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#and frisk is not a fan of them fighting

determinators · 3 months

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Yes, the 4channers were awful and they persist in misgendering me, while simultaneously complaining I don't post anymore, with zero self awareness.

4chan harassment alone isn't why I left. This is.

It's the transphobia.

I have been in the fandom since 2015. I have been arguing with transphobes in the fandom since 2015. I have been making write ups about why it's important not to misgender the - yes, fictional - characters since 2015, because of the complete lack of caring it communicates to real nonbinary people.

Last year, I wrote a post that got 7000 notes and is currently pinned to the Deltarune subreddit. I poured my heart out about what the nonbinary characters meant to me and why they were important.

It was argued over, I was mocked for it, I included personal details about my family situation and my difficulty coming out, I was mocked for it.

I wrote it because I believed it mattered. Because for eight years, the constant comment when mentioning the pronouns of these characters has been: Who cares?

At any point since 2015, Toby could have saved the transgender people in the fandom the trouble of having to "prove" the characters were nonbinary by saying something.

Last year, Legends of Localization comes out - thoroughly reviewed by Toby - and calls Frisk, Monster Kid, and Napstablook "ambiguous", designed to have an unclear gender.

You can see in the collage of screenshots how the transphobes in the fandom took that. One delightful individual was so triumphant over the victory, they put the statement in their Reddit subtitle.

So each time this individual posts to the Undertale subreddit, people will see this quote, carried around like a trophy with all the pride of a dog with a rotting pelt in its mouth. That's how much it meant to the transphobes in the fandom. They're delighted by having this quote to throw back in the faces of transgender fans.

Because who cares? The majority of the fandom isn't transgender, or on tumblr. It's easy for them not to care about transgender people.

You can block block block as many people as you want (I had thousands blocked here) but you can't curate your way out of transphobia. It isn't possible.

Because the majority of the fandom is on Reddit, or YouTube, or Twitter, and they, quite vocally, do not care about transgender people.

Some people may recall that I stopped posting to the Deltarune subreddit after the mods decided to filter all posts containing the word "nonbinary" without telling anyone.

The mods stopped filtering the word after I posted this and apologized, but the point was made: people in the greater fandom think the word "nonbinary" is a dangerous, impolite word, one that only invokes argument and therefore should not be used.

So I stopped posting on the Deltarune and Undertale subreddits. I never made YouTube or Twitter content. I set my blog to only allow people with Tumblr accounts to view it. I turned off all asks, anonymous or otherwise. I blocked thousands of people. It did not work. Transgender people can't curate (read: quarantine) our way out of transphobia.

Years of this, of transgender fans of the series getting attacked for trying to claim and fight for nonbinary representation in the series, and "ambiguous" is the language Toby signed off on.

If the characters are meant to be nonbinary representation, the last eight years has proven that this needs to be stated outright, or the onus of "proving" it falls on the vastly outnumbered transgender fans in the fandom - something that we have never been able to do without being profusely harassed for it until we shut our mouths.

If the characters were only ever meant to be ambiguous for the sake of "freedom of interpretation", then this should have been communicated with seriousness and respect to the transgender fans of the series years ago, not as a throwaway line in a translation book. (and to be clear, this is not at all the author's fault - Toby corrected and reviewed the language used)

This is why I left and why I'm never coming back, no matter what happens next. I have had enough of the transphobia in the fandom, and I have no way of fighting back anymore.

Transphobes in the fandom want the work and the passion of nonbinary people but won't even use a pronoun to show the basest level of respect and humanity for us.

I'm watching our rights being taken away day by day, and people like this just want me to keep producing my worthless little game theory posts.

Trans people don't owe you our "content" or our passion, particularly not when we produce it for free in the face of eight years of a deeply transphobic audience that we are expected to either beg for the most basic respect or to turn our heads down and hide away from so they can continue either hating us or pretending we don't exist or that that part of us doesn't matter.

"Who cares?"

When people ask this in response to talking about being nonbinary or respecting pronouns, they know transgender people care.

What they're saying is, who cares about transgender people?

For this reason, I'm requesting people not archive anything I've written, though I know I can't enforce this. That includes the Character Analysis and the "(Characters) are nonbinary why it matters" post, which I wrote in such profoundly naive good faith. For every "who cares" I have received over eight years of being transgender in this fandom.

If my identity as a nonbinary person doesn't matter, if nonbinary people don't exist, then neither does the content I made which they feel so entitled to, even while misgendering me.

I can't even think about this series without becoming angry and miserable anymore. That is the lasting, final impression the art has had on me. I can't think about it or the characters without remembering how little transgender people matter to most of the world. I've had to completely cut it out my life. There's no rage as potent as the helpless one. "Who cares?" I can't make people care.

You can't have the creations and art and "content" made by transgender people and our destruction at the same time. And maybe you can't prevent our destruction either, but you sure as hell can use a damn pronoun.

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carlyraejepsans · 1 month

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Jokes aside could you explain your take on the human protags being neutral for the sake of the story and not nonbinary/trans? One of the YouTuber theorists I follow tried to approach the topic and got his beehind handed to him for it. I think people would take it better from you

lol there's not really much to it? I've seen how toby handles textually transgender characters and he's quite bombastic about it. chara/frisk being trans and nonbinary is simply the logical way fans compute their neutrality through the realistic lenses of our society's conception of gender. ie "they started from an AGAB and chose to transition to neutral when they realized they were trans".

it's a headcanon! i also enjoy it myself more often than not. but if we're talking text, then I don't think that's the case. i think they were conceptualized as neutral (for whatever's reason, meta or not) and that's... well, just what they are. not in a "you can imagine them as whatever gender you want" way, but as in they're just neutral/androgynous characters. especially in a setting where we never see any other humans, nor see how they act about each other.

if anything, i think kris has a much better chance of being straight up trans in deltarune. them having a (gender) identity of their own would fit snugy alongside their arc about fighting back for their individuality, agency and control.

#answered asks #metanalysis

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andreabandrea · 4 months

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The AndreaBandrea UTY post

I need some place to put my Undertale Yellow (UTY for short) thoughts & criticism, and this is my blog, so I might as well put them here. If you don't want to see constructive criticism about Undertale Yellow, don't click below the readmore!

Pretty much everyone I talk to really likes this game, and honestly, I'm really sad that I don't like it more. I like some parts of it quite a bit! But I have mixed feelings about other parts-- I think the writing and characterization could have been a little more impactful than they were, and I’ll be discussing that here. I don’t want to just rag on this game without expressing suggestions and parts that I do like in more detail, so those will be covered as well.

I also want to add a disclaimer that I don't have negative feelings towards the development team or fans of this game in the slightest. I have nothing but respect for the creators of Undertale Yellow. This project was obviously a massive undertaking with a lot of love behind it, and I'm glad to see that it's found success and a community of people who do enjoy it.

The reason I’m writing this post is that, again, I liked parts of this game and wish I enjoyed it more. If I didn’t like it at all, I just wouldn’t engage with it at all anymore. I also haven’t really seen any other people expressing constructive criticism on the game’s writing, so it’s felt more important for me to express these thoughts, be heard, and see if others feel the same way.

The Good

I'll start off with the things I like. The art, the animation, and the music are all fantastic. I was very impressed by the battle backgrounds and the little touches, like the way Clover runs. Clover doing things like reaching for other’s hands, giving fistbumps, drawing their weapon, changing their expression at times-- they feel very dynamic and fun to play as.

The music is really catchy and fun. I love the iterations on the battle theme-- Snowdin’s battle theme having bells, for example.

I also had fun with most of the fights in the game! I liked the unique mechanics that came into play (e.g. the lasso in North Star's battle). I think that changing the way Clover attacks compared to Frisk feels organic and fun.

I also love the mail system. Ever since you could deliver and receive letters in Paper Mario 64, I’ve been hooked on mail as a storytelling system in video games. I think the letters you receive are interesting and clever, and it’s a great way to keep past characters relevant in lieu of a cell phone.

I’m going to be discussing criticism of the characters later, so I’m going to take a moment to talk a little about things I liked about them. I really like Martlet’s optimism and belief in humans. Starlo made me laugh quite a few times and the Feisty Five have a great dynamic with each other. A lot of the background characters in the game are fun-- I like the one who serves you at the Honeydew Resort. The fact that you can go back to these vendors later on and get four new topics to talk about is fantastic and makes the world feel a lot more alive.

The Slightly Less-Good (and more disclaimers)

The writing is where the game falls short for me-- and it’s sad for me, because the writing is the heart of Undertale. I don’t think that the writing is bad by any means! I like the characters and story well enough, but- again- I just wish that I liked them more. I’ll try to incorporate suggestions so this isn’t just a total downer post without anything backing it up.

I want to express something about the ‘suggestions’ that I’ll be offering after the criticism. I know that Undertale Yellow is now out, and the team isn’t going to go back and change it now, and that’s totally fine. I don’t want to make it sound as if the team should change Undertale Yellow just because I have some reservations about it. I’m just one fan out of many. In the very off chance that a member of the Undertale Yellow development team is reading this--

First of all, hi!

Second of all, I know that changing major parts of Undertale Yellow at this point is very unrealistic, and I wouldn’t want you to. If anything, I’m honored you’re reading my ramblings at all. I’d be touched if you’d be willing to take some of my words to heart as you move onto your next creative projects.

The reason I’m including suggestions, therefore, isn’t because I think that the team should or must make these changes, but because I don’t want to just sound excessively negative about this game without offering a little feedback.

I don’t presume that my criticism and suggestions are objectively correct or better than what the Undertale Yellow team created. This is my personal blog, and these are my personal rambly thoughts about Undertale Yellow. The reason I’m including so many disclaimers is because I’ve gotten into discourse before due to poorly thought-out posts about Undertale, and I hope to avoid that this time. I don’t want to just not post something on my own blog, though, because I’m afraid it could be misconstrued or possibly upset somebody. So, I’m trying to discuss this as carefully as I can.

As one final disclaimer, I'll say that I know that it was more likely than not that I'd be at least a little disappointed by Undertale Yellow. The original Undertale was a very important game for me, and very little could reach that standard. (I think this is one reason why Toby decided to do Deltarune, a sort of AU/spinoff rather than a full-on "Undertale 2", and I respect that decision.)

