#<- retroactively now that this au exists :)

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

I have drawn more winged Mumbo!

I just think the idea of him accidentally getting wings out of the soul juicer incident is really funny

[anirritant]

another thing i was gonna organically explain through writing but it's too hard so im just gonna info dump shh

ok so. side effects of being attacked whilst travelling through dimensional holes. i have an idea for this for my au. i didn't think too hard on it so there might be holes in my reasoning bc im stupid but shut up you don't see the holes LOL

so. darkrai. his thing is nightmares. nightmares are dreams, dreams come from the subconscious mind, the subconscious mind draws from memory. so then my logic for my au is that, because it was darkrai attacking the hero, the side effects came in the form of permanent alterations to the hero that are directly related to darkari's powers.

his power over the subconscious mind, and therefore memories, led to amnesia.

(but why'd they also turn into a pokemon? uhhh something something, turning into something else is a common thing that happens in dreams, so that then manifested in reality??? shut up idk lol)

this leads into my explanation for darkrai's dimensional holes now being interdimensional in my au. it's because he was attacked by palkia specifically.

there isn't an explanation for him opening dimensional holes in the first place so i'm just leaving that blank LOL but him having that ability to begin with means he already had some ability to manipulate time. being attacked by the god of space whilst inside a dimensional hole led to that existing ability mutating, and now his own dimensional holes can cross into different realities altogether.

(hmm i might use this idea as an explanation for the hero's dimensional scream and darkrai's dimensional holes actually.. like at some other point far in the past they both got hit by dialga which led to them developing these time-related traits. not sure. i might also retroactively make darkrai's dimensional holes a different colour to signify that they've been permanently altered in some way hmm)

[pixies-and-poets]

In which I dare to rant about Paper Mario

So there's this discourse going around twitter right now about Paper Mario being an AU and Paper Mario not being the "real" Mario and if ANY of the PM games happened in "the real Mario world" or have parallels, do the characters exist outside of the Paper World, etc etc

And all I can think is like, damn, how unfortunate is it that Intelligent Systems deciding to use a charming and timeless art style back on the N64 led to this. The idea to use 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds to create a storybook feel eventually spiraled into the series' ENTIRE IDENTITY. Gameplay does not unite the whole Paper Mario series, depth of story does not, shared characters do not, only the art style and the idea of 2D vs 3D.

And it's a shame because the first PM was a lovely fairy tale that clearly followed in the footsteps of SMRPG as an extrapolation of what the Mushroom Kingdom could be, and how Mario's world works. It was also my first Mario RPG and had tremendous influence on me. Friendly Koopas and Goombas, the Star Spirits, wishes. It was called Mario Story in Japan and the paper aspect mattered nothing to the actual narrative. And then TTYD got a little cheekier with the paper abilities (with them being a fourth-wall-wobbling joke tacked on to what was clearly supposed to still be a Mario Story). And then SPM, much as I love it, bases its entire hook around 2D/3D in a way that's hard to reconcile with Mario's "normal" existence. And by Sticker Star they just said screw it, reboot it, everyone is 100% aware they are made of paper and that's like the series' whole deal now. And it has stayed there ever since.

For the last three games, you can say maybe there's a "real" Bobby out there or a "real" Captain T. Ode but it's impossible for their plots to take place in a world divorced from the craft universe unless we substitute in a lot of body horror and viscera (and even then, what of the Things? Etc). And that's ok for these games, they work within their own context and can be fun for what they are. But it's now got people thinking the first three games fold into this same AU. And you can blame Paper Jam for this but the PM series did it to itself. PJ just clearly spelled out the dual reality that Sticker Star and its follow-ups obviously necessitated. And now the whole series has retroactively been wrapped up into this Paper Universe.

Look, I know "Mario lore" doesn't actually matter, and most RPG characters never show up again even in their own series, and as long as you enjoy each game in a vacuum that's what matters. But it's frustrating that we've reached a point where PM characters have to be the odd ones out who may or may not "actually exist" or have actually met the "real Mario". Mallow is definitely real, Cackletta is definitely real but Chuck Quizmo- WHOA SLAM THE BRAKES, IDK ABOUT THAT ONE CHIEF. Thankfully most people don't give a shit about this drudgery and it won't stop people from drawing Vivian and Geno interacting, because it's just fun and good.

But my point is, I don't think the people working on the first PM (and TTYD) really could have foreseen the series evolving into what it is today, and it's unfair to wipe out their lovely narratives and relegate them to some kind of side universe not worthy of The Real Super Mario(tm) [especially because, taken in sum total of characters and vignettes, TTYD is the greatest Mario narrative there has ever been IMO]. SPM, so strange in both its style and its entire concept, is in some kind of weird limbo where I don't even really care what people think of it anymore, just let me enjoy my game that makes me cry every time in peace lmao

I can't think of another example of a series where an arbitrary stylistic gimmick (not a gameplay or story gimmick but a STYLISTIC gimmick) consumes it and becomes its entire thematic identity. Can you? It's Flanderization on the scale of a franchise, not just a character. Closest is perhaps the Yoshi series, where Yoshi's Island had a childlike crayon look to stand out on the SNES and fit the theme of Baby Mario, which got expanded to Yoshi's Story being a storybook and now we have craft themed Yoshi games. But it's still not entirely the same thing because the gameplay has remained somewhat consistent, if getting rather easier.

