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lostinforestbound · 7 months ago

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It's finally here! I'm sorry it took me so long, with work and art projects I got completely swamped. But now it's here! I'm aware I'm posting this incredibly late so no one will see this until morning probably hahaha! Requested tag: @snoozeeebee

Rolan/M!Tiefling Tav

Third Time's the Charm - Ch.1

Rolan intends on doing great things when he finally gets to Baldur's Gate, but an utter idiot named Tav is distracting him. Unfortunately, against his better judgement, he's starting to fall for him.

Word Count: 5.9k (AO3)

Relevant Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rolan's POV, Makeout, No smut (yet) but it gets frisky, Slowburn

(If there's any tags I missed, please let me know!) NSFW, MDNI

They've been at this grove, stewing and waiting for too long. That Archdruid (Halsin was his name, he believes) might have been welcoming, but the other druids have not. Now he up and disappeared after he decided to follow a group of weak, loud, wannabe adventurers who were only out for themselves. When they cowered back inside the grove with less than half their group, he knew that this place was doomed. What's worse than all of that mess is that Lia is stubborn about leaving, and now they're in an argument again. They've been having them a lot in recent months, ever since the fall and rise of Elturel.

"-and all you care about is your stupid apprenticeship!" Lia shouts at him, his mind finally tuning back into the conversation- no, not a conversation, a damn shouting match.

Her words make him bristle and grind his teeth. How dare she? How dare she ever think this was all only for the apprenticeship? It's an insult to injury, knowing no matter what he does, trying to take care of them results in him being called selfish. What is selfish about wanting a better life for the three of them? They only have each other, their mother long gone. She's gone, and now he carries the sole responsibility of taking care of them.

She's gone.

"Take that back. Right now." He hisses, getting in her face as they glare each other down.

Cal immediately inserts himself in between the two of them, palms out in front of them both. "Can we all just take a moment? Please?"

Rolan idly notices the sweat gathering on Cal's temple as he pushes Lia back slightly by her shoulder, creating more space between all of them. He does the same to Rolan, but stays put in the middle to form a weak barrier- wait, who is that tiefling that approached? No, it doesn't matter.

"Hells, we can't just leave. They're kin!" Lia begs, almost pleading with him.

"I will not gamble our lives- our futures, on people who are as good as dead," He says somewhat calmly, though his tail still flicks behind him in irritation. "We must leave for Baldur's Gate at once."

Lia looks ready to bare her teeth at him, angry with him. She's always angry with him. "What's the point of blades and spells if we don't bloody use them?! We should stay! These people aren't fighters, we can help!"

"Or yell louder, that's fine too," Cal says with a familiar bitterness in his tone; gods, he hates that tone on Cal. He's been hearing it more often, these days.

"Have you forgotten Elturel?" A voice breaks through, and he finally acknowledges the presence beside them.

It's another tiefling, a much larger one at that. He's not part of the refugees, as he hasn't even seen him around until now. Did he just arrive here?

This one isn't that much taller than he is, only by a few inches; but hells, his mass absolutely dwarfs his own. A fighter most likely, or even worse, a barbarian. It doesn't matter which one he may be, he looks like an idiot that isn't worth his precious time.

"We should stand by our people. You know no one else will." He says lowly, giving a knowing look of both annoyance and sadness.

He loathes that look. He’s never wanted to blast someone more than in this moment. How dare he look at him as if he was some child throwing a tantrum?

"This isn't Elturel, and I'm not responsible for every damn tiefling in the world!" He exclaims, almost furious.

Lia pokes him harshly in the chest with her pointer finger, and he has to suppress a wince. "Just be responsible for yourself, then! We have to stay; it's the right thing to do."

He hates that fucking tiefling even more now. Not only has he butted into his family affairs, but now he turned his sister- Lia, even more against him. For once, why can't things go his way? Why do they not listen to him?

When did they stop listening to him?

"Zurgan. Fine! We'll stay. If we survive, it'll make for a good story, I suppose." He airs, rubbing a finger to his temple as he feels a headache form there.

For the first time in a long time, Lia gives him a genuine smile, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. "Thank you, Rolan.” She says sincerely.

Cal now takes the calm moment to usher the two further into the grove, seeming to want to get away from the entranceway as soon as possible; for once, Rolan lets him. He doesn't pay any mind to the strange looks they get by going further into the grove with the other refugees, and he certainly doesn't pay any mind to the oaf of a tiefling that they left standing there by himself.

He decides he hates that man, and he pisses him off to no end.

"How long until Rolan shows off his Thunderwave?" Cal asks as they settle down near an old human woman's tent, who seems to be organizing some herbs in her storage crate. Something is off about her, but Rolan can’t put his finger on it. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

Lia snickers at that moment, crossing her arms over her chest. "Depends, how many people are dumb enough to ask?"

"Hah! True."

Rolan rolls his eyes, trying to dust off the dirt on his robes. He hates the smell of this damned grove, it stinks. Is he truly supposed to arrive to Lorroakan with his clothes smelling like this? He'll have to burn them, no question.

"Don't be grumpy, Rolan. We'll get to the city soon." Cal chirps, bumping his shoulder with his own.

"I am not grumpy."

"The scowl on your face would frighten a troll."

Despite the foul move he's in, he smiles at his little brother. "Heh. You're an idiot."

-----

It's been days, and that tiefling is still here.

He's heard about his many exploits; saving one of the children the druids held hostage, saving another orphan child from a group of relentless harpies, getting their money back from that tiefling brat with the eyepatch, and slaughtering Kagha. Emphasis on slaughtering.

When he came out of that grove where the ritual had stopped, he saw the amount of blood that was covering the large man. None of it was his own, he realized. The man barely had a scratch on him and seemed proud when exiting.

He caught himself staring at him many times, watching how the muscles stretched across his skin, seeing all the little imperfections. Scars, beauty spots, all the like. He internally curses himself and looks away when he feels his face growing hot.

Paying back attention to his siblings, he notices how Cal stares at the blacksmith across the way, rubbing his hands absentmindedly as he thinks of something.

"You shouldn't waste precious time on distractions. We need to head to Baldur's gate after this goblin fiasco is over." He remarks, getting up and brushing off dirt.

"Rolan." Lia warns, but he ignores her and walks away with a roll of his eyes. They need supplies, so he will go get them if they are too lazy to do so.

And, of course, the oaf is already buying them off of one of the druids. Damn it all!

"Need something?" He asks, inspecting him as if Rolan was much shorter than him.

He scoffs, even more irritated than he was originally, "I was in need of potions, but it seems you got them all already."

"What did you need?"

"It doesn't matter, you beat me to it!” He instinctively snaps, briefly pinching the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “Bloody health potions are so short of stock these days-"

Wordlessly, the man puts three large health potions into his arms, which, for once, renders Rolan speechless. He doesn’t even remember the original tangent he was about to go one. Something about price inflation, probably.

Staring down at the red potions in his arms, he snaps back into reality when he speaks again. "You three need it more than I do. I, at least, have a healer."

He sneers at him, gripping the potions tight. "So what, you look down on us?”

"Not at all."

"We are not charity cases,”He almost growls, baring his teeth. “What is your game here?"

"…Can I tell you a secret?"

Why is this his life? How did everything turn out this way? Why is he even entertaining this fool??

After a bit of contemplating his life choices, he finally responds. "What?"

The tiefling suddenly leans in to put his mouth near his ear, and gods he's so close. Tav was his name, wasn't it? He heard it in passing by one of his group mates. Balsam, rogue's morsel, and acorn truffle are what he smells on him, a strong scent that is surprisingly pleasant- gods, what is he thinking?! Feeling his face starting to heat up, he tries to take a step back, but Tav stills him with a hand on the back of his neck. It makes his breath catch in his throat.

Finally, Tav whispers to him, "I'm just being nice."

Tav pulls away, leaving Rolan completely dumbfounded as he continues. "I'm not trying to look down on you or be a pest, I just think you need the potions more than I do. Cause gods forbid these fucking druids try and help out people who need it." He spits with a roll of his eyes, staring directly at the Druid that was still besides them through this entire ordeal. He looks uncomfortable.

"Well, that is shockingly intelligent of you." He huffs, hoping the jab aggravated him. "Although, aren't you fighting a swarm of Goblins out there?"

"I am, but bold of you to assume they hit hard enough to hurt me." Before he could come up with another insult for his remark, Tav interjected. "Anyways, I have to return to my camp as it is getting late. Good luck to you and your siblings. Cal and Lia, right?"

He didn't have the chance to respond before the idiot sauntered off, back outside the grove. Great, now he's indebted to the bastard. Slowly, he stalks back into the grove, tying the potions to his belt as he does so.

-----

Some panic swept across the grove when people realized the goblin army planned to raid it for all it was worth. He's heard so many horror stories of slaughtered tieflings, their enemies sawing off their horns to keep as trophies or as foghorns.

If they think they could do the same to his family, they are sorely mistaken.

As others run and hide in Zevlor's war room, others stay to help fight, including himself. But, once again, the three of them can't stop arguing about their positions; he can tell Cal is getting pissed off, but so is he.

"I'm telling you to stay back. My Thunderwave will make short of any goblin that dares to come close. If you two are in the way, I'll knock you both over!"

"And I'm telling you to just get behind us! Spellcasters can't take a punch or a blade!" Lia shouts.

"Can we not argue over this? Please? How about we all line up together?"

"No." They both state and Cal immediately shuts up.

"Wow, you three must love each other very much." A familiar voice says sarcastically.

He grits his teeth and turns towards Tav. "Oh, piss off you oafish-"

"Wait! Wait, maybe Tav can help us out. Figure out positioning and whatnot?" Cal suggests quickly.

"Great idea Cal! Let's ask the professional harpy slayer."

Tav looks at them all, seeming to take in the equipment and weapons that they have on hand. In all honesty, Rolan didn't even think Tav could think.

Suddenly, Tav grabs Cal and moves him to the front, and in the next moment, he gently moves Lia to the back, leaving Rolan in the middle. "There. That's a good positioning."

"See? Easy!" Cal says cheerfully. "Now can we just-"

"Why can’t I be in the front with Cal?”

“Lia come on-“

“I want to be able to help out!”

Tav yawns briefly before explaining, "You will be helping, a lot. Both of you and Rolan are range users. You will hit goblins better by staying in the back where you'll be more effective. Cal here is in melee, with both a pike and a shield. He can protect you both and be your frontliner, while at the same time, you two cover his blind spot. Although, alternatively, you two could be next to each other, but stay behind him."

Rolan blinks slowly, processing the logic behind it. Damn it all, it's incredibly smart. Maybe Tav isn’t an idiot.

"There, good enough explanation?" He asks.

"It's great! Thank you, sincerely." Lia says, patting Tav's shoulder.

"…You're welcome." He pauses before putting a hand into his bag. "We'll kill those bastards out there, no doubt. But I would feel better if you all have this just in case."

Taking out a bright scroll, he holds it out to the three of them to take. Rolan instantly recognized it, especially with the unique binding on it.

A Resurrection Scroll.

Lia is the first to react and take it. "We won't need this, but thank you! Doesn't hurt to have a backup plan if things go wrong."

"I'll make sure it goes smoothly." He reassures, cracking his knuckles.

"What do you have planned, anyway?" Cal wonders aloud.

"I stole a bunch of smoke powder barrels in their camp and set them up along the perimeter. Anyways, they could be here any moment. Stay vigilant. If all goes super well, you won't even have to fight."

-----

They feel the explosions before they hear it. A deep rumbling in the ground that shakes them, awake and alert. There are so many of them that go off after the first one, like a domino effect. How many barrels could Tav have possibly gotten his hands on??

Unfortunately, those explosions didn’t stop a giant spider and some goblins from coming in.

Goblins were easy. He made quick work of them with his thunderwave, blasting them back into the stone wall. Though with his distraction of mentally stroking his own ego, he didn’t see the giant spider coming up until Cal quickly got to his side, blocking its oncoming fangs with his shield, the force of the bite splintering the wood.

His eyes widen, and he blasts a magic missile at the spider right as Lia shoots an arrow into one of its eyes. It screeches in pain, but it’s stubborn in its conviction. It lunges, and Cal cries out when it tears into his arm, trying to rip off his flesh.

Rolan shoots off another thunderwave in his anger and panic, killing the spider in an instant. He watches some of the legs get cut clean off, the body flying and crashing into some crates, destroying them, and its sickly green innards spilling onto the dirt floor. A disgusting sight, indeed.

“Cal!” Lia yells quickly, snapping Rolan back into reality and he quickly rushes over.

Cal is teary-eyed but tries to wave it off, even as Lia tries to get a better look. “I-I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Come here.” Rolan says maybe a little too harshly, making his brother sit down on a wayward crate and grabbing his elbow to hold it still.

“Rolan please-“

“You look close to crying! Just-“ He stops himself and takes a deep breath, eyes meeting his. “Let me help. Please.”

Cal sighs shakily but nods, letting his arm be lifted for him and Lia to see.

It’s a deep injury, but nothing deathly serious. It looks painful. The spider managed to inject some kind of poison, but Cal resisted whatever effect it could have taken.

Rolan takes out one of the health potions he’s received from Tav and carefully pours it over the injury, and it slowly seals the wound. No scar is left behind, surprisingly enough.

“Does it hurt?” Lia gently presses.

“Not anymore. Thanks, Rolan.”

He wants to yell at him so badly, the argument already bubbling up his throat. Why wasn’t he more careful? Why did he jump towards his side so quickly? He had it handled! He’s supposed to protect him, not the other way around.

Instead, he settles on, “You’re welcome.”

Knowing it’s safer, Cal leans against him quietly, and Rolan carefully holds him with Lia. It wasn’t even a close call, but it’s clear Cal needed some comfort.

No more enemies come through. There were no casualties, either.

Zevlor ends up making a speech at the gate when they check out the damage, and he’s sure others are inspired, but he’s barely paying attention to it. He doesn’t care, in all honestly. He wants to leave this fucking grove and never look back; it is by far the worst place they’ve ever stayed in, second to Avernus. Though, he might be being dramatic.

He found himself looking around for Tav, but he didn’t see him anywhere. Why was he looking for him, anyway?

When he finally spots him, he shouldn’t be shocked by the amount of gore he’s covered in, but he is. He’s completely drenched in blood, whether from the goblins or the Drow leading them. Some of it was his own since he spots injuries littering his frame.

He shakes his head and straightens up, shifting his attention to his siblings and ignoring the warmth growing in his cheeks. “Now that this fiasco is over, we will head to Baldur’s Gate.”

“Are you serious Rolan?! Come on, there’s going to be a party!” Lia complains, bumping her hip with his. “We have to go.”

“We don’t have time for parties! Lorroakan is waiting for me, I cannot be late.”

“What’s one party, Rolan? It’s just for a night. We need to rest anyways.” Cal says, looking around the other excited tieflings. When was the last time they saw a crowd of them so happy? He certainly doesn't remember, and it makes his original conviction crack a little.

“I will not-“

Cal takes hold of one of his arms, tugging him. “Please, Rolan? Just for tonight.”

“There’ll be free wine, provided by the heroes.” Lia sing-songs, leaning against him and almost making him stumble.

“…Free wine?” He questions, genuinely thinking about it.

“And free food,” Cal confirms.

Gods, he hates the pathetic puppy-dog eyes that they use. He can’t stand to look at their faces, and he hates it even more that he's falling for it, just as he always has.

He sighs heavily in defeat, head hanging a little low. “Fine.”

“Yes!” Cal cheers, giving him a tight hug.

To his surprise, Lia joins in, the both of them crushing him. “Thank you, Rolan!”

He rolls his eyes but lets a smile break through, even when he can hardly breathe. “All this over a party?”

“It’ll be fun! You’ll see!”

He smirks knowingly, finally separating from the two. “All right all right, I trust that this will be an exceptional occasion. I look forward to seeing you say you love me while drunk, Lia.”

"As if, brother."

It doesn’t take long for Tav to offer up his area with his party members, so they gather with the Tieflings and head to the camp. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s secluded at least.

That bard, Alfira, starts decorating the place in an instant; lantern lights go up, colorful ribbons decorate the trees, and boxes get moved to the side. Others help out, including Lia, but Rolan and Cal sit back and relax for the time being.

When the party finally starts, they pass wine between the three of them.

“Can you give us a magic show, Master Rolan?” She teases.

Rolan rolls his eyes playfully. “Already?”

“Oh! Can you make an owl bear?? Or a dragon!” Cal suggests, scooting forward more on the log.

He stretches out his arms in front of him, cracking his knuckles while doing so. "Patience! Have you no respect for showmanship?"

"Having performance issues Rolan?" Cal whisper-shouts playfully, and Rolan idly notices Tav approaching.

He turns his nose up high momentarily before holding his hands out. "Hush, you. And behold!"

It's a brief performance, but amazing nonetheless if he says so himself. He makes it look like stars that spark, fly, and explode into various lights. He has always been irritated he could never make it last long, but that is what his training will be for.

He looks over at Tav as soon as he claps, seeing the way his eyes glide over the lights. His face doesn’t change in the slightest, so he can’t tell if his clapping is meant to be some sort of taunt or if he’s genuine.

Either way, he does a dramatic bow. "Adoring applause? You're too kind."

"Remember when he couldn't cast that?" Lia teases.

"They grow up so fast," Cal states.

"Never have I met such troglodytes. Now, pass the wine." Rolan demands, but a content smile is plastered on his face.

It seems Lia was about to offer Tav some of it, but when she and Rolan turn towards him, he’s already gone.

“Looks like he already got bored of you.” Lia sings to him.

“Oh hush up.” He huffs, snatching the wine bottle and taking a long drink.

He will never admit how much that comment stung. He doesn’t know why he was so bothered by it in the first place. There are many possibilities he goes over as he feels the alcohol give him a pleasant buzz; was it her wording, or was it the fact that Tav disappeared without a word? Did he get bored?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care what that man thinks of him. He swears he doesn’t.

Later in the night, he drank- no, chugged wine while Cal and Lia chatted with the other tieflings partying. As much as he loved to perform for them both, even someone as great as he gets tired after using a bunch of magic in rapid succession.

The wine wasn’t good; nothing compares to Arabellan Dry, but what else was there to drink? He refuses to partake in ale or beer, he never found the appeal of it. Honestly, it’s disgusting, and he doesn’t understand why Lia likes it so much. Cal seems to be looking for someone in particular but isn't finding them. He looks disappointed.

As he wonders about Cal and debates checking in on him, he doesn’t notice the brute approaching him until his giant form sits next to him with his own alcohol, the bark of the fallen tree groaning from the extra weight. He covers up how it startled him quickly, tilting his head up towards the brute with a bored expression.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. I’m here to drink.” He says nonchalantly, sipping on the wine bottle. “Impressive display of magic earlier.”

His nose scrunches up, yellow eyes settling on his flaming ones with a glare. “Was that sarcasm?”

“No. Are you self-taught?”

Of all the things he expected tonight, it wasn’t this. Tav, a person who hits things and asks questions later, is curious about him? He wonders if he has an ulterior motive.

He pushes the thought to the back burner of his brain for now but approaches the conversation cautiously. “I am! And a man with many talents, may I add. I’m going straight to Baldur’s Gate to learn from the best: The Great Lorroakan.”

He sees the imposing Tiefling roll his eyes, putting his bottle down to stare out at the water surrounding the camp. Tav looks a little different, in the moonlight. Seeing him up close is a different experience entirely, and now he can see every little detail about him, including how he was shirtless-

Wait, did he just roll his eyes?

“What?” He demands, posture straightening as he grows defensive.

“Nothing. Just heard he’s a cad is all.” He mutters, deciding to pick the bottle back up and taking a long swig.

“Common gossip and rumors! He’s the greatest wizard in all of Baldur’s Gate. I’ve never imagined he would answer my letters.” He states with a happy sigh, idly swirling the liquid in his bottle. “I will become his apprentice as soon as I arrive. I cannot be late, yet Cal and Lia insist that this party is a wonderful idea. An adoring crowd, fine wine - I daresay this place is almost civilized.”

“Do you regret staying?”

“Of course I do. But Cal and Lia…” He trails off for only a moment but snaps back to it. “They deserve to have some fun for a little while. We’ll leave at dawn, either way.”

The Tiefling stares at him for a moment, seeming to be searching his face. For what, Rolan had no idea. Some kind of lie, perhaps?

“All right then. Good luck to you.” Tav eventually settles on.

“…That’s it??” He exasperates.

“If you’re looking for someone to argue with, find someone else.”

“You-“

“You talk too much.”

He settles a death glare on Tav's form. “Prick.”

Tav slowly looks at him with his own glare, determined to play his game. “Entitled fuck.”

“Dumb oaf.”

“Prickly bastard.”

They both stare each other down, faces too close but neither of them breaks their stare. He feels Tav's hot breath ghosting over his lips, and the tension could be cut with a knife.

“You’re insufferable.” Tav huffs, suddenly gripping Rolan’s jaw and kissing him firmly.

He moans in surprise at the force but isn’t against it. In fact, his face gets incredibly red before he remembers he can kiss back.

It’s not like this is his first kiss. He’s given and received kisses before, he’s not some kind of reserved prude. But this is the first one that’s so heavy. Hot. He’s completely out of practice and can do nothing but grip Tav's thicker forearm.

Something about being desirable to Tav makes him throb in his pants, though it also may be the way Tav's tongue is tracing his bottom lip, seeking entry.

Tav's free hand trails to his rear and squeezes, making him inhale sharply; a perfect opportunity for Tav to slide his tongue in to taste him. He knows he's losing his composure and by extension, himself, but what's the harm in indulging in this? It's pathetic, but he's never felt so desired up until this moment, even if this ends up being a fling.

Why did the thought of this being a fling make him feel hollow?

He pulls away to give himself space and to breathe, but Tav doesn't pause, kissing along his jaw and ear. "My tent is west of here if you're interested. No one will hear us."

He shudders at the feeling of sharp teeth grazing the edge of his ear, teasing and provoking. Swallowing, he nods, and Tav pulls him away from the party towards a more secluded part of the area. He hopes that Lia and Cal didn't see him, but they most likely did. He’ll never hear the end of it when he returns.

Almost clumsily, Rolan finds himself in Tav’s tent quickly after, their kissing getting more heated between them. It was a strange feeling, exchanging breaths with someone else, but it felt good. Better than he thought.

They settle down on the floor of the tent, him sitting in Tav’s lap as they continue their make-out. Their tongues dance almost…lovingly. No, he can’t be reading into it right. They barely know each other; he's overthinking again.

He feels his large hands attempting to find the hem of his robes, and he seems to find it quickly as if from experience. Fingers start to dance across the bare skin of his back, running up the ridges of his spine. He sighs out shakily, goosebumps prickling out as his tail anxiously flicks about. Nerves hit him like a loose carriage, fast and suddenly, settling into the pit of his stomach. He felt cold, heart racing a mile a minute.

Why? This was good. Everything was good. This was supposed to feel good.

Why isn’t it?

He’ll give it time. It’s normal to be nervous about this kind of thing, right? Most definitely his lack of experience is a contributor, and doesn’t he deserve this after all his hardship? What’s the harm in pleasure for at least a night.

He feels his back hit the bedroll, warm calloused hands trailing over to the front of his body instead. Their kisses were feverish, desperate, and pent-up. All Rolan could do was grip the bedding below him as nails teased the textured skin of his sternum, a hand rolling a nipple between two fingers.

Tav’s lips go to his neck, finger tips trailing teasingly down his stomach before he begins to palm at his crotch through his smalls-

He can’t do it.

A cold sweat beads on the back of Rolan’s neck, panic and bile rising in his throat as it closes. He can’t do it, and he quickly grabs Tav’s arm with a death grip with wide eyes. “W-Wait, stop!”

Tav immediately gets his hands off of him, giving him space to move. His head reels from the sudden adrenaline, but also because Tav’s stoic demeanor is no longer present, and the man genuinely looks concerned. Fearful, even. “Did I hurt you?”

“No! No.” He reassures quickly, but his vulnerable mind is scattered and unfocused as he sits up.

There’s so many reasons why he couldn’t do this, but he can’t pin one down. Surely, Tav deserves an explanation, so he rushes to think of one.

It’s too soon, he hasn’t done this before, and this isn’t the place for it, he’s not a degenerate, his siblings are nearby, Tav is too imposing, it might hurt, it’s too vulnerable, he’s never been with a man, he’s never been with anyone, this is the wrong place to do it, he’s a coward, he’s scared-

“I can’t.” He grimaces, with no actual reason good enough to say out loud. Part of him is worried about what Tav would say; would he be upset with him? On one hand, if he does, Rolan knows that Tav was never worth his time. But on the other, he found Tav not as insufferable as he thought, and he may have just ruined the strange bond they made by stopping everything. Gods, he is pathetic, isn’t he?

Tav sighs slowly in relief, sitting back. “That’s okay.”

It’s not good enough, not for Rolan. As a wizard, he demands answers for a multitude of reasons when things happen. It’s only fair that he gives an explanation, is it not? Finally, he pins down a reason he could give: he doesn’t want to do it after having so much wine. There, that should do it.

