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I bought scrivener way back in 2021 and just never got around to trying it, but holy shit this so much better than word or google docs, i can't believe it took me this long to use it

#wishbone was getting too complicated to be jumping between different google docs and my outline so i thought to try something new and wow #this is so much better #and very satisfying to use

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how was the fall

Uf!Sans belongs to Fella/Underfell

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the original:

sorry i got struck with a vision

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“IS THIS YOUR REVENGE? KEEPING ME AWAKE ALL NIGHT WITH YOUR TOSSING AND TURNING?” 

These Masks We Wear - Chapter 5

(This is so freaking dark, but if you click on it you can actually see the outline.)

#THIS IS SO GOOD #the eyelights omfg

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if you wanna talk about it itd be great to hear how your characters feel about anger and forgiveness, i am intrigued

Ohohohoh I would LOVE to talk about it

Quinn:

So uncomfortable with anger that she’s almost incapable of recognising it in herself, much less expressing or acting on it.

Too willing to offer forgiveness to everyone, regardless of whether they deserve it.

The electrician:

So comfortable with feeling anger that they enjoy it.

Unwilling to accept forgiveness even if freely given. Especially then, even. There’s no amount of work they can do to feel like they’ve earned it.

The Second Mage:

Uses anger as a shield and a weapon and a method of self-flagellation and a heavy blanket to smother everything else.

Unable to forgive anyone or anything, because forgiving means moving on.

#rtc asks #wishbone asks #thank you!!!! #Quinn Lawson #the electrician #the second mage

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yes all my favorite characters are desperate to be loved. no i don’t think that says anything about me

#me exclusively writing characters who have complicated relationships with anger and forgiveness #the word doc is a mirror lmao

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Secret to getting to know other fans on tumblr is reblogging. This sounds like a trap to get you guys to reblog art and fics and gifs which yes that’s an added benefit but also the way you get a feel of followers or mutuals is the little comments in the tags of a post like subtle little whispers and you start to recognise names like oh that’s the one who’s always nice to artists or that’s the funny one or maybe they have a funny queue pun tag or maybe there can be a little prev tags interaction like that’s how you start creating your own little likeminded souls club here. Also you get to put pretty art and fics and gifs on your blog

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obsessed where stories where it is like. the mistakes are unfixable and the worst thing that could happen happened and nothing can go back to how it was. but there was still love in this and love will continue after this and love endures always.

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Me when math.

I saw this image when I was scrolling through Pinterest and I immediately thought of Nightmare when it comes to his little daycare of Bad Sans lol. I don't rly think cannon Nightmare acts like that but the idea of tired dad NM is too good to pass up lol

#qldksdcbzmp

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re-reading my own fic because the author has exactly my taste in tropes, ships the same ships in the right way, and also shares my sense of humour. what a find, what a revelation. i hope they write more of this sort of thing.

#can someone tell that bitch to write the next chapter

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A cowgirl puts a nickel in an El Paso parking meter to hitch her pony, October 1939. Photograph by Luis Marden, National Geographic

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fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.

#boop

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pissing each other off as foreplay

#funny that this can fit both of my ongoing fics with the Same Guy

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Soulmates in Wishbone, or how I think the soulmate trope would shape the culture of a Swapfell Underground.

Disclaimer: worldbuilding is not one of my strengths lol, so take this more as rambly what-if speculation than anything concrete. If I end up contradicting any of this in the fic, shhh no I didn't.

@blurry-palmetto wanted to hear more about soulmates in my swapfell soulmate au fic Wishbone, so instead of replying to their comment like a normal person, here’s a whole long ass post below the cut!

Here’s a recap of what we know about how soulmates work in the fic:

The soulmate bond is solidified by physical touch.

Soulmates share HP, LV, and EXP.

Soulmates can share physical sensation.

Soulmates can access each other’s thoughts, feelings, and Intent.

They can share their own of all of the above with their soulmate.

They can also prevent their soulmate from accessing these things.

