#Gerson I’m coming for you next >w>

[theswedishpajas]

Had a thought yesterday

[Clean version + bonus below]

[krat395]

Ticklish Tests of Patience and Perseverance (Chapter 5)

With the conclusion of Patty’s tickle time, it’s now Perry’s turn to be on the receiving end of some inevitable tickles! ;) Is he more ticklish than Patty? Or less ticklish? Or are he and Patty equally ticklish? Also, are any of the turtle monsters planning to help Patty put one heck of a smile on her big brother’s face? Daisy, most likely will! But what about Gerson and Alvin? Hmm…

 Undertale(c) Toby Fox.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 6

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TICKLISH TESTS OF PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE

 Chapter 5: Perry's "Demise"

 Perry and Patty have had a pretty wholesome evening so far. But it's not over yet! With Patty's tickle session, a family dinner, and helping Patty with her Kyle situation out of the way, there was just one last thing to do before bed. Tickle Perry! :D During Patty's tickle session, Daisy told Perry that she wasn't going to allow him to slip by without any tickles tonight. Now, whether or not she meant every word of that statement, Perry is uncertain. Because during their family dinner, Daisy and Patty never brought up such a topic! Not once! By not reminding Perry of his later tickle session, Daisy and Patty both gave Perry the impression that they may have forgotten all about it and if they did, that means he's in the clear as long as he keeps his mouth shut the rest of the night. But the two sisters didn't forget and once Perry realized that they didn't forget, it was too late! Once he finished his supper, he went upstairs to his bedroom and waiting for him in his bedroom was Daisy, whom Perry thought was grading homework assignments in a different room upstairs since that's exactly what she told him she was going to be doing during the next while when she left the dinner table minutes before he did. She lied. But for a good reason! To catch him off guard!

 Perry: Whew! Safe! *sighed Perry in relief, right after entering his bedroom and locking the door*

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Safe? Safe from what? *asked Daisy cheekily, revealing herself to Perry and startling him at the same time moments later

 Perry: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! *Perry screamed like a girl in response*

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! What? You didn't think I forgot, did you?

 Perry: I-I-I-I w-w-was kind of h-h-hoping you d-d-did f-f-f-forget! *stammered Perry, shuddering at the thought of his turtle sister tickling him to precious pieces*

 Daisy: Heeheehee? Me? Forget about tickling you? Not in a million years! *teased Daisy, slowly approaching Perry with her hands up and making claw gestures with her fingers like the playful big sister she is*

 Perry: *frightened gasp* Eeeeeeeeeeeeep! Wait! Wait a second! What am I doing?! I'm next to my door; I can just dash out of my room! Hehehe. Later, Turtle Sis! You can't tickle me if you can't catch me!

 Upon remembering that he was standing next to his bedroom door, Perry attempted to make a break for it and he probably would've escaped from Daisy had it not been for Gerson and Alvin standing right outside his bedroom door to stop him getting too far.

 Alvin: Haha! Going somewhere, Perry?

 Perry: Yipe! Dad, Grandpa, no! Oof! Let me go! Let me go! Ergh! Oh god, why are you helping her?! Why are you helping Daisy?! *Perry asked very nervously, seconds after being pinned down against the floor on his stomach by Gerson and Alvin*  

 Gerson: Wa ha ha! Daisy? No, no, young boy! We're not doing this for Daisy! We're doing this for Patty! It's her that's going to be doing most of the tickling, remember?

 Patty: Heeheeheehee! He's right, big brother! *said Patty, revealing herself to Perry* Heeheeheeheehee! *she giggled, seconds before kneeling over Perry while he was lying down on the floor on his stomach; Perry's hips between her knees* Time for your cute little sister to get her revenge! With help from three amazing turtle monsters! Heeheeheehee! Ready or not, here I come! *she then exclaimed excitedly, right before lifting up her brother's two shirts and kneading his sides and hips as if she was molding clay*

 And just like that, Patty started tickling her brother, starting with his sides and hips. And with Patty kneeling over him and three turtle monsters holding him down against the floor (Alvin kneeling on the floor to his left holding down his left arm and Gerson and Daisy kneeling on the floor to his right holding down his right arm and both of his legs respectively), there wasn't anything he could do to escape the torture. He just laid there and took everything his little sister dished out. He had no choice! But it wasn't so bad, actually. Perry may always be terrified at the start of a tickle session and the thought of being tickled in general but once the tickling actually starts, he accepts his fate and has all kinds of fun, despite sounding so annoyed at the world the entire time he's laughing and giggling uncontrollably. XD

 Perry: Pfffffffff… Eeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheheeheehee!!! *Perry simply giggled* Dahahahamn it!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Crahahahahap!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Gohohohosh darn it, Patty!!! *he exclaimed, appearing to be annoyed with his current predicament* Hahahahahahahahaha!!! Thohohohose dang little fingers of yohohohours!!! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! They're eeheeheevil!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 Patty: Heeheehee! Are they? Well, would you prefer if I used my hair instead? *teased Patty, hanging her head over Perry's exposed lower back and moving it side to side so her hair could drag across his bare skin before he could even answer*

 Perry: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!! Heeheeheeheeheheeheeheeheeheehee!!! No, nohohohot your long hair!!! *Perry pleaded through his suddenly more frantic giggles, arching his back and wiggling only slightly in everyone's clutches* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Patty, stop, I'm too ticklish!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! I'm too ticklish!!! *he claimed, despite the fact the fact that he's not anywhere near as ticklish as Patty* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! *squeak* Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheheeheehee!!! Dang it!!! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Fudge!!! Gahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 While being tickled, Perry always acts like he's twice as ticklish as Patty. But in reality, he's actually much less ticklish than her; everywhere except for one particular spot. And someone, if not Patty, will most certainly give that spot some attention as well but not until first focusing on the parts of his body that have low and moderate sensitivity. And little does Perry know, Patty might not be the only one tickling tonight. Since he's not very ticklish, Gerson, Alvin, and Daisy might join in and help Patty. ;)

 Patty: Pfffff… Hahahahaha! Ok, now that's a lie if I ever heard one!

 Daisy: Pfft. Right? He's probably the least ticklish little boy I know, which is why I'm gonna help you, sis!

 Seconds later, Daisy, now holding Perry's legs together at the ankles with her knees alone, started spidering her fingers along the backs and sides of Perry's legs on the outside of Perry's jeans (and occasionally Patty's bare soles since they were facing upwards up behind her while in her kneeling position over Perry's hips), adding to the tickle torture and causing Perry to laugh a slightly harder in response and only slightly because every inch of his legs; everywhere on his thighs, knees, calves, and ankles; are the spots with the lowest sensitivity other than his hips, which are moderately sensitive.

 Perry: Ahhhhhhhhh, Daisy, nohohohoho!!! *squeak* Hahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahha!!! Only Patty's supposed to tickle me, reeheeheeheemembeheheheher?!?! *squeak* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! No. Didn't you hear Grandpa? He said that Patty will be doing MOST of the tickling. And now that she's done some of it on her own, it's time for me to join in and help her! Then after a while, it'll be time for Dad and Grandpa to help! Heeheehee! Right, you guys?

 Gerson: Wa ha ha! That's right! You can count on us!

 Alvin: Absolutely! Eight hands are better than four, you know!

 Perry: Hahahahahahahahaha!!! What?!?! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! No!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Nohohohoho!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Thahahahat's nohohohot fair!!! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! That's just not fahahahahahair!!! *claimed Perry, completely shocked by Gerson, Alvin, and Daisy's "betrayal"* Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 Patty: Heeheeheeheehee! Oh no! This is definitely fair! You're not anywhere near as ticklish as me! *Patty pointed out, right as she began scribbling her fingers wildly all over his back on the outside of his two shirts*

 Perry: Eeeeeeeeeeeep!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! *Perry laughed slightly harder while twitching at the sudden relocation of Patty's fingers* Yes, I am! *he claimed, not fooling anyone as he continued giggling and laughing like any moderately ticklish boy like him would* I'm the mohohohost ticklish kid in the wohohohorld!!! *squeak* Eeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!!! Dahahamn it!!! Gahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Oh, no you're not. *said Daisy in a singsongy voice with a mischievous grin on her face* And here, I'll prove it! *she added, scribbling her fingers against Patty's bare soles for five seconds and only five seconds too, causing the little girl herself to scream with laughter at a much louder volume than Perry and stop tickling him for the time being*

 Patty: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!! GYAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! DAHAHAHAISY, NOT MY FEET!!! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!! NOT MY FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!! *SQUEAK* GYAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Sorry, sis! *Daisy apologized with a giggle, stopping her ticklish assault on Patty's feet and resuming her ticklish assault on Perry's legs* (Heeheeheehee! That's not going to be the only time I do that!) *she then said to herself with a playfully mischievous grin*

 And it wasn't either! While helping Patty tickle their brother, Daisy would occasionally tickle her soles from behind. But only for one or two seconds at a time, unlike the first time she tickled them and practically every time she did so, she'd tell Patty that her hand slipped or something of the sort. She simply couldn't resist. Patty's feet are such inviting targets for tickling and teasing and the little 9-year-old has it coming for frequently exposing them for everyone to see! Except on the days when it's too cold outside to wear flip flops, that is! And Patty didn't mind either! In fact, she was hoping that Daisy would occasionally tickle her feet while helping her tickle her brother! ;)

 Patty: Heeheeheeheehee! It's ok, Daisy! I forgive you! *said Patty cutely, while resuming her ticklish assault on Perry's back* Just… don't do it again if you can help it, alright? *she then said cheekily to Daisy while giggling and wiggling her toes, making it very clear to the reptilian girl herself that she can tickle her feet again if she wants to, that little tease ;)* Heeheeheeheehee!

 Daisy: Heeheehee! No promises! (Oh, I am gonna have so much fun tickling you to precious pieces tomorrow, Patty; you little tease you! X3)

 Perry: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Yes!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Tickle Patty instead!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Please!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!! Pleeheeheeeheeheeheease!!! *begged Perry, acting all desperate to escape his current predicament once more* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! She deserves it sooohohoho much mohohohore than me!!! *squeak* Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!!! Oh gohohod!!! *squeak* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Yeah, she probably does! But the current task at hand however is for us to primarily tickle you! And you know Patty and us turtle monsters. Once we start a task… *said Daisy, before signaling to Gerson and Alvin to finish her sentence*

 Gerson and Alvin: ...We always finish it! ALWAYS! *the two male turtle monsters suddenly chimed in, just one second before they began tickling Perry's arms; Alvin spidering his right hand fingers (his prosthetic fingers) along every inch of his left arm while holding it against the floor with his left hand and Gerson spidering his left hand fingers along every inch of his right arm while holding it against the floor with his right hand*

 Perry: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!! Hahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha!!!! *Perry laughed harder in response to new ticklish sensations* Dahahahahad, hahahahahahaha, Grahahahahahandpa, hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, nohohohoho!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Nohohohohoho!!!! *squeak* Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!! Eeeheeheeheeheeheheeheeheeheheheeheheeheeheehee!!!! Gohohosh dang it!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! That's right! So if I were you, Perry, I'd get comfortable! Because something tells me you're going to be here for a while. Heeheeheehee! But I'm sure you're fine with that.

 Patty: Heeheeheehee! He is. He just doesn't want to admit it.

 Perry: Hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahhahaha!!!! No, I'm not fine with this!!!! *lied Perry, this time not even trying to escape the clutches of three turtle monsters and his kid sister* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! I'm not fine with any pahahahahart of this!!!! *he lied once more* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

 Alvin: Hahahaha! Says the boy who's now making absolutely no effort to escape. Hahahahaha! You know what that means, right, Daisy?

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! I do! It means he wants us to tickle him until he pees his pants! *answered Daisy jokingly, for no reason other than to tease Perry*

 Perry: Ahhhhhhhh, nohohohohoho!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Don't do that!!!! *pleaded Perry, concentrating too much on laughing he didn't realize that Daisy was just kidding* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Pleeheeheeheeheease don't do thahahahahat!!!! *he pleaded once more, now squirming frantically in everyone's clutches* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

 Daisy: Pfff… Hahahahahahahahaha! Oh my god, Perry! Hahahahahahaha! Wow, I didn't think you'd actually fall for that! Hahahahahahahahaha!

 Alvin, Gerson, and Patty: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Neither did we! Hahahahahahahahahaha!

 Perry: Hahahahahahahahahahaaha!!!! Ehehehehehehergh!!!! Hahahahahahahaha!!!! You meeheeheeanie, Daisy!!!! *said Perry without any actual spite in response, bringing his frantic movement to a complete halt after realizing that Daisy was just teasing him* Hahahahahahahahaha!!!! Uhuhuhugh, hahahahahahahaha, I cahahahan't think while I'm beeheeheeing tickled!!!! *squeak* Heeheeheeheeheeeheeheheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!!!!

 Perry was embarrassed. He knows that Patty, Alvin, Gerson, and Daisy would never tickle him until he pees his pants. While being tickled by one or more individuals, people have a tendency to believe the most outlandish things in existence and Perry, as intelligent as he is, is no exception. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because it shows that Perry's human; that he's not perfect. Nobody's perfect. And Perry himself may not think this little slip up of his is funny now (he's currently laughing but that's only because he's being tickled by four individuals XD) but one day, possibly sooner than he thinks, he may look back on the entire thing as a whole and laugh. And without any "assistance" from his family either! XD

 Gerson: Wa ha ha! Hey, that's alright! No need to be embarrassed.

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Yeah, we feel you, Perry. None of us here can think straight under the effects of tickles. I know I can't! Heeheeheeheehee!

 Patty: Really? *asked Patty cheekily in response, now even more curious to find out if Daisy is as ticklish as she is* Heeheeheeheehee! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFF… HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHHAHA!!! *she suddenly burst into hysterical laughter, Daisy tickling her upward-facing soles from behind once again*

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! I know what you're thinking there, sis! And I'll let you, for a little while yet tonight and a long time tomorrow. But right now, we've got a job to do! So no abandoning your post until then, little girl! Got it?

 Patty: HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YES!!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!! I'LL STAHAHAHAY RIGHT HEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEERE, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I PROHOHOMISE!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I PROHOHOHOHOMISE!!! *SQUEAK* GYAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheeheehee! Ok, I guess I'll have to take your word for it. *teased Daisy, immediately shifting her fingers back over to Perry's legs, thus ending her brief ticklish assault on Patty's bare feet* (Heeheehee! Oh, Patty, why must you be such a cute little rascal? X3)

 Perry: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Dang it!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Fudge!!!! Hahahahahahahaahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Dahahahahagnabbit!!!! *squeak* Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheheheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!!!!

 Poor Perry, his kid sister and three turtle monsters all tickling him at the same time. But it wasn't so bad. They only focused on parts of his body with low to moderate sensitivity. That is until after six minutes when they rolled him over and tickled the front side of his body! Same positions as before; the only difference was that Perry was lying on his back rather than on his stomach, giving Patty easy access to the parts of his body with higher sensitivity as she kneeled over him with his hips in between her knees once again! And the first thing she did was lift up his two shirts and scribble her fingers against his bare stomach, causing it to quiver and immediately send Perry himself into mild hysteria.

 Perry: Oh no! No, please, no! I’ll do any… EEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! YAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OHOHOHHOHOH MY GOHOHOHOHOHOHOD, WHY THEHEHEHEHEHERE FIRST?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WHY THEHEHEHERE FIHIHIHIHIRST?! *SQUEAK* GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 Patty: Heeheeheehee! There it is! That’s what we wanted to hear! Right, you guys?

 Gerson: Wa ha ha! Dang right, little miss!

 Alvin: Hahahaha! Oh, absolutely, sweetie!

 Daisy: Heeheeheehee! Right on, sis!

 Perry: HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! STOHOHOHOHHOHOP! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! STOHOHOHOHOHOP! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! PLEEHEEHEEHEEASE STOHOHOHOHOHOP! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! PLEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEHEESE STOHOHOHOHOHOHOP! *SQUEAK* GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 Before the turtle monsters joined in, they let Patty have a little fun on her own first. For about two minutes, the little 9-year-old girl herself focused entirely on her brother’s belly. First with her fingers, then with her long hair, and then with her mouth! The finger tickling was intense enough already but when Patty’s hair and raspberries got thrown into the mix, Perry was shaking and squirming in everyone’s clutches and acting like he was going to die. But his family knew better than that though. That’s just how he behaves while being tickled on his belly or anywhere on the front side of his torso for that matter. He always makes out like it’s the most unbearable thing in the world but in reality, it’s one of the most enjoyable experiences he’s ever had. And it only became more enjoyable for him when Alvin, Gerson, and Daisy joined in the moment Patty began scribbling her fingers all over his torso on the outside of his two shirts. While Patty concentrated on the entire front side of his torso, Alvin spidered his right hand fingers along the underside of his right arm while holding it against the floor with his left hand, Gerson spidered his left hand fingers along the underside of his left arm while holding it against the floor with his right hand, and Daisy spidered her fingers along the front sides of his legs! Perry laughed harder at the new ticklish sensations. The undersides of his arms and front sides of his legs are more sensitive than the other areas of his arms and legs. Combine that with tickles to the entire front side of his torso and Perry was in pure hysterics faster than he could say a one-syllable word, any one-syllable word.

 Perry: AHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WOHOHOHOAH, WOHOHOHOHOAH, WOHOHOHOHOAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WOHOHOHOHOAH, WOHOHOHOHOAH, WOHOHOHOHOAH THEHEHEHEHEHEHERE! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA! STOHOHOHOHOP! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHA! STOHOHOHOP, THAHAHAT TICKLES MO… GAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

 Gerson: Wa ha ha! Of course it tickles more, sonny boy! And from this point forward, things are only gonna get worse!

 Alvin: Or in your case, better! Hahahahaha!

 And things truly did get better/worse for Perry too! After six minutes, Patty dug her fingers into the hollows of his armpits, causing him to howl with laughter in response and squirm about like he wanted to tear his own arms off. His armpits are the second-most sensitive areas of his body and Patty focused on them alone for about a minute or so, exploring every sensitive nerve of them; first with her index fingers, then with her middle fingers, then her ring fingers, then her pinkies, and then her thumbs.

 Perry: BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!! NOHOHOHOHO!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!! NOHOHOHOT THEHEHEHERE!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!! NOHOHOHOT THEHEHEHEHERE!! HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!! OHOHOHOH GOHOHOHOD!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!! HOHOHOHOLY FUDGE, PATTY!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!

 Perry's two shirts did very little to reduce the feel of Patty's fingers and as soon as those little fingers themselves dug into his armpits, he knew he was done for! And things only got more intense for him when the turtle monsters joined in and helped Patty! While Patty continued tickling Perry's armpits, Alvin and Gerson, being the through ticklers that they are, pried open Perry's hands, which he had clenched in fists for quite some time, and tickled his palms. And at the same time, Daisy wrapped her left arm around his ankles and went to town on his socked feet, scribbling her fingers all over the tops and soles of them. His feet and palms may only be moderately sensitive but when combined with armpit tickling, the young boy himself almost couldn't tell the drastic differences in levels of sensitivity!

 Perry: GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHA!! OH MY GOHOHOD!! HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!! WHY THE HEHEHEHEHEHELL DO MY, HAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA, PAHAHAHHAALMS AND FEEHEEHEEHEET FEEHEEHEEL MOHOHORE, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, SENSITIVE THAHAHAHAN USUAL?!?! GAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!

 Daisy: Heeheeheeheehee! You're a smart boy, you tell us! *teased Daisy, while twisting her pointer finger against the spot on Perry's right sole where the arch meets the heel*

 Perry: BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!! *Perry laughed harder all of a sudden* DAHAHAAISY, NOHOHOT THEHEHEERE!! *he pleaded, wishing that Daisy wasn't focusing SOLEly on the most sensitive area of his right foot, which is also the most sensitive area of his left foot* HAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA DAISY!! *SQUEAK* GYEEEHEEHEEHEHEEHEEHEHEEHEEHEHEEHEHEEHEHEEHEHEEHEEHEEHEE!!

 Holy smokes! At this point in the session, Perry is starting to believe that his entire family has it out for him! Palm tickling, feet tickling, and armpit tickling all at once?! Torture! Pure torture! But luckily for him, after two more minutes of tickling, he was finally given a proper breather. About time! But he didn't feel relaxed during the entirety of it though because shortly after the tickling stopped, Daisy pulled off both of his black socks, revealing his bare feet. Unlike his little sister, Perry is somewhat self-conscious about showing his bare feet, hence why he regularly wears socks. That and he just knows that both Daisy and Patty will have tools that will abSOLElutely destroy him! Since his feet are only moderately sensitive, utensils such as hairbrushes and scrub brushes are necessary to get him laughing rather than giggling. Their stiff bristles work wonders on his soles and toes and shortly after his break was over, both Daisy and Patty used those exact utensils on his soles and toes, immediately sending him into a fit of frantic laughter. Patty tickled his right foot and Daisy tickled his left foot and the two girls themselves tickled his feet alone for three whole minutes; first on his soles with hairbrushes, then on his soles with heavy-duty scrub brushes, and then on his toes and in between his toes with mini scrub brushes all the while Gerson and Alvin held him against the floor for them.

