#also trying out the new font though i think i still like calibri better
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FINAL FANTASY XIV: SHADOWBRINGERS "I shall fulfill my duty as the Oracle of Darkness!"
#final fantasy xiv#ffxiv#ff14#gaia ffxiv#loghrif#gamingedit#ffxivedit#gamingladies#gamingnetwork#my gifs#gaia serving as always 💅✨#randomly decided to farm mounts for friends yesterday and i finally got a good non-photobombed footage#also trying out the new font though i think i still like calibri better
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Ouf okay, let's do this (Part 1)
I typically write in Times New Roman or Calibri, simply because I enjoy the style of the font. I tried using other fonts but my eyes rebel against anything else than the aforementioned two.
I started by writing everything by hand! Back in school when I was bored I got out my pad and started scribbling, or when I was travelling too. Back then I didn’t have a laptop yet which ended in massive folders filled with my stuff. Once I got a laptop and realized editing and writing in general is much much easier on it I switched immediately and never returned lmao.
It’s terrible, actually. I have that little oriel in my living room with old furniture and a lot of candles. I typically sit down in my comfy round rattan chair, light the candles, turn on my playlist and start writing. The curse, though, is that I need absolute solitude. It’s hard for me when someone else is in the room or when there is another source of light/noise. This is making it really hard for me to write because I’m living with my partner and he usually spends his time in the living room.
Unecessarily. Uneccesariy. Unnecessarily. Gods, I always forget how to write it.
Idk if it’s superstition but you write better the more you travel. Going out, meeting people, seeing other places; It all gives you motivation and inspiration. Which is why I always take my laptop with me, no matter where I go.
Never getting to finish my novels. My original motivation came with an original idea I started writing years back, but playing FFXIV, falling in love with Zenos and starting “Like Fire and Ice” cut inbetween my original novels. I’m currently trying my best to “finish” “Like Fire and Ice” (although I have a lot more planned still) so I can start writing what I had originally planned.
Realizing that I’ve done that. It was me who wrote all of these words. All of these pages. And there are actually people out there who read it. Honestly, every comment I get on my stories makes me giggle like a little kid.
I’d probably choose to leave out the dialogue. You don’t have to let your characters speak to tell an interesting story, but without at least a little bit of action it would get too boring for me and possibly the reader. It would probably be something dark and mysterious, perhaps something about a cryptid.
Yepp. A 100% . Had my own experiences and have been working with the paranormal/occult for some years now. Also, I love Ghost Adventures and Sam&Colby.
Haunt me? No. If I found something disturbing or just straight up “bad” I cross it from my mind.
Hmn, not really. I do “love” to kill of characters, but only for character or plot development. My deaths are usually calculated. I may miss the characters but I do not grieve them for I know they achieved what they needed to.
Easy! Better concentration, more time to write and a better memory. Those are the three things always ruining my flow.
Hmn, good question. I don’t have a problem with any kind of topic thinking about. I usually make sure to do my research before writing about more sensitive stuff but it never bothers me. I don’t enjoy writing slice of life type settings though.
I do! And honesty, I don’t actually care if I get them back or not. I do have a handful of books I cherish and I wouldn’t hand out because I use them for inspiration or research, the rest on the other hand mostly just exists? I’ve read them, of course. But I rarely read books multiple times. I rather give them away to people who’ll enjoy the story and know I made someone else happy in doing so.
Never in my life would I butcher a book like this, heavens. It hurts me to see mistreated books, be it dog-ears or similar. Even worse are books whose pages have started to curl from moisture, which is why I would never read in the bathtub. We can still be friends, though know you leave a cut in the deepest parts of my soul.
You ask the guy with a sifter for a brain. Uff good question, I think it was a keychain? I honestly can’t remember.
*nervous laughter* Honey, you don’t want to open this box. To make a long story short, it’s more or less an enemies to allies to lovers with three different timelines. In these timelines I explore the different routes the relationship between my hero and my antagonist can take and the various outside influences that drive them to make certain decisions. It’s a fun way to bring light to different aspects to their characters and to show how the way people treat you can change your point of view and, ultimately, your decisions.
“Like Fire and Ice” – Accursed Bonds – Part Ten “I'm so tired.” “Then rest.” A quick noise of complaint comes from somewhere next to me but I don't have the strength to see who made it. All that's left for me to do is take a breath in as Zenos' arm gently lays over my back once the healing touch has faded. I expect it to hurt, but it seems like I've gotten too numb to feel a thing. And still the Garlean makes sure to move as carefully as possible as he slips his other arm underneath my thighs and lifts me up. “You are safe now, hero.” His strong arms cradling me, holding me close to his chest, I feel my heart explode. It's a warmth I haven't felt in years, a light I thought had left my world. Sighing quietly I open my eyes, leaning my weak head against his chest as I look out to the vastness of the Steppe, my eyes threatening to fall shut. It's sunrise. This was one of the scenes I had been looking forward to for ages. In it our hero is rescued by his friends together with the help of their enemy after having been abducted by a mysterious group currently terrorizing their allies. I actually got the idea from one of these “prompt-videos” on tiktok in which the beaten up hero stands in front of their enemy who asks them “Who did this to you?”. I loved this idea so much I somehow had to implement it into my story, but I at that point I was already too far into my storyline to add it. So I sat down and thought how to turn and twist it to make it fit. My first idea was to separate the two in one way or another, forcing my hero to face a different enemy on their own. Unable to come up with a good idea I chose to just keep on writing and so I did until I was presented with the perfect moment to implement it. At this point of the story my hero and his enemy had already begun to (although out of necessity) work together and had to spend a good amount of time travelling alone. Finally being fully confronted with the other they managed to find some sort of way to get along and actually started to bond a little. Still, my hero clung to the trauma and the pain his enemy had inflicted on him and thousands of others and pushed him away, forcibly building a wall between the two. His abduction, though, made him realize just how comfortable he had grown with his enemy. Even though part of him still hated that madman he couldn’t deny that there was something pulling him towards his enemy. During the days spent with his captors he was subject to torture and wilful neglect which in the end almost cost him his life. When his enemy finally had found him he snapped and ruthlessly killed the man that had tortured my hero, the rest of his friends and the other captors staring in horror at the scene. I wanted to show my characters and my readers just to what lengths his enemy would go to save my hero and also to open my hero’s eyes and admit his true feelings.
Weird Questions for Writers (because writers are weird)
1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?
2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?
3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?
4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?
5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?
6. What is your darkest fear about writing?
7. What is your deepest joy about writing?
8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?
9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know
10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?
11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?
12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules
13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?
14. Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back?
15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?
16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?
17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.
18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.
19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?
20. If a witch offered you the choice between eternal happiness with your one true love and the ability to finally finish, perfect, and publish your dearest, darlingest, most precious WIP in exactly the way you've always imagined it — which would you choose? You can’t have both sorry, life’s a bitch
21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?
22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?
23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.
24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?
25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?
26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?
27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?
28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?
29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?
30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?
31. Write a short love letter to your readers.
32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?
33. Do you practice any other art besides writing? Does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate?
34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:
35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?
36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know?
37. If you were to be remembered only by the words you’ve put on the page, what would future historians think of you?
38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?
39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?
40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.
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please don’t look under the read more i’m just testing
Can you imagine a world where we're all represented by a font? Huh, I wonder which one I would be? sees Arial Too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. sees Badaboom Too.. uh... Deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now THAT'S the one! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. If your personality were represented by a font, what font would you be? Take a moment and put your font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I'm getting bored with ol' Calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many requests to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you all have wanted Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. True loyal theorists will know that Earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played Undertale I'm sure that was a really weird opening. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, pause the video and come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What's more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player's actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn't belong in underworld seems to be correct. The evidence seems to point the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.”
This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they clearly-- uuuGGHH take two CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would? We get further clues to Sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "i know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, "and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he's from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That's a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I've seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that's what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren't important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? The Franklin badge. Now, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about, the Franklin badge is a pivotal item from the Mother series. You know, the one with Earthbound. Or, maybe you don't know that one either. Uh, you know, the one with Ness from Super Smash Bros? Yeah well, Ness is from Earthbound, and Earthbound is the second part in this larger Mother trilogy. Alright? Good. Anyway, the Franklin badge is a really important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life multiple times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the Smash Brothers series. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans' drawer was THAT EXACT badge?
Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite game, thereby making it even COOLER, but that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of Earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the best, most satisfying endings in gaming to look back on your journey in picture form. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the Mother series. But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Earthbound, Ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien Giygas. To do that, Dr. Andonuts (remember him, by the way, he's going to be important later) with the help of the science geniuses Apple Kid and Mr. Saturn, create what's known as the Phase Distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes with a cost. It can't transport organic material. As a result, the young heroes must put their souls into robotic bodies to use the machine, and thus, save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor Andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love and care about are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful RPG. So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that Mr. Saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken Phase Distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot. If Sans wound up in Undertale via Phase Distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the Phase Distorter is a time machine. By being in underworld, he's not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he's also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between Earthbound and Undertale continue. When you speak to Apple Kid at the end of Earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of Ness overcoming Giygas, saying that he's going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to harness its power. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments. But I'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, because I have plenty. During one of the endings of Undertale, we see Undyne and Alphys hanging out on the beach on the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical resort location named Summers that you play through in Earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of Mother. When Undertale's crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset falling across the landscape of a tall mountain, a large city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection to indicate water, and a lack of trees in this middle section here, hence the sand.
Well, in Earthbound you have the big city of Fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a desert that just so happens to be adjacent to some water, and to the east, the mountain in Onett where a meteorite lands on Earth. I always called it Aw-nett. But if that's not clear enough for you, Mother 1, Earthbound Zero, Earthbound Beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of Eagleland (Eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) between the world of Eagleland and the surface world of Undertale. But the strongest physical connection, one that definitely unites these two franchises, comes from none other than Papyrus himself. He wears a custom-made costume known as his “battle body”. But if you look really closely at the design on the armor, you'll notice some markings on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of Starmen, the most iconic enemy of Earthbound. And look at the way he stands! I always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arms of the Starmen in the Mother series! In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Earthbound universe is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Ness from Earthbound? Sent through the Phase Distorter during a test of courage, carrying the Franklin badge and his photo album and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior. Remember, Sans can seemingly teleport. And Ness just happens to have the PSI ability to teleport. Now look the way Sans always stands, hands in his pockets, directly facing the camera. It's a very similar stance to how Ness is depicted standing in most marketing for the game. It even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, Sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of Ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator's previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale, had previously worked on a Halloween hack for Earthbound. But this just wasn't a simple reskin. The Halloween hack tells the tale of Dr. Andonuts after the events of Earthbound. Remember, I pointed him out? He's the one who made the Phase Distorter. In Toby Fox’s version of the story, we see that after Giygas' defeat, the souls of the kids never return home. Instead, by going to the past to defeat Giygas, they create a new timeline that they're stuck in. As a result, Jeff never reunites with his father Dr. Andonuts. And Dr. Andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, and extracting the souls of his son and his son's friends to send them back to what he assumes was their death. In his mind, he's killed 4 kids. And in Toby Fox's game, he's lost his mind trying to deal with that guilt. I'm telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of Undertale in this game. The appearance of Amalgamates, the first use of the awesome song Megalovania, the prototypes for Flowey? And the theme of having the choice to be nonviolent in an RPG, SPARING your enemies. But then why's all this matter to the theory? Well, remember, in Toby Fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home. Just like Sans. And, in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. Presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his 3 friends.
In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Earthbound, with Ness never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans, and accompanied by Papyrus, a former Starman, an alien force able to speak English and still equipped with his armor, and signature posture, but without any knowledge of earthly things... like the Sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!