Before he could start his tangent, he felt a hand cover his mouth.

“I don’t need a reason. It’s okay.”

He’s about to argue, completely insulted, but it gets muffled by the hand on his mouth.

“You don’t ever have to explain to me why you want to stop.” He says, finally moving his hand away. “I’m sorry if you felt like you couldn’t say no to me earlier.”

“I did want it.” He assured quickly, because he did. He truly did. Why did he panic?

“But you changed your mind.” He began, not unkindly.

“I did.”

“That’s fine.” He says with a small shrug. “If you want, we can keep kissing. Nothing further than that.”

He laughs in disbelief, running a hand down his sweaty face. “And why would we do that?”

“Doesn’t hurt to have company for a night. Besides-“ He gently takes hold of his chin, tilting his face up. “You seemed to enjoy what we were doing. Why not indulge? Just for one night.”

He smirks up at him, leaning forward with false confidence. “Am I that irresistible?”

“You have a pretty face.” He noted, swiping his thumb across his kiss-bruised lip before kissing him again.

The kiss is lazy and less heated, but it makes his heart pound all the same. Being held so tenderly is new, and he’s growing attached.

He cannot have attachments. What is he thinking?

After kissing for a little longer, he lets himself be held in the bedroll as they lay down, indulging in the quiet night with Tav. They didn’t need to discuss what happened or question it. It’s exchanging favors. For Rolan, it’s just wanting the comfort of another body near him, letting him pretend that he’ll have something like this in the future. One day, he’ll be good enough for someone. He’s not sure what this does for Tav exactly, but he seems content to hold him.

“You can ask for more if you’d like.”

“I’d rather not embarrass myself more than I already have.” He barks before glancing at him in apology, eyes softer.

“Would it help if I said I will keep my mouth shut about this?” Tav suggested, pushing some hair away from his face.

He shifts to glance at his face, seeing if he is genuine. He can never read his face that well, but when he makes his judgment, he sighs and takes one of Tav’s hands, lacing his fingers through his.

“This is pathetic, I know.”

“I don’t think it’s pathetic.” He mumbles, squeezing his hand. “This is nice for me, too.”

Rolan feels himself relax more, body almost relieved that this hasn’t been rejected.

“What will you do, when you finally get your apprenticeship figured out?” Tav asks in the quiet.

“I’ll learn everything I can about all schools of magic. Then I can put on a real show for Cal and Lia.”

“They seem to love your shows already, why change them?”

“It’ll be different.” He pledged, “Bigger, better, and more sustainable. I’ll make them last so much longer, I’ll bring it more colors, and the illusion will look realistic. You will see.”

“I’m sure they’ll be great.” He yawns, nuzzling into the back of his neck.

“I will show you when you reach to Baldur’s Gate, my friend.”

There’s no response, only a quiet snore greets him. At first, he’s annoyed, but it’s hard to be angry when he is just as exhausted from today. For now, he falls asleep in his arms, hoping that for once no nightmares haunt him.

The Tiefling beside him is still fast asleep when he wakes at dawn, though he’s impressed by how the man can sleep through the screeching birds outside.

Quickly, he fixes his robes and hair, trying to not look like a mess. Cal and Lia are surely going to tease him, knowing he never returned to their tent. He debates on whether to wake the idiot up to say goodbye, but that seems foolish. He needs to sleep, and they need to head to Baldur’s gate immediately.

So he opens the tent, sparing one more look back before leaving.

He cannot create attachments. Not now, not ever. Not until he’s done with his apprenticeship.

#forest-writes #holy rolan empire #rolan #bg3 rolan #rolan bg3 #bg3 #rolan x tav #cal #lia #rolan fanfic #rolan brainrot

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vgfm · 11 months ago

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A Lily Gilded: A Review and Analysis of Undertale Yellow

The Short, Spoiler-Free Review (TL;DR)

Any Undertale fan who owns a PC should play Undertale Yellow, even if they previously weren’t interested or have any doubts or reservations.

No criticism that I levy at Undertale Yellow, big or small, is intended to dissuade anyone who hasn’t played it from trying it: you should play it and there is no reason not to aside from a lack of free time or not owning a PC.

Although I have some criticisms of Undertale Yellow, my overall opinion of it is still very positive. I’m glad to have experienced this game.

If you haven’t played the game yet, then I recommend starting with the neutral route. Pacifist is much harder in this game and there are story segments exclusive to the neutral route that make it worth the time investment.

My analysis from this point forward will include spoilers for all three major routes of Undertale Yellow. It will also be very long (close to 60 pages), so be warned.

My Background

I’ve completed all routes of Undertale, Deltarune (Ch 1-2), and Undertale Yellow

I primarily engage with UTDR fandom by reading and writing theories. I like to think that I’m decently knowledgeable about the series, at least

I have no professional background in game development

I’m usually a purist when it comes to games and the topic of fangames and mods. I’m a “picky eater” in particular when it comes to UT/DR fan content:

I’ve never played an Undertale fangame prior to Yellow

Most UT and DR fangames have either not appealed to me personally or have not been finished

I don’t engage with most story-driven Undertale/Deltarune Aus or fanworks if I feel they don’t capture the spirit of the original games

Saying Something Nice

Undertale Yellow is the best fangame that I’ve played in recent memory. I think it’s very likely that Undertale Yellow is not only the best Undertale fangame ever made but that it will remain the best Undertale fangame of its kind for the foreseeable future. It’s not just a good fangame but a good game in general--had Undertale Yellow been a completely original game with no ties to Undertale, it very likely would have become a cult classic in its own right.

Of the long-form fan content I’ve seen, Undertale Yellow is among those that come the closest to replicating the style and tone of the original game without feeling like it’s simply cribbing the story or jokes.

It goes without saying that Undertale Yellow’s spritework and animations far surpass those of Undertale in sheer effort, and at times they rival and surpass those of Deltarune as well. There are some stylistic differences between Yellow and the canon games, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say Yellow’s visuals are always better in every conceivable aspect, but the general quality difference is night and day.

Yellow’s music comes close to rivaling Toby’s work, though frankly I think this is a barrier that no fangame will ever overcome for me. It’s a better impression of Toby’s style than most who’ve tried, but it’s still noticeably an impression. One thing that I immensely appreciate is that Yellow has battle theme variants for each major area in the game. “Enemy Approaching” is a fine song, but I always start to get sick of it by the time I reach the end of Waterfall in the original game.

Most of all, what I respect about Undertale Yellow is when it shows restraint: the restraint to largely omit cameos and callbacks to Undertale’s characters except when it feels warranted to do so. I respect that the game doesn’t try to smuggle in characters or worldbuilding elements from Deltarune and instead sticks to its guns as an Undertale prequel. I also appreciate that, for the most part, it sidesteps the trap that most prequels fall into of trying to tell a bigger story than the original—the story of Undertale Yellow still feels impactful and meaningful, but it does not overshadow or diminish the events of Undertale.

I wanted to frontload my praises for this game because a lot of my more detailed analyses to follow will come across more negative and nitpicky. Admittedly, it’s much easier to point out something that doesn’t work in a story or game that’s otherwise good because it sticks out like a sore thumb and takes you out of the experience. Additionally, so many things are done well in this game that I’d be here all day if I listed every single thing that worked. If there’s an aspect of the game that I don’t comment on then just assume that I found it at least serviceable, if not great.

My Criteria

Since Undertale Yellow is based on the world of Undertale and borrows many gameplay elements from it, it’s virtually impossible to review or analyze the game without inviting at least some comparisons to Undertale.

Having said that, I’m going to avoid criticizing differences between Yellow and the original game if the criticism would boil down to “it’s different from Undertale, therefore it’s bad.” There are things that Yellow does differently that I find worse, but I’ll argue those on their own merit rather than pointing solely to the fact that they’re different. On the flip side, there are a few places where Yellow differs from the original game because Yellow does something better—I’ll be sure to point out these instances as well.

Overall, I’m grading Undertale Yellow on a curve because I can’t help but compare it to the original game. I don’t feel it’s unfair for me to do so, since Yellow relies on Undertale not only for its conceit but also for some of its story beats—Yellow would not make sense or feel complete as an experience if Undertale did not exist.

If Undertale Yellow had been a completely original game, with whatever tweaks or rewrites would have been necessary to make it such, my overall tone would probably be more positive, since I’d be comparing it to the average game experience rather than to one of my favorite games of all time. This is not to say that Yellow would have necessarily been better as an original game, nor am I saying that it should have been—it just would have made the comparisons to Undertale less warranted.

Lastly, I’m going to try to avoid comparing Undertale Yellow to Deltarune. I feel like this is a less fair comparison since Deltarune is not a finished game and Yellow lifts very little from Deltarune beyond a run button and the charge shot.

Bosses

Undertale Yellow’s bosses were the most contentious issue for me during my initial playthroughs. Subsequent playthroughs caused me to warm up a bit to some of the problematic ones, but most of my gameplay-related gripes are tied to its bosses.

My three biggest issues with this game’s bosses are the strategies for sparing bosses, the telegraphing of their attacks, and the attack variety that each boss has.

Sparing Strategies

To start with the simpler complaint, half the bosses and minibosses in this game have pacifist fights that consist of waiting for the boss’s dialogue and attacks to run out before you can spare them, sometimes requiring a token act only at the very end of the fight.

This is a problem because it reduces these fights to waiting games that can be brute-forced with a full supply of healing items. Annoyingly, these same fights also come with 2-3 options in the ACT menu that often do nothing and in most cases don’t even prompt any reaction or different dialogue from the boss.

By comparison, Undertale’s pacifist route only has two (and a half) bosses that require waiting out the opponent: Papyrus and Muffet, and both of these fights have alternate completion conditions that can be used to bypass the wait.

Conversely, Napstablook’s fight requires acting, Toriel requires constant sparing, the Snowdin dogs all have unique acts, Mad Dummy requires redirecting her attacks back at her, Undyne requires running away, the Royal Guards require acting, Mettaton must pass a ratings threshold tied to unique acts, Asgore and Flowey require fighting; Asriel’s fight is half waiting but the second phase requires the lost soul segments to be completed.

Every Undertale boss felt like a puzzle on pacifist and some like Undyne and Mad Dummy were genuine brain-teasers. None of Yellow’s fights ever quite scratch that itch, though a couple come close like Guardener and Axis.

It baffles me a little that this issue is even present because the common enemy encounters in Yellow don’t fall prey to this. In fact, a few enemy encounters in Yellow cleverly require using multiple different acts in a specific (and usually intuitive) order to achieve victory—something that even Undertale seldom did.

It seems that most bosses in Yellow were designed around distinguishing themselves via their attack patterns rather than their spare method, though this leads into anther major issue: how these attacks are conveyed, paced, and telegraphed to the player.

Attack Telegraphing

Undertale Yellow is meant to have harder combat than Undertale, which had me a bit wary going in. The average enemy encounter in Yellow feels harder than Undertale, and the same is certainly true of the bosses. However, I’m not sure if I’d say any of Yellow’s hardest bosses quite rival the Sans fight in terms of sheer difficulty, at least in terms of the number of attempts it took me to complete them.

This could be chalked up to me coming into Undertale Yellow with more experience than when I first played Undertale, or Yellow’s 1.1 patch toning down a few of the harder fights. For the record, I’ve beaten all fights in Yellow without the use of the game’s “easy mode” option—I used it for certain bosses in my very first pacifist and no mercy runs, but I later replayed those runs with the setting disabled in order to have a “proper” experience.

Many fights in Yellow, big and small, feel less “fair” than the fights in Undertale and even now I’m not 100% sure I can nail down why. A lot of this boils down to the “feel” of the fights, but part of this could be due to me already being familiar with Undertale’s attack patterns and not Yellow’s. OG Undertale does have a handful of battle moments that feel “unfair” or not designed as optimally for new players as they could have been, which is easy for a player like me to gloss over after I’ve become familiar with the game. One such example is the Lemon Bread amalgamate, which (imo) is one of the hardest fights in the pacifist route.

Still, I noticed many instances in Yellow where incoming attacks would give little or seemingly no warning before they were able to hurt you. Some examples off the top of my head would be Mooch’s moneybag attack, Guardener’s triple stomp attack that fills the whole box, Starlo’s horseshoe attack that blends into his head before it drops, and Ceroba’s paralyzing diamond attack.

The only consistent way I found to avoid attacks like these was either to know in advance where they were going to enter the bullet box or to already be moving before they appear. It doesn’t help that often attacks that come from outside the bullet box will spawn in immediately outside the box, minimizing the travel time where players could see them coming and act accordingly.

Another common issue I found is the frequent use of blue and orange attacks, often paired with each other and/or with regular attacks, and often without properly telegraphing which will be used until they’re already onscreen. In contrast, Undertale generally used these types of attacks one at a time or, in Asgore’s case, clearly telegraphed them before they were used in tandem.

Yellow’s approach presents a problem because dodging orange and blue attacks demands either movement or lack of movement, which can force the player to take a hit if there’s already another attack onscreen that demands the opposite. In my experience the solution was either to know in advance where the blue and orange attacks would come from (and when) to get into optimal position, or simply tank the hit and hope you make up for it later.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I struggled for a time with Ceroba’s No Mercy fight when I went in blind—she has multiple deadly attacks with little to no telegraphing as well as color attacks that can overlap each other if you’re not already in an optimal position. I was only able to complete this fight on normal after I watched a no-hit run so that I could memorize her patterns. This is something I’ve never had to do for any Undertale or Deltarune fight, including Sans, and it doesn’t really feel like it’s in the spirit of the franchise. I always try to go into each of these games blind and I don’t think it’s unreasonable that a new player, even on a harder route, should be able to intuit what is expected of them in a fight. A few attacks might be challenging or counter-intuitive at first, but having to rely on rote memorization or a guide just doesn’t feel fun or organic to me.

On that note, some of you may be nodding toward the Sans fight as an example of some of the things I’m complaining about, particularly the lack of proper telegraphing and a reliance on memorization. Well, let’s unpack that.

To start, I’ll say that the Sans fight is not my favorite fight in Undertale from a pure gameplay perspective and that I don’t fully agree with some of its design choices. One reason I don’t play fan battles in general is because many of them seem to emulate the style of the Sans fight or double down on it without understanding it.

Despite my minor issues with it, I find the “unfair” aspects of the Sans fight to be more justified and acceptable within the context of Undertale than I find the seeming “unfairness” of Yellow’s harder fights to be in the context of that game. One reason is that the Sans fight is the only fight in Undertale (or Deltarune) that works the way that it does, whereas Yellow has several, even if they’re overall less hard than the Sans fight.

More importantly, the Sans fight has proper buildup, feels appropriate for the character and story, and (most important of all) the game itself acknowledges the fact that it’s unfair and the fight is designed around that admission. Sans literally has over a dozen different dialogue variations depending on how many times you die in his fight and when.

The game is even aware of the fact that most new players won’t survive Sans’ first attack and creates multiple variants of just the dialogue before and after that attack. Undertale fully anticipates your deaths and cultivates a unique experience for you along the way as you learn Sans’ patterns.

To put it simply, the Sans fight is the exception that proves the rule: it makes you realize how much fairer the other fights in Undertale are and how easy it is to take those design principles for granted. Conversely, the attack patterns in the hardest Yellow fights didn’t feel radically different or radically “less fair” in philosophy from Yellow’s moderately difficult boss fights—both feel varying degrees of “unfair,” but the harder fights are just “more” with the occasional twist added on top.

My platonic ideal of a challenging boss fight in an Undertale game would be Undyne the Undying. Undyne the Undying is a massive difficulty spike in her respective run, at times she requires ridiculous reaction time, and it’s easy to psych yourself out and get double-tapped by her barrages and die quickly. Nonetheless, her fight feels fair—it’s a culmination of the rules you’ve been taught and it doesn’t needlessly subvert them. Even though she has her dreaded reverse-arrow attacks that trip up new players, these are still properly telegraphed and manageable. Looking at footage of it now, it’s surprising how this fight looks more honest and straightforward than many of Yellow’s later boss fights.

Attack Variety

Another contributing factor to my issues with Yellow’s boss fights is the sheer number and variety of attacks that some bosses have, particularly in the latter half of the game. To wit, most bosses in Undertale have about 4-5 unique attacks that are repeated with variations, while Undertale Yellow’s bosses can have upwards of 9-10 unique types of attacks, not including variations. Ceroba alone has ten completely different unique attack patterns in just the first phase of her pacifist fight—every single turn is a completely different attack requiring different dodging strategies and none are repeated.

Some may be asking why this is a problem. Isn’t more variety a good thing? This just shows that the Yellow team put more effort in, right? My issue here is that many of these attacks don’t seem to exist for any reason except for the sake of artificial variety and because the devs (presumably) thought they’d be a cool-looking thing to dodge. If you’re confused as to the point I’m trying to make, let’s look at how Undertale utilized its attack patterns with Mettaton EX.

The Mettaton EX fight is a favorite of fans and mine, and one reason I like it so much is for how it uses eclectic and seemingly chaotic attacks to teach the player new mechanics while offering a spare mechanic that relies on strategic thinking to optimize. The fight offers the following types of attacks: moving legs, bombs, boxes, miniature mettatons, gates, a disco ball, and Mettaton’s heart. Not counting the joke/gimmick turns like the essay or break time, this is seven main attack archetypes, each with their own variations and crossover with each other.

Note that all seven of these attack types interact with the fight’s core mechanic: the yellow soul mode. More importantly, each of these attacks teaches the player something about how the soul mode works with no need for an onscreen prompt. Boxes and bombs teach you that there are some attacks you should shoot and some that you should not. The hand gates initially teach you that some bullets are unaffected by your shots, but later you’re given gates with yellow buttons that will open them, teaching you that some targets require precision. The miniature mettatons teach you that some attacks will become a bigger problem for you if you don’t take them out right away. The moving legs teach you that shooting can stop certain attacks from moving and that the timing of your shots is important. The disco ball builds on this lesson, requiring the need to plan your next movements when shooting the ball. The heart serves as the culmination, featuring the bombs and mini-mettatons from before while also giving you a precise moving target to hit repeatedly.

All of Mettaton EX’s attacks tie into a common theme and reinforce one another—learning to dodge and utilize the mechanics of one attack will make you better-equipped to deal with the others. It’s by no means a perfect fight, nor does it teach all of its lessons perfectly—I remember it taking me several attempts to complete and some mechanics like the disco ball and legs didn’t “click” with me immediately, but there’s clear intent behind every attack and it’s remarkable how utilitarian the whole thing is structured, despite its reputation for being one of the game’s longer and more self-indulgent fights.

Let’s bring things back to Ceroba for comparison. Her first phase has 10 unique attacks, only half of which feature mechanics that appear in the later phases: her paralyzing diamonds, her spinning bullets that circle around you, her bells that create colored shockwaves, and the vortex that opens in the center of the arena.

The other attacks are only used once, have little-to-no pattern commonality with each other or with her later attacks, and teach nothing other than how to dodge each of these one-off attacks. At most, a few attacks share a flower motif but move with completely different behaviors (straight line, fanning out, circling, homing in). While this isn’t horrible design, I can’t help but find it a bit wasteful considering what other fights have done with less and how chaotic the later phases of Ceroba’s fight get—something that players could have been eased into by having her first phase present more of her later attacks in a more controlled environment.

In the end, I remember being frustrated with the Ceroba pacifist fight when I first played it. Part of this was due to my own mistake of going past the point of no return without a full stock of items, but the lack of cohesion in the first phase and its lacking relevance to the mechanics of the second phase made it hard for me to “gel” with the gameplay and, as a result of my own frustration and confusion, I had a harder time getting invested in the narrative. I’ve seen some fans label the Ceroba fight the best fight in the series, but I wouldn’t even put it in my top 25, despite the overwhelming effort on display from the developers.

To bring the comparison home, I cried the first time I saw Mettaton say goodbye to his call-in viewers, but not once did I cry during Ceroba’s fight. A flamboyant robot making a single pained expression leaves a bigger impact when his attacks are unintrusive to the experience, and a lovingly-animated grieving fox’s backstory doesn’t hit as hard when I’m distracted by a hodgepodge of visually stunning but incoherent bullet hells. Less is more.

I realize I’ve been a bit mean to Yellow during this segment. In fairness, I did replay the pacifist route and tried the Ceroba fight in a more prepared state. I enjoyed the fight more my second time around, but I still would not rank it among my favorites in the franchise. And to be clear, I don’t hate this fight at all—I just think it represents the excesses in Yellow’s battle design and how they can sour a first-time experience, which is the most important experience for a narrative-driven game. Even the weaker aspects of Yellow’s design are, by and large, serviceable by the standards of typical game design. Compared to Undertale, though, I was disappointed in the areas where it lacked or, more accurately, overstepped.

Having fewer types of attacks is not a result of less effort—it allows more room for variations on each type of attack and it can make difficult or poorly-telegraphed attacks more forgivable if the attack is used multiple times with the first instance training the player for the future variations. I feel that having too many unique attacks for each boss resulted in each attack not receiving the necessary polish and balancing that it should have, and it also made each fight feel less instructive and lacking in a clear design goal.

To close this off, I’d like to give a positive example of a boss fight from Undertale Yellow: Axis. For the most part, Axis successfully walks the tightrope of Yellow’s more complex late-game fights while still maintaining a consistent theme and introducing concepts to the player gradually. The whole fight revolves around blocking Axis’ attacks with a trashcan lid—first with a ground-based lid, then with a lid that rotates around an axis (get it?). As the fight progresses, new types of projectiles and hazards are introduced, usually first using the ground-based lid to avoid overwhelming the player.

As if that weren’t enough, the fight comes with its own unique sparing strategy where players fill a meter by blocking attacks and then attempt to reflect an orb back at Axis once the meter is full. The fight’s not perfect—there’s still the occasional one-off attack that doesn’t really teach any relevant lesson to the player, the orb reflection mechanic is finicky, and the fight is perhaps slightly more difficult than I’d prefer from a typical boss fight, but if all Yellow bosses had been of a similar caliber then I wouldn’t have needed to go on this massive detour about boss design in the first place.

Since some might ask, I might as well weigh in on Yellow’s most controversial boss: El Bailador. I initially had difficulty with this fight due to my lack of experience with rhythm games (and the lack of preparation that the game gives you). I also found the need to press a direction key and the Z key for each note to be a tad clunky. Beyond that? I actually didn’t mind the fight all that much. It introduces a simple concept and builds upon it gradually in a way that felt satisfying to me as I began to master it. The last turn maybe goes on for too long, but I can’t say that I hated it. I promise I’m not trying to piss off the Undertale Yellow fandom (who, if memes are anything to go by, seem to despise this fight), but I found the simplicity of Bailador refreshing considering how chaotic the later fights get. That said, I turned on the auto-rhythm setting in future playthroughs to make this fight less of a difficulty spike.

Themes

To start off, I’d like to acknowledge the fact that Undertale Yellow largely avoids most of the “meta” themes that Undertale and Deltarune touch upon, nor does the game try to go in its own direction in regards to metatextual concepts. Undertale Yellow generally leaves the topic untouched, aside from continuing to use in-universe mechanics established in Undertale such as saving and EXP/LV. Some fans might view this as disappointing or even a betrayal of the tones and themes previously established in Toby’s work. Me? I don’t mind at all, honestly. If anything, it’s refreshing to see an Undertale fan project that takes the setting of Undertale at face value rather than trying to outsmart it or put their own meta spin on it. Far too often have I seen fanworks that swing the pendulum in the other direction and have characters just flat out address the player and shatter the verisimilitude of the setting with no buildup.

None of this is to say that Undertale Yellow is lacking in themes. The most prominent theme I noticed, unsurprisingly, is that of justice. Undertale strongly implies that the yellow human soul is the soul that represents justice, and fanworks ever since have ran with the idea. Undertale Yellow represents the culmination of this concept by turning each of its routes into differing interpretations of what justice means.

As a refresher, Undertale Yellow has three main routes with four endings: true pacifist, “false” pacifist, neutral, and no mercy. I see each ending as its own realization of and commentary on the concept of justice.

Neutral

In Undertale Yellow, the neutral ending acts as something of a “bad ending” from classic video games. These are the kind of endings you get when you fail to 100% complete a game and you’re told to go back and do it again, complete with Flowey’s laugh imposed over the “Thank you for playing!” end credits message.

Who wore it better?

Thematically, the neutral route represents justice as subjective and personal—Clover can spare or kill whoever they wish. It’s hard to argue that any one monster in Undertale Yellow is more guilty than any other in this route, so killing monsters in neutral largely comes off as the capricious whims of Clover rather than being based on any consistent law or greater principle.

This outlook ultimately blows up in Clover’s face when they come to a head with their foil in this route: Flowey, who exercises his own form of justice, or “judgment” as he prefers. Flowey only cares about freeing himself from his current situation and will use any means to achieve this goal. In his eyes, your failure to follow his directions or be of further use of him is a slight against him that demands punishment as he sees fit.

