant and fundamentally disastrous for the Elder ending to make any sense at all.

Hero, villain, leader, monster, tortured soul, brutal dictator, immature twerp, bearded sex hunk. However you personally interpret Arthur Maxson, there is no denying that he is a venerated, popular, beloved figure in the BoS. He is the blood heir of the organization’s founder, a powerful warrior, a brilliant tactician, and a charismatic negotiator. He is responsible for reuniting the East Coast BoS with the Outcasts, leading the new, stronger BoS with a sense of shared purpose. There is a damn good reason his name is Arthur and he named his ship The Prydwen, echoes of King Arthur and the legends of his glorious kingdom of Camelot. Arthur Maxson is so beloved that many view him as a demigod, a messiah sent to lead the BoS into a mighty and prosperous future.

So I’m sure nobody’s going to be upset when some wasteland jackass recruited a month ago stumbles in with a synth, kills him, and takes over his job. Right?

It doesn’t matter that it’s “honorable.” It doesn’t matter that it’s done “by the book” via obscure BoS rules. There is no codex or litany or rule so binding that it’s going to overcome the cult of personality around Maxson. There is no way that the BoS is going to accept the death of Arthur Maxson, a man whose reverence borders on worship, especially not when he is immediately replaced by a wastelander, or a synth.

The death of Arthur Maxson removes the unifying glue that’s been holding the BoS together since mending the rift with the Outcasts. Maxson’s death eliminates the one person that both sides of that conflict agreed could steer the organization in the right direction. Some level heads may try to keep the focus on the mission and the Brotherhood tenets, but Maxson loyalists will never forgive the new Elder for his death, and that amount of passionate righteous anger will not be quelled by appeals to the rules. The new Elder’s war on the Institute is basically over before it begins, when the forces splinter and start infighting over the change in leadership.

And this is if the new Elder lives long enough to actually give any orders. I give them around 24 hours after the duel before some angry Maxson loyalist “accidentally” pulls the trigger and “tragically” empties a clip into their back.

24 seconds, if it’s Elder Danse, the dirty synth abomination.

4. The Assassination of Arthur Maxson (Figurative)

The Elder ending of BB falsely pretends that Arthur Maxson is the biggest and only problem with the BoS.

In the Elder ending, as written, the conflict of BB is considered completely and totally solved by the death of Arthur Maxson. The core problem, that Danse is a synth and considered an enemy by the BoS, has not gone away. But by getting rid of Maxson, this apparently no longer matters. Nobody else is going to take offense to Danse’s nature or protest his presence. Nobody else is going to attack him or try to follow through with Maxson’s prior orders. Nope, that meanybutt guy who gave the order is gone, and everybody else is going to welcome Danse back into the fold like nothing ever happened.

I touched on this a little bit on an ask about Maxson a few weeks back, but a lot of people seem to believe that the FO4 Brotherhood of Steel is the way they are purely because of him. That he is the one making them treat non-humans as second class citizens at best, and enemies to be slaughtered at worst. That it’s his fault the BoS is so vehemently against synths and the Institute. That he is the one influencing their imperialistic tendencies, and treating the Commonwealth like territory to be conquered and people to be ruled over by their betters.

He’s not. That’s the Brotherhood of Steel, guys.

The charitable, altruistic, virtuous BoS that many of us met for the first time in FO3 were outliers. Lyons’ group was literally disowned by the rest of the faction because their kindness to wastelanders had gone so far astray from the “core” tenets. The BoS as a whole has always been exclusive, isolated, and seen themselves as “superior” to the average wastelander. They have long disliked or outright hated non-humans (and even Lyons’ BoS in FO3 use ghouls, feral or not, for “target practice” if they get too close!) The rigid dogmatism of the BoS is not something that Arthur Maxson started, but has always been part of their fabric.

Now, it’s true that Maxson is absolutely going hard on the BoS tenets, and extremely dedicated to upholding them. His BoS are the way they are and act the way they act because he believes that this is the way it should be. Is it possible that a different leader may be a little more flexible? Absolutely. Could a skilled Elder eventually show them the benefits of a softer approach and a more generous worldview? Totally. Is getting rid of Maxson and replacing him going to make that happen overnight, or going to make the rest of the BoS who supported him shrug and follow suit?

Nope.

Blaming Arthur Maxson for everything unsavory about the Brotherhood is unfair to him and also foolishly ignoring the deep, massive problems that are far older than he is-- problems that plenty of its members wholeheartedly believe are not problems at all. Getting rid of Maxson does not make the BoS kinder or gentler. Even pretending Maxson isn’t as personally beloved as he is, any new Elder who steps in and starts trying to fundamentally alter the way the BoS operates and what they believe in is going to face some major, immediate pushback.

Like, a full clip of bullets in the back type of pushback.

In the face if it’s Elder Danse, the godless freak of nature.

5. The Un-Redemption of Paladin Danse

Last, and my personal least favorite!

At first glance, Paladin Danse is a steely jackboot, a die-hard Brotherhood loyalist who fully and firmly believes in their cause. Many immediately dismiss him as a humorless brute, or completely ignore him because they think that’s all there is. But if you spend any time with Danse at all, you’ll notice a sort of weariness in him. He is tired, overworked, and his years of service are starting to weigh on him. He has watched friends, comrades, and mentors die in horrible and gruesome ways, and he suffers from PTSD. Though he has always been told that his own sacrifices, the sacrifices of his brothers and sisters have been” worth it,” he’s starting to question if that’s true.

After telling of the incident where he personally executed his best friend Cutler, who’d been turned into a super mutant, the Sole Survivor is able to console him:

Player Default: You did the right thing. Danse: {Somber} It's what I was taught. I don't know if it was right.

This line is an excellent summary of Danse’s entire character arc. He learns to question whether to believe what the Brotherhood has taught him, or to believe in himself. His gut feelings. His sense of justice and his own ideas of what’s right and wrong.

(In the interest of not turning this into an essay about Danse’s character, I won’t even get into how this also applies to his beliefs about his worth as a person. But keep in mind, that dimension is there, Danse just covers it up by making everything about the Brotherhood.)

During Blind Betrayal, after getting the orders to execute him and hearing Haylen’s plea for mercy, we may expect Danse to be ready to fight back or flee. But when you confront him in the bunker at Listening Post Bravo, he’s compliant and suicidal. Danse is so deeply poisoned by the BoS’ rhetoric that his own feelings or will to live don’t factor into the conversation. He demands that you follow your orders and execute him, because he believes, as the BoS does, that all synths are dangerous and must be destroyed.

Danse: {Stern} Synths can't be trusted. Machines were never meant to make their own decisions, they need to be controlled. Technology that's run amok is what brought the entire world to its knees and humanity to the brink of extinction.

{Confident} I need to be the example, not the exception.

Through various dialogue options, if your charisma is high enough, you are able to talk Danse off the ledge. He is able to consider, at least, that the BoS’ merciless judgment of him is wrong and that what he was taught isn’t right. He is a thinking, feeling, self-aware synth, and that makes him as much a person as any human. Danse is no danger to humanity-- and maybe, most synths aren’t either.

Danse is an example, not an exception.

Later on, if you manage to get him out of BB alive, Danse shows further acceptance of his nature. His approvals about synths begin to soften slightly (or many of them do, at least… it’s not perfect.) He is still struggling with his identity and reconciling it with his former hatred, but his dialogue suggests that he’s on the road to being more open-minded and understanding. Along with this, Danse learns that he has value as a person beyond the Brotherhood. He no longer needs to define himself with BoS beliefs or judge himself by how useful he is to them. He learns that he is worth caring about, worth being friends with or being loved because of who he is-- not what he is, in any regard.

[SIDENOTE: Many players, myself included, are frustrated that Danse’s arc leaves off sort of midstream there. Due to the open-ended nature of the game, we don’t get a real conclusion to his arc-- even though much of his idle dialogue doesn’t change and he still espouses pro-BoS sentiments ( an unfortunate by-product of writing for a video game) there is every indication that he’s started down the right path, but understandably has a ways to go.

Also, Peter Jessop agrees with us.]

Meanwhile, in the Elder ending, Danse doesn’t get a redemption. His entire character arc, actually, hits the skids and does a total 180.

He never leaves the BoS. So scratch the need for Danse to ever think about himself as separate from them. He never needs to question what they’ve taught him or whether they’re right or wrong. He never needs to find any worth in himself beyond his use to the BoS. Why would he? He might be the Elder. The BoS is all he needs to care about anymore. The BoS is all he ever needs to be, ever again.

And I think, most horrifying of all, this Danse never needs to change his mind about synths. On the contrary, one of the surviving dialogue files includes Danse’s speech to reassure the rest of the BoS of his stance:

Danse: I want to make one thing clear to everyone. This body might be synth, but my heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood. The Institute is still a tremendous threat to the Commonwealth. They possess technologies that need to be confiscated or destroyed. And even if that means I have to pull the trigger on my own kind, I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

Elder ending Danse doesn’t grow more understanding on the nature of synths. He doesn’t accept that synths are people, or anything more than technology run amok. He won’t even accept that for himself. Elder Maxson wasn’t wrong about synths-- they’re the enemy and they need to be destroyed.

But, see, he was wrong about Danse. It’s okay for Danse to exist in spite of his nature. It’s okay for him to never fully accept his own personhood, and to outright deny it to his kind. Because his body is a machine, but he’s different from the rest because his heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood.

He’s the exception, not the example.

CONCLUSION:

The Elder ending of Blind Betrayal is dumb, contrived, stakeless, character-derailing powergaming crap at its finest and I’ll happily dance on its grave.

People give Bethesda a lot a shit for their writing-- whether it be stuff they left out, stuff they left in, or stuff that they never, ever could have made work due to the limitations of writing for a video game. Plenty of it is well-deserved, or at least worth a discussion. But from the minute I found out about its existence, I have always wanted to extend a congratulations to Bethesda for cutting the alternate Elder ending of Blind Betrayal. It was a good choice. A very good choice to cut a very dumb plot that would have fundamentally altered the story they were telling, and characters that I’ve grown to love. I think the writers deserve some credit and a hearty handshake for the wisdom of this decision.

