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the-ark-awaits · 1 year

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Hello all you may remember me from such bangers as 'show me the proxies in marble hornets' and 'and another thing'

oday um here to talk about how we've fucking regressed as a fandom since creepypasta and marble hornets on ao3 got. presumably merged as a fandom tags bc sorting for exclude crossovers still shows creepypasta fic. in fact doing that just now to confirm this, the very first fic on the list was creepypasta.

so obviously this is a huge pain in the ass for anyone who wants marble hornets fanfic and only marble hornets fanfic. you cant even remove creepypasta fics with exclude crossover, youd have to do it manually with filtering options not everyone knows how to use. and we shouldnt have to yknow? you should be able to go in your fandom tag on ao3 and find only that fandom and crossovers (which should be easily filtered out by exclude crossovers) same as here on tumblr crosstagging is a huge issue but the worst part of it is that the continuous crosstagging in recent years has caused the fandom tags to be merged (not fully as shown by the fact that the numbers for amount of fic in each tag is different) but enough that they're considered the same universe by ao3 which is. blatantly untrue.

creepypasta is a catchall term for internet short stories made by a community, marble hornets is one single webseries online. fuck the creepypasta fandom wouldnt be what it is without huge swaths of shit stolen from marble hornets (like yknow, the pages, the operator symbol, masky and hoodie) but that doesnt mean they are marble hornets fans that doesnt mean theyre making marble hornets content. that would be like saying that since fnaf and batim are kinda similar and the fans have an overlap that means theyre the same and should be tagged the same. they arent, and shouldnt be yknow?

also apologies this isnt the best post im kinda fried rn and im stuck on mobile

that not withstanding its fucking depressing. this did not used to be an issue. thr only fics tagged with both were generally easy to ignore or a real honest to god crossover, but now i swear you look at the mh tag on ao3 and the majority of the recent fics are crosstagged crp fics with giant tag lists that tack up the whole page and tag anyone who is so much as mentioned

and maybe this is a step too far here. but i really think this is bc of tiktok. the people crosstagging posts and fics seem to be the same type to complain avout the 'ao3/tumblr algorithm' not favoring them. but there is no algorithm, just annoyed fans who have to dig for their actual content because people dont have common decency anymore. theres an etiquette you need to follow for shit like this. like how would you feel if like. i dunno. fucking... genshin (just an example of a large fandom or whatever made a character cameo out of like jeff the killer and suddenly all the crp tags were filled with genshin posts not even related to or barely mentioning the character, just ti try and get more clicks?

youd be pretty fucking annoyed having to scroll past all that to find actual creepypasta content huh?

thats the same issue happening here, and honestly i think its a huge issue. for obvious reasons but also bc its so much harder to find mh content now that im sure its incredibly disheartening to be a creator in the fandom rn and foe the past few years. you work and make content for your rather small fandom and its buried under barely related shit, its gonna feel bad yknow? especially when that content gets more clicks bc. frankly theres more creepypasta fans than mh fans just bc of what creepypasta is format wise. its collectively made shortstories. you can like one or two and bc a crp fan, its not like that for mh

this is going kinda off my starting topic but anyways if theres any ao3 tag wrangles following me or who see this.

please for the love of god i beg of you to do anything you can to unmerge those tags i will do anything ill get receipts proving they're separate things please unmerge the tags im dying here

#marble hornets #ao3 #sorry im still reallt spacey rn cause i was high earlier today and im big adhd at the best of times #so someone with more brainpower than me rn id love some input #ill write a more coherent version lf this when im back home with my laptop after new years

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bears-necessity · 2 years

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im curious of what you think about the yiik characters. i need to know what other yiik fans think. alex is my personal favorite (i want to kick him down the stairs) but i like michael a lot too. theyre all stupid nerds. honestly if you have any headcanons id love to hear them.

OMG THANK YOU FOR ENABLING ME TO BE ABNORMAL I HAVE SO MUCH THOUGHTS ABOUT THESE GUYS OKAY SO im putting this under a cut just so its not super long on ppls dash here

first off every YIIK character is queer and neurodivergent becuz I'm queer and neurodivergent and I said so, the specifics of that depend on my mood and what sort of au bullshit i'm coming up with at 2am in a VC with my friends tho

Alex is complicated. i hate him hes a massive douche but also I really do get what the devs were trying to with him. the occasions when he's being nice and having fun with his friends are where he shines and honestly at heart hes just some guy who needs to get a grip and get his shit together (relatable). if i knew him personally i'd probably slap him and then we'd be good, he probably specialised in sci-fi/fantasy creative writing for his libarts degree and definitely wrote an essay at somepoint about videogames as an art form. He has tattoos but they're all probably really cringe and embarassing because they were super trendy when he got them and then fell out of fashion, he has one of those barbed wire ones around his upper arm.