I also think that quite a bit of my criticism is subjective-- several of the characters didn't fully click with me and several of the jokes just didn't land for me, personally. More people than you might think just didn’t connect with the regular Undertale, either. I’ll be talking a little about my subjective opinion on characters, but I’ll try to explain why I feel the way I do rather than just say, “XYZ character sucks because they’re lame, moving on.”

With that said, the post. I’ll be addressing my criticisms from smallest to largest. To begin, I’ll recap the plot of UTY to better analyze aspects that I do and don’t quite like. Spoilers abound.

Undertale Yellow Plot Recap!!!!

The central story of UTY, to my memory and understanding, is as follows:

In the past, a fallen human being went on a rampage in Snowdin and hurt Kanako, the daughter of Chujin, a former royal scientist and monster who happens to be a boss monster. Dalv, an unrelated monster, was also hurt in this incident and sealed himself away in the Ruins in a self-imposed isolation. Chujin’s family (presumably him or Kanako, but not Ceroba, as she doesn’t recognize Dalv) felt bad about this and left him corn from Starlo’s farm as a gift. But, when Chujin died, the corn gifts stopped coming.

Stepping back a bit, after the incident, Chujin developed a deep hatred for humanity. He invented a security robot called Axis and told it to go kill the human. Axis did this (and we will return to this later). Chujin kept the soul (at least, for a time) to experiment on.

At some point in this, Axis failed to impress Asgore and Chujin was fired as the royal scientist. At some point as well, he began to teach Martlet how to build puzzles. Martlet got a job in the royal guard and Chujin disapproved because humans are very dangerous.

Due to experimenting on his own boss monster soul in an attempt to find a way to turn regular monsters into boss monsters so that monsterkind could potentially stand up to the threat of humanity, Chujin wound up very ill and then passed away. He left video tapes to his wife, Ceroba, asking her to finish his research. However, he asked her to leave Kanako out of this so she could live a normal life.

Ceroba agreed to finish this research, but Kanako found out about it and asked to be experimented on because she, like her father, has the power of a boss monster. Ceroba agreed to experiment on her, which injured Kanako and caused her to ‘fall down’. Ceroba sent the near-death Kanako to Dr. Alphys, the new royal scientist, who was collecting ‘fallen down’ monsters for her own experiments with determination.

Plot summary over. I’ll take a closer look at some of these aspects going forward.

UTY Plot Criticism

I don’t feel like this is a bad story, necessarily. With that said, it doesn’t feel quite as tied together as Undertale’s story does, and I think certain aspects don’t land.

First, I feel that the majority of the plot elements about Chujin & Kanako get dumped on you at the last minute. You might be thinking that the story about Chara & Asriel is also dumped on you at the last minute-- and to an extent, this is true. You do get a massive amount of information regarding their story near the end of the game, in the True Lab.

However, Chara & Asriel's story is a massive part of the narrative from the very beginning. You meet 'Asriel' (Flowey) in the very beginning of the game. Toriel is in the Ruins due to the fallout of Chara & Asriel's deaths. Asgore and the monsters are trying to kill Frisk and steal their soul because of this, and the royal guard has taken it up as their mission. Sans is aware of an anomaly that will end everything (implied to be the player), and he would have 'killed Frisk where they stand' had he not made a promise to Toriel. And so on.

I’ll be reviewing criticism of the game’s plot in sections themed around each major character. I will be discussing suggestions about each character in their respective section here, as I discuss things I didn’t quite like about each character, my suggestions are intrinsically tied to why I didn’t quite like them.

Dalv

The connections between characters and the Chujin & Kanako plot feel a bit tenuous to me. Similarly to Toriel, Dalv is in a self-imposed isolation in the Ruins due to a major incident in his past. He fears humans due to the attack he suffered in Snowdin, and he suffers loneliness after losing his friend (who left him corn). When he sees Clover, he wonders if this is “some sort of haunting” (implying he knows that the human who attacked him was killed).

In the pacifist route, Clover can prove to Dalv that not all humans are evil and Dalv can move out and learn how to trust people again. This becomes a recurring theme-- Clover, pure of heart, proving to monsters that humanity isn’t that bad after all.

However, Dalv then disappears from the story. His motivation is to basically be left alone, but once you prove to him that humanity isn’t so bad, his role in the story is essentially complete.

I feel that, by comparison, Toriel’s motivation is more active-- to protect humans who fall down from Asgore. It’s this motivation that drives her to return at the end of the true pacifist route and ultimately make the true ending of Undertale possible.

Dalv’s passiveness makes him a weaker character to me. Now that you’ve proven that you’re his friend and humanity isn’t so bad, I would have liked to have seen him take an active motivation to protect his friend or help them in some way. We don’t have to copy Undertale beat for beat and have him dramatically save Clover from Asgore or anything, but it would have been nice to see him vouch for Clover in some way at some point.

Now, for the final time, I know that UTY is released and major changes aren’t likely. Some of my suggestions are “I would have liked to see this, but this change would require redoing the entire game,” which I don’t think should or could be done at this stage. This is just daydreaming and- if I’m praising myself highly- potential considerations for the devs’ future works (and the works of any other creatives who are reading this).

With this proposed major change to Dalv’s character out of the way, I’ll suggest instead the most minimal possible change that I would like to see, so my suggestions don’t feel entirely like just daydreaming.

I really like how Dalv sends Clover a letter about his moving out to Snowdin. This is active of him in terms of motivation-- Clover is his friend and he wants to keep in touch with his friend. I’d be absolutely thrilled to see a little bit of extra dialogue for him in an update. After you go back to Snowdin and see him, I think the dialogue he already has is totally fine! But, I’d be really happy if he’d take initiative and tell Clover a little more about his experience with the past human, or invite them to rely on him, too.

Martlet

Martlet felt… a bit restrained in terms of her writing, to me. I think that one aspect of Undertale’s writing is that it’s not afraid to go over the top. Papyrus isn’t just silly, he wears a costume every day and cartoon eyes pop out of his head when he’s surprised. Undyne isn’t just determined, she aspires to be a badass anime heroine. I like Martlet just fine, but she never had a moment where she really stood out to me in this way.

Martlet’s defining traits are that she likes puzzles, she loves reading and abiding by the rules of the royal guard, and she believes in humanity and wants to help Clover. As I said before, I really like this optimism and belief. I’d like to see more of it.

Near the end of the true pacifist route, Martlet says that she was taught in the royal guard that humans are scary, but Clover proved to her that humans are kind. This felt very abrupt to me at the time-- we know that Chujin disapproved of her joining the royal guard due to his own trauma, but Martlet had no personal involvement in the last human’s violent actions.

Martlet doesn’t seem to have any reason to dislike humans more than any other monster. We learn in her diary that she essentially joined the royal guard out of a desire to help people and build puzzles, and also because she needed a job.

If she’s just supposed to be a representative of the average monster and their feelings toward humanity, and her growing to like Clover is meant to represent how all of monsterkind could grow to like humankind, that would be one thing-- but I think that she specifically is meant to represent a person who wholeheartedly believes that humans can be good and that humans and monsters can live in harmony. In the no mercy route, she repeatedly pleads to Clover to do better, that they don’t have to act this way, that she wants to help them. That’s not the response of the average monster, who fights Clover or tries to flee from them.

I believe the intention is that Chujin & Martlet represent either end of an ideology axis (no pun intended). Chujin believes all humans are evil no matter what, but Martlet believes that humans can choose to be good. But why does she choose to believe in humans other than a sense of personal optimism?

I would have liked to have seen some defining event that made Martlet choose to believe in the goodness of humanity. I would have liked to have her being kind and optimistic to a fault be more of a defining trait-- to have that go over the top in an Undertale-style way. A lot of her interactions with other characters just personally weren’t very memorable to me.

Martlet spends a lot of the game sidelined. She loses you in the Mines. She gets thrown in jail in the Wild East. She has to go back to Snowdin once you're freed. Yes, she's there for you in the true pacifist route, but she's otherwise pretty absent through the neutral/true pacifist routes.

I recognize that the main characters in Undertale can be absent after you leave their respective sections of the game. However, you're able to call Papyrus & Undyne as much as you want, and you get a major hang-out (or “date”) with each of them and Alphys which gives time to expand on their backstory and character arc. Martlet doesn't get that. We even get a little bit of time to hang out with Dalv after we become his friend, but Martlet shoves us on a boat and hurries us to the next area as soon as we beat her. And sure, we get to talk to her on the boat, but it’s just a bit of silly dialogue-- it doesn’t really expand on her character. It feels like a missed opportunity.

So, yes, my major suggestion on her would be to zoom in more on her belief in you and let her be a liiiiitle sillier and more over the top, and give more opportunity for Clover to hang out with her.

At this stage, however? In this proposed minor ‘dialogue update’, I’d be really excited to see a little something more from her. Maybe a letter? She does send you one, but only in the neutral route to tell you to meet her on top of the apartments. It would be a good opportunity to either let her be silly or explain a bit about when she came to want to believe in humans-- or both, ideally.

Starlo

I honestly have very little to say on Starlo. He seems to be the fan favorite, and I did find his section fun! Ultimately, though, he's just kind of… there? I mean, he's on the periphery of Ceroba's (and Chujin and Kanako’s) story because he's her childhood friend (and his family grew the corn that Chujin gives to Dalv), and yes, he later on reminds her that she can still choose to be a better person because he also almost killed Clover! However, every monster in the game almost killed Clover.

There’s nothing wrong with having a silly character who wears a costume and isn’t a major player in the plot. I feel like Starlo is similar to Papyrus in this way. But Papyrus isn’t just a goofball, he’s the monster in Undertale who believes unerringly in Frisk & the player’s ability to do better because he firmly believes that you can make anything happen if you just try. This belief helps elevate Papyrus from comic relief to an actual rounded character.

I don’t feel like Starlo has any sort of strong conviction like that. We do learn that he wants to bring hope to the Underground by roleplaying as a sheriff in the Wild East town, giving them a slice of (supposed) surface life. I think this is fine, but I’d like to see a bit more of it. In the no mercy route, he does bravely stand against you because he’s a sheriff and it’s his job to bring justice to murderers like Clover.

My expectation when I first met him, a fellow cowboy (gender-neutral), was that he’d have his own ideas about justice. I expected that he would clash with Clover about these ideals, and neither of them would be quite right or wrong-- and this would prove that justice can’t be measured mathematically, and one outcome can’t be applied to all situations.