Now as for why Nick Valentine isn’t romanceable--

[vgfm]

Deltarune Theory: The True Identity and Importance of “Everyman”

I’ve been away from the Undertale theory scene for a long time. It’s been so long that a whole new-fangled game got announced, and I’ve got some theories on it.

Are these theories about Gaster or Sans or whatever’s going on with Kris? Not exactly. At least, not yet. I’ve got a better character in mind.

Let’s start with Everyman: Undertale’s most obscure character and (I think) one of the most pivotal in Deltarune.

This is a two-part theory: the first part outlines who Everyman is and why I think he’ll be important in Deltarune. The second part? You’ll have to read and find out.

This is a long one and with loads of images, so strap yourselves in.

Sections

Part 1: Introduction to Everyman

Who is Everyman?

“So Everyman’s just an Easter egg, right?”

Everyman’s Importance

Why did Everyman appear in True Lab?

Why Everyman will have a bigger role in Deltarune

Part 2: Everyman is ???

What will Everyman’s role be?

Jevil’s Connection to Everyman

The Spade King’s clue

Additional Evidence

“Seriously?”

The Gaster connection

The “Strange Son”

Who made who?

“Seriously, who is Everyman?”

End

Closing Summary

Final Conclusions

Who is Everyman?

"Everyman” is a special attack that appears during the Reaper Bird amalgamate fight in True Lab.

This same figure appears twice in Deltarune’s first chapter:

Once as graffiti in an alleyway in Hometown...

...and again as a rare bullet attack during Jevil’s fight.

The name “Everyman” only ever appears in-game next to his graffiti portrait in Hometown. Everyman’s sprites are simply titled “strangeman” in Undertale’s game files:

[Image transcript: UTModTool is showing multiple highlighted sprite entries that begin with “spr_strangeman”. On the right is the file “spr_strangeman_walk” opened, showing a picture of Everyman. End image transcript]

Some time after Undertale’s release there was a since-deleted tweet from Toby with a picture of Reaper Bird’s attack that he titled “Everyman,” which is where fans first got the name.

[Image transcript: A tweet from toby fox that says “Everyman”. The first reply says “Is that his name. please thell me thats his obj name.” Toby’s response repeats “Everyman.” The next reply says “everything i aspire to be.” Toby responds again with “’Everyman’ you aspire to be.” Toby then adds another tweet saying “Description. Just a good guy that shows up on occasion.” end image transcript.]

This is a web archive screenshot so the image of Everyman’s bullet sprite wasn’t preserved here. Special thanks to catcat for tracking this one down!

“So Everyman’s just an Easter egg, right?”

I don’t think so. I’d be more inclined to write off Everyman’s role in Deltarune as a mere cameo if he had only shown up once. But it’s odd that Toby felt the need to include Everyman twice in a single chapter. To me this seems less like a one-off cameo and more like foreshadowing for a greater role in the full game.

Let’s compare Everyman’s appearances to instances of character foreshadowing and one-off cameos from Undertale and Deltarune:

Mettaton

[Image transcript: four Undertale screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left screenshot, the narration text box reads “(the machine isn’t working.)” as Frisk stares at Mettaton in Snowdin’s colored tile puzzle room. In the top-right screenshot, the narration textbox is reading a TV announcement in Papyrus’ house: “(It says ‘STAY TUNED FOR A NEW PROGRAM - MTT.’)”. In the bottom-left screenshot, Napstablook’s text box says “there’s a show i like to watch on it... sometimes...” as Frisk looks at their television. In the bottom-right screenshot, Undyne’s text box says “This oven is some top-of-the-line MTT thing.” as Frisk stares at her oven. End image transcript.]

Mettaton is foreshadowed multiple times before he makes his proper introduction in Alphys’ Lab. This includes a direct on-screen appearance of his rectangular form as part of Snowdin’s colored tile puzzle. What’s interesting is that half of these references (including the tile puzzle) only make sense in hindsight to a first-time player. For all we know there could be other, more-cryptic Everyman references already in Deltarune that we don’t have the full context to understand yet.

Rouxls Kaard

Despite his legendary introductory sequence catching many-a-player off-guard, Rouxls Kaard actually is foreshadowed a couple of times before his stunning debut.

[Image transcript: four Deltarune screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left screenshot, Ralsei is reading a message from Rouxls Kaard: “It says... ‘Thoust fools, thou will NEVER figure it out now!’. This is continued in the top-right screenshot: “Then it, um, says, ‘PS - I make my own Rules. - RK’”. In the bottom-left screenshot, a puzzle-master says “ROUXLS KAARD... Lord of the Puzzles... Be careful...!” In the bottom-right screenshot, one of Clover’s heads says “RK came by... What a hunk!” End image transcript.]

I’ve noticed from watching Let’s Plays that many people don’t even realize that these lines were meant to foreshadow him (and I’m pretty sure I didn’t realize it either on my first playthrough).

Ice-E

Now here’s something that’s an example of both a one-off cameo and proper foreshadowing! In Undertale, Ice-E is referenced exactly once in the entire game—as part of Sans’ Monster Kidz Word Search puzzle. No other character mentions Ice-E, Ice-E does not appear in-person, nor does the Ice-E’s restaurant appear... in Undertale. Deltarune is a completely different story.

[image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. in the left screenshot, Kris looks under their sink and the narration text box says: “A can of Ice-E’s Cool Boys Body Spray ‘Spray For The Boys,’ Flamin’ Hot Pizza Flavor.” In the right screenshot, Kris reads a chart in the hospital. The narration text box says: “(It’s a classic 1-to-10 pain scale, using ICE-E as a model.)” End image transcript.]

In Deltarune chapter 1 we find numerous references and bits of foreshadowing for Ice-E and, lo and behold, we see that Ice-E’s restaurant exists in Hometown at the end of chapter 1. And notice how it’s multiple references and not just a one-off like last time.

In every example of foreshadowing listed above we’re given more than one hint of a character’s presence, and so far Everyman fits this same pattern. This makes me feel safe in assuming he will have a bigger role in the full game.

Everyman’s Importance

What’s interesting is that in Chapter 1, Everyman appears in both the light and dark worlds. So far Deltarune has kept the light and dark worlds largely separate from one another, with only Kris and Susie traveling between them (as far as we know).

Everyman’s presence in both worlds implies that either he can travel between both worlds as well, or at least that lightners and darkners are both familiar with him.

Based on what we know, I’d wager that Everyman is a lightner—specifically, a monster.  I say this for two reasons: 1.) so far we’ve only seen lightners (Kris and Susie) travel between both worlds, and 2.) this would explain Everyman’s appearance as one of Reaper Bird’s attacks in Undertale’s True Lab.

Why did Everyman appear in the True Lab?

The worlds of Undertale and Deltarune are connected. Toby has all-but-confirmed this himself.

[Image transcript: A screenshot from the official Deltarune website’s question-and-answer page. The question says “So there’s no connections between the two games?”. The answer says “It’s a different world that might even have different rules. That doesn’t mean there will be no connections at all though.” End image transcript.]

One major connection between Undertale and Deltarune is their largely-shared cast of characters. Many major characters from Undertale make an appearance in Deltarune’s first chapter, and Toby has shown that at least some characters from Deltarune’s universe have counterparts in the Undertale universe as well.

The Undertale Alarm Clock App makes reference to Rudolph Holiday living in the Underground some time prior to the events of Undertale.

[Image transcript: A dialogue box where Asgore says “Rudy... loved the holidays, you know.” End image transcript.]

This dialogue also strongly implies that Undertale’s universe has a counterpart for Noelle.

[Image transcript: Another dialogue box from Asgore. He says: “With a warm slice of fruitcake on the table. His youngest daughter peeking shyly from around the corner...” End image transcript]

Depending on how one interprets the Clamgirl NPC’s dialogue, there may or may not be an Undertale version of Susie (aka “Suzy”) too.

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Clamgirl tells Frisk: “Synchronicity...? My neighbor’s daughter looks about your age.” In the right screenshot her dialogue continues: “Her name is ‘Suzy.’ I feel like you two should be friends.” End image transcript.]

I’d argue that Everyman also had a “counterpart” in Undertale’s universe who lived as a monster in the Underground. Much like Rudy, the Underground’s Everyman likely grew old and eventually “fell down”. But unlike Rudy, Everyman was sent to the True Lab for the royal scientist’s soul experiments and became part of the Reaper Bird amalgamate.

This would fit with the pattern that we see with most other amalgamates, namely that they each seem to be made up of one named/noteworthy monster combined with several other generic monsters. The formula goes like this:

Lemon Bread = Shyra (Shyren’s Sister) + Aaron + Moldbygg

Endogeny = Muttler + various dog enemies

Snowdrake Mother = Crystal (Snowdrake’s Mom) + Vegetoids(?)

Reaper Bird = Everyman + Astigmatism + Whimsalot + Final Froggit

The Memoryheads seem to not “fit” with the other amalgamates, perhaps intentionally, so I’ll leave them out for now.

Long story short: Everyman was most likely a monster since he was part of an amalgamate and (as far as we know) amalgamates can only be made of monsters.

Why Everyman will have a bigger role in Deltarune

We see in Deltarune that three of the monsters who became amalgamates in Undertale have since passed away. This fits a trend I’ve noticed of Toby trying to “explain” the absence of characters who are prominent in one of his games but not the other.

The examples I cited above of Rudy, Noelle, and (possibly) Susie existing in Undertale’s universe also serve as “excuses” for where those characters were and why they were absent from the events of Undertale’s story. Rudy was dead and Noelle and “Suzy” were living with their families (presumably) in parts of the Underground where Frisk never ventured.