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Best Girlfriend Ever dd
Could you do a David x reader where they are out on a shopping spree and they meet a few fans through out the day
Don’t know if this is what you wanted. I stared writing and this came out. Hope you like it.
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You were convinced he was only doing it because he had spent the day before at his ex’s birthday party and had bought her a really nice gift. You told him you weren’t fussed about it, and thought it was sweet of him to still turn up. Even if deep down you had hoped he would abandon the brunch and come meet up with you and Natalie at Universals.
“David I really don’t need anything,” you complain as he pulled you into another store.
“Well you’re going to have to pick something,” he says over his shoulder. “Or we’re never leaving this mall. Unless you think this place isn’t good enough. Do you want to go to the Gucci store?”
“That is not what I want,” you answer. “David I was more than happy sitting on the sofa with you while you edited. We really didn’t have to come shopping. It’s not like I need anything.”
David stops in front of a row of leather jackets and turns to look at you. “This might sound weird, but I woke up this morning and had the need to buy you something. I don’t know what it is, but please let me do it.”
“I know what it is,” you mumble.
“You do?” David frowns at you. “Want to explain it to me then?”
“Not really,” you sigh.
“Now I really want to know,” he says taking a step closer to you.
“Well I think you maybe want to do all this for me today because you feel a little guilty about not coming with me and Natalie yesterday. We had It all planned for when Reggie came to spend the day together, but last week you found out about the brunch and I told you to go there instead.”
“So you didn’t want me to go to Liza’s thing?”
“I didn’t want you to have to choose,” you answered. “I wanted you to do what you wanted, and you did.”
“But if I had decided to blow off the brunch and come with you guys instead it would have made you happy?” David asks you cautiously.
“I just didn’t want to be the nagging girlfriend,” you shrug. “And it all worked out well. You had a great time with the guys and I had fun with Natalie and Reggie. And at the end of the night we even had a fun trip to Vegas. So there really isn’t anything to feel guilty about David, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
He opens his mouth to say something but stops himself when he looks past you. You know what it is before you even turn around. Three teenage girls are making their way towards you both. Before they even reach you, they have their phones out ready to ask for a picture.
“We really don’t want to bother you…”
“You’re not,” David smiles. “You want a picture?”
You quickly move out of their way and offer to take the picture for them. It’s the same routine you go through every time you’re out together.
“Alright everyone ready?” you ask before snapping a few pictures.
“Oh my god this is so cool,” one of the girls gushes. “We were just watching the vlog where you scare Y/n with lizard.”
“Yeah thanks for reminding me about that,” you laugh. “I’m still trying to figure out how to get him back.”
The girls ask a few questions and tell you both about other vlogs they love. Before they leave the quietest of the three girls stops in front of you and smiles.
“Can I just say thank you?” she says quietly.
“For what?” you ask confused.
“For dating David,” she answers before rolling her eyes. “I know that sounds so stupid, but as one of his fans, it was awful to see him last year. He looked so down a lot of the times. But then when you started appearing in the vlogs he looked a lot happier. Now his vlogs are getting better and better and I think that might be down to you.”
You have no idea what to say to her, so you just pull her in for a quick hug before letting the three of them walk away.
“So,” David says as you watch the three girls walk out of sight. “That was…”
“Intense,” you breath out.
“I was going to say sweet, but your word works too,” he smiles. “And she’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“I also think my vlogs are a lot better since you came into my life,” he answers. “I guess that’s what I was trying to say earlier. Sure I should have probably skipped the brunch and gone with you…”
“But I didn’t want you missing out on a group event,” you interrupt.
“And that’s very sweet of you,” he says as he takes his hand in yours. “I think I had my eyes opened yesterday.”
“In what way?”
“Because I didn’t have my camera at brunch, I had a chance to really look around at everyone. I watched Mariah continuously warn Heath not to drink so much. I could hear Scott and Kristen snapping at each other because she didn’t like what he was doing or saying. She even complained about his outfit. Right there in front of everyone. Then I thought about when Liza and I were dating. She used to pick out all my little faults too. She hated when I didn’t get my hair cut, or if I didn’t want to eat at a certain place. And then I thought of you. You don’t care what my hair looks like. And if I want to eat at the same place every day you’re fine with it. Kristen spent an hour yesterday complaining that Scott hadn’t bought her the right shoes for her birthday, and you’ve never once asked for anything from me. And when I told you I wanted to go to brunch with everyone, you told me that it was okay. Even though you had every right to complain about it. I guess I came away from the brunch feeling a little guilty. Maybe that I’m not treating you like I should be.”
“Or maybe you should realise I’m your girlfriend and not your mother,” you point out. “It’s not my job to tell you what to eat and how to cut your hair. And if you want to hang out with your friends then I need to be okay with it. And I am. David you don’t have to buy me things to make yourself feel like you’re being a good boyfriend. I’d say you’re doing pretty well in that department.”
“So you don’t want a fancy dress or a new leather jacket?” David asks looking around the store.
“Not really,” you shrug. “Anyway I’m more comfortable lounging around the house in a pair of shorts and a clickbait hoodie. I don’t really need Gucci.”
“This is what I’m saying,” David says as he wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you towards him. “You’re like the best girlfriend ever. And you know what else?”
“What?” you giggle as you wrap your arms around his neck.
“If you swipe up right now, you get twenty percent off all clickbait merch,” he says as he points his finger up in the air. Causing you to giggle more.
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Hello there! I read all of your how to zine thing and I've been thinking how to organize a portfolio online... Do you have any suggestions or tutorials on how to do one? I use Google drive but I don't like it anymore (it seems unprofessional) so I was wondering if you have any tips óvò thank you in advance and sorry for my English!!
aaaa it’s ok I’m no native English speaker either, so don’t worry!!
For your question, I personally have started using the Adobe Portfolio (it seems to be free?) as I have the Adobe CC for uni purposes and thus already an Adobe account. I innicially wanted to have it for design stuff only but then discovered I could make a second portfolio so I made one for my internet illustration/art stuff as well and used it as portfolio for zines (idk if it interests you but in case you want some inspiration, here’s the link.) I’m still kinda unsatisfied as it doesn’t really have a gallery option where you can click through the images individually, it really is catered to mobile users and the images look uncomfortably large on the desktop for me, but in general building them is kind of intuitive even if the layout options are rather limited.
I personally don’t have much experience with other portfolio websites (I only tried deviantart’s portfolio before and wasn’t really satisfied with it either, but that’s been years ago.) I would recommend doing some research (maybe some of my followers also has suggestions?) and maybe also consider using a general website from a website builder like weebly or wix (I think there are also free options?) as they are a bit more flexible in their layout.
EDIT: I added a list with some website builders and portfolio websites on the How to Apply post, if any of you have more suggestions, I’ll add them to the list as well. Just a note that I don’t have experience with every website on the list.
Some of my study friends also from other universities used a PDF file with their best works and sent that to agencies, so that might be an option, too, especially if you’re only allowed to a very limited number of pieces. With programs like InDesign it’s fairly easy to make a cohesive and nicely designed PDF (I recently got some suggestions for similar programs as a lot of people suffer from Adobe raising their CC prices but I haven’t tried any of them so I can’t vouch for them.)
For me, it largely depends on what specifically the portfolio is for.If I were to apply for an agency job, I’d try to fit in as much of my range as possible while still trying to focus on what the specific job is for. I think that tactic works for zines as well, even though it’s more illustration-heavy than necessarily corporate or editiorial design. I started to categorise my works more by projects/purpose so that the individual concepts are gathered together instead of having “sketches” “illustrations” “typography” etc. as throughout time, you’ll get more and more interdisciplinatory projects so you can’t sort them that easily. Of course you can sort them also on the main focus for the individual projects (a magazine might be sorted into editorial or typography for example.)
I made an extra category for my comic project to have everything together, currently most of them are just some illustrations but I’ll add more concept art and stuff like that later on.I also like displaying commission or zine works in a seperate category so it’s easier to see what people can expect from hireing me, plus it also shows that I actually already have experience with zines and commissioned work. Of course you don’t need to put all your commissions/zine works into it, especially if you don’t like them/don’t find the result very pleasing anymore. A portfolio is always courating your own works by what you consider your personal qualities.
As I already have mentioned in the portfolio post, I also try to kick out works that are older than 3 years from the portfolio staples that I use when zines only ask for a few of my best pieces (like 3-5) but I keep them in my online portfolio site if I still like them on a general basis, especially if the style is something I still can pull off. I also never use pieces I never published anywhere online so I usually just link to the tumblr post if there’s only a limited number of pieces allowed. I just try to keep my tumblr organised and aesthetically pleasing and check if all the links still work.
For the layout, I recommend using something simple and neutral as the work itself should be the focus, not the very fancy design around it. This especially should be the case if you want to display several styles and/or moods/colour schemes. If your style is very pastell-y and cute, of course a more cute and pastel design compliments it well. But if you also have very dark colours and for example gory designs, it most likely will clash with the works and thus isn’t a very wise descision. Safe colours are always white and any completely desaturated greys that are somewhere in the lighter and mid-range shades. Black can look good, too, but imo should be handled with a bit more care. I probably would recommend a darker grey instead as it doesn’t swallow too much light. You want your work to pop but having too much contrast between your work and the background can also get uncomfortable for the eye.
I also would recommend not using too fancy and playful fonts as they easily distract you from the actual work. I also wouldn’t use Times New Roman and Arial as they aren’t very comfortable to read (and don’t have a very good design.) Calibri is always a very safe and well-designed font that most likely is an option everywhere, but of course just look through the font options and test what suits your works the best.When picking a font colour, please always check the contrast to the background, especially when you use more saturated colours. I also wouldn’t recommend using 100% saturated colours as they are also very uncomfortable for the eye.My prime example of very little readability is bright red on pitch black background. It’s one of the most uncomfortable combinations to read as red is very aggressive to the eye and through the very high saturation also is difficult to distinguish in front of the very dominant black. Having a red-ish grey would work much better, especially if it’s a lighter shade, and not using black but a darker grey would take away the tension as well. Just play around a bit until you get to a visually satisfying result.
Always be aware that starker contrasts also always draw the eye, so you want the most contrast in your works and not in what surrounds them. If you have especially light works with maybe a very delicate lineart and little contrast, you might want to use a white, pastel colour or light grey with a fairly light font (that still has enough contrast to the background to be readible)
The most general advice I can give is focussing on displaying your works and not distracting from them. I would try to have a very simple and cohesive site that puts everything together in a harmonizing way and also doesn’t have too many subcategories so that navigation is easy and smooth.
I hope that helped in some way? ^^;
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bungus
can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!
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[1/23/18] more of a rant than a blog post
i have no idea what i’m doing wrong man, lol. people continue to remind me why i have such severe trust issues. people never come to me genuinely they always seem to have some kind of underlying motive.
i try my hardest to be a hard working genuine loving person but no one ever does the same shit back for me and that’s just how it’s been this past year. i really really hate people sometimes. i know who my people are and i have to make sure i don’t forget.
i’m trying new things with new people and having fun with it but almost every interaction has lead to failure so far. there’s one open door left but it feels like i’m stepping over egg shells and i really want it to work out. i want to be happy with someone. i’m not even asking for romance, lmao. i just need a friend who won’t bail.
i have a lot to catch this blog up on but the fact of the matter is too much has happened lately and i don’t have enough time to type up a long explanation. i can, however, copy and paste a couple pastebins
from before the disney cruise
from the disney cruise
When I do ctrl+A on wordpad it keeps reverting it back to calibri 11 so FINE i'll just stick with it. not like it'll stay on this same font anyway if/when i publish this.