Fitting this individualistic outlook, Flowey takes “might makes right” to its logical conclusion by trapping you in his own personal hell while he acts as a wannabe-God looking down on high. Ultimately Clover can only escape when Flowey wills it, cementing Clover’s status as a pawn subject to the whims of the powerful despite their illusions of independence. Without laws to protect them, the weak will be trampled by the powerful.

Pacifist

Pacifist presents two outlooks depending on whether Clover spares or kills Ceroba in the final battle. Of all the monsters Clover meets, Ceroba is the most culpable for a serious real-world crime other than Asgore and Axis (the latter of whom may not meet the definition of culpability or competence to stand trial).

Clover lacks the fore-knowledge that Ceroba’s daughter will likely survive thanks to Alphys’ efforts, so Clover would view Ceroba’s actions toward Kanako as manslaughter, or at least reckless endangerment. Unlike the neutral route, Clover’s choice can’t solely be chalked up to their own personal whims—actual harm has been done by Ceroba, but more harm may yet be done if she’s killed.

False Pacifist

If Clover kills Ceroba, then this choice seems to represent justice as following the law to the letter, for good or ill. Starlo, who’s most upset by Ceroba’s passing, reluctantly echoes this sentiment:

Even if Clover stands by their choice deep down, it’s reasonable to assume that hurting Starlo this way left a bitter taste in their mouth. Not long after this, Clover reaps what they’ve sewn as they come face to face with their foil for this ending: Asgore.

Initially I thought it was strange that Asgore doesn’t appear if you spare Ceroba, but this ending illustrates why Asgore’s entrance is most appropriate here. Asgore finds himself in a similar situation as Clover. Asgore is keeping his word to his people for good or ill, and a king’s word is law. In all likelihood, Clover probably hated killing Ceroba in much the same way that Asgore hates killing humans. But both are trapped within the confines of their own rigid principles.

Martlet, who acts as an onlooker, first argues on behalf of Clover’s killing of Ceroba on the basis of the law, but just as quickly turns around to plead that Asgore bend the rules of his kingdom to spare Clover. In the end, she can’t have it both ways. No one is happy with how things turn out and the only thing served is the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of justice.

True Pacifist

If Clover spares Ceroba, it might be for her own sake or because killing her will benefit no one and will only serve to harm Starlo. In much the same way, killing the monsters who harmed the five humans won’t bring any benefit to monster or human alike and will instead only fan the flames of war.

Clover came to the Underground armed in search of five humans, no doubt willing to enact justice on anyone or anything that harmed them. Instead they find a world of good-hearted people who have ample reason to distrust humans. Through acts of kindness, this distrust is cast aside and many friendships are made.

In the Wild East, Clover is presented with the classic trolley problem. Starlo emphasizes that Clover could let a large group of monsters die while incurring no personal responsibility. Clover didn’t tie those monsters to the tracks in much the same way that Clover is not personally responsible for monsters being trapped Underground. However, Clover can save them by sacrificing a single life—an anonymous other, but eventually Clover is faced with the possibility of becoming that sacrifice willingly.

Clover choosing to give up their soul is not only an ultimate act of selflessness but also interprets justice as a principle higher than any mere law or person’s whim—laws should not exist solely for their own sake because laws should be a means for the betterment of all. Any “justice” that loses sight of this higher principle has no meaning or value, so one must act in service to the greater good.

Clover doesn’t deserve to die, but sitting on the sidelines so that monsters or the next fallen human can suffer in their place would be a greater injustice in their eyes. Ultimately they decide that their own sacrifice, while tragic, will create the best outcome for everyone and act as a step towards restorative justice for monsterkind.

No Mercy

No mercy was a bit of an enigma for me initially. It starts off largely the same as Undertale’s no mercy route, only without the one-shot kills and commentary on completionism. It’s not until Steamworks when the aim of this run starts to come together. We see a role reversal where Clover chases down Axis, and Flowey of all people questions Clover’s craving for destruction.

When fighting Axis, we see him admit that he had killed a previous fallen human. Although this information can be uncovered through a hidden tape in the pacifist route, here we see this revelation enrage Clover to the point that their LV increases on the spot. Normally I’d nitpick something like this, since Undertale states that cruel intentions can make a human’s individual attacks stronger but their LV is tied to their EXP. However, I can overlook this since the rules are bent in service of a good character moment that defines the run for me.

This moment and the ending recontextualize the whole run up until now: Clover isn’t killing indiscriminately like Frisk was. On the contrary, Clover is quite discriminate with their killing: they specifically want monsters (and their creations) destroyed, but not humans. Up until now we haven’t had an Undertale protagonist who is unabashedly pro-human. Chara was very much the opposite and some lines in Deltarune imply Kris may feel similarly. Frisk seems ambivalent, but from the beginning Clover has been acting for the sake of the five missing humans.

In neutral and pacifist, Clover judges monsters on an individual basis, but in no mercy all monsters are deemed guilty. What distinguishes this run from the others, besides the brutality of Clover’s actions, is that their actions can’t solely be chalked up to dogmatic obedience of the law or their own selfish desires.

Throughout the run, Clover can choose to steal from shops, commit armed robbery against Mo, and even cheat in their “dual” with Starlo—all of these indicate some degree of underhandedness or dishonor, but Clover’s outlook is seemingly that monsters don’t deserve fair play or the benefit of the doubt.

Conversely, we see from the ending that Clover goes out of their way to free the five human souls—they don’t leave them behind or try to go on a power trip and use them for their own ends (as far as we’re aware). No mercy is a dark reflection of true pacifist, where “justice” has transcended the letter of the law as well as personal desires. Instead of “justice” being in service to the greater good of all, it’s in service to division, tribalism, and vengeance.

Even so, one can debate whether Clover’s actions are motivated more by a love of humanity or purely by a hatred of monsters. Asgore points out that Clover’s actions will only worsen the conflict between humans and monsters, and more humans will die in the future as a result.

This doesn’t seem to give Clover any pause, so one can assume they either don’t believe Asgore or they don’t care—they’re here to make monsterkind pay, and if more conflict arises then that means more opportunities for payback in the future. Make them pay and never stop making them pay.

Characters

Character writing is a crucial component of any Undertale-adjacent game and it’s often the biggest stumbling block I encounter when I’ve tried to get into fanworks. I mean that in no way as a slight against fan creators, but rather to illustrate how high the bar has been set by Toby. This is a bar that’s set just as high, if not higher than Toby’s musical abilities, imo. In all the ways that I would describe myself as a “picky eater” when it comes to Undertale content, I’d say character writing is where I’m by far the pickiest.

To give Undertale Yellow a fair and thorough analysis, I’ll be going over all of the major characters one by one to give my impressions of them as well as what I feel works and what doesn’t, starting from the top:

Clover

There isn’t a ton to say about Clover compared to the other characters, but this isn’t a bad thing. What’s apparent is that Clover has more personality and initiative on display throughout the game than Frisk did, though in some ways not as much as Kris—Clover is something of a middleground between the two canon protags. At several points we’re only given a single dialogue “choice,” meant to illustrate when Clover has made a decision on their own.

We’re told Clover’s surface-level motivation: to find the five humans who disappeared, but we’re not given any context as to what connection (if any) Clover has to these humans or what their own history is beyond one or two vague bits of flavor text.

Clover’s motivations can evolve or outright change course depending on which choices the player makes throughout the game. I already went over this in the themes section, but the fact that Yellow largely eschews the broader metatextual commentary found in Undertale means that Clover’s actions are much easier to attribute as their own in-universe decisions, rather than something imposed on them by a controlling entity.

Beyond this, we also see Clover display various quirks via their character animations, such as kicking their feet while seated, tugging on Ceroba’s sleeve, or standing on their tippy-toes when handing their hat to Martlet. We ultimately can’t say much about Clover’s overall personality or interests outside the context of game events, but these little flourishes help to make the character memorable.

By default I’d argue that Clover’s “better written” as a character than Frisk was, barring the metatextual baggage attached to the latter. Overall, not a bad start.

Dalv

I wasn’t sure what to make of Dalv initially. Confession time: Dalv was the deciding factor that led to me not checking out the Undertale Yellow demo when it first dropped. I’ve got nothing against the guy, but at the time I didn’t really “get” his character—I wasn’t sure what his motives were and I couldn’t even understand what his first lines of dialogue were meant to convey.

Even now I’m still not 100% sure whether his first line of dialogue is him rehearsing a conversation with another Ruins monster, with the monster that used to leave him corn, or with the previous human that he encountered. The fact that Dalv is known by the other monsters for talking to himself and having imaginary friends only blurs the lines further, though this doesn’t feel intentional.

This is part of a broader, though minor, issue with some of Yellow’s writing where characters will allude to events and other characters that a first-time player wouldn’t be familiar with. To be fair, Undertale does this as well early on but usually with enough context clues to help you figure things out—Papyrus namedrops Undyne and Alphys in Snowdin, but we learn from context clues within Snowdin that Undyne is a monster of authority that Papyrus knows and Alphys is a doctor and apparent inventor.

To draw a more direct comparison, we know early on that Toriel is a motherly figure and we see in her house that she has taken in other children who’ve met an unknown fate—this mystery leads to some first-timers speculating whether Toriel is the one responsible for said fate. Right before her boss fight she explains her motives more clearly--her actions, though overbearing, have been to protect Frisk. You can also infer, though not stated directly, that her actions towards Frisk may be some attempt on her part to recreate or make up for her past experiences with children that she’s lost. Later on we learn that she’s Asgore’s ex-wife and lost her two children tragically, but this is not something that needs to be spelled out in order to get a basic grasp on Toriel as a character.

Dalv, on the other hand, has an implied backstory that is never outright stated but instead needs to be pieced together from context clues given much later in the game, some of which are tied to optional secrets and randomly-generated fun events. In short, Dalv was a monster living in Snowdin who met Kanako when she and Chujin came to visit. During that visit, Dalv was attacked by a human (implied to be the one carrying the blue soul), who was later killed by Axis. It’s implied that this experience was so traumatic that Dalv retreated into the Ruins and cut off all contact with those around him. Conceptually? This is a solid backstory. No notes. It’s a shame, then, that most players don’t even seem to be aware of it after finishing the game.

Now, a character doesn’t need a tragic backstory in order to be likable or compelling. In fairness, I do enjoy the aspects of Dalv’s character that are given upfront in his house—his neatness, his social awkwardness, his creative side, and his “imaginary” friends. The problem is that we don’t see these sides of him until after his boss fight, when most players likely won’t see him again for the rest of the game.

Characters don’t need to front-load their entire personality or backstory into their first encounter, but doing the opposite isn’t helpful either. First impressions matter in fiction, and unfortunately Dalv gave very little for me to latch onto for most of his screentime. It’s really only through hindsight that I began to appreciate Dalv as a character, but even then he isn’t one of my favorites in Yellow, let alone comparable to Undertale’s core cast.

Martlet

Martlet is the most recurring character in the game aside from Flowey. Although her personality is quite different, I get the sense that her role is meant to be analogous to that of Sans and Papyrus, namely as a comic relief character that drops into your adventure regularly and presents a crucial turning point right before the game’s ending.

Martlet’s introduction gave me flashbacks of Dalv—namely that she never even interacts with Clover until the end of Snowdin, making me fear that once again a new character’s story was going to be backloaded into their final appearance before they disappear from the narrative. Thankfully this wasn’t the case. Martlet’s in it for the long haul and her boss fight is more of an introduction to her character than a conclusion.

So what do I think of Martlet? I’d say that I like her more than Dalv, or at least she’s better utilized than Dalv. Still, it took a while for Martlet to “click” with me. I think what I got hung up on was that a lot of her early gags revolve around royal guard protocol and the handbook that she keeps around. In many ways this feels at odds with what’s later established about her character, namely that she’s scatterbrained, wishy-washy, and lacks long-term goals or planning skills.

Martlet doesn’t seem like the type of person who’d follow a handbook in the first place, given how often she disregards it anyway. Perhaps the intent was for Martlet’s “arc” to be her unlearning what she’s learned from other monsters regarding humans and for her increasing disregard of the handbook to symbolize this. While I think the former is true—she says as much on the apartment rooftop at the end of the game, she seems to waffle back and forth on following her royal guard duties as the plot demands—ignoring them when it means accompanying Clover but following them when it means having to be separated from Clover.

I think this ties into a bigger issue that I have with Martlet, which is that at times she feels like she’s a character of convenience for the story rather than a character acting on a clear want or need. I think this is most blatant when viewing the various “abort” points in a no mercy run.

No matter how badly you beat Martlet in Snowdin and how resolute she is at stopping you, she’ll turn on a dime if you’ve aborted a run prior to Oasis or Hotland just so that she can play out her allotted part.

Other times it feels like she’ll show up just so that there’s someone for Clover to talk to and someone to react to what Clover sees. Now, it would be reductive of me to write off Martlet as a mere plot device—she isn’t, and any appearance otherwise is more so a flaw of the narrative than of her as a character.

You’ll notice I haven’t said much about how I feel about Martlet’s personality, her dynamic with other characters, or her overall “vibe” and honestly she’s just… fine? It’s hard for me to say anything because she feels a bit lukewarm to me—she’s not undercooked like Dalv, but she’s not as memorable as many of the other characters either. She says some funny things, but she’s not the funniest. She has some great and heartfelt lines during the pacifist ending, particularly this one:

But as a whole? She’s just fine. She's competently written, no major complaints.

I think maybe what Martlet lacks is a “larger than life” quality to her character. I’m not saying that her role within the setting should be larger than life, but rather she could use at least one exaggerated trait to help her stand out from the pack—Papyrus has his bravado, Sans has laziness and jokes, Undyne has intensity, Alphys has awkwardness, and Mettaton has his showmanship. Not every Undertale character is like this, but I feel like Martlet was intended to fit a similar mold—we catch glimpses of it, like her overly long “P.S.” messages amended to her first puzzle, but imo she doesn’t go far enough consistently enough (assuming that was the intent).

One last thing that I want to touch on is Martlet’s contingency plan for Clover that comes into play in the No Mercy run, where she injects herself and becomes “Zenith Martlet,” as fans have dubbed her. Conceptually I’m fine with the idea of Martlet having an ace up her sleeve that she’s too indecisive to actually use in most scenarios.

This feels in-character for her and I can even look past a scatterbrained character with no planning skills having a plan like this since it’s largely Martlet appropriating another character’s plan. The main thing that I find questionable about Martlet’s plan is that it relies on Alphys’ determination extraction experiments.

We the audience know what that is, but how does Martlet know about them or even what to look for? We do know that underground residents were asked to donate fallen down monsters to the lab, but seemingly nothing is revealed to the public about the nature of the experiments. Even Ceroba, who had a vested interest in learning all she could, seems to be completely in the dark. In the pacifist ending, Martlet offers to investigate the experiment for Ceroba, implying she didn’t know the full story either. I also question how Martlet would’ve been able to venture into the true lab seemingly without running into a single amalgamate, given that she never brings them up in pacifist.

Now, my issue here is not the supposed “plothole” that this creates. My main issue is that a more reasonable solution was sitting right there: Chujin’s monster serum. I legitimately wonder if earlier drafts of this game’s story had Martlet using Chujin’s serum instead of Alphys’ extract, because the former would bring everything full-circle and it would tie in more naturally with the flashback scene of Martlet with Chujin.

Now, the obvious answer is that Chujin’s serum was never completed, but I can’t help but wonder if perhaps this wasn’t always the case. During Ceroba’s flashback, we can see a case with two syringes—one full and the other seemingly empty.

This is just my own speculation, but I can’t help but wonder if it was once intended for Ceroba to use one syringe on Kanako and for Martlet to have taken the other. Obviously this doesn’t jive with the story as it’s currently written—Martlet is clearly taken aback when she learns of the experiments that Chujin conducted. Still, part of me wonders if an earlier draft had Chujin entrust Martlet with a prototype of the serum to keep her safe.

I think it’d be fitting if the no mercy route were to reveal that Martlet was a lot more privy to Chujin’s less savory actions than she let on, and that even in pacifist she kept this knowledge to herself of self-preservation or shame. This would fit with a line of hers in the no mercy fight after her flashback of Chujin:

It would be fitting for the NM run if we were to learn that there was always a seed of doubt and mistrust between Martlet and Clover, even during the best of times.

The Feisty Five

I’ll be brief, but when these guys first showed up my first thought was “great, I’ll never remember all these new characters” and I’m glad I was wrong. While they don’t have quite the depth that the main characters do, they’re all memorable in their own way. They’re also the first characters in the game to get a serious chuckle out of me and I wish we got more of them. If we’re comparing quirky miniboss squads, these guys clear the Snowdin canine unit and Sweet Cap’n Cakes. There, I said it.

Starlo

This is the coldest take ever and I won’t even try to bury the lede: Starlo is the best Undertale Yellow character. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s flawed, he has layers, he has great moments of pathos with Ceroba, and he has a backstory that isn’t tragic yet still feels necessary to his character.

Here’s another cold take: Dunes/Wild East is the best part of the game. Dark Ruins and Snowdin, while not bad, still feel very much like typical fare for a romhack or fangame. Wild East is the first area that truly feels like Undertale, which is ironic since it’s also the first completely-original area.

By extension, Starlo is the one original character who feels most like he could be an Undertale character. It’s easy to take for granted all the little nuances that Toby injects into his characters to make them stand out, which is probably why I felt so lukewarm towards Yellow’s cast up until Starlo’s introduction.

One thing I admire about Undertale’s core cast is that each character has their own unique manner of speaking, to the point where you can identify a character’s dialogue without needing a dialogue portrait or typer sound. Starlo shares this trait, speaking in a semi-stereotypical drawl while occasionally misspelling words (FEISTYJ, dual vs duel). It’s a small touch but it goes a long way to endearing me to the characters in these games.

Although Starlo is mostly a comedic character, he still has plenty of depth. Another hallmark trait of Toby Fox characters is that they have multiple sides to them that seem contradictory at first glance but actually tell you something profound about the character (Papyrus’ bravado masking his loneliness, Sans’ joking to cope with his harsh outlook, Alphys’ awkwardness stemming from her guilt).

Starlo also fits this trend, first presented as a dashing and charismatic lawman that is nothing more than the mask of a nerdy and immature farmboy. And I would say Starlo’s fatal flaw is immaturity—not because of his interests, but because of his attitude. Starlo treats his friends like playthings, takes what he wants from Clover and Martlet when he first meets them, and he acts utterly irresponsible with his (or rather, Blackjack’s) firearms.

We learn from Starlo’s mom that he once pined after Ceroba and that he took a long time to move on.

It’s also implied that Starlo had a grudge against Chujin, which could have been due to the two having differing opinions on human culture or Starlo’s own jealousy over Ceroba.

We can also see this immaturity reach an ugly conclusion if Ceroba is killed in the so-called false or “flawed” pacifist ending. Starlo previously trained Clover to carry the weight of taking a life and also taught them the value of sacrificing one life to save many, but Starlo immediately throws this out the window as soon as Clover acts (as far as he’s aware) in self-defense.

This is a case where I’d argue that Starlo is right but for the wrong reasons. Starlo’s not so much recanting his earlier philosophy as he’s simply upset because someone he cared about was sacrificed this time—had it been a stranger or a ne’er-do-well like Vengeful Virgil then I doubt Starlo would’ve parted ways with Clover so bitterly. That’s just my interpretation, anyway.

None of this is to say that Starlo is always immature. When it comes to his interactions with Ceroba he’s often the most sensitive and emotionally-mature person in the room, which is a trait that we only see grow in him after he gets a reality check in the Wild East. When trying to talk Ceroba down we see Starlo give his respect to Chujin, despite their past differences, and he’s patient and understanding to the utmost once the fight is finally over.

This doesn’t mean that Starlo is a doormat for Ceroba either, as we earlier see him confront her and call her out when he suspects foul play involving Kanako—he clearly cares for Ceroba a lot but won’t sit idly by while she ruins her life or the lives of others.

Honestly, Starlo’s bond with Ceroba is a contender for the most wholesome relationship (platonic or otherwise) in the entire franchise—yes, I’m actually saying that there’s an aspect of this game’s writing that rivals and perhaps even surpasses Undertale and Deltarune.

I realize a lot of my analysis of Yellow’s writing has skewed negative, but as a reminder I am grading this game on a curve because it’s a companion piece to one of the best-written games of all time. To give Yellow a bit more praise, I think it might actually do a better job than Undertale at portraying characters’ moments of vulnerability and allowing them to cut to the emotional core of an issue, as seen with Starlo and Ceroba’s late-game interactions as well as Clover’s ultimate fate and its aftermath.

Unlike Undertale, there was no moment in Yellow that quite made me cry, but moments in the pacifist ending came close. I consider this quite the feat because the final outcome of Yellow’s pacifist ending is easily predicted from the start and the way that it plays out is a concept that would be difficult for any writer to sell. Yellow was backed into a corner by being a prequel, whereas Undertale had free reign to tell whatever story it wanted. In many ways I feel Yellow’s ending did just about the best job it could with the hand that it was dealt—it’s not perfect, and in one or two areas I feel it overplays its hand (which I’ll cover shortly), but the writing succeeds far more than I would’ve thought it would have with such a concept.

Axis

This’ll be another brief entry, but I wanted to include Axis since he always seems to get left out of fanworks. I enjoy Axis but I’m not sure I fully understand him. His overall arc and goals are very straightforward, but for the life of me I can’t really nail down what his personality is. He’s funny and memorable, which goes a long way for me, but I can’t really wax poetic about him beyond saying that he’s your stock quirky robot. It is a bit of a shame that, like Dalv, he’s largely isolated to one area and has little to no interaction with the rest of the cast.

I suppose one thing that bothers me is how robots in this game aren’t treated as people, which feels at odds with the broader themes of Undertale. We’re taught that amalgamates and even a soulless flower are still people, so having robots that lack free will and don’t even count as EXP kinda rubs me the wrong way. I generally don’t like when fictional works treat sentient robots as less than human or “soulless.” In my view, the true point behind sentient robot stories isn’t to debate whether robots have souls, but rather to question what a soul is and who gets to decide who has one and who doesn’t, or whether they exist at all.

Robots in fiction are meant to be a reflection of humans, and the robots in Yellow could have been presented as a reflection of video game characters as a whole—can free will exist when you’re programmed to fulfill a function? Unlike in our world, souls are a scientifically measurable quantity in Undertale’s universe, so I guess Yellow’s portrayal of “soulless” robots works on a technicality, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Ceroba

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Ceroba is the most controversial character in the game, and I find my own opinions of her (and her family) to be polarized as well. In a neutral run she’s barely noticeable but in pacifist she eventually becomes the main focus of the story. I’ve seen some people criticize Ceroba’s level of focus, but I’d liken it to Alphys and Flowey’s elevated level of focus in Undertale’s true pacifist ending. In other words, it doesn’t bother me.

Ceroba’s personality is a bit of an anomaly for me in the sense that she’s not quirky like a typical Undertale character, and yet I feel that aspect of her works for the story that Yellow tells. Previously I mentioned how Martlet didn’t really “wow” me as a character in part due to her lacking a sufficiently “larger than life” personality, but I feel Ceroba succeeds where Martlet didn’t for me because (1) Ceroba is clearly not intended to be a comic relief character and (2) Ceroba often acts as the straight man to other characters like Starlo and the Steamworks machines, whereas Martlet often feels like she has no one to work off of her besides Clover (for whatever that’s worth). In many cases, Ceroba’s understated reaction to things or her attempts to parse or explain them rationally end up making scenes funnier, such as when Starlo cuts off her piece on the ethical quandary of his trolley problem.

Having said that, I do think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that the game doesn’t expand more on Ceroba’s own interests or quirks outside of her family. While showcasing a character’s hobbies can sometimes feel like checking an item off of a list, it helps add a bit of texture to a character that makes them that much more believable.

Not knowing this information doesn’t “ruin” Ceroba or anything, but it’s a bit disappointing that most of her “talk” dialogue in the steamworks, while interesting, pertains to her immediate surroundings or her family and friends instead of herself. The most we get is that she used to have a gym membership and (if I recall) she was once a waitress. We later get to see her room and all that’s in there is a bed, a photo, and her clothes. After seeing all the loving detail put into Papyrus and Alphys’ living areas in Undertale, it’s such a shame to see Ceroba’s opportunity squandered.

Oddly enough, if there’s one existing bit of characterization that I think could’ve been retooled sightly, it’d be Ceroba’s dynamic with Clover. Ceroba is a mother who lost a child around Clover’s age (or younger) but she’s also distrustful of humans and had a husband who hated them. You’d think that Ceroba would react strongly to Clover one way or the other, either distrusting them as a human or having a soft spot for them due to Clover being a child, or feeling conflicted between these two outlooks. Instead Ceroba seems utterly casual around Clover.