But, he’s not at all bad the way he is. He has a lot of fans, after all. The minor change I’d suggest now that the game is out is that I’d be interested in learning why the cowboy aesthetic specifically appealed to him. Maybe a diary in his room explaining that Westerns are the epitome of ‘justice’ to him? I’d like to see a peek into the motivation that transformed an ordinary farm boy into someone who could bravely stand against a murderous human.

Ceroba

I’ll be honest. I want to like Ceroba, but I don’t.

I understand that there's an attempt to mirror Asgore in that the war against humanity, in general, has taken Ceroba's partner and her child from her-- and ultimately, Clover forgives her and helps her learn how to move on. It's about letting go, just like Undertale. I get that. But Ceroba’s story doesn't land for me, personally. In order to talk about Ceroba, I need to talk about her husband, Chujin, because Ceroba spends so much of the story acting out Chujin's will.

Whereas monsters in Undertale do attempt to kill Frisk and steal their soul, and Asgore has killed other children before, it's framed in a very 'video game' violence sort of way (again, Undertale has these meta elements). Ultimately, in the True Pacifist route, none of Frisk's deaths have stuck, and Asgore's actions- while reprehensible- allowed for Asriel to break the barrier once and for all.

Chujin, in the video tapes he leaves for Ceroba, implies that Axis’s murder of the human- presumably a child, like Clover and Frisk- was very violent and bloody. It feels a tiny step beyond the 'video game violence' aspect, for me. While it’s shown that Chujin regrets this, it still doesn’t change the way that this violence is expressed in the game.

Instead of giving the human’s soul right to Asgore to bring monsterkind closer to freedom, Chujin- who has already been fired by Asgore, I should add- chooses to keep the soul and experiment with it.

This is very selfish, even though he has good intentions. He’s told nobody else about his experiments with his soul at this point- not even his wife- and Asgore has told him to cease all activities as the royal scientist.

While monsters do want Frisk's soul for their own selfish reasons, they notably do not butcher them violently, succeed in this, and still try to get painted with the same quirky and fun brush that the other characters get.

After Chujin dies, he leaves detailed instructions for his wife to continue his work-- and although he says "don't involve Kanako", he leaves her all the tools she would need to experiment on Kanako, and notably, no other way to finish his work except to experiment on Kanako.

As I said, Kanako finds out about this and asks to be experimented on. And while she does give consent, she is a child. I cannot stress this enough-- she is a child who just lost her father and is still wracked by grief. Kanako is a child who cannot possibly know what she is consenting to.

Ceroba chooses to experiment on Kanako and more or less kills her. And then she chooses to send her 'fallen down' daughter to Alphys's experiment, despite the fact that Kanako presumably has some sort of trace of human soul/determination left in her-- which could have compromised Alphys's work as well.

Let's return to how I said that Ceroba is a mirror for Asgore. She's made so many mistakes and it's cost her her family and she can't stop now or it will all be for nothing. She's done horrible things, just like Asgore.

But the difference is that Asgore is the king of monsterkind. Asgore has no desire to kill human beings. He declared war on humanity in a fit of anger and grief, but the Underground had lost hope due to the loss of Chara & Asriel. Believing that Asgore could gather seven human souls and free them all brought hope back to the Underground.

His actions, while wrong, are selfless-- and much less explicitly violent and more 'cartoon violence'-like. Chujin & Ceroba have the well-being of monsterkind as their own pure intentions, but their actions are far more selfish and violent. Axis, Chujin’s creation, massacred a human being. Yet we're still expected to find them silly and fun and relatable-- it just feels unusual.

I’m not someone who hates nuance or morally gray characters. One reason I’m so sad that I don’t quite like Ceroba is that I love morally gray women. It’s just that we’re not allowed to really dislike Chujin or Ceroba for what they’ve done, and instead we’re supposed to see Ceroba- and Axis- as silly and relatable like the rest of the characters.

Immediately after Ceroba’s boss battle, instead of processing what just happened to a greater extent, Clover chooses to sacrifice their soul for monsterkind.

I understand that the intention is that Ceroba's grief and Chujin's desperation to protect monsters from humanity contributed to Clover's decision to sacrifice their soul. However, the idea is- to me- abrupt. Ultimately, too, Clover's decision is just as much about how much they love their friends (and how it's impossible for them to hide out in the Underground forever) as it is about Ceroba and her family.

Chara & Asriel’s deaths, Asgore’s war on humanity, the war of humans and monsters-- these elements impact every part of Frisk’s journey. But Chujin and Ceroba’s actions, while impactful on Martlet and Dalv to varying extents, are only part of Clover’s journey. And Chujin and Ceroba did awful things for this comparatively minor impact on the plot.

EDIT: Further analysis about how Ceroba doesn't have a lot of agency and spends a lot of the plot just acting out Chujin's will, as well as the inconsistency in her characterization (and feelings about sacrificing Clover and the well-being of Kanako), with input from @carlyraejepsans. Thank you!

I would have liked to have seen a bit more from Ceroba without any influence from Chujin- maybe an interaction explaining her relationship with Martlet and an additional conversation about Martlet’s nearly unwavering belief in humans vs Ceroba’s inherited grudge against humanity- but I don’t know where this would fit in. Adding more time for Clover to process Ceroba’s boss fight before sacrificing their soul might throw off the pacing.

In general, though, Ceroba's boss fight- while flashy and fun- ultimately feels pointless with how little she learns from it and how quickly she changes her stance on using Clover's soul for the benefit of monsterkind, and what will happen to monsters after they break the barrier. To quote @carlyraejepsans in the ask linked above:

In addition, it's like the writing didn't want to commit to her delusions and little character development. She feels that her daughter is alive and thinks she can save her—wait no that was a lie—wait it wasn't. The moment she's defeated she goes "Agh, what was I thinking!" out loud (which is already a questionable writing choice imo but i digress), and recognizes that sacrificing Clover for her plans is horrible... and then 5 seconds later Clover chooses to sacrifice themself to break the barrier and whoops nevermind she's suddenly the one getting the others onboard with the idea... wait. didn't she say she was making the serum because the humans would've only slaughtered them again if they broke the barrier? oh wait wasn't that also chujin again? whoops.

I would have felt better if there were more room to view Chujin and Ceroba in a critical light (and time to view Ceroba outside of just being a mom and wife). I can’t think of any ‘minor’ suggestion that wouldn’t require a lot of editing.

Axis…

And... okay. Let's talk about Axis real quick.

I want to give the dev team the benefit of the doubt, but I need to point out that this security robot's name is "Axis 014." If you don't know what I mean by pointing this out, I'll just say that both of these terms are nazi dog whistles and allow you to look up the specifics.

I recognize that, by this point, it’s too late to change his name. I’d at least be grateful if the team would acknowledge this and confirm that they aren’t nazis.

Axis’s name makes his actions far worse in retrospect. He, as a security robot wants to kill a child, but he isn't able to anymore because his programming has changed. So, as a legal loophole, he forces them to hold 'a weapon' (a trash can lid) so he can justifiably kill them. This is the same robot that brutalized and murdered a human being in the past at Chujin's behest.

It feels tone deaf and ultimately the one thing I’d just outright call bad about UTY. I don’t think it was intentionally done this way, but I don't like that we're supposed to find this nazi-aesthetic police brutality robot "quirky and relatable" like the Undertale cast. In the true pacifist ending, he falls in love with a robot made out of a trash can and his eyes turn into cartoon hearts and etc. It’s even more jarring than viewing Chujin & Ceroba in a fun/relatable way.

In the no mercy route, Axis will defend himself and claim that his programming forced him to kill the human and he didn't want to. This "just following orders" defense feels weak to me as well, personally. Axis clearly delights in harming humans, going out of his way to try to kill Clover. But also, Axis spends a significant amount of the game displaying a very similar amount of free will to the other characters. He’s not just a janitor robot that sweeps back and forth.

He’s a nearly sentient being-- and the fact that there are these nearly sentient robots makes Alphys’s accomplishment of creating “a robot with a soul” (at least, so she claims-- Mettaton is only the ghost in a machine) much less impactful to me, personally. Yes, Asgore thinks that Chujin failed in creating a sentient robot, and so it’s impressive that Alphys supposedly did it. But I don’t know why Asgore wouldn’t be more skeptical of Alphys’s accomplishment after Chujin failed more than eight times and set fire to his flowers.

I think that Axis is ultimately a missed opportunity to make a really villainous character. This concept that he disobeys his programming- used as sort of a parallel for law, as a security robot- to attack Clover could have been explored to further the ‘justice’ theme. He doesn’t write his programming (the laws), he just carries it out (violently enforces the laws).

The ‘minor’ suggestion I’d make, though, is to just acknowledge the name.

Undertale & Meta Elements

Now, we’ll be addressing my largest criticisms-- the omission of meta elements and the way Flowey is written.

Undertale Yellow never quite stopped feeling like a fan game to me. And it is, of course-- but I think that it feels as if it tries so hard to be Undertale (in the writing style, the humor, etc) that it fails to forge an identity of its own, and that holds it back from being just a fangame to a fangame that succeeds in expanding on the original creative work.

At the same time, although UTY tries to feel like Undertale, I don’t think it captures certain elements that make Undertale be Undertale.

Whereas Undertale was ultimately about video games as a medium and the normalization of violence in them, UTY doesn’t have this level of metatextual commentary. UTY does have a running theme of 'justice'-- and I don’t think this is bad! After all, if Undertale already said all there was to say about video games and violence, why retread that path? I respect that UTY knows its limits and simply focuses on justice as a concept instead.

At the same time, Undertale isn’t just an RPG about mercy-- it’s an RPG about RPGs. The fact that you can talk to and spare enemies isn’t just a quirk of the game, it’s what the game is about. This is one thing that makes Undertale great that UTY doesn’t focus on.

UTY doesn’t completely ignore these elements, of course. Flowey takes over resetting for you, and you do have three distinct paths based on whether or not you kill enemies-- the ‘true pacifist’ path, the ‘neutral’ path, and the ‘no mercy’ path (I will not be calling it the ‘genocide’ route, especially in light of recent world events). Through whether or not you choose to kill enemies, the theme of ‘justice’ is explored-- who is Clover seeking justice for? In the true pacifist route, Clover seeks justice for the monsters, while in the no mercy route, Clover seeks justice for the fallen humans before them.