So it's Monday the 8th, 11:43 EST. I've majorly enjoyed the cruise so far, I think the only sucky parts is that A) it's so short and B) i'm 19. this severely limits my options, as the events and stuff to do are majorly geared toward either kids, or teenagers below 17, or adults 21 and over who can drink and stuff. (And it's funny because apparently I should have prepared! The legal age to drink is 18 in Mexico, so I was totally legal to visit and revisit the open bar while we were on the beach. Which is interesting. I've never been interested in drinking or anything like that but it really doesn't help when, yknow, everyone else around you is doing it and you wish you could at least get buzzed since you're bored and your options are limited. I tried a pina colada, but fuck since my mom's been drinking since she was like 15 or whatever she prefers really strong stuff. I couldn't handle.)
I bought myself a couple really cheap coffee mugs because that was the kinda souvenir I was in line for, but I also found a couple really cool lighters, but I accidentally got caught by my mom trying to buy one. I still don't know if she knows I smoke weed. Either I'm doing a really good job hiding it or she's doing a really good job hiding the fact that she knows. But oh well, I'm not really worried about it, I just hate that apparently her first thought is that I was buying the lighter for my ex. Which. No. It's for me. I didn't tell her, though.
It's really nice having relative freedom. At the very least I still get the executive privelege of ice cream and pizza almost whenever I want it. The only problem was the fact that I got seasick last night because when we took off from Cozumel it was stormy enough to shake the ship, so it was rocking back and forth a lot. I almost threw up, but thankfully I was able to down a motion sickness pill and head straight to sleep. Only thing was I woke up incredibly hungry at 2:30 AM, and of course all the food places were closed. Why me. But I feel better now, it's just that literally all of us feel the same way about today... the final sea day, the day where we all wait for it to be tommorow and we can go home. Lol. Except for me, I'm flying straight to GDQ when I get off the ship!!! Which is what I've been really looking forward to for this vacation.
I probably won't be able to finish mario odyssey (which I've been using my spare time to play in our room) by the time we dock, but I WILL be able to play it on the plane so maybe I'll get enough headway there. I do wanna be able to learn any% after having at least gotten the normal ending. I can 100% it or whatever later, it should be okay.
Either my headphones are breaking or my laptop just doesn't pump out very much sound because this music isn't playing very loud in my ears, lol. I just wanna turn it up some more!!!
In the vein of electronic devices and gadgets and such I really didn't prepare much. Or at least, I thought I did, but apparently didn't. Wifi and cellular data are RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. Like I thought i'd be able to pay a similar $8 a day thing like they have at the airports, but it's more like $8 per megabyte of data. MEGABYTE. Like I can't even listen to spotify on my phone because I didn't have any of my songs downloaded in advance. And it's not even like I'm trying to stay cut off from the ship itself and all its attractions either, I just wanted to be able to check into twitter or snapchat or twitch every so often during my down time. I've just been turning off airplane mode every 8 hours or so and reading the notifications or whatever, because at least past me had the genius idea of turning on tweet notifs for the gdq account so at least I know what's happening. But i'll be reconnected tomorrow, no biggie. For now I'm just throwing away some time while the room service dudes do their thing, and in a couple hours I'll honestly just go watch a couple movies. Coco and Star Wars 8 are playing so I'll try to catch both, play some odyssey, get dinner, and we'll roll from there. Thankfully I had spotify open from when I was packing for the cruise itself (since I haven't used my laptop at all since we left the house), so at least I can listen to the playlist I was already on while I write.
I just wanna know asap how much money I still have, lol. It feels a little scary spending and spending, not knowing how much I'll still have after the cruise is over. And I know it'll be fine, because all I have to do is work another week and I'll have another $400 to deposit, it's just like aaa. And the whole point of going on vacation is to NOT worry about my real life, and my finances, and my job, but I've been having stress dreams. I was lucky to be woken up from one the other night, I've been sharing a bed with my brother and I was dreaming about iHop and the GM being mad at me about something while I try and work, a la Christmas night, and in the middle of a stretch my brother backhanded me in the face softly, but just hard enough to wake me up. I was gonna get mad but I was like huh. Thanks. lol.
Uh oh my spotify ran out, lmao
If I could read my prior blogs real quick I'd know what I need to catch it up on, but I guess this one'll remain cruise/vacation only and I'll do a real one when I have interwebz. I wanna wait as long as possible to try heading back to the stateroom in case the room service dudes are still there. I ran into this problem on one of the first days :P I wanted to retire to the room but the service for each room takes like an hour, and I had nowhere to go so I was just walking around, being approached by each person like "hey are you lost" and I'm like no!!! I'm fine!!!
The thing about all the employees on the ship is like. I get it they're supposed to be extra nice and all that, for the disney feel and so that more people will book more cruises in the future, but I get weirded out by niceness. It probably has an impact on my serving as well, because I try to act like who i'd wanna encounter while eating out. Not overly nice, but not overly lazy and forgetful, yknow. It hurts at times to try and break that, to fake who I am in order to "serve better" so I don't know how some people do it. Props to them.
I'm probably done venting certain thoughts. Don't wanna make it seem like I hate the cruise though, the only issue I have, which is out of anyone's control, is that it's not at all tailored to the demographic that I fall under. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more the first time around back in 2013, when I WAS young enough to fall under the "youth activities" rung. Bad timing is all it is. Ideally next time I cruise or anything like that, it'll be when I'm much older. But I'm not the one who planned it or paid for it, and I'm making the most fun out of it I can instead of being my old sour teenager self who hates everything. :P Proud of myself for coming of age in that regard. I think my siblings have too. (Except for my youngest brother. ;p) --- 7:33 EST just came out of Last Jedi, was pretty damn dope. Just as a movie by itself i'd recommend it to anyone who likes that style of story where a bunch of different plot lines and points of view finally converge. Homestuck always comes to mind when I encounter stories like this
Didn't get to catch Coco because apparently the theater was jam-packed, like zero places left to sit down.
7:50 EST i don't like the way the boat moves. i think cruises really just aren't my thing, lmao. if i could get this same experience, but like, on land? i think i'd like that more :P like the longer i lay here knowing dinner time's coming (25 minutes) the less i want to move and the more i just want to sleep.
post-gdq
but i’m back in the groove of my job and things. i’ve talked to my manager about some stuff, other stuff i kept in, but my schedule’s “””okay””” for the time being. i’m gonna ask about my shifts starting in the 6:00 range because i really don’t like that, but for now i’m fine with it as long as it’s not the majority.
i can’t do graveyard for the time being since server priority 1 ronnie (i’m server priority 2 basically) has asked for those shifts since he’s a little bit extra in need of cash, so of course they’re gonna indulge him on that. but as soon as i can get those shifts back the happier i’ll be
i got my first car payment taken care of and set up recurring payments monthly, which i’m really excited about. next step i think is to a) keep working and saving and b) figure out my w-2 and such because this’ll be my first year doing taxes with ihop under my belt
a few things plaguing my mind lately involve my love life, a new friend that i’ve made that i really hope to grow closer with, and an old friend who i really miss. i wish wish wish i could go into further detail but whoops, ain’t got no one to tell this shit to. i’m a gay piece of shit
not sure what else to say for the moment, but i hope this sinus infection goes away soon so i feel like doing more stuff. my room is a hopeless wreck but i couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it
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A Punderful Proposal (SansxReader One-shot)
Hey, everybody! This is somethings I wrote up based on a dream I had a while back. I wanted to write out the idea, cuz I’m a sucker for fluff. Hope everyone enjoys!
Ao3 Link
Title: A Punderful Proposal Pairing: Sans/Reader Word count: 2598 Warnings: Fluff overload. Terrible shitty puns and jokes. No pronouns used for Reader. Otherwise, none.
——
Laughter rang out as the sun shined brightly from the cloudless sky. Waves rolled softly back and forth on the golden sand. The heat was eased by a gentle, cool, ocean breeze.
It was a glorious summer day and you and all your friends had been able to organize a beach house getaway for the next couple of days.
You never expected to become such great friends with all of these wonderful Monsters and their little Ambassador. It stared with Alphys. You had helped her find the local nerd shop and ended up in a very long discussion about anime inside the shop. Through her you met Undyne, when Alphys had invited you out for lunch one day to meet her girlfriend. Next had actually been Toriel and Frisk. You were invited to a sleepover at Alphys’ that Frisk had been invited to as well, and you instantly loved the determined child to pieces and Toriel became a pseudo-mom to you. Finally, you met Papyrus, and in turn, Sans. Undyne was taking you to one of their training session and Papyrus had dragged Sans along this one time because Undyne had said you would be there. Papyrus was the coolest, sweetest person you had ever met, and Sans…
Well…
Something seemed to just click with you two.
Maybe it was the way you treated his brother. Or maybe how friendly you were with his friends.
Or maybe the mutual love of puns.
“the beach is quite the sand-sation, isn’t it?”
“I sea what you did there, but don’t star fishing for compliments.” You giggled. He laughed and planted a kiss on your cheek.
“stars, you’re wonderful.” He sighed dreamily, “how did i become so lucky to be allowed to date someone like you?”
“Sans…”
“i know, i know… no self-depreciation. but still, i sometimes still wonder how you’re real. you’re so incredible and beautiful and smart and funny and i love you so much…” He pulls you into a hug that you quickly return.
What ever it was that clicked between you two, it grew and grew. You became closer and closer, Sans eventually admitting to you his darkest thoughts, and you in turn being a light to guide him back from them. When you were having a hard time and stressing out over everything, he would pull you back and help you unwind. Mutual give and take. There were bumps here and there as with anything, but neither of you wanted to leave the other.
Two years in and Sans realized he loved you far more than a friend. It took another year though for Sans finally find the courage to ask you out. Part of it was the fear you wouldn’t return his feelings. Another, bigger part was that he didn’t think he deserved you. He was still trying to recover from everything the resets had done to him. He was getting better yes, but he was still a mess sometimes. Even if his HP had finally stared rising again, it was still rather precariously low at the time, and he had been sure the heartbreak of being rejected by you would have dusted him where he stood. He couldn’t do that to you.
You had figured out Sans feelings for you a little after he did, and even though you returned them, you were going to wait for Sans to ask you out. You dropped little hints that you returned his affections, but never pushed him. You waited for him to accept that it was ok to take this chance with you. To take a chance at letting himself have a bit of happiness. When he finally did, via a pun in true Sans fashion, you had laughed with the biggest smile on your face and said yes.
You ended up admitting that you had been waiting for him to ask and explained why you had done so. Because Sans deserved to be happy too. You wanted him to believe he deserved it. He asked if he could kiss you right then and there. You answered by taking his face in your hand and pressing your lips to his.
It’s been three years since then and the two of you couldn’t be more of a happy couple if you tried. Papyrus was over the moon with how happy the two of you were, so relieved that his brother was no longer on the verge of Falling Down and so very excited about you joining the family. (The two of you had also given Alphys and Undyne plenty of material for their growing Doujinshi and Fanfiction archives.) Everyone couldn’t have been more happy for the two of you.
“Shell we?”
“we shell.”
You both giggle like the dorks you were.
~~~
It was a great time. You got roped into many shenanigans with your friends; making sandcastles (and burying a sleeping Sans in the sand), collecting shells, playing a rather erm… passionate game of volleyball with Undyne and Papyrus.
“I’M SO SORRY ______!!! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HANDLE A SPIKE FROM UNDYNE!!!”
“Pap, I’m fine. Got the wind knocked out of me, but no harm done.” You try and comfort the tall skele, despite the ball shaped bruises on your arms stating otherwise. Papyrus tearful shuffles in place, still guilty for the incident. You sigh and reach up to take his face in your hands. You gently pull him down to your level and place a chaste kiss on his forehead.