Shyra, Muttler, and Crystal are similarly “excused” from Deltarune’s story when the graveyard informs the player of their passing. Gerson is likewise excluded from Deltarune due to having passed away before the events of the game.

Conveniently, Everyman is not listed among the amalgamate monsters who have passed away in Hometown, and the alleyway graffiti implies he’s alive and well.

We know that Deltarune’s timeline and character ages don’t match up perfectly with Undertale’s—Deltarune Asriel is still alive and slightly older than Kris, who’s roughly the same age as DR Monster Kid. Conversely, Undertale Asriel died long before Frisk entered the Underground, yet Frisk is still seemingly in the same age bracket as UT Monster Kid (who’s barely younger than Asriel in Deltarune). Like Rudy, we can assume that Deltarune’s Everyman is younger than the Everyman who “fell down” in the Underground.

What will Everyman’s role be?

Remember when I said this was a two-part theory? Well, here’s the second half of my theory: Everyman is the Knight.

[Image transcript: A text box that says “Yes, you read that correctly.” End image transcript.]

Yes, the same Knight mentioned by Seam, Jevil, and the King of Spades. The same Knight who’s pulling new dark fountains out of the earth and who’s implied to be a major antagonist in the full game.

I could hedge my bets by saying Everyman is merely “connected” to the Knight, but if the Knight is a character we already know of then I think Everyman is the most likely candidate.

Let’s start with the name: Everyman’s sprites are titled “strangeman” in Undertale’s files. The very first mention we get of the Knight in Deltarune is Seam describing a “strange knight” who appeared, complete with red font for emphasis.

[Image transcript: Seam speaking inside of a shop, saying: “But, recently, a strange knight appeared... And three of the kings were locked away.” End image transcript.]

The word “strange” seems to be used selectively and very deliberately in Deltarune’s first chapter. Here’s a breakdown of all the times it’s used:

Seam referring to the knight

Seam referring to the Knight’s “strange son” (more on that later)

Telling Seam about Jevil (”Strange Prisoner”)

Seam referring to the “strange someone” that Jevil met

Seam mentioning the “strange words” Jevil said

Rouxls Kaard referring to Lancer (”a strange and irritating darling!”)

Narration before Kris seals the dark fountain (”You felt something strange.”)

Flavor text during the Jevil fight (”Kris gazed strangely”)

The Devilsknife/Jevilstail appearing in a “strange chest” outside of Jevil’s cell upon defeating him (this may be dummied out or only triggers if your inventory is full of weapons/armors and Jevil can’t give his item to you)

The description of the key to Jevil’s cell (”something feels strange about it”)

With the exception of the line from Rouxls Kaard, every instance of “strange” somehow connects to the Knight or Jevil. If the Knight is indeed the “strange someone” who Jevil met then the list tightens even further, to the point where all but one use of the word “strange” is associated with a single character and his handiwork—a very “strange man”, as it were. Speaking of Jevil...

Jevil’s connection to the Knight and Everyman

Jevil’s fight is one of two places where Everyman appears in Deltarune chapter 1. Not only that, but Everyman’s sprite only appears as a rare event during Jevil’s carousel attack, implying that his appearance is somehow significant.

Interestingly enough, the other two sprites that appear during this attack are one with a head that vaguely resembles Mysteryman (believed to be Gaster) and another with the head of a horse, a.k.a. the same as a knight piece on a chess board. It’s also worth pointing out that it’s rarer for the Everyman sprite to appear than it is for either of the other two sprites to appear.

We can also see the Everyman sprite represented in the official Chaos Revolving Keychain from Fangamer.

Jevil mentions the Knight once you defeat him, showing that he has knowledge of his existence.

[Image transcript: Jevil saying “THE HAND OF THE KNIGHT IS DRIFTING FORWARD.” End image transcript.]

This is interesting since Seam’s dialogue implies that Jevil was imprisoned well before the Knight overthrew the three kings at Card Castle. I can think of three possible explanations for this seeming timeline discrepancy:

Jevil is somehow intrinsically “aware” of things that go on outside of his cell

The Knight or someone else visited Jevil in jail to tell him about what happened with the three kings

The Knight is the same “strange someone” that Jevil met before he was locked up

The first explanation is the least likely, imo, due to Jevil asking who Kris, Ralsei, and Susie are when he first meets them.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Jevil is talking to the fun gang and he says: “BUT LO, THREE VISITORS STANDING INSIDE?” This continues in the right screenshot, where Jevil says: “WHO ARE YOU FEW?” End image transcript.]

If Jevil was aware of the outside world then he’d surely know of the fun gang’s antics by that point.

The second explanation doesn’t seem very likely either. Seam is the only character who acknowledges Jevil’s existence and we never see Seam visit Card Castle, even after the Spade King has been overthrown.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Jack Person tells the fun gang: “By the by, I asked Seam to come here, but...” Continuing onto the right screenshot, where Jack Person finishes by saying “There wasn’t any interest.” End image transcript.]

Jevil’s cell doesn’t seem to have any guards and it’s kept on its own floor, so that would rule out Jevil hearing about the knight from other prisoners.

If someone in the castle brings food to Jevil then he may have overheard it from them, but even that is speculative. Does Jevil even need to eat? He says his body “cannot be killed,” after all.

[Image transcript: Jevil saying “THIS BODY CANNOT BE KILLED!” End image transcript.]

And I’m not sure if the King of Spades would be so accommodating towards a dangerous prisoner.

That just leaves the third explanation, which seems the most likely to me. It’s also the tidiest explanation for how Jevil would be aware of both the Knight and Everyman—they’re the same person.

We can only speculate as to why the “strange someone” caused Jevil to run amok. If that strange someone was the Knight then I would assume that setting Jevil loose may have been his attempt to overthrow or destabilize Card Castle’s leadership. We know that the Knight eventually overthrew the three other kings himself, so that may have been his plan B after Jevil failed or he merely wished to remove Jevil as an obstacle. Either way, the Knight toppled the quadrumvirate and installed the Spade King as the protector of Card Castle’s dark fountain.

The Spade King’s clue

The Spade King is the closest ally of the Knight that we’ve seen so far. The exact nature of their relationship isn’t fully known, but the King’s words imply that he reveres and is loyal to the Knight.

[Image description: Four Deltarune screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left, the King of Spades says “By the Knight’s will, I shall shatter your heart to pieces!”. In the top-right, the King says “For the KNIGHT has appeared.” In the bottom-left, the King says “The KNIGHT that pulls the Fountains from the Earth.” In the bottom-right, the King says “My KNIGHT... I shall not fail you...” End image transcript.]

Both characters share an interest in maintaining the existence of dark fountains, given that the Knight has been said to create new fountains by pulling them up from the Earth.

Unlike Jevil, the Spade King’s attacks never make explicit reference to Everyman’s visage, but he does give a possible nod that many players have overlooked. When the Spade King is defeated, he makes a curious gesture by letting his cloak fly away like a butterfly.

While this may be a simple artistic flourish, I always found this moment to be odd and unfitting for a brutish character like the King. It’s also worth pointing out how the King’s cloak is clearly not a part of his body, unlike what’s implied with Lancer’s “clothes”.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the battle narration says: “You tell Lancer you can’t tell the difference between his clothes and his body.” The narration continues in the right screenshot, saying “He seems flattered... His ATTACK POWER went down!” End transcript.]

What if the King didn’t always have that butterfly-shaped cloak? Did someone give it to him? Think of where else we’ve seen butterfly motifs before.

At first blush, this seems obvious—the Reaper Bird is clearly made from the Core mercenaries, including Whimsalot. Whimsalot attacks with butterfly bullets, so that’s where Reaper Bird got them from, right? Case closed. Well, not so fast.

It turns out there are two different sets of butterfly bullets in Undertale’s game files, and Reaper Bird’s are different from Whimsalot’s.

[Image transcript: Two groups of butterfly bullet sprites. The left group is labeled “Whimsun / Whimsalot.” The right group is labeled “Reaper Bird”. End image transcript.]

Notice how Reaper Bird’s butterflies are smaller and have pointier, more symmetrical wings? While those differences could be chalked up to limited pixel resolution, it’s interesting how Toby went out of his way to create an entirely unique set of butterfly bullets for Reaper Bird when it arguably would have made more sense for him to recycle the Whimsun butterflies like he did for Whimsalot.

If you want to compare the sprites for yourself I suggest either looking at the game files directly or looking at an actual playthrough of Undertale. I’ve noticed that Spriter’s Resource mistakenly has Reaper Bird’s butterflies listed under Whimsun’s sprite sheet (which is a completely understandable mix-up).

To drive the point home, notice the string names that are used for these butterflies:

[Image transcript: An UTModTool window showing multiple named strings. Highlighted in red are six strings that each contain “obj_strangeman_butterfly” in their names. End image transcript.]

They’re “strangeman” butterflies. Not “amalgamate” or “Reaper Bird” butterflies (despite Reaper Bird having its own share of dedicated strings and named sprites), and they’re not “Whimsalot” butterflies either. Toby clearly delineates them as belonging to strangeman, a.k.a. Everyman, meaning that Everyman is specifically associated with butterfly imagery. The Spade King also makes use of butterfly imagery immediately after he mentions the Knight in his final turn.

Between the King and Jevil, this makes two characters that can be linked to both Everyman and the Knight.

Additional Evidence

Let’s circle back to Reaper Bird for a second. It’s commonly known that this amalgamate is made from Astigmatism, Final Froggit, and Whimsalot. To wit:

These enemies are part of the mercenary group that Mettaton hires to attack you in the Core. Have you ever noticed how out-of-place they seem? Almost every other set of enemies in the game is somehow themed around their environment — Snowdin enemies are ice creatures, Hotland enemies are fire/lava-themed, etc. These mercenaries are themed around medieval warfare and yet they show up in the Core, the most high-tech area in the entire Underground.