Anyway peace and love I just want Johnny Jones and Cortez to hang out

[justalittlestarguy]

Small Collection of Deltarune Musings

I see people constantly posting their Deltarune theories online so I decided to post mine in a corner of the internet.

Toby Fox & Deltarune's Origins

I feel like people when theorizing about Deltarune largely overlook how Deltarune came to be... it's enormously important to the timeline of events. We have to remember that Toby doesn't really compromise on ideas - I think it's a safe to assume that Deltarune of the past is largely still what Deltarune of now is.

Let's go over the facts real quick.

The idea for Deltarune came to Toby Fox in a dream he had in 2011 while he was at college. In the dream, he saw the ending to a video game and was determined to create it. Fox was also inspired by a collection of playing card designs posted on Tumblr by artist Kanotynes. Development of the game started in 2012, although it was abandoned before Fox created the first room.

(Source: Wikipedia page on Deltarune, cites a Nintendo article on Ch. 1)

We have to remember that Deltarune is the original. This is my core problem with people theorizing about Deltarune in the context of Undertale. While as an audience that is all we are privy to regarding Toby's world, we have to remember that Undertale came from Deltarune, not the other way around. If anything would refer to Undertale, that's either Toby messing with his audience or means something different in this context.

Deltarune is an AU to Undertale in one sense, but in many others, it's a prequel. I am in the full belief that Deltarune's events are before Undertale could ever happen. If Undertale and Deltarune were in the same universe, Undertale would 100% happen after it, but I don't think Toby was lying when he said that the events are largely unrelated.

In fact, I don't think Toby has ever once lied about his details about Deltarune. "They are connected in a sense" and "they are not in the same universe" can both be true at once. Toby is not even necessarily lying by omission, but moreso that as an audience we could not realistically grasp the timeline from a meta perspective. The only real outlier is "Deltarune is meant to be played by fans of Undertale" as expressly retroactive, and I think this is because Undertale fans will get something new out of his characters.

I think that the timeline largely explains a lot of factors that people theorize about and can't quite get to the bottom of, including...

W. D. Gaster

People talk about the fact that Gaster's fingerprints are all over Deltarune's narrative, and Andrew Cunningham went over all of Gaster's leitmotivic theories very well, better than I ever could. Like most Deltarune theorycrafting videos though, I got stuck on one line from the video, when talking about April 2012 (the song).

For April 2012... I don't know man. Even if Toby Fox crawled out from under my bed and handed me a ratified document professing that the quote here was 100% intentional, what would that really tell us beyond the fact that Gaster's theme has existed since at least 11 years ago? It would be interesting, sure, but not particularly insightful.

My liege Cunningham I must respectfully disagree. I believe that April 2012, if a real Gaster quote, actually tells us a lot about Gaster and why he's all over Deltarune. In terms of concrete information about plot details, the answer is small, but definitive. After all, Gaster escaping his confinement as "merely unused content that people love fan speculation over" would be quite interesting itself. We assume that he will show up, but aside from ANOTHER HIM, there's very little reason for him to.

...By the way, has anyone ever wondered why Gaster went unused in the first place?

I think people just think about it at the surface level. Gaster is unused, or died before the events of Undertale (or worse). He's got NPCs that refer to him in very vague ways, and he's a particularly hidden trinket of lore. When Toby anticipated people datamining the game, he didn't really hide his existence there all that much as some other things.

But if we remember that Deltarune was the original idea, that Undertale later springboarded off of, then I think that makes Gaster a lot more interesting. I don't think Gaster was EVER meant to be a part of Undertale's story in a major way. He's a Deltarune character that snuck his way into Undertale as an easter egg.

I do have a small shred of evidence to support this as well, with another character that gets explicitly mentioned in Undertale in a small capacity... Rudy, Noelle's father. ...At least in the alarm clock dialogue.

Rudy, similarly to Gaster, seemingly dies before the events of Undertale could ever take place, but still existed there. Largely, many of the characters are still the same or have counterparts in Undertale. Gaster being Ultra Hidden still had a presence there, and I think some of people's musings on connections to other characters have merit, but for the wrong reasons. (Being related to the skelebros with another font and Sans' machine are interesting notes, especially given that we haven't actually seen Papyrus in Deltarune yet...)

Chara & Deltarune's Release Schedule

I similarly think that Deltarune being a meta-prequel makes people talking about Chara also make sense. The idea of Chara and Kris being largely separate characters makes sense in a traditional story, and we largely lack evidence for it aside from a tease in Chapter 1. However, let's consider a new meta-detail: Deltarune's intentional release schedule.

When we played through Deltarune (known at the time as SURVEY_PROGRAM), we were left with two big twists. The first... the scene at the end where Kris seems to form a Chara-like grin with a knife, and throws our red heart into the birdcage. This is an obvious tease on Toby's part. There was little subtlety here, but it gave a lot of questions. The second is that THIS IS CHAPTER 1, not a demo.

Fast forward to the height of COVID, and Toby decides on a whim to release Chapter 2. This was...expressly NOT planned. Deltarune was meant to be in our hands in any close-to-complete form with the release of CHAPTER FIVE. So we are effectively given a peer into foreshadowing that wasn't even meant to be seen by us until we could continue further.