“It’s ok, Pap. It was an accident, and no one is mad. No more tears, ok? We’re supposed to be having fun.” You coo, softly wiping away his tears. He sniffles, but nods and gives you a small smile. “Now, come here.”
You pull him into a hug and he returns it, burying his face in your shoulder. You hear him mutter a ‘thank you’ and something else you almost didn-
Did he…
Did Papyrus just call you his sibling?
You pull back from him, wide-eyed. Even after so long of Pap saying he considered you such, that’s the first time he’s actually called you it. It seems he finally registered his own words as his face begins to tint orange.
“I-I MEAN- THAT IS- UM-” you cut off his embarrassed stuttering by making little keening noises.
“Oh my god, Pap! You’ve never called me that! I’m so happy!” You sniffled, your heart about to burt with joy.
“NOW LOOK WHO’S CRYING.” Papyrus chuckles. You do as well at the turn of events.
“I’VE- BEEN WANTING TO CALL YOU THAT.” He admits. “FOR A WHILE NOW.”
“You have?” You tip your head in curiosity. “What changed?”
“NYEHEHEHE.” Papyrus holds a finger up to his lips and winks. “SORRY, DEAR SIBLING, BUT THAT, I CANNOT SAY.”
You blinked in confusion. Papyrus? Keeping secrets?? What has the world come to.
“DO NOT WORRY THOUGH! YOU WILL KNOW WHY SOON ENOUGH.”
“Ok then, Pap. I’ll trust you on that.”
~~~~~
It was two days in of your three day trip, and the sun had finally set. Everyone had gathered outside around a bonfire to relax after the long day of playing.
Well, almost everyone. Frisk had passed out on one of the couches, completely tuckered out, and was put to bed. But that didn’t explain who else was missing.
“Where’s Sans?” You ask, looking around for your missing boney boyfriend.
“I think he said he was going up to the Cabana.” Toriel offered. “Though, he has been gone for a while…”
“I’ll go get him.” You say, standing from your seat. “I heard the Cabana has a really good view of the stars, so he probably wanted to see them and lost track of time.”
“Alright, call if you need anything.”
You then turned from the group to head up the cobblestone path to the Cabana. You didn’t notice the faint giggling of your other favorite skeleton.
~~~
“What’s gotten into you Pap?” Undyne quirked a brow at her friend. Papyrus continued to giggle like an excited child.
“OH THIS IS THE MOST WONDERFUL JAPE! AND NO, I WILL NOT BE TELLING YOU WHY. YOU WILL GET TO HEAR ABOUT IT SOON.”
“Aww, not even a hint?” She tried elbowing him in the side, but he avoided it and rolled his eyes.
“ONLY THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT SANS HAS BEEN PLANNING TO DO FOR A WHILE.” Alphys blink in confusion for a second, then her eyes went wide as she gasped.
“Y-You mean he’s-!? Right n-now!? Oh my gosh!!!” She bounced excitedly in place. It didn’t take Undyne much longer to figure out what was mean either.
“Ooooh-ho-holy cheese balls, really?! The nerd is finally going through with it?! Why the heck ain’t we up there?!” Undyne hopped up to go march after you, but Papyrus’ voice stopped her dead.
“NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING.” All eyes turned to Papyrus. “SANS HAD ENOUGH TROUBLE CONVINCING HIMSELF TO DO THIS WITHOUT ANYONE PRESSURING HIM TO DO SO. HE DOES NOT NEED IT NOW. I WILL NOT HAVE ANYONE RUIN THIS FOR HIM.” He was entirely serious about this, and though he didn’t say it, he was also prepared to forcefully keep his friends from spying on Sans and you. Sans almost didn’t end up asking you out all those years ago because their friends kept nagging him about it. He was not letting Sans get cold feet because of stage fright or nerves. Not when Sans was so close to what used to be nothing but an unachievable dream.
“Alright Papyrus.” Toriel, ever the voice of reason. “We’ll stay here and wait for the good news.”
~~~~
“why did the proton blush? it was positively attracted to the electron.”
You snorted and laughed. Ok, so you had found Sans at the Cabana, just like Tori had said. You had initially just sat and started making small talk, then Sans threw some puns, then you did, and now the whole thing has dissolved into a joke war. By now, the stars were in their full glory.
“Ok, I saw this one on the Internet and I thought of you.”
“awww, babe.”
“So, two fonts, Arial and Calibri, were in the midst of a bad breakup. Calibri said, ‘I’m sorry, you’re personality is too bold.’ Arial responded, ‘You’re just not my type…’”
You both dissolved into a fit of giggles.
“ok, ok, I got one. two nuclear technicians got married. she was radiant and he was glowing.”
Oh? Relationship jokes now? Well ok then.
“I bet they were a fastidious couple. She was fast, he was tedious.”
“an invisible man marries an invisible woman. the kids were nothing to look at either.”
“When a psychic showed me the person I’ll marry, it was love at second sight.”
“what do you call a melon that’s not allowed to get married? a cant-elope.”
You throw your head back and laugh, your side starting to get a stich. You two continued this trend of marriage, wedding, and relationship puns for a bit. But you started to get curious. He’s never made these kinds of puns before. You laughed until it was quiet.
“Sans…?” He seemed nervous now. “What’s wrong?”
“nothing, i just…” He takes a deep breath and steels himself. “knock, knock.”
“… Who’s there?”
Wait. Was this…?
“marry.”
Being alone with Sans in a beautiful place. The theme of the puns.
“I’VE BEEN WANTING TO CALL YOU THAT. FOR A WHILE NOW.”
Your eyes are wide and your hands are trembling.
“M-marry who…?”
He slids off his chair and down on one knee in front of you. Out of his shorts pocket he pulls a little black box. His own hands shake as he holds it out to you. You can hear the soft rattle of his bones.
How long were you waiting, Sans?
“Marry… me…?” He opens the box and inside is a simple but absolutely gorgeous ring. Nothing more than a simple gold band with a single small gem embedded in it, and you think you see engravings on the inside. But you really didn’t want anything else, Sans and you were both simple people. It sparkled in the moonlight and your breath had left you. You brought a hand to your mouth, your eyes going misty as you continued to gaze at the ring.
The silence stretched for several more seconds and Sans didn’t seem to take that as a good sign. He started to pull back, tears beginning to fill his sockets, and your brain finally caught up with you to say something, you idiot!
“What did the melons say when they were being married?” You blurted out quickly, making Sans freeze.
“w-what…?”
You carefully pluck the ring from the box and slide it onto your finger. Then you take Sans’s face in your hands and peck him quickly on the lips.
“Honey, I do.”
He blinks dumbly at you for a few seconds. Then you giggle and your words finally register. All the tension falls out of him as he starts tearfully laughing. You pull him to you and he wraps his arms around your middle, face pressed to your stomach.
“you can’t go doing that to me babe.” He blubbers between watery chuckles. “i thought i messed up. thought you would…”
“I’m so sorry, Sansy.” You apologize, pressing kisses to the top of his skull. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I love you too much… I don’t think it’s possible for me to say no to you.”
“you did just say yes to marrying me.” Sans mutters. That sentence them seems to strike him all over again, his arms wrapping tighter around you as he begins to laugh in ernest.
“you said yes!! you said yes!!!!” He cheers. He pulls back suddenly, only to jump up on his feet, take your face in his hands, and smash your lips together. You’re quick to return it, crushing him to you the best you can. When he pulls back, he gives you the biggest, most joyful smile you’ve ever seen on him. You laugh as he nuzzles his face to yours.
“You’re never getting rid of me, you know.”
“i should be the one saying that.” He chuckles, then gets this almost wistful look. “i don’t know if i’d be able to live without you now.”
“Sans.”
“i know, self-depreciation. but…” Sans gently takes your hands in his and presses a kiss to your fingers, just below your ring. “we’ve got the rest of our lives for you to keep reminding me.”
All you could do was pull him into another kiss.
Your ring continued to glitter in the moonlight.
~~~~~~~
’WHAT DO YOU MEAN “SANS PROPSED LAST NIGHT”?! WHY DIDN’T ANYONE WAKE ME UP?!’ Frisk furiously signed.
“No one knew he was doing so except for Papyrus, and he wasn’t letting anyone see Sans propose. So you weren’t the only one who didn’t get to see, my child.” Toriel soothed, not looking up from cooking breakfast. Frisk stomped their foot once in frustration, then rushed over to you and Sans, who were eating breakfast together in the living room. They nearly tackled their skeleton uncle, causing him to grunt and try to not fall over.
“whoa there kiddo, easy on these old bones.”
'I had better get to be the Ring Bearer at the wedding!’
“Sure Frisk, whatever will keep you from bearing grudges.”
Papyrus then looks up from his breakfast with a flat face.
“IT SEEMS I HAVE BEEN UNDER A MILD FORM OF INSANITY. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME STOP THIS WEDDING.”
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Analysis of Stevenbomb: Wanted
There be spoilers under the cut
Ok, so first off I want to say that I am very pleased with this strong narrative Season 5 has started with and am dying for the next episode(s) to come out even though we have none scheduled as of yet. (I swear to goodness it better not be an entire month before we get another episode I’ll be frothing at the mouth and dying by then).
I’ll go ahead and skip analyzing Stuck Together since it aired early and most of the internet has already seen it. Having said that, let’s proceed to The Trial.
While there’s a lot to say about this episode, I’ll try my best to summarize it as just WOW.
True to her word, Rebecca has done it again by giving the fandom exactly what it has been waiting for since Jailbreak Season 1. A meeting of the Diamonds with Steven acting as a key factor. To be honest, I was honestly surprised we were getting straight to the point with this episode, seeing how Steven just sorta decided to surrender at the last moment in I am my Mom, but I’m grateful the Crewniverse wastes no time throwing us into the hellfire of a 6,000-year-old grudge against Rose Quarts as we finally get to see exactly what roles the Diamonds play on Homeworld.
I absolutely adored Zircon in this scene; trying her best to be a good lawyer and losing her cool, and yeah I get the show’s ‘logic’ is supposed to for kids, but honestly her dialogue had me raising an eyebrow or two as she tried to state her case, and I think even Steven knew she was getting nowhere with her argument.
Speaking of that, the attitudes that the different Zircons and Pearls have towards their own kind ruled under different Diamonds was an interesting little bit of information that clearly shows gems don’t seem to find ‘compassion’ and ‘friendship at the top of their list; at least when it comes to other gems ruled under another Diamond. (I also loved how Y-Pearl typed her entry in, while B-Pearl drew pictures. :3)
Adding Lars in for the trial was an interesting touch that I think surprised just about everyone, seeing how up until now he hasn’t really been significant to the plot other than for comedic relief and furthering Steven’s own maturity. I like how he’s just sorta dragged around by the gems, yet is still allowed to do his own thing to an extent. (So long as he doesn’t interfere with whatever the gems are doing). Seeing how he helps keep Steven grounded and focused on the mission I think is what makes him an important plot piece in the episode, as otherwise I think Steven would be very overwhelmed without a direct goal in mind. (And that goal is saving Lars and getting out of there.)
Blue Zircon really makes her debut after the brief court recess, as she finally gets her act together after Steven provides her with some actual evidence, and completely turns the tables around as she goes as far as to accuse the Diamonds of sabotage based on the factual evidence and eye witness accounts.
Here’s something I found funny. Eyeball as a witness. She had no real reason to be there, and frankly made herself look even worse when she admitted Steven healed her during the trial. Why would a Diamond shatterer heal an enemy gem? ;) Still, it was a nice little touch the Crewniverse added for comedic effect and I loved it all the same.
I’ll wrap it up by saying that Yellow seemed pretty mad to be accused of treason, though I have my suspicions that she’s not the real culprit here, nor is Blue. (Though dang Blue’s emotion manipulating abilities are something to be afraid out.) It might be White, since she’s not been seen yet, and she may not even exist I’m just spit balling, or it might be a color switching/shapeshifting alien/gem? We’ve never seen before.