What’s even stranger is that this medieval theme seems to come out of nowhere. Astigmatism, Final Froggit, and Whimsalot act as “upgraded” versions of Loox, Froggit, and Whimsun, respectively. And yet their Ruins counterparts don’t have any medieval theming whatsoever—it was added purely for the mercenaries. For whatever reason they’re all dressed like a bunch of wizards and... knights.

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, a Core NPC says “Why do I look like a black sausage and not a knight or a wizard?” This continues on the right, where it says “Well... Everyone has an angle they look best from.” End image transcript.]

That’s not my interpretation of their designs—the game outright calls them knights.

On the one hand, it’s true that Asgore’s royal guards also dress up like knights, but the Core mercenaries are explicitly not part of the royal guard—they’re mercenaries.

[Image transcript: Battle flavor text that states “Mercenaries emerge from the shadows.” End image transcript.]

Assuming that Asgore has a dress code for his guards or is just old-fashioned in his sensibilities, there’s still no reason why fighters outside of the guard should follow their standard. Even some of the royal sentries don’t follow this theming, as seen with Doggo and Sans (who’s technically a sentry):

With the abundance of knight-themed royal guard and sentry enemies that exist already, Toby could’ve easily designed the Core Mercenaries to more accurately fit with the Core’s futuristic theme. Doesn’t it seem a little too coincidental that Everyman would wind up as part of the same amalgamate as these otherwise out-of-place knights?

When we look at the other amalgamates, we can see that Lemon Bread (a.k.a. Shyren’s sister) is made up of Waterfall enemies. Endogeny is made up entirely of dog-based enemies. These two amalgamates each have a “theme” for their component monsters that fits the “main” named monster they’re each made of, and Reaper Bird has a clear theme of its own. Why would Everyman be paired with a bunch of knights if he was not connected to them in some way?

Even the Undertale artbook groups Everyman’s concept art with the Core Mercenaries, specifically the ones that look the most like knights and wizards in-game. The book also repeats the name “Everyman” and Toby’s cryptic phrase of “Just a good guy who shows up on occasion.”

Perhaps Everyman knew the Core mercenaries when he was alive? Were they his fellow knights? Or did they work for him before he fell down and they had to then lend their services elsewhere?

“The Knight? Seriously?”

Some of you may be shaking your heads dismissively at the idea of Everyman being the Knight (or you more likely clicked over to another tab by now). I mean, just look at the guy:

What part of this design makes you think “knight”, let alone THE Knight? Well, Seam does refer to the Knight as a “strange” knight, and Everyman certainly fits that bill. But more importantly, we haven’t seen an actual overworld sprite for Everyman yet—we’ve only seen some graffiti and a couple of magic bullet attacks, which are always abstract and simplified.

Not pictured: Froggit, Migosp, Temmie, Moldbygg, Tsunderplane, Mettaton, or Endogeny.

Everyman’s “proper” design would almost certainly differ from his Pillsbury Doughboy-esque bullet sprite, especially if he’s wearing a cloak or a suit of armor. And even if his design doesn’t differ that much, so what? It’s not like this series has ever had an opponent that looks goofy or non-threatening, right?

Another little tidbit I noticed: one of Reaper Bird’s attacks consists of Everyman repeatedly removing his own head.

Or maybe it’s not his head? Perhaps it’s a helmet? Like one that a knight would wear? After all, it’s not unheard of for helmets to have beak-like protrusions.

And this is a series where helmets can come in any shape or size to better fit the needs of the wearer.

Just some food for thought.

The Gaster connection

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: “Isn’t Gaster supposed to be the Knight?” If you haven’t heard by now, this is one of the prevailing theories in the fandom. To be honest, if the Knight ends up not being Everyman then Gaster is the next-best candidate, imo, but these two theories don’t have to be mutually-exclusive. I think a case can be made that Everyman and Gaster are connected in some way.

Let me say up front that this section is highly speculative (unlike the previous sections, which clearly aren’t the least bit speculative). We’re dealing with two super-obscure characters who’ve yet to make a proper on-screen appearance in either game. It’s already hard enough to figure out how either of them connect to the broader Undertale universe, let alone to each other, but I’ll give it a shot.

For starters, we can affirm that both Gaster and Everyman are linked to the True Lab. There’s no shortage of fan theories and speculation on Gaster’s prior usage of the True Lab in his own experiments and I won’t get into all that here, but suffice it to say the True Lab has Gaster’s name written all over it.

(Am I the only one who thinks the DT Extractor looks more like Everyman’s head than it does a Gaster Blaster? Forget I said anything.)

We’ve covered how Everyman appears as one of Reaper Bird’s attacks. Interestingly, the amalgamate Memoryhead has an attack that resembles the head of Mysteryman, the figure believed to be Gaster (which I’ll assume here for simplicity’s sake).

If we follow the logic of my prior “Everyman is the named/important monster that makes up Reaper Bird, fitting the pattern of other amalgamates” argument, then Gaster (or pieces of him) could fill the same role for the Memoryheads.

Everyman and Gaster’s sprites both have the suffix of “man” in Undertale’s game files. Here are all the sprites that use this same naming scheme:

strangeman - Everyman

mysteryman - “Gaster”

snowman - gives you the snowman piece

riverman - a.k.a. River Person

darkman - the shadowy overworld sprites used for the Core Mercenaries

watchingman - The spoon-shaped amalgamate that tucks Frisk into bed

The snowman’s inclusion is a bit of a fluke, because what else would you call a snowman without using “man” in the name? If we exclude the snowman, each instance of “man” represents a mysterious figure that ties back to Everyman and/or Gaster.

We’ve already covered the connection between Everyman and the Core Mercenaries, and it’s easy to connect the “watchingman” amalgamate with the True Lab. River Person is also frequently linked to Gaster in fan theories (and they allude to “the man from the other world” and “the man who speaks in hands”), so what we’re left with is a close-knit community of strange, mysterious "man”s.

This naming scheme looks very intentional on Toby’s part, and he seems to be continuing it in Deltarune by referring to the secret unseen NPC who gives you the egg behind the tree in Scarlet Forest as simply “a man.”

[Image transcript: Narration from the secret egg room. The text box states: “(Well, there is a man here.)” End image transcript]

The Knight’s “Strange Son”?

Remember when I said I’d get back to the Knight’s “strange son”? That’s now. I’m a little iffy on this topic because it involves stacking a whole ton of assumptions onto a single line of dialogue that’s phrased in an ambiguous way. But, if it means what I think it means, it could shed a ton of light on Everyman’s possible connection to Gaster and whether either of them are the Knight.

When you ask Seam about the “Kingdom”, Seam says this:

[Image transcript: Three of Seam’s text boxes arranged vertically. In order, they read: “Historically, this land was ruled by the Four Kings, from CARD CASTLE to the East. But, recently, a strange knight appeared... And three of the kings were locked away. The remaining king put him and his strange son into power.” End image transcript]

Let’s focus on that last sentence. On my first playthrough I misread this line as “the knight put the king and his strange son into power” because that sounds a lot closer to the events that happened—the Spade King and his “strange son” Lancer are in power now because the three kings were locked away, presumably by the Knight.

But the actual text states the opposite—the remaining king (Spade King) put him (the Knight) and his strange son (i.e., the Knight’s son) into power. Or does it? The line could also read as—the remaining king (Spade King) put him (the Knight) and his (the King’s) strange son (Lancer) into power. The second way is  awkwardly-structured but technically valid. And this is assuming that Toby didn’t make any grammatical errors when he typed these lines, which he has done on occasion.

[Image transcript: A dialogue box where Dr. Alphys says “I felt so guilty knowing I hadn’t do anything to stop you.” End image transcript.]

Not to be too hard on Toby, but even if Seam’s line is grammatically correct it’s still clunky and murky in its conception—at this point in the game we’ve only just been introduced to Lancer and the fact that his dad is the King, and now this line is potentially introducing yet another father/son duo that is closely connected with Lancer’s dad—is it any wonder that this line is often glossed over by fans?

The second reading, where Lancer is the “strange son,” is also awkward because the Spade King would have little need to put Lancer “into power”. Lancer was already a prince and, presumably, already wielded power in that role. Various NPCs make reference to Lancer bossing them around, and such a thing could’ve easily happened before the three kings were deposed.

If we take Seam’s line with the first reading (where the Knight has a “strange son”) and assume there were no grammatical errors, then this is the only time in chapter 1 that the Knight is ever referred to as having a son. It’s also the only time that the Knight is addressed with pronouns, implying that the Knight is male. If true, this would rule out the theory that Kris (or any potential alter ego that Kris has) is the knight, since Kris is neither male nor do they have a son. This would also rule out Susie, who’s never been a popular contender for being the Knight but is referred to as a “dark knight” on her stats page.

Who made who?

So then, who’s male, widely believed to be the Knight, and is often depicted as having one or more sons?

This (alleged) guy!

“But wait,” you might ask, “isn’t your theory that Everyman is the Knight?” Well, the Knight and his “strange son” seem to be working as a duo in the scenario that Seam outlines, given that the Spade King put both of them “into power.”

Because of Everyman’s connections to the Knight that I’ve laid out, plus the more popular theory that Gaster is the Knight, it’s possible that one may be the Knight and the other may be the Knight’s “strange son.” The way I see it, it doesn’t make a huge difference which one is which.

Now, I don’t think that Gaster and Everyman would be father and son in the strict biological sense. There are a number of reasons for this, but for starters I’m not even sure if Everyman and Gaster are the same species. My inclination is that Everyman is a monster, while Gaster may be a darkner. The latter is mostly my own guess and springboards off of a popular theory that Sans is a darkner, but it’s a whole other can of worms that I won’t get into now.

More importantly, Gaster is strongly implied to have some sort of connection to Sans and Papyrus. All three of them are also connected with special fonts that they each use. As far as I can tell, there’s no widely-used font by the name of “Everyman”, so this would imply that Everyman is not a skeleton and therefore not biologically related to them. However, there’s more than one way to start a family.