This is important because there are a few elements that Chapter 2 starts delivering upon but doesn't entirely go through with:

Kris as a "[Heart] on a [Chain]"

Anything involving the "Weird" route, straight up didn't exist in Ch. 1

A couple more Gaster-y details than Chapter 1

Spamton seemingly hints at the next few bosses

("WE DON'T NEED [Easels] OR [CRTs]"... seemingly implying our Ch. 3 Dark Crystal holder is a TV, and our Ch. 4 Dark Crystal holder is an easel [art related?])

("WE DON'T NEED ANY [Man, Woman, or Child] AT HALF PRICE" ...could mean a lot more, but seemingly refers to Chapter 5 in some way like the others, as he goes on about Mike afterwards.)

So what does all this mean for the Chara "reveal" at the end of Chapter 1? We were supposed to see it from the start, unlike Chapter 2, so where does that leave us?

Toby is intentionally setting an expectation.

I think Kris and Chara are related in more ways, but more explicitly, I think Kris' story is more pivotal to Undertale than one may think. We have to remember a few details about Chara.

1) Before Chara became everyone's favorite diagetic narrator, Chara was a kid who lived in a monster family. No more, no less. There's no reason to think Chara was insane before effectively escaping the narrative.

2) Chara still had a fascination with a few things in common with Kris. Knives and chocolate being a couple of them, and Asriel rounding it out. Asriel is Kris' big sibling, except a bit more literal this time compared to Chara.

3) Kris and Chara (as well as Frisk) are all intentionally non-binary or potentially agender altogether. Kris goes by they/them, and both Chara and Frisk never have explicit genders either, though that can be argued to be for other purposes such as character immersion (any/all).

4) Chara is a similarly deeply troubled individual as Kris, suffering from mental conditions that Toriel and Asgore are not very good at helping them get through. This leads to disastrous consequences when Chara takes their own life in Undertale.

So what does this mean for Kris?

I think many people assumed correctly when saying that Kris is Chara, but I believe it's more accurate to say that Kris IS Chara in Undertale, but with a new role.

Kris, Chara, and CONTROL.

We all understand at this point that Kris has a troubled relationship with autonomy, given that the player guides their actions during the plot of Deltarune. But if Kris is related to Chara, then we can ask a question - what do the two have in common?

Well for one thing, they both exercise a desire for control.

In a similar vein to Cunningham's video, I once watched a video talking about [Hyperlink Blocked] that was quite interesting, and I thought there was one theory as to what it was that doesn't get enough attention. (at around 50:50, I'm going to use some select quotes here)

Control Theory [...] Kris and Spamton both want control, and it makes sense that Spamton would offer this to Kris as a reward. [...] However, the one noticeable weak spot in this theory is in Snowgrave. You could argue that Kris is taking control of their life, but they are really not. If anything, they are robbing Noelle of her control, which isn't the same thing.

The line in question substituting Hyperlink Blocked in this context is:

"NO, I GET IT! IT'S YOU AND THAT [Hochi Mama]! YOU'VE BEEN [Making], HAVEN'T YOU! YOU'VE BEEN MAKING [Control]!! AND NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR OWN SUPPLY, YOU DON'T NEED ME!!!"

I respect Jabu's actual theory a lot on this one. [LOVE] in the context of Undertale makes a lot of sense and fills just about every quota. However, that's in the context of Undertale's terminology. We can't limit ourselves to just that. I don't think [LOVE] gets extra brownie points for just tying into Undertale, expressly for the reasons I've stated before. Deltarune's ideas came before Undertale's, and while some concepts are linked, they are not all the same. (See: the concept of a human SOUL and Determination not lining up either.)

Jabu has a point about Control, but only from a healthy mindset point of view. We have to consider the mindset and shoes of someone who lacks control.

Take... a controlling mother. One who lacks control over a lot of aspects of her life for one reason or another, and demands perfection from herself. One coping mechanism, no matter how wrong, is trying to seize the control over her sons. It's a way she can exercise having control over something in her life. It gives her room to have agency, even at the expense of her sons' agency. She could force her son to go to college, because she can't imagine any other path for him, and she never GAVE him a choice.

...Anyways.

This anecdotal example isn't just for shits and giggles. I really do want people to look in the shoes of someone who is deeply troubled by a lack of control and examine the Weird route with that in mind. Many people troubled by this go on to become manipulative people, or exercising their agency by using someone else's. In the weird route, Kris manipulating Noelle becomes his coping mechanism, and you enable their behavior with your actions.

So what does this mean for the normal route? Obviously it's at least a bit more healthy, and as a result I do expect (and look forward to) Kris butting heads with the player, not just as a way of coping or fighting back, but to wrestle control of the narrative for their own at some point. I don't think Kris becomes a villain in this context, but I do expect them to become an antagonist if the player is considered the protagonist.

All this lines up well for Kris, but then what is Chara? We know that Chara works through the player for the [Genocide] route in Undertale (its own "Weird" route) and that by the end Chara has taken full control away from the player. This is a Chara that never had the opportunity that Kris had to turn things around. This is a Chara fundamentally broken by their lack of control, and abuses it every chance they get once they do obtain it. And to top it all off, you hand it right to them at the end. They even exercise their control over the narrative with the creepy extra scene if you perform a Pacifist route on the same file as a Genocide route was previously completed.