Point is, Rose is pretty much confirmed to not be the killer of Pink Diamond. I’d bet my two cents that she loved PD, and that Pink was actually trying to help humans. :O
Off Colors
Oh you sneaky writers, you ;)
I really like how the title not only foreshadows Lars’ death, but is also a slang term for ‘defect’ on Homeworld, which I never guessed either would be canon in my wildest dreams.
So, we basically meet 3 new gems (8/9/10 ½ ??? If you count the fusions and whatnot) and Lars becomes a hardcore hero who sacrifices himself to save his new friends.
I have to give props to Lars for doing what he did, seeing how he’d basically been a yellow-belly this entire time and only ran away from his problems. Honestly I expected him to do the same this time around, but when I watched him interact with the defects I realized that he saw something he’d never expected to see in those gems. Himself. And why is this significant?
Let me put this in perspective for ya,
Have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself doing something either embarrassing or something that reminds you of a darker time in your life and go, “If only I had a time machine and could go back and tell myself not to do ‘x’ or that life will get better if you just hang on a bit longer… Then life would be so much better for the both of us.” This is Lars seeing his past-self reflected in these, scared, defenseless gems, who have no one to help them.
So this is why Lars decides to become courageous and be the hero he’s always wished he could be but was too afraid to act, and goes ape sh*t on the robonoids because he knows he’s the only line of defense they’ve got.
So ya, needless to say I’m very proud of Lars for sticking up for himself and protecting the defects from Homeworld.
(Also A+ writing for the team thinking about Lars being ‘invisible’ to the Robonoid’s scanners and using that against them! It was amazing and heroic and alkjfhdgjkdhfjgkhfj!)
Lars’ Head
So a bit of a misleading title, but understandable given it’s hard to explain what’s just occurred in a few short words while simultaneously not spoiling the episode. (Even though everyone already knows that Lars is Pink Lion 2.0 from the previous episode).
So wow, again I never expected this to be a canon thing in the SUniverse.
I can’t really express the excitement I got when Lars was revived by Steven, the team discussing death (briefly and without literally saying that word ‘death’ just ‘away from life’), and Lars is PINK now. (And has what I assume is a BA permanent eye scar, along with the fact his ear lobes are probably stretched out forever now hahahaha sucks to be you Lars! ;D)
I think Lars accurately summed up everyone’s thoughts when he asked Steven “Am I a zombie now?!?” because let’s face it, yes Lars, you are in fact a very, very, magical pink zombie. J
So yeah, let’s talk about the defect gems for a second since I totes forgot about them in favor of paying attention to my Pink Son for a moment.
We’ve got the Twins of Rutile, Rhodonite, Flourite, and Padparadscha Sapphire (Which I’m gonna call P-Sapphire for now).
The twins are rather interesting, as they seem to be the most level-headed of the team, as well as quite possibly two of the brighter gems in the group. I just really love how they don’t seem to be all that concerned about their appearance, and more concerned about the group, which really shows how compassionate they are in comparison to some of the other characters on the show which are way more hung up on their looks than caring for others.
Rhodonite wasn’t a major shocker for me, seeing how we’ve already been filled in about Garnet’s past, but it did raise some eyebrows about how two gems fused on Homeworld and weren’t shattered right away for doing so, just merely replaced. I think theirs’s a lot more to their story the Crewniverse didn’t have time to put in, but hopefully somewhere along the lines we’ll see her again and get to know more about the two of them.
Flourite is… Interesting. Besides the obvious fact that she looks like the Hookah smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, her personality and combination of gems is so distinct from the others that it’s amazing she’s actually a stable fusion. I get the underlying theme is polyamory for her, but besides that it’s something else to see such a massive fusion remain so gentle and kind while not bickering between herself since she’s got like 6 or 8 gems… Sidenote: something interesting I wanted to point out was how slow Flourite talks when she’s speaking, and one can only assume that’s because of how many gems she’s comprised of, which is fascinating. It speaks volumes that the more gems involved in a fusion, the more time it seems to take to sync up thoughts and even actions, as demonstrated by Flourite’s behavior.
Lastly, P-Sapphire. A classic Rosalina appearance with a heart of gold. I’m really curious to know how the heck she survived this long and how she found this rag-tag misfit of gems since she can only predict the recent past, as she seems to constantly be stuck in her visions as demonstrated by her actions. Regardless, she’s still really cute and I love how eager and excited she is about everything, so hopefully we’ll get to see her character arc grow past just comedic relief.
Anyways, back to Lars. The fact that Lars is essentially a portal home is cool enough, but when Steven steps inside it’s shown he’s got his own tree in there too. So I get Rose can do plant stuff, which explains the tree on? in? Lars, but what I don’t understand is the portal power since it doesn’t seem to be connected to either of her abilities.
The fact Rebecca decided to leave the defects and Lars on Homeworld was a surprise, but an understandable one, not for the story’s sake, but because trying to fit Flourite through Lars’ hair would be a nightmare that I don’t think anyone would want to explain.
So Steven discovers he’s a necromancer and that Lion’s his undead slave pet, and then the gems and Connie and Greg all show up just in time to have a reunion and happy tears are shed. (And then Steven proceeds to eat everything in sight, prompting Greg to go out and buy the boy some more bread lol).
So much has been left out in the open, and I get the distinct feeling this is gonna be the least season for this show. L Still, I feel like everything’s gonna be amazing when we get the next episode, so for now I’m rather content. :D
#su#su spoilers#su wanted#steven universe#why do i do this to myself#help#su analysis#stuff#lars#pink lion#off colors#the trial#lars head#homeworld#the diamonds#a summary#my hands can't stop typing#my computer is literally burning up the cpu as we speak
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can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING
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can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!
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can you imagine a world where were all represented by a font? What font would I be? Hmmm, no, not Arial, that's too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. Too uh, deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now that's the ONE!!! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a personal question. If you're personality were represented by a font, which font would you be? Take a moment and put you font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I get bored with old calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many request to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you've all been wanting Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Truly loyal theorists will know that earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, comic sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played undertale I'm sure that was a really wierd opening. ANYWAYS, sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE Is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given by a shopkeeper in Snowden, who claims that sans and papyrus just, and I quote, "showed up one day and asserted themselves." Wierd, right? What's more is that papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. SANS is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly deadly and much more serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts through the world on ridiculous routes. He even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, that he doesn't belong in the underground seems to be correct. The evidence shows he used to be a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, papyrus asks sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, we call that the sun. This is important because A, the use of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun, shows that sans has a kinship or knowledge of other humans, and B, that despite he and papyrus both being skeletons, and BROTHER, and apparently both appearing in the underworld at the same time, the clearly have two very different histories. Why would papyrus not know the name of the sun but sans would? We get further clues to sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say that means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is " and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on the dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, and as though the surface he's from is from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface but from a different time period, who seemingly had the power to teleport. That a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After visiting the workshop you find some items that leave a lot more questions. A photo album featuring sans and a bunch of people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean. Well a lot of undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named w d gaster. A ghostly figure who never truly appears in the game, honestly covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably best saved for another day. All of the gaster theories i've seen haven't been able to explain all the details. A photo album, and the badge, and that's what kept nagging me as i researched undertale. A badge? That one in particular stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of the room. Something that supposedly reveals the truth about sans. Badges just aren't important in undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was infact the most important badge in the history badge in the history of gaming? This franklin badge. And for those of you who are wondering what i'm talking about, the franklin badge is a pivotal item from the mother series. You know, the one with earthbound, or, maybe you don't know that one either. You know, the one with ness from super smash bros? Yeah well, ness is from earthbound, and earthbound is the second part of this larger mother series. Good? Yeah, well anyways, the franklin badge is an important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life many times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the smash brothers series. So i asked myself; what if the badge in sans drawer was THAT badge? Well first off, it would make undertale connected to earthbound, thereby making it even COOLER? But that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as i started looking more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the most satisfying endings to a journey. And what does sans have in his other drawer? A photo album of people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not character present in undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the mother series linked to the mother series. But how do the broken machine and blueprints fit in? Well, in the final stretch of earthbound, ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien giygas. In order to do that, with the help of dr. andonuts (remember that, he's going to be important later) along with science geniuses apple kid and mr. saturn, create a machine known as the phase distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes at a cost. It can transport organic material, as a result the young heroes must put their souls in robot bodies in order to save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and i'm not ashamed to admit that when i first saw this scene i cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's all a very dark departure in what was otherwise a fun, colorful, and quirky RPG. so what does all of this have to do with undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that mr. saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken phase distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch but it actually explains a lot. Sans wound up in undertale via phase distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences, not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the phase distorter is a time machine. Based on the way he talks, he's not only from a different space but from a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between earthbound and undertale continue. When you speak to apple kid at the end of earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of ness defeating giygas. Hes going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to obtain its power. That seems awfully familiar to the experiments happening in undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that sans was a key player in those experiments. But i'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, i have plenty. During one of the endings of undertale, we see undyne and alpyhs hanging out on the beach of the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical location summers that you play in earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of mother. When undertales crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset with a tall mountain, a big city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection, hence the water, and a lack of trees in this middle section, hence the sand. Well, in earthbound you have the big city of fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a dessert that just so happens to be adjacent to water, and to the east, a mountain on onett where a meteor hits earth. I always called it onett. But if that's not clear enough for you, mother 1, earthbound zero, earthbound beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of eagleland (eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) and the surface world of undertale. But the strongest physical connection, the one that definitely connects these two franchises, comes from none other than papyrus himself. He wears a custom made costume known as his “battle body” but if you look really closely at the designing on the armor, you'll notice a few marks on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of starmen, the most iconic enemy of earthbound. And look at the way he stands, i always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arm and hand of the starmen. In short, we have some strong proof that the earthbound universe is somehow connected to the undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took in one final step and said that sans happened to be ness from earthbound. He hopped through the phase distorted as a test of courage, carrying his franklin badge, a photobook, and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does sans’ behavior. Remember, sans can seemingly teleport. And ness just happens to have the ability PSI teleport. Now look at how sans stands, hands in his pockets, legs out, it looks very similar to how ness is shown on most of the marketing for the game. It even explains why sans bleeds when you hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creators previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind undertale, had previously worked on a halloween hack for earthbound. But this isn't just a simple reskin. The halloween hack tells the tale of dr. andonuts after the events of earthbound. Remember i pointed him out, he's the one who made the phase distorter. In toby fox’s version of the story, we see that the souls of the kids never returned home instead, by going to the past to defeat giygas, there stuck in a new timeline. As a result, jeff never reunites with his father andonuts. And dr. andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, taking the souls of his sons and his sons friend to what he assumes aws their death. He's killed 4 kids, and in toby fox's game, he's gone crazy with guilt, trying to deal with that. Im telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of undertale in this game. The appearance of amalgamates, the use of the awesome song megalovania, the prototypes for flowery? And the theme of being nonviolent in an rpg, SPARING your enemies. So why is this important to the story? Well, remember, in toby fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home, just like sans. and , in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his friends. Which brings us back to undertale. 3 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? Its ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, undertale is a continuation of toby’s version of earthbound, with ness never being able to get home, adopting the name sans, and being accompanied by papyrus, a starman, with knowledge of english, his armor, and his signature posture, but without any of his memory of human things, like the sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’d have a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!
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Cast Away Your True Love's Kiss
5. “I didn’t want it to end, I just thought you’d be better off without me..” from the 40 Prompts List
@rebelliouswhirlpool this fic is finally done. It is finished. It is thirteenpages, Calibri, 11 point font, single spaced with a space after each paragraph. Tumblr won’t allow me to add a read more to an ask, and I’m not going to torture everyone on my dash with that monstrosity of a long post.