Initially her laid back attitude served as a nice contrast to the overbearing wackiness of Starlo and the Feisty Five and helped endear Ceroba to me as a character, but it begins to feel a bit out of place when she says things like "I respect the hell out of you" to a child.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but the way Ceroba treats Clover makes sense for how she’d treat a stranger who was a monster, given what we see of her personality, but I’m just not sure it makes sense that she’d treat Clover that way specifically. I’d be fine with it if the narrative unpacked the idea—maybe she’s casual around Clover because she’s too world-weary to muster a strong reaction, or maybe she’s forcing herself to act casual to hide her true plans for Clover, or maybe she never fully agreed with Chujin’s rhetoric on humans and is acting against them out of pragmatism, or maybe she never liked kids until she had one of her own, etc.

Speaking of kids, I guess there’s no avoiding the elephant in the room: Ceroba’s backstory. If I had to guess, I’d wager this is probably the most controversial portion of Undertale Yellow’s entire narrative, and I have a lot to say about it.

To start, I’ll say that I really like the way that (most) of Ceroba’s backstory is doled out to the player piece by piece over the course of a playthrough. As early as Snowdin you hear mention of Chujin, then in Wild East you can piece together from various bits of dialogue that Ceroba had a family that she’s reluctant to speak about. Steamworks fleshes out Ceroba and Chujin’s pasts considerably, albeit mostly hidden behind optional talk dialogue.

Steamworks also has one of my favorite scenes in the game when Ceroba learns why Chujin got fired—it technically doesn’t contribute anything major to the main plot, but it helps illustrate Chujin’s flawed methods that Ceroba willfully overlooks so that she can double down on furthering his “legacy.”

Right before Hotland is when the other shoe drops and Starlo confronts Ceroba—this was the moment that had me hooked on uncovering the mystery of Ceroba’s past. This leads right into the abandoned Ketsukane estate, which is another of my favorite sequences in the game. I was always a huge fan of Undertale’s True Lab and Ceroba’s house scratches that itch for me. The two locations have a very different tone and style of gameplay (or lack of), but both are dripping with unsettling atmosphere and environmental storytelling. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always been creeped out by abandoned houses—not decrepit haunted mansions per se, but places that were abandoned so recently that you’re not sure whether someone might still be lurking inside.

Unfortunately, I start to run out of nice things to say about this storyline as soon as Clover and Martlet enter the estate’s basement. Before we descend into that chasm, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I am not a “Cinema Sins” kind of guy. I do not go into a work of fiction looking for inconsistencies to complain about. My philosophy is that I can overlook the occasional plothole or retcon or bending of the rules if it’s done in service to a good story or memorable character moment.

If anything, I find it annoying when a story tries too hard to cover all its bases with exposition out of fear that some smartass is going to find some plot detail to complain about—this just draws more attention to potential “plotholes” that could’ve easily been ignored. I don’t care if the eagles could’ve carried the ring to Mordor and I don’t care whether the ark of the covenant would’ve killed the bad guys in Raiders if Indy wasn’t there. At the end of the day, if a story is well told then I can overlook things like that, and if it’s not well told then my mind wanders and I begin to notice those sorts of things, but those nitpicks (more often than not) are not the underlying cause of the problem—lack of a compelling story or believable characters is.

So, getting back to the basement. Here we see Chujin’s tapes and the plot begins to lose me. Chujin wants to create a serum that will strengthen monsterkind and give normal monsters the power of a boss monster. All well and good. Where I start to take issue is the convoluted method of creating this serum and what it means for the story.

As a point of comparison, I always thought that the rule in Undertale of requiring a human soul plus a monster soul to pass through the barrier felt a little convoluted and contrived, but it seems to exist for the sake of forcing a “kill or be killed” confrontation between Frisk and Asgore as well as explaining why Asriel passed through the barrier with Chara’s soul but (presumably) Chara alone couldn’t. In this way, the rule acts in service to the story and creates memorable character moments with Alphys and Asgore and gives Frisk a stronger temptation to kill Asgore during their fight. The two soul rule is a bit clunky, but I can begrudgingly accept it. Chujin’s serum fulfills a similar purpose but is clumsier in its execution.

To start, Chujin’s serum also requires a human soul and a boss monster soul—this makes sense, as the goal is to turn monsters into boss monsters and one can assume that human souls have some kind of preserving property that would keep the serum stable.

On top of that, the human soul must also be “pure of heart, uncorrupted.” I thought nothing of this line initially until it was reiterated during Ceroba’s flashback and I realized why it was in the story.

This concept bothers me for a number of reasons and it’s technically not even a plothole or inconsistency. It feels out of character for Chujin to frame things this way given how he views all humans as evil, and this purity rule seems to exist solely as a plot device to explain why Ceroba enacts her plan in pacifist but not in neutral runs. I feel like the story could’ve come up with a more organic method of explaining why Ceroba couldn’t be present or was otherwise occupied during the steamworks section in a neutral run, plus I feel like she wouldn’t let something like “purity” get in the way of attempting her plan if she was that dead-set on it, given how rarely humans appear in the Underground.

Lastly, we learn that Chujin and Kanako are both boss monsters, or at least “carry the boss monster gene,” which is an odd concept to me. You could argue that this revelation technically doesn’t contradict anything established in Undertale, but like the pure soul rule it just bugs me. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of the early days when the fandom thought that all bosses in Undertale were boss monsters instead of just the Dreemurr family. I won’t waste time rambling about the particulars of boss monster lore, but I think what bothers me with Chujin and Kanako is that it feels like yet another contrivance to explain why Ceroba’s actions had to involve Kanako specifically.

I’ve mentioned that Undertale’s two soul rule feels somewhat like a contrivance. One could argue that the Barrier requiring seven human souls to shatter is also a contrivance, but I think what makes that easier to swallow is that it’s a rule that’s established fairly early in the game. The reveals of the Barrier’s two “rules” are spaced apart from one another and each are given dramatic weight and time for the player to dwell on their implications.

The mechanics of Chujin’s serum, on the other hand, rely on multiple contrivances that are all spilled out onto the floor at once in the final stretch of the game right before they become necessary to explain Ceroba’s motivations, which only makes their narrative purpose feel all the more transparent.

Getting back to Ceroba, we’re left with her plan and what she did to Kanako. Now, I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt here and say that I don’t mind the particulars of whether Ceroba’s plan involving Clover would have worked or not—as far as I’m concerned, Chujin’s plans could have been doomed from the start even with a “pure” soul. The point wasn’t whether Chujin’s plan would’ve worked but rather how Ceroba’s grief has turned her own life (and by extension the lives of her family) into a sunk cost—she feels that she has to go through with her plan or else all her family’s suffering was for nothing.

In many ways this makes the contrived requirements for Chujin’s serum feel less necessary, since the serum’s mechanics could’ve been kept vague or it could’ve even been implied that Ceroba was simply repeating the same experiments as before hoping for different results.

I’ve put it off long enough, but it’s time to talk about that scene. You know the one: the big reveal flashback at the climax of Ceroba’s pacifist fight. Again, I’ll try to be charitable and say that I don’t absolutely hate the idea of Ceroba testing Chujin’s serum on Kanako. I mean, I would hate the act on a moral level if she were a real person, but I don’t hate the idea as a story concept. Still, my charity has its limits.

I’ll just come right out and say it: the scene where Ceroba injects Kanako is hard to watch—not because it’s tragic, but because it’s just not a good scene. My original write-up for this part was far harsher, but I’ll spare the vitriol. This scene has been memed to hell and back by people more critical of the game and… I can’t disagree with them—this is my least-favorite scene in the game.

(Image from ScottFalco's "Undertale Yellow with a side of salt" video)

The most obvious criticism I’ve seen is the fact that Chujin specifically told Ceroba not to do the exact thing that she does. That’s a fair point and honestly, yeah, I think the simplest writing fix would’ve been for that line not to have been in Chujin’s tape to begin with so that Ceroba doesn’t look willfully ignorant on top of being recklessly negligent.

Tbh, it feels a little out of character for Chujin to say something like that because I got the impression that Chujin wasn’t always the most thoughtful or attentive dad. His own tapes mention that he didn’t keep an eye on Kanako when a monster was attacked in Snowdin, and even then Chujin was more preoccupied with tracking down the human than with comforting his own daughter. He made nice things for Kanako, sure, but even that could be explained as him being more wrapped up in the work than her. It’d be wrong to say that he didn’t care about Kanako at all, but I got the impression that he had the wrong priorities and it’d be fitting if Ceroba’s own actions followed that pattern.

That being said, I can’t solely blame Chujin’s warning for why Ceroba’s flashback doesn’t work. The scene as a whole is just dreadful, even when viewed in isolation from the rest of the narrative. There’s so many issues big and small with this scene, like Kanako being able to read the word “corruption” but not “extract,” Ceroba’s immediate turnaround after the slightest prodding, or the predictable outcome of the whole thing that’s dragged out for what feels like an eternity.

You know, I’ve heard some people critical of Undertale say that the true pacifist ending to that game felt maudlin—I disagree, but in some places I could see where they were coming from. Calling the Kanako flashback maudlin would honestly feel like letting it off easy. If I wanted to be mean I’d call it manipulative, but honestly I think a more fitting term would be a comedy of errors. It feels less like tragedy and more like dark humor bordering on self-parody of what an Undertale character’s sad backstory would be.

So what should’ve been done differently? The easy and safer option I’ve seen suggested would be for Kanako to stumble across Chujin’s research and inject herself, with Ceroba feeling guilt for allowing it to happen. I would prefer this over what we got, but I said earlier that I don’t completely hate the concept of Ceroba experimenting on Kanako, so how can that idea possibly work? Besides getting rid of Chujin’s overly-specific warning, I honestly think the best fix for this scene would simply be to not show it. Don’t remove the events from the backstory, but just don’t reenact them onscreen. Normally it’s better to show than tell, but there have always been exceptions to that rule.

I’m reminded of how Undertale didn’t show us Asriel’s death or the Dreemurrs’ divorce, and only offered a glimpse of Chara’s buttercup plan. These were cases where less was more—letting the players imagine these events in their heads sidestepped any potential tastelessness and seeing the aftermath of these events and how they affected the characters involved painted a vivid enough picture. I think Ceroba would be a perfect fit for a similar approach.

If we need to see something, then either portray it via montage like Asriel’s memories or only portray Kanako finding Chujin’s basement and Ceroba stumbling upon her after she’s viewed the tapes. Ceroba could then explain to Clover that Kanako pleaded with her for months or even years to let her help with Chujin’s experiments. With time Kanako only become more stubborn and their relationship more strained. The whole time Ceroba knew that only Kanako’s soul would work for the experiment but she tried to remain in denial and hope an alternative would present itself. After countless research dead-ends used up all but one vial of the leftover human soul extract, Ceroba gave in to Kanako’s demands in a moment of weakness. And that’s all it took—one moment she was there and the next she was gone.

Not to toot my own horn, but I feel this kind of summary would’ve worked better because it leaves things up to interpretation. Was Kanako still a child when this happened or was it many years later? Did Kanako understand what she was signing up for? Is Ceroba’s recounting of the events reliable or is she merely rationalizing her actions after the fact? It’s not perfect and it’s still somewhat “safe” compared to the game’s swing for the fences. Unfortunately, a big swing means nothing if it misses, and even less if the bat goes flying and hits someone.

Despite what I just said, the Kanako scene doesn’t ruin Ceroba for me as a character. It blemishes her boss fight for me, though I have other issues with that fight besides the flashback (as I’ve mentioned). When thinking back on this game’s characters and story, I mostly just ignore the particulars of the Kanako scene unless if I need to sit through it again. I view it as the equivalent of a flubbed line read or a boom mic visible in a shot--I can see the pieces that were meant to be there underneath the lackluster execution.

Surprisingly, Ceroba’s still my 2nd favorite original character in Yellow, though a lot of this is owed to her dynamic with Star, and part of me wonders if I like her more for the character she could’ve been rather than the character we got. Still, I’ll always remember the buildup to the mystery of Ceroba’s backstory, even if the reveal failed to deliver.

Flowey

Flowey is one of my favorite Undertale characters as well as the only character from Undertale featured in a recurring lead role in Yellow, so I was curious to see how this game would handle him.

When this game was first announced, many fans debated the “canonicity” of whether Flowey would have encountered the human who fell prior to Frisk and whether Flowey would retain his save abilities in such a scenario. Often this debate overshadowed the other aspects of Flowey’s portrayal, so to avoid doing the same, I’ll just say that I don’t believe Toby ever intended for Flowey’s save abilities to function in relation to a human like how they’re portrayed in Undertale Yellow. However, I don’t take issue with this “lore contradiction” because I feel that the way Flowey is utilized in this aspect works for the story that Yellow is trying to tell. Flowey’s role is to limit Clover’s own powers and to keep their story on-track.

It’s easier to tell a prequel story where the main character is destined to die if that character doesn’t also have the ability to return from the dead at will or turn back time, so having Flowey fill that power vacuum makes sense. Despite this, Clover is still given plenty of agency. Flowey only railroads their story in two notable instances: whenever Clover is going to live with Toriel or when Martlet offers to have Clover come live with her in a neutral run. Both outcomes would be a bit of a cop-out for the game’s main conflict and would be the boring option as well (sorry fanfic authors)—Flowey agrees with this sentiment, making it feel justified that he’d intervene.

Having gotten that out of the way, what do I think of Flowey’s portrayal? Compared to Undertale, it’s interesting to think how much more screentime Flowey receives in Undertale Yellow, despite Flowey being the main antagonist and ostensible central character of Undertale. Since Flowey’s story can’t be allowed to conclude in Yellow, his character is kept in some degree of stasis—in many ways, Yellow’s portrayal can be seen as “Flowey, but more.” That might sound like a pejorative, but for the most part I think it works here. Flowey’s interactions with Clover honestly make him feel a little underutilized in Undertale by comparison.

That said, Undertale was a game intended to have moments of isolation, so having Flowey chime in at every save point likely would have diminished that effect and also made Flowey less threatening due to overexposure. I think Yellow can get away with giving more screentime to Flowey because for most of the game his mask hasn’t dropped—he has every bit of ill intent that he did in Undertale, but for the sake of his plans he has to play along at being your friend for far longer than he did in Undertale.

The result is that very little of what Flowey says in Yellow can be taken at face value once you know his aims. Until that point, however, I think the game does a good enough job at keeping you guessing as to how far gone Flowey is and at what point in his moral decline this story is meant to take place. If someone played this game without playing Undertale first, they’d probably chalk up Flowey’s mannerisms to him just having an odd and occasionally morbid sense of humor, which isn’t far from the truth.

One thing that I appreciate about Yellow’s portrayal of Flowey is his dynamic with Clover—the game manages to thread the needle of not making their relationship an also-ran of Flowey and Frisk or Flowey and “Chara” from Undertale’s No Mercy run. For most of the game you get the sense that Flowey views Clover as a means to an end that he’s forced to humor and put up with, but that deep down he likely has some small sentimentality towards them (mainly shown in the pacifist ending).

I think Flowey’s relationship with Clover in neutral and pacifist gives us a look into how he likely acted around the other monsters of the underground back when he tried to solve their problems or form bonds with them—he can’t fully relate to them but is willing to fake it ‘til he makes it, or rather until they make it to the outcome that he wants. If I were to draw a more direct comparison, I think Flowey’s bond with Clover might be the most similar to his bond with Papyrus—he’s implied to have spent a lot of time with each of them and found them each amusing in their own regard, but ultimately Flowey isn’t above using them or casting them aside.

What I find especially compelling about Flowey and Clover is the turn that their partnership takes in Yellow’s No Mercy route. Here Flowey initially seems to be cautiously optimistic about Clover’s rampage, but as his advice is ignored he grows increasingly exasperated with their actions. It’s strange to say, but it’s a refreshing dynamic to see Flowey outright grow to hate his human companion—while he voiced plenty of insults and disdain towards Frisk, it came off more as condescension or an attempt at intimidation.

In Yellow, however, you can really feel Flowey becomng absolutely fed up with Clover, not just for their pushiness and disobedience in the no mercy route but also for the hundreds of runs where Flowey has had to string them along and, in the process, be strung along himself. This development is much better-paced in Yellow than Flowey’s turn toward fearing Chara in Undertale—it’s amazing what can be done when you’re allowed to have more than four conversations with a character.

That said, I don’t think there’s any one Flowey moment in Yellow that quite lives up to Flowey’s speech in New Home or the conclusion to his story in the form of Asriel—those two moments will forever be peak Flowey to me. When comparing Undertale Flowey to Yellow Flowey, it’s a case of quantity vs quality, but in this case the “quantity” is still pretty good.

If I had to voice any complaints for Yellow Flowey beyond a broad “it’s not as good as something near-perfect”, I will say that when Flowey’s mask does drop in Yellow, he doesn’t sound quite as crass or childish as he does in Undertale—something I feel is important to him as a villain, but this is a very minor nitpick since he has plenty of lines in this game that go hard. I didn’t even notice the difference in speech styles until I went back and watched footage of Undertale and realized “oh yeah, I guess he sounds a bit more childish here.”

I suppose there’s one other thing I should discuss regarding Flowey. This is a topic that I intentionally saved for last since I find it’s a perfect capstone for Undertale Yellow and my opinions on it: Flowey’s boss fight. If ever there was a case of “Flowey, but more,” it would be this fight. For years Undertale fans have speculated and wished and wondered what a fight against plain old vanilla Flowey would be like. Countless fangames and fan battles have tried.

Yellow opts for an unorthodox approach by centering the entire fight within Flowey’s mind—this framing is used to its fullest and then some, allowing for interface-screws and psychedelic attack patterns showcasing Flowey’s twistedness, his self-loathing, and his various forms of retraumatization.

Players are attacked by phantoms of any bosses that they killed, complete with Floweytale-esque corrupted designs. This aspect of the fight dovetails perfectly with Flowey’s comment about only enjoying the moments of Clover’s run where they “gave in” to their violent urges, and clearly these moments are etched in Flowey’s memories for Clover to relive.

Afterwards we’re treated to a peek behind the curtain at Flowey’s subconscious, featuring a collage of his first runs as a flower—this whole sequence adapts my favorite Flowey moment from Undertale while not tipping its hand too much by revealing Flowey’s true identity, as it easily could have in less-skilled hands. We’re given just enough to ponder without spoiling things for the mythical gamer who tries playing Yellow before Undertale.

Next up is a brief horror fakeout where Clover “reunites” with Martlet. I don’t have much to add other than the telegraphing being a bit obvious but not in a way that majorly detracts from the moment. Overall it just makes me consider that this fight as a whole might be scarier than anything in Undertale

Finally we have the climax of the fight. I’m not quite sure what to call it. Photoshop Flowey 2.0? To be brief, the visual spectacle shown in this phase surpasses not only the visuals of any sequence (so far) in Undertale or Deltarune, but I think it’s unlikely that future chapters of Deltarune will feature anything with visual flare on the level of this finale.

That’s probably the highest praise I’ve given to Undertale Yellow so far, which is what makes this next part so difficult. I’m sure this will go down as my hottest take in this entire review, and it breaks my heart to say it given the clear effort on display from the developers, but…

I did not care for the Flowey fight.

How can I even say that? Was all of my prior praise just a lie? Not at all—I meant every word of it and then some. So how is it possible that I didn’t like this fight? You’ll notice that I broke down the Flowey fight into its individual phases and aspects, praising each in isolation. You might also notice that my praise was aimed at the spectacle and underlying concepts of the fight, which are fantastic, but I had very little to say about the actual experience of playing the fight—and that’s because I found the fight to be an utter slog to get through. In hindsight, it might actually be my least-favorite fight in the entire Undertale franchise if we’re solely talking about the gameplay. I’d rather fight a Jerry than have to fight this thing again.

I’ll admit up front that I sucked at this fight when I played it. I sucked at all of Yellow’s final bosses and initially didn’t care for their gameplay. I eventually warmed up to Ceroba and Martlet’s fights as I got better and learned to beat them without needing easy mode, but the Flowey fight never clicked for me in the same way despite arguably being the easiest of the three.

So what’s the problem? There are little things here and there—I found some of the phase 1 attacks a bit obnoxious to dodge, though nothing major. I found the collision detection in the vine chase sequences to be a bit clunky, resulting in one or two deaths that felt unearned, but none of these issues are enough to sink the fight.

No, two major missteps that come to my mind are length and repetition.

Out of curiosity, after my neutral run I looked up gameplay videos of the Yellow Flowey fight and the Omega Flowey fight from Undertale: on average, Yellow’s fight took players twice as long to complete as the Omega Flowey fight. The difference is so stark that a “no hit” speedrun of Yellow’s fight with dialogue skipped, the intro cutscene edited out, and no attacks from killed bosses is still longer than an Omega fight played normally.

I want to be clear that my criticism here is not “it’s different from the Omega fight, therefore it’s bad.” The Omega Flowey fight, in my opinion, already drags at times, and it’s probably my least-favorite final boss in Undertale despite having the most effort put into it. I already take (minor) issue with the Omega Flowey fight for overstaying its welcome, but Yellow’s fight is beyond the pale. One nice thing I can say is that Yellow’s fight at least tries to break itself up with an intermission of sorts in the middle, but the whole experience is still technically one fight, so in some ways this just feels like padding, particularly the Martlet scene.

To give a non-Undertale point of comparison, the Flowey fight reminded me (oddly enough) of Darth Vader’s hallway fight scene in the film Rogue One. For many fans this scene was considered the highlight of the entire film, but a vocal minority at the time criticized this scene for being irrelevant to the film’s central characters and unnecessary to the overall plot—it was just something thrown in for fan service that could have been cut at no detriment to the overall narrative. While I can understand the latter perspective, I have no issues with the Vader scene at all—if anything I think it enhances the third act’s feeling of desperation. but overall it’s just a cool scene and that alone makes its inclusion feel warranted.

So why do I feel different about Vader’s scene compared to Flowey’s fight? After all, both are action-heavy “scenes” featuring the main villain of the original installment doing what they do best at the end of a prequel that wasn’t centered on them. The difference is that Vader’s scene is less than 2 minutes long. It’s closer to 60-90 seconds if we only count the portion where he’s onscreen and it’s less than 1% of the film’s runtime. Conversely, there’s a no commentary neutral run of Undertale Yellow on Youtube where the Flowey fight takes up about 15% of the overall run. Had Vader’s scene been that long, even if it were expertly shot and choreographed while being broken up with bits of pathos, I would’ve been checking my watch and waiting for it to be over.

Still, I could forgive the Flowey fight’s length if it had variety and was building toward something. Surely this is true of the Yellow fight, right? Well, I would say that the Yellow Flowey fight probably has the widest variety of total attacks in the game—it has six unique photoshop phases as well as copied attacks from previous bosses in the first phase. The problem is that these are part of his total attacks but not necessarily his most common attacks—half of the ones I just listed are optional depending on who you killed and the other half are for brief one-off phases.

For the majority of the fight you’ll be dealing with Flowey’s other attacks: his standard attacks, which are recycled ad nauseam with little variation and no iteration. In phase 1 this isn’t too noticeable if you only killed one or two bosses, but if you killed most (like I did) then every unique boss attack is sandwiched between a standard Flowey attack and a vine chase sequence, which really bloats the runtime of the fight. Still, I’d argue that phase 2 is the worse culprit in this regard.

For those who’ve played, let me know if this sounds familiar to you: four vines shoot up out of the floor, four piranha plants emerge twice spitting up bullets, two hands scroll across the screen lazily scattering pellets, three guns materialize and fire at your location, a bomb with an “X” or “+” shape detonates, a small circle with spikes orbiting it homes in on your position, and two cowboys riding horses gallop by until one explodes, all while the song “Afterlife” plays from the beginning. Now tell me: which part of the fight am I referring to? If you guessed “more than half of all attacks in the 2nd phase,” then you’d be right!

Now, some of you might be questioning why I’m complaining about lack of “variety” when I just listed off seven individual attacks and earlier I complained about Yellow bosses using too many types of attacks. Well, the problem is that these same seven attacks are all used in sequence with each other over and over and over with no progression—each phase of this lasts 25-30 seconds and it’s repeated at least 7 times in the fight (more if you die).

Combined, no joke, this one sequence of attacks lasts 3 minutes, longer than an entire pacifist Toriel fight (dialogue included). Don’t believe me? Look it up on Youtube. You spend at least 10% of the Flowey fight dodging this one attack pattern. You literally spend an entire Toriel fight dodging just one prolonged attack pattern. And as the cherry on top, “Afterlife” always starts over from the beginning each time this sequence plays—just to drill into your head how repetitive this all is.

To be fair, Omega Flowey has a similar problem of repeating a ~25 second attack phase multiple times, but I find it more bearable there because:

Omega Flowey randomly uses 3-4 types of attacks from his larger arsenal per phase instead of trying to cram nearly every single one in every time like in Yellow, which (ironically) makes the Omega sequences feel less samey

Omega Flowey makes use of loading, which spices up the encounters by feeling unfair initially until you notice the save messages in the corner that telegraph them

Each of Omega’s sequences has a Fight button that, though optional, acts as a goal and motivator, as opposed to the player just impotently killing time until the phase ends, and

Omega Flowey’s music doesn’t start over from the beginning each time he attacks.

Those last two might seem minor since they don’t directly affect the overall gameplay, but I honestly think they’re the most crucial because they give the player a goal and a feeling of progression, even if it’s illusory.