...hey, isn't that similar to Kris' actions and Susie's actions that the player never has direct control over? Weird. Even expressly against the player's wishes too? Interesting.

Conclusion / TL;DR

The summation of my theorycrafting is built on the knowledge that Deltarune came first, and that Undertale builds off of this info, not the other way around. Many people theorycraft assuming the inverse relationship due to Undertale releasing first, but no one seems to ever step into the developer's shoes.

I believe this:

Kris and Chara ARE expressly related and not just for surface level observations - they both tell us something about **control**

Gaster is a Deltarune character that Toby knew would be important, but got scrapped for Undertale so it can tell its own story. He was left unused in Undertale because he was never meant to be an important part of it.

A lot of Chapter 2's foreshadowing is expressly information we are *not supposed to have* due to Deltarune's intended release schedule and for that reason is very volatile.

Deltarune is a meta-prequel to Undertale. Deltarune's ideas not only came first, but are the original, and if anything Undertale is a spiritual successor to what Deltarune will eventually become. As fucked up as that timing sounds.

Anyway like and subscribe for more stupidity

[joelletwo]

gintama time loop reading that i had while watching

(laid out for my own reference. this doesnt have to interest u guys.)

okay so like. watching gintama and getting to kintoki arc. what i knew was 1. i was getting into the anime art style changes i had varying feelings about which signaled 2. i was getting into the back half of gintama 3. what i knew about the back half of gintama is that utsuro exists, gintoki did something fucked up on that cliff that ppl cant stop talking about and drawing parallels to with every arc of gintama, and ppl (i sensed) think the writing of the ending is stupid

kintoki arc has yorozuya and tae promise:

before breaking Gintama The Series into a distorted au where the chars are WILDLY different but still play out their roles to their arc-concluding purposes. birthing in me the image of a gintama that can fill any shaped-hole you put it in and still have the same basic inherent form it moves towards (whatever happened on that cliff, which i sensed was being gestured at in kintoki arc w the beheadment seppuku but had no idea the fucking. extent of lol)

gintama making formal changes (ugly or lovely art style shifts, at some point a radical change in thrust of story with the introduction of utsuro as a final and plot-twisty villain) but (hoping that it's) remaining the same at heart... or being railroaded into being the same. somehow the yorozuya promise became about. being cognizant of being in the narrative timeloop** and being subjected to Circumstances. being cognizant that something was being taken from u (catharsis of ending--) and also inflicted on u (--replaced with episodic and genre-typical* endless storylines)

(*not a slam. just that gintama's storylines are all about like. accepting the horrors. which is a journey of experiencing the horrors in order to come to terms with them that is harrowing to be subjected to over and over and over again. [cest la vie]

**and timeloop was also being flavored by me understanding yoo joonghyuk orv's regressions as about the endless iterative failures of making progress on a journey of recovery from trauma. all timeloops are about that to me now.)

thought shelved until obi-one's arc where, although i understood him as an oboro figure, he was performing a shouyoutsuro role of being a dearly missed mentor figure who comes back for happy family times yayyyyy but oh no he came back Wrong (a disabled cyborg programmed to betray against his own will). and Evil (needs to be taken down, and the shimuras-through-gintoki have to be the ones to dismantle their own happiness that it turns out was always retroactively tinted by this grief).

the presentation of nostalgia as longing for a return to the past that cant actually be achieved. or rather, you can achieve it, but Time changes things, and the past you get back won't actually be the same.

this helps me shift what i know about utsuro (shouyou but Wrong) into being about. what actually isnt that textually present in the series? but has to be assumed, i think? bc like? of course? the desire to have shouyou back (tho now i ask: whose? gintoki's? again, not really... in the text?). you can have shouyou (idealized gintama timeperiod where everyone is happy and innocent) back! you can have all the shouyou (early days swagful gintama anime that i am constantly missing as i move into the future material) back that you want! and its gonna fucking suck (for the chars and for the audience)!

and that basically ends up being the framing thought i take with me into utsuro's introduction................... it gets lost the more i actually see him and late-game gintama for myself and gain the context i never had for everyones blogging i was seeing. but. still. the theme i understood to be what gintama was telling me. you cant get back what you lost. and if (when) you try, you only come face to face with what was damaged in the losing.

however...................................

the further i got into silver soul and through to the ending the more it was............ interesting but confusing that, as i put it, the chars were "fighting the representation of the dangers of Nostalgia with More Nostalgia"?

and still i dont know what to do with the ultimate last-pages ending of gintama being a return to the status quo (with cosmetic changes). yay we defeated the evil specter of our past that haunted us and kept us in the desire timeloop. now we can get back to the episodic timeloop that we spent the fight with the specter... desiring to get back. hm. well!

[eternal-moss]

Even with just two episodes Fionna and Cake managed to destroy me, and I’m definitely going to be heavily posting because I love this show so much already. Spoilers and rambling under the cut!! If you want to watch it but don’t have access to HBO, dm me~

They really hammered in the depressing urban theme in episode one, and of course Fionna is incredibly relatable to the struggle of the average person. Hearing swearing in Adventure Time without their usual goofy filler-words like ‘dillweed’ or something feels SO weird, my brain could barely wrap around it.

An implication is that the world Fionna and Cake exist in is literally just a construct of Simon’s mind, which is retroactively kind of predictable, but at the same time slightly insane. This is shown pretty early in episode one, when I saw that fountain, my immediate thought was ‘Betty?!?’, and yeah, those sorts of things kept happening, until the moment Cake literally comes out of Simon’s head.