 Perry: BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! OH MY GYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOD! *Perry freaked out while laughing his head off, shaking and waving both of his feet frantically in his sisters' grasps* HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA! OH, YOU "EEHEEHEEEVIL," "EEHEEHEEHEEVIL…" *SQUEAK* GAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

 Perry was in hell. His feet may not be all that ticklish but his sisters were tickling them with the most effective utensils they had and they didn't let up with them at all. Not once! Constantly scrubbing fast and hard with them, they got the best laughs possible out of their brother and by the time they finished, his soles were as red as they could possibly be with blush. But they didn't stop there! After tickling his feet with utensils for three minutes, they tickled his feet again with their fingers… while Gerson and Alvin tickled his torso with their fingers!

 Perry: GAAAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! *Perry laughed harder at the new ticklish sensations on his upper body and bare feet* OHOHOHOH MY GYOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOD!! HAHHAAHHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!! OH MY GOHOHOHOHOD, YOU GUYS!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA!! ARE YOU TRYING TO KIHIHIHILL ME?!?! *he then asked rhetorically, knowing very well that what his family's doing is all in good fun* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHHA!! *SQUEAK* GAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

 Alvin: Hahahaha! No. Not in a million years, you precious boy. X3

 The three turtle monsters and Patty tickled Perry together for three minutes. And nothing fancy either, just tickling with their fingers. But their fingers were all they needed to get Perry laughing and what got him laughing more than anything during those three minutes was both Gerson and Alvin tickling his armpits and both Patty and Daisy tickling the most sensitive areas of his bare feet (where the arches meet the heels). But that however was nothing compared to the final part of the session, the part where Patty and only Patty tickled him where he's most ticklish. His NECK! ;)

 3 minutes later…

 Perry: Huff… huff… huff… huff...

 Perry was gasping for breath. This is by far the hardest he's laughed in a long time. But he's still having fun though and he happened to feel a sense of relief the moment he felt someone (Daisy) putting his socks back on. A very kind gesture on Daisy's part! She knows that Perry doesn't like leaving his feet uncovered longer than he has to, unlike her. ;) In all of Daisy's years from the day she was born all the way to today, she has never once worn footwear. A life choice of hers and very plausible one at that but she of all turtle monsters knows that her decision to never wear footwear comes with a penalty, a penalty she'll likely be paying immediately after Patty tickles Perry on the one part of the human body where he's more ticklish than her. And once Gerson, Alvin, and Daisy hold Perry down against the floor, that's her cue to start!

TO BE CONCLUDED...

[monkberries]

They dealt with all of the above. Ringo was treated as a joke for pretty much everything, especially since this was the era of prog rock. His personal life was also tabloid fodder. George was derided as being a dour spiritual nut who was out of touch. He along w/ Ringo didn't get the respect he deserved as a guitarist bc his style wasn't in at the time & people knew little about his role in The Beatles. All credit went to Lennon/McCartney. 1/2

John had the benefit of having the rebel genius image, but even he became a source of ridicule with all the stunts he pulled with Yoko and the way his career declined after Imagine. He wasn't deified to the degree he was in the 80s. I'm not trying to say Paul never had a hard time, but the way this fandom talks as if he is the only one who faced extreme criticism or disrespect just tells me they haven't looked much into the other Beatles' lives. The man is more admired than most musicians. 2/2

(IDK if this screenshotted anons were from the same person or not, but I’ll just answer them in this one since it’s all the same subject.)

Here’s what I think is valid, as I see it: Paul fans are upset by the way his music was treated by the music press, especially in the first few years of the 70s, while the music of the other three were generally given at least the benefit of the doubt. They’re not upset about the tabloid gossip, the purely personal stuff – they are upset, specifically and with good reason, at the way Paul’s music was treated and the way the music world’s personal dislike of him seeped into their music reviews. I’m gonna focus in on 1970 through the end of 1974, since this is where a lot of the complaints spawn from, and things start to shift in a big way in 74. You didn’t ask but contemporary writings about their early solo music is something I’m fascinated by anyway and you turned the wind-up toy key in my back, so. Off I go. This is gonna be so, so long.

At different points in the decade, all of them were subject to a sullying of their personal reputations. That is where I do agree with you: all of them were subjected to that by the press, to varying degrees, at varying times, and for various reasons for each of them. That is just what happens to public figures the longer they are public figures. Tabloids mess with everyone no matter how beloved they are. 

However, that’s not what I generally see Paul fans getting upset about. What I see is that they’re upset at the way the much more legitimate and widely respected music press approached Paul’s music and talent in general. It is widely received knowledge now that the critics treated Paul’s music differently than they did John’s and George’s and even Ringo’s; the trashing was not “equal.” They came at John and George with the assumption that their talent was real and ongoing outside of the Beatles, their genius unquestionable, their motives pure and well-intentioned and honest. Paul was not afforded these assumptions. Some examples to show what I mean, most of them found through wikipedia, rocksbackpages, or rollingstone.com.

John

Plastic Ono Band was Robert Christgau’s number one album of 1970 in The Village Voice. from Creem’s review: “John's record, of course, has been righteously raved over ever since its release, justifiably. It's interesting and even enlightening to see a man working out his trauma on black plastic but more than that, it's totally enthralling to see that Lennon has once again unified, to some degree, his life and his music into a truly whole statement.” From High Fidelity’s review: "a tremendously exciting listening experience, perhaps the best any Beatle has ever offered." In their Imagine review, Rolling Stone called POB “perfect.” A couple reviews in the mainstream were more mixed, put off a little by the rawness of it, but overall the rock world quickly grew to see this album as a work of genius.

Imagine was even more widely well-reviewed, despite a mixed review from Rolling Stone (John fell out with Jann Wenner around this time, curiously). Here’s a passage from rateyourmusic.com: “Imagine was actually one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, aside from this tepid review in Rolling Stone. Indeed, much of the rock press seemed palpably relieved that the former Beatle hadn't gone completely off the deep end. ‘It's the best album of the year, and for me it's the best album he's done, with anything, or with anyone, at any time,’ Roy Hollingworth wrote in the 10/9/71 issue of Melody Maker. ‘The album is superb,’ Alan Smith agreed in the 9/11/71 issue of NME. ‘Beautiful. One step away from the chill of his recent total self-revelation, and yet a giant leap towards commerciality without compromise...I have no criticism at all.’”

Some Time in New York City was admittedly John’s nadir, and the press was vicious about it, both personally and musically, deeming the album egotistical, lacking in energy, and devoid of sincerity. However, many maintained a reverence for the genius that came before it and hopeful encouragement for the future. Rolling Stone said that “The Lennons should be commended for their daring;” Creem said it wasn’t half bad; and even though NME’s article was scathing, it ended with a plea for John to return to form, saying, “Don't rely on cant and rigidity. Don't alienate. Stimulate. You know, like you used to.”

Mind Games, though reviews were mixed, fared far better in comparison. Again, there is a hopeful tone to the reviews, a sureness that John can do better. From Rolling Stone talks about the music being a return to POB form, but the writing is his worst yet; however, Landau qualifies this by saying the lyrics aren’t “offensive, per se, just misguided... [John Lennon’s admirers] might even be able to withstand something more challenging” and then praises John’s voice, his production, and a few individual songs. In Melody Maker, Ray Coleman says, “if you warm to the rasping voice of Lennon and, like me, regard him as the true fulcrum of much of what came from his old group, then like any new Lennon album, it will be enjoyable and even important.” Christgau is more middling but also says, “Still, the single works, and let's hope he keeps right on stepping.”

Walls and Bridges seems confusing to reviewers in retrospect. They couldn’t seem to come to a consensus on it. The musicianship was widely praised, for the most part, though Rolling Stone criticized the first side on this front; reviewers alternately said it was “the latest chapter in John Lennon’s Identity Crisis” (Creem) and “truly a superb album by any standards” (Melody Maker). Throughout the Rolling Stone review, the author is able to thoroughly critique the songs, for better or worse, with a neutral affect and without resorting to insulting John personally. He ends the review on a positive note: “When one accepts one’s childhood, one’s parenthood and the impermanence which lies between, one can begin to slog along. When John slogs, he makes progress.” Again, even though the reviews aren’t all positive, we can see, especially and most importantly in the most influential rock magazine of the time, the acknowledgment of his talent, a sense of excitement for what John will do next, and a belief that his work is authentic and honest.

George

All Things Must Pass, I mean. Apart from a couple of outliers like Christgau in The Village Voice (he called it “overblown fatuity”), it was incredibly, almost universally beloved by the music press when it came out. There was quite a bit of surprise that such a talent had been under everyone’s noses all this time, but I don’t think anon is quite correct that all the credit for the Beatles went to Lennon/McCartney. For example, Ben Gerson in Rolling Stone recognized George’s talent within the Beatles like this: “Up until now, George has been perhaps the premier studio musician among rock band guitarists. From the electronic whine which began “I Feel Fine” to the break in “Hard Day’s Night” to the crazed, sitar-influenced burst on “Taxman,” George exhibited an avant-garde imagination and a technical flawlessness, as well as the ability to stay within the bounds of a song, which has remained unparalleled.” In Melody Maker, the feeling of journalists was summed up thusly: hearing the album was “the rock equivalent of the shock felt by pre-war moviegoers when Garbo first opened her mouth in a talkie: Garbo talks! – Harrison is free!" The personal nature and honesty of the lyrics were praised as well; Time described it as an “expressive, classically executed personal statement.” Ben Gerson did call his proselytizing offensive, but in the next sentence says that George redeems himself from that with the personal plea in Hear Me Lord.

Concert for Bangla Desh - again, some cynicism from Christgau in The Village Voice (must have woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day) and of course tax issues dogged it later, but overall, for the rock press at the time, this was a crowning achievement that George pulled off. He was praised all over the press, countercultural and mainstream, for his live musical talent, the group of musicians that joined him, the lack of political motivation, the sincerity and goodwill, and George’s ability to bring back  "a brief incandescent revival of all that was best about the Sixties" (Rolling Stone). To this day he is credited with creating the model for future charity concerts. 

Living in the Material World - Nothing could have topped the one-two punch of ATMP and the Concert for Bangla Desh, but honestly, LITMW came pretty close for some journalists. Rolling Stone again praised George’s honesty and authenticity: “ Despite the occasional use of “psychedelic puns,” Harrison’s lyrics are so guileless they convey an extraordinary sincerity that transcends questions of craftsmanship. Similarly, the devotions we are called upon to share with Harrison, though they communicate no specific, private torment, do have the authenticity of overheard prayers and are therefore sacred.” Melody Maker said, "Harrison has always struck me before as simply a writer of very classy pop songs; now he stands as something more than an entertainer. Now he's being honest." The pushback against his pious attitude and lyrics picked up some steam with this album, particularly with Christgau (again) and Tony Tyler of NME, who called it “so damn holy I could scream.” However, it was far from the consensus opinion at the time, and with the biggest rock magazine in the world at your back, you can withstand quite a bit.

Dark Horse, oof. That poor man. It did get some positivity in Billboard and Melody Maker, but my god, the reviews for this album and its subsequent tour were so cruel. I suspect when these anon(s) talk about the others being treated terribly by the press as well, this, along with John’s STINYC, is one of the examples they would give, and they’re not wrong about that. This was the point where George’s piety and what they perceived as a sanctimonious attitude finally started really getting to everyone, and the album plus the tour was the perfect opportunity to dogpile on him. I guess it was to be expected; no one can ride that high forever, and the press loves to knock people over and kick them while they’re down. Rolling Stone called it “disastrous,” “shoddy,” and called his guitar work “rudimentary,” eventually declaring that George had “never been a great artist.” This from the same magazine that was practically worshipping at his feet the year before. Yowch.

Ringo

Sentimental Journey - The less that’s said about this album, the better.

Beaucoups of Blues was actually quite well-received. No one called him a genius for it, and it wasn’t a serious personal record and therefore wasn’t treated that way, but journalists seemed uniquely able to let themselves enjoy this record despite the serious/political/personal tone of most musicians at the time. Melody Maker believed Ringo had  "conviction and charm" and that because of that, the album stripped away the serious “hip posturing” and let you just enjoy the music on its own terms. The Village Voice said that Ringo was “good at making himself felt.” Although Rolling Stone’s tone was a bit more cruel than other magazines (there was a crack somewhere in there that Ringo wasn’t as smart as John), it also called him lovable and the record “a real winner” where the songs “sound terrific.”

Ringo was a total smash and I think people forget this. It’s remembered only because it’s an album that was worked on by all four Beatles, but actually, the critics fuckin loved it. Ringo was praised in Rolling Stone for his unpretentiousness, sensibility, and essentially collaborative nature: “Ringo was always the figure of conciliation within the Beatles, undoubtedly the most genial, conceivably the most sensible, and the one with the smallest musical axe to grind. His very lapses bespoke the esteem in which the others held him; had they not liked him so much, those perfectionists would never have allowed him to sing. Perhaps because as the drummer he stood outside the process of creation, he had the best perspective from which to see the Beatles as a unity. Ringo has never had any pretense of self-sufficiency. Once he had gotten his special projects out of the way (projects for which John, Paul and George's talents would have been unsuited anyway) Ringo was ready to call upon the three most obvious people to assist him with writing, singing and playing. As Starr's first "pop album," Ringo signifies a homecoming, not just of family, but in musical style as well.”

Goodnight Vienna was kind of a minor album for Ringo, but still, reviews were pretty good. Rolling Stone praised his “unalloyed sincerity which is his trademark and trump card.” Yet again, we see the theme of authenticity popping up in these reviews - if you are perceived as authentic, honest, and sincere, that takes you a long way with music reviewers in this time period, and Ringo was nothing if not wholly, completely himself.

Paul

McCartney - One of the main complaints of Paul fans is that Jann Wenner forced Langdon Winner, the author of the review for this album in Rolling Stone, to rewrite his article and put a more negative spin on it. The result is that Winner praised most of the music but totally undermined his own praise by questioning the authenticity of the tone and deriding the press release that came with the album as much as he praised the music. He ends the article like this: “I like McCartney very much. But I remember that the people of Troy also liked that wooden horse they wheeled through their gates until they discovered that it was hollow inside and full of hostile warriors.” This was a huge blow at a time when personal authenticity and substance were considered paramount. Melody Maker also questioned the legitimacy of his genius, saying “With this record, [McCartney's] debt to George Martin becomes increasingly clear.” Most other reviews weren’t any better.

Ram, I mean, Jesus Christ the reviews for this. It’s a widely respected album now, even made the RS top 500 albums of all time list last year, but at the time people were still so angry with Paul for supposedly breaking up the Beatles that they were still taking it out on his music a year later (imo). Landau in Rolling Stone called it “emotionally vacuous” and said it lacked conviction, saying also that it was “so incredibly inconsequential and so monumentally irrelevant you can’t even [hate it]; it is difficult to concentrate on, let alone dislike or even hate.” NME called it “the worst thing Paul McCartney has ever done.” Threaded through these reviews is a belief that the songs are devoid of meaning and that Paul’s happy domestic front is just a frustrating lie; Christgau in The Village Voice said he was “infuriated by the McCartneys' modern young-marrieds image” - infuriated because he clearly doesn’t believe it, rendering Paul dishonest and his music inauthentic. Once again journalists are unable to review Paul’s music without sniping about him as a person.

Wild Life - Though the situation remains largely the same - reviewers refuse to take him seriously, believe anything he says, or treat his musical talent as anything but vacuous fluff - the reviews aren’t quite as bad as they were for Ram and a bit of positivity begins to stir. It’s evident especially in the Rolling Stone review, where Mendelsohn wonders if Paul is making crappy fluff on purpose to piss John off because it will sell just as well anyway. It’s not much, and on top of the fairly strong criticism there is almost no hope for future Paul releases: “My own conviction is that we'd be foolish to expect anything much more earth-shaking than Wild Life out of McCartney for a good long while... In the meantime the reader is advised to either develop a fondness for vacuous but unpretentious pop music or look elsewhere for musical pleasure.” But it’s something.

Red Rose Speedway Paul continues to be lambasted by a lot of the press on this album for being lightweight and having no meaning behind his songs (at this point it’s just repetitive to quote the articles, just trust me that they say basically the same thing they were saying for the past three albums too), BUT I think a nuance that gets forgotten in all of this is that Rolling Stone gave it kind of a decent review. It seems like they finally quit gatekeeping and realized that songs don’t need to have some deep personal meaning to be good. Kaye is still not very nice about Paul’s lyrics but he recognizes that he doesn’t have to take Paul’s music on the same terms as he takes John and George. Paul’s music is less personal, but that doesn’t make it unworthy. He calls it “pleasant, accessible without concentration” and praises Paul’s voice and arranging skills. It feels like for this album, Rolling Stone��took the stick out of its own ass when it came to Paul and finally relaxed enough to receive Paul’s music on his terms rather than theirs. Which, imo, primed the rock world for...

Band on the Run, Paul’s comeback. Even though Christgau in The Village Voice remained unconvinced (he called it “a pleasant piece of hackwork”), almost everyone else adored it. It seems weird to us now, but the general sentiment seemed to be that people were surprised by how good this album was. NME said, “The ex-Beatle least likely to re-establish his credibility and lead the field has pulled it off with a positive master-stroke”; and although Landau’s review in Rolling Stone overflowed with praise, he also said, “I'm surprised I like Band on the Run so much more than McCartney's other solo albums because, superficially, it doesn't seem so different from them.” 

I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate a general trajectory with the musical reputation of each Beatle here. John starts off on two incredible high points, crashes and burns, and then works his way back up. He DEFINITELY missed with STINYC, but even when he followed it up with Mind Games, there was still a hopeful tone to the reviews, sort of like, “Ah, well, the last two weren’t great but we’re still looking forward to what John will give us next.” Until the Dark Horse tour/album, which did sour the press on poor George, the music press adored him. It was hit after hit with him. He could not miss. Three high points, one after the other, then a monumental crash. Ringo seems to stay fairly high, even if the records aren’t serious records. All three of them start out incredibly well, and the music press was able and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Paul was given none of that. Perhaps because he was out of step with the attitudes about music at the time, perhaps because journalists hated him for breaking up the Beatles, perhaps because they believed John when he painted Paul as “establishment,” perhaps a combination - whatever their issue was, Paul was given no benefit of the doubt to start with, no faith in his genius, and no belief in his authenticity. He was just a hack to the music press for the first few years of the 70s; he started at the bottom and was forced to work his way up, unlike the other three. It started, imo, when Wenner forced the journalist who wrote the McCartney review in RS to rewrite the article, and it spiraled from there. He was seen as hollow and uncool, as one of the anons said, “straight” in the parlance of the time - straight meaning “establishment.” This is kind of where I do start to roll my eyes a little bit at stans, when they get upset at people calling him “establishment” and trying to prove that actually he was so anti-establishment that people couldn’t handle it or whatever, without trying to understand what the word “anti-establishment” meant at the time. But there are also really substantive arguments you can make that say Paul’s music was not taken seriously because of a personal grudge against him.

I’m not saying that all of them didn’t have run-ins with the music press. I’m saying there is nuance here that I don’t think these anons are allowing for in the first few years of that decade. They came at George and John and Ringo with a positive, or at least neutral, slant most of the time. They came at Paul with a negative one. Case in point are the reviews of Band on the Run that were surprised at how good it was. That stuff gets people’s hackles up. The others didn’t have positive reviews rewritten to be more negative. The others didn’t have albums savaged that are now on the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time list. I do agree that John, at least, and George post Dark Horse, had a harder time with the music press than people generally remember or care to think about – deification is retroactive, I guess, and as Paul fans we should definitely recognize that Paul wasn’t the only one who went through a rough time with the press. But I do think Paul’s situation was made uniquely and unjustifiably difficult for those first few years.

I mean, at the same time, I cannot stress enough how much this did not affect his bottom line. Despite the horrible reviews, Ram still made a ton of money, McCartney made a ton of money, Band on the Run and Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway all made a ton of money. He had a fanbase, a huge one, that followed him loyally and faithfully through the early 70s as he was getting savaged by the press, and through the middle and late 70s when he was touring. At some point, you have to step back and go, wait. Why does any of this matter? This was 50 years ago. He was a multi-millionaire then and is a billionaire now. And you are right; whenever people over-generalize and try to make the case that Paul was always badly reviewed and the others were press darlings, I tend to get annoyed because they’re totally missing the actually interesting nuances of the situation (that can be easily found online! I found most of the music reviews through snippets on Wikipedia!) In conclusion, I guess my point is that both “Paul was vilified while everyone else wasn’t” and “everyone was equally vilified” paint the events of the early 70s with brushes that are too broad and miss the nuance that was evident in the way the press interacted with their music.

[a-non-ymouswriter]

On Remand Prosthesis AU Shot =========================================================

Entering the room, Sans had to grunt as he squinted in the darkness, waiting for his vision to adjust accordingly the moment the door shut behind them. He huffed as he sees his brother walk without hesitation, he didn’t have to wait, his visor immediately shifting visions to be unaffected by the lack of consistent light in the room.

It was dim and dark, with only the occasional light source that glowed both ominously and somewhat beautifully. Sans ignored most of them, having known what they could do and why they were glowing. If it weren’t for the fact that some of the experiments in Alphys’ lab were light sensitive, Sans would immediately head over to the room’s controls and raise the brightness of the lights. 