Michael is my FAVORITE GUY OF ALL TIME HES SO SILLY but also i've made him horribly angsty in my brain as well it's so. i think him and alex have a really good "friends who are used to each other's bullshit" dynamic but also i ship them a little bitty bit just cuz i'm a sucker for besties who are obliviously in love with each other as a trope. He would hate-watch ancient aliens and buzzfeed unsolved because he thinks he knows better than them. If you read his comments on ONISM he also seems to be a really sweet and supportive guy with the userbase and thats rlly cool hes such a guy Aside from that though he has the most unexplored depth as a character imo, since it's confirmed he isn't from the present reality and at some point definitely becomes aware of that fact I like to think underneath the funnyman bestie thing he's probably having a crisis about who he is and stuff because even before he's consciously aware of it he probably felt this vague subconscious feeling of like,,,Not Belonging ig? idk i think he probably knows this isn't where hes really meant to be and hes trying to truck through it but the impostor syndrome is definitely there. I love michael so much he is a certified blorbo

Rory is sooo mecore I stole his name online because he's so mecore we are both emo/scene kids and his canon favorite song according to some questions directed at the dev team is a brighteyes song that i also love its like fate. ANYWAY I feel really bad for Rory because i think his character is probably handled one of the worst just with the tonal whiplash a lot of his character-centric moments has. I bet he listens to weezer and radiohead. If YIIK was set now he would be into creepypasta and he would get michael into it since it ties in with his paranomal urban legend stuff, they would vlog hunting for slenderman together. him and alex run a gaming channel together (THIS IS AN INSIDE JOKE BUT I HAD TO PUT IT IN I COULDNT HELP MYSELF)

Vella is pretty and I think she's super cool, one of my besties LOVES her so I kinda let him be the friend group CEO of vella stuff but my biggest takeaways from her is that I hope she gets back into making music again, but for her own fun this time instead of to fulfill some success pressure. maybe she starts a crappy little garage band with some of the gang and they write terrible songs about aliens who smoke pot and dance the macarena and she's the only one there who can actually play but they have fun with it. She also knows all the videogame cheat codes and keeps setting high scores that alex and michael cant beat. Also her mind dungeon reminds me of yume nikki and thats super cool cuz i love yume nikki

Chondra and Claudio deserved way more time for their characters to develop and also their lore is weird and confusing and I think the whole missing brother thing is rlly weird too becuz of the reveal of how that all works with alex and shit. BUT if they had been handled bettter they probably would be my favorites because I think claudio is super fun and his VA sounds like he's really going for it and he's just such a chill guy and he's super passionate about his interests and i respect that and 100% would be his bestie chondra is super cool too, she's clearly really into sports and I bet she hangs out at the local skate park and impresses everyone cuz of her roller skates and also probably gets vella into skating too and they go together and have matching customised helmets just for the extra cool factor. alex and michael and rory come and watch them but are too pussy to try (alex has had enough from that stupid skateboard ability you get in vella's dungeon). Maybe she goes to some competitions for it and stuff too

uhhh some other various stuff the essentia is really cool but also confusing and it took ages to make sense of her lore but i LOVE her voice the effects to make it robot-y are *chefs kiss* and essentia 995 is just SO idk how to describe it the part when she says "often it is necessary to lie to oneself to get a tough job done" hits really hard for some reason. shes metal as fuck, metaphorically and literally. sammy is literally a caricature of a real life dead girl and i think that's pretty fucked up and they shouldnt have done that, but she would have been really cool if it wasn't for that big yikes. in general i really love a lot of the influences yiik has i'm a huge fan of rpgmaker horror and murakami books and a bunch of the other shit that it references so hehehehehe thats cool

this is long but also this is everything I can think of off the top of my head thank you for letting me be abnormal about this stupid game i hate it and love it so much :D

#yiik #yiik: a postmodern rpg #asks #ty for letting me go off for like an hour i have been exploding with thoughts about these guys for so long

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xxsweetoothxx · 1 year

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Keeping PM a creepypasta thing or not really is dependent on like 1 thing and that's "But what is happening with the CLOWN" Like PM Jack is not Laughing Jack they are completely different character now. But it's like "do I use my hippy clown and just make my own take on LJ that also exist and they just get confused for one another because mfs can't tell their clowns apart. Or do I just make Proxymorons not Creepypasta related? Do I do like i did with Patricia and Rainy and just have all the characters very obviously inspired by Creepypasta/iconic horror characters and monsters" A friend gave me the idea that if I'm gonna be replacing characters to replace slenderman with an oc thats meant to be the Boogeyman and honestly that's so fucking big brained of them to Suggest especially with Minerva being a Nightmare like thats such a good idea he gave me so glad I thought if it.

Either way I wanna post creepypasta stuff here anyway and if I DO make another attempt at a take on LJ he's going to be the most crackhead mother fucker. Not a thought will be behind that bozos eyes. Mf will be so blissfully unaware. His brain? Toughts? Outta there. He's living his worst best life. (Or is it his best worst life.) He is living.... He's out there. Just fuckin shit up and thinking the shits a game. But like genuinely. He will cry because he accidently kicked your dog. But then also laugh after he very intentionally eats your dog. He will run full speed into a glass sliding door and then wonder what the fuck kind of witch craft he's encountered. Out of sight out of mind. And glass? You just see through it so in his little pea brain it may as well not be there. His brain is like an empty clown car. Tiny unoccupied and smooth. Man will touch a hot stove say "YOWCH that hurt!" And then continue to keep touching it until it's not hot anymore and then think he's won the game he just made up in his own brain against the stove. He's in his own little world and we're all just livin in it to him. He will never say "fuck" swears? Not in his vocabulary. He may not kill children But he will eat your parents in front of you and expect a standing ovation. By even Underrealm standards he is a menace to society. This clown is loose and he's a silly silly goose. And geese? Geese are fucked up.