Speaking of Simon

Jesus Christ man.. he’s depressed as hell. (In my opinion, Finn is too, but they’re handling it in different ways). I was not expecting the content of the show to be much darker, considering ‘Distant Lands’ was about the same rating as regular Adventure time but damn.. seeing Simon hyperventilating hit me a little too hard, especially when he started pulling at his hair.

Be prepared for me to talk about Simon nonstop from here on out, he’s been a blorbo of mine for a long time now and this just relit that flame. Seeing him lying in mud with actually-rendered-red-blood felt so weird and harrowing. I was so happy when he decided to call Marcy and Peebs, and sad when they didn’t pick up on his obviously not too great mental state, but if they had there wouldn’t really be much of a show premise, so I’m fine with that (although sad on his behalf. Mans is suffering)

Anyway. I am a sucker for domestic Bubbline, and their silly antics at the tattoo shop did make me happy even if Simon was getting ignored. I am preparing for some heavy angst when Marcy inevitably realises what’s happening.

One theme that I felt heavily is that the show has sort of ‘grown up’. Even with Obsidian and Together again being set in the close and far off future, they didn’t feel like this. At the end of stakes, Marceline tells Peebs that she finally felt she had ‘grown up’- and that Bubblegum grew up with her (ironically they were both children at the same time, with the mothergum formed in the apocalypse).

This time period is Bubbline in their reckless young adulthood (as much as immortals can be), when the two were coded as older teenagers in the main show. They’re having fun, and trying new things. The other end of the young adult scale is Marshal Lee, Gumball (I didn’t catch his name) and Fionna of course, who are living in a bit of a grittier reality. Being surrounded by these characters who the show expects you to have grown up with is a really weird experience, but I kind of love it.

I really love the ‘modern au’ (I couldn’t think of a better phrasing, sorry) trio, Gumball (I know that’s not his name, my apd couldn’t catch it and there wasn’t subtitles) is so sweet (no pun intended) and a faithful genderbend to Bubblegum while having distinct differences.

Marshall Lee, that madman that he is, is still breaking hearts years later. I tell you, hearing his voice again made me swoon a little. I love the choice they made to make him visually black and it makes so much sense considering Marcy’s mother and also being voice acted by Donald Glover. I wonder what Hunson Abadeer is like in the Fionaverse (a better name although a bit confusing), being mentioned directly by both Lee and Fionna as his mother.

Anyway these are my primary thoughts splattered on a page, I’ll be rebloging like crazy from now on

[mcybree]

🌓 + ❄️ + 🌌

🌓 - opinions on watcher lore?

(warning for any onlookers I am a hater in this one. avert your eyes)

I think it’s fun in passing, like I have fun with it when I make an AU and have to incorporate it in a silly way but I feel as though watcher “KILL EACH OTHER WE MUST FEED” brand of interpretations undermine the entire narrative by tossing aside every character’s own agency and reducing their internal struggles to set-ups by immoral gods. There is only so much “I dont want to do this but I have to :( the watchers told me so” a story can take before it becomes the narrative happening *to* all of the characters, rather than the characters making their own bad decisions which takes away all the fun for me. similarly, watcher grian has always bothered me but I only ever put into words why a few days ago— If I was writing the life series, I would look take one look at Grian’s character and separate grian (watcher lore) and grian (the guy) into two different characters. I’ve never seen watcher grian incorporated in a way that compliments his character or says anything about who he is as a person. The Watchers are a punchline to me <\3

❄️ - be honest, which character do you care about the least?

I have thought extensively about every character at some point in my year long hyperfixation hellscape *except* for Etho and Impulse; through nature of being a scott megabuild mutual I care about Etho now like I get it but Impulse… im sorry man. I have still yet to get it I’ll keep trying though. I cant make myself write something without feeling that I have a grasp on how everyone involved thinks and acts I could not live with myself if I made every impulse fan point at me and go HE WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY THAT!!!! before rightfully banishing me to the beyond

🌌 - what happens when the players die?

Okay so. To me. The games are set in a dubious state of reality, like a simulation but theyre still made of flesh and blood and the trees are still breathing and the dirt is still dirt. I’m going to cite the infinity train car coding for how I sort of imagine this works… where its all living breathing thinking feeling but the organics of it are still attached to adjustable values behind the scenes. This is all to say that none of the players ever really sleep— the games existing in this dubious state of reality allows for adjustments to be made and this was one of them. So when they *die* die, the memories they gathered throughout the game are sort of flipped through and finalized in this window of time before the next game, creating a warped nonsensical dream sequence loosely based on the events of the game that they experience until the next one. I visualize this as a sort of psychedelic drug trip combination of all sorts of familiar places and people merging together but eerie nightmare purgatory dreams like being at an empty convenience store at night while echoes surround you is just as likely tbh.