Well, that and if they weren’t on a time crunch as it was.

“ALPHYS! ALPHYS WHERE ARE YOU?” His brother called out into the large space.

“I-I’m, I’m right here!” Came his reply, coming from- of course, she was there. 

The reply came from a cluster of monitors and control panels, both holographic and not, in the corner of the room. There she was, hunched over, gloved claws rapidly tapping the screen in front of her. “You’re ju-just in time. I’ve finished t-the file processing.” 

Sans stood by his brother, looking over the screens as he waited for Alphys to turn and face them. He had to cringe at the opened digital newspaper opened wide open on one screen, the header of ‘ADVERSIA DECLARES WAR!!!’ plastered on it with a picture of Adversia’s flag opened beside it. So they really were declaring war. Shit, he knew things were bad but...

“so, what was on the hickey?” Sans questioned, forcing himself to focus on the now. They didn’t have time to contemplate the state between Monidus and Adversia. At least, not in this context. “got a time crunch to fill in alph, look, your undyne radar is even off the fritz.” He said with a smirk, noting the console that was silently blaring while showing a certain fish monster on it.

“O-Oh stuff it Sans.” Alphys replied irritably, “Don’t worry, w-we got time. Undyne won’t be able to g-get here for a-a while.” She mumbled, no doubt inwardly warring with herself. She had a crush on the fish monster, but she couldn’t let her know what she was doing. Not with everything going on. 

“EVEN SO, I’D FEEL MORE SAFER IF WE WEREN’T PRESENT. YOU, KING ASGORE, AND THE OTHERS CAN ONLY STALL FOR SO LONG. AND WITH THE... RECENT PASSAGE OF HIS CHILDREN, ASGORE CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS AS EFFICIENTLY AS HE WOULD LIKE TO THINK.” Papyrus reminded causing both Sans and Alphys to grimace at him. 

Alphys sighed from behind her mask and swiped her claw up, causing the screen above her to show new information. “Alright. H-Here’s what I got unencrypted from the hickey. You’re not going to like i-it.” She warned, pointing up to the screen. 

“we know alph. we rarely like the shit we find in stolen hickeys.” Sans replied, looking up at the screen but the more and more he read his eye sockets widened. “oh shit... they’re- they’re not serious are they?” He questions quietly as the monster soul picture spun in place. “that is- alphys this is impossible. whatever you’re thinking, unthink it right now.” 

“I’M WITH MY BROTHER ON THIS ALPHYS, THE INFORMATION ON THIS IS INCREDIBLE YES BUT ALSO INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS!” Papyrus cried out before pausing, “... They Got Gerson?” He whispered, the digital eyelights of his disappearing as he took in the picture of the tortoise monster. 

“... I-I c-can’t. I’m the Head R-Royal Scientist you t-two...” Alphys whispered so quietly they almost couldn’t hear her. However, soon, her hunched back straightened and she looked straight at them, the lens of her mask glinting and suddenly, her SOUL was out, stunning them both as they were offered the heart. “B-But I can promise you this Sans. Papyrus. I will never e-end up like my- like Alba, I w-will never, do what she did- what she planned to do. I w-won’. A-and if I ever do... If I ever s-stray... I w-willingly offer my SOUL to be JUDGED in a COURT SESSION by you two. So I promise. On my SOUL.” 

Immediately, both Sans and Papyrus shuddered, eyelights flaring at the pledge- the darker sides of themselves whispering in their heads, taking the promise and forever remembering it should anything happen, categorizing Alphys’ SOUL into a future case should it ever happen.

“alphys what the fuck did you just do?!” Sans demanded after storming up to her and grabbing her shoulders- though he did his best to avoid crowding her SOUL holding her SOUL. “you just put yourself on a fucking remand! if you do something you’ll go on trial and be inducted into a fucking session!”

Alphys nodded, unable to show her smile from underneath her mask. “I-I know.” She whispered, SOUL dissipating into her chest once more. A new weight on it, a new promise.

“... YOU’RE BEING FOOLISH.” Papyrus told her, fists clenched at his sides as he stared at the reptilian scientist. “YOU ARE BALANCING ON A THIN PRECARIOUS EDGE ALPHYS, YOU CANNOT DO THIS.”

“O-Oh but I can. I j-just did. And you can’t do anything about it. Now take the hickey and l-leave. U-Undyne is on her w-way.”

=========================================================

another prosthesis au shot drabble thing!

it’s a bit longer than the last one and is probably depicting something even a bit more confusing but it’ll pay off at some point. and look! more drawing and alphys is here! kind of. 

admittedly i didn’t work on the artwork completely like my other one, there’s visible black outlines and such but i decided why not? next artwork i could try to color those in or whatever. and another attempt of shading. i am... yeah i don’t know what to think over my attempt of shading but i wanted it to be more dramatic and... yeah 

one day i’ll get better and i’ll depict prosthesis alphys dramatically standing in front of screens and looking very badass in the dark. one day.

at any rate, i hope you enjoy! i’m getting better with using my tablet and i’m steadily building up prosthesis au. the next chapter will come as soon as i can get to it, i’ve just started on working it right now. but yeah hopefully i’ll be able to update it this week. 

happy october everyone

[saint-hildegard-of-bingen]

If you love our country, please read this article, and continue to work to save our democracy. And stay hopeful!

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The despair felt by climate scientists and environmentalists watching helplessly as something precious and irreplaceable is destroyed is sometimes described as “climate grief.” Those who pay close attention to the ecological calamity that civilization is inflicting upon itself frequently describe feelings of rage, anxiety and bottomless loss, all of which are amplified by the right’s willful denial. The young activist Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, has described falling into a deep depressionafter grasping the ramifications of climate change and the utter refusal of people in power to rise to the occasion: “If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before?”

Lately, I think I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone who was, like me, born after the civil rights movement finally made democracy in America real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it.

After Trump’s election, a number of historians and political scientists rushed out with books explaining, as one title put it, “How Democracies Die.” In the years since, it’s breathtaking how much is dead already. Though the president will almost certainly be impeached for extorting Ukraine to aid his re-election, he is equally certain to be acquitted in the Senate, a tacit confirmation that he is, indeed, above the law. His attorney general is a shameless partisan enforcer. Professional civil servants are purged, replaced by apparatchiks. The courts are filling up with young, hard-right ideologues. One recently confirmed judge, 40-year-old Steven Menashi, has written approvingly of ethnonationalism.

In “How Democracies Die,” Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of Harvard describe how, in failing democracies, “the referees of the democratic game were brought over to the government’s side, providing the incumbent with both a shield against constitutional challenges and a powerful — and ‘legal’ — weapon with which to assault its opponents.” This is happening before our eyes.

The entire Trump presidency has been marked, for many of us who are part of the plurality that despises it, by anxiety and anger. But lately I’ve noticed, and not just in myself, a demoralizing degree of fear, even depression. You can see it online, in the self-protective cynicism of liberals announcing on Twitter that Trump is going to win re-election. In The Washington Post, Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a Never Trump conservative, described his spiritual struggle against feelings of political desperation: “Sustaining this type of distressed uncertainty for long periods, I can attest, is like putting arsenic in your saltshaker.”

I reached out to a number of therapists, who said they’re seeing this politically induced misery in their patients. Three years ago, said Karen Starr, a psychologist who practices in Manhattan and on Long Island, some of her patients were “in a state of alarm,” but that’s changed into “more of a chronic feeling that’s bordering on despair.” Among those most affected, she said, are the Holocaust survivors she sees. “It’s about this general feeling that the institutions that we rely on to protect us from a dangerous individual might fail,” she said.

Kimberly Grocher, a psychotherapist who works in both New York and South Florida, and whose clients are primarily women of color, told me that during her sessions, the political situation “is always in the room. It’s always in the room.” Trump, she said, has made bigotry more open and acceptable, something her patients feel in their daily lives. “When you’re dealing with people of color’s mental health, systemic racism is a big part of that,” she said.

In April 2017, I traveled to suburban Atlanta to cover the special election in the Sixth Congressional District. Meeting women there who had been shocked by Trump’s election into ceaseless political action made me optimistic for the first time that year. These women were ultimately the reason that the district, once represented by Newt Gingrich, is now represented by a Democrat, Lucy McBath. Recently, I got back in touch with a woman I’d met there, an army veteran and mother of three named Katie Landsman. She was in a dark place.

“It’s like watching someone you love die of a wasting disease,” she said, speaking of our country. “Each day, you still have that little hope no matter what happens, you’re always going to have that little hope that everything’s going to turn out O.K., but every day it seems like we get hit by something else.” Some mornings, she said, it’s hard to get out of bed. “It doesn’t feel like depression,” she said. “It really does feel more like grief.”

Obviously, this is hardly the first time that America has failed to live up to its ideals. But the ideals themselves used to be a nearly universal lodestar. The civil rights movement, and freedom movements that came after it, succeeded because the country could be shamed by the distance between its democratic promises and its reality. That is no longer true.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are often incredulous seeing the party of Ronald Reagan allied with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but the truth is, there’s no reason they should be in conflict. The enmity between America and Russia was ideological. First it was liberal democracy versus communism. Then it was liberal democracy versus authoritarian kleptocracy.

But Trump’s political movement is pro-authoritarian and pro-oligarch. It has no interest in preserving pluralism, free and fair elections or any version of the rule of law that applies to the powerful as well as the powerless. It’s contemptuous of the notion of America as a lofty idea rather than a blood-and-soil nation. Russia, which has long wanted to prove that liberal democracy is a hypocritical sham, is the natural friend of the Trumpist Republican Party, just as it’s an ally and benefactor of the far right Rassemblement National in France and the Lega Nord in Italy.

The nemeses of the Trumpist movement are liberals — in both the classical and American sense of the world — not America’s traditional geopolitical foes. This is something new in our lifetime. Despite right-wing persecution fantasies about Barack Obama, we’ve never before had a president who treats half the country like enemies, subjecting them to an unending barrage of dehumanization and hostile propaganda. Opponents in a liberal political system share at least some overlapping language. They have some shared values to orient debates. With those things gone, words lose their meaning and political exchange becomes impossible and irrelevant.

Thus we have a total breakdown in epistemological solidarity. In the impeachment committee hearings, Republicans insist with straight faces that Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas, who is smart enough to know better, repeat Russian propaganda accusing Ukraine of interfering in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice’s inspector general’s report refutes years of Republican deep state conspiracy theories about an F.B.I. plot to subvert Trump’s campaign, and it makes no difference whatsoever to the promoters of those theories, who pronounce themselves totally vindicated.

To those who recognize the Trump administration’s official lies as such, the scale of dishonesty can be destabilizing. It’s a psychic tax on the population, who must parse an avalanche of untruths to understand current events. “What’s going on in the government is so extreme, that people who have no history of overwhelming psychological trauma still feel crazed by this,” said Stephanie Engel, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who said Trump comes up “very frequently” in her sessions.

Like several therapists I spoke to, Engel said she’s had to rethink how she practices, because she has no clinical distance from the things that are terrifying her patients. “If we continue to present a facade — that we know how to manage this ourselves, and we’re not worried about our grandchildren, or we’re not worried about how we’re going to live our lives if he wins the next election — we’re not doing our patients a service,” she said.

This kind of political suffering is uncomfortable to write about, because liberal misery is the raison d’être of the MAGA movement. When Trumpists mock their enemies for being “triggered,” it’s just a quasi-adult version of the playground bully’s jeer: “What are you going to do, cry?” Anyone who has ever been bullied knows how important it is, at that moment, to choke back tears. In truth, there are few bigger snowflakes than the stars of MAGA world. The Trumpist pundit Dan Bongino is currently suing The Daily Beast for $15 million, saying it inflicted “emotional distress and trauma, insult, anguish,” for writing that NRATV, the National Rifle Association’s now defunct online media arm, had “dropped” him when the show he hosted ended. Still, a movement fueled by sadism will delight in admissions that it has caused pain.

But despair is worth discussing, because it’s something that organizers and Democratic candidates should be addressing head on. Left to fester, it can lead to apathy and withdrawal. Channeled properly, it can fuel an uprising. I was relieved to hear that despite her sometimes overwhelming sense of civic sadness, Landsman’s activism hasn’t let up. She’s been spending a bit less than 20 hours a week on political organizing, and expects to go back to 40 or more after the holidays. “The only other option is to quit and accept it, and I’m not ready to go there yet,” she said. Democracy grief isn’t like regular grief. Acceptance isn’t how you move on from it. Acceptance is itself a kind of death.

[brushstrokesapocalyptic]

The Legend of Asriel PART 6 | DEATH MOUNTAIN

it’s about as unpleasant as it sounds.

Frisk and Chara reach Death Mountain, and their first order of business is seeking out a blacksmith who can reforge their sword. There’s a bit of a famine going on right now so none of the Gorons are in working condition, but someone happens to direct Frisk to a Zora who lives just out of Goron City.

Following those directions, Frisk and Chara find an elderly turtle man sunning himself on the edge of a hot spring. Chara recognizes him and is confused as to why he’s here. Frisk knows not of their history with this guy though, and just walks up to ask if he can help reforge their sword.

Gerson laughs and says he’s not called the Hammer for nothing, he’s sure he can fix whatever toy sword they broke during target practice. Frisk removes the bundle from their backpack and shows him the shards of the Master Sword. Gerson rubs at his chin. “Hmm. Tricky one, that.”

Can you do it? Frisk writes in their notebook.

“The blade shouldn’t be too hard, I’ve got all the material I need here.“ Chara resists the urge to bring up the missing piece. “The hilt is harder, it’s made of a special material you can’t just melt down and cast into a new shape. I’d need to make another from scratch.“

Is it rare?

“Somewhat. As luck would have it, there is a deposit in the nearby mines, but those are flooded out.”

Frisk looks him up and down. ...Aren’t you like, a turtle? Surely a little water can’t stop you.

Gerson laughs heartily. “A little water is nothing, even for my old bones. Lava, however, poses quite a risk.“

Frisk makes a soft noise of understanding. If I got you a piece of this stuff, could you reforge it then?

“Of course!“ Gerson says. “I’d be delighted to, in fact. Not everyone can say they reforged the Legendary Blade of Evil’s Bane!“

Frisk beams, bundles the shards back up, and tells Gerson they’ll be back soon before hurrying off again. Chara trails them with a skeptical look. “Okay I appreciate the enthusiasm, but how exactly do you plan to get this weird rock? Do you have a supplier or something?”

Frisk slows to a stop, staring into the sky with a look of impending realization.

“...You didn’t think that far ahead, did you.“

Frisk most assuredly didn’t, but they won’t let that stop them! They do some more poking around, and eventually encounter a Hylian bard living it up in the town square, providing a brief moment of levity for the Gorons in this trying time.

Chara wonders how he can stand wearing such impractical clothing in this sweltering volcano, and Mettaton offhandedly mentions something about the laboratory near the peak before he registers that the person he just replied to is a ghost.

The dude doesn’t stick around, leaving Frisk and Chara with just the clue pointing towards the laboratory. It’s not much, but it’s all they’ve got, so they go to investigate.

The lab seems abandoned at first, all dark and messy and stuff. Frisk pokes around a bit, not giving it up as a lost cause just yet, and then Chara hears a weird scuffling noise. Frisk sees them tense, and they turn around just in time to see a flash of golden scales vanishing around a corner.

They give chase, and with a little help from Chara they track down the mysterious creature. A light flickers on, and Frisk finds themself face to face with a yellow Lizalfos in a lab coat.

For a moment, the two of them stare each other, down. Frisk isn’t quite sure what to make of the monster, and the Lizalfos looks kinda like a deer in the headlights. After a moment, though, Frisk’s hand inches towards their sword, and the Lizalfos rears back not to attack, but to frantically wave her hands defensively.

“Wait wait wait I can explain!“ she says, and it takes Chara a moment to dart into the right spot to interpret because they were not expecting a talking lizard. “Y-you see, I’m not a-actually a monster! I-I’m Dr. Alphys, and I’m t-t-totally a normal person, I’m j-just cursed to look like this! J-j-just c-cursed!“

Frisk raises an eyebrow, removing their hand from their sword and straightening up. They glance at Chara, who just shrugs, then dig out their notebook again. Do you need any help with that?

“N-n-no, it’s quite alright!“ Alphys says, looking a little sheepish. “I-I-I don’t get out much s-s-so it’s not like it matters how I look! I’ve got all my brains u-up here, s-so I’m fine!”

Frisk nods, relieved that they don’t have to add another layer to this fetch quest chain. I heard you can make heat-resistant clothing, they write.

“Where did you—“ Alphys starts, before pausing. “O-oh, I suppose I did give Mettaton some of my prototypes... how were they, by the way? That guy never gives me useful feedback.“

Frisk shrugs. He didn’t look bothered by the heat, but honestly it’s not that bad.

“Speak for yourself,“ Chara comments. “I’d be dying if I weren’t already dead. You’re just a weird desert gremlin.“

Frisk ignores them.

Alphys, unaware of the ghost floating next to her, nods thoughtfully. “Good, good, the tests I ran seemed positive but it’s good to have more data. Oh— w-were you interested in my fireproof clothing as well?“

Frisk nods. If it’s available, I’d like to buy a set.

“O-of course! Might I ask what you n-need it for?“

I wanna go into the mines but I hear they got flooded with lava.

Alphys pauses. “...Erm, a-and why do you want that?”

I need a special stone to reforge this legendary sword that got broken.

A long moment passes between them.

“...Can’t argue with that,“ Alphys says, then turns and walks away.

Frisk pays up and Alphys custom fits them with a nice heatproof tunic which I haven’t designed yet, but I probably will eventually and whenever that happens I’ll probably edit in a picture here.

But anyway now they’re decked out in sweet fashion and so they trek off to the mines, which are another dungeon. I don’t have nearly as much to say as I did for the Lost Caverns. It’s a bunch of mines and stuff, there’s magma. They get the Burnt Hammer, which is basically the equivalent of the burnt pan but like. It’s a hammer. And there’s some kinda a monster or possessed machinery or a monster possessing machinery, and after Frisk kicks its ass the mines go back to normal and everyone rejoices and they get a cool blue rock which happens to be timeshift stone but shhhhhhh it’s not that important.

And so they return triumphantly to Gerson’s forge, materials in tow, and ask him to reforge the Master Sword for them. Gerson laughs, declares that they truely do have the soul of a hero. Then he asks what kind of sword they’d like him to make it into, at which point they kinda stall out because they were kinda assuming it’d just be forged back into its original shape.

“Nonsense,“ Gerson says. “Trying to copy the original perfectly is a fool’s errand, and if it’s going to be reforged for a new wielder why not have them choose its shape?“

Frisk agrees with this reasoning, but they don’t know enough about swords to make a decision. Chara, however, does. They tap Frisk on the shoulder, an odd glint in their eye, and spell something out for Frisk to write in their notebook. They show it to Gerson, and he clearly knows what it means as he laughs again and gets right to work on that sword.

It takes time to make a sword, and so Frisk stays a couple nights in Gerson’s cottage. Chara keeps randomly snickering every time the Master Sword comes up in conversation, and they refuse to explain themself, so Frisk just resigns themself to finding out what they told Gerson to make when the sword is done.

After the better part of a week has passed with Frisk doing various sidequests for the Gorons, Gerson finally presents them with the reforged Master Sword.

Frisk unwraps it from the cloth covering carefully, examining the sheath before tugging it free to look at the blade. It’s beautifully crafted, the hilt carved into something reminiscent of a bird while the blade is razor sharp. They can’t help but admire the craftsmanship, and even Chara pauses to ooh and aah a little before they collapse into another fit of giggles.

“You know, it’s kinda funny you picked that kind of sword,“ Gerson comments, and Chara barely manages to pull themself back together enough to interpret. “See, there was this young whippersnapper I used to know, and they always said that was their favourite kind of sword. You know why?“

Frisk tilts their head in a silent question.

“They said it was ‘cause of the way the hilt is put together,“ Gerson explains. “In their words, it isn’t technically a sword. Just a very large knife.“

Chara descends into a full on fit of laughter. Frisk stands there for a long moment, then looks back down at the Master Sword. Then they set it down and take out their notebook. Does that make this the Master Knife, then?

Gerson joins Chara in laughing. “I like your style,” he tells them, as he follows them to the door. “Remember me after you’ve saved the world, alright, kid?”

Frisk nods, slinging the Master Knife over their back, and slaps Chara on the shoulder on the way out to get them to stop laughing already, it’s not that funny.

(It’s absolutely that funny, Chara insists inside their own head. God they love knives.)

[Next Part] [Index]

[yastaghr]

Our Skeleton 21

There were tabs to make this easier. I’m sorry.

Four knocks sounded on the wooden door. Toriel buried her face further into the pillows, covering both ears with pillows. They weren’t quite enough to muffle the second set of knocks a few minutes later. She sighed. A tissue was pressed to the corners of her eyes. She stood up, slipped back into her shoes, and stiffly walked over to the door.

She opened it to see Asgore. He was standing there with his right hand half raised to knock again. He had that patient look again, the one she hated and loved in equal measure. It wasn’t the happy look he wore in his gardens. It was too practiced for that. It was the look he wore when he was immersed in politics. A look that said he could sit through any explanation, any train ride, any speech. It made her proud, for she had taught it to him. But it made her angry because he also used it when she got upset over something stupid.