#proxymorons #can i tag this as #creepypasta #? well i am.#also #laughing jack #because i kinda went off a bit there and i may avtually be making that take on him a thing #regardless of if i PM is creepypasta related or not #crp

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kingwolfie08 · 2 months

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tommy boy

i decided to draw the flygon from my favourite pokepasta, with the same name as this posts title.

also if your wondering, i actually prefer the version by flimsy-cat on da (wich i think is the original one, but im not sure.) over the remake (or adaptation.) mostly because of the one part with the shuppet. but other than that, the flygon actually being a demon in desguise, is actually a pretty good idea.

well enough of that, i decided to try and add more details to the background, instead of just making it look bland and flat. and i was also going to just do a normal shiny flygon instead, but because of the reference image i was looking a having red eyes, instead of orange, i just went with actually doing tommy boy.

also, i decided to try and not shade that much in the corners, like i have been doing in my past drawings, and i think actually putting more effort into actually shading in the flygon, actually made him look better. and im suprised this turned out looking actually good, since i rarely draw flygon (if im right, i think the last time i drew something flygon related, was in 2022.)

anyways, heres the drawing:

anyways i actually really like how this turned out, and i might try to draw more like this, instead of how i have been drawing in the past few drawings.

also i feel like not all creepypasta drawings have to be edgy and emo with blood in it. it really just has to be how you want to draw it, even if you probably would get a small amount of hate for not adding blood in a creepypasta drawing. (by all that, i mean you dont need to make it edgy and scary. so like if you want to draw the most scary fucking being jumping into something like, i dunno- a pile of potatos, you draw that character jumping into a pile of potatoes, even if its a silly and not scary thing.) honestly just draw stuff how you want to draw it, and ignore the people who hate your art (because thats kinda what i do, but i really only got one person saying my art looks bad, in one of my yt community posts.)

well anyways, i hope you all like that drawing, because im going to try and make more drawings like that.

#pokemon #pokepasta #tommy boy (the flygon)

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sk3tch404 · 2 years

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https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA9lTFTzBoiEsLV51XJhYEfcJtfMj4bsJ

^^I think those were my main ones but Ofc there's probably ones that I missed due to missing childhood memories 😔

And YEHEHEHEA BOIII THISE 7MIN IN HEAVEN QUIZZES- istg id always get Eyeless Jack every time and if I didn't get him, I'd retake the quiz until I did 💀💀 and yeah he was my "main boyfriend" during my creepypasta phase and the funny thing is, I'm not sure if it even was because of his personality, I think it was just because he wore a BLUE mask.

Now lil funfact about me, when I was little, I was FUCKING O B S E S S E D WITH THE COLOUR BLUE. Always wanted to wear blue clothes, eat blue food, drink blue drinks (there was this one energy drink with a blue color that tasted absolutely awful, I still pestered my family members to buy it for me, even though I didn't like drinking it at all 🥲) I wanted EVERYTHING in blue—

So yeah, I held a questionable "love" for Mr.Kidney Eater lmfao. Also like, I left the CP before like, Bloody Painter and the others newer ones were made, so when I revisited it a while back I was like "who tf is this guy" and speaking of what changed after I left, I remember that EJs OG backstories was smth along the lines of "his father was a doctor, some shit happened, his father poked his eyes with like a Fireplace poker thingie and THATS why he got em black goo leaky eyes" and he was just Some Dude™ but that's also changed, I was so confused when they addressed him as a Demonic Creature like 👁👄👁 where'd my lil silly man go? (Not that I miss it THAT much but going from hahaha doctor twink with scalpel to an actual Threat™ was pretty jarring) there was also the gratification of getting The Smart One as a kid, like yeah I'm Not Like Other Girls I get the cool one, not JEFF. Oh, the Hipster/Internalised Misogyny Mindset my detested 💀

Speaking of old!Fanon, remember when they made Hoodie&Masky obsessed with cheesecake? And the reason WHY they made them obsessed with turned out to be pretty scummy actually? Big oof, big oof 💀

And OMFG THE PUBLISHED JEFF FANFIC AINT NO WAY— its honestly kinda impressive if you really think about it ngl imagine being able to sell physical copies of your fanfics without having it being just you printing out every pane in A4 format 🤔 it's just kinda unfortunate that the fanfics that DO get published are all kind of,,, crap (cough cough After cough 50 shades cough cough) like no flake on the authors (mostly) because good for them for being able to make money off smth they love doing (at least I think they do) but holy fuck what I would give if they actually published the good fanfics :,)

-Ren'py anon

YOU’LL NEVER TAKE US ALIIIVEEEEE

that’s the first one that was on there lol

GOD I LOVED KESHA HER MUSIC WAS TOP TIER

Lovely choices of nostalgia :D

LMFAO THAT’S A VALID REASON FOR WHY U WERE SO OBESSED WITH HIM. HOT MYSTERY MAN WITH MASK THAT IS ALSO A KILLER 😍😍😍 YUPPPPP THATS A KEEPER

And yeah no I can totally understand why you were so obsessed with blue! As kids, we literally have no idea of self identity and struggle with making a person out of ourselves. A lot of us grab ahold of one thing and try to stick with it, even when we don’t like it. I used to try so hard to be a tomboy. I hated pink, I didn’t like wearing skirts, I didn’t like makeup saying that I ‘liked being more natural’’, I wore an absurd amount of ugly male sweatshirts, T-shirts, and skinny jeans from Aeropostale, and most of all, I hated on other girls for being LITTLE GIRLS???