Probably my biggest issue with Yellow’s Flowey fight, even more so than the length and the repetition, is that it ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. It pretty much can’t be allowed to go anywhere due to the aforementioned “stasis” of Flowey’s character arc. Flowey can’t suffer a grand defeat or learn a lesson that impacts his character in any major way, which only makes me question why this fight is here at all.

Omega Flowey, while feeling hopeless and repetitive in some places, has a clear progression, goal, and conclusion that leads to Frisk either reinforcing Flowey’s beliefs or causing Flowey to seemingly question them and offer a path to the true pacifist ending. There’s a reason why the song “Finale” is considered an underrated gem—because it shows a clear turning point and building momentum in that fight. I’m not saying Yellow’s fight needed to copy this same moment, but instead it just peters out with nothing to show for itself. I mean, do I even need to say anything when the game itself basically makes my case for me?

So what would have been better? Personally, I think the first phase of the fight is largely fine as-is. Phase 1 is by no means without its flaws, but it’s the phase that’s most relevant to Clover and the overall story on a thematic level—the boss attacks are a consequence of Clover’s actions and the vine chases (though repetitive) are meant to symbolize Clover’s endlessly repeated runs. And the thing is? The pieces are already there for the fight to end in a more natural way that respects the player’s time.

If the fight were to be given a page 1 rewrite, then I would end it at the section with Flowey’s subconscious that shows his past. Why?

It’s a great scene on its own that should be kept,

The scene would actually be relevant to the fight instead of it going unremarked on like it currently is (seriously, Flowey has nothing to say about it?),

It would fit the central conceit of the fight—Flowey is able to peer into Clover’s memories but Clover can do the same to Flowey and that scares him, and as a result...

It would be a more believable and character-driven “off ramp” for Flowey to back out of the fight.

This last point is especially important because we see throughout Undertale Yellow that Flowey is constantly hiding from other monsters—he clearly doesn’t want to entangle himself with them or have them interfere in his affairs. We can also pick up from his dialogue in Undertale and, to a lesser degree, Yellow that Flowey doesn’t want to talk about his past life as Asriel.

Having Clover intrude upon that territory would likely spur a strong reaction from Flowey, to the point where he’d rather abandon his plans, albeit temporarily, than open up that side of himself to a stranger. This would not only make the fight shorter and end it on a more emotionally resonant note, but I feel it also makes more sense for the narrative and themes of Yellow.

Flowey’s rationalization for letting Clover go could be something to the effect of needing to “tidy up” his head space before he’s ready to share it with someone else. Perhaps in the process he could drop a hint that he’s only opened himself up like this once before (with Chara) or that he had thought he had buried those old memories for good.

I also feel like this explanation would work better in the greater context of Flowey’s actions—Flowey quitting the fight out of boredom raises the question of why he’d repeat the fight on future neutral runs or why he’d be so confident that he could absorb the six souls in Undertale if one was too stubborn for him. Instead, having Flowey be emotionally unprepared for his plan but trying to find a workaround would lend itself better to him trying again in the future—to him it was just a little slip-up that he can overcome with enough attempts.

I don’t want to give the impression that my critique here is “the Flowey fight wasn’t done the way I’d have done it, therefore it’s bad.” My suggested “rewrite” to the fight is merely piggybacking off of what was already there, which are great concepts that I could never have dreamed up myself. The problem is that there’s just too much. Way too much. It feels like not enough was cut during the planning stage and what we’re left with is the epitome of “less than the sum of its parts.”

Of course, my rewrite omits the 2nd phase entirely—something that couldn’t be done with the current fight since it’s the most visually stunning segment of the entire game—like it or not, that genie is out of the bottle.

If I had to give any suggestions to improve the fight that we currently have? I’d say that I don’t think the “afterlife” portions of the 2nd phase need to be repeated so often. I think the phase would be better paced if afterlife only occurred at the very beginning and very end, and instead each mini-phase just brought you right back to Flowey’s petal roulette wheel to take you into the next mini-phase.

None of this is to say that I hated the Flowey fight overall. I still love many of the concepts that the fight brings to the table and I’ll watch moments of it on Youtube from time to time, but I just don’t care to experience it again firsthand any time soon, which is pretty much the opposite of how I felt with the Omega Flowey fight.

Looking at Yellow’s final bosses now that I’ve completed them all, I think my favorite might actually be Zenith Martlet? Which is insane to me because I hated that fight the first time I tried it—anyone who shared a Discord with me can attest that I was complaining nonstop when I attempted that fight.

Even now I’d say the Zenith fight is sloppy and the bandaid solutions for it in the 1.1 patch only illustrate how unbalanced this fight originally was. I’ve never beaten it on 1.0, nor do I intend to, yet in 1.1 I’d say I probably enjoyed myself the most with this fight. It doesn’t overstay its welcome like Flowey, nor does it have anything as egregious as the Kanako cutscene in the Ceroba fight. It respects my time, it has great music (though that’s par for all the bosses), the attacks (while chaotic) mostly stick to a consistent handful of themes, and the narrative context of the fight works (minus the bit with Alphys’ lab).

At first I found the Zenith fight unfitting for Martlet as a character. I thought “what? Martlet isn’t some hidden badass,” but that was exactly the point—this isn’t who Martlet is, and reality catches up with her. The 2nd phase is my favorite part of the fight as we see, in typical Martlet fashion, she didn’t plan ahead and can only hopelessly flail about as the “enemy retreating” motif overtakes her theme. It’s a somewhat understated and undignified ending to the character and that’s exactly what makes it work—it’s another example of the game showing restraint and being all the better for it, as opposed to overreaching.

That said, if I wanted to cheat, I’d say my real favorite final boss is the Asgore “fight” from the false pacifist ending. It’s focused on the characters and their goals and it doesn’t try to be anything too flashy. It’s an even more understated yet fitting final boss than Martlet, though the rest of the “false” ending outside of Asgore is a bit lackluster since it’s just a glorified neutral ending.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, I’m sure you’ve all noticed the throughline here: Undertale Yellow is at its best when it’s tasteful and restrained, and at its worst when its ambitions run wild. Of course, that’s easy for me to say from the outside looking in. It’s likely that many of the things I enjoyed about Yellow were ambitious in their conception but were handled carefully enough to appear restrained and effortless. I have no intention of downplaying that—the project as a whole was ambitious, given the time and effort lovingly poured into it.

As I mentioned in the beginning, my criticisms are not intended to dissuade anyone from trying this game. I would not want this game to be forgotten, but I also would not want it to be uncritically praised as some flawless masterpiece that eclipses the original game—that not only does a disservice to the people who worked on Undertale but also to the people who worked on Undertale Yellow. Both games were carefully crafted and both games have their triumphs as well as their flaws.

The last thing that I would want any fan creator to take way from Undertale Yellow OR the original game would be “this was perfect, just copy what they did.” What’s important is understanding why things worked and where they could be improved. Despite Undertale Yellow’s reverence for Undertale, it takes risks and finds places to innovate over the original game. Not all of it works, but I can respect the effort.

And that sums up my overall opinion of the game—it’s a game that I like but a game that I respect even more. The best complement that I can give is that even the parts of the game I didn’t like still had good ideas evident within them. The pieces were there.

With some tweaks, fine-tuning, and the courage to reign in a couple aspects, I honestly think this game could be made to rival the original one day. But even if that day never comes, Undertale Yellow is still a fine game as-is. It’s not a game I consider “canon” like some fans have argued, but I still plan to replay it alongside the original in the future, and I can’t think of higher praise to give than that.

#undertale yellow #undertale #starlo #ceroba #martlet

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all-my-ocs · 7 months ago

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One Chance ch 1

Repost from my main account. Dividers by Saradika

After hearing that his daughter and brother were seen in a brothel, King Viserys needs to take decisive action. Luckily, his Hand has a solution.

Pairing: Daemon x FemOc

Warnings: typical era misogyny, ableist language.

One day. Not even twenty-four hours since his return from the Stepstones and he was already being kicked out of King’s Landing.

Again.

It had to be a record at this point.

Now (mostly) sobered up and repacked, he had suddenly been summoned to the Small Council chambers. He considered leaving his brother hanging for a while but decided against it. Viserys was already angry enough and he didn’t want their last interaction for gods know how long to just be more arguing.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be annoying. What else were younger siblings for, after all?

“Have you summoned me here to un-banish me, brother?” he asked with all of the cockiness he could muster as he swaggered into the room. His mood immediately soured when he saw Otto Hightower sitting next to Viserys.

“I take no joy in banishing you, Daemon,” Viserys sighed. “But I am prepared to offer you a deal, of sorts.”

He motions to Daemon’s usual council seat, and the prince plops down with as much audacity as he can muster. Viserys ignores it, but Otto glares, so he counts that a win anyway.

“I have not yet rewarded you for your victory in the Stepstones,” his brother continues. “While I will not grant your request to marry Rhaeyra, I am prepared to ask the High Septon to annul your marriage to Rhea Royce.”

Daemon narrows his eyes. His brother was a much better politician than most would give him credit for. “What’s the catch?”

Viserys starts to explain, but Otto decides to cut in (an attempt to ‘smooth things over’ no doubt). “There is no catch, Daemon. This is an opportunity. I know of a young woman who is in need of a husband—”

“So you’re releasing me from one forced marriage so you can force me into another. No, thank you.” He stands to leave, but the King raises a hand to stop him. Daemon really, really, wants to ignore it and leave anyway but there is a pleading look in his brother’s eye. So he doesn’t leave, but he doesn’t sit back down, either.

Viserys realizes that a compromise must be made. He orders his Hand to leave the small council chambers. Otto gives little resistance other than one of his many variations of ‘Your Grace.’ Once the two brothers are alone in the room, Daemon sits back down. Viserys slumps back in his chair, looking relieved that he doesn’t have to act kingly anymore.

“I know you, Daemon,” he starts. “And I would like to think that I know you more than our grandmother. I understand the political advantage of your marriage, but I always knew you and Rhea were incompatible. You are too much alike—stubborn and proud.”

If there were other people around, Daemon would loudly protest such a statement. But it’s just the two of them and there is no reputation to uphold. His brother is right, after all, he and his wife are far too much alike in all the wrong ways.

“I also know that you are a man who needs to be needed. You need a wife who depends on you—”

“I do not need a leech.”

“—for protection. This young woman is two and twenty. She must be married to preserve her family’s reputation.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Viserys sighs. “Nothing is wrong with her. She was… ill around the time her parents started looking for a suitable match.”

The way he says the word ‘ill’ gives Daemon pause. What kind of illness would require such discretion?

“What kind of illness?” he asks.

His brother deflects by saying, “I think it’s best for the family to explain that.”

If Viserys is presenting an illness as the issue, then there must be another catch. He can feel it. If her age and supposed illness are presented as potential deal-breakers, then the only other thing is…

“What House?” he asks.

“Mullendore.”

And there it is.

“So you intend to give me an old, sickly bride,” he growls, “from a minor House?”

And a House that is a bannerman of the Hightowers. Just when he thought his brother was making a decent political compromise, it turns out that Otto fucking Hightower has convinced Viserys to insult him thrice over.

“It is a good match,” Viserys protests.

“For Otto Hightower!”

“Otto Hightower does not wish to marry her.”

Daemon rolls his eyes. Of all the times for his brother to remember sarcasm, it’s now.

“I have already invited the family to the Red Keep.”

“Of course you have.”

“Give this a chance, Daemon. That’s all I ask. Give this an actual chance.”

And suddenly, they are boys again. There is no politics, no Iron Throne in the way. It’s just the two of them, the older brother asking a favor of the younger. And, out of respect for those bygone days, Daemon can do nothing but agree. But his pride will not let him capitulate entirely. He offers a compromise instead.

“One meeting brother. One chance and that is all.”

The family arrived in a little over a fortnight. Daemon found this quite interesting, considering how far away their manse was. Either they had particularly swift horses or Hightower’s plan had been in motion since before his homecoming.

To further annoy him, Daemon had only briefly seen his potential bride for a brief moment before being whisked away to the Small Council chamber to discuss the dowry and bride price with his brother and the Hand. All he saw was honey-blonde hair and a pale blue dress. At least she isn’t fat, he thought to himself.

He hoped the girl was nothing like her parents, or she was likely to be insufferable. Lady Mullendore didn’t speak throughout the whole meeting, instead staring quite pointedly at the table. Her husband was doing an impressive job of kissing ass while demanding far more than he deserved. Daemon would be impressed if it wasn’t so pitiful.

He didn’t really pay attention to the negotiations. The crown would be the one paying any bride price, after all. Lord Mullendore certainly wanted more out of the deal than he was willing to give himself.

“Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” he asked after several minutes of pointless haggling. “I have yet to meet this girl, let alone decide if I will marry her.”

“A very good point, my prince,” Lady Mullendore surprised all of them, speaking up for the first time since their arrival in King’s Landing.

Otto reluctantly agreed, though he looked like he’d bitten into something sour. Lord Mullendore, however, looked quite aggravated at being interrupted. At least Viserys had the decency to look a little chagrined.

“Forgive me - I was so confident in this match that I got ahead of myself,” the King replied jovially. He acknowledged Daemon for the first time since this farce began. “Why don’t you spend the afternoon getting to know Lady Adelayde? We shall convene after supper to discuss further.”

With that dismissal, Viserys stood, followed quickly by Otto and Lord Mullendore. Lady Mullendore stood as well, but lingered behind her husband. She leveled Daemon with a look that only a mother could accomplish. A look that said she wanted to speak with him and expected him to listen.

No one, much less a woman, had dared level such a look at him since the late Queen Aemma. He admired her confidence, and so decided to listen to what she had to say. She straightened her spine as he approached, looking more assured now that her husband wasn’t around.

“I wish to speak to you, Prince Daemon - not as a noble lady to a prince, but as a mother to the man who might marry her only daughter.” Daemon indicated for her to continue. “I am well aware that this is not a match you would willingly choose, but I do ask that you give Adelayde a chance. Not just one meeting, but an actual chance.”

“And what would you consider an actual change?’

“A courtship,” she replied confidently. “Court her for three months and she may win over even you.”

Adelayde waited in the palace gardens. She was nervous despite previously promising herself that she would remain indifferent to everything. There was no one else around; whether it was by happenstance or design, she didn’t really care. She occupied herself by watching a little bluejay hop along a low-hanging branch of a nearby willow.

When her father first reached out to Hobert Hightower requesting help finding her a match, no one expected it to go all the way to the Red Keep.

She would have been perfectly happy living out her days as the resident “mad spinster.” Her older brother, Kean, had already promised her a place in his home should she not marry. It would certainly cause an uproar; a bastard caring for his mad half-sister. Just the kind of chaos the two of them liked to cause.

Unfortunately, now that Prince Daemon was set forward as a potential husband, that was unlikely to happen. Her father was determined to make the match work. Still, she couldn’t complain. The Prince was rumored to be quite handsome and apparently rarely visited his first wife, and then only under duress. A disinterested husband who she rarely saw was the best-case scenario for a woman like her.

Her inner musings were interrupted by said Prince entering the garden. He certainly was handsome. He’d cut a striking figure even if he were a member of the smallfolk with different colored hair or eyes. Not that she’d ever say anything so rude out loud.

She watched the Prince approach with veiled amusement. He was trying to seem casual and disinterested, walking just fast enough to convey that he wanted their interaction over quickly, but not so fast that it seemed like he was eager to meet her. The bluejay flew from the branch as he got closer. Even though it swept quite close to his head, the Prince didn’t react. She must be more stressed than she originally thought.

“Lady Adelayde,” he greeted with the smallest nod of his head.

“Please—call me Addie. It’s what my friends call me.”

“We are not friends,” was his curt reply. She managed to suppress rolling her eyes, though her irritation must have shown on her face. A smug look passed over his.

“Shall we walk?” he asked before setting off without her.

She didn’t bother suppressing her eye roll now that his back was turned to her. So this was going to be his game, then? Be as annoying as possible until she wanted nothing to do with him? Unfortunately for him, she had three older brothers, all very close in age. Two could play at this game.

They walked in silence for a while. Just as it started to seem mildly uncomfortable, she spoke up.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asked with the most innocent tone she could muster

The prince’s head whipped around so fast, a piece of hair came loose from its quaff and flopped forward onto his forehead. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”

Addie cocked her head and gave him an inquisitive look. “A perfectly valid one. You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite color.”

Daemon stared at her for a moment longer, probably trying to tell if she was serious or just daft. She kept her head cocked and blinked a couple of times for emphasis. Her brothers hated that. The Prince seemed to actually give it a thought for a moment before answering.

“Red and black, I suppose,” he finally said. How predictable.

“Those are your House colors.” She didn’t even have to fake her sigh of disappointment. “They don’t count.”

“What do you mean they don’t count?”

“It’s just so… uninteresting.”

“Red also happens to be the color of Caraxes. My dragon,” he adds, as if the entire Realm didn’t know that already.

“Well. I suppose that’s alright, then.”

He scoffs as if to say ‘of course it is’.

“Can I meet him?”

“Meet who? Caraxes?”

“Unless you have another dragon no one knows about.”

Daemon wasn’t quite sure what to make of the woman next to him. She wasn’t bad to look at. Slim with honey-blonde hair and storm-grey eyes which were far more intelligent than she wanted him to believe. She was quick-witted and seemed to be having fun poking his buttons. At the very least, they might be good friends.

He refrained from pointing out that Targaryens can only have one dragon at a time. She probably knew that already anyway. Instead, he decided to continue with their original conversation.

“So, what does my favorite color say about me? Besides being uninteresting?”

“Well, most children like the color red . . .”

She was comparing him to a child? Never mind. They could never be friends. He was feeding her to Caraxes.

“It says that you’re passionate. You’ll defend the people you love to the death. You’re also probably quick to anger, headstrong, and violent.”

“You could have easily discovered that through court gossip.”

“But passion, anger, and violence are also commonly associated with the color red.”

“Does that bother you? That I’m passionate, angry, and violent?”

Addie took a moment to reply. It was clear that it did bother her to some extent.

“As long as you don’t harm me or any children we might have, then I will not complain.”

Interesting. A far more diplomatic answer than he might expect from a court lady.

“No lecture about how anger is sinful?” he pushed. “Or the virtues of nonviolence?”

Her lips pursed. “I have found that life is rarely so straightforward.”

An interesting answer; and not one he was entirely comfortable with. Daemon had originally intended to spend the majority of the months exchanging letters once Adelayde returned to the Uplands, but he was starting to think that this courtship might be better served in person. Besides, Adelayde was a fascinating character and it would be a shame to deprive himself of her company.

#hotd x oc #daemon x oc #daemon targaryen x oc #daemon targaryen #hotd daemon #hotd fanfic #Adelayde Mullendore

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embarrassinglastwords · 1 year ago

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i write fanfic every now and then but it’s always 1 ch and in universe BUT i was watching tv and this couple made me think…

WEDDING/PARTY PLANNER ATSUSHI AND PIANIST AKUTAGAWA

like i don’t have anything fully formed to write so i’m gonna ramble here-

akutagawa’s vampire-y look while he sits and plays elegant music that’s hauntingly beautiful. playing cause it’s his passion and becoming popular in the wedding world as well just some formal parties.

one wedding he gets hired for he’s setting up to play for the reception cause the couple had a specific song they wanted for the isle walk and notices a man with white hair, bangs that rival his own, standing to the side checking around the room with a clip board in hand. he’s dressed in a nice suit with fingerless gloves on and a normal tie compared to the room of bow ties. he doesn’t look like someone who’d give orders or be bossy like a wedding planner would have to be but to be fair most people are taken aback when he says he plays piano.

he finds this man so attractive and keeps glancing over at him which is just great because at some point they make eye contact and the white haired man begins to walk over to him. they talk about akutagawa’s cue to start playing, how long he should play, what specifically he’s gonna play etc etc. akutagawa was wrong he’s definitely in charge. he likes that but he pushes that thought down

during the wedding atsushi finds himself enthralled by the pianist. he looks so majestic and so perfect. like he was made to play piano. he thinks about how the man in an older styled suit at such a nice piano looks plucked right out of an old painting. he thinks to himself the man must be good with his hands but let’s not dwell on that rn he is at work

eventually there’s a moment for a break due to this being the time of night for loud music and dancing. they accidentally bump into each other and begin talking. they find out a good deal about each other in this time. akutagawa has a sister who’s also into music but she’s a guitarist for her band, atsushi has a little sister that he takes care of, they’re both young in their mid 20s but worked their ways up in their fields. both make a decent amount doing what they do.

they exchange numbers at the end of the night. i’m imaging like the couple has left, atsushi is making sure caterers are paid and rented items are set to go back where they’re from etc. akutagawa is collecting his sheet music and is just really taking his time with it because he has nothing but paper to take home but he needs an excuse to talk to the cute wedding planner again.

yadda yadda they keep recommending each other to people. everytime atsushi gets hired he immediately goes “i know a great pianist if you’re interested!” they work a few more weddings/gatherings together and get closer.

of course i’d want them to eventually work the same formal gathering so they could see each other dressed nicely and that’s the night where the first kiss. they go home to their friends (haven’t decided who yet) and they’re literally that “let’s fucking goooo / okay so you just kissed…” meme

WOW THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I INTENDED😭 i will probably never write this cause as stated before i only ever write like short one chapter things so enjoy this

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bsd au #sskk #shin soukoku #batposting #batpostingships #bungo gay dogs #bungou stray dogs

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aqueousablution · 2 months ago

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(January-February 2023) Don't mind me, just transing a vintage OC's gender

I opted to skip the original palette proposals for her and jump straight to the finalized one (which later got revised with dark sclerae), and that pistol concept is slightly edited from the initial posting to have a shorter barrel, for reference

Original post bodies under cut (warning, long as fuck):

Post 1 (sorXa & her armor)

Update (1/31/23): Now with mostly-finalized color schemes! The design of sorXa's armor itself needs a little more work, but I think these palettes fit her pretty well (I swear I wasn't intending to make her vaguely cohost-colored)

When I woke up I miraculously had the energy to draw, so instead of getting up and taking a shower I spent a few hours brainstorming a massive overhaul of one of my old Lego OCs, because while looking for Zero's missing right hand in my bedroom (as mentioned here) I stumbled upon his old mech walker in a drawer, with him inside it, and because he was vaguely self-insert-y (in the way that many of my long-term D&D PCs tend to be, in that they're not meant to be me per se, but they definitely borrow heavily from my IRL traits) I decided to make him a trans girl¹. I then very quickly hit upon the idea of making her an android (or more properly gynoid, I guess? I'm gonna call her that, anyway), and then further the idea that her old lore was in some capacity canon, but at some point her consciousness was transferred from her old AMAB supersoldier body into a more feminine artificial body untouched by the processes that made her original body a supersoldier. I'm not 100% sure on her name, though I particularly like the Gaelic name Sorcha since it's roughly equivalent to my IRL name, Clara, and I have both Irish and Scottish ancestry²; I might sci-fi it up a bit, maybe, since her deadname was sci-fi nonsense based very loosely on my deadname (same first letter, same ending phoneme, same number of syllables). Maybe borrowing a character from a different alphabet to transcribe the "ch", like Sorχa or something? Possibly just Sorxa, since the voiceless velar fricative is rendered as "x" in the international phonetic alphabet? I'll figure that out later, I guess. Edit: I think I've settled on rendering it as "sorXa"; starting with a lowercase letter gives me vibes similar to chaos from Xenosaga, which I think fits the sci-fi setting (not to mention that her design has some similarities to chaos's, now that I think about it)

I'll transcribe the notes under the cut since I know my handwriting is pretty illegible here (it's not always this bad, but when I'm cramming notes to myself around a drawing on a 3"x5" card, it tends to get sloppy)

Image 1: casual wear

Sorcha(?) | she/her | gynoid, formerly AMAB human

glowy eyes when needed

auburn hair (pointing to darker part of hair)

strawberry blonde? orange? gold? plat. blonde? (pointing to lighter-colored bangs)

chromatophore-like tech allows face markings to be hidden & hair color to change, among other aesthetic things

Image 2: armor

Sorcha(?) | she/her

glowy gold visor

black helm (blue accents? red accents?)

black w/ gold (or copper? rose-gold?) accents (pointing at breastplate and spaulders)

black? (pointing at forearm)

blue? grey? blue-grey? red? (pointing at upper arm, abdomen, and thigh)

poleyns? (next to knee)

MMZ-style big boots (next to side-view of one such chonky boot)

Bridget-like? HJB-like?³ (next to another boot, but with something on the ankle à la Bridget's GGST design)

speaker? (pointing at circle on the bevor of a mildly revised version of her sallet)

add earpiece?

Notes from another drawing I'm not posting on this page but that I think might be relevant:

modular limbs? (i.e. could attach extra limbs or swap out some of her normal ones)

not actual choker, just pigment per... (has arrow pointing to next bullet point)

chromatophore-like skin pigment - can change colors, good for both camo and looking more organic (can hide cheek lines, but thinks they look cool)

Notes: (I feel like I have these on every chost, I guess footnotes are my Cohost calling card now??)