Gaster was the royal scientist in Undertale’s universe and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he (or his potential Deltarune counterpart) could find the means to create life forms artificially.

[Image transcript: The vessel creation scene from Deltarune. The on-screen text says “YOU HAVE CREATED A WONDERFUL FORM.” End image transcript.]

Everyman could be a creation of Gaster’s and thus he’d be Gaster’s “son”.

There’s also another possibility: Everyman is Gaster’s creator. We know that the Knight is pulling new dark fountains out of the Earth. I think the Knight, regardless of who they are, must be able to survive without a dark fountain to give their body form, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to venture into areas where new fountains have yet to be pulled up. The Knight is almost certainly a lightner, and I’ve already detailed why I think Everyman is a lightner as well.

We don’t fully understand how dark fountains interact with darkners, but it’s stated multiple times that dark fountains “give form” to the Dark World.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Ralsei’s narration says “Today the FOUNTAIN OF DARKNESS-” and continues into the right screenshot, saying: “The geyser that gives this land form-” End image transcript.]

In the dummied-out manual pages, Ralsei also mentions how his dark fountain gives his body form.

[Image transcript: Ralsei’s manual excerpt, whic says “Dedicated to The unending pillar of darkness that gives my body form.” End image transcript]

Darkners need dark fountains in order to maintain their forms. They may not even be able to survive at all without them. From this point of view, when the Knight creates new dark fountains he’s bringing new darkners to life. If Gaster is a darkner himself, then it’s not unthinkable to imagine that Everyman may have brought him to life in this way and could thus be called his “father”. Seam does refer to lightners as the “creators” of darkners, after all.

[Image transcript: Seam’s dialogue box saying “They were like Gods to us. Our protectors. Our creators. Those who gave us purpose...” End image transcript.]

Ultimately the question of who’s the father and who’s the son is purely speculative. We don’t even know for sure if the Knight has a son, let alone whether it’s Everyman, Gaster, or someone else entirely. It’s very much a “the chicken or the egg?” kind of question.

[Image transcript: Two images. The right is a screenshot of the egg room with narration stating “(You received an Egg)”. End image transcript.]

Hmm...

“Seriously, who is Everyman?”

Let’s bring this home with the question we started with: Who is Everyman? I’ve gone into evidence that he existed as an actual person in Undertale and will likely play a role in Deltarune, but this doesn’t tell us much about the kind of character he is. We don’t even know if “Everyman” is his real name.

If Everyman is indeed a prominent character in Deltarune then there are two possibilities: 1.) he’s a brand new character we’ve never met before, or 2.) he’s someone that we have met before. The first option, while a strong possibility, doesn’t leave us with much to talk about, so let’s look at the second.

Right out the gate I can confidently say that Everyman is not a character that we talked to or had significant interaction with in Undertale. The obvious reason is that he was busy being stuck inside Reaper Bird and he couldn’t have been in two places at once (as far as we know). This means that Everyman would have to be a character introduced in Deltarune chapter 1.

I’ve said before that I believe Everyman is a lightner, so this would rule out any dark world characters. That leaves us with the residents of Hometown who didn’t have direct counterparts in Undertale’s story.

After careful consideration I’ve narrowed the field to two suspects:

Father Alvin

Father Alvin has always struck me as an oddity. He seems like an important member of Hometown’s community, and yet none of the other residents ever talk about him. He’s also conspicuously absent from Undertale’s universe.

The most notable thing about Father Alvin is that his church seems to worship “the Angel”.

[Image transcript: Father Alvin saying “Let the Angel’s power light your way.” End image transcript.]

Ralsei’s prophecy states that the three heroes must seal the dark fountains in order to banish the “Angel’s Heaven.”

[Image transcript: Two Deltaunre screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Ralsei’s narration says “Only they can seal the fountains.” The right screenshot continues, saying: “And banish the ANGEL’S HEAVEN.” End image transcript.]

This would put the heroes at odds with both the Knight (who’s creating fountains) and whoever is serving this Angel. We can only speculate on the Knight’s motives, but what if he’s acting in service to the Angel?

Something that isn’t brought up much in the fandom is the religious reverence that darkners give to their fountains. The King of Spades refers to the fountains that the Knight creates as “holy” fountains.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the King of Spades says “Holy Fountains, whose shadows are creating a new world...” The right screenshot continues, saying “OUR world.” End image transcript.]

The soundtrack that plays at the Fountain is called “The Holy.” Dark fountains can seemingly create life, so it’s easy to imagine the Knight viewing his own mission as some sort of holy rite.

As far as evidence goes for Alvin being Everyman/the Knight, the biggest clue is the drawing signed by Alvin that shows up in the supply closet at the end of chapter 1.

Every other object in the closet represents a part of the dark world that Kris and Susie visited, and yet at no point do they encounter a dark world manifestation of this drawing. We know that the Knight visited Card Castle previously, so this drawing could be meant to represent the Knight’s presence in that part of the dark world.

It’s also worth noting how most of the closet’s toys are arranged from left to right in the order that Kris and Susie encountered them on their journey. Alvin’s drawing is on the far right, just past the open cabinet drawer (i.e., Card Castle), implying that Alvin’s drawing was either at the fountain or that it was effectively the “next” thing that Kris and Susie would’ve encountered if they had stayed.

It’s hard to make out what the drawing could be beyond being a “poorly-drawn picture of a green turtle”, as the flavor text explains. Could it be Everyman? Or is it just a reference to Bold and Brash? Both? Neither? The world may never know. Or it may know when the full game comes out.

Can I also add how strange it is that Alvin’s drawing is in the closet to begin with? Alvin looks to be a pretty old dude, so why would his drawing still be in a school that he no longer attends? I don’t have an answer, I just think it’s weird.

Other clues that could point to Alvin being Everyman are that he is, scientifically speaking, old-looking, which would line up with my hypothesis of Undertale’s Everyman being an older monster who fell down before becoming Reaper Bird.

Alvin also vaguely resembles Everyman as far as their proportions are concerned.

It’s by no means a perfect match, especially if we factor in Alvin’s shell, but both characters possess a round head with some sort of beak or proboscis.

If Everyman actually is Father Alvin, then the title “Everyman” could be a reference to The Summoning of Everyman, a 15th-century religious morality play. I won’t get into the specifics here, but the play focuses on a character named Everyman who must prepare for his inevitable death and judgment for his deeds in life. I don’t really know how much that would tie into Deltarune’s themes or if it’s even a deliberate reference to begin with, so make of it what you will.

Father Alvin was the first character that I suspected of being Everyman when I started writing this theory, but there’s one major sticking point that prevents me from fully embracing the idea: the fact that he lacks a character portrait for his dialogue boxes.

This may seem like a minor nitpick, but dialogue portraits indicate when a character is important to the story, and it would be a pretty big oversight on Toby’s part if a (presumably) recurring antagonist wasn’t given a portrait. Even a three-scene wonder like Rouxls Kaard was given a portrait.

It’s true that recurring characters like Napstablook and Monster Kid weren’t given portraits in Undertale...

But Deltarune has greatly expanded the number of characters with portraits this time around, and we can already infer that Noelle (who had a portrait in chapter 1) will be an important character going forward:

Given Alvin’s limited dialogue in chapter 1 and his lack of a portrait, I’m more inclined to believe that he’ll end up being a minor character, in which case he’d almost certainly not be the Knight (and therefore not Everyman). But who knows, maybe Toby will give him a portrait in the full game.

Thankfully, we have another candidate who might be Everyman:

The Ice-E’s Employees

You think I’m joking? Trust me, you’ll know when I’m joking.

I didn’t initially make the connection between Ice-E’s and Everyman until I saw a post from @curioscurio​ that pointed me in that direction.

Let’s go back to the Everyman graffiti that appears in Hometown.

Notice how the drawing right next to it resembles Ice-E’s head? I can’t believe this was staring me in the face the whole time and I never realized the connection.

Another point in favor of the Ice-E’s workers is that we don’t even know what two of them look like. We know that Burgerpants is one, and another is implied to be the Nice Cream Bunny that we met in Undertale.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the Ice-E’s employee says “Psst, can I tell you a mascot secret? I only started working here because...” The right screenshot continues, saying “The logo made me think it was an ice-cream shop...” End image transcript.]

But this still leaves the “purple guy” and “The Warrior”, who remain in full costume for chapter 1, meaning that one of them could resemble Everyman underneath their mask.

Speaking of The Warrior, he certainly fits the bill as being “strange.” His title wouldn’t be out of place among the likes of The Knight, and his dialogue refers to the hospital’s medical staff as “white wizards”, which fits with the medieval theming that’s associated with Everyman’s mercenary cohorts in Undertale.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the Warrior says “This castle’s WHITE WIZARDs relegated me to this HEALING CHAMBER...” The right screenshot continues, saying “But my BLOOD is BOILING FOR BATTLE!!!” End image transcript.]

Speaking of the Core Mercenaries, here’s an interesting tidbit:

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, a Core NPC says “As a youth, I would sneak out to play by this creepy flaming pit.” The right screenshot continues, saying “Since the CORE is always re-arranging, it was like a game trying to find it.” End image transcript.]

I used to assume that the Core Mercenaries were older monsters who fought in the human-monster war, which would explain their insistence on dressing up as old-timey knights and wizards. However, these lines of dialogue imply that the Mercenaries are far younger—young enough to visit the Core when they were kids.

So why would a bunch of younger monsters dress up like old-school knights and wizards? Simple: they’re LARPers. This would explain why their more casual overworld dialogue doesn’t match their overly-serious battle dialogue whatsoever—the battle is over and, thus, so is the act.