“Yes?” Toriel said, her voice as stiff as her spine.

Asgore reached up with one hand and scratched the back of his head.

“Um...we’ve finished the timeline downstairs. We’re not sure if you had anything to add. Would you like to come down and see?”

Toriel stepped forward, brushing him aside. She saw his face flick to disappointment out of the corner of her eyes. She strode onwards, ignoring the twinge of guilt in her soul. She wasn’t quite done being mad at him yet.

Toriel continued on down the two sets of stairs to the bottom floor. Undyne was standing there, waiting. She had her arms behind her back and was studiously not looking at Toriel. The Boss Monster ignored her as well, sweeping past and over to the hallway with its long strand of masking tape running down the middle of the floor. Piles of folios and ripped notebook pages stood in stacks at various intervals along the wall.  

The first eight feet of the tape line held only one note, right at the front. It simply said, “Birthdays???”. Toriel looked down and saw the simple mark on the tape: 0ARD. Her heart skipped a painful beat. The unanimous decision of monsterkind to use the death of her first two children to start a new calendar still hurt, all these years later. It always would.

Another pang shot through her heart as she saw the little hearts on the timeline. She could still remember their faces. She could still remember their names. Ama had fallen in 3 ARD. They’d been so happy to learn monsters respected those who didn’t fall on the extremes of the gender spectrum. They’d stayed with Toriel for two years before they left to argue with Asgore. Their little yellow heart was marked in 5 ARD.

Patience had stayed with her from 52 ARD to 58 ARD. She’d been a cute little girl with excellent manners. Why her father had hated her so much for being born from another man...it made no sense to Toriel. Her light brown skin was just as adorable as the rest of her.

Sean had fallen in 79 ARD. He hadn’t stayed long. He wanted to prove to her that, with enough bravery, he could survive Asgore and make it out the other side. His little soul mark proved not.

Pers’ little heart was at 93 ARD. She wondered if he’d gotten to see all the underground like he’d wanted. Minori’s heart was at 189 ARD. They’d gone off to get Toriel more snails. They’d promised they were coming back.

The first pile of paper, at the 200ARD mark, was the largest. It had all of the orange folios and most of the blue ones. It also had a notebook page on top. She picked up the paper and read it.

Summary of 200ARD-224ARD: Gerson saw in 204 ARD Arrived in Snowdin 205 ARD Both brothers had yellow bones, malnourished, calcium-deficient sans very prot. and def. about souls - healer & grillby couldn’t see Blue Folios - Sans: multiple breaks in every bone in his body of var. ages old, deep crack on his skull missing facets and spinous processes on multi vert. recent damage to right eye socket and skull stats check - Sans at 1 HP Orange Folios - Papyrus: restraint marks on his wrists and legs stress fractures in his hands from wringing (habit continues) stats check - Papyrus at 60 HP Sans relents - Healer brought in 208 ARD very prot. and def. about souls - healer & grillby couldn’t see Brothers begin school 210 ARD

There was so much there that Toriel didn’t know how to unpack it. Why would any child in the Underground be that mistreated? Surely their parents had cared about them. No one could be so clumsy as to break so many of their bones. The damage to Sans’ skull might explain his apparent amnesia. But…what could have made them so wary of revealing their souls? It was common for healers to check color, texture, size, and examine any cracks. Why would Papyrus have been restrained so long that it left marks? He was so gentle, so loving, so kind...it made no sense.

She really didn’t want to look in those files. Her heart couldn’t stand it.

Toriel moved on to the next pile as she fought back her tears. It was hard to see until a familiar furry hand passed her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and read the summary.

225-249 ARD: Sans graduates 230AD Pap struggles w/ rules, socializing, and written words - fears punishment Letter to Asgore - sans gets job building information network 230AD Sans gets job as judge 248 ARD

Nothing there was particularly surprising. She wondered what this information network was. Wasn’t that what the guard was for? But that could be learned later. She continued to the next pile.

250-274 ARD: Blue Folio - Sans: sans self-dest. bone breaks discovered 253 ARD Papyrus graduates 270 ARD

Toriel clutches at her heart. She had a hard time understanding why any monster would hurt themselves, let alone someone close to her. She would have to read that folio later. Then she would know what signs to look for. She moved on to the next pile.

275 - 299 ARD: Sans gets job as comedian in 277ARD Papyrus can’t decide on a career

That was a very short note. So was the next one. Fatima’s green heart stood just before it, in 288 ARD. Summary 300 - 324 ARD: Undyne meets Papyrus 303 ARD Sans sentry 319 ARD

There was no note in the next section, but Toriel held out her hand for the notebook. Undyne’s blue hand passed it to her, along with a broken pencil stub, and she wrote: Summary 325-349 ARD: Sans knocks on door in 348 ARD

The next mark on the timeline was familiar. Just after 350 ARD was written, “Barrier Breaks 366ARD”. And that was where they were, wasn’t it? Nearly 367 years since the death of her children.

[undyingguppywarrior]

Another Day Chapter 2

Undyne’s footsteps could be heard echoing through the caverns of waterfall as she was sprinting full speed on her way to school. She darted around every corner at high speeds at least for an eight-year-old. As she continued the route, she normally takes she could hear some talking up ahead and slowed down to a jogging speed not wanting to run into anyone. She would look out for the sounds for the voices only to see a couple monsters on a lower path of Waterfall. Upon a closer look she could see her best and nerdiest friend Alphys who seemed to be hanging out with Diamond Receptionist. As she was making her way by, she couldn’t help, but hear some of the conversation that was happening which caused her to come to a dead stop. ���Come on you nerd just had over your homework and I’ll leave you alone.” It seemed that the only thing that was happening was bullying “I-I just don’t think it f-fair for you to t-take my homework.” Undyne knew very well her friend didn’t like confrontation which led to her never standing up for herself “M-Maybe I could just h-help you w-with your own hom-“ The monster was then interrupted by the diamond shaped one “Look I’m making this easy for you so just hand it over.”

 By this point the Undyne was done watching and choose now was the time to intervene “Why don’t you just leave her alone diamond head!” the young guppy yelled while sliding down the hill followed by jumping off near the end and landing quite loudly between the two monsters making them both jump back “U-Undyne? I didn’t notice you nearby. We were just having a chat is all.” The diamond monster was now clearly nervous given the fact that Undyne was already known for her absurd physical and magical strength “More like you were bullying my best friend. If I ever catch you doing this again then you’ll be my target practice understand?” the young guppy then stomped the ground leaving some small cracks to show she meant business “O-Of course Undyne. It won’t happen again.” Just like that Undyne had Diamond Receptionist running away in a hurry “T-Thank you Undyne. You don’t always h-have to defend me.” The yellow monster spoke shyly as she felt bad for troubling her friend once again for her lack of courage “Don’t be silly Alphys. As your best friend it’s my job to make sure you aren’t pushed around and it’s what a Royal Guard would do. Next time you need to stand your ground, look your foe dead in their eye, and let them know you won’t be pushed around!” Undyne was trying to give her friend the confidence and courage to face her fears head on “I-I’ll try, though we should g-get to school before we’re l-late.” The young guppy then remembered that she was on her way to school “Right then I’ll get us there in no time and you can help with my training!” the younger monster was now fueled with a drive to get both of them there on time “How can I-I help?” suddenly Undyne picked up Alphys and began running towards school at to speed

Within moments both of the young monsters were at their destination with Undyne having worked up quite a sweat. Turns out sprinting full force and carrying another monster was more challenging that she thought, but the young guppy had made it so to her she won. She then set down Alphys who looked very dizzy “T-Thanks for the lift U-Undyne.” The yellow monster said in a haze still trying to recover “Don’t mention it bestie. Just remember what I said and don’t let any monsters push you around.” The young guppy said while giving the other a hard pat on the back. After that they went their separate ways as Alphys was in more advanced classes given how smart she is. The young monster made her way to her first class which was basic mathematics. Lucky for her she had no homework assigned yesterday from this class, though there was that test from the other day. As the teacher started handing the monsters back her test Undyne wasn’t really wanting to see her as she normally scored low, though soon enough hers was handed back. She slowly turned it over and was shocked to be revealed with a C+ along with a note which read ‘Excellent job Undyne!’ which made her give a small smile. This was her best grade yet in this class even if the score was still low compared to other monsters. After spending a little over an hour and a half in math the bell rang and she went to her next class which was science with Dr. Gaster. She always hated this class as the doctor always was the hardest on her and whenever she said something about it, she always got the excuse that it was because she had such potential and all that other stuff that adults say. Lucky for her Dr. Gaster had a headache so he just put on a video which they took notes on

She then went through history, social studies, and arts class before finally magic training came up which was of course her favorite class. It was the class she excelled at the most given her natural ability in magic as well as her high physical strength. She stepped onto the gym floor wearing her normal black tank top and a pair of shorts. The best part was the couch was none other than her mentor (slash father figure) Gerson “Alright listen up you youngsters. Today we’ll be taking it easy with a game of dodge ball.” The old turtle spoke with in a raspy voice showing just how old he was. Undyne normally accept whatever Gerson threw her way, but a simple game of dodge ball wasn’t intense enough for her “Can I be on a team by myself Coach?” all the other younger monsters turned to look at the young guppy and while most would laugh at such a thing all of them knew that Undyne wasn’t one to take lightly even if she wanted to be on a team alone

The old turtle stroked his chin thinking about it before giving his answer “Alright, but let’s have a clean match here. No below the belt, no magic, and no trash talking.” All the young monsters agreed to the terms and each took a side of the court with Undyne alone on one side and the rest on the other. The young guppy sized up the other team which had thirteen monsters in total while waiting for Gerson to blow the whistle and start the game. It was clear that all the other monsters were nervous about facing the young guppy, but some had confidence that their numbers could take her down. There was a long minute with no one making a move until finally the sound of the whistle was heard. Just as the monsters took one step towards the dodge balls Undyne was already far ahead of them and had claimed two only to chuck them full force and nailing two targets who didn’t even have a chance to dodge and managed to grab one more before the other team made it to the dodge balls. They all threw their dodge balls at Undyne at the same time which seemed like a good idea on paper, but the young guppy easily dodged most of them and deflected the others with the one in her hand. This gave the young fish monster control of most of the dodge balls

Undyne then stomped on the ground causing several of the dodge balls to go into mid air and just as quickly she kick or punched them at the enemy team each on hitting a target knocking out five more opponents leaving six more left. The six remaining monsters were now on guard looking for any openings, though one cracked under the pressure and simply threw wildly at the guppy who simply caught the ball with one hand while letting out a yawn at the monster who she just took out. The five monsters left all threw their dodge balls at random times, though Undyne simple dodged them all. She then the two dodge balls in her hands with each hitting before bouncing off and hitting the same monster leaving only two more. One of her remaining foes left was Diamond Receptionist who was shaking by this point. The diamond monster then gathered whatever courage she had left and threw her dodge ball only for the fish monster to dodge with a roll, pick up a dodge ball in the process, and throw it hitting the monster full force and knocking her flat on her back. The last monster that remained was none other than her friend Alphys to which she simply walked close to the line that separated the teams where the yellow monster stood on the other side and lightly tossed a dodge ball taking her out. Alphys let out a grateful smile that Undyne let her off easy, though that’s what the young guppy always did “Well it looks like Undyne was won the game. You young monsters can either rest or do some light exercises.” Hearing that all the monsters who just faced Undyne’s wrath choose to take it easy and rest while Undyne herself began to do full sprints around the gym.

Soon the bell rang thus ending the school day “Alright you youngsters. It’s time for you to head home. You all did a good job in today’s game and remember there is no losing only learning.” With that all the monsters went to the lockers, changed into their regular clothes, and began walking out of the school building. Almost all the monsters had their parents waiting for them while some were old enough to walk home alone. Undyne was going to talk to her friend Alphys, but saw she was busy talking to her parents and figured it’d be best to head on home. As she turned to leave, she found the yellow lizard suddenly cut her off “I-I’m glad I caught you before y-you left. I want to t-thank you for helping m-me today so h-here.” Alphys held out what appeared to be today's homework and the guppy quickly realized what her friend was trying to do. Undyne simply shook her head and pushed the homework back to the yellow lizard “Thanks for the offer Alphys, but I won’t get anywhere if I let people do work for me. To be part of the Royal Guard means you give everything your all and accomplish everything with your own determination.” It seemed the young guppy wasn’t going to accept the offer “Now I better get going or I’ll be behind on my training. Catch ya later Alphys.” With that the young fish monster walked off leaving the yellow lizard feeling let down that her help was rejected, but was more inspired by the small speech. As Undyne walked away from the school she could see Diamond Receptionist and some other monsters looking at her as they spoke. The young guppy simply shot them a look which caused the small group to rush off “Just another day I guess.”

[scenitroute]

Happy holidays @gloomdraws!!  I’m your secret santa this year for @undertalesecretsanta!!  I hope you like this little story.  I was going for some nice feels.

Sorry I’m posting this so late in the day, I hope you didn’t get anxious!  Happy holidays and happy new year!!!

Frisk kicked up the thin layer of dusty snow that had fallen the night before, pouting slightly.  It wasn’t the thick snowfall they had hoped for, that stuck well and made for the best snowballs and snow forts.  Still, they thought, watching their breath come out as white puffs in front of their face, it was pretty nice.

“And just what are you doing out and about kid?”  A voice called to them.  “Aren’t you supposed to be helping ‘ole King Asgore with some decorating?”

Frisk smiled, trotting up to the door of Gerson’s little shop and new home above ground.  The old monster was sitting outside on his small porch, bundled up against the cold so that only his face remained exposed.  He grinned down at Frisk as they approached.  “Whatcha got there?”

In Frisk’s hands was a square package, prepared by Toriel before they’d left the house.  They held it up to him, knowing he’d recognize the smell as one of Toriel’s own pies.  As expected, the monster’s eyes widened happily, and he took the box, peeking into it.  Somehow his grin grew wider as he inhaled the warm scent of the treat, and he ruffled Frisk’s hair with a mittened hand, displacing their earmuffs.  Frisk quickly adjusted them.

“Thanks kid for bringing this by!” he laughed.  “Smelling it now, I don’t know if it will last long at all!  I may have to ask her to make me another huh?”

He winked as he said it, then shivered.  “It’s nice to have seasons these past few years, but I might think about traveling somewhere warmer before next winter.”

He scowled a little, then stood up, heading towards the door.  “Then again, I’m too old to keep moving around!”

Laughing again, Gerson opened his front door, and Frisk could feel a warmth from inside that felt produced by magic.  “I’m going to put this away before it freezes in this air,” he said.  ‘I will see you tonight?”

Frisk nodded excitedly and the old monster laughed.  “Right then!  I’m sure you have plenty to do until then kid.  Don’t be late!”

As he retreated inside, Frisk waved, and set off again.

It had been several years since the barrier had fallen, freeing monsterkind from the underground caverns and tunnels they had been trapped in.  The monsters had worked very hard to make a home for themselves.  This would be their first Giftmas where every monster finally had a solid place to call home in the village.  Thanks to a lot of help from neighboring towns, where the humans who lived there had offered plenty of help with building and supplies.  The towns were becoming an example to the rest of the world, and the past year for Frisk had been an especially happy one as ambassador for the monsters who had become their family.

Close friendships had been made with many of the humans.  When the monsters decided to hold a party in the center of their village for Giftmas Eve it was quickly agreed that their new friends would also be welcome.

Alphys pushed blue curtains back to peek outside her front window.  The glass was frosted around the edges, and she curled her fingers into the fabrics to keep them away from the cold panes.

She sighed a little, looking up at the cloud filled sky, and snow began to fall.  Letting go of the curtain she turned around, pulling her sweater tighter around her.  Undyne was sitting at their new dining table-

”An early Giftmas present!”  She had laughed when Alphys asked about it’s sudden appearance.  They both had ignored the splintered scraps of their old table in the trash outside.

Undyne finished lacing up her boots, looking up at Alphys to give her a disparaging look.  “Can’t we just build a fire and stay in tonight?”

Alphys handed her an extra scarf, pulling her own coat down from it’s peg.  “We promised to help set up in the square,” she reminded Undyne.

The former captain sighed.  “It’s only getting colder.”

They finished bundling up and Alphys stopped Undyne before opening the door.  “W-wait!,” she said, smiling.  “I almost forgot…”

She scrambled a little box out of the closet behind their front door, pulling a couple of plastic pouches from it.

“I found these at the human store last time I went, they should help!”  Undyne watched curiously as she opened the plastic pouch, revealing two smaller cloth pouches inside.  Alphys handed them to her.

“T-they should activate automatically,” she explained.  “But the clerk told me it would help t-to shake them up.  Try it out!”

While Alphys opened the second pack, Undyne, confused, started shaking the pouches.  After several moments she felt heat coming from the little cloth bag.

“Woah!”  She exclaimed, a grin forming across her face.

Seeing her pleased expression, Alphy’s own smile widened.  “Put them in your pockets,” she instructed.  “They’ll las the rest of the night.”

“You are the best babe!” Undyne laughed, stuffing the pouches away.  She gave them a quick squeeze in her pockets, relishing the warmth, then reached out to pull the scientist into a tight hug.  “Thanks Alphys.”

The lizard monster blushed deep red through her yellow scales as Undyne pressed a kiss to her forehead.  Feeling a little as if she no longer needed them, Alphys hurriedly stowed away her hand-warmers into her own pockets and together the pair left their home.

As more and more monsters arrived in the center of town, the busier Grillby’s diner became.  The building glowed from inside from strings of soft golden lights.  The front entrance stayed open for people to come and go, but stayed magically warm inside.  Sans the skeleton sat at the counter, watching with amusement as Frisk tried to hang a string of glittering tinsel on the highest branches of the tree Papyrus and Undyne had brought inside.  Standing on their tip-toes, Frisk could still only reach about halfway up the tree, and when they lost their balance, catching a face-full of pine needles before swaying away from the branches, Sans chuckled.

“Need a lift?” he asked.  Frisk heard a soft Ping! and was slowly lifted into the air with their garland.  Delighted, Frisk laughed, and quickly went to work.

Papyrus, who had been looking through a box of ornaments, turned with a star-shaped tree-topped in hand.  His eye sockets widened, seeing Frisk floating around the top of the tree, giggling.  He glared at Sans.

“OF COURSE YOU WOULD FIND THE LAZIEST WAY TO HELP SANS!”

Sans only shrugged, focusing on keeping the human child up in the air.  As they finished, Papyrus handed them the star.  Frisk placed it, carefully adjusting it so it would stay, then gave Sans a thumbs up.  With another soft Ping! the magic around their soul fell away, and they fell too, right into Papyrus’s waiting arms.  They clapped excitedly.

Papyrus held them, looking around the diner.  “WELL FRISK, IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO DECORATE?”

In fact there were very few things inside Grillby's establishment that had not been covered with some kind of decoration.  Ribbons, garlands, wreaths and ornaments hung all around the room, from the walls, tables, chairs, and even the jukebox in the corner.  The machine was belting some holiday tune that Asgore (who was fairly decorated himself between his colorful sweater and small sparkling ornaments hanging from his horns), hummed along to as he helped Grillby to set out trays of food for everyone.

Frisk indicated to Papyrus that this should be enough, and he set them down on the floor again just as Toriel arrived. They ran to her right away, and was enveloped in a warm, tight hug.

“Hello my child!” she said smiling.  “Are we ready for our guests?”

Frisk nodded, bobbing up and down on their toes.

“OH, HAVE THE HUMANS ARRIVED?” Papyrus asked, and Toriel confirmed.

Everyone very suddenly straightened, looking both excited and just a little bit nervous.  Following Toriel, and already in their coat, Frisk walked outside.  The center of the village was a round clearing with a fountain in the middle.  Several shops lined the center, and many were open and decorated like the diner to offer their wares and warmth to monsters and humans alike.  People had already started wandering around, greeting monsters they knew and exploring.  Many greeted Frisk as they stepped into the warmth of Grillby’s, the exclaimed excitedly about the decorations.

Monster Kid appeared on of a group of human children, laughing and playing.  “Frisk come on we’re going sledding!”

The evening grew darker, and the party quieter as people made their ways home.  Alphys and Undyne were tucked into the same side of a booth, drinking hot tea and laughing.  Grillby wiped the counter while talking with Sans.  Papyrus was enraptured with a family of five who was describing their own holiday and it's traditions (“SANS THEY CELEBRATE FOR EIGHT WHOLE NIGHTS!”).

Frisk wished their friends well and watched as they left.  The snow was still softly falling, and had added a couple inches to the ground throughout the night.  They stifled a yawn, unwilling to think about turning in just yet.  Instead they sat in the open doorway, listening contentedly to the chatter and music coming from behind them as they looked out into the clearing.

Snow blanketed the fountain and the statue in its center.  It was illuminated from the lights on all the shops and shops surrounding it and from the base of the fountain itself.  Frisk found themselves staring at the happy faces of the human and goat monster children portrayed by the statue.

A soft hand lightly patted their shoulder.  Frisk looked up, smiling at Toriel, who crouched down next to them.

“It has been a very long day Frisk,” she said.  “Everything is cleaned up for now.  Would you like to wish everyone goodnight?”

Frisk nodded, and lingered in the diner a while longer, giving extended goodbyes and “see you tomorrow”s and long hugs to their family.