TLDR what happens when the players die is whatever makes the coolest visuals for an animatic SORRY. Like if I’m being completely honest it’s whatever I need it to be to tell the story I made this up retroactively,

[luxraydyne]

I am very invested in the idea of an eitoku high era prequel (<- biggest manaka fan I know) and am interested to know your ideas for it? Putting a question mark at the end of that sounds weird but. This is an ask I guess

me 'n anon right now

tbh i have less than ideas and more like a big globule of vaguely channeled feelings knocking around in my brain lmao. from what little we see of her manaka seems like such a charming, bright, optimistic young woman, and with the trio having such different backgrounds and approaches to their lives i so want to see the three of them in action and what experiences caused them to form such a powerful bond such that we see even just in the awful horrible (albeit wonderfully done) snippet we get in aitsf. like hitomi and renju's conversation about baby iris and 'a war is about to begin between you and the baby' is hilarious and sweet in a way that is so indicative of their dynamic i want to see all three putting their heads together over something. i guess something somewhere between aitsf's real-world investigation sequences, a very pared back persona 4, maybe a dash of ace attorney or even older point-and-click mystery-adventure type games, a serious, but very local (like, within the school sort of local), contained sort of plot they bring into their personal life out of a combined sense of curiosity, naivete, and frustration at a lack of agency in their own lives, that steadily spirals out of their control in some way without becoming, yknow, a literal apocalypse level disaster. branching end pathways could be tricky, for one, knowing from the jump there is one precise complicated scenario we have to end up with in at least one "canon", and for two, also having to weave in throughout some pretty major side-happenings with renju's entrapment by the kumakuras, hitomi as an only child dealing with the sudden death of her parents, manaka meeting so sejima and becoming his "mistress", however that happened (this is reminding me more and more of a more mature but equally nutty persona plot actually, minus the demon fighting, although that could also be a fun romp, and that draws me back to my psyncer!hitomi/renju revenge au. anyway.) like for a writer i am in fact shit at plotting out anything lol.

i suppose as a footnote to all this i should add that a dedicated prequel letting us see more of them would probably remove much of the vague, ghost-like presence that manaka and renju both have in aitsf, retroactively (retroactively?? would that be right??? for something made after but set before?? idk) making aitsf less interesting. but part of what makes characters like those two fun is the almost-not-quite-futile effort trying to reconstruct a sense of a whole complex living person out of the bitty unstable artifacts they left, allowing them to persist beyond death and intrude on the present in this fragile, timeless state (and that's real haunting the narrative baybeeee), which is kind of what we're doing with this exercise, dressed up as "imagining the fake eitoku gang prequel which would be way too grounded and non-meta, non-sci-fi to ever actually exist anyway"

[giffingthingsss]

Destroying Romulus. It's a non-starter for me. You don't blow up a planet you haven't sucked dry of its creative potential.

It makes sense that new trek kept that part because obviously Kurtzman wasn't going to ignore his own canon. So I get it. But still no.

Unless you want to argue that the 2009 movie and the properties that follow its thread are all AU. In which case, fine. Do whatever you want. (Why they didn't take that position and dodge all gatekeeping is beyond me. )

I might feel differently if the last three seasons of Enterprise existed. With the Romulan war and all, that potential could have been tapped. Once the orange has been sucked dry, fine. Throw it away.

But they don't exist so no.

Now, you could fix this by going back and filling in that picture. There's nothing (or nothing more than a few logistics and an audience that gives a crap) stopping you from retroactively fixing this. But the actors are fast approaching the mark beyond which they would be able to plausibly pull it off. You can still do it, but you've got to move. Now. Your time is up in 10, 9, 8 -

Oop, gotta do a Starfleet Academy show, never mind.

[purgetrooperfox]

leo. what? you can't just say this. i want to hear more now 👀

OUGH well this kind of just came from and also spawned some thoughts about an AU where Nocte and Dara both survive the fall of the Republic/rise of the Empire/Jedi purge/pick your atrocity

in "canon", Nocte gets folded into the Imperial Army and ultimately dies there. @kit-fisto-obsessive can explain Dara's "canon" better than me if they want 👉👈

but basically the thought in my brain is what if Nocte got out. escaped the Empire. got to try to make his own way. I've bounced around ideas about him providing kind of. uhm. underground medical care to other escaped clones and Those Personally Victimized By The Empire at first, then aligning himself with the Rebellion when it gets off the ground. he'd be mostly still doing medcare but would 100% volunteer for infiltration missions, bound by "I got out so it's my responsibility to get as many of my vod'e out as possible". a sense that he has to retroactively earn his freedom. plus it's a use for the ol' rusty ARF training

SO. somewhere along the line, his path crosses Dara's again. probably before the Rebellion. he keeps an ear to the ground for sightings of Jedi who survived, especially for his Jedi. it could be that he heard about Dara and went looking, but I'm partial to the idea that she heard about this mobile clinic that takes Force sensitives and took the gamble because she needed help, and that's how they reunited

and then you get this bittersweet rekindling, this process of learning to trust each other after everything they both went through. figuring out if this is something worth the growing pains. but they ultimately stick together, if only for scraps of comfort and familiarity in the darkness at first. eventually they get some level of security, some freedom from scrutiny as time passes, and they keep growing and learning and trusting. they find the love they thought was lost, even without Kit

but he lingers in the spaces between them, always

they help out the Rebellion in whatever capacity they can but another Thought that sticks with me is that Nocte has to reach a point where he feels justified in existing for himself. not just as an aid in whatever fight or to free his family or alleviate his guilt. he can just Be. maybe that means fucking off to some remote planet with Dara where they can idk hang out on beaches and look at cool rocks and retire in peace

anyway this is rambling and probably incomprehensible bc I'm sick and exhausted but I care and love them so much and they deserve to be happy