That got really deep oops, but yeah, most logical and relatable thing ever am I right 😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😂 /hj

I’ve never looked into EJ’s backstory, all I knew is that he was hot, ate kidneys, and had goo for eyes. BUT OH MY GOD WHAT. WHY ARE CREEPYPASTA PARENTS ACTUALLY MONSTERS??? Probably because 11-18 year olds were sharing and altering the stories during the early 2010′s and whatever. Anyway, A FIREPLACE POKER INTO EJ’s EYES??? THAT IS SO BRUTAL HOLY SHIT. It’s so funny how you’re all like, “Oh shit man that’s crazy. Anyway, where’s my funky little cannibal? ^^”

I hate it when people change stories to smth paranormal or demonic. Like, I have little to no issues with it, but GOD DAMN do they butcher tf out of the genre.

Ah yes, that I”M DIFFERENT FROM OTHER GIRLS AND DON’T CARE ABOUT STUPID THINGS LIKE SELF CARE AND ESTEEM. No I could NEVER act like a decent person who doesn’t argue over every little thing 🙄🙄🙄

Yes yes yes YES, that whole Hoody and Masky thing was actually really cruel. I thought they just really loved cheesecake just like how Toby really liked waffles. Turns out, the entire Marble Hornets fandom made fun of the figure/weight of the actor who played Masky. Saying he should, ‘lay off the cheescake’.

That was so messed up man. I know it was early internet banter, but god damn that was just straight up brutal.

Yeah, I was shocked too. How could something THAT bad be published with STOLEN cover art? 😭 The story was shitty as all bad Wattpad fanfics are. If people actually published the good fanfics, the world would go CRAZY.

AN X READER FANFIC THAT IS GOOD? IMPOSSIBLE! BURN THE DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITING AND REJECT IT IN THE NAME OF GENERAL SOCIETY!!!

Unfortunately, 50 shades of grey had that fame despite it’s.... interesting contents. Some people love it, most people despise it now over the years.

It is such a shame that doesn’t happen more often though. It is quite embarrassing to say you read fanfiction, but it shouldn’t be so condemned and tossed away for it’s notoriety with the bad ones that got around.

#renpy anon #you give the greatest hot takes #and give the most interesting asks #Once in a while i finally get to your asks #and genuinely have fun #although it's a bit of a hassle #i enjoy it!#sorry for the loooooong time #i have so many things taking up my time #but i finally got to this #whooo hooo!!!

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hauntedtotem · 4 years

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I understand how you don't want to get involved anything related to snuffbomb, but why Toby, Sally, and Clockwork? I guess I also understand why you won't do Toby, since both of the creators try to stay away from the fandom. But why also Sally, out of all the other pastas?

with clockwork idk exactly what her creator said in regards to leaving the fandom and if its okay to still use the character, but I know clockwork was made for them to cope with their own assault and it just feels weird that the character they based off their trauma got so popular.

idk, if I made an oc to cope with trauma and it got popular and a bunch of people were talking about them and their backstory thats based off something I went through it wouldn't be good for my mental health. anyways idk if they simply left the fandom or if they specifically asked people not to use clockwork for anything, but im just not going to use her out of respect and bc it would feel weird to use someone elses character when its so personal to them

For toby, theres the whole thing with the creator wanting to pull him from the fandom, but that's not exactly why I don't draw him? I love Toby’s design but I hate how he’s portrayed. I never liked his personality, and idk how people portray him nowadays, but back when I was first in the fandom people used him to be really ablest, playing into stereotypes and ridiculing mental conditions.. I never really liked his story or personality, his design was good but other than that I just never wanted anything to do with him

with sally its moreso personal reasons, some I wont get into. The creator drew nsfw art of her with older characters a couple years ago, including porn of sally x laughing jack which is really fucked up for multiple reasons.

although shes taken it down since then. but even before she did that Sally felt like she was made just for shipping. I liked her story and I feel she had a lot of potential. But with how she was portrayed outside her original creepypasta, like in art and rp, she was just boring and mary sue-ish. I just have a lot of negative emotions and memories associated with her

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synthient · 5 years

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The Key to Understanding Deltarune: The Halloween Hack

So we’re currently in the middle of a 4000 year content hiatus

Which is unfortunate, because ever since the big iconic Halloween-day surprise demo drop, my brain has been rattling a baseball bat against the inside of my skull and chanting “CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT”

Undertale was like candy for the thematic analysis side of my brain. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights going “fun value......he put a quantitative value on fun.....numbers going up.....”