Also, this fic is going to contain blood-based body horror and a character who suffers from depression. Hard to believe that this was originally a Sleeping Beauty au, isn’t it? (If you wanted something less dark I have your original ask.)
AO3
FFN
“Are you okay?” shouldn’t have been the words that started the end. When they left Jim’s mouth, they didn’t sound like they were words intended to start the end of things.
No, she wasn’t okay. Okay was only five feet away from perfect and she was as far from perfect, as far from okay even, as far she was from Arcadia.
“I’m fine,” Claire said instead. Fine was a nice lie, a lie that she had perfected. It was one of the few things still perfect about her. And besides, if she wasn’t fine now it was a state she could get to if she worked hard enough. She had to be fine, and she had to handle it on her own.
“No, you’re not.” Of course, Jim could tell when something was off. “Are you sleeping okay? The ground probably isn’t good for your back.” Then again, he was also entirely off from the source of her problems.
Was she sleeping okay? Ha. She wasn’t levitating with blackened eyes or trying to take down wards when she was supposed to be sleeping, was she?
“I’m fine, Jim. Really.”
He ignored her. “Are you eating enough? I” Was he? “I can cook more for you. Would that help?”
No, she wouldn’t try to torture Jim. He loved cooking and he couldn’t eat his own food.
“Seriously, Jim, I’m fine.” She wouldn’t be fine if he kept trying to fix her. He couldn’t fix her.
“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me. You did that when you were sick, and, well…” Jim trailed off, possibly sensing her fury a moment before it was unleashed.
“This is nothing like that,” she seethed. Angry magic rose within her; she pushed it down. Jim shouldn’t bring it up like that, but she would not be a monster. And that was just another part of her problem.
“I’m really worried about you, and you keep brushing all of us off!”
“There’s nothing to worry about!” Because there’s nothing you can fix so drop it.
“Please, Claire,” Jim said, dropping his voice into a soft tone. “All of us – Blinky, Me, Nomura, Notenrique, Toby – we’re all worried about you. You’re jumpy, and it feels like each night you’re dragging behind more and more.”
And there it was. There was his chance.
Claire grabbed her backpack and began to walk out of the cave.
“Where are you going?” Jim asked.
“Home. Arcadia,” Claire said. She didn’t look at him. If she looked back at him she would crumple to the floor.
“How are you going to get back there? We’re hundreds of miles away.” Jim asked as Claire removed the crystal from the center of her chest. Her armor disappeared.
“Greyhound.” Short, simple, words kept her from crying. She almost dropped the crystal that triggered her armor but chose to put it in her pocket instead.
“I, okay,” Jim said. “Are you sure? I can try to make things better, we can still fix things.”
She wanted him to fight for her, for them. She wanted him to push her away.
“There’s nothing you can fix, Jim.” She put as much poison into the words as she could. That’s all that was left of her, wasn’t it? “I hope you can find someone better than me.”
Jim called out for her as she began to walk across the scorching sand. Claire didn’t cry because it was a mile-long walk to the nearest bus station and she didn’t really want to get dehydrated.
Jim stopped calling her name, and she realized that someone else was also calling out her name.
“Come on, Claire, wait up! Little legs!”
For the first time since leaving, Claire turned around. NotEnrique had retained his changeling ability to walk in the sun.
“NotEnrique, what are you doing here?” She walked towards him, slowly and steadily so she wouldn’t try and run back to Jim once she got to her brother.
“Didn’t think you could just leave me behind, did’ya?”
“But the Heartstone–”
“Most changelings don’t get a Heartstone. Heck, old Bossman stayed with the Trollhunter’s mother instead of traveling to New Jersey with us. No, I’m staying with you, kid. You can’t push me away that easy.”
Claire scooped him up into her arms and began walking to the bus stop again. “You’re getting shoved in my backpack and you’re not allowed to mess with anything once we get closer to civilization.”
After days on a bus, Claire was finally back in Arcadia. Did she regret it?
It was only another item on the list.
She knelt and let NotEnrique out of her backpack. He looked around.
“Really, sis? You couldn’t have waited one more stop to get us closer to yer house?”
“You’re the one who complained about being cooped up.”
It was sunny out, so there weren’t many trolls around.
“You gonna call him to tell him you got home okay?” NotEnrique asked. She didn’t have to ask to know he was talking about Jim. He’d tried to give her relationship advice, which oscillated between “maybe you should’ve left me behind, so I could’ve made his hands symmetrical and gotten rid of the extra teeth” and trying to get her to talk about her feelings and how there was obviously something wrong other than the fact that Jim had pushed a little too much in the wrong direction.
Claire pushed her shoulders and her feelings down and back. “Later.”
“What about your parents or Tubby for a ride with a car or a magic warhammer?”
“We’re walking,” Claire said a bit more forcefully. Besides, she didn’t want to have to talk to them right now. Her mom would try to act like she had been right all along, that living a normal life would do Claire better than a change of scenery. Her dad would manage to come up with more creative threats for her ex-boyfriend than NotEnrique had. Jim had probably cried to Toby about her walking out on him, so things would be at least as awkward as they had been when she had first joined the team.
As Claire crossed the bridge that went over the entrance to Trollmarket, she glanced at the canal. Once destroyed by the vortex that created the Eternal Night, building teams had managed to patch the hole in a surprisingly fast amount of time.
That patch allowed Claire and NotEnrique not to fall into an incredibly deep chasm whose fall they wouldn’t survive. They would have fallen down and down, and without the Shadow Staff then at least Claire would splatter among the dead Heartstone like a messier version of Vendel’s death.
Instead, they rolled, and the burst of energy caused by Claire summoning her armor took away from the freefall.
“Pity, what they’ve done to my handiwork.” Claire had never wanted to hear that voice again.
Morgana’s spirit floated in front of Claire just like it had so many times in the past.
“I sealed you away,” Claire said. She moved to grip her Shadow Staff and remembered that it had been destroyed.
“Yes, well, so did Merlin, and you still were my servant for a little while.” Morgana was being more courteous since the last time they had seen each other. She was acting like she had in the bathroom, after she had stopped pretending to be concerned that she had absolutely terrified Claire by taking on the form of her reflection.
“Get away from her!” NotEnrique ran towards Morgana. Claire wasn’t sure if he knew that he would probably pass through the witch, but neither of them got to find out. Morgana flicked her wrist, and NotEnrique went flying across the canal.
“They never learn,” Morgana sighed.
“Some of us do,” Claire said, magic bursting from her hands.
“Then what I’ll do to you might be a kindness.” Claire was baking in her armor and she still shivered at the word “kindness” coming out of Morgana’s mouth. “After all, you won’t have to live as Merlin’s newest apprentice.”
Claire brought up her hands to form semi-crystalline shields.
Morgana smirked. “A dangerous spell to use, when the combination of your raw power and desire to die are matched by your inexperience.”
Claire didn’t actually want to die, though. Just disappear for a while. No, the witch was just taunting her. She was referring to the fact that sometimes Claire did stupid things, like tackle people into the Shadow Realm or make a giant portal that she had been warned not to make.
It wasn’t that Claire didn’t suspect something was going terribly wrong when her veins began to crack and turn black again. It was just that it was a painful side effect of magic.
It was odd, though. This spell wasn’t normally so painful to cast.
“I’ve been wondering when you would return to this place,” Morgana said. “It took longer than I expected, but don’t worry. I’ve had other things to do while I waited.”
Claire wrinkled her nose. Then something warm began to drip out of it, and she pressed her lips together. This was not the time for her to develop allergies.
Morgana’s smile grew wider. “Well, now you’re back in your beloved Arcadia Oaks. You’re going to destroy it for me.”
“I won’t let you possess me again!” Claire shouted. Blood dripped from her nose into her mouth. “I’d rather–”
Well, maybe the witch had a little bit of a point.
“Oh, don’t worry, you burned that bridge. Such an ungracious host,” she scoffed. Claire felt like she was salivating blood.
“No,” Morgana continued. “You’re going to carry a plague to the rest of Arcadia Oaks, and after that, how about the world? It’ll be like in that play you like, oh, what was the line?” She tapped a translucent jade finger against her chin as if she was thinking. “Oh, right. You’ll be like a plague upon both the you tried to protect worlds.”
Had she been younger, Claire would have been frustrated by the way her favorite play was being used against her. Instead, she was more focused on the fact that she was starting to cough up blackened blood.
She wouldn’t be patient zero. She needed to do something to protect Arcadia.
She began to cry, and her vision began to go black. She didn’t faint, though, she just looked around wildly as she realized that blackened blood had blinded her.
“Oh, you poor thing,” the Mother of Monsters drawled. Blood disseminated down Claire’s throat as a ghostly hand managed to cup her cheek. It then grabbed her chin and presumably forced her to face Morgana. “Tell you what. Since we both had to suffer under that wizard, I’ll tell you two forms of a cure.”
Claire didn’t need to see Morgana to know that her grin must have been splitting her face open by now.
“The first is a fairy’s breath, and the second is true love’s kiss. Now, I wonder which of those will be harder for you to find?”
How did Morgana know about her breakup with Jim? She was probably referring to the fact that she had knocked him out in battle.
Claire hoped she blasted a hole in Morgana’s incorporeal form with the blast of presumably purple light that came out of her hand.
Claire felt herself get lifted into the air, and then get dropped for her insolence. She tried to form shields to slow her fall. She had to find a way to keep herself from infecting Arcadia and killing the rest of the world like Morgana had wanted, because the fairies had lost the war to the pixies and there would be no true love’s kiss.
The last thing Claire felt was her lungs filling up and her magic pulsing out of her like a shockwave.
“Hey, Tobes! I guess I caught you at a bad time, hope you’re keeping it crispy! Bye!”
“Hi, Mom. I’m guessing you’re at the clinic, so I’ll call you back later.”
“Toby, are you mad at me?”
“Hey, AAARRRGGHH!!! Blinky’s a little worried about you, and don’t tell him I said this, but I think me might be worried about Dictatious, too.”
“Mom? I didn’t want to leave you, you know that, right? You know that I wasn’t trying to be like Dad – bad-dad, not Blinky – when I left; are you mad at me? I love you. Bye.”
“Hi, Mr. Strickler. Can you please tell Mom I’m sorry for whatever I did?”
“NotEnrique? Hi, it’s Jim. Weird stuff is going on, and I was wondering if you and Claire are okay. Sorry for putting you in an awkward position.”
“Hi, Claire. I know you’re mad at me, but please. I need your help. No one from back home in Arcadia is answering my calls or texts, and I’m getting worried. I can’t find anything on the internet, and you should be back in Arcadia by now. Can you just talk to them? You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to, though an indicator that you made it back safe would be nice. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“This is Jim. I don’t know why you won’t talk to me, but this is going to be my last call until you call me back. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I know I said that last time was my last call until you called me back, but I’m coming back to Arcadia. Do as you will. I’ll be ready.”
The gyre broke down before it got to the station. It was alright, Jim supposed. He had left Arcadia six months ago, and six months ago he would have been elated to be back home.
He didn’t really want to go back to Arcadia, now, but there was a baby Heartstone to bring back to the old one. They were here to figure out what cuttings would be needed to be able to safely place the new Heartstone into the old one. It would be easier than trying to establish a Trollmarket in New Jersey.
“Good thing we left at sunset,” Blinky said, “because it looks like we’ll have to walk.”
“I’ll see if I can find directions,” Jim said half-heartedly. “There’s nothing.”
It was like his hometown had disappeared off the map.
“We’ll just take the old routes.”