As they walked home, holding hands with Toriel, Frisk thought of nothing else but their activity filled day.

[themanicmagician]

Nothing Gold - Chapter One

Summary: Sans, Papyrus and Gaster survived hardships in their youth that brought them together. But as they grow, and their ideologies split, their bonds of brotherhood are tested.

Sans sat on the low, wide windowsill of his room. Beyond the glass stretched leagues of thick forest, layers of snow threading the trunks. His chosen distraction proved too potent; he was so deeply immersed in the dense adventure novel in his hands, that he failed to hear several calls of his name.

“Sans,” Calibri, his mom, sounded exasperated and short of breath as she reached the threshold of his room. Her stomach, swelled with pregnancy, made the stairs a proper workout.

He earmarked his page before shutting the book.

“Sorry.”

“Are you ready? Come here.” Obediently, he shuffled closer. His mother bent with some effort, and she deftly unfurled the jumbled mess he’d made of his tie, and fixed it into a proper knot. “Just like your father.”

Sans’ small grin dimmed. Calibri doused the candles and grabbed his hand, to lead him downstairs.

“Let’s go, little bone. We mustn’t be late. The King will be there.”

In addition to financing the ceremony itself, King Asgore graciously provided them with a carriage for transportation to New Home. Their chauffeur, a centaur, helped Calibri up into the carriage. Sans hopped up in after her, and their chauffeur shut the door to their gilded vehicle. The carriage was covered in a gold paint, floral embellishments carved into the wood. The two windows were buffed to perfection. A small candle, contained within a bolted-down lantern in the carriage, was their one source of light; once “night” fell, shop keeps and guards doused any lanterns in the town. Like many things, oil and candles were rationed.

Grandpa Semi was already seated inside the carriage, waiting for the pair of them. Calibri and Sans took seats on the bench across from him. There was a quick jolt as the chauffeur lifted the carriage from the front, and they started to move. Grandpa Semi nudged Sans’ leg with his cane.

“Chin up now, Sansy.” Grandpa Semi’s eyelights flicked to Calibri and back to him again. Sans gave a small nod. He had to be strong for his mom, now.

The carriage ride passed silently, save for the muffled clop of the centaur’s hooves. Calibri stared out the window, watched the forest blur. Sans marveled inwardly at the sheer power of their chauffeur; he hauled the heavy carriage and them, its cargo, effortlessly.

Grandpa Semi coughed once, twice, the sound a deep rattle in his ribcage. He fished a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and patted it against his teeth and chin. His chronic cough had set in one day and never seemed to leave. When he noticed Sans watching, he flashed a reassuring grin.

The ride passed briskly, their driver pausing only once for a quick drink before Hotland. Before today, Sans had never ventured so far away from his snowy home. The farthest his parents had ever taken him was Waterfall. It was hard to appreciate the ruggedness of Hotland, the splendor of New Home, considering where they were headed.

At last, their carriage slowed and came to a stop. There were hundreds of carriages already present, crowding the dirt road, but a royal guard escort cleared a path for them right to the door. The chauffer once more opened the door for them. Sans, the closest, was let out first. The centaur then helped out both Sans’ mother and grandfather. The centaur’s flanks were white with foam from the hard ride.

Everyone was staring at them as they entered the funeral home. Sans’ shoulders hunched, and he took his mother’s hand to hold. The service was choked with monsters, from every corner of the Underground. Not many among them had truly known Times New Roman, but they attended out of respect.

Calibri walked Sans over to the gilded silver urn near the back of the room. He gripped her hand tightly as they stopped before it.

“Would you like to look?” She asked him, quietly.

Meek, he nodded.

With reverence, she lifted the urn. She removed the lid, and lowered it down so Sans could see what remained of his father.

Inside was dust, like fine particle sand, with a heavy smell of chalk.

Sans swallowed hard. His mother wiped at her tears, taking care to not let them drip into the dust.

After a moment, she set the dust back onto the table, replacing the lid. After the wake, they planned to take the urn back with them to Snowdin, to spread Roman’s dust on his precious things.

It didn’t take long for attendees to line up to pass on their condolences to the widow. The first, of course, was the monster who arranged and paid for the elaborate wake: King Asgore himself.

“Calibri.” The fur on King Asgore’s cheeks was damp, matted. He embraced Sans’ mother carefully, mindful of her swollen stomach. “Your husband’s sacrifice will not be in vain. Thanks to him, the third human soul is in our possession. He will forever be remembered as a savior of the Underground.”

“Thank you, King Asgore. Roman was happy to live in service of the crown.”

The hug broke. “I know it’ll be difficult, keeping your child’s magic level stable without your husband to assist. If there is anything you require, the Crown will provide it. No matter the expense.”

Calibri expressed her thanks, once more. King Asgore turned to Sans next. The aura of a boss monster was too overpowering and intimidating; Sans, shy, half-hid behind his grandpa’s leg.

Grandpa Semi elbowed him. “Show some respect, Sans—”

“It’s alright.” The King crouched, to appear less hulking. It didn’t quite work, for even at this angle he was still several feet taller and wider than Sans. “It is difficult to lose a parent at a young age. I myself lost my mother in my childhood. I remember all too well the pain of it.” King Asgore closed his eyes, a shadow of grief falling over his face. When he opened his eyes again, it smoothed away. “But you cannot let it control you. Honor your father, yes. But do not give into your despair. Stay determined.”

Grandpa Semi nudged him insistently, so Sans gave the King a jerky nod of understanding. King Asgore shook Granpa Semi’s hand firmly, and then with a slight bow left the family to themselves.

After the King came a stream of strangers. Some shook Sans’ hand, and offered words of encouragement. Some gave their condolences only to Calibri and Grandpa Semi, their gazes sliding over Sans completely, for what could a child understand of such loss?

Midway through the line, an old turtle stumped forward.

“Gerson,” Grandpa Semi clapped the turtle hard on the shell. “So you’re still kicking, you old bastard.”

“Language,” Calibri scolded, giving a significant glance to Sans.

“Sansy didn’t hear nothing,” Grandpa Semi pat his skull. “How can he. He’s got no ears!”

“I’ve got to say, I certainly don’t miss your bad jokes.” Gerson jibed. He sobered, turning to Calibri. “I’m deeply sorry about Roman. If I had left my Waterfall post to help intercept…”

Calibri dismissed the thought. “No one is to blame but the human. If you had gone to Roman’s aid, it might have killed you, too.”

“If you or the squirt ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

Calibri nodded, grateful.

Gerson lumbered off back into the crowd.

The hours stretched on. All the sympathetic monsters blurred into one unrecognizable mass, all invoking the same hollow condolences. Sans felt numb, detached. From his mother’s expression, she was feeling much the same.

~*~

Sans pulled out his step stool from the closet. He carried it over to the kitchen, and hopped up on it. On the counter was an array of pill bottles, as well as a time chart. Sans dutifully recorded the time before he took out the proper pills for his mother; two for nutrients for the baby, one for aches and pains, and another for magic resupply. It was usually the other parent’s job to supply the magic the mother and baby needed, but in this case, they had to make due by other means.

Sans took the pills, cradled carefully in his hands, to his mother’s room. Only two weeks from her expected due date, his mother had been given stern orders from the doctor to stay in bed. Grandpa Semi was at work, leaving Sans in charge of fetching whatever his mother needs.

“Thank you, Sansy.” She took the pills one by one, chasing them down with a glass of water. She pat the bed. “Come sit with me a moment.”

Obediently, he scrambled onto the bed. Calibri wrapped her arm around him, pulled him snugly close. The glow of her stomach was visible through her maternity gown.

“Can I…?” Sans’ hand hovered over her stomach.

She nodded, and he rested his hand gently on her belly. He sent a small pulse, questioning. It took a moment, but then a rush of excitement bounded over to him. Sans grinned widely. No matter how many times he had established soul connection with his new sibling, it never failed to leave him breathless and really, really happy.

“Baby loves you already.” Said Calibri, warmly. “You’re going to be the best older brother, right?”

Sans nodded fervently.

“I’ll play with them, and teach them magic, and, and read them stories!”

“You’re always been a good storyteller. Why don’t you tell me one now?”

Sans’ mouth dropped open, a tale already forming, when his mother tensed.

“Are you alright?”

Calibri tried to smile. “Just a minute, little bone.” She let out a pained moan, hands curling around her stomach.

Sans hovered, anxious. Should he run and find Grandpa Semi? Or was it better to stay here, in case she needed something?

“Um…” His voice was shaky.

“The baby’s not coming yet,” Calibri allayed his concerns. “Can you get Mommy another of the blue pills, please?”

“Y-Yes!”

Nearly tripping over his own feet, Sans rushed back to the kitchen. He grabbed the bottle of magic-boosting pills. He twisted the cap—

In his nervousness, the bottle popped out of his hands. The pills scattered, most on the kitchen island, but some onto the floor.

“Bastards,” Sans swore under his breath. He immediately glanced around, guilty at uttering the dirty word. But no one was there to chastise him. He grabbed one of the pills off the counter, and brought it back to his mother.

She was still clutching her stomach, pained, when he returned. Calibri took the pill from him, and swallowed it dry. Bit by bit, the tension drained from her body.

“I’m alright, Sansy.” She assured him, and wiped sweat from her brow. She forced out a laugh. “Your sibling is going to be a strong one, with all the magic they’re pulling from me.”

“But you’re ok?”

Calibri smiles. “Yes, darling. Come back up here.”

Sans didn’t need to be told twice. He curled back up by his mother’s side. Calibri was warm, her aura soothing. She ran a gentle hand over his skull. She sung a soft tune that carried him off to sleep.

~*~

Sans was eating dinner with his grandfather when they heard his mother scream.

He looked up at his grandfather, frightened. “The baby’s not supposed to come out ‘till next week—”

“Well, looks like they decided they want out now.” Grandpa Semi pushed himself upright with a grunt. “Remember what we discussed. Fetch the towels and a tub of hot water.”

Sans hurried to retrieve the items, galvanized by further cries from his mother. He grabbed the towels from the linen closet—thick, fluffy—and followed Grandpa Semi into his mother’s bedroom.

“Stay calm, Cali,” Grandpa Semi instructed, as Sans entered the room. His mom was holding Grandpa Semi’s hand in a tight grip. The covers were all thrown off the side of the bed. Calibri’s gown had been removed, and a sheet was draped across her pelvis to preserve her modesty. The soul shone brightly within her ectoplasmic stomach. She strained, trying to push the soul out. It glowed brighter still, but didn’t move.

“Sans.” He jolted at Grandpa Semi’s sudden call. Realized he’d just been standing there, watching.

Sans set the towels within his grandfather’s reach, and left the room to fetch the rest of the supplies. He grabbed the heavy wooden pail, left by the front door, and ran outside. The lampposts were still lit, their flickering light guiding Sans to the well at the border of Snowdin and Waterfall. The townsfolk had tried to build a well in the center of town, long ago, but the frostbitten ground was too unyielding to chip through.

Panting, Sans set his bucket down beneath the faucet. Once his soulbeat slowed, he grabbed the crank on the pump and started moving it, up and down. It was slow going at first, the pump’s joints locked with the cold, stiff and reluctant. But he kept at it, and soon enough the water began to pour.

Once the bucket was filled, Sans abandoned the pump to heft it up by its handle. He grimaced at the weight of the water, but endured it. He could do this. For his mother, for his sibling.

They’d had everything planned out. Starting next week, the midwife was going to stay at their home around the clock, ready to aid Calibri at any time. She would have brought supplies, would have been prepared for anything. They hadn’t thought it’d happen so soon, so suddenly. Even if they called for the midwife now, it wouldn’t be any good; she was all the way in New Home. They have to do this alone.

Sans tried to hurry, but moving too fast sloshed water from the bucket. At an awkward gait, he hobbled his way home.

In his haste, he’d left the front door ajar; the wind blew it wide open. He tottered inside, and brought the bucket over to the fire. The remains of Sans and Grandpa Semi’s dinner sizzled at the bottom of a pan over the fire, nearly black. After setting that pan aside, he put a big cooking pot in its place. He transferred as much of the water that could fit. He added more sticks and brush to the fire, urging it to be bigger, hotter.

He couldn’t hear his mother anymore. Was that good? Bad?

Leaving the water to heat, Sans returned to his mother’s room. As he got closer, he could hear her again; crying, breathing hard.

Sans inched open the door, and peered inside. The soul had emerged from its ectoplasmic womb in his absence. It hovered above Calibri, a shining beacon. Strands of magic connected the soul still to its mother. The magic would help the child’s body form.

Calibri noticed Sans peeking in.

“Hi, little bone.” She said, voice weak.

Grandpa Semi turned. “You’ve gotten the water?”

“I-It’s warming now.”

“Good lad.”

Sans approached the bed, watching the strings of magic connecting his mother and his sibling pulse with surges of energy. “Is there anything else I should do?”

Grandpa Semi shakes his head. “At this point there’s little we can do but wait for the souling to form.” That could take at least an hour, Sans had been told.

Deeming the situation ok, Sans went to check on the pot of water. Warm, but not boiling yet. Sans dragged the basin over so it was ready, and waited watching the water until it bubbled.

After putting on mitts to combat the pot’s heat, he poured the water into the basin, taking care not to let any spill. When the basin was near-full, he set the pot aside. There was still extra water remaining in the pot, in case they needed it later.

Sans grabbed the basin and hefted it up, carrying it down the hall to his mother’s room. Once inside, his grandfather directed him to set it to the side for now.

Sans loitered by the edge of the bed. There was nothing for him to do now, but he felt anxious and awful, just standing here watching his mother suffer through this.

“Sans, wait outside.” Grandpa Semi directed him.

“No, I want to stay.”

His grandfather sighed. “Sans, please don’t—”

Calibri screamed out as there was a sudden crack.

Sans’ gaze jerked up. The soul was shifting, breaking, no—

There were two of them now. Separated. Two souls, a duller white than the one had been, but still vibrant enough to be healthy.

“Twins,” Grandpa Semi breathed, tears of joy in his eyes. “Stars above. You have twins.”

Calibri stared up at the twin souls with love in her eyelights. “They’re beautiful.”

Calibri’s complexion drained suddenly, from glowing to ashen. She started to sag on the bed, eyelights hazing. “Oh…”

“Stay sharp, Cali.” Grandpa Semi’s palms were alight with magic. “The hard part’s over. You’re doing great. Just—keep going.”

“Mom!” Sans grabbed her spare hand. He didn’t know how to transfer magic, but he was sure he could figure it out—

“Sans.” Grandpa Semi’s reprimand was sibilant. “You are too young to share your magic. The expenditure could kill you.”

“But…” Sans looked between them, helpless.

“It’s fine…” His mother murmured. She gave his hand a feeble squeeze before letting go. “Sansy, it’ll all be okay.”

Magic clumped around the souls, bigger and bigger. A balled mass at first, the magic started to mold into shapes. Small torsos, limbs, heads. The magic thickened, firmed up to form two tiny skeletons, curled tight in the fetal position. As one, the twins took their first breath, rib cages moving in synch.

One twin opened his eye sockets. They were dark—did baby skeletons not have lights? They started to uncurl.

“I need to separate them now.” Grandpa Semi stood, letting go of Calibri’s hand. He coughed, burying his mouth in a handkerchief, and muttered curses until the fit subsided.

“No,” Calibri whimpered, the sound piercing Sans to his core. “My babies—”

“Hush, Cali.” Grandpa Semi stuffed his handkerchief away. One hand cradled the baby that had started to move. The other grasped the magic tether. “Count to three for me.”

Calibri sucked in a shallow breath. “One, two—”

There was a spark of energy from Grandpa Semi’s hand, and the cord dissipated. The baby screamed, and Calibri howled with them. Grandpa Semi quickly bundled the child in one of the towels, and handed them off to Sans.

“One more, just one more,” Grandpa Semi yelled to be heard. The second twin stirred at all the noise, disproving Sans’ theory with their brightly glowing eye lights.

Grandpa Semi repeated the procedure with the second twin, and pushed them into Sans’ arms too. The babies squirmed with discomfort.

Calibri let out one last moan and slumped over. Her ectoplasmic stomach seemed to melt off her, the magic pooling across the sheets, running like blood.

“Take them out of here.” Grandpa Semi herded him to the door. The babies wrested their tiny hands free of the towels to entwine their fingers.

Sans twisted his neck, tried to see his mother on the bed, but Grandpa Semi blocked his view.

“But Mom is—”

“I’ll handle it,” His grandfather said, though Sans could hear the tremor in his voice.

Then the door was shut firmly in Sans’ face.

The twins hadn’t stopped crying since they came out. Sans shushed them, and rocked them in his arms to quiet them. He pressed the side of his skull to the door. Ever so faintly, he could make out Grandpa’s voice.

“...have to hang in there, Cali. Don’t you want to meet them?”

One of the babies—the one with glowing eyelights—started flailing in Sans’ grip.

“Stop it!” Sans hissed. “Don’t—”

The child nearly wriggled free of his hold, forcing Sans to clutch him tighter. He grimaced as sticky magic residue from the infant’s bones smeared across the front of his shirt.

Hefting the babies in his arms, Sans made his way down the hall to the kitchen and living room area. His new siblings were fairly light, but their constant writhing made the short trip a battle.

Finally, they arrived at the kitchen. The pot set aside earlier still had some water left in it. Sans laid the twins down onto the floor. They didn’t try to move, content to lay there beside each other, hands still clasped. Mercifully, their crying petered out.

Sans stuck his hand into the water; it was lukewarm. Sans let slip a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to risk scalding their sensitive new bones. He transferred the water to the wash basin he used for his own baths, and added some bubbly soap.

As the soap mixed in the water, Sans turned a critical eye to his new brothers. Aside from the lack of eyelights on one of them, the twins were identical in every regard, down to their hands with the curiously-shaped holes in them. No Eyelights seemed slightly less fussy, so Sans decided to start with them. But their tiny hands were still so tightly clasped together.

“Alright, this’ll only take a minute,” Sans kept his voice gentle and assuring as he reached towards their joined hands. But as soon as he tried to pry them apart, the twins broke out into earsplitting wails of dismay. Big, fat tears slid down their faces as they cried their little souls out.

“Okay, jeez! I get it!” Sans yelled to be heard over them, but his raised voice only seemed to make them cry harder.

Sans peeled them out of their towels, and carefully set them both into the wash basin. The tepid water calmed them somewhat.

Sans grabbed a small hand towel from a nearby drawer, and used it to scrub away the residue before it could set. The twins were going to be nice and clean when he handed them back over to his mother.

He rubbed the towel over No Eyelights. Oh, right. He didn’t have to guess or invent names for them—they’re family. Sans checked them.

PAPYRUS - ATK 0 DF 1

His stats worried Sans for a split second before he realized—duh. Papyrus was a baby.

Sans checked the other infant next.

WINGDINGS GASTER - ATK 0 DF 1

The identical stats weren’t surprising at all. Wingdings’ name, however, was pretty unusual. His mother and Grandpa Semi had mentioned different uncles and friends named Sans and Papyrus, but he’d never heard of the name Wingdings before.

After he finished cleaning off Papyrus, he moved to Wingdings. The twins were wilting in the basin, growing sleepy. Sans had to prop Wingdings up against the side of the basin so he didn’t list over as Sans cleaned him.

In a matter of minutes, Wingdings and Papyrus were both clean, and smelling faintly of lavender. Sans felt a puff of pride. His mom had told him again and again that little siblings would be a lot of work. Sans thought it wasn’t so bad.

The front sides of their towels were a little sticky with magic, so Sans flipped them over to the clean sides. He bundled Papyrus and Wingdings back in the towels, hefted them in his arms, and carried them back to the hallway.

When he reached his mother’s door, he kicked at it.

“Grandpa Semi?” Sans called, as loud as he dared with the sleeping twins in his arms. “Grandpa?”

The door didn’t open.

Sans spied the telltale green glow of healing magic under the door, and Grandpa Semi didn’t respond.

Sans slid down into a sitting position, so his back leaned against the wall facing the door. Stuck waiting, Sans looked down at his sleeping brothers. The faint glow of magic illuminated their features. Papyrus and Wingdings would look a lot like their mom, he could tell already by the shapes of their skulls. They were pudgy with youth, but Sans knew they’d grow up to have her same angular skull structure.

Sans huffed a faint, bitter laugh. Unlike him. He was more big-boned, like Dad had been.

Sans settled Papyrus and Wingdings in his lap as his eye sockets grew heavy.

He drowsed lightly as he waited, but perked up again after a few hours, as the green light beneath the door faded.

There was a faint smell of—chalk? Like someone had banged two erasers and clouded the room with chalk dust.

Sans was roused fully as the doorknob turned, and Grandpa Semi joined him in the hallway. Sans stood, holding Wingdings and Papyrus in his arms again.

“...Grandpa?” Sans tried, after his grandfather stared blankly into space for a moment.

Grandpa Semi’s gaze jerked to look down at him.

“Oh, Sans.” He said, as if he hadn’t realized Sans was there. Grandpa Semi wiped the sheen of sweat from his skull before he took Papyrus and Wingdings from him. “You did very well taking care of them.”

“What about Mom?” Sans demanded, a touch too loud; Papyrus began to stir.