I am desperate to know what kind of themes Deltarune is going to tackle. Can you effectively predict that from one (1) 3 hour demo? No. Does my brain care? No.

Which is what lead me to the wonderful world of intertextuality, or examining how a media text is shaped by other media texts

It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this with me doing a playthrough of EarthBound, the video game that Toby has cited as his biggest inspiration for Undertale

That was fun & interesting (the “throwing away an emotionally engaging experience to grimly make Numbers Go Up” thing feels a lot closer to home after trying and failing to get the sword of kings), but it didn’t provide much insight into Deltarune, specifically. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. I was willing to dig into literally any intertext (except Homestuck, which no force on this earth can compel me to read :) )

anyway thats how I ended up playing Toby Fox’s high school fangame

And somehow (sorry Toby) I walked out of there with an unironic theory (a game theory....if you will....): Deltarune is Toby’s adult reexamination of the Halloween Hack.

What is the Halloween Hack?

You know that thing where, like, people take the engine of a Pokemon game and edit it so there’s a new region and a bunch of new fakemon, and also There’s Swears Now

In 2008, Toby Fox entered a contest on an EarthBound fansite for the best Halloween-themed EarthBound hack

In one sense, reducing the Halloween Hack to a “bad romhack with swears” is a little bit of a disservice. There are some glimmers in there of a really affecting, thought-provoking game, and you can see some of the early blueprints of what would later become Undertale (“do video game ‘monsters’ really deserve to die” is a major theme, and the character of Dr. Andonuts was effectively split up into Alpyhs, Asgore, and Sans)

But it’s also. very much a fangame made by a 16-year-old.

You can read a basic summary of the Hack here. High school-age Toby wrote two pretty extensive analyses of his thought process behind the game. I’ll be referring back to them a lot, and I’d highly suggest giving them a read--Toby’s been so famously resistant to making any Word of God statements about Undertale that it’s kind of fascinating to see him being so candid

an extremely long and rambling examination of How This All Relates To Deltarune

The Halloween Hack opens in the town of Halloween Twoson. Twoson is one of the cites in EarthBound, and here it’s been painted orange. and there’s pumpkins now

See, high school Toby had...a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In the Making Of notes, he explains that he was frustrated that “most people generally thought I was just ‘another funny guy’”. So he designed the opening of the game to seem unoriginally close to the original EarthBound--like “a regular, funny, lazy hack”--to lull players into a false sense of security before the horror elements set in.

Two interesting things there:

“Lazily, unoriginally close to the source game” sounds an awful lot like the Dark World segment of Deltarune

Halloween Twoson looks very visually similar to Hometown

Toby’s description of Twoson also sounds pretty Hometown-esque:

The main impressions of Twoson that I wanted to give the player were: It's funny. It's a nice fall day outside. The person hacking this game is ridiculously lazy. It's a nice place to live. If you look at it a little closely, it's kind of claustrophobic.

And when does the horror kick in? When the player descends into the underground tunnels beneath the city.

The “horror” in the Halloween Hack is, however, Pretty Not Good.

There’s a whole lot of the flavor text narrator (put a pin in that one) insisting “this is so scary. you’re so scared. your hands shake and your head throbs because you’re so scared.” There’s also a thing where the battle text keeps going “the shambling zombie BITES your HEAD OFF!!! (you lose 15 hp).”

I think the True Lab sequence in Undertale is a decent demonstration that Toby’s come a long way since then (and that Honey We’ve Got A Storm Coming :’) ). But you know what the Hack’s style of horror reminds me of?

My first thought when I beat the demo and saw this stinger was “this looks like an intentionally shitty creepypasta.” Now I wonder if it’s lowkey adult Toby poking a little fun at teenage Toby

The Halloween Hack is a game about railroading. It’s Spec Ops The Line before there was Spec Ops The Line.

According to Toby:

The main theme of this game is the lack of choice. There is really no choice in this game. From the moment you start to the moment you finish, you're destined to kill Dr. Andonuts. There are two endings, but they both eventually end up the same way. It's all a big joke on the player.

You know why there isn't a choice there? Because you already chose to make Varik go into the door. You already chose to go forward. The only real choice, as Varik realizes at the end of the game, is to stop or keep going. By "stop" he means "turn off the game," and that's all you can do. Anything you play is your own fault for playing, and that's the only real choice you can make.

Interesting? Yeah. A little obnoxious? Also yeah.

That’s one of the criticisms people had of Spec Ops. "The atrocities we commit when we feel like we don’t have a choice” is an intriguing theme, but “~the only way to win is not to play~ [the game I worked hard on for the express purpose of people playing it]” isn’t a very satisfying conclusion.

Undertale, in direct contrast to the Hack, is all about choice. It earns the right to guilt you for the No Mercy Run by giving you every opportunity not to go through with it.

But even Undertale plays a little with the concept of railroading--you can’t stay with Toriel; you can’t spare Asgore in any of the neutral runs; you can’t save Asriel.

Now Deltarune seems to be returning full-on to the Hack’s “your choices don’t matter” premise. But it’s going to need to find something more insightful and satisfying to say about it.