What does this have to do with Ice-E’s? Simple. The Warrior is also a LARPer. But he takes it a step further and never lets the act slip. According to Burgerpants, he terrorizes customers with war chants during his day job, and we see him keeping up the act while he’s injured in the hospital. It’s clear that he’s living in a fantasy world, and someone like that would have every reason to spend time in a strange dark world that “seems like” fantasy.

[Image transcript: Lyrics from Deltarune’s credits theme. It says: “And the places that you know seem like fantasy”. End image transcript.]

Someone like him could grow attached to such a place and want to see it spread as far and wide as possible, with no regard for how it would affect the boring “real world”. All he’d need to do is create new dark fountains to sustain this fantasy world.

I also find it interesting that The Warrior is in the hospital during chapter 1. Burgerpants claims that this is the result of “pizza-related injuries.”

[Image transcript: Two dialogue boxes from Burgerpants. Read from top to bottom, it says “The Warrior - Thankfully absent due to pizza-related injuries. Constantly terrorizing customers with war chants.” End image transcript.]

But what if there was another reason? We can see signs of “some kind of struggle” in the King of Spade’s throne room, complete with tattered wall banners.

[Image transcript: Narration in the Spade King’s throne room. The text box says “(Wall banners. They seem to have been through some kind of struggle...)” End image transcript.]

What if the Knight sustained injuries when he overthrew the three kings and had to go to the hospital afterwards? A “struggle” implies that there was some resistance involved.

Another interesting coincidence is that the previews for Deltarune Chapter 2 strongly imply that it will take place in a dark world that forms in the hospital.

Earlier previews have also implied that Noelle will have a larger role in Chapter 2, and she’d have every reason to be in the hospital visiting her father when things hit the fan.

It feels awfully convenient that a new dark world springs up right in the spot where the Warrior is. I wouldn’t be surprised if chapter 2 gives us our first glimpse of the Knight in person, and what better way than a surprise run-in with the Warrior?

Some of you may be asking why I’d suggest a minor character like The Warrior might be the Knight when he has a single line of dialogue and no dialogue portrait? Simple: characters tend not to have portraits when their face is hidden from view. We see this with Undyne in Undertale:

She doesn’t gain a dialogue portrait until after she removes her helmet. This is also true of Burgerpants in Deltarune.

So, unlike Father Alvin, The Warrior has an excuse for not having a dialogue portrait yet. While Father Alvin has some compelling evidence supporting him being the Knight/Everyman, The Warrior has no major counter-argument that I can think of (unlike Father “no portrait” Alvin), so I give The Warrior the edge as far as Everyman suspects go.

I’d also like point out that if Gaster ends up not being the Knight or the Knight’s “Strange Son,” then we could get a two-for-one deal of Father Alvin as the Knight and The Warrior as his strange son. Definitely not the most likely outcome, but technically possible! I’d imagine those two would have a hilariously awkward dynamic if they were related.

Closing Summary

Wow, this post went on for a while! Let’s summarize what we’ve learned today.

Everyman (in Undertale)

Was likely a monster who “fell down”

Became part of the Reaper Bird Amalgamate

Likely knew the Core Mercenaries

Is connected to butterfly imagery

Described as “strange”

May or may not have looked like his bullet sprite

May or may not have been connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not have been connected to the River Person

Everyman (in Deltarune)

Is alive and active

Is known to both lightners and darkners

Can most likely travel between the light and dark worlds

Is known of by Jevil

May or may not resemble his Undertale bullet sprite

May or may not be connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not be Father Alvin

May or may not be an Ice-E’s employee

May or may not be the Knight or the Knight’s “strange son”

The Knight

Described as “strange”

Is pulling up new dark fountains from the Earth

Has been to the dark world

Is possibly a lightner/monster

Is connected to the Spade King, who uses butterfly imagery

Overthrew the other three kings at Card Castle

Is known of by Jevil and Seam

May or may not be Everyman

May or may not be “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not be the “strange someone” who changed Jevil

Likely male

Likely has a “strange son”

Everyman and the Knight (similarities)

Both are likely monsters

Both are alive and active in Deltarune’s world

Both are (presumably) male

Both have a presence in the dark world

Both are known by Jevil and may have met him previously

Both are associated with butterfly imagery to some degree

Both are connected to knight imagery

Both are described as “strange”

Both may be connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

Both are foreshadowed in Deltarune chapter 1

Final Conclusions

So what do I really think? I’m reminded of Undertale’s original Kickstarter demo and how much of the full game’s story was left out of it. Right now we’re in a similar situation with Deltarune. I can’t view any of my theories with certainty because at the end of the day I have no idea what Toby’s going to write for the full game, but I can guess.

If I had to put a number to it, I’d say the odds of Everyman making further appearances in Deltarune is 95% and the odds of him being the Knight is about 66%. There’s always the possibility that Gaster will usurp the title of Knight and leave Everyman as the Knight’s “strange son” or as the far less illustrious role of “no one particularly important”.

If Everyman is in the game, I’d give 50/50 odds that he’s one of the Ice-E’s employees, mainly due to the Warrior’s situation lining up well with Chapter 2′s (likely) setting. I’d then give a 25% chance it’s Father Alvin and the remaining 25% as “anyone else”.

Thanks for reading all of this (or skipping to the end). I’ve seen hardly anyone talk about our favorite strange little man and I just wanted to get the word about him out there. Even if you don’t agree with my conclusions, I’m happy to (hopefully) ignite further discussion over this often-overlooked character.

For now I’ve said all that I can say on the topic. All we can do is wait and see what happens. Fingers crossed.

Special thanks to @curioscurio​ for inspiring me to make this post in the first place.

Date published: December 10th, 2020

[sapphim]

no pressure or anything but i’m curious since you go in the game files a lot + have a mod sorta centered on this quest, i’ve never seen anyone do this, and i don’t have access to da2 rn, do you know how best served cold like. works? if bethany/carver are both dead, sebastian is never recruited, fenris is either not recruited or hawke betrays him during his act 3 quest, anders gets kicked out of the party after his act 2 personal quest, isabela leaves at the end of act 2, and hawke has aveline, varric, and merrill with them the whole time?

does the quest still work or does it get glitchy? i suppose it might not be too difficult to get to work from a gameplay standpoint, but that seems potentially even less comprehensible than the normal quest lmao and i know the devs were under crunch

lmao I don't know about "get" glitchy, since it is already glitchy under typical circumstances. after a companion is kidnapped you can still add them to your party from the party picker and sometimes go initiate conversations with them at their party base. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

what usually happens is that there will (should!) always be a "default" option the game will be able to fall back on, even if it's not itself a "correct" option. what I mean is like, if you have two lines that play based on Hawke's gender, you wouldn't set one to play if Hawke was male and the other to play if Hawke was female, you'd set one to play if Hawke was female and then set the other to *always* play, and then if Hawke's gender wasn't registering as either male or female for whatever reason, it would still have *a* line to play, even if incorrect, rather than abruptly breaking and falling out of the conversation early.

as for how best served cold works—in Keran's dialogue where he announces which character has been kidnapped, he has a long list of lines describing the kidnapped character, with special plot flags used specifically to determine if that character is eligible to be kidnapped there. this is for the siblings and romances. if there's no sibling alive and no romanced character not in the active party, it falls through to the default, generic line "We just got word they pulled it off, right before you came here."

cut for length

if that line plays, it calls a special little bit of plot script used to determine, if a sibling or romance isn't kidnapped, then who should be kidnapped instead? I've looked at the script disassembly for this flag recently and I don't 100% understand it, but it goes thru a list of characters and checks their availability and their approval level and then picks the first one in the list that meets its requirements. there SHOULD be a fall-through state for this too in case no one passes. I know back when I was making my mod, I made my fall-through state if all the changes that *I* made failed to pick a kidnapping victim to just... call this plot flag and let IT figure it out lmfao.

still, it's very probable that they didn't ever consider this one very specific situation in which NOBODY would be eligible and now I'm curious, so I deleted most of the characters from the party pool in my save game, unset some flags that would lead the game to believe bethany and carver were available anyway, and rocked up to the warehouse with aveline, merrill, varric, and no other friends in the whole wide world to see what would happen, keran told me someone unspecified had been kidnapped, and then lying there on the beach...

was no one

and then we abruptly fell out of thrask's conversation early because the conversation was set up "improperly" with no fallback line and so Grace couldn't decide whose death to call for, leaving us all stranded standing aimlessly on the beach with no way to progress the rest of the quest or the game

which was very funny

then I checked the cnv and saw the other dialogue choice WOULD have allowed the cutscene to progress (the third dialogue option was missing from the wheel completely), tried that, found a second dialogue wheel with a missing option, and then

we abruptly fell out of the conversation here once again because there was no one to thank me for rescuing them again and, once again, no fallback line, so once again our game was softlocked

so I'd say, to answer your question, the quest does NOT work and "glitchy" is an understatement

thanks for asking!

[wisterialagoon]

For you, I'll stay : pt1

Dabi is one of the top soldiers of the League of Villains. He does the dirty work and feels the stain of crime on his hands. You're an Assistant Inspector at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, resigned to records-keeping instead of doing actual fieldwork. What happens when these two become intertwined in the most prominent political event that changed the era of 1990's Tokyo Japan?

Warnings: Violence (a girl gets beat up in this chapter), gangs, eventual smut(not in this chapter tho)

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency, Kantō Region, Japan.

January 9th, 1990, Tuesday. 

22:30 hrs.

"It's going to be a long night," she thought, while fixing her desk for the fifth time. There was a haphazard pile of file folders, an unboxed diskette pack, and coffee cup stains all over her table calendar. She quickly reorganises the file folders, placing them in chronological order, then according to crime. Then, she matches the diskettes, which contain additional data such as interrogation footage, with each pile. Lastly, she makes her way to the pantry to refill her mug with coffee, humming along to a tune that was receiving more airplay recently.