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Okay, but there being two Ingo's would be existentially horrifying. Which one is the original? Who's the copy, and who's the original? Is it right to leave the other in the past? How would the other Ingo handle this realization? (I HC that the one in Unova's the copy for Maximum Angst, but who can really tell who's real?)

i mean let's not pretend this is like revolutionary. this is the teleporter paradox and my god has it been run into the ground by every scifi show in existence. ...sorry, i just have strong feelings about this particular topic and how annoying pop philosophy is

anyway "how do we qualify Personhood" is like one of the most foundational questions in philosophy that i think there is, right up there with "how much of our perceived reality is real" and such. and now we're getting kind of absurdly serious for a pokemon au, but ingo is actually a wonderfully screwy edge case. he has been physically transported to a radically different point in spacetime, and also he has zero memories. this attacks a common-sense definition of sameness on two fronts. he's the same person he was before because he occupies the same material form (...except we can't prove that he does, because who knows what happened in the distortion world). he's the same person because there's an unbroken rope of memories tying him back to his past (...except that rope has been severed, and even if it's repaired, you can't retroactively un-sever it for that period of time). even setting aside Cloning Problems, there is materially no way for him to prove he's still himself.

if there's one of them, this is a cool thing for pokemon people with free time to argue over, and probably a thing for him to angst about at 3am while falling asleep, but it's not really a material problem. he's ingo by process of elimination: nobody else is doing it. his personal identity is free real estate. but what if there's already an ingo though. one who arguably has more claim to the identity than him, no less! where does that leave him? this isn't so much a question of copy vs. original as it is a question of "required characteristics for Counting As A Person."

there's a little trick of sameness that's used for similar problems that we can apply here to like, give a baseline: differentiating between numerical vs. qualitative sameness. things that are qualitatively the same have all the same attributes, but something that is numerically the same has the same physical matter. that doesn't really solve the problem though. it gives us more labels to slap on the two, but which one is actually ingo? which one gets to be the subway boss?

the thing that's really unfortunate for hisui-ingo is there's kind of no answer that doesn't leave him the one who Doesn't count: he has definitively less memory and less physical consistency tying him back to the Original. unless you go with "both" but that, while nice, isn't super helpful for sorting out paperwork, ya feel.

going around any question like this tends to leave you with "this is actually a problem of not having the correct language to apply," so i feel like there's an argument to be made for a theory of A Person Is a Pigeonhole. there's a box with your name on it and as long as you retain a rope of characteristics tying you back to every former iteration, you still fit in the box. but the box is two small for two separate people to both fit in there, so a second person would need a new box, which could be very similar but would still be numerically different.

...good god i'm rambling aren't i

[the-lonelybarricade]

Uhg loved cat!rhys and can’t wait to read more!

Apparently everyone in the comments had the same thought as me but “The beasts live in our village and wear the faces of men” was such a good line. Straight facts nesta

I love the way you’re writing the sisters relationship, it feels very real to me. They’re all different people and it can be tumultuous at times but overall supportive and loving.

Also forgot papa archeron existed in this au, in my mind he was dead lol

Brb gonna reread fox!lucien now! Xoxo

Ahhh thank you anon!! I've been meaning to respond to my inbox all day and just have not had a moment of time! I wanted to get the next chapter out as soon as I finished work so I kind of did things in reverse order haha

Anyway, I'm so pleased you enjoyed chapter 1! 🥰 And your feedback on the sisters' dynamic means so much to me! They all love each other in their own little way and I try hard to give them a good relationship while also staying true to that.

Papa Archeron existing was a choice I made in They Are the Hunters when I didn't think about building this world out. He's been a bit of a mild inconvenience plot-wise and I considered retroactively killing him but instead he's just there 😂

[inamindfarfaraway]

Idea for your Villain!Knuckles AU

What if this was the reason why Silver chose Knuckles to be the leader of the resistance? Because he suffered first-hand what would happen had the last echidna been led astray. His only hope lying in trying to go back and convince the red menace to save rather than destroy.

Even after saving the day, Silver can never look at Knuckles the same way again. Now he knows just how fragile Knuckles’s mentality is, and how easy it would be for him to take the entire world down with him.

YES

I love the idea of Silver’s future suddenly, retroactively going to shit because one of his ancient friends turned evil and him going back in time specifically to prevent it. Premature intervention. It was Knuckles in the Forces prequel comic, but maybe another day it’s Tails. Or Amy. Or what to Sonic’s mind is a casual hangout with Silver is the reason Dark Sonic isn’t canon in the games (yet). Surprisingly rarely is it Shadow, though. Or maybe when it’s Shadow, he tends to destroy the world so thoroughly that future inhabitants like Silver just don’t exist. And you do not want to know about the evil Chaotix timeline.

At this rate, Silver constantly having to save his time period from the butterfly effect is gonna be his villain origin story. Hmm…

This is my Villain!Knuckles AU for context.

Thanks for the ask!