However, Flowey taking over the mechanics of saving and resetting for you makes concept of ‘the player’ obsolete. I recognize that not everyone in the Undertale/Deltarune fandom quite enjoys the concept of 'the player' and the meta elements of these games due to the fact that there can be implications that playing Deltarune (as an example, which ups the meta elements quite a bit) can actively hurt Kris and make their world a worse place. However, Deltarune isn’t a complete work and we don’t know this for certain. Additionally, I feel as if at least acknowledging Toby's intentions are important to analyzing the work, no matter what one's personal feelings are about them.

The Importance of the Player

The presence of you, the player, is important in Undertale. Frisk is a subversion of the 'blank slate protagonist' trope. You think that you're able to name them and control them, but in the True Pacifist route, Frisk begins to act on their own (they walk slowly in some parts of the True Lab because they're presumably afraid, etc). In the end, you realize that Frisk is their own person with their own name, and you as the player have to let go-- when Frisk & the monsters go to the surface, Flowey (a mirror of the player themselves) urges you to let them go. Don't treat this as a game anymore-- don't replay and wring out any last drops of content you can. You enjoyed it, now move on.

But many players want to see the No Mercy route because it’s the last thing they haven’t done in the game, and they don’t want to let go. And that's where the role of you, the player, becomes undeniable in the game's story. What is the No Mercy route except playing a 'typical' RPG in the way it's meant to be played? You grind to become stronger, killing every enemy that stands in your way. And when you've killed all the monsters and become as strong as you can be, you've won.

Many players didn't do this because they hate the characters in Undertale and want to hurt them-- if they hate them, they likely just wouldn't play the game. Many players did it because they like the characters in Undertale, and wanted to see what would happen. They couldn't stop playing. And this is exactly what Sans means in his dialogue during his boss battle-- to paraphrase, "you think that because you can, that means you have to."

This is one of the ways that Flowey is a mirror of the player. Flowey didn't start killing out of malicious intent, but because he had become so bored and isolated that he just "had to see what happens".

Chara's role at the very end of the No Mercy route is to call you out directly for this. They tell you that their power was yours. Their words were very misconstrued by fans for a long time, and they themselves wound up as a scapegoat for the No Mercy route-- but ultimately, there's no reason for Chara or Frisk to kill every monster in the Underground. The only reason is because of you, personally. You want to see what would happen. You want to grind and play it like a typical RPG.

They call you out for this if you don't want to delete the game world at the end. Why go back to that world that you've already destroyed? Why play nice with the monsters that you just massacred because you can?

Why am I talking about this at such length? Because I believe that ‘the player’ and how they interact with the world of Undertale is important. Characters lampshade the UI and battle mechanics often-- Flowey talking about the world as a game and ‘saving’ and ‘loading’, Papyrus telling you to “press C to open the dating HUD”, Sans explaining ‘LV’ and ‘EXP’, and so on.

This is my personal opinion, and I recognize this is very nitpicky, but I feel that not acknowledging this or adding to these meta elements in some way makes UTY weaker for me.

Flowey’s Role in UTY

Flowey essentially saves and resets for you because he's bored, and he wants to use Clover as a tool to access Asgore’s five stored human souls. His role as a mirror for the player becomes him essentially just acting as a stand-in for the player. While this in itself can invite self-reflection, I think that the execution of his role is a little awkward.

We learn at the end of the neutral route that Flowey has already reset the timeline hundreds of times by the time we first start playing the game. According to him, Clover always ends up at a dead end (they choose to stay in the Underground for the rest of their life) or they die (and they can’t reset of their own power). Thus, Flowey chose to set Clover on an alternate path by sabotaging a lever in the Ruins, which made them fall into the Dark Ruins and meet Dalv.

Flowey then tries to kill Clover and absorb their soul because they, again, hit a dead end. Yet he gives up on it after a while because Clover won’t stop fighting back, and he thinks he can just reset and try again anyway.

At the end of the true pacifist route, Clover instead opts to sacrifice their soul willingly to Asgore & monsterkind. Flowey comments that he could just reset (and you still can, if you want to play again), but Clover “earned their rest” and he calls them a friend.

This progression from “Clover is a tool that Flowey is using to access the 5 human souls” to “Clover is a friend and Flowey willingly lets them die and stay dead” feels undeserved and underdeveloped to me.

"But, Andrea," you might say, "Flowey went from trying to kill Frisk as Omega/Photoshop Flowey to hugging Frisk as Asriel really quickly too!"

Yes, but in that short time, Frisk and Flowey/Asriel had a Whole Thing where Frisk 'saved' him like everyone else and he learned he needs to let go, too. It was a short time, but it was a poignant time. By contrast, Flowey is pretty much absent throughout most of UTY's true pacifist route. Sure, you could easily say that he just got bored of Clover and gave up-- but that, too, doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I really hate to say this, but I feel that Flowey’s writing in UTY cheapens the original Undertale for me, which is why this is one of my major criticisms of the game.

Flowey's entire character arc in Undertale is about how he was stuck with the same places and same people for an endless amount of resets. In my opinion, the limited amount of places and characters for him to interact with in Undertale only adds to how trapped he is (and the Underground being so small really strengthens the concept of "there's overpopulation and the monsters are running out of time to find a solution/earn their freedom" that we see in the game, but I digress).

So when something finally changes and he meets Frisk, it's deeply impactful to him. Finally, someone new to play with! Finally, potential for change! Even though Flowey admits that, even if Chara came back, there's a great chance that he couldn't really love them due to his lack of soul, just experiencing something new for the first time in ages is as close to love as he can possibly get. So Flowey:

Starts to believe that Frisk is Chara, this person he ‘loves’ or wants to love, or some manifestation of Chara.

Refuses to let Frisk go, even if that means- when Asriel has the power of seven human souls- just resetting the Undertale timeline over and over instead of going to the surface or doing anything else.

For Flowey to have gone through everything that he does in UTY- all these new places, all these new people, Clover included- weakens this, in my opinion. And sure, there's very heavily implied to be lots of places that Frisk doesn't explore and people they don't meet-- 99% of New Home and its residents, for instance. But Clover themselves is the real problem for me.

No matter how many times Flowey reset with Clover, I really struggle to believe that he would get bored of a human being that easily. He even said that Clover's actions and choices would sometimes change from reset to reset, and he only recently learned how dramatically he could alter their path by sabotaging that lever in the Ruins. Clover isn't a static being-- and even if they were, they're at least a new static being.

And although we learn in the neutral route that Flowey can't really absorb Clover's soul because they fight back too much, I can't believe that would stop Flowey so easily. What about at the end of the pacifist route, where Clover has given it up willingly and it's being transported in a little jar? Clover’s body is separated from the soul, now-- could Clover still fight back?

Or, what about if Flowey tried to kill them as soon as they entered the Ruins? Or, what if Flowey played nice the entire route and then at the end tried to convince Clover that if they sacrificed their soul, he would take it to Asgore for them? With access to full control of the timeline, I don't think Flowey would give up on this. We learn in Undertale how painful it is for him to be soulless and how desperate he is to access power so that things will change.

For Flowey to acknowledge Clover as a 'friend'- maybe even a true person, not just a compilation of dialogue- suggests character growth. It suggests remorse for his resets that he isn't capable of having and doesn't have until the events of Undertale. I just don't feel like it’s earned.

Flowey is, of course, an unreliable narrator.

At the end of the no mercy route of UTY, Flowey expresses that he never saw Clover as a friend-- he only enjoyed watching them die over and over again. It should be noted that this was said while under extreme duress (Clover is LV 20 by this point and has killed everyone save for Asgore), and this route isn’t canon in the way that the neutral and pacifist routes are.

With that said, if we agree that Flowey can’t feel love as a soulless being, then I could argue that this is about as much of a ‘friend’ as anyone could be. This is how he wanted to keep Frisk (“Chara”, in his mind) for eternity when he had the six human souls + the entirety of monsterkinds’ souls-- just watch them try over and over again, for eternity.

Why am I contradicting myself? Because, let’s suppose that Flowey doesn’t mean Clover is a ‘friend’ in the traditional sense- that they earned his respect and he cares for them in some way- but Clover is a new toy that he got bored with and gave up on. I feel like this, too, makes Undertale a little weaker.

If Flowey did have some type of positive regard for Clover, but was willing to let them go, then it feels- to me- like Frisk’s role in his story isn’t that significant. Frisk helped him learn how to let go and move on, but Flowey has already demonstrated being capable of this. The circumstances are different- if Flowey gives up at the end of Undertale’s true pacifist route, it’s over for real, whereas if he gives up at the end of UTY, he can just wait for another human to fall- but I feel like the core feeling is the same. Flowey, by the start of Undertale, doesn’t strike me as someone who’s capable of letting go.

So, how would I have changed this?

I recognize that- again- Undertale already made these points about video games and violence, and Flowey has his entire character arc in that game. For Flowey to have more of an arc in this game would potentially make this game no longer line up with canon Undertale or weaken Undertale further. And why retread old ground that Undertale already talked about?

I respect the decision to tell a self-contained story, but the meta commentary about video games in Undertale is so significant for me that I personally would have liked to see a bit more of it in Undertale Yellow. I also recognize how much of my criticism of Flowey’s writing in UTY is subjective. It feels unrealistic for me, his arc feels abrupt for me, it makes Undertale less poignant for me.

A lot of people love his inclusion in this game, and it’s very novel to see Flowey as a friend throughout most of UTY and hear his snarky commentary on demand rather than having him as an enemy who’s absent through most of the game, as he is in Undertale.

The Flowey Suggestions

First, I’ll be honest. I know this is not and has never been possible, but my easiest solution to the dilemma of Flowey’s lack of a character arc- and the lack of an ability to give him a character arc- would have been to just remove him from UTY.

I think that Flowey’s inclusion in the story of the yellow soul human and his role saving and loading could have been interesting. It goes against certain story elements implied in Undertale, and popular fan theories-- and I don’t mind that, if something meaningful is done with it. But, I feel as if Flowey’s relationship to Clover isn’t impactful enough to justify including him.