It was an uneventful night, to say the least. As usual, she worked overtime, working on organising the paperwork and records of each case-from instigation to case management. She loved it initially, but now that she's six months into this new assignment, she could feel herself wearing down with how emotionally, physically and mentally taxing everything is. It wasn't so much the quantity or frequency of the load, but the content itself.

Seeing death, rape, theft and disappearances on a daily basis was starting to take a toll on her mental health, and even if she learned how to compartmentalise, there was something about seeing all the details that made her sleep less and less these days. The photos of dead bodies or visages of crying relatives would disturb her to no end, and having to type out each case report even if it meant tagging it as a cold case, was something that never really sat well with her.

Her direct senior, the only female Inspector in the agency-the only one who was actually nice, unlike the rest of the police force who talk about her during lunch breaks and agency dinners-tell her that the feeling of being "uninvolved" and "useless" will soon pass. "Besides," she tells her during one of the rare nights that they're both doing overtime, "You've got potential."

She sighs, wary of the compliment. "I just... I wish I could be doing more."

"You'll have your fair share of fieldwork and interrogations, Y/N" she says, patting the younger girl's shoulder. "Just keep working well, and the Chief will soon see your potential."

That last line resonated with her the most. She knew that the Chief was a firm leader-he did routine inspections, called people in his office to ask for status reports and he'd set all sorts of deadlines. But he was also known for being experienced in reading people just with one look.

So the question was, what was his assessment of her?

Did the Chief view her just like how the rest of the agency did-an Assistant Inspector who was only fit for clerical work even if she had graduated at the top of her class? Did he even notice her presence in the building-or was she too conscious of all the judgemental stares thrown her way because she was the first female recruit in a long while?

That was it, she thought, not noticing that her cup had overflowed.

With a sharp curse, she flung her hand away from the scalding beverage, and moved to grab some tissues-her mind thoroughly forgetting the questions that had darted in her mind not a minute ago.

As she dabbled the tissue on her hands and shirt, the police hotline rang, disturbing the silence of the otherwise empty floor. Alarmed at the prospect of a crime or report coming in at this hour, she runs towards the desk of the patrol and public safety unit.

"SMPA, what is your concern?" she asks, voice surprisingly level. When there wasn't a response, she asks again, this time a notch louder.

"Kidnapping," the voice cuts through the radio silence, its texture a rich timbre with a raspy undertone. Caught off guard at the mention of a kidnapping, she scrambles for a notepad and a pen. "23:00, 6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan. Takahashi Yua." In hastily written script, she takes note of the details, not once interrupting the man on the line.

"Who is this? Where is your intel from?" she finally asks, after she hears mere breathing sounds. "Hello?"

The person on the line doesn't respond, instead opting to breathe heavily before the line dies.

"Wha-" she exhales, overwhelmed with the situation. It wasn't unheard of for random tips to come in the station, that much was true. But a tip at this time? And with that much detail? She was wary enough that there wasn't any crime traffic recently but this is proving to be the suspicious exception.

Shaking off her doubts, she dials the home number of Inspector Sato, the head of the patrol and public safety unit. She knows he'll definitely give her an earful for calling at such a late hour-and to his house no less, but if what the man said was true, and if her gut was right, someone was after the daughter of the Minister of National Defense.

At the sixth ring, he picks up and greets her with a litany of questions. "Who is this? Do you have any idea what time it is? Whoever you are, you better have a damn good reason for waking me up!" he rattles off, temper flaring.

"This is Miyasaki Y/N, sir." she says, surprised at how stable her voice was. "Assistant Inspec-"

"Ah, the personal assistant." his tongue clicks, and even if she didn't see, she knew he was shaking his head. "What is it? Here to ask help again in records-keeping?"

At that, she presses her mouth in a thin line, stopping herself from giving him a piece of her mind. She knew that they would always find fault in whatever she does but sometimes she wants to just put them in their place and prove herself.

But now wasn't the time to do that.

"No, sir." she starts, fisting her hand. "There's been an emergency call to the patrol and public service hotline. A tip was given about a kidnapping at apartment 6 Chome-10-1 in Roppongi -"

"Let me stop you right there." he expels a deep breath, clearly uninterested with her report. "You do know what that area is like, right? Or do you not even know where it is?"

"It's in Minato city. The residence listed houses many important political figures, it has national defence" she says, foregoing the other details and taking the opportunity to transition to the most important part. "Sir, you see, this could actually mean that-"

"This means that there is no kidnapping. I mean, if you're trying to pull a joke, it's a terrible one. Hell, there's hardly any crime in that area!" he gives a dry laugh. "it's an executive residential area, guarded and all that. As you said, National Defence is there and so are diplomats and expats. No one in their right mind would attempt a prank call, let alone a kidnapping."

"But the caller gave a name, possibly that of the victim. We should send a team, I have the address. I could lead the-" again, he cuts her off. At this point, a vein was threatening to pop at how unprofessional he was being, but she'd rather not break out into an argument with a direct senior-especially when he was clearly already annoyed at her.

"So this is why you really called, huh?" he chuckles. "Look, no one knows how you got in, or what strings you pulled to pass the Academy, but at the rate you're going, you'll never lead a team-much less my team." the certainty in his voice washed over her, causing her to remain silent at his blatant jibe. "So go back to whatever you're doing and don't even attempt to call me or anyone from the agency to waste their time with your tall tales." the other line clicks, ending their phone call.

Exasperated, she puts down the receiver with a little too much force than was necessary. "Fine, I'll do it myself." she mutters, putting on her coat, muffler and grabbing her car keys.

30 minutes. She'll have to pray that she makes it. After all, she doesn't have much time.

6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan.

The Takahashi Residence.

23:00 hrs.

The gate to the apartment building alone rendered her speechless. Pure brass balusters and a towering guardhouse greeted her, complete with intimidating security personnel who wasted no time in asking for her identification.

"Assistant Inspector Lee, from the SMPA. We received a tip about criminal activity taking place in the vicinity of this residence," she starts, not giving any specific details. "This won't take long." she adds, as a last ditch effort to convince them that she means business.

"Alright," one of the guards lets her through. As she rolled up her window, she catches a muffled dialogue between the two. "Isn't she a little too young to be an Inspector? And criminal activity? Talk about absurd."

Scoffing, she speeds up to the address the caller gave and in a few minutes, found herself outside the apartment building. But she was too late. There, standing by the of the main entrance, was the defence Minister himself, with blood on his hands and a shell-shocked expression.

"My daughter..." she hears him mutter. From just behind the door, she hears distant voices screaming for someone to call the police. "Dial the police! Or call the National Defense for all I care! Someone do something!" the voice got louder as she linked it with a face-Takahashi Riku, the Minister's wife. As if seeing the police lights flashing atop her car, The ministers knees gave out.

She makes haste to catch him before he falls, and as she does, she gets her shirt stained with blood, and scrapes her elbow with the force of his weight. Not minding the sting of the wind blowing by her scraped skin, she pulls out her walkie-talkie, and radios the police patrolling Roppongi that night.

"This is Assistant Inspector Miyasaki Y/N, does anyone copy?" she starts, practically shouting. For some reason, she felt an adrenaline rush at the development of events. "Repeat, this is Assistant Inspector Miyasaki, does anyone copy?"

After a few beats, a voice breaks through the white noise. "This is Inspector Takami, copy. What's your 10-13?"

"I've got a two zero seven." she says, forgetting that she hadn't even scouted the area for verification that a kidnapping actually took place. "6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City. Send a medic for shock treatment." she rattles off, surprised at herself for actually being able to focus and act given the situation.

Then again, this was her job. Her first fieldwork-albeit unwarranted and unapproved.

"Copy that, 10-4. I'll run code. ETA twenty minutes." he affirms his direct response before ending the dispatch call.

6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan.

The Takahashi Residence.

23:20 hrs.

After twenty minutes, two police cars pull up the driveway. One belonged to Inspector Takami, the other was the patrol for back-up. He closes the gap between them in five, quick strides, hands in his coat's pockets.

"What happened?" he asks, ready for a briefing.

"There's nothing definitive yet..." she trails off, mentally berating herself for not even scouting the interior to study the scene. "But I've spoken to the family."

"You mean you've spoken to the Minister of National Defense." he supplies, his breath fogging up in front of him. "What did he say?"

"The family heard the door slam shut, and when he went to check his daughter was gone," hesitant, she clears her throat as a stalling method. "He found her in the marking lot, the girl was bruised and bloodied, unconscious. Looks like she was forced to inhale somthing, and her hands were tied."

"Attempted kidnapping?" he asks, stealing a glance at the apartment buildings façade.

"High chance for it." she answers, clearing her throat again. "Listen, Inspector, I received a tip in the agency around an hour ago-saying something about a kidnapping taking place at this time, at this exact address."

He raises his eyebrows, evidently taken aback at this new piece of information. "And?" he asks, expectant.

"And I think this is a set-up." she declares, sure of something for the first time that night. "Whoever is behind this, wanted us to come, thinking it was a kidnapping when it was an assault and break-and-entry."

"What are you getting at, Miyasaki?"

"There's a reason why Miss. Takahashi was assaulted and not kidnapped. They're telling us something." she says, handing out her notepad which contained the details of the emergency call a while back.

"What do you think this could possibly be then?"

"I don't know... yet." fuelled with conviction, she fists her hands at her sides, no longer feeling that sensation of helplessness or uselessness back in the agency when she was working on records-keeping. "But I'll find out."

9-chome, Kitakarasuyama, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo.

Assistant Inspector Miyasaki Y/N's Residence.

02:00 hrs.

Finally back at her apartment after filing the case and sending off the Minister's family with words of certainty about exhausting their whole force on the job, she slumps on the sofa, feeling her body become dead weight.

"God..." she sighs, fatigued. "That was a long night."

[openheart12]

This Is Where I Belong

A/N: Set during The Conjuring 3 and contains dialogue from the movie (okay quite a bit ifhsdshgskdf) 

Summary: Ed is distraught after realizing his wife is in the same place as the Satanist, all alone and rushes to meet her. Only to be under the curse that almost makes him destroy the most important thing to him; his wife. 