After a couple minutes of walking, Jim had to blink a couple times. “Hey, Blink? Do you feel like something’s trying to turn us away? Like, we shouldn’t keep going, like there’s something bad ahead?”
“Oh, Jim, I know this is hard for you,” Blinky said. “I don’t know why they stopped speaking to us, but we have a duty to the other trolls.”
“I know, but it’s not like that. It’s like…”
One moment, they were walking through the woods. The next, they were on the outskirts of Arcadia. A barrier of violet and gold light stood behind them. On the ground was a squirrel mid-run. Birds perched in the trees.
All of them looked like they had been hit by Creeper’s Sun.
“Great Gronka Morka, who would’ve done this?” Blinky asked.
Jim summoned his shield and gestured for Blinky to get behind him. “And why? Small animals wouldn’t pose a threat, and it’s not like anyone would rather eat them petrified.” He looked behind himself, to check to see if he was saying was true.
“Not like this, it’s unnatural,” Blinky said, ignoring the fact that so was whipped cream with preservatives. “Also, that barrier makes me uneasy.”
“After we crossed it, I stopped feeling like we were supposed to turn away.” Jim frowned. “Do you think that’s why we couldn’t find any information on Arcadia?”
“Perhaps, son.” Blinky pulled out his phone. “All the information is almost six months old.”
Jim summoned his dagger and cracked open the squirrel. Like a geode, it was filled with amethyst, though it had veins of iron pyrite. Between the amethyst and k-spar-esque covering, the squirrel was comprised of obsidian.
“Let’s go to Trollmarket; I can check my library. Oh, I do wish my brother didn’t complete the act of burning it.”
The road to Trollmarket’s entrance was littered with petrified bodies. To call Arcadia Oaks a ghost town wouldn’t have encapsulated the extent of the horror Jim felt. All these people were going about their everyday lives; none of them looked like they knew what would happen to them.
It was Blinky who saw it first.
Sprouted from the canal was a single amethyst. It was three meters high, and vaguely conical. As Blinky and Jim walked towards it, they found that a ring of iron pyrite kept it fused to the jagged circle of obsidian that surrounded it.
For all its supernatural beauty, it was the figure inside the amethyst that gave them the most pause. Claire was frozen in freefall, with black veins peeking out from her clawed armor. Despite the stains that obscured them, the knowledge that those same veins in her face would be blackened filled Jim with dread. Despite her eyes being unseeing voids of black, she looked so scared. Black spheroids streamed upwards from her eyes, nose, and mouth; she was eternally crying and drowning in amethyst.
“No,” Jim said. “She didn’t deserve this.” He turned to Blinky. “I’m going to cut down her body.”
Carving her out was emotionally arduous but faster than Jim would’ve expected. Feeling NotEnrique’s petrified gaze upon him didn’t make it any easier. One of his daggers cut a little too close to her hand, and he winced.
Could he have saved her? She had been dyspeptic when he had last seen her alive and “fine”, but maybe if he had tried harder to make her happy, or at least comfortable, maybe she wouldn’t have left and wouldn’t be like this.
Her hand began to glow like an eggplant dwärkstone.
“Get down!” Jim called, summoning his shield to defend himself from the chunks of amethyst that came flying off Claire’s body.
When the blast cleared, Claire’s chest rapidly rose and fell as gurgling noises came from her throat. Blinky ran to the pair of teenagers, hugged Claire from behind, and squeezed.
It was hard to tell whether she vomited black blood, coughed it up from her lungs, or some abhorrent combination of the two.
“It’s alright, Faire Claire,” Blinky said. “You’re safe now.”
The three of them sat in Blinky’s library, which hadn’t been trashed by Gumm-Gumms.
Claire didn’t look Blinky in the eyes, and she tried not to look at Jim. Her eyelids felt heavy; the bloody tears clung to her eyelashes like cheap expired mascara.
“I hadn’t been back in Arcadia for more than half an hour when she found me.”
“She?” Blinky pressed.
Claire flinched. Jim had only seen her so jumpy twice. Once had been in the woods upon learning that trolls existed; the second time was the hours after her possession. “Morgana.”
“She’s back?” Jim asked. “But you guys sealed her away.”
“Not physically.” Claire coughed into the crook of her arm. “Her spirit showed up and tossed NotEnrique and I around. She wants me to carry a plague.”
“If she wanted you to carry a plague, then why would she have petrified everyone and trapped you in crystal? Or made a barrier around town that makes every human forget that Arcadia exists and keeps them from wanting to enter town?”
Claire gasped, an ugly and wet sound. “I think I did that. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, I just wanted to shield myself from her magic.”
And of course, she wanted to disappear.
Blinky stood up. “If she cursed you, then if you’re cured it might cure everyone else, since they were affected by your magic.”
“Morgana decided to tell me a way to cure myself, since, her words, ‘we both had to suffer under that wizard.’ It was a taunt, though, since fairy’s breath would be difficult to find.”
But not as difficult as true love’s kiss, nor as manipulative.
Claire had tried to stay out of Jim and Blinky’s way. She didn’t deserve them trying to help her. Everyone else in Arcadia did, though.
Claire sniffled again and tilted her head back. The number of nosebleeds she had been getting was frustrating. Stupid curse. Stupid black blood. Stupid Queen of the Seventh Realm or whatever she called herself these days.
Her stomach growled because it was mercifully empty of her own forsaken blood.
“When was the last time you ate?” Blinky asked.
“About five months ago,” Claire admitted. She opened her backpack to find the bag of beef jerky that had served as meals. “I think I have a… no, NotEnrique ate them all. Of course, he did.”
“Hopefully food on the surface hasn’t spoiled… I wonder if they have whipped cream,” Blinky mused. “Unfortunately, the sun should be rising, soon. Jim!”
“Yeah!” came the call from a call from one of Vendel’s old records.
“Can you accompany Claire to the surface to obtain food?”
Claire grimaced. “Blinky, I’ll be fine; I can go on my own.”
She hadn’t expected Blinky to give her such a sad smile. “Normally I’d believe you when you say you’ll be fine.”
Of course, Jim would have told Blinky about her last conversation with him. Would have told him how she had angrily professed to be fine. She had then gotten herself cursed and frozen in time.
“But you’ve lost a lot of blood,” he continued. “I don’t want you fainting.”
Walking together was awkward. Claire kept her eyes on the ground, so she wouldn’t have to see the people she had turned to stone. If she had stayed with Jim and the trolls, this wouldn’t have happened. She would have made them miserable as they figured her out, but she wouldn’t have been responsible for this. At the very least, she probably could have learned more from Merlin, so she could have protected herself.
Or she could have gotten her hand cut off, but that would be better than what she had done to her town.
“I almost wish we could call Merlin,” Jim said. “There’s a chance he might actually be able to help, for once.”
“Something happen to him?” Claire asked. Merlin hadn’t exactly been entirely helpful upon getting his magic back, though he had occasionally given her magic lessons. They seemed like they happened because he was bored, though, not because he truly took an interest in her magical ability.
They were probably better than what Morgana had gotten, at least.
“He up and left back in October.” Jim was fishing for the apology, or at least the explanation, that she owed him.
Claire began to walk faster. It would be more comfortable for him, she told herself. He had a longer stride than her. It just seemed like she was walking away. Again.
“Do you have any plans for after we find the cure for you?”
Not particularly, beyond hugging Suzy Snooze and bawling in the safety of her own room. Her younger self would be horrified with what she had become.
“Do you?”
“The Heartstone in New Jersey’s pretty small, but Blinky thinks we can use the old Heartstone to amplify it. It’ll be easier than building new infrastructure.”
“So, you’ll be coming back to Arcadia.”
“Eventually, yeah.”
“That’ll be, I’m sure you’ll be happy to see Toby and your mom again.” She’d have to face him more often than she thought she would.
“Yeah, considering that no one willingly cut all contact, it’ll be good to see all, everyone again.”
He blamed her. Of course, he did. Why wouldn’t he blame her? Yeah, Morgana had wanted her to kill everyone, but she was still the one who turned everyone to stone. And besides, she wasn’t a pleasant person to be around. Not anymore.
“The grocery store should be this way.” Claire started to walk faster before doubling over. She couldn’t breathe, and this wasn’t like when she would have an anxiety attack. She began to cough.
A four-fingered hand pounded her back with restrained force. A five-fingered hand held her hair away from her face.
“Thanks,” Claire said hoarsely once she was done coughing.
“Any time.”
“Still answering every call?”
“I kind of have to; there’s no walking away from being the Trollhunter.”
Why didn’t he just stick Eclipse into her? It’d be more efficient than his continuous lack of subtlety at inserting knives into her and then twisting them.
“Do you know if there’s been any heavy rain lately? If not in Arcadia, then the greater LA area.”
“No, why?”
“Just wondering how strong the stone is. NotEnrique could’ve been swept away if we’ve gotten any large rainstorms. And smashed against the walls of the canals. It’s also good no one has gotten other forms of erosion.” She was rambling too much. All the words she hadn’t said because she was fine and then a crystal were threatening to spill out.
“That would have been pretty bad, since once a troll is shattered that’s it for them, or at least it is with Creeper’s Sun.” Jim coughed slightly, and the frowned. That was odd, he hadn’t coughed ever since he had taken Grave Sand.
The whipped cream was spoiled, as were all the perishables that would have perished in the time since Arcadia Oaks had been petrified. Claire grabbed multiple cans of fruit and other foods she wouldn’t feel absolutely miserable eating cold. That meant passing over a can of refried beans in favor of Spam. Not even the chorizo-flavored canned meat, but the original flavor that had been used since the second world war. Not that the refried beans would taste as good as homemade ones but cooking beans more time.
“We can probably stop at one of our houses to see if the microwaves will work,” Jim said.
“I’d rather not.”
“You really want to eat that cold?”
“Back when you were human, would you rather have eaten a can of cold Spam or have stumbled upon your mom’s petrified body?” She walked over to where the bottled water was kept.
“Cold spam. I’ve already seen Mom petrified once, and that was enough.”
“When?” Claire asked before she could stop herself. She didn’t deserve his vulnerability.
“That was my worst fear when the pixies came.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Claire handed the water to Jim and began walking to the register. She began to pull out cash and a pen. On a paper towel she wrote a note, stating what she had taken and how much, making sure to pay for it in full. She didn’t look the dead-eyed cashier in the face.
“Looking back, I think I might have rather faced petrified family members in the Deep,” Jim mused.
“What did you face down there?” Claire asked, voice soft. He hadn’t ever really spoken about it, at least, not to her.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me what’s going on with you,” Jim said.
Claire bristled, adjusting her grip on her heavy backpack. “I already told you, I’m cursed.”
“You weren’t cursed months ago, when you left us.”
Dammit.
“And months ago, I told you to drop it.”
“I would have if you had given me one reason not to worry about you! Just one reason, and I would have tried to make things better! Unless,” he said, a betrayed expression overtaking his face. “Is it because I’m a troll?”
No. That wasn’t it at all. She had meant what she had said back on the rooftop six months ago, and she hadn’t changed her mind.
“Not everything is about you, Jim,” she said instead. At least his look of betrayal was replaced by one of more generic anger.
“Right. It’s about you.”
“What?”
“We’re trying to help you, you know, but for the past couple what has been only days for you, you’ve been irritable and stuck-up.”
“Stuck-up? Irritable, sure, I’ll admit to that. But how have I been stuck up?”
“Does ‘I hope you can find someone better than me’ ring any bells?”
Blood and acid churned in her stomach. “Jim, no,” she said, suddenly very aware of the way their angered voices echoed against the too-quiet parking lot. “That was supposed to be a low bar. You were supposed to figure out that someone better than me is a low bar. Six feet under Blinky’s library low. By the way, he’s probably wondering where we are.”