Both of the above are learned skills that require effort to execute. Without knowing how to be intentional with the bond, you just kinda end up transmitting everything to your soulmate all day long.

Soulmates are unable to FIGHT each other.

The death of one soulmate results in the death of the other(s).

Extended time away from your soulmate(s) results in soulmate sickness. For Papyrus, this manifested as feelings of itchiness, restlessness, insomnia, palpable anxiety. Increased physical distance between him and the reader worsened these symptoms.

Soulmates are a strictly monster thing: all monsters have a soulmate, and those soulmates can be other monsters, or they can be humans. There are no human/human soulmate bonds. Two humans can be soulmates with the same monster, though.

Any number of people can be soulmates in many different configurations. In Wishbone, the reader is in a wishbone, V-shaped bond with Sans and Papyrus, where they’re the middle bit and the brothers branch off from them.

Before the events of the first chapter of Wishbone, there were no mage/monster soulmate bonds.

Nobody has ever survived an attempt to break a soulmate bond.

For Wishbone, it was important to have two differing cultural views on soulmates because I wanted there to be a huge disparity between how Sans and Papyrus approach the bond compared to the reader. This choice was made for a few reasons, but mostly for maximum angst potential lmao (the driving force behind most Wishbone related decisions). I wanted the soulmate phenomenon to be deeply respected and revered by the monsters, a cultural tenet akin to children wearing stripes and respect for the monarch. A Big Deal, basically. This is juxtaposed with the reader’s disdain and ignorance - they have no idea how any of this works because soulmates weren't a Thing before the barrier broke, and they don’t really care to know, because the bond is nothing but a Big Problem they plan on rectifying. Yay to miscommunication and misunderstanding!

Now, for the monsters to feel that reverence, there has to be some advantage to having a soulmate Underground, right? Particularly in the cut-throat environment of Swapfell (or any Fellverse in general) - if this was just another glaring weakness ready to be exploited, everyone would do their best to avoid meeting their soulmate.

This brings us to:

Soulmates in a Fell Underground; what’s so good about having a soulmate, anyway?

First off, let’s talk about the downsides.

The biggest one is if your soulmate dies, that’s it for you too. You share HP and if you’re both drained, you’re dust. No second chances. This is obviously a massive, easily exploited weakness, and one that I think would’ve shaped the way soulmates cohabitate and interact with each other. I mention in the second chapter of Wishbone that typically the weaker monster(s) will move in with the stronger; this is one of those things that would’ve arisen to protect against this weakness. I think collars would exist for a similar reason in this universe.

Soulmate sickness. An issue if you’re separated from your soulmate, but it would’ve been much rarer Underground. In terms of sheer physical space available, it’d be pretty hard to get physically far enough to cause major issues, and like Papyrus says in Wishbone, soulmates don’t try to avoid each other. The situation in the fic is practically unprecedented.

For the stronger monster, you’re now responsible to ensure the survival of someone(s) weaker than you. Kinda hard to just look out for number one now. You’ve got a whole other person/group of people to keep safe and happy. That's a lot of pressure!

For the weaker monster, you might now find yourself the target of someone seeking to hurt your stronger soulmate(s).

All of that really sucks. There’s gotta be some pretty good benefits to offset all of those downsides.

And there are!

You get to share HP, EXP, LV. We’ve touched on the negatives, but there’s a huge advantage to this too. Not everyone’s bound to a soulmate. In a fight with an unbound person vs a bound one, the bound one theoretically has access to double the power.

Having a soulmate gives you a built-in ally, someone you can trust to have your back. They’ll always have your best interests at heart, because their interests are yours. Underground, this would’ve been an advantage to have over your unbound counterparts who can’t really trust their allies fully.