Grandpa Semi hesitated a second too long. Sans’ soul dropped in his chest. He darted around his grandfather, and threw open the door.

“Sans!” Grandpa Semi, encumbered by the twins, couldn’t stop him from running in.

His mother was...his mother...

Sans approached the bed. The twisted sheets. The pile of dust.

[sparrowwritings]

Writing Challenge Day 3: Applause

Previous Day -- Original Post -- Next Day

The ghost sang the last note and let it hang in the air before they turned their eyes towards their audience. Blooky silently clapped their ghost limbs together and nodded with approval. Shyren sang an encouragement tune. The Woshua that had wandered into the small cavern in the middle of the ghost’s performance only squinted its eyes in vague disapproval.

It wasn’t entirely what the ghost wanted, but they glowed with pride anyway. 

Letting themself float a foot higher than they had been, the ghost announced, “That’s all for today, darlings! Thank you for being such a lovely audience!” They spun in place and winked, which Shyren giggled about. The Woshua muttered something about dirty gestures before wandering off again, though the bird on its back whistled a little tune. 

When the group had dwindled down to just the two ghosts, Blooky floated next to their cousin with a very small smile. “that was...very nice...cousin.” The ghost couldn’t help but smile back. Getting Blooky to be excited about anything at all was rare, and it was even rarer that they were excited enough to smile. 

“Thank you, Blooky,” The ghost replied politely. “You go on ahead back to the farm, I’ll follow you soon. The human fanclub is starting!” Blooky nodded and floated down the familiar path. As soon as the ghost couldn’t feel their cousin’s presence, they frowned. Again, they’d announced a concert and again the only ones in attendance were their friend, family, and a passerby. They had put fliers everywhere they could think of! Even old Gerson had humored the ghost and let them hang one up in his shop! Just what could they do to be a star?

A shuffle from the hallway behind them caught their attention. The ghost whirled around only to find a yellow lizard-like monster glancing around the cavern nervously. In her claws were one of the advertisements that the ghost had made for the human fanclub. At least SOMEONE new had come around. Realizing that they had been invisible for quite some time, the ghost rematerialized in order to introduce themself. 

The lizard monster let out a shriek and had to readjust her glasses. “O-oh, I-I didn’t realize--I th-think I have the wrong c-cavern, d-don’t mind me.” 

“Wait!” The ghost cried and zoomed to float in front of them. “Please don’t go! This is the human fanclub, I swear!” The ghost introduced themself as a last effort to get the monster to stay. The lizard monster stopped in her tracks and stared right at the ghost for a long moment. 

“A-alright.” Extending a claw, she gave a nervous smile. “I-I’m Alphys. Uh, and w-was that you singing before?” The ghost felt themself turn partly invisible in embarrassment. “N-no, don’t go! It was really nice!” 

They stared, still mostly opaque. “...You think so?” 

Alphys grinned wide enough to show all of her teeth. “I know so.”

It still felt like Mettaton had met Alphys only a few days ago. And that his body had been planned and built so soon after. And that just yesterday he had been introduced to the King in his new body. Of course he had been the first to see the announcements about his new body and persona. He was also the one that insisted on showing himself to be as friendly as possible--to be more accessible to the population of the underground of course. And since a human hadn’t been seen in ages, keeping the whole “Human Eradication Robot” routine as a backup role would be easy.

Now here he was, about to face the curious eyes of the monsters of New Home for the very first time. It was the role he was born to have, that he left Blooky alone to pursue. He was more excited than he’d ever felt before. 

Mettaton also had a brief wish to turn invisible, just as the curtain went up and the crowd could be seen. He took a moment to collect himself before bringing the microphone to the audio port of his flat face. “WELCOME, ALL YOU BEAUTIES AND GENTLEBEAUTIES, TO THE METTATON SHOW!” The performance wasn’t nearly as elaborate as he had wanted it to be. The single wheel holding up his body slid where he was more used to floating above the ground, and he had no idea what to do with his other arm as he sang. The smoke machines had broken down, so he had to make due with using some improvised flashy magic as a finisher. 

The moment of silence that occurred after the end of his performance seemed to stretch for hours. When cheers first started to erupt, that’s when Mettaton knew he had been successful. He stretched his arms as far out to his sides as he could and drank in the applause. The lights displayed on his face flashed to showcase a heart, and it beat in time to the clapping. Finally, his dream was here.

[monster-massage-blog]

Dreams of a Happier Time (24)

Saga woke up in someplace dark...where there were crystals or something to that effect that Imber was tapping playfully to bring light...no wait, they were just squeaky mushrooms. It seemed he had been moved somewhere so he wouldn’t be laying on the stone floor anymore. Now this was some form of...short grass. Or maybe it was moss. Whichever it was...it was warm. He must have been laying there for a while. He sat up and yawned...oddly, he felt better. A lot better. He did a check chest...he remembered his time with Gerson. Alright, he remembered that, now what else...he didn’t know why he had dust on him...okay, he didn’t remember everything...actually, he felt sort of detached. He knew he should be feeling bad. Getting over things that quickly wasn’t natural. He should probably talk about it with them. They’d probably find out anyway. “Ahhh...hey.” He said softly, but all three turned around rather quickly as if they had been waiting for him.

“Evok-errr...Saga, right?” Gelu asked nervously. “We were talking with Aura and Eurus, and we were told you much prefer your name to your title.”

Saga nodded slowly. “I...don’t much like formality. Just Saga is fine with me.”

“I dig it!” Imber said happily. “It’s short and sorta rolls off the tongue! Saga Saga Saga.”

“But you don’t have-” Gelu started.

“Metaphorically speaking. None but Saga HAVE a tongue.” Nox stated. “It just meant it is easy to say. Gelu is also easy to say but Nox, while short, has a hard end so it does not roll off the tongue.”

“Really?” Imber asked. “Gelu Gelu Gelu...okay! Nox Nox...bleeeeh, that last letter really is hard.”

“I told you.” Nox said simply. “Try your own name. It’s the longest but it’s not the hardest.”

Imber bounced a little as she started chanting her own name. “Imber Imber Imber Imber…heee, Iiiiimmmbuuuuurrr…”

“Well, someone’s having a good time.” Nox said, sounding amused as everyone watched her.

“Is it fun?” Saga asked.

“Sure it’s fun!” Imber said. “Here, you-!”

That’s as far as she got before the world seemed to tear open once more and found himself lying on the floor. He shot up and onto his feet but a wave of nausea washed over him. His knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor. The three elementals clustered around him in a bit of a panic. “Whoa whoa whoa, take it easy evok-err...Saga! You’re safe!” Gelu said quickly.

Saga glanced around...this had been where he’d woken up...wait a minute...he’d almost called him evoker… “H-huh?” He panted as he tried to sit up. This…all seemed familiar. Could it have been a dream?

“We were talking with Aura and Eurus, and we were told you much prefer your name to your title.” Gelu explained. This was the same...what if he said the same thing?

Saga nodded, trying to avoid any big or fast movements as his eyes trailed over Imber. Next she would say-

“I dig it!” Imber said happily. “It’s short and sorta rolls off the tongue! Saga Saga Saga.”

“But you don’t have-” Gelu started.

“Metaphorically speaking. None but Saga HAVE a tongue.” Nox stated. “It just meant it is easy to say. Gelu is also easy to say but Nox, while short, has a hard end so it does not roll off the tongue.”

Saga felt a chill. This was too weird to be a coincidence...but why was this so familiar? Did time just go back? Why? The three continued to talk but he wasn’t listening anymore. He only snapped back into reality when he noticed they’d started saying different things since he hadn’t asked Imber if it was fun but at that point they’d been talking for a while. Gelu gently tapped his shoulder. “Saga? You okay?”

“Y-yeah, I was just...thinking…” He muttered softly. “What were you talking about?” “Well, we talked about how some names roll of the tongue, then we started talking about other words, and now Imber wants to backtrack so she can get more water.” Gelu summarized.

“Water’s the best you guys don’t understaaaaaaand!” Imber whined. “Come on it’s not that far away! Saga don’t you like water?”

“I...yes?” Saga said, confused by the question. Water was important but he felt like there were some implications in that question.

“Oh my gosh, you should try swimming!” Imber declared as the idea buzzed into her head. “I bet you’ll be great!”

“How did we get to swimming?” Nox asked.

“Because water!” Imber said and raised her arms into the air. “You swim in water. It’s just what you do.”

“Uhhh...I can’t swim.” Gelu muttered and started tapping his fingertips together.

“I’ll pollute the water.” Nox stated but there was some concern in his tone.

“I...don’t know how to swim.” Saga said quietly.

“But you gotta try it! I be in the water! I can keep you up!” Imber insisted. “Swim in the water! I’ll keep your head in the air space!”

“Don’t push him into this.” Nox said sternly. “If he doesn’t want to-”

“Erm...I think it’d be okay to give it a try.” Saga said. “Maybe it’ll clear my head.”

“Are you quite sure?” Nox asked. “We’ll have to dry you afterwards or you might be quite cold.”

“It’s okay. Hotland is past here. I can warm up there.” Saga stated. “I might even steam a little if I stand close to the edges..." but then he paused. Hotland probably wouldn’t be very good for any of them. Gelu might melt, Imber might evaporate, and it’s very bright...Nox might dry out. How would he get them through? Oh well, he'd figure something out. He needed a break now. Spend some time with them. Swim with Imber and then get to know Nox and Gelu some. He'd been pushing himself and it was worrying them. "...If I remember right, water is back that way." Saga said, pointing back. "It's past Gerson. Do you think we can stop and say hello again? I want to apologize. I left too quickly and he probably knew it."

"I see you're finally considering your limits." Nox said, sounding a bit pleased. "We most certainly can."

"I'll lead the way!" Imber declared and was already leading the way before anyone could get a word in. They had to hustle just to keep up with the eager water elemental. However when they got to the alcove that Gerson was inside, they were surprised to see the old turtle standing outside, and likewise he was surprised to see them as well.

"H-hello." Saga stammered as he stepped infront of him and then bowed quickly. "...I-I'm really sorry! I was so sure of myself but you probably knew I wasn't ready to go yet. Still I used my position to order you aside."

"You had a conviction in your eyes that I rarely see down here." Gerson said, crossing his arms. "Gave me pause. Didn't think a kid like you could make a look like that. That's why I stood aside. Yes I figured it was too soon but maybe you had some other surprises. It's a relief to see that you reconsidered though. What happened?"

"A friend stood up to me and told me they were worried." Saga said with a small smile. "I guess it's what I needed to hear. I just wanted to push on and on without any real plan. I don't know what I'll do about anything. I just...I still don't know really but I know what I want to do. I want to go to daddy."

"Then what are you doing back here?" Gerson asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Taking a break. I ran myself into the ground and sleep is only going to help so much." Saga answered. "I need to stop and spend some time with my friends. Imber wants me to swim."

"I still don't think it's a great idea but it's his choice." Nox blurbed.

Gerson nodded. "I won't say anything on the matter but remember the human is out there somewhere. Passed here and probably somewhere in Hotland I figure. Good luck kid." And with that, he turned around and walked back in the Alcove.

"Come on come on swim swim swimmmmm!" Imber urged, getting behind the prince and pushing him along.

"Ahhh, wet!" Saga whined as her tendrils soaked into his dress, jumping forward.

"Imber!" Nox bubbled sternly.

"What? It's gonna get wet anyway." Imber said with a small pout. "Come on...wattterrrrr!"

"Alright alright." Saga got moving once more, going at a brisk pace that seemed to satisfy his companion and walked all the way to an outcropping of stone...this was where a duck usually was. There was plenty of water here. "Is this good enough?" He asked.

Imber didn't respond with words. Rather she dove into the water and seemed to vanish, only to resurface, looking slightly larger than she was before. "Yeeeeeeeessss....water! Come on come on!"

"Ahh...give me a moment." Saga said. "Do I just jump in or-" However the choice was made for him when a spear tore through the air and pierced his torso. He fell forward into the water as the spear's force pulled him and Gelu let out a shrill, piercing scream while Nox whirled around, to confront their assailant. It was the human who looked more than a little pleased with himself.

Saga hit the water with a splash and sank, crimson blooming from his wound and dispersing into the water, while Imber promptly freaked out and pulled him up and out of the water. "Oh my god! Noooo, no no no! Uhh...w-what do I do!?" She asked as Saga coughed water he'd ended up swallowing. "Uuuh, water out, got it." She pushed a tendril into his mouth and down his throat, before pulling it out quickly and the water that didn't belong inside him. He coughed anyway but it was a bit easier. "Is that good? Is that better?"

"Just shut up and listen to me." The prince growled. This knocked Imber and Gelu into a stunned silence, but Nox and the Human were still locked in place, sizing the other up and pondering their next move. "I'm not going to recover from this...that is a really big wound. I'm bleeding too much. It feels like my insides are being turned into a liquid...but I will get better if you kill the human."

"What? How-" Imber tried to ask.

"Shut up and do as I say." Saga hissed. "I don't have enough time to explain. Either get them in the water and drown them or get them into Nox. I'm pretty sure he can handle it if he gets a hold of them. Gelu, make an ice wall, cut off the escape."

"Uhhh, right!" The Ice elemental was still sort of dumbfounded but he could still take orders, raising his arms and making an ice barrier behind the human. The Human's attention was taken off Nox for a moment as they realized things were starting to happen and seemed displeased that their route back was no longer available.

"How long does it take you to die?" They asked, looking at Saga. "Just dust already."

"Go fuck yourself." Saga spat. "Imber, lay me down on the ground. You all have your orders. Go."

That was all they needed. Nox and Gelu surged forward while Imber hung back, taking in more water and making herself larger, waiting for a chance to knock the human off the stone floor. Nox was chasing after the human, trying to get a hold of them while Gelu was taking swipes and throwing sharped chunks of ice. While the human was dodging rather deftly, they didn't have a good means of counter-attacking, especially with the ballet shoes they currently had on. Any physical contact with the mysterious goo monster was probably not advised and Gelu's ice shards were making barriers, cutting away at the human's dodging space. Eventually they drew a little too close to the water's edge. Imber tucked her tendrils under the water and moved them stealthily over, springing out from the water the human was by and wrapping around their ankles before violently yanking them backwards and into the water. The Human's scream was cut off as their head was pulled under and Imber pulled them further and further down, but her resolve was starting to waver as they thrashed against her grip.

"This will....m-make you better, right?" She asked, looking back over at Saga.

"Yes." He said firmly...or at least as firmly as he could. He was feeling pretty weak now, lying in a puddle of his own blood. He was actually starting to feel a little cold.

Imber accepted this and continued to hold the human under. It was horrendously uncomfortable feeling them weaken and slow down...but eventually it stopped completely, and the world seemed to fracture, just as Saga had expected, and he found himself waking up back in the dark place with the crystals. His hand went to examine his torso...everything was as it should be. He let out a small sigh of relief, alerting the other three that he was awake. Imber stopped poking the mushroom.

"Evok-errr...Saga, right?” Gelu asked nervously. “We were talking with Aura and Eurus, and we were told you much prefer your name to your title.”

[jojoingjoseph]

pinafcl‌:

Asgore fidgeted with the ends of his cape, “You’re kind of right though the reason my aging is a lot more complicated is beacuse I’m a boss monster, you don’t particularity have to be royalty to be a boss monster. You just have to be a goat lion monster like me. When the child of a boss monster dies t-they stop aging all together.” The usual sadness in Asgore’s eyes, the sadness he tried so hard to hide came flooding back. Asgore felt his stomach in knots just by talking about this but this topic would come back eventually so it’s best to be honest, right? “As for how monster funerals are different then human ones, when humans die you leave behind corpses…W-When monsters die we just turn to dust since our bodies are mostly made of magic. During a monster funeral we spread the dust on the monster’s favorite object in life.” Before Asgore knew it a few tears started to run down his face. You really don’t grow out of being a crybaby do you? “A-Ah, I-I’m sorry you have to see me like this. I-I have an old friend named Gerson, h-he can explain this a lot better then I can or at least without getting as emotional as I do.” Asgore said with a weak smile trying to get his composure back. Asgore knew the more he talked about this that he was probably going to end up a big sobbing mess, not that he isn’t used to it by now but it’s never a pleasant thing to see especially for someone Asgore considered a friend.            

★ “ A.. ‘Boss Monster?’ ” Joseph parroted back as though confirming that was indeed what he heard. What came next though, he wouldn’t have been able to predict as the innocent inquiries instead brought remnants of a sad tale to light. Whatever words that might’ve followed after caught in his throat, understanding of the meaning behind the statement clicked behind his eyes. Oh man, this.. well he honestly didn’t mean to-..! Try as he might to avoid it, this thumbs fidgeted amongst themselves as he listened quietly, letting Asgore finish before speaking in a lowered voice matching that of sincere concern.

“ Hey, hey, Asgore.. Sir, I’m sorry for bringing it up.. I didn’t.. know such sadness would y’know.. get brought up. I didn’t mean to. ” His shoulders slacked considerably, reaching a hand up to paw at the back of his neck as he tried to think of what else to say aside from a mutter. “ Y-yeah I read about that.. ”

Along with how Monsters were.. generally weaker to humans, especially if one were to actually try to kill such peaceful beings who had no wish to fight. They were made of magic, hopes and compassion and fell to dust when the end of life came. The revelation of Asgore having a kid that ended up dying, thus stopping the King and whoever had been his Queen from aging.. well it was heartwrenching to say the least.

★ “ I’m sorry, for your loss, Sir. ” It was the bare minimum he could say, internally hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing TO say right then after glistening tears marked down furred cheeks. Emotions weren’t.. something he was keenly attuned towards, though it wouldn’t mean he couldn’t try to do his best to console as he looked up towards the other. “ Hey, don’t worry about it, alright? I.. well I kinda know how it is getting overly emotional. ”

★ “ I mean, not that it’s a bad thing! I.. Er.. what I mean to say is.. I uh.. I’m sorry for bringing it up, I truly meant no harm! That and I don’t.. it’s alright that you’re crying, I used to cry a whole lot when I was a kid..! Er, no that came out wrong, I should really shut up.. sorry! ” Dear God what was he saying?! None of it came out like he originally thought, much less sounded as reassuring as he wanted it to be. Glancing off to the side, Joseph tried to salvage the mess of words and misleading intent. “ I-I can go if you want, I didn’t mean nothing, honest. I don’t want to make you anymore upset or keep saying stupid crap like what I just said! ”

[xwolf-26]

DoubleTale Trailer

Golden pedals and blinding light.

That’s what I woke up to that morning. Not my alarm, not my parents, just the light burning my eyes from the top of that hole.

… Why was I in a hole?

My body burned with the pain that can only come from falling from how ever many feet it was from that hole to this bed of golden flowers.

Come to think of it, this was more of a deep cave than a hole.

And it looked oddly familiar.

I forced myself to sit up, looking around. I felt something in my pocket, and reached in, pulling out a pen.

“Huh… Where did that come from?” I asked myself. “And why, of all questions I should have, is that my first one?” I added, looking around this cavern.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“M-man, the Ruins are unusually dusty… Heheh…” I gulped once more as I went on, the three Froggits of the next room missing.

I felt myself break into a sprint, rushing up the steps and into Toriel’s home.

“Uh… Hello?” I called out. Nobody came.

I rushed through the home, into the living room first. A book was set down, reading glasses set on top of it.

“No no no no…” I ran into the kitchen, finding a large pie missing one or two slices.

“I’m gonna need this…” I told myself, taking hold of the pie. It suddenly disappeared, and a screen appeared before me.

It read my name, my LV (One, of course.), and my HP. I looked into the option labeled Stats.

Weapon: Pen.

Armor: Earbuds.

“… Oh sweet merciful Neptune everything in this game is going to kill me…” I gulped, reading the description of my items.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

I ran out into the open, sliding to a stop as I watched a pile of dust fall to the ground, a child slightly shorter than me standing before it, holding a blood soaked toy knife.

“O-oh no…” Slipped out of my mouth.

The looked slowly over their shoulder at me, eyes icy cold as they stared directly into my soul.

“Who are you?” They asked as they turned to face me, and I unconsciously pulled out my pen, pressing the button on the top and bringing out the point.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“So… I don’t really like beating around the bush, kiddo. You know a lot about this place. And you show a surprising care about us. It was like you knew Papyrus and I. Though, with that other kid, I get this sense of de ja vu. With you…” He took a drink from his bottle of ketchup.

“Well, I’d remember an expression like that… And trust me, I’ve never seen it on that other kid. At least, not for awhile…” Sans glanced over at me.

“So, I guess my question is, what’re ya doing here, kid?” His grin shrunk about as much as I guessed it could.

“I… I really don’t know. I just kinda woke up at the bottom of the ruins this morning. I don’t remember climbing the mountain, and I don’t remember falling down that hole. When I think about it, I just remember this strange dream I had… There was this figure shrouded in black, and all of these other grey people stood behind him… It was strange…”

“… That… That is strange.” Sans stared at his ketchup bottle.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

I panted, my feet carrying me at the highest speed I could manage through the snow.

“C'mon kid,” Sans appeared next to me, but I ran past him.

“Do you know how-” He appeared before me again, and once again I ran past him.

“Angry Papyrus’d be-” I ran by him once again.

“If we just-” I shook my head as I ran by.