To clarify on ‘implied story elements’ and ‘popular fan theories’:

While I might be misremembering, I thought that it was implied in Undertale that Flowey came into being after Asgore had already collected six human souls, and that a significant amount of time had passed since the last human had fallen down.

I won’t go into it at length because this post is long enough and I, again, am not an Undertale expert. With that said, it’s also implied that all human souls are capable of saving/loading/resetting in the Underground. If you make Frisk tell Asgore that he killed them before, he just nods as if he’s used to it-- and he’s the one character who we know has killed humans before.

Now, how did Asgore successfully kill beings that can just reset the game whenever they die? Well, Sans faces the same dilemma in Undertale’s no mercy route. There’s no way that he can permanently defeat you, the player, who is a real being. Therefore, the way he ‘wins’ is by infuriating you enough with his difficult boss fight until you give up and stop playing Undertale (or, at least, reset and make better choices).

Think about all the times you’ve played a game, got stuck on a hard boss, and never played it again. While it’s not ‘canon’ to the story- giving up on your copy of Mario doesn’t mean Bowser really wins- functionally, giving up on a game means that the story ends for you. This is how I believe Asgore captured the six human souls, even if they were also capable of resetting like Frisk is-- he fought them until they gave up.

Humans all are said to have great amounts of ‘determination’, not just red soul bearers. We don’t even know what trait the red soul exemplifies. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s determination itself.

The bottom line is that I don’t think it would be unrealistic for Clover to be able to save/load/reset on their own, or for Flowey to not exist yet during the time they fell down.

But, I get it, Flowey was in UTY’s demo that has been out for seven years. He’s in the trailers. He couldn’t be removed at any part of development, and he sure as hell can’t be removed now.

My second suggestion would have been to zoom in on him, instead. While the prequel is about Clover, the yellow soul human, I would have liked to see it be about Flowey in a significant way. I kept hoping for Clover to have an opportunity to ask Flowey at some point, “why are you helping me, anyway?”.

This is my personal interpretation, but I’ve come to believe that Flowey thinks that the reason he’s stuck as a flower is that it’s a punishment. Because he, as Asriel, refused to fight back, he failed Chara, and now they’re dead. Now he’s stuck as a rinky-dink flower with no soul, he can’t love his former family, and he can’t stop playing this game.

In the no mercy route of Undertale, Flowey feels very much like he’s trying to appeal to Frisk- the person he believes is Chara- in a way like a younger sibling trying to impress an older sibling. He says he’s impressed by how you killed everyone. He helps solves puzzles so you won’t have to slow down. He brags to you about how he’s also a heartless killer.

Notably, he talks about his past. He tells ‘Chara’ that he was afraid to start killing, at first. He said he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he just had to know what would happen.

Then, Flowey laughs and says that you (Chara) know how liberating it is to be this way-- to kill people and shape their fates. He ‘recognizes’ Frisk as being actually Chara because of how they killed everyone in the Ruins.

But we have no indication that Chara was a violent or evil person in their life. I believe that Flowey is partially projecting and partially recognizes Chara because, in the last moments of their life, they were telling him to kill. He always knew that Chara hated humanity and wanted power to better the position of monsterkind. This is why Flowey brags about how he has a plan to get the human souls, and once they do so, they can go to the surface and “finish what [they] started.”

To Flowey, in my opinion, killing people isn’t just about seeing what happens. It’s about trying to understand and appease Chara and doing what he thinks he should have done all that time ago, as Asriel.

I bring this up because I think that I would have liked to have seen this be explored in Undertale Yellow. Flowey is still a very misunderstood character today due to being an unreliable narrator. I believe that a lot of Flowey misinterpretations are due to taking him at face value-- hearing him say that he’s an unfeeling, manipulative, patient killer and agreeing with him.

But Flowey contradicts himself at several points. He gives up his “catch these friendliness pellets” trick after you dodging just a few times. These aren’t the makings of a perfect manipulative killer, but an impatient child. That’s who Flowey is at his core-- a child.

I recognize that, again, if Flowey told all of his tragic backstory to Clover and they became true friends, this wouldn’t fit with canon Undertale and his actions in that game. Flowey and Asriel distance themselves from each other, and it wouldn’t make sense for Flowey to tell this to Clover-- especially if he just views them as a tool to use and play with.

I think, however, it wouldn’t have been impossible for Clover to have learned this information about Flowey in a way that could still be canon compliant with Undertale itself. Hypothetically, maybe the “hopes and dreams” statue in the UG Apartments near the Core could have sparked intrigue in Flowey.

Maybe analysis of Flowey could have come up during his neutral route boss fight-- after all, Clover appears to peek into the minds of Ceroba and Martlet during the true pacifist and no mercy run boss fights, respectively. We already get a little of this- Clover has to run through a hallway of flowers in Flowey’s boss fight, and we hear sad and scared dialogue that’s presumably from a past version of Flowey himself. However, it’s not necessarily new and doesn’t quite add to Flowey’s character in my personal opinion.

I feel that including Flowey’s story more in some way would justify having Flowey in the game, and knowing the history of Asriel & Chara could factor into Clover’s decision to give up their soul for the sake of monsterkind. Chara, too, sacrificed themselves willingly, after all.

I don’t have a ‘realistic suggestion’ that could be implemented with a dialogue update because these suggestions are so vast-- and, ultimately, very personal and subjective. I have very strong feelings about Flowey.

Meta Elements of Undertale

In Undertale, you’re asked when you should or shouldn’t fight. As a pacifist, you can get through the Ruins without killing anyone. Flowey will then ask you what you would do if you met a relentless killer. Would you betray your morals and fight? Or would you give up and let yourself die?

Undertale is the friendly RPG where nobody has to die. While you have to kill Asgore at least once to do the neutral route, and you do have to fight back against Omega/Photoshop Flowey to end his battle, the game ultimately posits that there never is a good time to fight. You don’t beat Omega Flowey by being stronger than him, you do it by appealing to the souls and allowing them to rebel. You don’t beat God of Hyperdeath Asriel Dreemurr by beating him up, you do it by saving your friends- him included. The game, again, is about an inversion of the necessity of violence in video games to me.

I would have been interested in seeing an exploration of when it is necessary to fight, and this could be done through the lens of ‘justice’. Would Clover fight if it brought them closer to justice (on a pacifist route)? Is it morally correct to kill one person if it saves thousands?

Sparing someone is always the correct option in Undertale. In that way, the true route is quite linear-- there’s one solution that works for everyone. What if there were situations in UTY in which there is no single correct option that works for everyone? What if Clover were placed in situations in which they had to act as arbiter and decide between two outcomes and what is right? It could have been like how they get forced to solve the trolley problem in the Wild East, but with consequences.

Adding to putting a ‘twist’ on the elements that Undertale introduces with its combat system-- what if sparing someone ultimately enabled them to keep hurting others? What if fighting to weaken someone was the correct solution for once? These inversions could have built on the meta elements of Undertale, and I think that it would make Clover’s decision to sacrifice themselves to bring justice to monsterkind more poignant to me.

Again, I have no ‘realistic’ suggestion for this in the full release of UTY. I think that the plot about justice alone isn’t bad, but I would have been happy to see it tie into the gameplay a little more.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think that UTY tries too hard to be Undertale without iterating on the aspects that made Undertale memorable. The characters feel like they fail to pop or relate to the game’s story in meaningful ways, and to me, the main story isn’t executed as well as it could have been (and far darker than the main Undertale in ways that don’t feel as if they’re handled sensitively).

I will say, again, that this project is very impressive in scope, and I applaud the dev team for finishing it and releasing it. I recognize that a lot of my distaste is subjective, and creating another Undertale is a fool's errand considering the acclaim that Undertale got. I recognize one final time that my suggestions are just daydreaming, and this game has already found a lot of success-- which I think it deserves.

I tend to criticize a lot of media I like, which might sound contradictory to some, but it makes perfect sense to me. If I don’t like something, I won’t engage with it. I think that the original Undertale has its flaws, too. At the end of the day, I like UTY, but no media is perfect. This is how I think it could have been better, and I hope that I think other creatives who want to make Undertale fanworks (or any creative works, for that matter) will take these thoughts into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

#bandrea blabbers #long post #the uty post

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weirdoartsy · 2 months

Text

DTIYS

"two sides of a coin"

DTIYS of Leo and Mikey, in the lost ruins of new york city

Context: Freshly after Donatello's death Leo is always on missions, even before his two brothers death he was always on the Front Lines but now all he cares about is fighting. Casey wanted his sensei's attention and thus would try to join them but he was still too young(16) in sensei's eyes and was not willing to risk the future of the resistance and one of the only reasons he is still alive. One day he sneaks out onto the field and the krang finds him, therefore kidnapping the poor fella. Leo after finding out goes to save him and Mikey joins not wanting his brother or his nephew to die making this a "journey of the ronin's"

HEYYYYYY YOU GUYS, GUESS WHAT? I FINALLY HAVE ART FOR MY APOCALYPTIC AU "JOURNEY OF THE LAST RONIN'S" AND I WANT YOU GUYS TO ALSO DRAW IT!!!!

@donniesbrows my dearest brows, I told you I would @ you! Gnat is a very good artist and a big fan of rottmnt like myself! She is also one of my dearest friends on here and I want you all to support her as much as you guys can🙏

@friskyeee Frisk is also one of my dearest friends. She is also an incredible artist and super sweet person. She is not as funny as me but a funny person! I'd love it if you guys also support her!!

@the-hombrearana this lil guy is the bestest friend irl and online! Just a lil annoying heh but! Alas if you like spiderman rp this guy is your best friend in that regard! Please support him as much as you wish🙏🙏🙏

@drawingbakeryy You- YOU LITTLE! Anyways this fella is one of three ultimate inspirations She is an incredible person and artist she was one of the first friends I made in this account, please follow and ANNOY them as much as you humanly can 😌

@tapakah0 My TOP inspiration ON TOP! Tapa while she might not remember this she was one the first people to comment on my first account when I made a post on how I was being dragged into the rottmnt fandom and she really made my days so much brighter whenever she posted! Please support her on this account and on her other account @somerandomcockroach

@somerandomdudelmao this fella was the catalyst to my addiction. A true comic artist unparalleled! She is honestly an incredible person who deserves every follow she has and more! She and tapa brighten my day plenty. Please support this account and her other one! @keferon

Here's the unedited version of the DTIYS!