Which makes me really curious about this:

If the Hack has a secondary theme besides railroading/lack of choice, it’s The Soul-Crushing Impact Of Internalized Homophobia.

The tragic antagonist, Dr. Andonuts, destroys his own life trying to repress his gay desire. He retreats into a dream world made of his neuroses and trauma, and he’s inevitably Otherized and murdered by the player. He’s something of a dark version of Alphys, who “disappears” into her lab without ever meeting and getting support from Frisk, Papyrus, and Undyne.

Undertale takes an opposite approach to its lgbt themes--the Underground is a utopia where homophobia and transphobia don’t exist. Everyone respects Frisk’s and Chara’s pronouns. Alphys finds solace and healing in her relationship with Undyne.

It’s a heartwarming growth from the despair in the Halloween Hack. And it’s a vision that’s been deeply meaningful to a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no value in exploring issues of homophobia. 16-year-old Toby tried to do that, but...wasn’t exactly at a point where he was equipped to handle it with a ton of sensitivity and nuance.

(There’s. There’s a boss battle where you fight the physical manifestation of Andonuts’ gay repression. It’s a crotch. You fight a crotch.)

Some of the hints in the Deltarune demo, however--the Toriel Has Become Catholic thing; the fact that Alphys and Undyne haven’t met and Mettaton hasn’t been able to transition; the potential trans implications of choosing a name only to have it discarded for an assigned one (“you can’t choose who you are in this world”)--make me suspect that’s one of the themes that Toby will try to revisit from an adult perspective.

The Hack is interested in the idea of the flavor text narrator as a distinct, intelligent entity, whose thoughts and goals don’t always align with those of the player character or the player.

The Hack’s narrator makes a habit of dictating “your” emotions to you (you’re scared; you can sense ‘the monster’ and you want to kill it; etc). The narration starts to seem more and more unreliable, until, as Toby put it, “The narrator starts talking to you personally...rambling about incoherent things.”

At the game’s turning point, you’re given a yes/no choice to kill Dr. Andonuts. Choose yes, and the narrator (mockingly?) calls you a good person, describes the murder you commit, and then narrates what appears to be your (or their? or Varik’s?) psychological breakdown. Choose no, and the narrator tells you that’s not a real choice and redirects you back to the yes/no box. If you press the b-button to try and opt out of the choice (the game’s unofficial subtitle is “Press the B-Button Stupid,” and doing so allows you to follow Andonuts into his dream world), the narrator starts to panic, although the game ultimately ends the same way.

Not to NarraChara Real, but NarraChara Real

The Hack is also interested in the idea of the player character as a possibly-unwilling puppet controlled by the player (who in turn is controlled by the railroading/their need to beat the game).

According to Toby:

As you approach someone you've never met that you're labeling as a monster, your body pushes you forward to kill him. What's funny is that it's not even uncontrolled, it's really just the force of the player's controller pushing that little bounty hunter into murdering Andonuts. You might not realize it, but Varik is almost dead, and yet he can't stop moving because you keep pushing those buttons.

The Halloween Hack is, fundamentally, a nostalgic meditation on an existing game.

It’s a little obvious to say, but the Hack isn’t a standalone game. It’s a hack of EarthBound.

Toby writes:

EarthBound dominated my childhood, shaped my preteen years, and played a large role in molding me into the offbeat pseudohippie I am today. It gave me a sense of humor. It helped me learn how to read. Its lessons served as a basis for my sense of justice and courage.

But at age 16, Toby’s feeling about the game that had shaped him were a little mixed. He describes “the staleness of a fifteen-year-old video game” as one of his motivations for making the Hack.

In Deltarune, he (kind of hilariously) has Alphys parrot his teen-self’s “staleness” line:

(I could write a whole meta just on the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie vs Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 thing)

Still, Toby’s nostalgia for EarthBound is essential to how the Hack operates. Earlier, I said there were glimmers of an thoughtful, affecting game buried in the “bad romhack with swears.” The most genuinely moving moment in the Hack, in my opinion, is the Onett sequence.

You wander though a faded, dream world version of Onett--the hometown from EarthBound--while a slowed down arrangement of the Onett music plays. Snatches of forgotten conversations appear on road signs. Various monsters from EarthBound follow slowly behind you, but don’t attack. The only battles are against creatures called “Remember Me?”

The EarthBound characters appear to recognize “Varik” as Ness, EarthBound’s protagonist--or are they recognizing you, the player, as the same person who played EarthBound once upon a time?

The one problem, of course, is that not everyone has played EarthBound. It’s a relatively niche game. The sense of remembrance and regret and loss in the Onett sequence is universal, but being shaped as a person by the specific video game EarthBound isn’t a universal experience.

But in the years since the Hack, Toby has created something with a wider reach than EarthBound. Something that can evoke that sense of memory and nostalgia in players. A familiar game that he can take apart, rearrange, and examine in an entirely different light.

He made Undertale.

And now he’s rearranging the pieces into Deltarune.