“Showed up guns blazing and-” I could see the fight scene getting closer and closer.

“Show that we don’t-”

“Believe in that human-”

“At all?”

“I don’t believe in them!” I yelled, getting closer to the scene.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“Honestly, I don’t believe you’ll change unless someone makes you… Unless you hit a real wall. But you seem to be some kind of Unstoppable Force, what with your ability to grind anything down with that SAVE file ya got there.”

“Heh… Isn’t that a nice thought?” I grit my teeth, a glowing red heart appearing over my chest.

“Some kind of Immovable Object… Like, for example, someone else who could SAVE?” I shrugged, smirking.

“Where are you going with this..?” Their grip on their weapon tightened.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“Get out of my way.” I told them firmly.

“Make. Me.” Their grin widened.

“Hey, wait!” Monster Kid suddenly said, running and stumbling, not falling as he managed to - for once - catch himself.

“Right. On. Time.” They smirked, and I glared at them out of the corner of my eye as I looked back at Monster Kid.

“Yo, what are you doing? Why would you attack another human like that?” Monster Kid asked me, much to my shock.

“Don’t you get it? This freak’s the reason why monsters have been dying! This is the bad guy Undyne has been chasing! They’re the reason Snowdin was evacuated!” I explained, though he didn’t seem willing to listen.

“Even if that’s true, humans shouldn’t fight other humans! Monsters don’t fight other monsters!” Monster Kid said. “You two can work this out, like monsters do!”

“Well humans aren’t monsters!” I said, turning back to the child before me.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

“You’re looking a little down there, kid.” Sans said, jolting me from my thoughts.

“I would think someone who just cheated death would be a little more upbeat.” Sans shrugged.

I sighed. “Sans… I…” How much could I tell him? How much did he already know?

“… From the looks of it, you know a lot of what’s gonna happen. Maybe all of it.” Sans arched a brow at me, before shrugging.

“Well kid, you have the power to change this world’s fate.” Sans said.

“I know, kinda not the most effort I coulda put in my ‘stay determined’ line.” Sans shrugged.

“… But I heard what you said when you first confronted that other kid, right around the beginning of Waterfall.” Sans said, pupils disappearing.

“You and I both know how DETERMINED that sicko is, and you and I both know you just aren’t that DETERMINED.” Sans looked to the side, pupils reappearing as his grin remained.

I don’t know why I expected it to ever fade away.

“But you already thought something up, didn’t cha?” Sans winked one eye shut.

“W-well, I mean… I’m not sure if it’ll work…” I scratched the back of my head.

“Trust me, it will. Humans can handle magic, but Monsters can’t handle DETERMINATION. We really drew the short stick, eh?” Sans chuckled, standing and stepping away from his chair.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o “… Uh, Alphys..?” I said after a short moment of thought.

“H-huh?!” Alphys jumped slightly, looking at me before calming down. “O-oh… It’s just you…” She looked away, wiping tears from her eyes.

“I-I-I’m sorry… You shouldn’t see me like this…” She stood, looking down. “I-I’m supposed to be the adult, and…”

Her eyes widened, feeling me pull her into a hug.

“I’m so, so sorry…” Was all I could manage to say, feeling tears rise to my eyes as well.

Once again, it felt like I could have done something -anything to have stopped this.

I could feel her crying into my shirt, and I was glad she was a shorter monster, as this probably would have been a lot less comforting if she wasn’t.

“W-what do we do..?” She asked desperately, and my eyes narrowed as I looked down.

“That kid’s unstoppable… N-not even… N-N-Not e-even…” Alphys seemed unable to finish her sentence, and I rubbed her back, nodding slowly.

“I know…” I closed my eyes.

“I-I just… I just watched it all happen… I watched Papyrus die, I watched Gerson die, and I… I even watched…” Her hands clenched into fists on the back of my shirt.

“It’s not too late, Alphys. We can still stop them.” I said, and Alphys pulled back, looking at me.

“H-how?” She wiped tears away, not letting any more take their place.

“Well that’s simple.” I smirked with DETERMINATION, and Alphys looked slightly surprised.

“All we need is a human and some magic.”

0o0o0o0o0o0o

“Ah, already almost to the end already… Heheh…” The child grinned, right eye glowing red as they came to the cross roads, one path leading to the elevator, the other leading to Alphys’ lab.

And then there was the person standing in the middle.

“…” Grillby stared the human down, not saying a word.

“… Well, this is different…” The human said, standing ready.

“…” Grillby rolled up his sleeves, fire spiraling up from his arms as he did so.

“… Aren’t you uh… Gonna say anything?” The human arched a brow at Grillby.

“… Hotland’s closed, kid.” Grillby eventually said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“Heya.” Sans said, watching the human step from the shadows.

“You’ve been busy, huh?” The child grinned at Sans words.

“…” Sans glanced to the side, grinning. “Anyway, I’ve got a question for ya.”

“Do you think even the worst person can change?” Sans tilted his head to the side.

“That everybody can be a good person, if they just try?” Sans arched a brow. The human stepped forward.

“Heh heh heh heh heh…” Sans closed his eyes for a moment. “All right.” Sans held up two hands, as if telling them to cool it.

“Here’s a better question.” Sans’ grin widened.

“Do you wanna have a bad time?”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

They entered the throne room, which was empty. They looked around, not catching any sign of Sans, Asgore, or the other human.

“Hm…” What had Sans been talking about? Why had he came in here instead of walking the other way?

They walked out of the Throne Room, and their eyes widened.

“About time.” I said, crossing my arms as I stood in the light that shone down into the dull room.

“Been a long day, huh? I mean you just experienced death, what, ten times?” I tilted my head to the side.

“And me, well…” They noted the scarf wrapped around my arm and the sweatshirt draped over my shoulders.

“You just killed a good friend of mine.”

“If I had to find one word to describe how I’m feeling right now…” I looked to be thinking. “It’d probably be ‘livid’.”

A grin cracked across their face.

DoubleTale

By XWolf26

Coming Soon.

“Tell me, fool, what is your name?” They tilted their head to the side, grinning.

“My name?” I stroked my imaginary beard. “Good question…”

“Heh, like I’d even tell you that.” I smirked. “But uh, you’re Chara, right?”

Their eyes narrowed.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I closed my eyes, still smirking. “So, if you’re Chara, I guess you could call me Cter?” I said, pronouncing it 'Cuh-ter’.

“I dunno, something like that. Because, y'know, Chara-Cter.” I shrugged. “It’s not important.”

“… You’re an idiot.” They said, eyes narrowing.

“And you’re a freakish, murderous midget, what’s your point?” I smirked, tilting my head to the side.

*Gerson, the Hammer of Justice blocks the way! *Grillby is heated. *You feel like you’re gonna have a bad time.

*You feel as though have just inflicted upon yourself a crummy juncture.

[bountyofbeads]

Democracy Grief Is Real https://nyti.ms/2LRLcSL

I have been in a deep depression since Thanksgiving and feel totally defeated and exhausted so I'm heartened to know there's a reason for it. 😭😭😭

Democracy Grief Is Real

Seeing what Trump is doing to America, many find it hard to fight off despair.

By Michelle Goldberg | Published Dec. 13, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 13, 2019 |

The despair felt by climate scientists and environmentalists watching helplessly as something precious and irreplaceable is destroyed is sometimes described as “climate grief.” Those who pay close attention to the ecological calamity that civilization is inflicting upon itself frequently describe feelings of rage, anxiety and bottomless loss, all of which are amplified by the right’s willful denial. The young activist Greta Thunberg, Time Magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, has described falling into a deep depression after grasping the ramifications of climate change and the utter refusal of people in power to rise to the occasion: “If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before?”

Lately, I think I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone who was, like me, born after the civil rights movement finally made democracy in America real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it.

After Trump’s election, a number of historians and political scientists rushed out with books explaining, as one title put it, “How Democracies Die.” In the years since, it’s breathtaking how much is dead already. Though the president will almost certainly be impeached for extorting Ukraine to aid his re-election, he is equally certain to be acquitted in the Senate, a tacit confirmation that he is, indeed, above the law. His attorney general is a shameless partisan enforcer. Professional civil servants are purged, replaced by apparatchiks. The courts are filling up with young, hard-right ideologues. One recently confirmed judge, 40-year-old Steven Menashi, has written approvingly of ethnonationalism.

In “How Democracies Die,” Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of Harvard describe how, in failing democracies, “the referees of the democratic game were brought over to the government’s side, providing the incumbent with both a shield against constitutional challenges and a powerful — and ‘legal’ — weapon with which to assault its opponents.” This is happening before our eyes.

The entire Trump presidency has been marked, for many of us who are part of the plurality that despises it, by anxiety and anger. But lately I’ve noticed, and not just in myself, a demoralizing degree of fear, even depression. You can see it online, in the self-protective cynicism of liberals announcing on Twitter that Trump is going to win re-election. In The Washington Post, Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a Never Trump conservative, described his spiritual struggle against feelings of political desperation: “Sustaining this type of distressed uncertainty for long periods, I can attest, is like putting arsenic in your saltshaker.”

I reached out to a number of therapists, who said they’re seeing this politically induced misery in their patients. Three years ago, said Karen Starr, a psychologist who practices in Manhattan and on Long Island, some of her patients were “in a state of alarm,” but that’s changed into “more of a chronic feeling that’s bordering on despair.” Among those most affected, she said, are the Holocaust survivors she sees. “It’s about this general feeling that the institutions that we rely on to protect us from a dangerous individual might fail,” she said.

Kimberly Grocher, a psychotherapist who works in both New York and South Florida, and whose clients are primarily women of color, told me that during her sessions, the political situation “is always in the room. It’s always in the room.” Trump, she said, has made bigotry more open and acceptable, something her patients feel in their daily lives. “When you’re dealing with people of color’s mental health, systemic racism is a big part of that,” she said.

In April 2017, I traveled to suburban Atlanta to cover the special election in the Sixth Congressional District. Meeting women there who had been shocked by Trump’s election into ceaseless political action made me optimistic for the first time that year. These women were ultimately the reason that the district, once represented by Newt Gingrich, is now held by a Democrat, Lucy McBath. Recently, I got back in touch with a woman I’d met there, an army veteran and mother of three named Katie Landsman. She was in a dark place.

“It’s like watching someone you love die of a wasting disease,” she said, speaking of our country. “Each day, you still have that little hope no matter what happens, you’re always going to have that little hope that everything’s going to turn out O.K., but every day it seems like we get hit by something else.” Some mornings, she said, it’s hard to get out of bed. “It doesn’t feel like depression,” she said. “It really does feel more like grief.”

Obviously, this is hardly the first time that America has failed to live up to its ideals. But the ideals themselves used to be a nearly universal lodestar. The civil rights movement, and freedom movements that came after it, succeeded because the country could be shamed by the distance between its democratic promises and its reality. That is no longer true.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are often incredulous seeing the party of Ronald Reagan allied with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but the truth is, there’s no reason they should be in conflict. The enmity between America and Russia was ideological. First it was liberal democracy versus communism. Then it was liberal democracy versus authoritarian kleptocracy.

But Trump’s political movement is pro-authoritarian and pro-oligarch. It has no interest in preserving pluralism, free and fair elections or any version of the rule of law that applies to the powerful as well as the powerless. It’s contemptuous of the notion of America as a lofty idea rather than a blood-and-soil nation. Russia, which has long wanted to prove that liberal democracy is a hypocritical sham, is the natural friend of the Trumpist Republican Party, just as it’s an ally and benefactor of the far right Rassemblement National in France and the Lega Nord in Italy.

The nemeses of the Trumpist movement are liberals — in both the classical and American sense of the world — not America’s traditional geopolitical foes. This is something new in our lifetime. Despite right-wing persecution fantasies about Obama, we’ve never before had a president that treats half the country like enemies, subjecting it to an unending barrage of dehumanization and hostile propaganda. Opponents in a liberal political system share at least some overlapping language. They have some shared values to orient debates. With those things gone, words lose their meaning and political exchange becomes impossible and irrelevant.

Thus we have a total breakdown in epistemological solidarity. In the impeachment committee hearings, Republicans insist with a straight face that Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. Republican Senators like Ted Cruz of Texas, who is smart enough to know better, repeat Russian propaganda accusing Ukraine of interfering in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice’s Inspector General report refutes years of Republican deep state conspiracy theories about an F.B.I. plot to subvert Trump’s campaign, and it makes no difference whatsoever to the promoters of those theories, who pronounce themselves totally vindicated.

To those who recognize the Trump administration’s official lies as such, the scale of dishonesty can be destabilizing. It’s a psychic tax on the population, who must parse an avalanche of untruths to understand current events. “What’s going on in the government is so extreme, that people who have no history of overwhelming psychological trauma still feel crazed by this,” said Stephanie Engel, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who said Trump comes up “very frequently” in her sessions.

Like several therapists I spoke to, Engel said she’s had to rethink how she practices, because she has no clinical distance from the things that are terrifying her patients. “If we continue to present a facade — that we know how to manage this ourselves, and we’re not worried about our grandchildren, or we’re not worried about how we’re going to live our lives if he wins the next election — we’re not doing our patients a service,” she said.

This kind of political suffering is uncomfortable to write about, because liberal misery is the raison d’être of the MAGA movement. When Trumpists mock their enemies for being “triggered,” it’s just a quasi-adult version of the playground bully’s jeer: “What are you going to do, cry?” Anyone who has ever been bullied knows how important it is, at that moment, to choke back tears. In truth there are few bigger snowflakes than the stars of MAGA world; The Trumpist pundit Dan Bongino is currently suing the Daily Beast for $15 million, saying it inflicted “emotional distress and trauma, insult, anguish,” for writing that NRATV, the National Rifle Association’s now defunct online media arm, had “dropped” him when the show he hosted ended. Still, a movement fueled by sadism will delight in admissions that it has caused pain.

But despair is worth discussing, because it’s something that organizers and Democratic candidates should be addressing head on. Left to fester, it can lead to apathy and withdrawal. Channeled properly, it can fuel an uprising. I was relieved to hear that despite her sometimes overwhelming sense of civic sadness, Landsman’s activism hasn’t let up. She’s been spending a bit less than 20 hours a week on political organizing, and expects to go back to 40 or more after the holidays. “The only other option is to quit, and accept it, and I’m not ready to go there yet,” she said. Democracy grief isn’t like regular grief. Acceptance isn’t how you move on from it. Acceptance is itself a kind of death.

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Ukraine’s Leader, Wiser to Washington, Seeks New Outreach to Trump

President Volodymyr Zelensky still needs backing from the administration. He is proposing a new ambassador and weighing hiring lobbyists to build better ties.

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Andrew E. Kramer | Published Dec. 13, 2019 Updated 12:44 PM ET | New York Times | Posted December 13, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Eager to repair their country’s fraught relationship with Washington, allies of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine have met with lobbyists with close ties to the Trump administration, hopeful of creating new channels of communication.

After more than two months of anxious waiting, Mr. Zelensky finally appears to have won support from the White House for a candidate to fill Ukraine’s vacant ambassadorship to the United States.

And Mr. Zelensky, still deeply dependent on American assistance, has been signaling, in hardly subtle fashion, that he and his officials will not assist in the impeachment process, keeping quiet in particular about the fact that his government knew weeks earlier than it has publicly acknowledged that Mr. Trump had frozen nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.

Nearly every world leader has struggled to figure out how to deal with Mr. Trump. But few face greater pressure to find the answer — or more hurdles to doing so — than Mr. Zelensky.

Wiser now to the ways of Washington, he and his team are carefully trying to reestablish themselves in a variety of ways as an important ally with a substantive agenda deserving of Washington’s attention and support.

They have a long ways to go. Mr. Zelensky’s team has been discouraged by the absence of expected support from Mr. Trump for Ukraine’s peace talks with Russia, as well as the lack of follow-through from the White House on a promised Oval Office meeting with Mr. Zelensky that the administration had quietly signaled might happen in late January.

Mr. Zelensky’s allies were frustrated further by Mr. Trump’s meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. And when the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani paid an unexpected visit to Kyiv last week in a continued effort to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump’s political opponents, no Ukrainian government officials met him.

Asked by an official at the German Marshall Fund on Friday what the Zelensky administration wants from Washington, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, who has been in Washington this week meeting with administration and congressional officials, said “all we are asking from our colleagues in the U.S. administration is fair treatment.”

He added, “We don’t want to be shamed and blamed.”

The continued push to try to overcome Mr. Trump’s grudge against Ukraine suggests Zelensky administration officials have concluded that impeachment will fail in the Senate and that they will almost certainly need to work with Mr. Trump for at least another year, and possibly another five years if Mr. Trump is re-elected.

“Our relations are not in good shape,” said Olena Zerkal, a former deputy foreign minister under Mr. Zelensky. “I don’t believe in any chemistry between our leaders.”

Mr. Zelensky’s willingness to accommodate the Trump administration has hardly gone unnoticed in Kyiv.

After the White House released a rough transcript of a July 25 call between the American and Ukrainian presidents, Mr. Zelensky was panned in Ukraine on social media for seeming too eager to please Mr. Trump. That included signaling a willingness to pursue the investigations sought by Mr. Trump into political targets like the family of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“Monica Zelensky,” the Ukrainian president was called on social media in Kyiv, in a reference to the intern whose sexual relations with Bill Clinton led to the last impeachment proceedings of an American president.

Even a White House visit, if it happens, risks being seen not so much as a triumph for Mr. Zelensky as more kowtowing to Mr. Trump, who could cite it as evidence he never linked such a visit, or American military assistance for Ukraine, to investigations that would benefit him politically.

“In Kyiv, we have to place bets on the current power in Washington,” said Nikolay Kapitonenko, professor at the Institute of International Relations. But outreach to the Republican administration is not risk free, he said, adding, “Zelensky understands that taking any side is dangerous.”

The importance of American support for Ukraine — and the desire for more of it from Mr. Trump — has been on display in recent days.

An American diplomat traveled to Kyiv to express support for the Ukrainians headed into Mr. Zelensky’s first face-to-face meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday in Paris.

But Trump administration officials privately told the Ukrainians that Mr. Trump himself would signal support, according to Americans and Ukrainians familiar with the matter, either via Twitter, as first reported by The Daily Beast, or possibly even an invitation for Mr. Zelensky to visit the White House next month. While Mr. Trump posted more than 100 tweets on Sunday, none expressed support for the Ukrainians headed into the peace talks.

The Trump administration had also resisted calls to levy sanctions against a Russian gas pipeline that would circumvent Ukraine. The White House reportedly worked to undermine congressional efforts to block the pipeline, though sanctions language was added to a $738 billion military policy bill that passed the House on Wednesday. And the military assistance that Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of using as leverage to force the investigations reportedly still has not fully reached Ukraine.

Those are among the issues that may help explain why the Ukrainians are considering stepping up their lobbying in Washington, despite potential political and financial costs.

During his campaign and early in his presidency, Mr. Zelensky proclaimed that he had no need to hire lobbyists like the government of his predecessor. “I never met a single lobbyist,” he said. “I don’t need this. I never paid a coin and I never will.”

Yet, in the weeks before Mr. Zelensky was elected in April, his advisers quietly worked with a Washington lobbying firm, Signal Group, to arrange meetings in Washington with Trump administration officials, as well as congressional offices and think tanks that focus on Ukraine-United States relations.

Mr. Zelensky distanced himself from the arrangement, even though Signal Group reported in a filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, that it was paid nearly $70,000 by Mr. Zelensky’s party through a lawyer named Marcus Cohen. Mr. Cohen, on the other hand, claimed that the money came from his own pocket, not from Mr. Zelensky’s party.

The Justice Department’s National Security Division, which oversees FARA, sent a letter to Mr. Cohen requesting information about the arrangement, then urged him to register as a foreign agent, according to people with knowledge of the situation. One of the people said that the division also audited Signal Group’s filings, informing the firm in a letter in October that the inquiry was closed.

Signal defended its FARA filings as accurate, and referred questions about Mr. Cohen’s representations to him or Mr. Zelensky’s team. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Zelensky “may find that it is best to be his own spokesperson on this subject for a while to prevent others from interpreting his words for him,” at least until “trust can be rebuilt,” Heather A. Conley, who was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs from 2001 to 2005, said in an email.

Ms. Conley, who is director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was among the think tank officials who met with one Mr. Zelensky’s advisers in April in a meeting arranged by Signal and Mr. Cohen.

They discussed Mr. Zelensky’s anticorruption and economic overhaul plans, Ms. Conley said, adding, “Ukraine faces a fraught landscape in Washington — with or without a lobbyist.”

The discussions about hiring a lobbyist, which are described as preliminary, have divided Mr. Zelensky’s team.

Some are concerned that hiring a lobbying firm with ties to Mr. Trump could jeopardize Democratic support. And some are wary of becoming involved with K Street at all, because of the specter of Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for crimes related to his lobbying for a deeply unpopular former Ukrainian government.

Yet two of the firms being discussed for possible lobbying engagement have links to Mr. Manafort, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.

A representative of one of the firms, Mercury Public Affairs, which worked with Mr. Manafort on his Ukraine effort, met in Kyiv last month with a top aide to Mr. Zelensky. The lobbyist, Bryan Lanza, has ties to the Trump White House, and was in Ukraine on unrelated business according to people familiar with the meeting.