I remember, actually, that one time I played out this scenario where he ran into an alternate universe version of himself who was a girl, and they... teamed up or something? Hung out? Fuck if I remember, and it actually may have been a different sci-fi Lego-based OC, but I'm pretty sure it was an early version of him which had a very different appearance barring the red hair and laser sword (though even then, the not-lightsaber went from yellow to blue). I do remember that their first interaction was passing each other on their not-speeder bikes as she came out of her universe, which was linked to his universe by some sort of cave opening or whatever? I'm getting way off track, the point is this isn't the first time this character has been a girl, even if at the time my younger self had no idea that might be related to me being trans. #JustEggThings

I'm not exactly sure how much Scottish ancestry I have on my mom's side, but in terms of Irish ancestry on my dad's side, my grandfather and grandmother were from a town in County Fermanagh and a tiny village (really more of a homestead, it's only a few houses in a small cluster) in County Leitrim, respectively (my dad and my aunt were born in New York, though). I actually visited Ireland in Summer of 2019 for a family reunion, and we visited the (heavily renovated) house where my Nana Bridie grew up (one of the families who lived there when she was young is actually living in that house now, though it's substantially more modern than the dirt floor and hearth farmhouse she grew up in), as well as the rowhouse my Pop-pop Mickey designed and had built in his hometown when he and my grandmother briefly moved the family back to Ireland in the 60s because of the rioting in NYC (which was, as you might image, the exact wrong time for a family of Catholics to move to Northern Ireland; luckily they were unharmed, but they still returned to New York after only about a year or so).

"HJB-like" refers to the high jump boots from Metroid, which add forward-facing spikes to the ankles of Samus's power suit. In case you couldn't tell, this armor leans heavily on the character design aesthetics of both Metroid and Mega Man Zero, with a splash of late medieval/early renaissance European armor (hence the sallet and poleyns). I'm a huge sallet fangirl, if you hadn't noticed (did you know that some designs of Samus's helm have a very sallet-like shape? I did, and I pogged IRL when I noticed it, like the fucking dweeb that I am)

---

Post 2 (updated unarmored palette and weapons)

I think I've finished all the designing I need in order to finish this drawing of sorXa that I've been working on, namely the dagger/beam sword and handgun she carries normally, plus an update to her color scheme.

A general note that applies to both the sword and the gun: energy-based weapons in the setting I'm developing around sorXa require too much energy for a compact power source to fuel for any significant length of time, so they often have cords to be plugged into an external power source for added functionality. Normally this would be something like a clunky battery pack or generator, but being an anthropoid¹, sorXa's abdomen can open up like KOS-MOS using the X-Buster (Xenosaga Episode 1 spoilers in that cutscene btw), but instead of the X-Buster it contains a set of jacks for said cords, and then she can plug a weapon in to draw from her internal power supply à la Heavy Metal L-Gaim.

To briefly touch on the updated color scheme: Pink is a pretty color. Simple as. (Well, okay, the idea is that it's more of a white jacket with reddish-pinkish iridescence, or maybe it's just a very pale pink, I'm not sure)

Weapon descriptions under the cut:

Dagger ("Devilhorns")

Based primarily on a cinquedea and the version of the Z-saber wielded by Girouette in Mega Man ZX, but also a kabutowari. I need to update the design to reflect that the guard flares out into more proper quillons when it's powered, but still I'm quite proud of the idea of the wire spool being in what would normally be the palm-swell of a typical cinquedea hilt. The name "Devilhorns" is in reference to the fact that relative to a cinquedea, it's missing about 2 "fingers'" worth of physical blade, not entirely unlike some variations of the "devil horns" hand gesture (particularly a hypothetical variant where the thumb is raised flush with the index finger, but I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of that version being a thing), though I'm not particularly married to the name since it feels... clunky? Also, the yellow beam blade is in reference to an ancient iteration of her², when she was some sort of Lego bounty hunter whose main weapon was a lightsaber with an opaque yellow blade (since I didn't have a translucent yellow blade for her to use and wanted hers to be ~special~).

Handgun (unnamed)

Based on the two handguns most heavily associated with Mine Fujiko from Lupin III, the Browning Model 1910 and the Remington Double Derringer (based moreso on the appearance of the Browning than the Remington), combined into what's essentially a MMZ/ZX-style buster pistol. Normally it relies on a magazine-shaped battery that can power... 12 shots, maybe? before it has to be swapped out, but when plugged in it can shoot effectively indefinitely without needing to reload, or it can draw on the internal battery as well as the external power source to fire a charge shot³ (which consumes what would have been 1 or 2 shots from the battery normally) in the vein of Mega Man and Metroid. The ventilation on the obverse (which in this case is the left side, since this is meant as an off-hand weapon for a right-handed character) is meant for releasing excess heat, meaning that while it wouldn't be pleasant to have your hand there when it shoots, it's certainly not going to blow your hand off like the small drawing in the middle might make it seem. I went with Fujiko's iconic guns as a basis for this pistol since they're both relatively small and concealable, which suits the needs of this particular gun as an emergency sidearm to use in self-defense when sorXa isn't necessarily looking for a fight. Considering that this is literally the first time I've ever tried to design or even draw a semi-realistic gun (in no way, shape, or form do I consider myself a gun enthusiast, I'm much more of a "medieval and early-renaissance hand-powered weapons" kinda gal), I'm surprised by how happy I am with how this design turned out (though it probably helps that this borrows so heavily from the real-world Browning Model 1910)

I'm leaning toward "anthropoid" as a gender-neutral catchall for humanoid robots in the setting, since "android" is explicitly masculine, and while I have no problem calling sorXa in particular a gynoid, I feel like having a broader term is important. Apparently I'm not the first person to arrive at using the term in place of "android", but I personally learned of the word via... anthropoid-hilted Celtic swords, of all things (though "anthropomorphic" seems to be the more common term to use for that hilt shape these days).

We're talking, like, gradeschool here, maybe early middle school at the latest. She also had a starry black cape (which would have been from a Harry Potter Hairy Pooper set; the mild irony of a character who previously incorporated something tied to a Rowling IP in their design winding up as a violently anti-fascist trans girl is not lost on me) and a red bandana on her head, if memory serves? A later version of her had a more traditional translucent blue lightsaber (maybe 2 of them?), but that version of her is now part of her backstory when she was a (less-than-willing) supersoldier (I need to flesh out that lore better, so I won't go into it here, but there's a lot going on there), so I'm going back to the classic yellow for her new beam sword.

This particular pistol is actually meant to be a fair bit more robust than some others in the setting, at least when it comes to charging shots. I had the idea that in a firefight while using a temporary civilian-grade body (while her custom combat-grade gynoid body was still being built), in an act of desperation when faced with a hallway full of enemy soldiers advancing toward her, she'd have tried to power a weaker pistol plugged into a port on herself that wasn't designed to handle the amount of power drawn by a charged shot and, in the process, blew up the gun, wrecked both arms, launched herself backwards into a wall, and severely damaged her body's power core (as well as accomplishing her goal of killing everyone in her line of fire, of course, essentially following Mega Man charged shot rules, i.e. they pierce any enemy they destroy). This incident, in addition to helping her gain the trust of her new comrades (who would have mistrusted her as a former member of the enemy forces), also led to her receiving a pistol capable of firing charged shots without destroying itself (the one shown here). (As an aside, she didn't count on the charged shot having that much blowback, since she was used to using military guns while wearing power armor, as opposed to a relatively flimsy pistol scrounged up by rebels while in a body that's not much more resilient than a relatively sturdy but otherwise ordinary human; she certainly figured it would be a risky maneuver for her, but nowhere near the "possibly get yourself killed in the resulting explosion" kind of risky that it wound up being.)

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bamdelune · 1 year ago

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In Hindsight 📹 Ch. 04: "the day i died once pt. 1"

notes. please do me a favor and pretend the first slide is actually edited to be posted as a twitter circle tweet 🙏

A familiar pattern of knocks echoed throughout the room. Your head turned to the door in confusion, Baizhu wasn't supposed to be coming in here today. He only came by on weekends.

The door slides open with the rolling sound of the gear to reveal the doctor and what looked like to be Kunikuzushi behind him. The general aura of the mood Baizhu entered the room with was eerily heavy as if someone just died.

"Good afternoon, Y/N." He greets, his tone slightly awkward. You return his greeting and say your hello to Kunikuzushi as well, to which he nods at in acknowledgement.

"Doctor Baizhu, is something the matter? You don't usually come in here on a weekday like this." You ask, nervously fiddling with your fingers. A sense of dread was pushing against your stomach and spread throughout your body.

Baizhu clears his throat, "I'm afraid there's something that needs to be discussed that prompted my visit."

Kunikuzushi has now also turned his attention towards the physician, eyes curious as well. Baizhu takes a deep breath, "I don't wish to scare you but it's inevitable. I fear that your condition has worsened. Ergo, you don't have much left, dear."

Silence fills the room, save for the whirring of the air conditioner. Other than that, you might as well have heard a pin drop. The tension was far too thick for your liking, anyone could cut through it with a knife.

"What?"

That's why Baizhu looked mournful when he came in. He was mourning a dead man walking.

"How much do I have left." Your tone comes out more strained that intended, as if your voice was about to crack.

"11 months. Even then, you're pushing it."

That wasn't so bad, right? You just wouldn't be there to see your album, the one that you've waited so long to start on, in all its glory after the production process. You wouldn't be alive to celebrate it with Xinyan, Aether, and Lumine.

notes. and we're finally at turning point #1 of this au! things will get easier to lay out from here and i hope everyone enjoys what's to come <;3

synopsis. You are a singer-songwriter. Music has always been a part of you, it's a part of your identity that no one can ever take away. However, there's always a catch: you are diagnosed with a chronic illness that puts your life on a timer. Those who have heard your countless melodies have grown to notice that the notes on the sheet played a gloomier tune. Would the snarky and capable medical student you've met be able to bring life back into these melodies? Even as life begins to seep out of your own body? (scaramouche x gn!reader)

tags. gender-neutral reader, angst, fluff, crack, heavy contexts of death and illnesses, friends to lovers, slowburn, profanities, drinking (characters are in college), suggestive themes but no nsfw.

taglist. (open, reply or send an ask to be added) — @beriiov @alatusorrow @br0oke96 @ohmyfinggod @itzblazekun @featuredtofu @sketcheeee

masterpost ★ masterlist © bamdelune 2023. do not repost, translate, plagiarize any of my works without permission, thank you so much! reblogs, notes, and comments are always appreciated!

#📹 (in hindsight) smau #bamdelune #genshin impact #genshin #genshin x reader #bamdelune's bookstore #genshin smau #scaramouche x gn reader #scaramouche #scaramouche x you #scaramouche x reader

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disasterbijupiter · 4 months ago

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G Gundam side story English translation, Ch. 2 part 1

This is my fan translation of the new G Gundam side story, Chapter 2!

(start from beginning) | (read previous part)

I'm breaking each chapter into sections based on scenes, so here is chapter 2, part 1 (a LONG one, as this chapter only has a couple scenes...):

Episode 2:

Prologue

Everyone hears the Dark Shuffle’s introduction. In the middle of this, Stalker appears.

Stalker: “Everyone, this is a shock! Suddenly the Dark Shuffle has appeared before the fighters, who have their first matches of the Gundam Fight Tournament coming up tomorrow! Do they indeed have a connection to the strange events that have occurred in the world?! And for what purpose have they appeared at this Gundam Fight? No matter how you look at it, it’s clear that they don’t intend to even participate in the tournament………”

The five Dark Shuffles’ eyes glow mysteriously.

Stalker: “Well then everyone! Gundam Fight, ready, gooooooooo!!!!!!!”

Arena

Faced with the Dark Shuffle, everyone is astonished.

Domon: “Dark Shuffle, you say?!”

Chibodee: “Domon, do you know what it is?”

Domon: “No, this is first I’ve heard of it too!”

Halfway stunned, everyone looks at the Dark Shuffle.

Domon: “That’s right! Master! You must know!”

Domon questions the Undefeated of the East, who remains calm.

Undefeated of the East: “Ha! It’s only at a time like this that you call me Master?”

Domon: “Uh………”

Domon is hit in a sore spot.

Undefeated of the East: “Well, alright……… since I certainly didn’t tell you anything.”

With a bitter smile, the Undefeated of the East glares at the Dark Shuffle.

Undefeated of the East: “As I thought, the recent strange events around the world were the work of the Dark Shuffle, were they……”

Dark members: “Oh wow……… You are the former King of Hearts……… Then you understand our objective, don’t you?”

Undefeated of the East: “Of course……… Although I’ve handed down my crest and retired, that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the other side of the Shuffle.”

Domon: “The other side of the Shuffle? What does that mean?!”

Undefeated of the East: “Shut up! I’m telling you right now!!”

As he scolds Domon, the Undefeated of the East steps out in front of the Dark Shuffle.

Undefeated of the East: “Alright, are you listening!? The duty of us Shuffle Alliance is to ‘keep order in the world’! ……… With that aim, as a shadow long throughout history, from generation to generation various martial artists have filled those five seats……… But, like the wars that risked the survival of humanity in the past, by no means has it always led to a satisfactory resolution.”

Domon and the others: “………………”

Domon and the rest all listen attentively.

Undefeated of the East: “And before they knew it, the Shuffles began questioning themselves……… Do they themselves, or their successors, truly possess what it takes to be Shuffle? That was their question………”

Domon and the others: “What it takes to be Shuffle………”

Domon and the other present-day Shuffle gaze at their own crests.

Undefeated of the East: “Thus, the Shuffles who at one point or another left that sadness behind ask, can the current Shuffle bear that heavy responsibility? Will they make mistakes? In order to question their capabilities and strength, they have come back to life!!”

The Undefeated of the East faces the Dark Shuffle with a glare.

Domon: “S-so then?? These five people??”

Dark members: “That’s right!! We are the Dark Shuffle! You, King of Hearts!! Do you five truly have the capabilities and strength to be Shuffle, and can you lead the world in the right direction? We were resurrected from the past in order to put that to the test!!”

X X X

A boxer stands up in a dilapidated boxing arena. In a corner of an old cemetery, a female knight stands sadly by a gravestone. In an old abandoned temple, a lone monk is meditating inside. Far above, a man drifts through space in a spacesuit.

X X X

Undefeated of the East: “Originally, it was customary that they would appear when all Shuffle members had been switched out, but with the exception of the King of Hearts all of you have switched at once, so we must be observing the result of that unusual situation.”

X X X

In Shinjuku, the predecessor Shuffles pass down the crests.

X X X

Chibodee: “And now, in order to confirm our capability………??”

George: “They have been resurrected from the underworld………??”

Argo: “That’s crazy………”

Sai Saici: “Oh give me a breeaak, I can’t handle spooky stuuuuff.”

Chibodee and the others’ breath catches in their throat. Sai Saici is half-seriously shaking in fear of ghost-related things.

Dark members: “Ha ha ha, young one over there, there’s no need to be afraid.”

“We harbor no malice whatsoever.”

The five gently reassure Sai Saici.

Sai Saici: “Really?”

Dark members: “Yes. However……… You shall receive judgment!!!!!!!”

Sai Saici: “See, I thought sooooooooo!!!”

Sai Saici trembles with fear at the five’s sudden change.

Domon: “What are you people planning to do?!”

Domon becomes protective of Sai Saici.

The five people: “Of course, only to have you fight us and show us your strength.”

“We hear that in this world, world domination is determined with something called the Gundam Fight.”

“Indeed, world superiority is assessed through each country’s technology and capability.”

“That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“The only problem is the remaining issue of harm to civilians.”

“Aside from that, it is well put to call it a peaceful war.”

“However, among the representatives of those competing nations is the Shuffle!”

“That violates our basic principle of ‘non-intervention’!!”

“Should we remain silent and allow this to happen!?”

“Therefore, we’ve decided that by our own hand we will question your capabilities!!”

“If you have any objections to raise, we will hear them with our fists!”

“Now then!!”

At the Dark’s signal, five arenas appear outside the opening ceremony area.

Rain and all the others are shocked.

Rain: “You can’t be serious!? Special arenas just for this??”

Nastasha: “When did they set up such a thing??”

Undefeated of the East: “Hmph……… It must be that Wong………”

The Undefeated of the East looks at Wong, who has a wry smile on his face.

Undefeated of the East: “What is he planning……… Well, never mind, let’s watch closely and see.”

X X X

Wong: “Yes, I’ll show you myself……… Undefeated of the East, are you really the person I need for my plans………?”

Wong looks at one member of the Dark.

Wong: “What I need is someone stronger……… Depending on the situation, Sensei, it’s possible you may be replaced………”

Wong gives a daring smile.

X X X

Members of the Dark jump from the corner posts into each of the arenas.

Dark members: “Now, you of the Shuffle Alliance!!”

“Come to this battlefield!!”

The Dark members call out to the Shuffles.

Sai Saici: “No kidding!! And we have the Fight starting tomorrow!! Can’t we just have fun before that?!”

Nastasha: “That’s right!! Our country doesn’t give a damn about Shuffle matters and the like!!”

Chibodee: “First off, we were suddenly attacked by the Shuffle Alliance group in Shinjuku, and without our knowledge they passed their own crests onto us!!”

George: “That’s right! None of us wanted this!!”

Sai Saici: “But then, you’re saying it’s as if we’re doing something wrong!”

Nastasha: “If there’s anyone who betrayed the Shuffle’s rules, it would be the Undefeated of the East right there! Far from ‘non-intervention’, that man participated in the last Gundam Fight himself, and he even won!! To falsely blame the one who replaced him is unreasonable!!”

Nastasha points out the Undefeated of the East.

Undefeated of the East: “………………”

Staying silent, the Undefeated of the East gives a faint smile. The Dark members slump their shoulders when Chibodee and the others refuse to fight.

Dark members: “Hmmmmmm……… So that’s what happened, is it?”

“Well, we’ll deal with the issue of the Undefeated of the East, Master Asia, separately.”

“You’d best obediently follow our orders here.”

“Otherwise………”

The Dark members point at the sky above everyone. Upon looking………

The sea of clouds above swirls in a vortex, and in the middle of it a colossal corner post slowly descends into view. It’s one of the corner posts the Survival Eleven ring ropes had been stretched around.

Zuisen and Keiun: “Isn’t that one of the Gundam corner posts in orbit?!”

Janet: “That’s falling here onto Neo Hong Kong??”

Dark members: “As you can see……… However.”

“If the Shuffles fight us Dark and can defeat all of us, we will recognize that they possess the qualifications of the Shuffle.”

“We’ll send that corner post back into space.”

“On the other hand, if even one of them loses to us………”

X X X

Neo Hong Kong destroyed by a direct hit of the corner post

X X X

Nastasha: “N-no way!! If something like that falls, Neo Hong Kong will be absolutely destroyed!!”

Everyone becomes aghast.

Sijiema: “You’ve gotta be kidding me!!”

Eric: “We can’t just do nothing in a situation like this!!”

Rutger: “Get out!!”

Forming a scrum with their respective gundams, the fighters attempt to break through the barrier. However, the barrier remains untouched and the gundams stop activating.

Eric: “It’s no good!! The barrier makes the gundams shut down!!”

Sijiema: “Hey! Big Neo Greek guy! Is it impossible even with your strength?!”

Marcelot: “Yeah, if it’s no use when you guys do it, the answer is it’s the same for me. There’s no point.”

The Zeus Gundam is sitting atop its chariot.

Sijiema: “Then, what do we do??”

The group of fighters is astir.

X X X

Wong: “Hey, hey……… I never heard anything about something like this………”

Secretly, Wong whispers to the Dark members through a communication device.

Wong: “I only said that I would prepare you people’s match venues, that’s it.”

Dark members: “Hush!! You’d best shut up and watch!!”

Wong: “But, that’s………”

Wong begins to get impatient with the Dark’s response.

X X X

Undefeated of the East: “Wong, you bastard……… It seems you miscalculated………”

The Undefeated of the East snorts disdainfully. In the middle of the group’s commotion, Schwarz approaches the Shuffle.

Schwarz: “Everyone, it seems as if there is only one way……… There’s no choice but for you to accept those people’s invitation and win………”

Domon: “Schwarz………”

Domon responds anxiously.

Schwarz: “Leave things in here to me……… I’ll try and find a way to break through.”

George: “It seems as if there’s no other way to go about it.”

Argo: “Then, we have no choice but to do it!”

Sai Saici: “Well alright, I guess that person seems nice.”

One of the Dark is nodding gently.

Domon: “In that case, Schwarz, I’m leaving the rest to you………”

Schwarz: “Right……… I’ll be counting on you, everyone………”

Entrusting Schwarz, the Shuffle makes up their minds. The Dark members nod in agreement.

Dark members: “It looks like you’ve made your decision.”

“Now, each of you, fight the opponent with the same crest as you!!”

At the Dark’s signal, a Shuffle crest emerges on each arena.

Nastasha: “Hmph, that’s a rather extravagant measure.”

With anger, her hand tightens around the whip.

Nastasha: “You know what to do, right?! Argo!”

Argo: “Of course.”

Nastasha: “Then go!!”

The Bolt Gundam heads for the barrier on Nastasha’s cue. Just like that, it passes through the barrier.

Sijiema: “Hey? You got through the barrier??”

Eric: “So, now’s our chance?”

Each of the two heads for the barrier. However, as expected they are repelled and can’t get through.

Sijiema: “W-whaat?!”

The Spiegel looks on with folded arms.

Schwarz: “It appears as though only the Shuffle can pass through.”

Eric: “What did you say?!”

Chibodee: “Well, I’ll get you out of here in no time, so you all watch from there and hang tight!!”

Gundam Maxter heads towards the barrier.

The gals: “Be careful! Chibodee!!”

Chibodee: “!!”

He gives an OK sign to the gals, who watch worriedly as he leaves.

Raymond: “Mr. George, you be careful as well.”

George: “Yes, I’ll burn the radiance of this sword into their eyes.”

Gundam Rose grabs its saber and advances.

Sai Saici: “Aaaah, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, it’s scaaryyy.”

When the others look, the Dragon Gundam is sitting crosslegged, hiding in the other gundams’ shadows.

Zuisen & Keiun: “What are you doing, Sai Saici?! You mustn’t fall behind everyone else!!”

Sai Saici is given a scolding by Zuisen & Keiun.

Sai Saici: “O-okaayyyy, I get it. I should just do it, riiiight?”

The Dragon Gundam crosses over the barrier. Once he does, Sai Saici turns and looks back with a fearless smile.

Sai Saici: “As payback for this, I’ll make it so these guys can never come back from the other side again!”

One by one, they stand on the competition stage with their own crest.

Gundam Maxter VS Dark Spade Gundam

Gundam Rose VS Dark Dia Gundam

Dragon Gundam VS Dark Club Gundam

Bolt Gundam VS Dark Joker Gundam

Lastly, the God Gundam approaches the barrier. At its feet, Rain watches him go.

Rain: “Will you be alright?! Domon!!”

Domon: “Don’t worry, Rain!! I’ll be back soon!!”

Ignoring the Master Gundam beside him, Domon proceeds. As they pass each other…

Undefeated of the East: “Be careful……… That person is stronger than me…”

Domon: “Eh?”

When he faintly hears the Undefeated of the East’s words, he looks to the Dark Shuffle at the arena bearing the King of Hearts crest.

Dark: “………”

Their cold gaze pierces Domon.

Domon: “Stronger than Master………??”

Domon confronts them, his spirits rising.

(continue to next part)

#g gundam #mobile fighter g gundam #g gundam 30th anniversary story translation #g gundam side story

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shina913 · 2 years ago

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Scions, Ch.8c | Kim Line + JHS

Scions, 8c

sci·on | \ ˈsī-ən \ Definition:(1)a descendant(2) a shoot or twig, especially one cut for grafting or planting

✼Scions Masterlist✼

Pairing: Fem!Reader Sister + Kim Brothers; JHS x Fem!Reader

Rating: M (🔞)

Genre: Siblings!AU; Marriage!AU; FWB!AU; exes to ?; Mom!Reader; Brother’s Best Friend; drama; angst; smut; fluff

Warnings: ANGST!!!; DRAMA!!!; sibling bickering; soft sibling moments; cussing; multiple POV switches; mentions of character death; parenting frustrations; alcohol consumption; vulnerable confessions; cussing; pining; unrequited love; mentions of divorce/separation; emotional outbursts; mourning; it just hurts 🥴

Word count: 5.5K+

Summary: Four grown siblings return to their childhood hometown after their father is declared to be terminal. They are forced to live under the same roof for days, along with their overbearing mother, to say their final goodbyes. It starts off nostalgic until some unresolved family issues along with an assortment of spouses, exes, and might-have-beens make things even more interesting.

A/N: Third of three mini-updates! This chapter contains callbacks from the supplement, Sunshine. I think(?) I've added enough context to this chapter so that you wouldn't have to read it to get the references but you can read it if you feel that the gaps are too wide.