#deltarune #undertale #o and to clarify: i don't think the flavor text thing means that chara's evil #in fact i think deltarune's going to deconstruct that very reading of undertale #which is maybe a whole nother (hopefully much shorter) meta

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iamthescalesofjustice · 2 years

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jumpchain shit time okay so

[[MORE]]

gauntlets kind of annoy me on principle since like if i wanted to do something hard i would simply limit my available selection and magnitude of powers on my own

but they sometimes give meta-rewards including things which can carey over into other gauntlets which i find interesting (even when they are incredibly minor or niche)

and there is a new one recently hammered out for whatever that new fnaf game is which like. ethical consumption etc etc insofar as engaging with the series at all is propping up a shitbird who is directly putting that money to bad causes etc. also as a series whose ongoing existence is and always has been predicated upon indirect engagement doing numbers (people watching lets plays, theorizing, which is why the mo is to answer a few lore questions while raising others and providing contradictory possible answers to others its on purpose that its like that theres no cleancut snagless answer to 'the puzzle' and there never will be because allowing one would be detrimental to the goal of raising and maintaining peoples engagement with it on the basis of looking to 'solve' the lore etc)

anyway whatever listen, the gauntlet rewards for it as it stands are very kind of shit. pretty 'i do not want this, you expect me to deliberately make things harder on myself engaging with this dumb challenge for the sake of not totally nerfing a potential reward and proving no other firm benefit to completing the damn thing at all' you get the idea. i do not extend generosity of interpretation in these things bc the conceit annoys me thats on me whatever

anyway its been a few days since i looked at it and uh. hm. might be coming around to the idea

of having a copy of the map i mean.

what would i do with a copy of a parody of big 80s arcade complexes and/or chuck e cheese creepypastas that is not in fact staffed wuth evil robots? well i was thinking i could use it as a site for a sociological study,

by which i mean im thinking of pulling a reverse-isot and grabbing a few villages worth of 11th century german peasants (or something along those lines) and tossing them in there and seeing what happens.

i think it could be pretty funny and also that i am underestimating them. they could form a new society in reaction to their bizarre and fantastical surroundings and also for sure take out any robots if i left some in, yknow?

would that society be funtional? maybe. dysfunctional? certainly. scismless? almost definitely not. ethical? we are so far beyond that, why must an experiment be ethical is it not enough for it to be entertaining

i want to see what they grow in the lank soil of the lobby planter boxes desiged to barely sustain palm trees. i want smashing of neon lights and i want to see what explanations they come up with for their torment predicament and what mythology they create around the shadows of the characters, ghosts haunting these halls but not literally bc i cannot stress enough how much i am not paid to continue to allow robots of any kind to exist within these halls. but their character images are everywhere within that place so i would like to see what saints or devils they become under the gazes of the stranded peasants

i slept too much today bc i had a headache and i had a bit of a nightmare if you couldnt tell but it is in fact only tangentially related to anything i have detailed here thank you goodnight

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notailtheories · 6 years

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NotailsAndMore Tweet Compilation 2

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This section will contain the tweets that I consider make up Act 2. Because they are not actually from O-1, you could also consider them an intermission... But they still hold important information either way. OwO

This batch of tweets began a little over an hour after the last round stopped... Which isn’t a very long pause. You can most easily tell the difference because this person’s face is “TvT” rather than “=)”, if you’re looking to track these from the Twitter itself... OwO

98 |

I passed out and I wake up to me being logged into this creepy ass notail fact account. Fuck off who did this? TvT

Reply to 8, & 99 |

hate to be a stickler for details but you didn't say a fact just a question tho i *would* like to know some notail facts about my dark past :D

Holy fuck. Look if you know me O-2 sir I just want you to know I did not make this account or tweeped at you, I just woke up to this. Who tweeps shit like this at an O-class? TvT

100, reply, & 102, reply, 108, reply, & 112 |

X-7364 if this was you and some of your shitty experiments I WILL strangle all of your dirty rats. These O classes could order my death for no reason. You even used my actual email to do this. They could figure out who I am! TvT

Your buddy even said "fuck you" to me. Now that guy's got some real claws. >:3

I am so sorry O-6 sir. I had nothing to do with this but I will still apologize. Please forgive me, I'm ok if you don't forgive my friend and kill him though. TvT

Grovelling ain't pretty, you know. But hey, you ain't done anything, right? Maybe I'll let you go. >:3

You would be most kind if you let me go for words that were not my own. Thank you. TvT

I'll think about it. >:3

Thank you. That is all I ask, and all I am allowed to ask. TvT

Reply to 98, 101, reply, 109, reply, 113, reply, 114, reply, & 115, reply, 118, reply, 119, reply, 120, reply, 122, reply, 124, reply, 125, reply, & 126 |

lol u rly had me worried there sweetie :3 im still curious abt this whole thing if u want 2 help me find out abt it :3

I didn't write any of this! This has to be an X class prank. "Ha Ha, make your friend pass out, make an account with their email and possibly kill them by telling O-6 that you love them. So funny!" TvT

lmao u creeped out like every single o class tho i think thats kinda an achievement u should be proud of urself :3 whoever made this account was saying some really spooky stuff tho do u think it was just creepypasta or what :3