Neither of them spoke on the way back to Trollmarket, but Jim kept on giving Claire concerned glances.
“All the whipped cream spoiled,” Claire said. “Sorry, Blinky.”
Jim watched the two of them interact; his heart filled with what must have been longing. It felt more liquid than usual.
He had been trying to ignore it, but she looked so fragile. At first it had just been the combination of his half-troll strength and the way the veins along her jaw, eyes, and fingers formed black cracks. But now, knowing just how she viewed herself, knowing that he had been right about her not being fine in the worst ways…
Hating his ex-girlfriend had been hard enough in the months that had passed. Trying to convince himself that he didn’t love her anymore was even harder.
Now it was impossible to do either.
“You want any help?” Jim asked.
He didn’t expect the “sure” that fell out of Claire’s lips with a little bit of blood. She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.
“What’cha researching?”
“The war between the fairies and the pixies, and the connections that a certain witch we know has to the fairies.”
“Let me guess: it’s more than her last name?”
“I’m not sure if ‘le Fay’ is actually a last name or more of a title, but yeah. Apparently, she’s the daughter of the queen of Avalon, which is supposedly surrounded by an uncrossable sea of chaos and shadows.”
Jim gasped in horror. “That means–”
“– we’ll have to find a way to get through the Shadow Realm,” Claire finished solemnly. “But she said it was a cure.” Not exactly. “That would mean there’s other possible cures.” Ones other than crossing through the Shadow Realm and the one that would be entirely impossible.
“And if there isn’t, we’re going to have to be careful. Morgana did this to you because she could use it to break out–”
“–and she has a personal grudge against me,” Claire interrupted.
“And she has a personal grudge against you,” Jim said. “But this isn’t going to be like the Darklands. We’re going to get the fairy’s breath, fix you and Arcadia, all without releasing anyone who wants to destroy the world.”
“You can’t fix me,” Claire whispered. Jim looked up from the book into her eyes. The resignation in them made her look more ancient than Vendel had been.
“No, we’re going to find a cure,” Jim said.
The smile that stretched across her face asked why he had drunk all and left no friendly drop to help her after.
“I know you can, Jim. We’re going to find a way to save Arcadia. But you can’t fix me. At this point, I’m not sure if anyone can.”
“That’s why you kept saying you were fine,” Jim said.
Then he turned away from her and the books and started coughing into his hand.
Claire screamed his name and rushed to face him. Jim pulled his hand away from his mouth. It was covered in blackened blood.
“Well, looks like we’re on more of a deadline than we thought,” he said.
Claire took a deep breath, and then another.
“Morgana actually gave me two cures,” she said, and put a hand up when Jim started to protest why she hadn’t mentioned it. “I didn’t tell you about the second one because that one won’t work for me, and I think she knew that. She probably got her reasoning wrong, but it doesn’t matter. It’ll work for you, though. I think.”
“What is it?”
“True love’s kiss,” Claire said, and every word felt like pulling out a serrated knife she had become numb to. “I hope it doesn’t have to be mutual, or if does have to be mutual it doesn’t have to be romantic, because then Blinky or I can just kiss you and you’ll be okay.”
“Wait, what?” Jim asked.
“Then again, the last Morgana-related magic we used was the antidote for the Creeper’s Sun, and the true love’s kiss for that had to be romantic, so it was only Toby’s tears that would have worked. Hopefully the magic behind changeling-created-potions works differently than the curse we’re both now under.”
“You still love me?”
Inky tears filled her eyes before Claire could stop them, and she lowered to the ground, so she wouldn’t have to stumble around blindly. She wrapped her arms around herself like she could shield herself from her own emotions with them.
“I didn’t want it to end,” she said between sobs. “I just thought you’d be better off without me...”
“Is it okay if I hold you?” Jim asked, and she nodded, trying to make her arms fall limp at her sides. Jim curled around her, and she was unable to restrain herself from wrapping her arms around his torso.
“I didn’t want you to know,” Claire sobbed, ignoring the way she was ruining his shirt. “I didn’t want you to feel bad when you figured out that you didn’t love me anymore because I wasn’t worth loving, and that’s half of why I left like that and have been trying to push you away when you’ve been trying to help me.” She took a shuddering breath.
“Claire, I never stopped loving you, not really,” Jim said. “I tried to convince myself that I didn’t, and I tried to convince myself that I hated you, but I couldn’t do either of those things.”
“But why? Why me?” Claire lifted her head, hoping she was making a good approximation of looking Jim in the eyes. “I’m not who I used to be.” I’m a million miles from the girl who tried to be perfect.
“Neither am I.”
“But that’s different, you don’t petrify an entire town and block out everyone’s memories because you just want to disappear.” The words were spilling out of her like the blood that had come out of her mouth when Blinky had performed a Heimlich maneuver on her. “You’re still you inside. I’m an empty shell that’s filled with nothing but self-loathing. And I guess cursed blood, too.”
“Claire, I…” Jim held her a little more tightly. “I can’t fix you because I don’t know how, but you’re so much more than that. And just because you don’t love yourself doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
Claire felt him brush the side of his face right next to hers, silently asking permission. She turned and softly kissed him on the lips.
The taste of blood faded from her mouth, and the scent of it faded from her nose. Her veins relaxed back into her skin.
Jim’s phone rang once, twice, a third time. They ignored it.
“Jimbo, you’re almost as bad as Eli because I somehow just got about a thousand texts and voicemails from you all at the same time!” Toby shouted through Jim’s voicemail.
#jlaire#claire nuñez#jim lake jr#notenrique#morgana#blinky#body horror#blood tw#tales of arcadia#trollhunters#my writing#rebelliouswhirlpool
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Can you imagine a world where we’re all represented by a font? Huh, I wonder which one I would be? sees Arial Too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. sees Badaboom Too.. uh… Deadpool…. BROADWAY! Now that’s the one! Now THAT’S the one! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. If your personality were represented by a font, what font would you be? Take a moment and put your font in the comments. I’m really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I’m getting bored with ol’ Calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it’s time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don’t think I’ve ever gotten this many requests to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you all have wanted Undertale. And honestly, I’m glad you brought it to my attention. True loyal theorists will know that Earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it’s like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you’re saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven’t played Undertale I’m sure that was a really weird opening. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there’s a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven’t played it, pause the video and come back after you’ve finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won’t regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I’m feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans’ mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven’t played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what’s given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What’s more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he’s also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he’s one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he’s only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you’ve played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he’s killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player’s actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn’t belong in underworld seems to be correct. The evidence seems to point the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.” This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they clearly– uuuGGHH take two CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would? We get further clues to Sans’ origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to “go home” or “go back.” He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, “i know the feeling.” He then continues, “maybe sometimes it’s better to take what’s given to you.” As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, “look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago.” End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that’s clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, “and getting to the surface doesn’t really appeal anymore either.” Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It’s as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he’s from a different time. It’s pretty intriguing. So we’re left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That’s a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here’s where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says “it’s time you learn the truth.” After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don’t recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don’t forget.” so what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I’ve seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that’s what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren’t important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn’t from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? The Franklin badge. Now, for those of you wondering what I’m talking about, the Franklin badge is a pivotal item from the Mother series. You know, the one with Earthbound. Or, maybe you don’t know that one either. Uh, you know, the one with Ness from Super Smash Bros? Yeah well, Ness is from Earthbound, and Earthbound is the second part in this larger Mother trilogy. Alright? Good. Anyway, the Franklin badge is a really important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life multiple times in the process. It’s SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the Smash Brothers series. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans’ drawer was THAT EXACT badge? Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite game, thereby making it even COOLER, but that’s still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of Earthbound you’re given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it’s one of the best, most satisfying endings in gaming to look back on your journey in picture form. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don’t recognize. Of course you don’t know them, they’re not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that’s used here, PEOPLE you don’t recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that’s 2 items oddly linked to the Mother series. But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Earthbound, Ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien Giygas. To do that, Dr. Andonuts (remember him, by the way, he’s going to be important later) with the help of the science geniuses Apple Kid and Mr. Saturn, create what’s known as the Phase Distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes with a cost. It can’t transport organic material. As a result, the young heroes must put their souls into robotic bodies to use the machine, and thus, save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and I’m not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It’s DEVASTATING. Doctor Andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you’ve grown to love and care about are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It’s this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful RPG. So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that Mr. Saturns are known for their, let’s say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken Phase Distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot. If Sans wound up in Undertale via Phase Distorter, it could provide a reason for why he’s a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the Phase Distorter is a time machine. By being in underworld, he’s not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he’s also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between Earthbound and Undertale continue. When you speak to Apple Kid at the end of Earthbound, he’s blown away by the astronomical odds of Ness overcoming Giygas, saying that he’s going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to harness its power. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments. But I’m sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don’t worry, because I have plenty. During one of the endings of Undertale, we see Undyne and Alphys hanging out on the beach on the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical resort location named Summers that you play through in Earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of Mother. When Undertale’s crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they’re met with a beautiful sunset falling across the landscape of a tall mountain, a large city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun’s reflection to indicate water, and a lack of trees in this middle section here, hence the sand. Well, in Earthbound you have the big city of Fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a desert that just so happens to be adjacent to some water, and to the east, the mountain in Onett where a meteorite lands on Earth. I always called it Aw-nett. But if that’s not clear enough for you, Mother 1, Earthbound Zero, Earthbound Beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it’s had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like there’s a definite connection between the world of Eagleland (Eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) between the world of Eagleland and the surface world of Undertale. But the strongest physical connection, one that definitely unites these two franchises, comes from none other than Papyrus himself. He wears a custom-made costume known as his “battle body”. But if you look really closely at the design on the armor, you’ll notice some markings on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of Starmen, the most iconic enemy of Earthbound. And look at the way he stands! I always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arms of the Starmen in the Mother series! In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Earthbound universe is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Ness from Earthbound? Sent through the Phase Distorter during a test of courage, carrying the Franklin badge and his photo album and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior. Remember, Sans can seemingly teleport. And Ness just happens to have the PSI ability to teleport. Now look the way Sans always stands, hands in his pockets, directly facing the camera. It’s a very similar stance to how Ness is depicted standing in most marketing for the game. It even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, Sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of Ness. That’s just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator’s previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale, had previously worked on a Halloween hack for Earthbound. But this just wasn’t a simple reskin. The Halloween hack tells the tale of Dr. Andonuts after the events of Earthbound. Remember, I pointed him out? He’s the one who made the Phase Distorter. In Toby Fox’s version of the story, we see that after Giygas’ defeat, the souls of the kids never return home. Instead, by going to the past to defeat Giygas, they create a new timeline that they’re stuck in. As a result, Jeff never reunites with his father Dr. Andonuts. And Dr. Andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, and extracting the souls of his son and his son’s friends to send them back to what he assumes was their death. In his mind, he’s killed 4 kids. And in Toby Fox’s game, he’s lost his mind trying to deal with that guilt. I’m telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of Undertale in this game. The appearance of Amalgamates, the first use of the awesome song Megalovania, the prototypes for Flowey? And the theme of having the choice to be nonviolent in an RPG, SPARING your enemies. But then why’s all this matter to the theory? Well, remember, in Toby Fox’s version of the story, the kids don’t come back. They’re stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home. Just like Sans. And, in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. Presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his 3 friends. Which brings us back to Undertale. 3 faces, with “don’t forget” written on it? It’s Ness, trying to remember his 3 friends. In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Earthbound, with Ness never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans, and accompanied by Papyrus, a former Starman, an alien force able to speak English and still equipped with his armor, and signature posture, but without any knowledge of earthly things… like the Sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel. But hey, that’s just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!
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