It was arranged by an American lawyer named Andrew Mac, who himself registered last month with the Justice Department as an unpaid lobbyist for Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Mac, who splits his time between Washington and Kyiv, was appointed by Mr. Zelensky last month as an adviser responsible for building support among the Ukrainian diaspora.

In a sign of the scrutiny in Kyiv on its new government’s tumultuous relationship with Mr. Trump, and efforts to calm it, secretly recorded video and photographs circulated of Mr. Lanza’s meeting with the Zelensky aide in a restaurant.

In an article featuring the photographs, a Ukrainian news outlet noted that Mr. Lanza helped lift sanctions against the corporate empire of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin ally. That arrangement was assailed by critics in Washington as a sweetheart deal that represented a capitulation to the Kremlin, while Mr. Lanza also lobbied to help remove potentially crippling sanctions on the Chinese telecom giant ZTE.

Mr. Mac said Mr. Lanza had been “very effective in working for his clients on difficult matters.”

Another firm that was discussed by Mr. Zelensky’s aides, Prime Policy Group, also has a Manafort link — albeit a more dated one. It was started by Charlie Black, a former business partner of Mr. Manafort’s in the 1980s and ’90s. Mr. Black’s firm has represented other clients in Ukraine, including Sergey Tigipko, a Ukrainian billionaire and former official in the government of Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Mr. Black said he had not had any conversations with Mr. Zelensky’s team about a possible contract, but would not be opposed to such an engagement.

Mr. Mac met this month in Washington to discuss Ukrainian energy issues with the former Representative Billy Tauzin, a Democrat turned Republican from Louisiana who is now a lobbyist. While someone with knowledge of the deliberations said Mr. Tauzin was not being considered as a potential lobbyist for Ukraine, he has connections that could be helpful. His congressional staff once included Dan Brouillette, who was confirmed this month as secretary of the Energy Department, upon which the Ukrainian government has relied for help with its power supply during brutally cold winters.

Ms. Conley suggested that Mr. Zelensky would be better served by an ambassador than a lobbyist, but the process of filling that vacancy has not been quick.

At least three names had been floated in recent months, and the Zelensky administration’s current preference for the position, Volodymyr Yelchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, had been awaiting approval since late September or early October, according to people familiar with the process. They said that the State Department had signed off on Mr. Yelchenko weeks ago, but that the Ukrainians had grown anxious waiting for the White House to do so.

Officials in Kyiv were told that the approval would be formally communicated this week, they said. The White House and State Department did not respond to questions about the approval of Mr. Yelchenko.

Some attributed the delay to a quiet push by some Trump allies for a prospective ambassador who is closely aligned with Mr. Giuliani, Andrii Telizhenko, who had served as a low-ranking diplomat in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington under the previous government.

He was embraced by Mr. Trump’s allies after claiming that the former American ambassador to Kyiv and other Ukrainian officials worked to undermine Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. In recent months, Mr. Telizhenko has worked closely with Mr. Giuliani to advance those claims. As part of the effort, the two men traveled together to Hungary and Ukraine last week to record interviews with former Ukrainian officials for a series of programs by a conservative cable channel seeking to undermine the impeachment proceedings.

It is unclear whether Mr. Zelensky’s team ever seriously considered Mr. Telizhenko as an ambassador candidate.

Kenneth P. Vogel reported from Washington, and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv.

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The Party That Ruined the Planet

Republican climate denial is even scarier than Trumpism.

By Paul Krugman | Published Dec. 12, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 13, 2019 |

The most terrifying aspect of the U.S. political drama isn’t the revelation that the president has abused his power for personal gain. If you didn’t see that coming from the day Donald Trump was elected, you weren’t paying attention.

No, the real revelation has been the utter depravity of the Republican Party. Essentially every elected or appointed official in that party has chosen to defend Trump by buying into crazy, debunked conspiracy theories. That is, one of America’s two major parties is beyond redemption; given that, it’s hard to see how democracy can long endure, even if Trump is defeated.

However, the scariest reporting I’ve seen recently has been about science, not politics. A new federal report finds that climate change in the Arctic is accelerating, matching what used to be considered worst-case scenarios. And there are indications that Arctic warming may be turning into a self-reinforcing spiral, as the thawing tundra itself releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

Catastrophic sea-level rise, heat waves that make major population centers uninhabitable, and more are now looking more likely than not, and sooner rather than later.

But the terrifying political news and the terrifying climate news are closely related.

Why, after all, has the world failed to take action on climate, and why is it still failing to act even as the danger gets ever more obvious? There are, of course, many culprits; action was never going to be easy.

But one factor stands out above all others: the fanatical opposition of America’s Republicans, who are the world’s only major climate-denialist party. Because of this opposition, the United States hasn’t just failed to provide the kind of leadership that would have been essential to global action, it has become a force against action.

And Republican climate denial is rooted in the same kind of depravity that we’re seeing with regard to Trump.

As I’ve written in the past, climate denial was in many ways the crucible for Trumpism. Long before the cries of “fake news,” Republicans were refusing to accept science that contradicted their prejudices. Long before Republicans began attributing every negative development to the machinations of the “deep state,” they were insisting that global warming was a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a vast global cabal of corrupt scientists.

And long before Trump began weaponizing the power of the presidency for political gain, Republicans were using their political power to harass climate scientists and, where possible, criminalize the practice of science itself.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of those responsible for these abuses are now ensconced in the Trump administration. Notably, Ken Cuccinelli, who as attorney general of Virginia engaged in a long witch-hunt against the climate scientist Michael Mann, is now at the Department of Homeland Security, where he pushes anti-immigrant policies with, as The Times reports, “little concern for legal restraints.”

But why have Republicans become the party of climate doom? Money is an important part of the answer: In the current cycle Republicans have received 97 percent of political contributions from the coal industry, 88 percent from oil and gas. And this doesn’t even count the wing nut welfare offered by institutions supported by the Koch brothers and other fossil-fuel moguls.

However, I don’t believe that it’s just about the money. My sense is that right-wingers believe, probably correctly, that there’s a sort of halo effect surrounding any form of public action. Once you accept that we need policies to protect the environment, you’re more likely to accept the idea that we should have policies to ensure access to health care, child care, and more. So the government must be prevented from doing anything good, lest it legitimize a broader progressive agenda.

Still, whatever the short-term political incentives, it takes a special kind of depravity to respond to those incentives by denying facts, embracing insane conspiracy theories and putting the very future of civilization at risk.

Unfortunately, that kind of depravity isn’t just present in the modern Republican Party, it has effectively taken over the whole institution. There used to be at least some Republicans with principles; as recently as 2008 Senator John McCain co-sponsored serious climate-change legislation. But those people have either experienced total moral collapse (hello, Senator Graham) or left the party.

The truth is that even now I don’t fully understand how things got this bad. But the reality is clear: Modern Republicans are irredeemable, devoid of principle or shame. And there is, as I said, no reason to believe that this will change even if Trump is defeated next year.

The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have.

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Donald Trump Wanted Another Roy Cohn. He Got Bill Barr.

EVEN BETTER.

By Caroline Fredrickson, Ms. Fredrickson is the author of “The Democracy Fix.” | Published December 12, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 13, 2019 |

President Trump famously asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Demanding a stand-in for his old personal lawyer and fixer, Mr. Trump has actually gotten something better with Bill Barr: a lawyer who like Cohn stops seemingly at nothing in his service to Mr. Trump and conveniently sits atop the nation’s Justice Department.

Mr. Barr has acted more like a henchman than the leader of an agency charged with exercising independent judgment. The disturbing message that sends does not end at our borders — it extends to countries, like those in the former East Bloc, struggling to overcome an illiberal turn in the direction of autocracy.

When Mr. Trump sought to have President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announce an investigation of his political opponent, he likely expected a positive response. After all, politicized prosecutions had been part of Ukraine’s corrupt political culture for years.

On Monday, when Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Justice Department, released a report that affirmed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was justified, Mr. Barr immediately turned on his own agency in defense of the president.

“The F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” he said.

Similarly, Mr. Barr’s response to the report from Robert Mueller on Russian interference and Mr. Trump’s purported presidential misconduct was to cast doubt on his own staff, questioning their work product as well as their ethics and legal reasoning. Even before he became attorney general, Mr. Barr questioned Mr. Mueller’s investigation of the president for obstruction of justice in a 19-page legal memo he volunteered to the administration.

And where he could have neutrally passed Mr. Mueller’s findings to Congress, he instead took the widely criticized and unusual step of making and announcing his own legal conclusions about Mr. Mueller’s obstruction inquiry. He followed up this Cohn-like behavior with testimony in the Senate, where he insinuated that the United States government spied on the Trump campaign. Mr. Barr apparently has decided that, like Cohn, he serves Donald Trump and not the Constitution or the United States, flouting his oath of office and corrupting the mission of the Justice Department.

In the past, the United States has, however imperfectly, advanced the rule of law and supported governments committed to an anti-corruption agenda. According to George Kent, a State Department official who testified in the House impeachment inquiry, Russia sees corruption as a tool to advance its interests. So when the United States fights a kleptocratic culture, it serves not only lofty humanitarian goals but also our national security. Mr. Zelensky ran a campaign and was elected on a platform that put fighting corruption at the forefront. He should have received extensive and unmitigated support in that effort.

In the former East Bloc countries, despite the hopes of many for a post-Soviet era where democracy would thrive, the parties and politicians in power have consolidated their control in a manner reminiscent of the Communist era.

Autocrats understand that supposedly independent institutions such as the courts and prosecutors are vital to locking in their power. In Romania, a crusading anti-corruption prosecutor who was investigating top government officials was fired at the same time as the government advanced legislation to cabin the ability of other prosecutors to pursue cases against political officials. Poland’s right-wing populist Law and Justice Party has attacked the independent judiciary and has sought to remove judges who do not follow the party line. Hungary has followed suit. Bulgarian politicians have persecuted civil society groups that have criticized their abandonment of the rule of law.

While several United States ambassadors have attempted to support anti-corruption efforts in the region, they have been continuously undercut by the White House. In addition to firing Marie Yovanovitch, who served as ambassador to Ukraine, in part because of her anti-corruption focus, Mr. Trump hosted Viktor Orban of Hungary in Washington over the objections of national security officials who did not want to elevate a corrupt leader with close ties to the Kremlin; furthermore, the president has tried to cut funding for anti-corruption programs.

Mr. Trump’s focus on cultivating foreign leaders who can help his re-election has overwhelmed our national interests in the region. That is certainly a shame for the anti-corruption activists in former Communist countries who have depended on our help and leadership since the end of the Soviet era and who have seen their justice system turned to serve political ends.

But for Americans, we must worry that we face a similar domestic situation: a prosecutor who bends to the political needs of the president. Mr. Trump may no longer be able to call on Roy Cohn, but he now has a stronger ally in the United States’ top law-enforcement official, who thinks that if the president does it, it can’t be wrong.

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How Trump Weaponized the Justice Department’s Inspector General

The president and his allies have turned investigations into a political tool for use against their enemies.

By James B. Stewart, Mr. Stewart is a New York Times business columnist. | Published Dec. 13, 2019, 6:00 AM ET | New York Times | Posted Dec. 13, 2019

In his report on the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, and in testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the Department of Justice demolished President Trump’s most sensational allegations about the Russia inquiry: He concluded that the opening of the investigation was lawful and legitimate, that there was no improper “spying” on the Trump campaign and that the F.B.I. wasn’t part of some “deep state” conspiracy to overthrow the president.

That hardly stopped Mr. Trump and his allies. The report “was far worse than expected,” the president asserted — after already predicting it would be “devastating.” “This was an attempted overthrow and a lot of people were in on it and they got caught, they got caught red-handed,” Mr. Trump said in the Cabinet Room at the White House.

Attorney General William Barr was quick to pile on, too: “The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” he said in a Justice Department statement.

Media coverage and Senate hearings quickly shifted to the F.B.I.’s procedural failings, which Mr. Horowitz labeled “gross incompetence.” By the end of the week, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the F.B.I. was indeed part of some sinister coup attempt — precisely the opposite of what Mr. Horowitz had concluded.

So much for the supposedly nonpartisan and independent office of the Department of Justice Inspector General — a position that, before the Trump administration, most Americans hardly knew existed. To a striking degree, Mr. Trump and his allies have turned the post into a potent weapon aimed at his supposed enemies in the federal law enforcement agencies.

Their ability to wreak political havoc with the latest Horowitz report is part of what has now become a clear pattern: Call for an investigation of a favorite Trump target; speculate about the likely outcome; seize on any collateral evidence that emerges; spin the results; then move quickly to the next investigation. Repeat.

The White House and Republicans in Congress insisted the inspector general open an investigation into the origins of the Russia inquiry, even though it was already thoroughly covered in a report from the special counsel Robert Mueller. Investigators armed with virtually unlimited time and budget will nearly always find something (as critics of the special counsel role have long argued).

Mr. Horowitz uncovered some new details, and the irregularities he discovered in the F.B.I.’s FISA application process may well prompt a needed overhaul of the standards for intrusive surveillance of American citizens. But Mr. Horowitz conceded that even if all of those problems had been corrected, he couldn’t say the outcome would have been any different. Nor do they fundamentally change our understanding of how and why the Russia investigation began — already reported in considerable and accurate detail, including in this newspaper and in my recent book, “Deep State.”

But no matter how redundant, such investigations can serve as useful fishing expeditions. Six House committees conducted investigations of Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi attacks. All of them absolved her of any wrongdoing. But it was in one of those investigations that a committee uncovered her use of a personal server for her email correspondence, which led to the F.B.I.’s Clinton email investigation. That provided candidate Trump with his “Lock her up” chant — and arguably cost her the presidency.

Mr. Horowitz, citing requests from members of Congress and the public, spent 17 months examining the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case. His conclusion: There was “no evidence” that the decision not to seek charges against Mrs. Clinton was “affected by bias or other improper conclusions,” the opposite of what Mr. Trump had been asserting for months.

But during that investigation Mr. Horowitz uncovered hundreds of texts between an F.B.I. agent, Peter Strzok, and an F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page, that suggested animus toward Mr. Trump and also revealed that the two had in the past engaged in an extramarital affair — information eagerly disseminated by the Justice Department and Trump allies.

Since then Mr. Trump has tweeted about Ms. Page over 40 times, caricaturing her and Mr. Strzok as “love birds” conspiring to bring down the president, with Mr. Trump often using the most vulgar terms to whip his supporters into a partisan frenzy. At a rally in October, Mr. Trump simulated an orgasm while saying: “I love you, Peter! I love you, too, Lisa! Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa! Oh God, I love you, Lisa.”

Citing that incident as the last straw, this week Ms. Page sued the Department of Justice for unlawfully releasing the texts, which she said had “radically altered” her day-to-day life.

The existence of an investigation provides the president and his allies with unlimited opportunities to speculate about the outcome, while the inspector general is bound by confidentiality restrictions until the report is released. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, confidently predicted the inspector general’s report would demonstrate a “system off the rails” before he read it.

This may help explain why Mr. Trump, in his efforts to pressure Ukraine’s government to open investigations of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, didn’t really care whether the Ukrainians actually conducted such an investigation — only that one be announced. That would have given him and his allies the opportunity to speculate about what the investigation was finding to tar the Bidens without any risk that an investigation would exonerate them.

It doesn’t matter if the report itself turns out to be something of an anticlimax. To his credit, Mr. Horowitz didn’t abandon the objective evidence in an effort to please his overseers. He certainly didn’t reach the answers about Russia or the Clinton email investigation for which President Trump and his allies so fervently hoped.

Yet there’s just enough in the Horowitz report to fuel “deep state” conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump has seized on reports from the inspector general to excoriate James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other former F.B.I. employees as “traitors.” Many media reports have focused on Mr. Horowitz’s “scathing” criticism of the F.B.I. rather than his broader conclusions.

Mr. Trump can be confident that few people will actually read the dense, legalistic prose of the Horowitz report — just as relatively few Americans read the entire Mueller report — which shows the F.B.I. largely fulfilling its mission in extraordinary circumstances.

The pattern has already started again. Mr. Trump has moved on to the next Russia investigation being conducted at Mr. Barr’s behest by United States Attorney John Durham of the District of Connecticut. This week Mr. Durham took the extraordinary step of criticizing the Horowitz report, fueling renewed speculation that this time Mr. Trump will finally get a result he wants.

“I do think the big report to wait for is going to be the Durham report,” Mr. Trump said, once again speculating about a report that hasn’t been written. “That’s the one that people are really waiting for.”

James B. Stewart is a New York Times business columnist and the author of “Deep State: Trump, the F.B.I., and the Rule of Law.”

[sawson]

Spiritale Chapter 24

828 words

                           Chapter 24: First a talk, then a Flower

2 hours later…

“And that’s the story of how Queen Toriel and King Asgore broke up”, Gerson said calmly with his eyes closed.

“That’s awful”, Chara said sadly with a sandwich in their hand.

“Indeed, they were known to be the sweetest couple to shine in this Underground”, Gerson said looking at the cave ceiling in his shop, “I miss it so”

“There still could be a chance that they’ll get together again, right?”, Chara said sounding hopeful.

“Mmm I don’t know, the Queen can be really strict when she’s serious”, Gerson said getting up, “I hope she can forgive herself”, he said under his breath and putting his arms behind his shell.

“What?”, Chara asked.

“Oh it’s nothing, just speaking to myself that’s all”, Gerson said turning around and smiling.

“Oookay”, Chara said before biting their sandwich.

“Well I’m glad you told me how the King was doing, I was afraid he’d be alone in those Ruins”, Gerson said facing Chara still having his arms behind him.

“Oh he’s got plenty of friends, and he’s super nice”, Chara said joyfully after finishing their sandwich.

“Yea that sounds like him”. Gerson said picking up the dishes, “Anyway, thank you for the company Chara”, he thanked with a warm smile.

“You’re welcome”, Chara said smiling, “Do you need help?”, they asked getting up.

“No need, I’m sure you have something important to do”, Gerson said walking to the kitchen.

Chara looks at you and remembers what they had to do, you don’t think that’s what he had in mind.

“Oh right, well byyye”, Chara said walking off.

“Good luck Chara, I hope we meet again”, Gerson said gently waving.

Chara continues walking through the Underground, next time making sure they walk beside you.

“So Frisk, are you ready to talk?”, Chara asked nervously, “You don’t have if you don’t-“

“No…I’m ready”, you said then breathing, “….I’m…I’m really homesick”

“….”

Chara is pretty speechless, they’re just standing there and rubbing their head. You don’t say anything else. It’s…tough not to think of home now.

“Frisk, can you tell me what your world is like?”, Chara asked looking at you.

You didn’t expect them to say that, but you gladly told them. About how they act, how they talk, and even what they wore. Chara laughed at how different your monsters were, you laughed too because you think the same. You told them that your Asriel was a flower instead of aaa….um…

“Toy?”, Chara filled in.

“What, Temmie’s a toy?”, you asked a little shocked.

Chara nods their head. Okay you really didn’t see that coming like at lot, you are a little…actually you’re just mind blown.

“Hahaha, they are your family now?”, Chara asked stopping in the dark area with glowing mushrooms.

“Yea and they’re awesome!”

“Cool, the monsters here can be my family too?!”, Chara asked excited.

“Yea if you want”, you said with a smile.

“Hehehe yay, it’ll be great to have a family kinda like yours!”, Chara said bouncing with excitement.

“!…Yyyooouuu, don’t have a family?”, you asked nervously and confused.

“I…”, Chara said before shaking their head and looking down.

“So did I, or well…you know”, you said tilting your head back and forth with hands up.

“YOU WERE AN ORPHAN?!”, Chara shouted really shocked.

You nod smiling. Orphan

“Oh my gosh…WE ARE SO ALIKE!!!”

“I KNOW RIGHT?!”

We were so happy and excited about how similar we were we started matching the things we do. We both love exploring, we both love making new friends, and we even love mixing lemonade and orange juice together! How cool is that! Okay now you are feeling so much better. And you what, you can’t wait to see more of this Underground. You are pumped, you are ready! And so is Chara! Let’s do this- OH SHOOT FLOWEY!!!

*Special enemy Flowey appears here to defeat Chara*

“Aaaawwww~!”, the two of you said adoring the flower.

“You’re a human, I found a human!”, Flowey said waving their leaves in the air with excitement, “I’m gonna capture you!”

Aaaawww you can’t take it, it’s so cute~! Chara is thinking the same thi-

“AAH!!!”, Chara shouted after getting grabbed by huge vines from the ground.

“I caught you~!”, Flowey shouted happily.

“Oh okay, okay you caught me. C-can you put me down now?”, Chara asked super nervously.

“No~!”

“What?!”, you both shouted.

“I’m taking you with me~!”, Flowey said cheerfully placing their leaves of their face.

“Aaaaaahh w-w-w-wait, please wait! WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?!”

“To my village~!”, Flowey said dragging Chara!

OH NO, OH NO, OH NO, OH NO!!!! WHAT ARE YOU GOING DO?! YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING!!! NO NO NO, NOT AGAIN!!! THINK, THINK, THINK!!! Okay calm down, Flowey has your Temmie’s personality. They’re nice, yea really really nice! They-they won’t hurt them, yea. Yyyy-WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?!!