Please don't say I did it. I had nothing to do with this. I wouldn't contact the O classes, much less say such things to them, for they are most favorable to my survival. It was just some shitty prank. Some of the reactions are, strange, but that is no matter to me. TvT

watching u suck up 2 them is rly funny lol but kk babe i guess ill drop it :3 smh i thought this was something cool :3

I rather not relate "something cool" with angering the O classes but I understand. TvT

suckuuuuuuuup :3

I rather live a suck up than die for something I didn't do. TvT

how abt i give u smth else 2 suck on hot stuff :3

Look I don't even have a tweeper and I'm about to abandon this account and never touch it again. So my response to that is "um bye." TvT

i hate 2 see u leave but i love 2 watch u go :3

That's extremely holy and not ok. TvT

i hope ur not as disappointing in bed as ur friends failed arg was on tweeper :3

How could a notail raise so high to grace? TvT

u sure raise some things of mine baby :3

I would block you but I'm not going to be related to this account anymore, and if my friend logs back in I'm ok with him getting fucked over by your words. TvT

id prefer 4 u 2 to get fucked by me :3

Courtship between notails is not ok, but I suppose you know that. Just understand that "no." TvT

lol our society sux anyway i dont think its possible to pollute our gene pool more than its already fucked up babe :3

Ok well society gives me a roof over my head, food, and the time I got bit by a mallon I was experimenting on society fixed my arm before it rotted away. So we'll have to agree to disagree. TvT

lmao :3 the more u talk the more stupid and boring u seem :3

Says the notail who keeps going after clearly making me uncomfortable. But "sigh" I guess that's most people. TvT

ppl are funniest when theyre uncomfortable :3

Typical notail. You fit in just nicely. TvT

Original, 103, reply, & 105 |

@NotailsAndMore is it time for my 13 other facts?

Look it up yourself? Go read the Cosmosdex or something. I may be a K class but I'm not some fact machine. TvT

The what

Can you not look up basic and common terms? Geez look. http://cosmosdex.com/cosmosdex/ TvT

104, reply, & 107 |

X-7364 just walked in with coffee and called me a sleepy head. Said I passed out after intensely working on typing. Said I wouldn't respond to me when he had a question. He's lying, he knows he went overboard this time. TvT

You may want to improve your security. This could have ended very badly for you. :V

I will do what you recommended O-7 sir as you are most wise as all O classes are. I do have good security, I must have passed out so fast my computer didn't lock so my roommate and coworker decided to fuck with me. TvT

106, reply, 111, reply, & 117 |

I just checked the profile page to see if I could find some evidence of who did this. "i'm not sorry i told the truth when you didn't. no one deserves lies." The hell. If this is over lying about who ate the last pizza I'm going to be pissed. TvT

This went better for you than it could have mate, but I would recommend keeping closer guard over your belongings. Some of the other O-classes seem a bit agitated right now. uvu

Fully understood O-5, who kicks clockworks across the skies. I'll attempt to not pass out at my computer with my roommate around. TvT

The epithets aren't necessary mate. But maybe give your roommate a kick so they don't pull this again for good measure. uvu

I will make sure to give him a kick no matter how much he says he had nothing to do with this. Thank you for the advice O class. TvT

Original, & 110 |

@NotailsAndMore Once you figure out who did this, send me their ID number. Immediately. unu

I....think it's my roommate X-7364, but he's swearing the whole time this was going on I was working and refused to respond. I don't believe him but he sounds so serious about this. TvT

Reply to other party, & 116 |

Is there any way I can convince it to become a solid Yes? c:<

(Note: I won’t record this whole exchange because I don’t think it’s relevant... The context is O-8 is looking for who made this account. That’s all. OwO)

I know this is rude of me, and feel free to confirm this, but will you spare my roommate? He seems so honest in his pleads that he didn't do it.... He's the only one who could have done it, so it's him, but it seems like he regrets it deeply now. TvT

Original, 121, reply, 123, reply, & 127 |

I really am impressed by how many people they managed to unsettle in, what, an hour? uvu

Honestly as an X class he is naturally unsettling but I've never seen him act this badly. I wonder if I really ticked him off with the pizza thing. TvT

I've dealt with much worse than some X class...if it was just that then whatever...what does your friend know....OwO

I wish he would just admit it already. He said a few really odd things on this account and I have no idea where he's getting it from. Just. Fucking admit it X! Why is he being so rude to O classes you guys could KILL or BANISH us. TvT

It feels like something stranger is going on...OwO

It's just a stupid prank. A stupid prank that's now getting us basically evicted cause we can't stay here anymore. Stupid, stupid, prank. TvT

128, & 129 |

Ok this account is done. My roommate likely made this account as a laugh and somehow got the attention of the O classes. I'm sorry this happened even though I had nothing to do with it. I wish I could say my friend was sorry too but he's pissed off. TvT

Logging out, and never logging back in again. Yet again. Sorry for all the problems this account caused. Just unfollow this account. Bye. TvT

[ THIS ACCOUNT IS DEAD | Shitty prank by shitty roommate/friend who refuses to admit it | Will never be logging in ever again ]

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#fortuna #cosmosdex #category: references #category: o1 #category: notailsandmore #category: twitter #mod OwO

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