#THIS IS WHY MOST SKELETONS ARE MYSTERIOUSLY ORPHANED IN ALL FICS EVER ITS SO ANNOYING MAINTAINING FAMILY SHIT WITHOUT HANDPLATES. AAAUGH

[bonestrouslingbones]

insane stream of consciousness ramblings of a madman desperately trying to rework the fuckass swapfell bros lore up ahead with so so so many incredibly beefy paragraphs turn back now or abandon hope all ye who enter here

ok so it's been building for a good minute/several years now but i think i kinda hate what i did with the grandpa gaster thing ngl. like its such a weirdly contrived and somehow overcomplicated yet extremely underdeveloped element that doesn't even have much reasoning for it other than "people thought i was talking about gaster so i ran with it"

swapfell bros' grandpa gaster who has been retired and working as a weapons dealer for at least over a decade but who faked his death for reasons very loosely POSSIBLY related to royal scientist shit (but we will never have time nor will i have the interest to delve into that At All) & went to live as an anonymous cryptic ferryman instead (which makes me have to figure out questions like "why were they raised by their grandpa instead of their parents?" and "who ARE their parents" and "how recently did the core thing even happen" and "why was the grandpa involved if he's been retired from being a scientist for over a decade" and "why would this not come off as a very obvious lie/coverup to either of his grandsons" and "why does he suddenly start acting like That as a ferryman" OR "if he was always like That why the hell are neither of his grandsons like That") sucks. this idea sucks you can tell wayyyyy too easily that i just pulled it out of my ass i hate it i hate it i hate it

would it be. too much of a change. to revive my original idea of making grandpa semi the one who raised them so that i can take gaster out of the grandparent role without having to make up some random nameless OCs that aren't connected to undertale even remotely, which is exactly what their parents would have been. and then because gaster is still available i can change him to a neglectful dadster who abandoned his kids & went into hiding because of the core incident soon after papyrus's birth. this only leaves the question of a hypothetical mother character but it's a bit easier to get away with not mentioning that one since most dadster fics don't anyway lmao, maybe she's just a surrogate or something idk

the change does still cause some Problems for me in terms of an arc way in the future where The Grandpa IS meant to show up and interact with characters and i would absolutely prefer for a role with this level of influence to be Gaster instead of some guy i stole the name of & made up the rest- meaning i also want that fucker dead For Real instead of the weird faked death thing. but replacing those scenes with dadster, who Fluff literally would not remember or have any connection to at all, would have. significantly less teeth to it lmao

and i could MAYBE have gaster "disappear" when Fluff is a little older and it would at least give some more basis to his abandonment issues (even tho those don't become overtly relevant til the ending of the main story + some of his epilogue arc and by then will be VERY JUSTIFIED even without dadster) but then that would spring up some problems of fluff believing that his grandpa's behavior is completely normal and not abusive, because it's literally the only type of parenting he's ever had. if gaster sticks around long enough for fluff to remember him and connect with him, obviously he would know forms of parenting outside of the strict discipline of his grandpa and it wouldn't really work as well imo

i wouldn't wanna make dadster outright cruel & physically/verbally abusive like the grandfather, probably just really fucking neglectful so that i can still attribute karma's size to stunted growth from malnourishment. maybe a SEVERE workaholic plus functional alcoholic with a side of a lil somethin else to keep him away from home for days at a time. making him also abusive would just feel like i'm writing the same shitty character twice and would probably come off as boring at best and trauma porn at worst and i'm already still annoyed about the borderline cartoonish way i wrote fell sans in self hatred so i gotta redeem myself

plus ngl i do kinda like the idea of fluff and dadster turning out to be very similar in terms of emotional distance/immaturity & substance abuse despite never knowing each other because they're both raised by the same shitty guy. and karma is only able to avoid being in the same spot because he WAS raised by gaster for more than long enough to remember and act out when he leaves, & then still skipped dealing with the grandpa for too long because of how young he is when he's kicked out to become essentially a ward of the state

SO. my options would be to rework that specific arc from almost the ground up OR cut it out entirely which is honestly almost tempting IF it wouldn't be. a lot of scenes & developments for me to cut out lmao. some of which are actually pretty fucking important considering they all lead up to russ no longer being able to avoid talking about how he left his universe and where all his worldhopping abilities came from. that's a little too big of a reveal to cut maybe

ugh. blugh. blagh. smashing all of these stupid purple skeletons with a large wooden mallet like whack a mole