There’s also all the stuff Papyrus said when he was telling the Second Mage about the origin/purpose of soulmates. Monster souls are composed of love, hope, and compassion, and they inherently seek connection with others. He explains that soulmates have existed for as long as monsters can remember, as a way for souls to find individuals who can fulfill their need for hope, trust, love, and compassion. In an Underground where finding this with others was scarce, this is a big bonus. (As a side note, I think this adds a new layer to Sans’ glove wearing. The gloves actively prevent him from touching others and finding a soulmate. For a tactically minded person who is very aware of the strategic bonus of a soulmate, it says a lot that he's purposely passing up on all of those benefits.)

And that’s just all the purely practical stuff. Finding your soulmate(s) is highly romanticised. A bright spot in the otherwise bleak Underground. The stuff of fairytales - literally, Sans talks about telling those stories to Papyrus in chapter 2. There’s a reason Papyrus is so excited to be a soulmate (note that he’s not fussed about who that soulmate actually is).

Okay, but now the barrier’s broken and everyone’s above ground. Now what?

Great question, hypothetical person!

Firstly: a whole lotta monsters find their soulmates in humans. Remember how monsters can have soulmates in monsters and/or humans? This means that lots of monsters Underground were unable to meet their human, above ground soulmates. Now that they're free, this changes. This is a mostly good thing for the monsters, but I'm sure that a lot of humans in pre-existing relationships now had to grapple with the fact that they're now telepathically bound to their literal soulmate after accidentally brushing hands at the grocery store.

In the wider context of human society, I think there’d be mixed reactions, but what’s more shocking, monsters having soulmates or the mere existence of monsters in the first place? I think by the time everyone gets over the monster thing, the whole monster soulmate thing would be a lot less crazy in comparison.

In the context of mage society - before Wishbone, this just wasn’t an issue, because everyone thought that monsters can’t have mage soulmates. We’re now dealing with the fallout from realising that isn’t the case in the fic.

Where does this leave us?

A fun angsty playground to play around in, full of pits and spikes and traps, in my opinion! There’s so much cultural stuff that the reader insert in Wishbone just doesn’t get. Rules and norms and expectations that they know nothing about and can't really learn on their own, because so much of this knowledge is passed down through oral storytelling.

This is just another issue the characters need to contend with - they aren’t on equal footing for a million reasons, and one of those reasons is that they all know and believe different things about the bond and nobody is communicating about any of it. Well, Papyrus tried, but was shut down immediately. Which makes sense - he tried because he wants to have a proper, close bond with the reader, the kind he's wanted his whole life, and the reader shut it down because they have no interest in any of that. Not to mention round-the-clock glove wearing Sans, who has some pre-existing Issues with the idea of having a soulmate altogether.

But like Papyrus said, the supposed purpose of the bond is to help people get their fix of love, hope, and compassion, things that all three of them need if they ever want to be truly happy. In particular; Papyrus is desperate to be loved, and also doesn’t love himself; Sans has put so much space between himself and compassion as a protective measure over the years that it’s almost completely foreign to him, both feeling it for others (note that the Second Mage invokes reluctant compassion in him almost immediately, despite how much he hates them) and accepting it from those who care about him; and the reader, someone so focussed on building a better future for others, is completely without hope on a personal level because they see no future for themselves in the wake of the loss of their twin.

So, in theory, this whole soulmate thing could be good for all of them. I guess we'll just have to see if that's the case in practice.

#July talks wishbone #I am so sorry blurry-palmetto for this info dump #but. if you or anyone has more questions. pls send them my way #walking through it like this was actually very fun and helpful for me

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That post that's like "stop writing characters who talk like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy" really blew the door wide open for me about how common it's become for a character's emotional intelligence to not be taken into consideration when writing conflict. I remember the first time I went to therapy I had such a hard time even identifying what I was feeling, let alone had the language to explain it to someone else. Of course there are plenty of people who've never been to therapy a day in their life who are in tune to their emotions. But even they would have some trouble expressing themselves sometimes. You have to take into account there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable expressing themselves and people who think they're not allowed to feel certain ways. It also makes for more interesting conflict to have characters with different levels of understanding.

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Drew this out of this fandom’s lack of Papyri.

#HAHAFHRJQPRDSMKZ