WC: 2,100

It was the morning after they had found the witch’s totem in Ed’s office and after a sleepless night for everyone, they were gathered in the living room trying to figure out what to do next.

“We have to find this woman. We’ve identified the curse and now we have Jessica’s casefile. There has to be something in here. Okay, I’m gonna take the book to be translated. There has to be a clue about where we can find the altar.” Lorraine said to the small group.

“So what do we do?” Debbie asked.

“You should go be with Arne. He’s gonna need you tonight more than ever. Ask Father Newman for help,” Lorraine explained as she grabbed the keys. 

“Drew, you and me are gonna tear into those files. We’ve got to find a link between these cases.” Ed said.

“And a Satanist’s power is strongest at night. So… Let’s hope she doesn’t try anything before then.” Lorraine said, standing up and heading for the door.

“Lorraine, wait!” Ed called, following after her. “I just wanted-” he trailed off, glancing at Debbie and Drew. 

“We’ll be in the kitchen,” Drew said, excusing themselves, knowing they needed some privacy. Ed shot him a grateful smile. 

“I just wanted to say be careful,” Ed continued. 

“I will be,” she answered with a small smile. They hadn’t talked about the night before, both trying to push it out of their heads. Ed had opted to sleep downstairs on the couch much to Lorraine’s disappointment, but she didn’t want to fight him on the subject, knowing that he was scared of potentially hurting her again. “Ed…” she called softly, “stop blaming yourself.”

He forced a small smile, “just, please, be careful.” 

“I love you,” she added, wanting to break through whatever walls he had built up. 

“I love you too,” he said, a genuine smile on his face this time. 

Ed had stayed behind with Drew to go over the casefile they had received. They had been pouring over the information for a couple hours now, not finding anything that linked the cases together and frustration started to build. 

“There’s nothing in these interviews. Her friends barely saw her after she got back from college.”

“Didn’t that seem strange to you?” Ed asked. “I mean, we’re here,” he said, pointing to the map, “the Glatzels live here, just fifteen minutes away. But Jessica lived 180 miles from here. Why is this one so far away?” He paused to think, removing his glasses before facing Drew. “Hey, where did Jessica find her totem?”

“I just saw something about that. It was in an interview with her parents, it was in a box,” he said as he searched through the papers in front of him. ‘She brought it back home in a box from college.’”

“Where’d she go to college?”

“Fairfield.” Drew answered. Realization hit Ed as he moved the pin from Jessica’s home to her college in Fairfield and the pins created a triangle. Drew brought over a map and they sat down to look at it. “This woman lives in the area.”

“Still a lot of ground to cover.”

“Yeah, but not a lot of train tracks. Remember Lorraine’s vision? She said she heard a train.”

“What time was it? Maybe we can start eliminating some of these.”

“Probably close to midnight.”

“Then it can’t be either of these two,” Drew said, pointing to two separate lines. “The commuter lines don’t run that late. That just leaves this freight line that crosses the river here.”

“The river. Oh, dear God,” he said, knowing exactly where the altar was and who was probably already there. Fear plagued him and he was unable to do anything for a few minutes before he got up and ran to get his coat. “Give me your keys. You stay here, call the police,” he said as Drew tossed the keys.

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“Anything, just get ‘em out there!” He yelled, shutting the door behind him and running to the car. He didn’t even realize he had forgotten his pills… again.

He started the car and backed out the driveway, holding the gas pedal down to the floorboard as he sped towards the house. He was berating himself for letting Lorraine go there by herself, they were a team and he should’ve been there with her. He never should’ve left her alone. His thoughts were going a hundred miles a minute, much like the speedometer on the car that climbed higher and higher. But his top priority right now was just getting to Lorraine, hoping, praying that was alright. 

Trees blurred past him as the sky stretched on for miles. Fear had anchored itself deep into his body like an anchor in the ocean. Time seemed to slow down despite the speedometer telling him otherwise. 

After what seemed like hours, he finally saw the house come into view and seeing her car in the driveway made his stomach clench in nerves. 

“Lorraine!” He called, jumping out of the car. “Lorraine!”

“Ed!” He heard her call, but she sounded so faint like it was coming from somewhere in the distance. 

“Lorraine! Lorraine!” He called, again and again, hoping for some kind of answer. 

“Ed? Ed!” She yelled, sounding closer than before. He noticed a storm drain and knelt down beside it.

“Lorraine!” He called into the drain, grunting as he tried to lift it but it had a lock on it. He looked around where he saw a shed and grabbed a sledgehammer, hitting the lock with it twice before breaking it. He removed it and climbed down, throwing the sledgehammer down first. “Lorraine! Lorraine!” He called again, walking down a dark tunnel. Two lights lit up and he jogged down that way, holding the sledgehammer close in case he needed it. “Lorraine?” 

“Ed!” He heard her call from behind him, turning around, he saw her running towards him and relief washed over him until at the last second, ‘Lorraine’ turned into the woman he had seen earlier, the woman behind his curse. She blew dirt in his eyes, and he rubbed them, trying to get rid of the burning feeling as he fell to the ground in a heap of coughing. 

He didn’t remember what happened next, time seemed to slow down and the next thing he knew, he was wielding the sledgehammer towards Lorraine. He couldn’t stop himself though, his brain screamed that it was wrong, that he needed to stop before he did something he would come to regret. But it was no use. He watched on helplessly as she called out to him, begging him to stop, begging him to remember her. 

“Ed? Ed?” She called, shining her flashlight around the darkness as he came out of nowhere, wielding the sledgehammer and hitting a box on the wall that had sparks coming out of it. He swung again, trying to hit something, anything. 

“Ed, stop!” Lorraine called as he continued swinging. “Stop! Ed, I’m begging you!” The swinging continued and she knew she was his target. “Ed! Stop! Stop this! Ed, I’m begging you!” She pleaded once more, the sound of the metal screeching across the floor reverbated in her head. “I’m begging you, remember me! Stop!” She cried out, breathing heavily as he followed her still. She gasped seeing his once blue eyes completely white with a look on his face she would never forget.

This wasn’t her husband.

“Ed, stop!” She screamed as he tried to hit her again. “Ed, please. Remember me,” she whispered. “You’re not gonna do this! This is wrong and you know it!” She cried, dodging another swing. She ran away, panting as she tried to hide behind a statue that was broken into a thousand pieces just a moment later. She rolled onto the ground, backing herself up until she made contact with something hard. “Ed… remember me,” she tried again, their eyes locking. This was her last chance. “She tried to turn you against me. Because she thinks our love is our weakness. But it’s not. It’s not. It’s our strength. Now, open your eyes.” She whispered and she shielded her head as he pulled the sledgehammer back before swinging it down again, breaking the altar into two pieces. 

The curse was broken. 

He held out his shaking hand, offering it to her which she took as she stood up. Before either of them could say anything, Isla walked towards them. Lorraine took a step closer to Ed, their hands intertwined. 

“Your curse is broken,” he said as she pointed a knife towards them. The sound of cracking bones and the sight of her body twisting and turning made Ed hold out his arm in front of Lorraine in an attempt to protect her. “You promised a demon a soul. And it can’t go back to hell without one,” he finished as her body crumbled to the ground, lying there limp. He pulled Lorraine into his arms, relishing in the fact that she was safe. 

They didn’t say anything, it could wait for now. They would talk later, but they were content with each other’s company and security at the moment. Ed led her to the drain, helping her out first before climbing up after her. He didn’t make it far once out though, falling onto his knees.

“Hon… I… I forgot my pills,” he said, breathing heavily. 

He watched as she opened the locket she always wore on her neck, revealing the photo of Judy and one of his white pills inside. She gently handed it to him to put under his tongue before kissing his temple as sirens wailed and red and blue lights lit up the night sky. 

After giving their statements to the police, calling Father Gordon, and having Ed checked out by the paramedics, the two of them were finally on their way home. Both of them were utterly exhausted after not being able to sleep the last couple of nights. There were physical and emotional scars they had acquired during this case. 

Some that would take months and years to heal. The physical scars would fade, only to serve as a faint reminder of what happened, but the emotional ones lingered still. 

And for Ed, he wore the worst ones from this specific case. He never thought he was capable of hurting the most important person to him, the person he would very well give his life for. But he had been, by his choice or not, it didn't matter to him. The fact remained still that if she had been hurt, it would’ve been by his own hands. The same hands that had promised to love and cherish her for as long as he lived in front of all their friends and family. 

Once making it home, they both headed straight to their bedroom, not even bothering to change out of their clothes due to their exhaustion. And as exhausted as Ed was, he wasn’t able to sleep. The events of the last day replayed in his head, haunting him. 

“Sweetheart?” He was brought out of his thoughts by her gentle voice etched with concern. Concern for him. Even after everything he did to her, she was still concerned about him. 

“Yeah?” He choked out, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. 

“Are you alright?” 

“No…” he said, not even attempting to lie to her. She knew him too well. He had his back to her and he felt one of his hands rest on his hip. 

“Roll over,” she said softly. And he complied, turning to face her as a few tears slipped down his cheeks. She wiped them away, planting a kiss to his forehead to try to console him as she held him in her arms. “I’m right here,” she whispered in his hair as sobs wracked his weak body. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while, his voice hoarse. “I never wanted to hurt you.” 

“I know. I know. I never blamed you, I still don't, which is why you shouldn’t blame yourself either. We’re both right here, together and that’s what’s important. We can talk more tomorrow, but we need our rest. I don’t want a grumpy husband in the morning,” she teased lightly, earning a soft chuckle from him. 

“I love you, Lorraine,” he whispered. 

“I know,” she promised, knowing how important it was to him that she knew that. 

Eventually, Ed drifted off to sleep in his wife’s arms, never feeling safer than he did right now.