[lividria]

Pikmin: Global Survey: Alph(a Wraith)

So one of my friends wanted to make a bunch of shitpost nintendo game ideas for something and he accidentally timed it right at the start of my pikmin hyperfixation so i went way beyond it and accidentally just made an entire pikmin AU essentially, it was meant to be pikmin 5 (and beyond) but for the sake of not retroactive consequences when/if pikmin 5 comes out i will call it Pikmin: Global Survey because the plot is pikmin 4's research team (plus other people) trying to explore as much of PNF-404 as possible to study stuff

so i'll start talking about it with the darkest & most serious idea of them all that started as a series of jokes and ended as the set-up for one of the funniest ideas i've ever had, what happens to alph

when i was writing the google doc from before i was taking this even remotely seriously i just wrote in the character section "Alph is dead." to explain why i brought back brittany and only brittany besides her just being my favorite of the koppaites (there was an entire gag planned where charlie was busy in a war in pikmin 5, mentioned being MIA in pikmin 6 and then pikmin 7's credits shows he's somehow on PNF-404 like pikmin 4 does with louie but that's the end of the series so he never gets an actual role), but then i realized i could work with that and it spiraled from dumb joke to extremely screwed up plotline

so the idea became like, for whatever reason koppai is going through a civil war after pikmin 3 (which i think takes place after pikmin 4 and i will treat it as such), and one of the sides decides to go to PNF-404 because they don't want to be in koppai anymore and they know there's food there as you can tell they didn't really think about it, and among other people charlie & alph are sent to get them to not do that but those 2 in particular are incredibly terrified of what's going to happen to all those people because they've seen all sorts of monsters, the plasm wraith in specific being yea, and given that they had siblings in pikmin 4 they could've heard about other shit like the water wraith which doesn't help

go fucking figure they crash, and alph and his ship lands right in front of the formidable oak (no idea where the other crew members went and it doesn't matter), and he's obviously panicking, and then the plasm wraith rears up behind him, clearly remembering him as one of the people who took olimar, and skewers him

with such a death you won't be surprised he comes back as a ghost, specifically the Alpha Wraith (i don't know if he counts as an actual wraith but what else would you call him, the Alpha Spirit? ...wait that doesn't sound bad actually), which is a bunch of concentrated alpha radiation (i love puns... does that count as a pun i don't know definitions) vaguely in the shape of a monster soul but with alph's face, hair and ears (but made of the radiation still obviously), and since he was the keen engineer in life he can control machinery & metal in general (he can probably like levitate metal around and assemble it into stuff but i haven't thought about it enough) but inhabiting anything for too long causes it to rust so he constantly has to jump around or stay vessel-less (i looked it up and radiation can actually cause rust but idk the details), but he obviously would prefer not just hanging out because radiation, if someone touches him that'd be bad, and by the time the research team finds him he's completely destroyed the spaceship he showed up with and i haven't figured the rest out from there besides him joining the team sorta lol but brittany is obviously very conflicted about the news because on one hand alph is dead but on the other hand he still exists sorta (but can't be taken out of pnf-404 because of course)

now for the actual reason i'm posting this, all of that leads up to this one idea for a gag comic that i was mentally assaulted with that i unfortunately cannot bring to fruition, where like, alph is obviously still not on good terms with louie after pikmin 3, so louie walks into whatever ship he's using and watches in terror as it begins to read out AM's hate monologue from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, louie stares up in terror with his horrible bulging eyes, while alph & brittany lose their shit in a nearby bush watching this happen

so this is a desperate attempt to see if anyone sees this and brings that to life because if you were there at the time and saw my reaction when that specific thought formulated in my brain it'd look like a ghost strangled me but if you saw my oatchi wraith post you know i am not particularly capable of creating it myself, so here we go

if anyone is interested in more ideas from this entire au almost-fanfic thingy whatever you'd call it i have a lot more to talk about with this idea but i don't think much of it is anywhere close to alph's part in most departments lol, sorry for the rambling & tangents but if you thought i was rambling too much in this post you're really in for it when/if i get into the other plot points

[bemusedlybespectacled]

It’s also not even just asking if you wasted your life, at least in my case. It’s a chunk of your life just gone. the first movie (which is how I found out about it) came out when I was starting the third grade, and the last one came out the summer after I graduated high school. obviously it wasn’t the only book I read, nor was it even my favorite series, but it was a constant presence for ten years of my fucking life before you even get into the subculture that existed even after the last movie came out. 

the cosplay I made for the midnight release of the sixth book when I was eleven? the one where I handmade Ravenclaw badges using cereal box cardboard and safety pins? completely tainted. it’s not a happy memory anymore.

the extremely detailed canon-divergence AU fic that I brainstormed with my (now dead) college roommate over a period of months? fucking ruined. that’s a whole-ass part of my relationship with her that I no longer have and can never get back.

every time I felt like shit because I was being bullied, and identified with Hermione and Luna Lovegood so I didn’t feel so alone? the time I broke down into tears because I got to the bit in Deathly Hallows where the trio sees Luna’s “friends friends friends” painting and felt seen? NOPE. THAT’S FUCKED. I NOW RETROACTIVELY STILL FEEL LIKE SHIT.

it’s like finding out that your mom is a serial killer. like, obviously the actual victims are the people who were murdered, and the worst part of the situation is that your mom fucking murdered people, but it also means that a fundamental part of your life, a huge chunk of the events that shaped who you are as a person, is just fucking gone now.

What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

[thatone-highlighter]

transmasc andrias who is also a pretty girl has huge titties is amazing I love it. Yeah give me context !!

Exactly. You Get It