In case you want a clearer version just In case!

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt art #rottmnt casey jr #rottmnt mikey #mikey hamato #casey jr #rottmnt fanart #rise mikey #rottmnt casey junior #rottmnt leo #rottmnt leonardo #rise leonardo #leonardo hamato

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packet-of-staples · 10 months

Text

Day 66 - Naps and pranks

Day 67 - COME BACK WITH THAT!! What the heck

Day 68 - HEY YOU! YES YOU UTDR FAN ARTIST! HOW DO YOU DRAW PAPYRUS? All of the submissions were great!! I loved them all :]

Day 69 (still funny) - Dropping frisk off at school!

Day 70 - Video game dream team

Day 71 - Shopping with Mettaton! Hes in there somewhere I swear

Day 72 - Winter gun fights

Day 73 - Poor air fryer…

#undertale #sans #frisk #papyrus #deltarune #Drawing Papyrus until he cameos in Deltarune #Undyne #alphys #toriel #mettaton #annoying dog #monster kid #days 66 - 73

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haveyouseenthisskeleton · 4 months

Note

The Undertale characters are having a family dinner with their S/O's family. S/O's grandma starts to flirt with them, but not really seriously. They're charming them playfully. They are just charmed by their partner and want to know more. How do they react?

Undertale Sans - He's flirting back with a lot of puns. He's glad at least your grandma likes him and he will spend most of the dinner with her, chatting like they've known each other for years. Sans loves old people, they always have the craziest stories to tell. They're a good public for his old-fashioned sense of humor too.

Undertale Papyrus - He's playing along, blushing and pretending to be overwhelmed by the compliments, and playfully fighting to give the best compliment to your grandma in return. He's having fun. He loves your grandma. She's great to bitch on people with! They need to hang out someday!

Undertale Toriel - Being an old lady herself, they become besties in like an hour or so. Toriel is playing along and is having fun, flirting back with no shame at all. After an hour or so, they are both on her phone checking pie recipes and sharing cooking secrets, and then they both disappear to go cook something because now they have to absolutely try it! You're not seeing either your girlfriend or your grandma for the rest of the dinner lol.

Undertale Asgore - He's blushing. Your grandma is hitting right every time she's talking to him and he's getting a bit overwhelmed. You joke asking him to be careful because your grandma will surely steal his heart and he throws you the most distressed look either. Please don't encourage her??? Save him instead! He's a mess and the dinner didn't even start yet!

Undertale Undyne - Your grandma can't stop petting her muscles and Undyne actually doesn't care at all, simply flexing to impress her. You're not sure what you're thinking of all of this honestly. Undyne is playing along and is determined to make a best friend out of your grandma. When you bring the plates, you catch them talking randomly about how to make Undyne's scales shinier and you decide it's best to not listen more.

Undertale Alphys - Alphys is a bit shy around your grandma at first, but as she gets more comfortable, you discover she can flirt as well, really savagely and with no remorse. It's a cheesy flirt contest now, and you're just staring in shock, wondering what is happening to your socially awkward girlfriend. Alphys is excited the next time you tell her you're taking her to have dinner in your grandma's house. Your grandma has Alphys' number now and they're chatting all night long as well.

Undertale Frisk - Do I even need to mention how Frisk is flirting back, saying the weirdest things possible to make your grandma howl with laughter? Frisk loves the attention, they love your grandma and they will do anything to have a reaction. They never have a real human family, but you have the feeling it's about to change soon.

Undertale Chara - They're smiling to be polite, but clearly, they're not too comfortable with this, searching your eyes. You can see they're calling you for help, but, eh, you're just staring back. Your grandma is having fun for once, you don't want to ruin her fun. Chara can deal with this. You're going to pay back though, be careful. You owe them one.

Undertale Mettaton - You didn't know your grandma is a big fan of Mettaton. As soon as she starts to flatter his shows, you know it's so over for you. Mettaton forgot your existence and is all over your grandma, showing her all of his merch and signing things and slowly dragging her towards the exit as he absolutely wants to bring her to his set and to doll her up to present her in his next show. You're weakly trying to stop him but you know it's no use. Once Mettaton is decided to do something, he will do it, either you say something about it or not.

Undertale Gaster - He's distressed now. You told him to be nice to your grandma and not be a grunch, and he promised he would, but please... That's the third cake he has to eat entirely because your grandma thinks he's too skinny and he's going to get sick, he swears he's going to get sick. Can he please stop now? He can't do this for another hour. He's begging you now.

Undertale Grillby - He's a bit shy, and your grandma pressuring him to talk more about himself is starting to make him anxious. The fact she's getting closer and closer to him doesn't help either. She clearly loves to touch his flames, to the point she's sticking her entire hands in them even though Grillby is weakly trying to ask her to not do that. Please save him.

Undertale Muffet - Honestly, you're in shock after Muffet purposely gives your grandmother a free pastry, and then a second one as your grandma praises her. What's going on? Did your grandma just tame Muffet??? Muffet is never giving pastries for free, NEVER. Your grandma is just special you guess. You're so jealous actually.

Undertale Burgerpants - Your grandma just pet him and now Burgerpants is crying on her laps telling her everything Mettaton is doing to her and how he's going to have a mental breakdown if he keeps working there and your grandma is comforting him and telling him he worths more than this and that's she's going to sue that robot's ass for bullying her grandson-in-law. You're too in shock to say anything.

Undertale Flowey - Flowey is hissing and screaming but it's too late. Your grandma decided to fertilize him because his petals are not shiny enough. You wave goodbye at Flowey, promising you will remember him, as he's getting dragged in the garden. Flowey curses you and your descendants for twenty generations.

Undertale Gerson - He's laughing so much you have to ask him and your grandma to lower their voice volume. Gerson answers back that he'll shut up once you buy him and your grandma hearing aids lol. Your grandma approves and calls you a little brat for ruining their fun. You're defeated.

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ohbo-ohno · 5 months

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Okay so BO!!! I have two brain worms lately that I wish to share but I’m only gonna tell you the one now because I’m lazy. Police Officers!Ghoap stopping your friend for speeding and seeing Reader in the backseat, drunk and to yourself, waving at them excitedly when they look in your direction. It gets Johnny all excited and before Ghost can even say anything he’s telling your friend and you to get out of the car, giving you both field sobriety tests. You fail and your friend passes but they both lie and say that they failed and that they have to take you both into custody. Taking you to the station and frisking you, Soap reassuring you when you ask if it’s normal to need two officers for a search. Ghost holding you still when Soap starts to remove your clothes, ignoring your whimpers and whines when he gropes at the flesh of your ass, resisting the urge to bite into it. And then Ghost says they have to do a cavity search on you to be certain you don’t have anything dangerous to hide :((( 🧡🧡🧡 - 🕸

ooh you should maybe check out No One Has To Know by Carin Hart! tbh i wasn't a huuuge fan, but it's got a stalker police officer who kidnaps the fmc and uses his position as an officer to threaten her

anyways! i very rarely write it bc i've actually never been drunk (looong history of addiction in my family) and i feel like if i tried i'd sound like kid guessing at what drunkenness is lmao but! i fucking loooove noncon (dubcon?) with a drunk victim who wouldn't consent if they weren't drunk, and the abuser takes complete advantage of that. hot as fucking hell. and the talking them down the next morning, gaslighting them into thinking they did consent? ohhh i eat it up

anyways 2x. im obsessed with what you've sent me, may i offer some variations?

rookie cop soap & experienced (and jaded) cop ghost who's stuck as his partner. they take both you and your friend in and soap takes you into a private room for your search but ghost can just tell that soap is gonna get himself in trouble, so he finishes his search real quick and goes into the private room to find johnny humping your back while you grind on his leg :( soap freezes in fear because he is actively assaulting you, but ghost just sighs and closes the door, grunts "hurry up, then. need to get her in a holding cell. can spend some more time with her then." and johnny moans, making you moan, and the two of you are just a soaked and desperate mess of limbs

ghost and johnny pulling you over alone on the side of the road in the middle of the night. they handcuff you and you're too scared to fight back, and they insist on doing a search, and then a cavity search before they take you in their car :( you're squirmy and scared and trying so hard to be good, and ghost and soap play good cop/bad cop with you. except, surprising you, ghost is the good cop and soap is the bad cop. mostly because ghost is near silent and soap is rough, kinda mean, while ghost is just ordering you around. anyway the interaction ends with ghost fucking you with his gun :/ you're trying so hard to be good but it's scary and soap keeps threatening to gag you if you get any louder :(

ghost and soap sneaking into the holding cell, making you stay silent in less you want your friend to wake up and see you taking their cocks so well :/ age-old trope but reader getting interrogated by ghost and soap and totally abused and violated as an interrogation method :/ ghost getting mean mean and telling you he'll either fuck you with his baton or beat you with it :/ soap making you shine his badge with your tongue while he's railing you :/

#🕸 anon #asks and answers #ghoap x reader #bo writes

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wickjump · 23 hours

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HELLO INTERNET AND WELCOME TO [wickjump]

My name is Wick (she/they), also known as Wickskip (TikTok), Wickjump (Tumblr), or Hopwick (AO3).

On all platforms my content centers around Undertale and the Undertale Multiverse, however I’ll also sometimes reblog/post about a few other fandoms.

What I post and reblog can contain themes of violence, mental illness, suicide/self harm, suggestive themes, or more. For those reasons, this blog is intended for audiences 16+ in age.

information zone /ᐠ - ˕-マ｡˚ᶻ 𝗓

[⁉️] byf/dni:

dni: pro/com/darkshippers, TERFs, zionists/pro-isreal, anti-semitics, basic dni criteria (bigots)

byf: i will sometimes post/reblog things of a suggestive nature, but none of said posts will be graphic nudity. i am not an nsfw account, and will not reblog or post nsfw content, but it may be briefly mentioned or discussed. any suggestive posts will be tagged as such so you’re able to block the tag and not see that kind of content.