Thank you to my loves, @internetjunkdrawer and @itdoesntmatterwhy for reading through this angst-fest. I appreciate you both 💜

A/N2: There are some elements of The Notebook here that I adopted because…it’s one of my fave *exes to lovers* stories 🥹

You sidle up to Namjoon, who was hunched over at a booth all by himself, scribbling some words over some cocktail napkins.

“You know, Yoongi-oppa will be pissed that you’re littering.” You fidgeted at a balled-up napkin.

“Well, it’s good I’m best friends with the owner then,” he deadpans without looking up at you.

You scoff, then begin to unfurl the piece closest to you.

“My love, don't look back anymore / Behind the clearly mixed memories / These remaining lives stay like a bonus,” you read out loud. “New song?”

He hummed noncommittally. “I don’t know yet. I’m just writing whatever comes to mind.”

You picked up another crumpled-up napkin to take a look. “You can't love someone like I do / That's all I can say to you.” You blew out a breath. “Oof…is this the makings of your own version of Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’?”

He chuckled. “Well, as it happens, life is currently giving me a lot of lemons so…”

You hold back a laugh upon hearing his answer. “Will you record it?”

He snorted. “If my usual guy can’t do it, I’ll probably do the guide myself.”

“No, I mean–will you record it for yourself?"

He pauses his scribbling and finally looks up at you incredulously as if you’d just given him a very complicated math problem.

“What? You have a good voice. You’re signed to a record label, technically…”

“Sure, YN. And how many drinks have you had?” He cocked an eyebrow at you.

You roll your eyes at him. "Relax! I'm good. And let's not change the subject!" Turning your body sideways to face him, you add, "I've heard your demos before. You've got that raspy voice thing going on that's very popular with the ladies," and snort.

His mouth twitches and grows into a shy smile, his dimple deepening. "Thanks... I guess." He knows you would never give him a backhanded compliment. Before Victoria came along, you were always one of the first people he would call whenever he had an idea for a new song. Even though you weren't as good with words as he was, he always said that you made the perfect brainstorming partner.

He begins to gather the handful of napkins and stack them in the order he intended the words to flow. After pocketing them, he pauses and puckers his lips.

“Can I actually have those back?” He points to the two discarded pieces that you read words from. You pick them up and hand them back to him; after which, he mouths his thanks.

“Will you be adding those to that secret mixtape that you’ve been working on forever?”

“Maybe.” He follows his response with an enigmatic smirk.

For years, Namjoon had talked about releasing a mixtape of songs that he had saved just for himself. Every now and then, he would unearth it from the depths of his hard drive, make some tweaks to the instruments or vocals, listen to it again, make more edits, and when he had poured out all of his neuroses into his tracks, he would close it out, not giving it another thought for another few months.

“So,” he asks, attempting to change the subject. “Where did he jet off to this time?”

You hesitate as Namjoon didn't have to say who he was referring to. Even though the rest of your family already knew about what you and Sam had decided, telling Namjoon felt like a difficult task. It wasn't just because he had resented your relationship early on, but also because part of you wanted to prove him wrong...and you managed to do that for a few years.

It was difficult because not only did you fail, but you also feared that Namjoon would take this as a moment of vindication.

"Kuala Lumpur," you said, taking a long swig of your drink and turning your face away from Namjoon. After allowing a few seconds for the drink to settle in your stomach, you clear your throat and decide that now was as good a time as any other. “When he comes back, we’re meeting with lawyers present.”

You and Sam had agreed to explain everything to the kids when he returned from his trip in two weeks. You wanted to buy some time for them…a few more days of innocent bliss.

You turned to look at Namjoon again. Apart from the slight crease between his eyebrows, the rest of his face was calm. That crease was still telling. It was the expression he wore while bracing himself for all the facts that he was about to bless you with.

It was also the same face that your father used to make.

But those litanies of factoids and inner thoughts would never make it past Namjoon’s lips. Instead, he quietly takes a sip of his whisky again before speaking.

Putting down his glass, he says, "I was wondering if you were ever going to open up about what was going on between you and Sam. I didn't want to push because I figured you weren't ready. So, I thought I'd wait patiently until you were."

Your eyes watered as guilt consumed you in the past few months, even as he bawled in front of you with everything going on in his own marriage. "I'm sorry, oppa—"

"You don't have to apologize. You never have to when it comes to things like this. We're both adults," he said, consoling you.

You pursed your lips, regret still on your face.

"Although I hope you'll forgive me for my childish thoughts about this, I'm a little upset that you couldn't trust me. I mean," he chuckled bitterly, "have you not seen how my marriage ended?"

"It's just that I know how you've always felt about Sam," you stammered, your shoulders rising defensively. Your eyes flit downward as you turn away from him again.

"Are you sure that's not just your pride talking?" he raises a questioning eyebrow at you.

Taken aback by his skepticism, you pause. But then you remember the promise you made to yourself years ago. You were going to make it work with Sam, no matter what.

"I'll admit, some of it was pride," you concede. "I just thought he and I could get through it."

Namjoon's hesitation was evident in his eyes as he regarded you. Eventually, he let out a deep sigh. "I know that Sam and I haven't had the greatest relationship, and I know it's caused a rift between you and me. That was selfish, and I'm really sorry."

You reach over to grab his free hand while the other clutches his glass. "I never held that against you."

“Yeah, but I know that we never really talked about it. I saw how he took care of you and the kids. For what it’s worth, I respected him for that.“

You smile ruefully. “Thank you. That means something. Unfortunately, Sam and I had deeper issues that counseling just couldn’t fix.”

His face falls. “Still–”

“Can we just leave all that behind?” you calmly interrupt. “Our relationships with our spouses may not have worked out, but things will always be good between us, right?”

He looks at you silently for a moment, then sighs softly, a small smile creeping up to his lips. “Always.”

You smile back and wrap your arm around his elbow. Tilting your head sideways, you lean on his shoulder. He mirrors your action, tilting his head and touching the crown of your head.

“You know, when we were kids, I always hated it whenever you copied everything that I did.”

You playfully smack his arm. “Excuse you? Who’s copying whom? My marriage has been falling apart for years, so I don’t know what you're talking about.”

“I filed for divorce first,” he retorts.

You frown at him for a second, but since can’t think of a quick comeback, you stick your tongue out cheekily at him instead.

He throws his head back in laughter. "Not that I needed further confirmation to know that Jooni is in fact your daughter," he chortles.

You give him another playful shove, and you both fall into fits of laughter.

"God, is it weird that we're laughing about this? What would Dad say?"

Namjoon sighs, then turns pensive. "I think he'd pour us both shots and say, 'Cheer up, guys! At least you didn't die'."

Your mouth falls open in shock, and you stare at each other. After a few beats of silence, you both start cackling again.

The joke would have been very on-brand for your father. He always had a way with words and knew the right ones to say in any given situation.

"If you're not laughing, you're crying, right?" he says.

Not that you needed further confirmation that Namjoon was, in fact, your father’s son.

******

Taehyung walks Eunhae out to the parking lot. The chilly air hits them both as they step outside.

“Are you sure you’re good to drive?” Taehyung asks, concerned.

Eunhae smiles reassuringly. “I had one drink over an hour ago and my hotel’s just right down the street.”

“Alright. Thanks for coming out,” Taehyung says. He sinks his hands in his pockets as he lingers for a moment, reluctant to let her go.

She gives him a small smile in return. “Thanks for having me.”

Taehyung stands on the curb, watching her fish her keys out of her purse. The spot she parked at was a little dark and she was having trouble. He walks up to her and switches on the flashlight in his phone to help. While she rummages through her things, he can't help but notice the way her hair falls softly over her face and her scent wafts through the air.

She’s grateful for the extra light, only to see a big hole at the bottom of her purse’s lining. She puts her hand inside and feels around until she finds her keys. She turns to thank Taehyung, but he's standing too close to her. She remembers the night before when they were just as close. She feels a shiver run through her as she notices the way he's looking at her. He leans in, but she pulls away, feeling a rush of emotions.

“Uh–t-thanks, Tae. I…I think I have everything I need.” She stutters.

Taehyung frowns a little, but he blinks it away. "Sure. Happy to help," he mutters, kicking himself for not being more confident.

Eunhae unlocks her car quickly but as she is about to get into the driver's seat she stops when she hears Taehyung blurt out, "I need them."

Puzzled by his sudden outburst, she turns to face him. "Sorry, what?"

You previously expressed concerns about him not defining his relationship with Eunhae, but he dismissed them. Tonight, during their spirited conversation, he was reminded of it again. He couldn’t just sit back and wait until he got back to the city without bringing it up to Eunhae.

“The labels – I need them," he answered, clearly having had a change of heart since then.

“Tae–”

"I know I said it didn't matter to me before, but I don't feel that way anymore," he admits. "I'd be lying to myself if I said I was still okay with this,” he gestures at the space between them. “It's just not what I want."

She looks at him closely. Truthfully, she had sensed a shift in their relationship. Under normal circumstances, she would never go out of her way to drive to a small town just to spend time with a guy and his family if he was ‘just a good friend with whom she occasionally slept with’.

“What do you want?” She waits for him to speak.

After a short silence, he took a deep breath and asked a question that had been on his mind for a while: "Is this going anywhere? Whatever this is between us?"

She closes her eyes briefly before answering. "Don't answer a question with a question, Taehyung," she scolds him gently.

Taehyung looked down at his hands, fidgeting nervously. "I just want to be sure," he said after a moment.

Eunhae's heart sank a little at his words, but she didn't let it show. She was familiar with his cautious and indecisive nature, which was holding her back. She wanted to protect herself, especially her heart.

"You always say that. Every time you do something or make a decision, you say, 'I just want to be sure.' Is it because you actually want to be sure, or because you're unsure of yourself?"

He paused. His family always said that he approached everything carefully. He couldn't help but wonder if he was really unsure of himself or if he was just a serial overthinker.

But then his father’s words come flooding back to him: Make a decision. And deciding not to decide doesn’t count!

“What if…what if we actually gave this a try? You know, a relationship?”

She sighs in mild exasperation. “Tae, we’ve talked about this. We said—”

“I know,” he interrupts softly. “I know what I said but lately, I feel differently and I just thought I’d take a chance and find out whether you might be willing to do that, too?”

Eunhae puffed out her cheeks and blew out a shaky breath. “Look, maybe we should wait until we get back to the city. You’re going through a lot. You’ve had a few drinks, you’re emotional—”

"I'm aware of all that," Taehyung acknowledges. "And I want you to know that I would never force you to do something that you don't want to do. It’s just that," he pauses and bites down on his lower lip, "I guess I'm wondering if maybe this is something you also want?”

Eunhae grew tired of getting disappointed in her past relationships, so she decided to focus on herself after moving to the city. However, meeting Taehyung changed everything. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized he was different. She started opening up and being vulnerable around him. Despite trying to distance herself, her feelings for him only grew stronger during their last night together in the city. Not only did those feelings linger during her time with him and his family in his hometown, but they also deepened.

Her pulse begins to race as she tries to come to terms with how she feels. With some hesitation, she finally whispers, "I'm scared.”

Her admission makes Taehyung’s heart squeeze, giving him a glimmer of hope. He chuckles wryly, understanding her apprehension. "And you think I'm not?" he replies.

As they stand in silence, Eunhae couldn't help but feel a mix of emotions–excitement, fear, and uncertainty.

"I feel like I'm saying it all wrong and I'm fucking this up--" he says, his voice trailing off. The words seem to catch in his throat, and he swallows hard before he continues.

"No," she interrupts him, stepping closer until she is standing right in front of him. She takes his face gently in her hands, tilting it up so that their eyes meet. "You're not fucking anything up. You're doing just fine," she reassures him softly with a warm and sincere voice.

With that, he feels the tension in his body start to ease. He wraps his hands gently around hers. "If you're okay with it, can we talk some more in the morning?"

She smiles at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Of course," she says softly. "I'll be here." As she speaks, he feels a sense of comfort wash over him, a feeling that everything is going to be okay between them.

She turns around to get back in her car but he stops her again. “Yeah?”

He steps closer and takes her hand. He brings it up to his lips and kisses the underside of her wrist. His lips touching her skin sends shivers down her spine. Pulling him closer, she tenderly kisses him. She sighs in contentment, as if eagerly anticipating this moment just as much as he was.

Minutes later, he watches her car drive away, and her taillights fade into the dark night. He smiles to himself, envisioning a future together and the possibilities that lie ahead.

******

You excuse yourself from a few friends whom you were catching up with to return a work call. Although your managers and colleagues sympathized, you also left abruptly to be with your family, and had only been working intermittently in the last week.

There was still work to be done, and you didn't mind checking in. You could have waited until tomorrow to answer your colleague's question, but instead, you stepped outside the bar to stand in a quiet corner by the dumpsters, away from a couple of Hobi's kitchen staff who were smoking on the patio.

"Are you sure you've got it?" you ask your colleague on the other end of the line, prompting them to ask any further questions.

As you listen to your colleague's assurance, you are unaware that Hobi is walking out of the side door, clutching two full garbage bags in his hands.

"Great, thanks. And please tell everyone that my family appreciates the flowers and sympathy card. Have a good night," you say before hanging up.

Your phone pings as you pull it away from your ear, signaling a new email alert from Sam. You open the attached document to find that it’s a petition for divorce. Sam adds in his message that his lawyer advised him to act quickly to avoid administrative costs. This only adds to your disappointment and frustration, as you were supposed to figure out all the logistics when he got back.

Guess the plan’s changed again.

As the reality of the situation sinks in, you shake your head gently. Even though you both decided to end the marriage, it still sucks to see it written on paper.

Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, take a few deep breaths to try to keep it together. Exhale and allow yourself a moment to feel the emotions that are starting to consume you. You can feel your throat tightening as you try to hold back the tears, but eventually, they start to fall.

“Fuck,” you muttered under your breath, doubling over, your hands on your knees. It’s okay to feel this way, you remind yourself. It’s perfectly normal to have moments of weakness…have a little cry before you rejoin the others.

“Are you okay?”

Hearing his voice, you quickly wipe off your tears. Turning your head, you see Hobi with a curious expression, making you feel slightly embarrassed.

“Oh, hey,” you force a smile. “I’m okay. Just…needed some air, that’s all.” You wonder how long he’d been standing there and how much he's seen.

He stands there for a few seconds, regarding you. Then, he nods sympathetically. “I get it.”

The guys who were smoking call out to their boss and Hobi briefly acknowledges them, thanking them for all their help tonight.

Hobi turns to you, and you both stare at each other. A sob escapes you, and he quickly rushes to your side, embracing you tightly. You bury your face in his chest and cry, feeling safe in his arms as you ride out all of the pent-up emotions you had in you. His steady heartbeat against your cheek is a small comfort in the midst of your pain.

“Shhh, it’ll be okay,” he whispers softly. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now but it will be. After some time, it’ll hurt less and less.”

As you listen to his words, you can't help but feel a sense of irony. How can he know that everything will be okay? How can he promise that the pain will lessen with time?

“Is that what you told yourself?” You ask when you lift your head up.

He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “I…I’m not sure I understand.”

Hobi suffered the loss of his father a few years ago, which is where his sentiment is coming from. However, after consuming several drinks and experiencing exhaustion and grief, you decide to bring up old, unfinished business.

You push off him and take a step back. “Did you tell yourself that—about us—when you left? Because that’s what I kept telling myself when you walked out. And you know what? It didn’t really work out for me.” Not only were you being childish but you were also projecting.

“YN—“

“Why would you do that? How could you leave me?”

He is dumbstruck by your sudden attack. This was not how he pictured the conversation going. "I left you? Are you serious right now?" he asks incredulously.

You shoot him a wry look. "I'm pretty sure you walked out that door, Hoseok," you say, your voice laced with frustration and anger.

Hoseok lets out a humorless laugh. "Because you told me to leave!" he retorts, his voice bitter.

The memory of him leaving is seared into your mind, yet he seems to have forgotten everything else that led up to it.

"I thought that after everything we went through, you would stick it out just a little bit more, for me!"

"I did!" he yells indignantly before catching himself. Losing his temper won't solve anything. He takes a deep breath to calm himself down. "It's just... I had a moment of weakness and needed to figure things out," he explains. "Walking out on you was the most bone-headed move I ever made. I regretted it the second I got home. I was fucking miserable!"

"But you still left me," you whimper pathetically. You're not sure what you hope to achieve.

"I came back," he whispers.

“When?” you ask unconvinced, struggling to process the fact that he had returned without your knowledge. In fact, he came back a month after, during which time you had hastily moved out of the apartment you shared. You had temporarily moved in with Namjoon until you found something more permanent. It was also during this gap that you met Sam.

“Did Namjoon know?” you ask, desperate for answers.

“Nobody knew,” he responds, his voice barely above a whisper. “I wanted to surprise you so I waited by the coffee shop across from Namjoon’s place. But then…I saw you with…him.”

You stare at him incredulously. “And you didn’t think to approach me?”

He looks down at his feet, his voice soft. "He made you laugh," he says, ignoring your question. "I used to do that, you know?" He had wanted nothing more than to beg for your forgiveness, to comfort you, and make you smile again. Instead, he couldn't help but think back to the memory burned into his brain: you with your bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

“So I went home with my tail between my legs. Then one day, Joon told me that you were getting married. Do you know what that day was like for me?”

"I think I might have an idea," you mutter in a smart-ass manner.

"No, YN! You don't know half of it! Do you know what it's like to have your airway cut off? Huh? Do you know what it feels like to desperately gasp for air so you won't feel like you're going to die?"

“You say that as if you were the only one who felt like dying that day!” You sobbed, feeling some regret.

“And yet you still married him!”

Hobi didn't know that you married Sam because you got pregnant. Sam wanted to be responsible and proposed to you. It wasn't ideal and not what you pictured for yourself. The fact was that your baby needed their father, and you were trying to do right by your child.

"It's the money, isn't it? You married him because he had some big-shot city job raking in tons of cash?"

His accusation stings you. "Is that what you think of me? After all these years, that's your perception of me?"

“Look, I get it. I get the appeal,” Hobi says. “He was successful; how could I compete with that? I’m just the small-town guy, the boy who lived next door. What do I have to offer?”

"Really, Hobi? Self-deprecation? That's great," you sarcastically interject.

"I would have loved to keep you for myself, to hold onto you, but that would have been unfair." His dad had also fallen ill shortly after he returned home. "At least you got to live your dream. You got to marry the guy meant for you, and you had a family together. If I were in his place, I would have just held you back. If I had been in his place, your dreams would have remained just that—dreams."

All the talk about Sam being ‘the guy meant for you’ was giving you a headache. Exasperated and tired, you snapped, "If you wanted to be in his place, you should have just done that to begin with!" With that, you abruptly walked away from him.

Taken aback, he felt a flash of déjà vu from the past - the day he drove you home after your old high school boyfriend dumped you. He squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. This was not how he wanted the conversation to go. "Sunshine, wait!" he called out.

But his term of endearment only riled you up further. You turned your head slightly and yelled over your shoulder, "Stop calling me that!"

"Why?" He asks.

You stop and turn around, seething. "Because I don't like it!"

"You're a shitty liar, you know that?" he shoots back.

You jerk your head in disgust. "And you're a smug asshole, Jung Hoseok," you spit out.

You turn to leave, but he yells after you, "YN, come on. Let's talk about this, please?"

"No!" Fucking nerve he has.

He puffs out his chest and shouts, "If you keep walking away from me, then I hate you!"

If Yoongi didn't have the speaker volumes all the way up, an audience would be gathering around you right now. You turn around and glare at him. "Oh really? You hate me?"

"Yes, I hate you! And I especially hate that after all this time, you still walk away from arguments just so you can get the last word."

You scoff. "Wow. Nice. This was exactly what I needed to hear from you tonight," you say sarcastically before walking away once again.

"See? It's true! You always get the last word, and that's because your dad and brothers always treated you like a princess. Well, I'm done with that!"

You square your jaw and scowl at his audacity. "Oh, you're done?" You mock him.

"Yeah, I'm done. So done!"

Slowly, he advances toward you. "I'm done thinking about whether you get enough sleep or if you work too much and forget to eat. I'm done wondering if Sam cooks for you. And when you're sick? Oh my god--especially when you get sick! You get so whiny! Does he make you soup? Does he..." he represses a growl. "Fuck it! I don't want to think about all of that anymore. I'm done with these thoughts of you filling my brain night and day."

The raw emotion in his outburst sobers you up. You believed that he forgot about you, but instead, he has been holding onto memories of you all this time. Memories that have kept him up at night, replaying in his mind like an endless loop.

”I’m done.” He says softly.

As seconds pass, his face softens and he continues to stare at you.

You try to respond, but the words get stuck in your throat. Instead, you throw your arms around him in a tight embrace, holding onto him for dear life. You feel the warmth of his body against yours, and for a moment, all the anger you had slowly fades.

After a few moments, Hobi gently pulls away, his hands still on your back. He looks down at you, his eyes softening as he sees your tears. He wipes them away with his thumb, his touch gentle and comforting.

As he cups your cheeks in his hands and gazes at you, you can't help but feel a sense of longing. You tilt your chin up slightly. He's unsure at first, afraid that he might be crossing a boundary. You stroke his cheekbone wordlessly to assure him. You lean in closer.

He gives in and closes the gap between your lips.

The kiss is soft at first, tentative, but then it deepens, and you lose yourselves in the sensation, feeling his arms wrap around you as you savor the moment. Your pulse races as his lips move against yours, and you can't remember the last time you felt passion like this.

“Hobah, are you–”

You jump in surprise at Yoongi's voice from behind. You and Hobi quickly back away from each other, turning around and hoping Yoongi didn't notice how flustered you were.

"I was just coming back in, hyung!" Hobi says in a panic. "What's up?" His hand creeps behind his neck, rubbing it nervously while trying to sneak glances at you.

"Oh," Yoongi says, trying to hide his amusement. "I was gonna ask you something but it’s not urgent.”

With a slight nod, Yoongi disappears through the side door again, leaving you and Hobi standing there, worried about how much he saw...or if he saw anything at all.

Not long after, the front door opens and Namjoon appears. "There you are!"

You jump again. "What? I wasn't doing anything," you say anxiously.

"I didn't say you were," Namjoon says slowly. "Listen, we should probably let Hoseok know—Oh, you're here too?" he says, looking at both of you skeptically.

"What is it? What do you want?" Your tone is suspiciously aggressive.

Namjoon squints for a second but decides not to ask why you were acting weird. "Okay, chill,” he chuckled softly. “I was just gonna say, it’s getting late and Jin-hyung doesn’t want to stay out too long since Yoojung-noona isn’t 100% yet, so he’s asking me to round everybody up."

Hobi is standing there like a deer in headlights--the same look he had when Namjoon decided to confront both of you after catching you kissing back in high school.

"Great, I'll just go get my purse." You excuse yourself hastily and turn to head back inside.

Hobi stands there, unsure of what to do. Namjoon asks, “Is she okay? What did–”

“Nothing happened,” he says too quickly. “I mean, she’s okay, I think. We were just talking and…things got a little emotional. I…I was trying to comfort her,” he tries to explain.

Namjoon’s eyebrow twitches for a second, but his expression turns somber. “I appreciate you being there for her…you know, even after everything that’s happened.”

Hobi nods. Namjoon was initially upset with Hobi for moving back home without you, but what could he do? You were both adults, and your father had already scolded both of you separately. Namjoon decided to help you get back on track as much as he could.

Standing next to his friend, Namjoon takes a deep breath. "Who would have thought, huh? Two divorces in our family. First me, and now YN," he says, shaking his head.

Hobi's mouth falls open. He knew about Namjoon and Vee's divorce, but he was unaware of yours. He is unsure how to react. In a span of minutes, he confronted you about your past, lashed out at you, and you kissed.

He couldn’t help but summarize it in the most ironic way he could think of. “I’m sure that wasn’t in your dad’s bingo card,” he attempts to say in jest to mask his shock.

Namjoon chuckles softly, appreciating the joke but completely unaware of the multiple connotations behind the remark. "Thanks for tonight.”

“Of course,” he answers before the two hug. “Love you, bro,” Namjoon says, patting his friend’s back gently.

******

You and your brothers bid farewell to the remaining guests. Naya embraces you warmly, and you promise to have dinner together one of these weekends. Jimin has decided to leave his car behind and take a cab home instead.

Your brothers exchange hugs with Hobi, thanking him profusely for hosting the celebration. They start walking out the door and towards the van.

Finally, it's your turn to say goodbye to your host. You come up behind Taehyung, who seems to be feeling better. You make a mental note to ask him about it later.

After thanking and hugging Yoongi, he clears his throat loudly and excuses himself to wipe some tables.

"Thanks again for tonight," you say quietly, the memory of him kissing you still nagging at you.

"You're welcome. It was a no-brainer for me," he replies.

You smile awkwardly before embracing him. While he holds you tightly in his arms, he whispers, "I'd do anything for your family...especially for you, Sunshine."

Your heart wrenches. Even after the hurtful things you've said to him, you're not sure you deserve his kindness.

As the van pulls out of the parking lot, you look through one of the windows and spot Hobi by the bar putting away some beer bottles, and to your surprise, Dara comes up behind him and caresses his cheek.