[⭐️] faves:

aus: xtale, handplates, dusttale, reapertale, aftertale

au sanses: cross, reaper, lust, dream, dust, error, sci and fresh

canon ut characters: chara, frisk, asriel, toriel, alphys

other au characters: xtale alphys, xchara, uf!toriel, uf!flowey, reapertale chara, handplates gaster, starlo (ut:y), outertale grillby, core frisk

ships: lustblue, kross, hypersomnia, afterdeath, bad sans poly, errorink qpr, and drinkberry. im not a picky shipper though :))

coffee order: 60-120k word slow burn rivals/strangers/friends to lovers modern au (possibly with a fantastical twist)

[⚠️] boundaries:

don’t flirt with me or make sexual comments towards me, regardless of age or relationship status, including jokes!!!! conversations with graphic sexual themes are generally uncomfortable for me and i’d prefer not to have them.

don’t drag me into fights/start them under my posts!!!!!!!

sometimes i can be wrong about things. if i am wrong about things, tell me so i can improve!! i never mean to make anyone upset because of something i said.

[🕯] other assorted info:

no twitter, discord, or insta :(

i have diagnosed autism, adhd, anxiety, and some others but that’s my personal biz. if i come off as awkward, ‘trying too hard’, unable to realize when a joke’s ended, or just weird/unlikable, that’s why. i’m seriously bad with that stuff but i’m trying my best!!

i’m an ace lesbian (i love women) and fem non-binary

i am squirrelstar, nightcloud, and mapleshade’s biggest fans and defenders ever!!!!!!!!!!! it’s fine if you don’t like them, just please don’t hate on them in reblogs of my posts or my askbox. common courtesy you know?

[🐇] links to my projects

COMING SOON (maybe)

(warrior cats divider by skelos-cath)

#i’m bad at tagging things and don’t have any personalized tags #i honestly don’t know who made the dividers unfortunately #i found them on a deactivated account though so there’s a chance testingbot3000 made them but i’m unsure

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n0maku · 1 year

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Some details from the Undertale Legends of Localization book

271 pages! If the localization of Undertale into Japanese interests you, I suggest getting the book off of Fangamer yourself. Anyhow, here's some details I noted from my reading:

-"mt.ebott is "toby" backwards, inspired by mt. itoi from MOTHER" (translation note from Toby to 8-4). This detail is also mentioned at another point in the book.

-An image of the debug tool that 8-4 developed to quickly jump to points in the game has "No Mercy" as a tab...(?) selector...(?). I don't quite recall what other names have been used for the route 'officially', so found it interesting enough to note. It is also referred to as such a few other times in the book.

-The name they used for the fallen human (shown in their debug tool menu image) is "Rose".

-Toby instructed the translators to keep ICE-E somewhere, even if to keep it funny the wordsearch got changed to something else.

-It has been known by people already, but the book notes how each item has three names! One standard name, one abbreviated for battle menus, and one abbreviated for battle menus during serious scenes. I think I recall some post calling it "Serious Mode"...? For example, the Butterscotch Pie goes in the battle menu from "ButtsPie", to "Pie" in the Toriel fight from "Serious Mode" . (Though, it says they cut the abbreviating for the Japanese translation as there were less space needed for the item names. I guess that means the japanese version didn't get any 'silly' item name variations...?)

Now, this gets pretty long, so I'll just put a readmore here...

-The translation of the Wrong Number Song comes up in the book, and it actually references that the main fan theory for who the "G" is is Gaster! BUT it reveals nothing about it basically. Toby remained mysterious about the "G..." person referenced in the call, with his note on it being "Character's name beginning with "G"... Actually, it might be suitably bizarre if you leave this line completely intact in English." Disappointing, but admittedly expected that this book wouldn't give any more details about it.

Apparently initially the localization team also thought it was meant to be "Gaster" and put a "Ga--" in an early draft, but it got overruled by Toby's decision to keep the call in English.

-A section emphasizes how while Monster Kid's dialogue uses ore, a more masculine pronoun, ". . .Toby designed the character to have no clear gender," and "Monster Kid's gender is never specified in the original script." I personally found it nice how the section asserted Monster Kid's gender neutrality and emphasized the pronoun choices being more purely used to reflect character, and chosen after consultation with Toby. -Onionsan's unclear gender led to the translators choosing for them to use watashi (which the section describes as a "polite, somewhat gender-neutral" pronoun), or simply "Onionsan" (which works to emphasize their childish vibes). -There is nothing about Frisk/their name is never mentioned. A section on Parsnik only notes that Hard Mode is accessed when you "give yourself a certain human's name." -Apparently Toby says Alphys is pronounced "al-feez"

-It is noted that Toby did not mean to reference the "it's over 9000!" meme with the dialogue "OH YES! MTT-BRAND OVENS CAN REACH TEMPERATURES UP TO NINE-THOUSAND DEGREES!" -For the (slightly inaccurate) Kitchen quote CHECK text (two lovers standing over the cauldron of hell...), Toby asked the translators to just translate it directly instead of grabbing the exact lines from the Japanese version of Kitchen. The section emphasizes how Toby was so unattached to it being a reference that he specifically requested the translators to not bother with it.

-There is a section on Entry Number 17 (the wingdings one, not the unused alphys one)! However, it is not referred to as such, merely vaguely talking about it- how most people never see some of the lines in Undertale, and the process of translating the wingdings. (They wrote out the Japanese translation with English spelling, keeping the same wingdings font.)

The image examples they use are images of the wingdings "THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING" and it translating to wingdings "YAMIHA NOUDO WA MASHITE YUKU". Funnily enough, the section notes ". . .it almost feels like these messages contain dark secrets. . ." and ". . .the localization team wanted to preserve the 'dark, mysterious, and unreadable' vibe in Japanese too." "Dark" twice... ha ha, these writers, I swear...

Sadly, no mention of Gaster or any other insight on the entry. An example sentence they use for Wingdings is "I EAT BUGS EVERY DAY," so uhhh maybe that's a clue that he's a bug eater? (I'm joking...) -"Asriel Dreemurr" being an anagram of "Serial Murderer" is confirmed to be intentional by Toby. -Toby notes how the "But it refused" line has two meanings: One, that it can mean "refused to die," secondly, that it can mean "'re-fused', referring to how the heart fragments fuse back together again." It's another thing that's been noted by some people, but a neat detail regardless!

Alright, that's what I've got...! There's a lot of other stuff, like how dialogue that was referencing other games was handled, (which is a LOT), but these notes are what I found the most personally interesting and relevant to Undertale.

#undertale #undertale analysis #? sort of #legends of localization #undertale legends of localization #perhaps not the most refined post i've ever written but anyhow #hoho! undertale!#gaster #somewhat #nomakuposts

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velvetwyrme · 2 months

Note

So Flipping Fate is my favorite Underfell Papyrus fic but what is your favorite UF! Papyrus fic?

AH 🥺❣️❣️ First off, thank you so much!! I'm glad you're enjoying Flipping Fate! :D!!!

Secondly, there's no need to apologize- my fav/s are definitely in the list you mentioned, but I'm more than happy to answer again here :]!! My favorite UF!Papyrus fic has GOTTA BE Thunderstruck. Absoluuuutely killer characterisation and development, delicious interactions and writing... I love it dearly 💖

Other notable fics (probably also in the list lololol) include; A Smile from the East and Roadside Attraction. ASftE made me fall in love with UF!Pap back in the old days of fandom, and Roadside Attraction made me adore him once again when I returned.

And since you asked so nicely, here are some more (sfw) UF!Pap/Reader recs that. also may or may not be in the list idk I didn't actually go back and check lol

Becoming Edge is a fic all about finding yourself and your identity through fashion and was instrumental in me doing the same. Really sweet!!! Pastel goth Edge... my beloved.

And speaking of pastel goth- My Soulmate is a Pastel Goth (And Other Concerns) is a enemies-to-friends-to-lovers fic with the added elements of Soulmates ✨! Love me some tempestuous soulmate fic. (Note: this fic also features Fem!Frisk as Sans' soulmate in the bg, so if you're not a fan, that's something to note ^^! Fr//ans isn't quite my thing, but tbh I'm really interested in seeing how things turn out for them here!)

Between a Rope and a Wrench, or; this skeleton is buying a lot of really weird, suspicious stuff but you will help him get it because it's your job and later because you're his friend. (Also, you choose his friendship over the possibility that you may become an accomplice in murder.)

Sound of Blooming... MAFIAFELL 💥💥!!!! It's been a bit since I read it but it's in ny bookmarks so... :3c!

A Home for Mending Souls is actually a UF!Bros/Reader, but it still counts. It's really good!! Healing from trauma! Soft moments! Slowly opening up to one another!

Till it Brews Over is a coffee shop AU where you purposefully misspell the name of your asshole regular, who just happens to be one edgy skeleton.

Also for additional fics that star UF!Pap that I enjoy/have enjoyed:

While I was looking for one of these fics it led me to realise that I STILL haven't read Fight Me! (by MsMk- not be confused with Fight Me! by Little_old_lady, which uses the same premise and is also really good, but it features FS!Sans instead of UF!Pap) Anyway, this is truly a travesty because they're a fantastic writer and I can only assume it got lost in my various open tabs >>"!! [Addition while drafting: I LOVE IT he's so sulky... I'm staring warily at the chapter count though. So much time for things to Go Wrong]

I actually really like UF!Pap in Bitty Hunt- his characterization is very much... reminiscent of that era of fic, but all the scenes with him in it are ones that have been seared into my brain !!

Another new-ish fic that I'm enjoying UF!Pap in is Honey Lemon Tea, which the summary succinctly describes it as "Papyrus finds his Grillby's... in the form of a very plain coffee shop.", and which I will less-succinctly describe it as "Anti-harem with a delightfully mysterious barista, with the obligatory awful gf"

Edit: I cannot figure out why for the life of me but the formatting looks REALLY weird on my end, but in the editor it's fine?? So if it looks weird/out of order to you please excuse this post, it seems to be some Tumblr Fuckery

#i WOULD have included 'Love? I Think Not.' purely for UF!Pap's characterisation but uhhhhhhhhh the fic (and series) is pretty much-#everything but UF!Pap/Reader lololol #i Do live for his relationship w/ Kei in that though. my little heart. i love thems.#anyway i excluded my ns//fw fic recs because uhhhhhhhhhhh this blog is meant to be Mostly sfw but if ur interested (and 18+) you can always #- hop over to my other blog and inquire there LMAO. i have tons #fic recs #doozis fic recs #underfell!papyrus #underfell papyrus #anon #inbox

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thewillowtreess · 4 months

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Dear all the Undertale fans who read the fan made comics/watched the comic dubs/watched Undertale animations,

I need help finding a few very specific comics and/or animations that i only remember specific scenes/lines from and i figure this would be the best place to ask :D ...D

The first one is a comic set after the underground is freed, i remember Frisk and the others having a snowball fight and having to stop because the soul of Chara had done something (I assume this comic had been done as a pacifist run after doing genocide), Frisk might have gotten a headache? and Chara wanted to reset.