◤Previous | Part 8d◥ | Main Fic Masterlist

Thank you for reading!

If you loved it and/or curious to learn more, please comment, reblog, or send me feedback! 📩. I love hearing from readers! If you didn’t like it so much, I would still like to hear about it 💜

#bts fanfiction #hoseok x reader #bts angst #namjoon fanfiction #hoseok fanfiction #taehyung fanfiction #seokjin fanfiction #seokjin angst #namjoon angst #taehyung angst #hoseok angst #btshoneyhive #thekpopuniverse #bangtantheatrenet #hoseok fluff #seokjin fluff #bts kim line #scions x kims jhs

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antihero-writings · 7 months ago

Text

Waving Through the Veil (Ch 1)

Fandom: Dear Evan Hansen (Book and Musical)

Summary: Evan is haunted by Connor. No, literally haunted. His ghost shows up after hearing Evan's lie about the Orchard, and Evan can actually see him. But, as weird as this situation is, maybe this is how they can become real friends after all.

Note: The one thing I’ve always wanted to see from this franchise, ever since first watching the musical, but even more so after reading the book, is the ghost of Connor being able to have a relationship with Evan. So...I decided to write it! This is written in the style of the book, and will probably mostly follow the book, (I even include some passages from it), but I will probably draw from the musical at times too, depending on what portrayal of something I like best. For those of you who have read the book, the fic begins in the middle of the first scene of chapter 9. I hope you enjoy!! If you do, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to let me know!! It's your comments that fics like this going <3

Chapter 1: All we See Are Ghosts

I didn't bother turning the light on as I flopped down on the couch with the signature groan of a man who’s hit rock bottom. Well maybe not rockbottom, but sediment bottom at least. I think we learned about that in science class; it’s where the fossils are get stuck…That’s pretty much how I feel at the moment.

I'm not sure why I keep reporting back to Jared after every new disaster. I never feel better after our chats. Jared has a way of highlighting my errors so they seem even worse than I first realized.

But I'm so lost right now, sitting alone on the couch in my dark living room. Jared is the only person in the entire world who has even the slightest appreciation for where I am.

I bring Jared up to speed with what happened at the Murphys. We end up texting for a while, and, at this point, my stomach is still churning from the conversation, especially the prospect of making fake emails. Fake emails...to continue the lie I didn't intend to start.

What is wrong with me? Seriously. Why do I keep fooling myself into thinking that the worst that could happen has already happened? Things always get worse. It's guaranteed. That's how life works. You're born and you keep getting older and grayer and sicker, and no matter what effort you make to reverse the process, you die. Every single time To repeat: worse, worse, worse, and then death. I have a long way to go before the worst. This is only the beginning.

And these emails...I'd be giving them what they want—what they need. I'd be helping them.

It's tempting. It really is. But it's also...sick? I can't keep doing this, deceiving these poor people. I'm not cut out for it.

At one point tonight it felt like I was sweating from my eyes—that's how anxious I was. Had I perspired another drop, I might have mummified. I can't go on like this. I'm all drained out.

I turn my phone over so it's facedown. The light from the screen waves over my cast. The memory of the story I conjured up for the Murphys hits me anew. They were talking about the orchard, and I guess the way they were talking about it made me think of Ellison Park. And I can no longer think of Ellison Park without thinking of the tree, and my fall. Connor wasn’t there that day, of course. But I guess...he could've been. when I was telling the story…it was almost like he was. Suddenly thinking of him being there to come get me…everything felt okay. Or at least not not okay. And 'not okay' is how I usually feel.

I’m considering going up to my room when I hear a voice speak:

“So you took my advice after all. It was a nice story, I’ll give you that. No racist-punching, but better than the truth at least.”

I fall off the couch and let out a scream that I’ll admit isn’t very manly.

I realize I probably should have turned on said light, because if I had, I might have noticed someone in the room. And that would have been scary, yes, but probably less scary than simply hearing a disembodied voice suddenly talking to me.

I’ve prepared—well, not so much prepared as worried, which masquerades remarkably well as preparation—for people breaking into my house longer than I’ve worried about the Murphys. Though, to be fair, I expected them to come with knives and/or guns and threats...not talking about advice and punching racists. (The people breaking in, not the Murphys).

The living room isn’t that far from the kitchen, I probably should be going for a knife. Instead I just try to scramble away on the couch and don’t make much distance.

“Who-Who are you?!” I demand, (or, at least, I try to demand, but it sounds more like a squeal), “Why are you in my house?!”

The perp makes a noise like a scoff. “So you can hear me. I thought you might have seen me the other day but I—“ He stops himself.

I stop in my scrambling too, because it’s starting to hit me, like spice that takes a second to set your mouth on fire.

I know that voice. It isn’t the voice of a strange burglar or serial killer—or at least, I don’t think he is but I guess I can’t rule it out, because it’s—

It’s a voice that can’t be speaking to me right now. Literally can't.

“Still,” He’s not disembodied after all, because his shadow walks over to the shelf. Despite the realization, or maybe because of it, I resume my scrambling, finally making it off the couch and onto my feet, (not without falling over first). “That’s some psychotic bullshit you barfed up. One moment you’re writing some creepy note about my sister, trying to make everyone to think I’m crazy, next thing I know you have dinner with my family, talking shit about how we were friends, telling stories about how we went to the orchard together. I’ve never been very good at math, tell me,” I can’t really see him but something tells me he’s turning to me with those blue death rays, “how does that add up?”

Somehow in my scrambling I’ve made it to the light switch, and my fingers clutch it like its a lifesaver thrown out to my pitifully struggling body at sea.

I’m not quite sure I wouldn’t rather drown.

I flick my finger, turning on the light.

I already knew I’d regret it before I turned it on, and, when I did, the regret hit me instantly and intensely, like the spice finally kicking in.

Standing there in his thick boots, and ripped jeans, and long, messy hair, and eyes that analyze my soul is Connor Murphy.

I cover my mouth, breath gaining about ten pounds, heart gaining a hundred, but still running anyways.

“Holy—Holy shit.” I say into my hand. “Holy fuck.”

Connor smirks. “At least someone has the decency to react.”

“You’re—but you—You’re alive?! You’ve been alive this whole time?!”

His eyes darken, dart away. “Not alive, no.”

“Well w-what else could you be?!” I stutter, reaching my tremoring hand into my pocket for my meds, my Ativen—maybe I’ll find my sanity in there if I dig far enough. He’s walking towards me and my heartbeat has gone past the hundred mile-per-hour mark to the speed of light. “I mean, dead people don’t just show up in people’s houses—!”

He leans forward and swipes his hand at me, and I tense, thinking he’s going to knock the pills out of my hand, but instead his fingers go right through me.

I let myself look up at him, finally understanding.

Up at the kid who I always tried to avoid. The kid whose sister I have a crush on. The kid who pushed me at lunch the other day. At the kid who took my letter in the computer lab. The kid I was terrified would ruin my life with that letter (well, more ruined than it already is). The kid who I'm pretending was my best friend. The kid who killed himself.

At Connor Murphy’s ghost.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

The pills scatter on the couch before I have a chance to attempt to get even one down, and I scramble to the bathroom to empty what little of Cynthia’s dinner I actually ate into the toilet.

In between heaves I try to think, to wrap my brain around this, to just have a second to breathe, not really able to do or have any of the above.

Step one: Connor Murphy steals my letter. The letter I wrote to myself. One that was more honest than it strictly should have been.

Step two: Connor Murphy kills himself.

Step three: Connor Murphy’s parents think my letter is his suicide note.

Step four: I can’t bring myself to tell the truth, so I end up going to the wake, and going to dinner at the Murphys’ house, and fabricating some crazy story about us having a picturesque friendship, and planning on making secret emails—

Step five: Connor Murphy’s ghost appears to me in my room.

Like an actual ghost. Yesterday I didn’t believe those existed. I think my mom does, and I always liked watching documentaries about haunted houses. But what I like about the documentaries is they often include a scientific explanation.

And aren’t ghosts supposed to be like…scary? I mean, don’t get me wrong this is scary, Connor is scary—he was scary before he died. But I always thought ghosts were supposed to be like something out of a horror movie, covered in rotting flesh, unable to do anything but moan and scream. Not the kid you happen to be pretending you were best friends with showing up in your room.

No, no, actually, I think I know what’s going on here. Yeah. There’s no ghost. This isn’t happening. The stuff with the letter didn’t even happen either. There was actually a step zero in there:

Step zero is I went insane.

When I manage to get the courage to come back into the room. He’s disappeared. I’ll admit, I was kinda hoping for that. I’m half relieved—more like fifteen sixteenths. Perhaps he was a hallucination after all. All those skipped dinners getting to me, when I actually ate something my body couldn’t handle it. I do my best to clean up the scattered pills on the couch, and the scattered thoughts in my brain.

But then I walk upstairs to my room I find I was wrong.

“I’ve gotten a lot reactions over the years,” he remarks when I get back. “Can’t say I’ve ever had that one.”

“Sorry, I—It’s just—I just—you’re…you’re here.”

“Not because I want to be, believe me. I’d rather be practically anywhere else.” His hand passes through my shelf.

“And you’re dead.”

“Come on.” He feigns offense. “A little respect for your dearly departed. I mean we were best friends, after all.”

“Oh god.” That’s right, the dinner. I'd tried to block out the fact that he mentioned my story earlier. “You really heard all that?!”

“Didn’t intend to go back to my house. Died to be rid of it, after all. But I did, and I saw you there, and I couldn’t fathom why. And here you were spouting the most incredible fucking bullshit about how we were friends.”

“Yeah-Um-So-Well—“ I breathe out, trying to get my lungs to work properly. I thought the Murphy’s house felt hot earlier. This is a couple degrees hotter than the Sahara.

I just want this day to end. What demon (if ghosts exist, those probably exist, after all) marked their calendar for Torment-Evan-Day? I mean, that’s kinda every day, but this is a specially-crafted brand of torture.

“The-” I swallow. “The-The letter? You know, the one that you took from me?" Then, realizing that sounds accusatory, I add, "I-I’m sure you didn’t mean to.” I shake my head. I’m trying my best to tell the truth without making him upset. It feels like a futile endeavor. “Your parents think youwrote it. T-To me, I mean. They think it was your”—I don’t know how or why, but I manage to look him in the eye—“suicide note.”

His eyes widen, but they narrow quickly afterwards. “So you just sat there and fed them bullshit about how we were friends instead of correcting them?”

“Well, no-They—they—” No, not the Sahara, I’m ninety percent sure I’m standing right in the sun. “I tried to tell them—” I swallow. “I promise I really did!” I wipe my sweaty hands on my shirt. “I mean technically I actually did tell them you didn’t write it—they were just…they didn’t understand. They wanted me—They were looking to me for help, for answers. I couldn’t—!“

Once again, I don’t know how I manage to look into those soul-sucking eyes. But once I do, I realize something.

An hour ago, I thought of him as the dead kid. The kid who killed himself. He was a concept, a symbol, more than a person I knew. But before that, as little as we talked, I did know him. He was Connor Murphy. He was real.

And in the second it takes to realize that, I’m replaying our conversations, and I’m realizing that’s wrong too. This isn’t Connor Murphy, and this isn’t the kid who killed himself. This is Connor Murphy…who killed himself. That is to say, the symbol, and the real Connor I knew, coalesce into one.

And I realize that those eyes aren’t analyzing my soul, or trying to suck it out, or hating me, or anything like that…they are so vastly, so perfectly—

“You...You didn’t give them anything else.” I don’t know how, where, I got this random shot of bravery. “I didn’t want to take away all they had of you, even if it was—“ I laugh a little, not because it’s funny, but because I can’t figure out what else to do. “Even if it was just some stupid letter I wrote to myself.”

His eyes widen. I think it’s because he’s surprised at, angered by, my boldness. I get ready to apologize, but he says:

“You wrote that to yourself?”

My eyes widen.

That’s right…I didn’t exactly let that on last time. Didn't have the chance. He thought I was messing with him.

“Y-Yeah. It…” I sigh. There’s no use denying it, and, well, it's not like he can tell anyone, right? Dead men tell no tales, after all...Except for the fact that one is talking to me. Right now. “It was an assignment from my therapist.”

Besides, if anyone’s going to understand…it’s him.

And...that's when it hits me.

Along with the realization that this is Connor Murphy, who killed himself, I realize I’ve been focused on the wrong thing.

I was worried—certain, really—that Connor would something terrible with it. All this time I was focused on covering my ass, I was focused on the fact that the letter was mine, not Connor’s.

This whole time, even after he was gone, it didn’t compute. I didn’t realize. The reason he took it. He didn’t take it because he wanted to use it against me.

Was it possible he took it...because he felt the same way?

“I bet he always brings things back to some shit that happened with your father.”

“Yeah…Yeah he does do that.” I laugh a little.

“Mine liked to equate my drug use with suppressed sexual frustrations. I told him I didn’t think they were very suppressed.”

I laugh, but quickly stop myself, remembering what happened last time I laughed at something he said, but when I turn to him he’s actually smiling. A little, at least.

“Into the Wild.” As far as abrupt subject changes go, that one might take the cake. He turns to my shelf.

“I’m—I’m sorry?”

He runs his finger along the spine of a book...or maybe just tries to. Or pretends to.

“O-Oh! You’re talking about the book!”

“I have a copy of it too—had," he scoffs, then mutters, seemingly more to himself than to me: "It feels weird to talk about myself in the past tense."

I'm sure it does feel weird.

I feel weird.

This whole thing is weird.

Even without the whole ghost thing, it feels weird to be in my room, talking about books with Connor Murphy. Like, to actually talk to him, as opposed to nervously and pitifully trying to defend myself, fearing I'll have a black eye in the morning.

“What were you and Zoe talking about?” He asks, changing the subject yet again, like that one hadn’t satisfied him enough.

“W-Oh, you saw us talking in the car. She—“ I grimace. “She wanted to know if we, uh, if we did drugs together.”

He snorts. “Always a charmer, that Zoe. My biggest fan you could say. You said we were friends and her first assumption was that we did drugs together. Can’t say her suspicion is unfounded. At least on my end. Though something tells me you’re not the type.”

“No—No I’ve never—“ I swallow. "No."

"So." Yet another subject change, it sounds like. "I had a secret email account, huh? I used it to talk to you all the time?

I freeze.

Yup. Just when I think the worst has already happened, I'm reminded hell has nine circles, and I haven't even arrived at the lobby.

When he was dead, he was a symbol. And, really—as terrible as it sounds—I could say anything about a symbol. I mean he wasn’t going to hear me. But now that I know he’s not dead—well, he is dead, just…undead, as insane as that is to think—and real (as far as I can tell), and he very much canhear me, I remember, despite the sadness in his eyes, this is still Connor Murphy, the kid who thew a printer at Mrs. G in second grade.

What the hell was I thinking?

His eyes darken. “Like, what? Secret lovers?" He shook his head. "Why the fuck would you say that?”

“Oh god, yeah I….I did say that.” Somebody just end it. “It was the only thing that made sense.”

“What kind of fucking sense does that make?!” There's a curl to his fingers.

Even though I know he can’t hurt me, my body doesn’t; it’s been trained to run away, and can’t help but stumble backwards like there’s a corporeal person in my room.

“Well they wanted to know how we could be friends without them knowing it.”

He scoffs. “I took you for some kind of loser. But now I see.” He leans forward so his eyes are level with mine. "You’re a diabolical mastermind, Evan Hansen.”

“I’m really—really—not. I just—” I hit the wardrobe in my backing up. I can’t believe he really thinks I intended any of this. My head falls into my hands. “Everything’s so messed up.”

“You saying I messed everything up?!” There’s a snarl in his voice.

“No—No!” I stand, waving my hands. “I didn’t say that! That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying I messed everything up!”

I expect him to keep advancing, to try his best to punch me, but instead he stares at me, then sorta…falls onto bed (I’m both surprised he does this, and surprised he can) laying back, sighing. He puts his arm over his face and, to my even greater surprise, he begins to laugh. Not an actual happy laugh. I know this laugh: it’s the kind of laugh I laugh when my body doesn’t know what else to do.

“Sure, people always ignoring me, always treating me like shit, like I had some disease, that was your fault.”

“Well, I—“

“Me pushing you, that was your fault."

“Well that’s—That’s not exactly what I meant.”

"Me killing myself, leaving nothing but a letter you wrote to yourself…that’s totally your fault.”

I freeze again. I think hell might have frozen over.

He sighs. “You’re right about one thing: everything is truly fucked up.”

I sit on the bed next to him and look at my hands. I’d like to say something. To do something. To offer some words of comfort. But I’m well acquainted with the fact that 'comforting' words (like 'Chin up! It'll get better!' or ‘It’s not the end of the world.’) really aren’t comforting at all.

I’d like to at least say ‘It’ll be okay’ but…how can I say that? Maybe, for me, everything will work out in the end (…I think this is the first time that thought has ever crossed my mind) but he’s already dead. There’s nowhere for him to go. Except the afterlife. …If that even exists.

The world’s already ended for him.

I’d like to comfort him. To argue against him. To show him at least one nugget that has been unharmed in the fuckage that I could present to him. But I can’t disagree with him. Like…at all.

Like I said. Things get worse and worse.

And then...you die.

I realize something.

It's not truly comforting, but it's a positive, at least.

I jerk my head up to look at him.

“Hey, maybe-maybe you could help me!”

“Help you?” He lifts his arm a little so he can raise an eyebrow at me.

“Help me set things right! Help me tell your parents we weren’t really best friends! I’ve been wanting to tell them the truth this whole time I just—I can’t seem to get it out. You could help me figure out how to tell them!”

He sits up, studying me. “I could do that. I could help you set things right. Put an end to this charade.”

I nod profusely.

“Help you tell my parents that the only thing they have of me is a letter you wrote to yourself. Dash all their hopes and dreams, make them miserable, you know, all that shit.”

It sounds bad when he puts it like that. Maybe the truth won't set you free after all.

“Or.” His mouth curves into a smirk, and I smile back—not because I’m happy, not because it’s an actual happy smirk, rather because it’s the kind of smirk that makes me nervous as all hell, and when that happens my body picks from a wheel of stupid reactions. “I could watch you continue your little farce, watch you suffer as you invent more and more ridiculous ways to cover your ass.”

No, no, that sounds equally bad. Let’s not do that either. “Is there an option C?” My voice cracks.

He considers it a moment, sits back on his hands. “I suppose we could compromise. In your little stories about me, it might be nice if you actually portrayed me accurately. I could help with that. Right now your impersonation is laughable. I don’t know how it fooled my parents.”

“I vote for option C.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I mean…What do you want?”

“Ohh you might just regret that.” He smirks again.

“Wait, I wasn't agreeing to giving you anything you want! I was just asking—!“

“Too late.” He puts his finger to his lips. “The deal is sealed.”

I keep digging myself into a bigger ditch without even saying anything. Let alone when I open my mouth.

“So what’s the next step of our little game?”

“Well…” I swallow. “Jared told me he could write fake emails. You know because your parents will...probably want to see them.”

“Jared, huh? Kleinman?" (I’m guessing he hasn’t forgotten about the incident from the other day.) “Good thing I’m here. If I’d left you to your own devices I’d end sounding like a—”

“Did you eat already?”

I nearly scream—well no, not nearly, I do let out a sort of strangled cry—at my mom’s voice. I had been so focused on all of…this craziness that I forgot she was heading home.

“I didn’t think I was that scary.” She laughs to herself a little, then she looks around the room, brow furrowed. “Were you talking to someone?”

She can’t see him. Good. I don’t have to explain why a dead kid is sitting in my room.

“N-Nope! Just uhh—Practicing.”

“Practicing? For what?”

“Uhh, for a play,” I say because what else could I be practicing? I can hear Connor stifling a laugh behind me.

She blinks in surprise. “Oh, Honey, you’re in the school play?”

She’s going to say it’s a bad idea. Because it is a bad idea. Because it’s not true.

“That’s fantastic!”

I blink. What?

“I always thought you hated public speaking. You know, from that time you fainted?”

“I do. That’s, uhh, that’s why I signed up!” I feel my face burning, I make a thumbs up with my casted arm. I know Connor can’t exactly use this against me, but him hearing me stumble through my lies to my mom in my own home isn’t something I signed up for today. Though, I didn’t sign up for any of this. Can I unsubscribe? “Yeah, I wanna get over that fear.”

“I’m so proud of you!” She clasps her hands together. “If you haven’t eaten yet, why don’t we have a celebratory meal?”

I’m shocked. Usually she’s the police on making sure I’ve eaten.

“Oh…Darn,” I say a little over-emphatically. “I already ate.”

“Darn.” She repeats.

“That was fun the other day, right?” She says. “Going out for breakfast?”

So much has happened since our breakfast it already feels like ages ago. “Yeah. Definitely. It was.”

“I was thinking, how about I bag one of my shifts this week. When’s the last time we did a taco night?”

I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure those tortillas in the freezer have turned by now. “Oh. You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to. Maybe we could even start brainstorming those essay questions together.”

The essays. Of course. Her face waits expectantly. “Sure,” I say. “That would be great.”

“Oh. That’s exciting,” she says looking victorious. “I’m excited now. Something to look forward to.”

“Yeah.”

“‘Practicing’?” Connor snorts after she leaves. “‘For a play’? You? You really need some coaching on this whole lying business. I thought you were a terrible liar with my parents but this is fucking priceless.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I bite.

Something dark enters his eyes. “I think hell will wait for me.”

"Well that's not what I—Oh never mind."

#dear evan hansen #evan hansen #connor murphy #deh musical #deh #heidi hansen #musical fandom

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partyinthemysterymachine · 1 year ago

Note

I notice how you draw Harry and James is pretty different from how they look in game. I was curious how you decided their looks. It's interesting to hear about that sort of thing if you don't mind answering. Thanks

hi anon!! :3 thanks for the ask!! i will do my best to explain myself LOL but no promises it'll make any sense >:3c!

so let's go on a fun lil' art journey, anon. grab a granola bar and some gatorade, and c'mon!!!

well first and foremost: i am a NOTORIOUS "i do what i want"-er. going off the beaten path to the beat of my own drum is my favorite thing to do!

.. that said!! as i've mentioned before, actor Josh Charles was my first PB/"cast" for Harry Mason.

and my very first piece of silent hill fanart (march 10, 2018) really reflects that, LOL

incredibly, and almost a full year later to the date, i drew and posted this on march 4, 2019. now THIS is actually the closest canon-Harry i've ever drawn. (this was also around the start of the SH RP i was doing with a friend, which then spawned GOOMT lol.)

april 25, 2019. first color piece for any SH art and my first "real" time drawing james. this is also the last time you'll see him with his bangs on the "correct" side LOL.

april 30, 2019. the SH RP is still going on, and this is where i'm starting to get a better handle on what i want them to look like. Harry also gets a maroon sweater. he's also notably thinner here, and still has a lot of Josh Charles vibes.

sept 22, 2019. james sunderland thinnest browns edition. the bangs will be drawn on the right from now on.

(the only reason why they're on the right is because i forgot which way his hair actually parted. oops.)

the RP has ended. the first chapter of GOOMT is written a tumblr post and subsequently posted to tumblr october 3, 2019. i write/pst chapters 1 - 4 in the following days, then draw them again:

james's jacket is still short (but at least he has eyebrows!!); harry is still thin(ner). he's also got more of a canon-harry super low cut sweatervest.

ch 5, 6 is written/posted to tumblr. i draw and post this on october 27, 2019. please clap for my art journey LMAO

you'll also notice hte presence of A Knife. this is actually Angela's knife. shhh. ;)

still figuring out what they look like in goomt here tbh.

stuff from the following week. more figuring out! DRASTICALLY different Harry, too! still very Josh Charles-y, but starting to take on his own look as well. (note his greys!!)

i like DILFs. i like dad bods. he was intended to be a little soft around the middle.

it's not until January 2020 that i draw these idiots again:

very different nose for james lmao.

this is actually my first full body for both in awhile.

(i'm redoing this :3)

also more "accurate" debut of Harry's jacket!! this jacket was ALWAYS intended to look/be bigger on him. i can't really explain why because i don't know, other than it felt right.

at this point i've figured out how i want Harry to look. his design elements are very simple, because i'm EXTREMELY self-indulgent and i really. REALLY like:

widow's peaks

big thick eyebrows

noses. big beak noses

old men

grey hair

(you can actually find this sort of pattern across my various OCs that you'll never find evidence of on my blog anymore haha except for Zach good luck tho. >:3c)

January then gets very busy in the art department for these guys.

Harry finally gets more of a pudge and starts to "look" like himself. James also starts to "look" like himself.

a note on james's bangs: i uhhhhhhh. Stylistically, i have a thing for drawing Big Hair and Tall Bangs. this is seen in my version of Jonathan Crane. but also my hair used to do the exact same bangs so are you really surprised.

(bonus pieces of abandoned James GOOMT character sheet from 2001. i might have the files somewhere if you guys want to see What Almost Was LMAO)