It was a Soriel one and i remember Sans and Toriel getting married, I also remember sans wearing a apron that said something along the lines of "Kiss the cook"

I remember one that had something to do with core frisk and Core Frisk finding the various different Sans AUs and taking them to somewhere safe.

Something about Sans and Papyrus melting together because of Alphys and the determination experiments

I remember something to do with Error Sans (sorry if this is a bad explanation) at some point he kill a universe i think, maybe Ink Sans was there, it might have been an ask blog? I have no clue tho, this one is probably the most fuzzy out of them all :(

If i can remember anymore I'll update this but these are the few ones that I just can't find :(

#undertale #help me find these PLEASE #undertale au #underverse #core frisk #sans au #papyrus #toriel #soriel #toriel dreemurr #alphys #undertale aus #error sans #ink sans

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hurgablurg · 5 months

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So, Undertale.

The funny thing to me about Undertale is that anything the game, and it's fangames, try to tell the player about peace and choosing non-violence falls completely and pathetically flat for at least one big reason: no one who isn't a main character takes that lesson for themselves.

Sure, Undyne chills out, you can guilt Toriel down, you can therapize the Amalgamates, you can even redeem Asriel, but what about the random encounters and side bosses...?

When does Washua stop trying to drown a child? When does Froggit stop pouncing? Why does Snowdrake, a literal child, think it's a cool idea to murder someone in the woods? When does Tsundereplane finally figure out that killing her senpai doesn't work? When exactly is Muffet supposed to learn that killing and eating people for not giving her money is bad? Are any of them even meant to go through the same improvement others do?

Are they after human souls? In most cases, apparently not, because much of the Underground doesn't even recognize Frisk as human in the first place. Even Undyne apparently needs to be told what the human is wearing to find them, as if she wouldn't be able to recognize a human right away.

Are they trying to "communicate through magic" but are inadvertently doing harm because magic is like that? No, that was a fan theory people came up with to explain why they attacked first. If monster magic really did work like that, then Frisk would have to avoid projectiles in every. Single. Conversation. You can buy items without dodging the SOUL around heaps of merchandise. You can talk to the Snowdin bear without having to duck around the presents he's setting under the tree. You can hang out with Papyrus without having to dodge his bones during the entire date.

The only explanation we are left with is that some people in the Underground just really love murder, and will happily attack anything that crosses their line of sight.

Hell, even the cripplingly depressed Shyren will STILL make a token effort to kill Frisk. Like, whats her deal?

Why do we want to befriend people like that? Especially if they keep trying it after being spared? It'd be understandable if each encounter only showed up ONCE and then was befriended from then on, but no, every time until post-game True Pacifist they will keep coming back to try to kill Frisk.

Where are all the moralizing friendship speeches about their actions?

Random civilians are free to attack children with impunity, but those same children acting in self-defence or fighting back is abominable, enough to make humanity in it's entirety worthy of genocide.

And genocide is the Underground's goal, in case everyone forgot. The whole purpose of Asgore absorbing the human souls and "becoming god" (that's literally how it's described in the game) is to take revenge on humanity. Asgore may not be willing to go through with it because he's a depressed weeny, but everyone else is pretty hyped for the destruction of humanity once the doors are open.

And for what, exactly? The Underground is perfectly livable. All that's missing is the sun, but unless a lack of vitamin D is what's turning everyone into slavering psychopaths, I don't see the problem. They can probably even just make their own artificial sun with the technology they have. Everyone's just hyped up on propaganda about how cool the surface is.

Is their bereavement worth the explicit extinction of the human race? Is it worth the inevitable monster casualties that will come from humans fighting back? I don't think so, to be quite honest.

I think the hypocrisy of this running thread is best displayed in the Yellow fangame, by Martlet during the game's Genocide route:

"We only took five, but you've taken dozens".

Sure, that's factually true, but it's also a fact that you intend to take the rest of humanity whether they fight back or not. It's not equivalent if the plan was always to do worse damage. It's hypocrisy.

The player (and by extension Frisk) has to put in extreme amounts of work into building relationships with people who will gladly turn physically violent at the drop of a hat, who are literally planning a genocide, constantly defying logic and self-preservation just to get a couple shots in on Some Guy.

Hell, I don't think Frisk as a person even comes into it in the first place. They are just a shell for us, the players, to experience the story.

And why? Because we saw a let's play of it? Because game reviewers said it was game of the decade? Because we want to see what it's like to play? To "befriend" these oh-so-whacky, predictable characters again and again a decade after the game's heyday?

The story, in the end, is all to fulfill a narrative who's foundation is a shaky legend about humans being mean to monsters millenia ago, some immortal, royal brats having bruised egos, and a mutated goat prince scaring a bunch of peasants into violence, told from the perspective of the Underground, with little inference as to what the surface is actually like.

For all we know, Asgore and Toriel are lying and were the conquering tyrants of a human-monster empire who were sealed underground by opposing kingdoms of the surface in the days of yore, causing them to rewrite history (and "rewrite" population demographics) to make themselves look like the victims to their entirely-captive audience. If the barrier was a cooperative measure, it would go a long way to explain why human and monster souls are both needed to break it. if the humans really DID want to kill all monsters to prevent their souls being stolen, why were the monsters allegedly allowed to surrender? The royals even have an equally-immortal "war hero" at their beck and call with a cross-game skill for writing Tolkien-esque fantasy literature, settled down "doing archaeology work" in the region where the Underground's supposed history is written. That's a coincidence, I'm sure.

All that said, and mostly by the by, I say Deltarune is the better game.

The previous, pitiless freaks are friendly neighbours. The foes in the Dark World are overlords, mercenaries, guards, animals, and madmen - people with purpose to capture or kill the Lightners, rather than random civilians who see fit to attack anything that crosses their path. It makes sense. Plus, the story is actually engaging, the mystery is more intriguing, the characters are more entertaining, Kris is an actual character with a will of their own that we are explicitly subverting, and the "evil route" is actually, undeniably evil.

Deltarune came first conceptually, if you will all remember. Undertale is the weird off-kilter AU Toby made for practice. Not the other way around. And it definitely shows.

#undertale #undertale yellow #deltarune #utdr #undertale spoilers #undertale yellow spoilers

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eurydiceryn · 1 year

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us! chara my sassy lost child

my own interpretation of underswap:

us! chara:

chara replaces frisk so they're now the 8th fallen child. they retain some key characteristics of their og/ut version though (dislikes humanity, has a soft spot for nicer monsters). i heavily see chara as a sassy, firecracker and trouble making child <3

personally, i think of ut! chara as an entity similar to flowey - they have no soul and can't really "feel" love and compassion. depending on what route you as the player takes, they go along with the ride. their beliefs and goals rely on how much exp/lv you've earned. i think of them as a pretty chill souless kid

us! sans:

im not a fan of infantilizing us! sans (honestly this applies to all "papyrus-types"). like chara, he retains some characteristics of his og version. he likes puns (and loves annoying his younger brother with them), a sciency type, and LOVES greasy food ("sans, for the last time, stop buying grillby's overpriced food"). most noticeable difference with his undertale counterpart is that he's a bit more active & more or less has his shit together a lot more than ut! sans.

you can actually die in his boss fight unlike og papyrus. he's aware of what "capturing humans" entail, & he's not really a fan of the whole killing children thing. but y'know, monsterkind just.. needs one more soul don't they? like og papyrus bossfight, you just need to tire him out before he goes "YOU KNOW WHAT, I CAN'T KILL A KID" & spares you.

(if you die thrice in his bossfight, he'll see your expression & just lets you go. he's unnerved & thinks chara's expression will haunt him for the rest of his life)

he can actually make edible food & is popular with snowdin's residents. he has the qualifications to join the royal guard, he just chooses not to. alphys approves of him and would gladly accept him into the team, but eh - he's content with being an unofficial member.

acquaintances with alphys. you could have considered them friends a.. long time ago, but the past is the past. the best big brother - cares deeply for papyrus and his severe lack of friends. pushes the human to hang out w/ him & papyrus (instead of a date).

us! papyrus:

following the trend of retaining some of the og's traits, papyrus can't cook very well. he's slightly above the category of being capable of burning water. he's talented when it comes to making and constructing puzzles - a great engineer tbh. papyrus still has the racecar bed & has dreams of driving one on the surface.

and for the record, he doesn't smoke - it's a lollipop. he's also anxious and socially awkward - guy's got ZERO friends (okay im exaggerating, he does have at least TWO). nevertheless, he's a loser and i love him; a certified babygirl.

similar to ut's events, paps makes a promise to a man behind the ruins' door to guide the human who passes through, and he intends to keep it. unlike ut! sans who tends to watch over the human from a distance (& occassionally intersects with their journey), papyrus is a bit more involved. he keeps chara company during some sections of snowdin/hotland & likes to keep check on them by calling on the cellphone.

although papyrus is lazier and more easy going than ut! papyrus, he's just as compassionate & kind. during his fight's first phase in genocide, he tries to force the human to give up and rethink their ways. his attacks generally consist of blue attacks - a defense; to push you back. he doesn't like the idea of killing someone (even if that someone happened to be the one who killed your brother and all your friends), but if the human does happen to die - it can't be helped.

if you spare him, you don't get dunked on dw. he'll let you off the fight but doesn't allow you to proceed any further. he'll keep blocking your way — the only way to get past him is to kill him. as a result, his bossfight is a lot easier than ut! sans, but still very difficult. when the second phase happens (you attack him when he spares you), he pulls all stops & tries to full on kill you fr.

on a lighter note, he's bffs with undyne. they construct wild and destructive experiments. BESTIES(tm) IN EVERY UNIVERSE <33

(that's all there is for now.. i have plans for the others but i'll post them in due time)

#eurydiceryn #my work #my art #undertale #underswap #sans #papyrus #chara #my underswap #underswap sans #underswap papyrus #underswap chara

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